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This story was originally written for the "

The 2024 "Hammered: an Ode to Mickey Spillane" Author Challenge

" event in July 2024.

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Those damn seagulls. Croaking and cawing, shrill like nails of an old Latina teacher scraping the chalkboard in some poor classroom in the Mission. Vermin, every one of them; scurrying through the sky like rats running down the grimy backstreets of Tenderloin.

I walked the creaking pier, wading through the clammy morning fog. Taking hasty sips of a weak, tepid liquid they call coffee. From a paper cup, like one of those hunched-over gremlins who squint at their fancy silver laptops. I flailed at the stubborn bird that circled above me, shielding an apple danish from its prying beak. That sweet roll was my ray of sunshine: the only thing I had to break the bitter cold of this early December morning.

But it was no use. The flying rat snatched it out of my damn hand, only to find it too heavy and drop it a few feet away. It fell, it hit the planks, it bounced, and it sank -- right into the black, mucky waters of Potrero Point. It went down like this poor bastard they'd just dredged up, maybe an hour ago or thereabouts.

"Inspector Roger Miller, from Homicide," I rasped, waving my badge at the shivering, bleary-eyed kid standing by the yellow tape. I pitied him; he'd have a monster of a cold if he kept standing here in this thin blue uniform of his. Good thing I still had my old coat. The lapels saw too much mud and too much blood, but it was warm, and it was mine.

"Th-this way, sir," he stammered, and the tape let me in. "The coast guard found the v-victim around 4:30 am, floating about half a mile away from this point. Male, Asian, late twenties to early thirties..."

Asian? That was new. Half the time they called me, it was to pick up the pieces after another shootout between the Mexicans and the Salvadorans. The other times it would also be one of these two, dumping a body of some unfortunate lackey from the other gang they managed to pick off alone. It'd be fished by the coast guard, just like our Chinese friend here, but without all the pomp and circumstance that he was getting.

I counted four squad cars, three more than normal; an ambulance, a firetruck, even the local TV van was here already... Thank god they were still setting up. The last thing I needed was some journalistic vulture, descending upon me like a hyena that smelled a rotting carcass.

And speaking of a carcass...

"Sir? He-here's inspector Roger M-miller, from Homicide," the shivering boy handed me over to lieutenant Jack.

"Good, finally. That'd be all, kid," he dismissed the youngster, then turned back to him and yelled, "And put on a jacket, for god's sake! I don't wanna hear you cough up a lung tomorrow!"

Ah, good ol' Jack Harrison. Always looking out for his underlings.

I nodded at him, then put on my gloves and looked at the stiff. "So, what do we have here?"

"Name's Yifan Li, born 1988. We know this because we found one of those hipster metal wallets in his back pocket. Credit card, driver's license, two hundred in cash. The benjamins are soggy but otherwise it's all intact."

Mr Li lay face down, jet black hair tangled like cobwebs under the awning of an old Victorian house. Seaweed got to him already but at least the fish and seagulls hadn't. Faded jeans; bland, monochromatic T-shirt; old sneakers with worn-out soles. Could've been a teenager, with those juvenile fashion choices, but Jack said the guy was pushing thirty. He was tall, probably six-one, wide and bulky in the shoulders.

Still a kid, though. Too bad.

"Any record on him?"

"Not a damn thing. Not even a speeding ticket. Wasn't reported as missing either. Seems like this is his first and last brush with SFPD," Jack said. He was always funny like that.

I squatted to look for any clues. There was something sticking out from under the man's waist. I slid it out carefully, but it was tethered to his belt. I waved at Jack to get down.

"What's this?"

Inside a dirty but mostly transparent envelope, there was a piece of plastic with the guy's photograph and name. It was printed on a rainbow background; the colors changed when you looked at it from a different angle, like those healing crystals my ex-wife would get in Cole Valley. The seawater got to it but it was legible enough. Some kind of access card or pass. No other markings to be seen.

"Oh boy," Jack said.

"You recognize this?"

"Yea. Ever seen one of those big coaches? They stop around Castro, Mission, or wherever the rent is about to go up next," he said, shaking his head with a scoff. "Corporate buses. They go between the city and the Valley, shuttling people who work for those fancy-shmancy tech companies. They always wear badges like this."

