In the third of the “Dupuis Mysteries”, Johnny’s nephew joins the fight.
Reading “The Mysteries of Armand Dupuis # 39: The Case of the Barefooted Murderess” and “The Deep Sleep” first would be best.
The Dorvak Protocol 1
1972
Trevor Dupuis was sure the large man in the dark suit and black sunglasses was watching him. He knew he should focus on the ceremony, but he kept spotting the guy looking in his direction.
Trevor tried to ignore him. First he looked at the waiting honor guard, standing without sweat in their dress blues in the brutal California sun. Then he tried looking at his Aunt Angie sitting next to his cousin Pete. The 13 year old looked both sad and uncomfortable. His mom just kept staring at Uncle Johnny’s flag draped casket. Trevor was about to look at the hearse when he caught the big man staring at him again.
Trevor finally whispered to Daisy, but she rolled her eyes and whispered back:
”I told you that weed was real strong. You’re just paranoid.”
This pissed him off.
”I’m telling you......ever since that last run....The Feds are into us.”
He was about to say more when he saw Aunt Angie staring at him with frightfully empty eyes. Ashamed, he shut his mouth. He and Daisy had been late for the graveside service, now he was creating a disturbance. Trevor’s folks had died in a car wreck back in 64, and Uncle Johnny and Aunt Angie had pretty much raised him. He respected his Uncle, he loved Angie. He didn’t want to cause her any further grief, so he tried harder to focus on the service.
The chaplain, resplendent in the dress whites of a Naval Lt. Commander, was reciting Uncle Johnny’s service record. The Naval Cross in World War Two, as well as two Purple Hearts. A battlefield commission on Pelilieu Island. Command of a company in Korea, along with more medals including his final Purple Heart.
He felt Daisy shift in her seat. All this celebration of American Military Glory must have been finger nails scratching the blackboard of her red soul.
The chaplain then went on about how his uncle created one of the most successful detective agencies on the West Coast. Next came all of Uncle Johnny’s contributions to various veteran charities. Then the padre recognized the family members. Trevor was the last name mentioned.
The ceremony became religious, and Trevor’s mind began to wander again. He couldn’t help himself so he suddenly looked, trying to catch the would be spy. The big man was gone, seemingly without a trace. Trevor started scanning the cemetery. He was about to whisper again to Daisy, when the crack of the rifle salute made him jump.
”Jeeze, Trev.......you need to cool it....people are looking.”
Trevor and Daisy stood in the line waiting to speak to Aunt Angie. It broke his heart seeing her like this. Still beautiful with her slender body and large eyes, she looked small holding the casket flag folded into a triangle. The Honor Guard was marching off to their transport.
”I wonder how many babies they’ve killed between them.” Daisy muttered.
”Probably none, Babe. Give it a rest. You promised. Anyway, you really didn’t see the guy?”
Before she could respond, Trevor was engulfed in a hairy embrace and lifted into the air. For a minute he thought the spy was attacking. But when he heard the baritone laugh, he smiled for first time since arriving at the cemetery.
”Agori Mou! Opa!” Uncle Artie put him down and they hugged.
“Daisy, meet Aristotle Nicodemus, the best chef you’ll ever meet. Uncle.....this is Daisy, my girl.”
”And a beautiful girl she is....please...you can just call me Artie.”
”Pleased to meet you....Artie.....Trevor’s said so many good things about you”
That much was true. Uncle Johnny wasn’t around much, so it was Artie who took Trevor under his wing. He taught him how to fish, play ball, how to drive, and even the birds and bees. Before he worked for the Agency, Trevor would bus tables at both the Taverna and the diner. It didn’t matter they weren’t related by blood, Artie loved him like a real nephew.
They talked a bit, and soon Trevor could see Uncle Artie had accomplished the near impossible. He had charmed Daisy. She was laughing hard as the old man told her the story about how a fifteen year old Trevor had nearly burned down Artie’s restaurant trying to make Saganaki, a flaming cheese dish.
