The Writers' Circle

The rain pelted down onto Dan's black fedora hat as he stood in the shadows across from the Goodman Theater.
	"Man I should have brought an umbrella." Dan says.
	Dan is waiting for Robert Mackey to come out of the theater so he can continue following him. He was hired by Theodore Randolph, Robert's boss. Theodore seems to think that Robert is taking money from his company and that's why Dan is standing here in the rain waiting. Dan pulls a pack of smokes out of his pocket and pops one in his mouth and tries to light it, but the rain keeps extinguishing the flame. Just then Dan glances up and sees Robert and his date exit the theater. Robert pops open an umbrella and the two squeeze tightly together under it and head away from Dan. Dan begins to follow from across the street but stays near the shadows as to not be spotted. The rain begins to fall harder as they move down the street and Dan is being pounded by this spring rain. Dan looks at a man begging for money and when he turns back the two are gone. Dan quickly scans the crowd and comes up empty. Then two gunshots ring out from a small alley across from him. He frantically moves out into oncoming traffic and draws his glock out of its pancake holster. When he comes into the alley with his weapon at the ready he spots the female leaning over Robert who is lying, bleeding on the wet pavement.
	"They ran that way down the alley, two of them."
	Dan notices that the lady isn't crying, but focuses on moving down the alley to see if he can spot the men. After arriving at the end of the alley he spots no one, not a single person moving on the street. He then turns back and jogs to where the two are on the ground. Dan quickly moves the lady aside and checks for a pulse and comes up empty. Robert is dead and a crowd is beginning to form. Dan asks everyone to stand back and hears sirens off in the distance. 
	He then asks the lady, "What happened here?"
	"I'm not sure. He said he knew a shortcut to the restaurant and we turned down here. Then a man, I mean two men jumped out and just shot him and I screamed. That's when you came running into the alley."
"So, where exactly did they come from?"
"I don't know. They just popped out and fired!"
Dan looks around and can't really see where the two men might have been hiding and then is startled by a paramedic asking him to move. Once he stands up he spots about seven officers standing around the scene.
The paramedic yells out, "Gun!"
The officers quickly draw down on Dan and he raises his hands immediately.
"I'm a P.I."
	"One officer tells him to lie on the ground and not to move. He obeys and lies on his stomach with arms stretched out. The officers move in and cuff him and remove his weapon. 
"I'm a P.I. and I was tailing this guy when I heard shots and ran into the alley to see what happened."
"Just relax until the detective gets here and we can check your story."
Dan complies and they put him into the back of one of the cars. While sitting there Dan runs the whole scenario through his head again and can't seem to figure out where the man or men went to, or where they even came from. The alley has nowhere for them to hide, no cans, garbage or doorways. Something isn't making any sense and now he starts wondering if he was set up. The question would be who would set him up? No one knows him except for the man that hired him. This man is thought to be a scammer and has taken a lot of money. Maybe there's a whole lot more to this story. Dan then spots an unmarked car pull up and it looks to be a detective who gets out. Dan remains cuffed in the car while the detective talks to the officers and then to the lady that was with Robert. Once he's done talking to her she walks away and gets into a cab. Dan can't believe it. That lady is the only witness and he just lets her walk away. What a great detective he is. After a good half hour of sitting in the back of the squad car the detective opens the door and tells Dan to get out.
"Private Investigator Daniel Monroe, a former Navy Seal and FBI agent, what brings you here?"
	"I was tailing Mr. Mackey when he and his date slipped down this alley where he was gunned down and you let the only eyewitness take off."
"Calm down Mr. Monroe. I took her statement and it appears like it was a random act of violence."
"Random act! He was gunned down after I was hired to follow him because he has been stealing money from his employer."
"How much are we talking, a couple of thousand?"
"Try more like three and a half million and the company wanted to know if he was involved with someone outside the company."
	The detective says again, "I'm going with random act of violence. Here's your gun so now be on your way."
	Dan can't believe it, so he walks off down the street and figures he'll get a bite to eat and wait for everyone to clear out so he can do his own investigation. 
After an hour of cops wondering around, the last car finally pulls off. Dan pays for his food and walks back to the crime scene. Once he walks into the alley he stands and maps it out in is head. Then he replays everything back in his mind while scanning the alley. He envisions the two walking into the alley and then two men jumping out of.. They couldn't have hidden down here, there are no hiding spots. Dan scours the area looking for the spent shells but comes up empty there too. The rain begins coming down again, a lot harder than it was earlier, and he decides to go back to his car and find out where that taxi took the mystery lady that was with Robert. Dan pulls out into traffic and dials the number to the detective that is handling this case. He's not in so Dan knows that he'll have to do it the old fashion way, phone book. He pulls up in front of a bar and figures that this will be the best place to find phone numbers to taxis. Upon entering the front door he spots the phone book right away and right above it is numbers to just about every taxi company in the city. Dan rubs his face and begins with the first company on the list and of course comes up empty. 
After nearly forty minutes of calling he finally gets the right one. The lady on the phone is extremely rude, but after sucking up to her for a good ten minutes she gives Dan the information he wants. Dan is shocked to here the address, considering it's to the business of the man that hired him, Theodore Randolph.  Dan steps away from the phone and thinks about getting a drink but thinks better of it just in case he has a confrontation with Mr. Randolph or his female friend.