I took the card out of its cover and flicked it between my fingers. I dropped it in a forensic bag, where it landed with a slimy squeak. I stood up and handed the thing to a technician. Sure, they would try, but after several hours in murky seawater I'd be surprised if they got anything useful from it. The Bay didn't give up its secrets so easily.

"I don't see any signs of struggle," I said, taking off the gloves. "Gonna open him up today, I recon?"

"Will have to." Jack sighed, glancing at the ruckus behind. The camera crew had started taping a while ago. "These journalistic dogs have picked up the scent already. Chief will kill me if we don't have anything concrete for the evening news."

"Get to it then," I said, fixing my hat as I prepared to leave.

"What about you, Miller?"

I turned to him with a wry smile. "I'll go work on my tan. Down south."

***

Ten years in Homicide, and there were still things that'd surprise even an old dog like me.

My current client was clean, like no street in the city ever was. Word had it he'd been earning his keep at one of the giants in Silicon Valley. Some kind of engineer, they called it, but something told me he would've built neither a house nor a bridge. But whatever he'd been engineering, I'd bet my bottom dollar it was hiding somewhere in my computer. Or my cellphone.

Or hell, maybe even in my car. It was a spiffy and fresh one, after all. Some weeks ago, I left behind my twenty-year old Chevy and gotten myself a new ride. She was quiet and easy to handle, in the exact same way that my ex-wife wasn't. More than a year of living the divorcee life but the deal had only been finalized last month. This was my way of celebrating; I was a free man, again.

"In three quarter miles, take the exit from US 101 to --"

"That's in like quarter-hour, smartass!" I flipped at the GPS thing. It was half past seven and the traffic was making me retch. We were shambling like half-drunk, half-high ravers who must've been leaving the clubs on Castro right about now. Even those shuttles that Jack told me about seemed to fare no better. I saw one stuck in the bus lane, crawling at a snail's pace with the rest of us.

Probably for the better, though. I heard those tech types weren't ones to start the day early. But, on the other hand, maybe I didn't want to hurry up too much either? The skinny was that they served fine food on those corporate campuses. And I still didn't have my breakfast.

In the end, I wasn't too far off. It took me twenty minutes to get off 101 and another five to find a parking spot. I followed the crowd from a nearby bus into a sprawling, two-story building. It looked like a warehouse, with a roof taken out of a closed-down Pizza Hut.

The young girl at the front desk was mildly distressed at my arrival, and that was before I flashed my badge and told her who I was. She wanted to direct me to someone from their own security department, before I mentioned the name of a guy I was supposed to meet. I was told to wait while she frantically hit the clattering springs of her keyboard. Her face vacillated between a mild frown and a weak smile. It finally settled on a frown, just before she sighed and looked at me again.

"Mr Green should be here in a minute," she said. "Please, have a seat."

I sat on a couch whose different parts were red, yellow, blue, purple and green, all at the same time. Everything in this place was like that: too much chaos, too many colors. The dress code, if there was one, followed the same principle. Those who swiped their access cards and entered -- identical to the one I'd picked off of Mr Li's waterlogged corpse -- wore garish T-shirts that they paired with either slacks or jeans. He definitely belonged in this place, I thought to myself, just like the guy who I was told was his manager.

"Mr Miller?"

I looked up to see a corpulent man with unkempt brown beard. Early forties, quite short, Caucasian; he was carrying a laptop that was completely covered in Post-it notes. I stood to shake his hand and found the grip stronger than I expected. He tried to smile but it was coming out crooked from behind his bushy mustache. I wasn't surprised. Whenever I had official business with a civilian like him, I rarely had good news.

He let me through the turnstiles and led through the wide corridors. The whole place was like a kindergarten mixed with a bullpen-style office. Weird shapes, gaudy colors, interior design choices straight out of Dali's paintings. At least it was quiet. There were only a few people around, most of them chewing through their breakfast. It once again reminded me that I still didn't have mine.

Thankfully, we passed a snack and refreshment area. They called it a microkitchen and it was twice as large as my kitchen back home. Mr Green said I could help myself to anything I wanted, and I sure wasn't about to pass on the offer. A cup of coffee and a protein bar later, I followed him even further into this bizarre land.