Trevor saw another familiar sight walking towards him. He excused himself and met the man halfway then shook his hand. Bart Patterson was a former cop who ran his Uncle Johnny’s Seaside office. Trevor had started working for Bart in High School. At first, Trevor was an errand boy, a gopher. But Trevor was smart and a hard worker. By the time he was a senior, Bart was having him do actual detective work.
”Good to see you, Mr. Patterson.”
Bart responded by taking a theatrical sniff. “Smoking grass today, Trevor?”
Once a cop, always a cop. But before Trevor could stammer out a response, Bart broke out in a big grin.
”Just busting your balls, kid. How are you? The haircut is an improvement.”
To his Uncle Johnny’s disgust, Trevor had gown his hair well below his shoukders, and a shaggy beard to boot. But when he had begun his newest vocation, smuggling draft evaders to Canada, he was smart enough to know a more square look had its advantages. His Uncle still would call his hair too long, if he were there.
Trevor then remembered the large man spying on him.
”Say, Mr. Patterson, did you noticed a big guy, in a black suit, standing in the back? A stranger, in black shades? Cop looking?”
”Yeah, I did. I saw him walk up. I’d never seen him before. So I go up to him....he looked to me like he was G-man of some sort. I’m all....you know....cop to cop....friendly like. I asked him if he was working.”
”What’d he say?”
”He told me to fuck off.”
Trevor was still disturbed by Patterson’s words as he and Daisy crossed the Diner’s gravel lot, filled with parked cars. He suddenly stopped, and Daisy looked at him.
She wasn’t as tall as Trevor, but she had long, lean legs. She had straight light brown hair that reached her mid back. Bangs framed her face. She had a pretty face that never needed make up. She wore a short black dress and carried her now discarded flat sandals.
”I’m done, Babe.....no more runs. I mean it this time.” He blurted this out in a rush.
”Trevor...your letting your imagination go wild. Besides, you made commitments to me...to my friends...to the Cause.”
He had met her his second year of college. She was beautiful and a whole lot of fun in bed. They had spent many an hour exploring her gymnast body. More important, she was smart. She had done much to broaden his political thought. He didn’t buy into all of her Maoist beliefs, but he certainly agreed the War was a tragic mistake, one he didn’t want anything to do with. He felt guilty about his college deferment, and knew the poor were far more likely to go. He was therefore open to Daisy’s friends’ offer to run draft evaders to Canada, two hundred bucks a head.
It was fun, at first. His work for the Agency gave him helpful skills. He liked and felt for most of the boys, poor young men sad to be leaving home, maybe never to return. He felt like he was helping them, and he liked the rush of excitement.
But now it was something he was beginning to dread. Increasingly, he felt he was being observed, followed. Worse, some of the clients were slightly older and barely talked to him. He suspected they were different. His fears were confirmed when he saw a wanted poster for one of them. The sullen young man wasn’t a draft dodger, he was a member of the extremist group, the Weathermen. He had apparently blown up a college ROTC office, killing a night janitor. When he confronted Daisy, she hadn’t denied it. She said that the man was part of the Cause. All Trevor knew was he unwittingly had become an accessory after the fact to Felony Murder.
”I never made any commitments. I told you, I did it for money....not for your Cause. I certainly didn’t to agree to get involved with a killer. I hope you understand......I dig you....I really do. But I can’t do it anymore. I’m out.”
She looked like she was about argue, but didn’t.
”Look, Honey......it’s a tough day for you...I get it. You’re upset. Let’s rap later about it. I want to meet your family.” She looked up at the big sign over the restaurant and said:
”Space Grills’ Diner: Home of the Barefoot Waitresses......sounds like my kind of place. What’s the story with the name?”
Before he could answer, shrill shrieks filled the air. His “Aunts” Dori and Nancy were joyfully running out in their normal black tops and tights. Under their page boy haircuts, they didn’t look anything like they were in their late thirties. They ran to them with their arms out, impervious to the gravel with their bare soles . Dori, the red head, got to him first, and hugged him. Nancy, the blonde, soon joined the hug, plastering him with kisses. Nancy spoke first.
”Trev.....,you look great...it’s been too long.” The blonde Nancy was her normal flirty self.
“We’re so sorry for your loss, Trev.” Dori, as usual, was always the more serious of the Space Girls. “He was a good man.”