After driving over to the office building in his beat up Escort he stops in front and then pulls into the alley and pulls out his official police business placard that he never returned and sticks it in the window. Dan walks to the front of the building and spots a security guard sitting at a desk so he figures he'll try the back of the building, where they have a restaurant. Moving back into the alley he checks his weapon and confirms that it's ready for action. Dan approaches the door and the rain begins coming down hard again and he quickly steps inside. He walks over to the bar and talks with the bartender for a few moments and then hands him a hundred dollar bill and walks into the kitchen and to a side door that leads into the office building. Dan looks around and sees that no one is paying any attention to him and he quickly picks the lock and steps through the door. Once inside Dan reaches into his pocket and pulls out a tape recorder to make sure he has a fresh tape in it. Once he's finished with that he pulls out his gun and moves toward the stairway. He begins the long journey up the stairs to the fifteenth floor where Theodore's office is. Dan takes a pit stop on the eighth floor and sits on the stairs breathing heavily and sweat running off his forehead like a waterfall. Dan regains his composer and continues up, but at the eleventh floor a security guard walks into the stairway right in front of him and Dan quickly snatches the guard and knocks him out without a sound being made. Dan finally arrives on the fifteenth floor and slowly opens the door prepared for anything and ready for everything. After scanning the area Dan steps out into the hallway and with gun drawn cautiously moves against the wall and slides silently down the corridor. Dan spots the light on in Theodore's office and can faintly hear voices. Dan knows that he has to record their conversation and get out without anyone getting hurt and that might be hard. Dan begins to walk forward along the wall of glass windows that shows all the office. Just as he is about to get to the office door he is struck on the back of the head and is rendered unconscious. 
Dan is awoken with a hard slap across the face, and as he slowly opens his eyes he sees Theodore standing across from him with the woman from the alley.
"Dan, you're an idiot. You should have let the killing in the alley go, but you had to just keep on going!"
"That's what you hired me for."
	"No, I hired you to follow him and to be a witness in his death. Now I have to make you go away."
	"If you planned on killing him why did you hire me, you had her for a witness?"
	"Two witnesses are better then one and you could identify the man as Robert Mackey."
	"The detectives would find that out for themselves, this isn't making a lot of sense to me."
	"The man in the alley wasn't Robert Mackey, it was Theodore Randolph."
	"Say what?"
	"I hired you under the pretext that I was Theodore Randolph so when the real Theodore was gunned down in the alley you would identify him as Robert and by the time the police figured it all out I would be sitting pretty with a hundred million dollars and no one would find me."
	Dan says, "So, you used me as a goat to identify someone who wasn't really who they where."
	Robert answers, "Bingo, and when they find out the real identity they will come looking for you, but now they will never find you because you will be dead."
	Robert leaves out of the room and Cynthia strolls in with her gun in hand with a silencer on the end. Dan prays that his last act before being knocked unconscious pays off. After he entered the floor he pushed open an office door that had an alarm sensor attached to it. He can only hope that the alarm was real and that the security will move fast to get him. Cynthia slowly raises the gun and Dan knows he has to do something before she kills him so he jumps up and puts his shoulder down and runs right through the lady knocking her to the floor and slamming her head against the floor. She's out cold and he makes a break for it trying to stop Robert. Dan gets into the hallway and doesn't see him anywhere, but he does feel a wet spot on his stomach and looks down. He's been shot in the stomach and the blood is flowing out of the wound at a good pace and he knows he doesn't have too much time before he blacks out. He staggers into an office and dials 911. While Dan is on the phone Robert walks in and begins to fire a gun at him missing badly. Dan knows without a weapon he won't last long in this room. Dan decides to try and move from the desk to behind the couch. Just before he makes his daring move he remembers a big paper weight sitting on the desk and quickly reaches up and grabs it before his big move.
	After firing a couple more shots Robert yells, "Just give it up Dan, you're just making it harder on yourself!"
	Dan doesn't reply but just waits for the right time to go. He knows his time is limited because of his gunshot wound and the fact that Cynthia could come to at any time. Robert fires two more rounds and Dan jumps up and chugs the heavy paperweight at Robert. The weight slams off Robert's arm and Dan makes a dash for the couch. Robert is knocked off balance and appears to be in some pain from the blow but he regains his composer and fires three more rounds into the couch. Dan can't believe how close the bullets are coming to hitting him but he figures that he's almost out of shots. Robert fires another shot and then the gun just clicks and Dan quickly makes his move and in two swift blows knocks Robert out and then four security guards storm the room with guns drawn. After Dan is taken to the ground and the police show up Dan explains the whole story about how Robert and Cynthia where going to split with all the money and by the time the police found out that the dead man in the alley was really Theodore the two of them would be long gone and no one would find them. The police arrest the couple and take them away. Dan is then taken out of the building on a stretcher and is whisked away to the hospital. 
	Two days after his surgery Dan can't believe how strange that case was and knows that from now on he needs to check deeper into his client's backgrounds. Dan laughs out loud to himself knowing that it'll never happen, just wave money in his face and he's on the case.