At length, we entered a conference room with a massive TV screen. Two men were already there, chatting over paper plates with scrambled eggs and sausage. Their faces hardened the moment they were told I was from the police. I learned I had this effect on people, and it was usually for a good reason. I didn't like it much but someone had to be the bearer of bad news. Someone had to remind them that there existed a real world, outside of their chocolate factory.

"Sorry, I'm late! There was a long line at the coffee shop."

And sometimes it would be me, feeling like I just found a golden ticket.

"Don't worry, Angie," said my portly host. "We are still waiting for Joel."

I saw her enter, but she didn't just walk in. She emerged and bent the space around her body, like a giant star testing the Einstein's theory of gravity. Her figure defied comprehension. To describe her merely as curvy would be like saying that rent in SoMa was high, or that Golden Gate was a notable bridge. She was voluptuous in a way that made you question the acuity of your vision. Heck, I thought my eyes were deceiving me, until she walked a few steps and I saw in vivid detail every shake, bounce, and jiggle.

She was tall, only a few inches below my own six feet. Her beige turtleneck couldn't have been more modest, and yet the splendor of the fleshy globes underneath was undeniable. Each one was as big as her head, large and round like watermelons at the farmer's market in Noe. The poor things were squashed together like sardines at Pac Bell Park whenever Giants played against Dodgers. It must've been industrial grade, the rubber band that held these wonders together. But I would still rip it apart if, by God's boundless grace, I ever got a chance to lay my hands upon these treasures.

She sat two chairs to the side, obscured by Green's beer gut. I sighed, but thought it was for the better. A distraction like this would've been hard to avoid, and I had some grim news to deliver.

"Hey, everyone," the last guy then appeared, as unremarkable as the others. He sat on the left-hand side of the bodacious goddess and, like everyone in the room, fixed his eyes on me.

"Team, this is Roger Miller from SFPD," I was introduced by the pudgy dwarf. "I've been told he, uhm, has something to share with us..."

It would be pointless to wax mournful about all the ways his coworkers reacted to the death of Yifan Li. Suffice it to say that the atmosphere in the cramped room got heavier than the ripe air inside a Muni bus. Tears had flowed and sighs were heard. Mr Green mumbled halfheartedly about some mental health benefits that their company offered in its capitalistic magnanimity. That Joel guy, the last one to come in, slammed the table and demanded I did everything to find the bastard who did this to his friend.

My respect for him grew instantly. I promised him exactly that.

When everyone calmed down and there was nothing left to say, I handed them my cards. I told them to contact me should they have anything that could help the investigation. None of them had tingled my spider senses -- other than the tingle in my loins when I saw the queen of curves -- so that was where the official part of my visit ended. But I still hoped I could drag something out of Green, or whoever it'd be to escort me beyond the premises.

To my surprise and delight, it was the Venus herself who volunteered to see me out. She was quite insistent about it, too. She had just been bawling her eyes out and had barely wiped the tears, so I got a hunch there was something more behind her eagerness. It dawned on me when I was forced to look her in the face, rather than try and sneak lecherous peeks at her magnificent boobs.

Her features were distinctly Asian. Probably Korean, if I were to hazard a guess. I was then reminded of the shocked gasp she'd let out, the very moment I said Mr Li was dead. It belied too much distress, for him to have been merely her colleague.

"You two were an item," I said, once we were alone.

"An... item?"

I sighed, hearing her prominent accent. "He was your boyfriend, wasn't he?"

She gasped. "Y-yes. How did you...?"

I only smirked. "Come on. Let's talk somewhere we won't be interrupted."

She showed me out and led through the office; and boy, did I enjoy being led... It was a miracle that those jeans of hers were still holding on, seams sorely tested by every tantalizing step. I saw pockets stretched so taut over her glorious backside, you would need a wedge to pull them away from those firm buttocks. The breadth of her hips was truly unbelievable, and their sway could easily hypnotize boys and grown men alike. The sheer size of her derriere demanded your complete and undivided attention, just to fully appreciate its exquisite splendor. I could put both hands on either one of her massive hemispheres and there would still be more acres of lush feminine flesh to enjoy.

And then there were her legs. She sashayed ahead of me, both powerful thighs rippling under her skin-tight pants. Immense meaty pillars; they beckoned me like an obedient dog, with their thick, captivating curves keeping aloft that tremendous butt. Shadows danced across them, the ebb and flow of sleek muscle visible even under the layered denim. The tortured fabric struggled to maintain its composure, just like I was fighting a losing battle to tear my eyes away from this stunning display of womanly allure.