Nancy was crying. “Yeah...you don’t know how he rescued us.....we owe everything.......”
Dori abruptly interrupted her partner. “Trev...we’ve been rude....introduce your friend.”
”Aunt Dori.....Aunt Nancy, this is Daisy. Daisy, meet Dori and Nancy, the proprietors of the best Diner this side of Kansas City.”
The four talked, then Dori remembered they were on a mission to go to the Taverna and get more beer for the wake. They told Trevor and Nancy to go in out of the heat. They then drove off in their station wagon.
Daisy said:
”I think I should be jealous the way they were all over you.”
”Nah....they’re family....not by blood, but still. Besides, I’m not what they’re looking for.....they’re a couple, if you know what I mean.”
”Huh....”
”You’re not shocked are you? Seems a little bourgeois for you, Che Guevara.”
”No.....it’s like Professor Pace says.....sexual deviation is to be expected in late stage capitalist societies.”
”Yeah, Professor Pace has a lot to say about everything.”
”I’m not judging them, Trevor. I’m sure the sexual inequality endemic to America has scarred them. I’m just saying in the socialist state there won’t be social deviates.”
”All I know is they don’t hurt anyone and they’ve always been good to me.”
Years ago, Trevor had spoken to Aunt Angie about the Space Gals. Her response was cryptic.
”There was real bad men in their life once, bad enough to put them off men forever.”
There she sat, the star of most of his adolescent fantasies. Norma Breckinridge held court in the corner of the diner, surrounded by men. Norma had been Uncle Johnny’s personal secretary. In her early forties, she could still pass as someone a decade or more younger. Her natural blonde hair was still in a Veronica Lake like cut and had no gray, and her movie star face had no wrinkles. She had a spectacular, curvy body atop long legs.
She wore a conservative black dress. Like most of the ladies at the wake, her heels and stockings were discarded. The men around her were mostly detectives from the Agency, and were hanging onto her every word. Trevor was surprised by her vivaciousness. The Norma he remembered, despite her looks, was always proper and businesslike.
Daisy was over at the counter trading Ouzo shots with Uncle Artie. She was holding her own, to Artie’s delight. Dean Martin singing “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” was blasting from the juke box, and many were singing along. Norma says a joke, and her collection of would be suitors all broke out laughing.
A feminine head leaned on his left shoulder. The smell of the black hair was unmistakable, and his arm went around the still tiny waist.
“How you doing, Aunt Angie?”
”Bout what you’d expect. I keep trying to tell myself this is better. The Parkinson’s was no picnic for him. He was used to always being the strongest guy in the room....and I don’t just mean muscles. The doctors said too many blows to the head.”
”I have to be honest, I wish I knew him better. “
“He knew you. He thought you were smart, smart in the way that counts. Sure, he hated the hair and the grass and the pinko girlfriend, but he saw your potential. Peter.....Peter is sensitive.....an artist. You....you he saw maybe taking over the agency someday. Me, too, Honey.”
Trevor didn’t know what to say. But the awkward silence was broken when Patricia, Norma’s stepdaughter walked up to them. Trevor knew she was one of the richest women in the world, and he was impressed she had shown up for the service and wake.
”Angie.....I’m sorry......but I think we need to get her out of here.”
Norma was standing on a table singing along with Sinatra and “The Summer Wind”. The crowd of guys had grown.
Patricia went on:
”I tried to tell her we had to go, but she told me to go without her.”
Angie looked at her for a moment, then went over to the corner. As Trevor watched, she waited until the song was over. After the applause died out, she helped Norma down. Then Angie stood on her bare toes and whispered into the secretary’s ear. Norma’s body seemed to stiffen, then relax. She said something back to Angie, then stared off into the distance. Patricia grabbed both of their purses, shoes and hosiery, then took Norma by the arm.
Angie walked back to Trevor, all maternal softness gone from her face.
”Tomorrow, the house...2 pm. And, Trevor?”
”Yes, Aunt Angie?”
”Leave the girlfriend behind, and I want you straight. I smell weed on you, I’ll crack you one. I love you like my own, but it’s time for you to grow up.”