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Sandra's stories have appeared in Crime and Suspense, A Cruel World, and Flashing in the Gutters. She has two stories in the anthology The EX Factor, due out in October from Koboca Publishing.

Dead Eye Dick by Sandra Seamans

The regulars call me Eye. It's an inside joke at Joey's Bar where I keep an office at a corner table. I lost my eye in the war and took to wearing an eye patch instead of a marble in the old eye socket. Joey says I remind her of them pirates on the covers of her romance novels. She thinks I give the place a bit of class. Who am I to argue––I don't pay rent on the table.

A one-eyed private eye ain't in much demand. I've got a phone number in the yellow pages, but it doesn't bring in the better class of clients. Probably the address scares them off, a bar on the raggedy side of town doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Truth is, I ain't lookin' for much work or I would have grabbed some prime office space in a better neighborhood.

But every once in a while, the door swings open and it ain't a regular. Just someone lookin for a helping hand. I wave them to a chair and take a listen to their problem. If I can help, they cross my palm with a bit of green. Usually enough to cover my bar tab for the month.

I was nursing my morning hangover with a cup of coffee when the door opened last week. Matter of fact, I didn't notice the dame who walked in until Joey dropped the coffee pot in my lap. Now, Joey's a good looking broad in her own right, so it must've been the mink and diamonds that took the starch out of her blouse. This dame reeked of old money.

Me, I don't care if the money's old or new, it all spends the same. We settled on a price and I took the case. Since I was two months in arrears with the bar tab, Joey relieved me of the burden of carrying around all that cash.

Now, this should have been a simple bit of legwork, snap the dame's cheating husband in action, then back to the bar for a tall cold one. Except when you're dealing with women, you gotta know you ain't getting the whole truth. And this dame, she never let on that her old man was doing the bump-and-grind with the mayor's wife. The mayor wasn't going to be happy when his wife's affair hit the headlines. It's an election year, and politics can be murder.

The mayor of our fair city owes his allegiance to the local union leaders, who owe theirs to the mob connections. Politics is a vicious circle to travel in when you ain't on the payroll, which I ain't. But with me holding the steamy, between-the-sheets action in the palm of my hand? Things could change.

A little blackmail never hurt anybody, right? I figured the pictures could do me more good than my client. The extra cash would go a long way towards keeping Joey off my back about the delinquent bar tab. So I made a call to the mayor's office.

I was expecting a brown paper bag filled with twenties. What I got was a visit from the local union leader and a couple of his thugs. Me not being a card-carrying member of the local teamsters didn't work in my favor. They took a baseball bat to my knees. I got off a couple of shots with my trusty revolver. I'm limping. They're dead. The cops got the photos.

As for the mayor, his chances of getting another term in office are iffy at best. His wife just got nailed in a drive-by shooting. That don't look good for a politician who's supposed be tough on crime. Like I said, politics is murder.

THE END