I followed her like a puppy, putting every ounce of willpower into looking just innocent enough not to draw attention. It wasn't very difficult: the jaw-dropping temptress would instantly steal all the glances. Every man we passed would fidget in his chair or furtively turn around, either averting his gaze in a hurry or scrambling to sneak a peek at the bodacious beauty.

We arrived at another refreshment area, and this one was even bigger than the last. It had several tables with chairs to sit on; we took one that was far away from the rest. I helped myself to another flapjack and a coffee. Miss Buxom brought tea and a Babybel cheese puck. She slowly unwrapped it with her impeccably manicured hand, sighing and sniffling the whole time.

"They don't know," I finally said.

"No. Yifan is...

was

my teammate, so it would be okay, but we didn't make it public because..."

I took a sip of my coffee. "Go on."

"Steve is moving on in a few weeks," she said, referring to Green and mentioning the name of a different company. "He told me because I'm the one who's most likely to take his place as the manager. And that would mean..."

"Conflict of interest," I said immediately.

Yeah, this wasn't my first corporate rodeo. Early on, during my stint in Homicide, I had a case involving a bank executive who'd been banging his secretary. She was later found dead. Turned out to be just another armed robbery gone wrong but we uncovered something else during the investigation. He had installed her brother in some well-paid sinecure, in exchange for her staying mum about their affair and not ruining his marriage.

The phrase 'conflict of interest' had been burned in my mind since then. What the busty belle was talking about, of course, was peanuts compared to that older case. But since a man was now dead, no detail should be trivial enough to overlook.

"Yes," she said. "So, I told Yifan about it, but he said I didn't need to worry. He didn't want to stay on the team much longer anyway. And now..." she trailed off, looking like she was trying to hold back tears.

I asked her a few more questions but didn't want to pressure the poor thing much longer. I had no reason to distrust her when she said she had no idea who did this to her beau. We finished our drinks and she escorted me out like she was supposed to do. I reveled in the pleasure of watching her mile-wide hips sway from side to side as she walked away.

I was just outside the building when the phone vibrated in my pocket. It was Donna, calling from the morgue. Her squeaky voice would always make me smile but alas, she was married.

"Miller."

"Oh, why so formal?" She giggled. "You know it's me, don't you?"

"Sorry. I'm still kinda dazed. Chocolate overdose."

"Say what?"

"Never mind. Got any good news for me, honey?"

"Well, I don't know about good but it sure is interesting," she drawled. I imagined her coiling her blonde locks around a #2 pencil. "We did the autopsy on your Asian boy."

I blinked. "Already?"

"Yup. Chief rushed it through. Wanna know what we found?"

"Hit me." I buckled up and switched the phone to hands-free.

"He had multiple broken ribs and extensive internal bleeding. Trauma is consistent with impact with water after a fall from a significant height. We see this a lot in these sad sobs who jump off of Golden Gate."

"Suicide?" I asked, turning the key to start the engine. "I don't believe it. He didn't seem like the type. I talked to his coworkers and they said --"

"Now hold on, Roger," she said in honeyed voice. "Your instincts are correct. But damn, we're lucky we did this autopsy so quickly. A few more hours and the traces would've been undetectable..."

"Traces?" I asked, pulling from the parking lot and into the short feeder road that immediately merged with 101. As I did that, there was silence on the other end. I grew impatient. "Okay, sweetheart, that's enough. Don't leave me hanging, will you?"

"Metabolites of sodium cyanide," she said finally. "Roger, your boy was poisoned."

I nervously swerved into the middle lane. "You sure?"

"Completely."

"Alright, hold on. I'll be with you in"--I checked the GPS--"an hour and a half?"

"Whenever you're ready, hun," she said, ending the call.

I let out a long sigh. Poison, huh? A change of pace to be sure, away from the usual gunshot wounds and blunt trauma from baseball bats. This case was getting more interesting by the hour.

***

On the way to the station, I stopped by the fridges to pick up the autopsy papers. Donna was her usual cheerful self, warming up the place with a radiant smile like a dozen hundred-watt light bulbs. I always teased her she'd spoil the stiffs. When she was in a particularly good mood, that quip would earn me a saucy peck on the cheek.