“
He had an accident, can’t make the meeting.”
“
Fuck! What’m I supposed to—fuck! He dumps me here and tells me—FUCK!”
She opened up her cell phone and stared at the screen. Maybe checking text messages, maybe considering her options.
I considered my own. Owl had said he was returning a favor for a friend. But this woman had no reaction to his name or concern for his well-being. So if not the client, who was she?
For a brief instant, I wondered if she might be a hooker. But Owl had been in his eighties… Maybe that was the secret to his longevity?
But no, she was no hooker, not if that rock on her finger was real, and it looked just gaudy enough to be genuine.
“
What did he tell you?” I asked.
She stared at me with those eerie sparkling green eyes, drilling into mine, like they were unearthing something.
As they narrowed on me, the skin around them showed etched lines like dry papercuts. “What is this? Who are you?”
“
Question of the day.”
I finished my other coffee and dropped the cup in the wastebasket, then stood up. I absently tossed the free newspaper I’d brought with me on the bed as I walked across the room. A small room, but she didn’t move an inch as I passed; her head was turned away, looking down at the bed.
Passing by the dresser, I looked over at the briefcase on top. Old scuffed leather with reinforced brass corners. Initials G.R. engraved in gold below the handle. One of the latches was up.
I continued on to the bathroom door, opened it, and peered in at a slant. It was empty. Toilet seat down. A lipstick-stained washcloth in the sink. No toothbrush.
I turned back.
She was fast, I was slow. The first I heard of her was from the shifting of contents in the briefcase she lifted up over her head.
And brought crashing down on mine.
It landed like a red-hot charcoal briquette. One corner hit my left temple and down I went, more from the blast of pain than the force behind her blow.
And perfect pinball that I was, the other side of my head connected with the dresser’s edge on my way down, and that’s all I knew for a while.
Time for a commercial break.
Less a dream than a rerun from a long-ago Saturday morning TV fest flitted through my reeling skull. A pencil-drawn cartoon of a shaggy-haired boy approaching the tree where an owl wearing a professor’s mortarboard is perched. The boy poses the eternal enigma, “Oh wise Mr. Owl, you know everything. How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?”
Mr. Owl grabs the lollipop in a talon more used to snatching voles in mid-flight, deftly unwraps it, and says, “Let’s see.” Lick. “Uh-one.” Lick. “Uh-two.” Lick. “Uh-three.” Crunch!
I woke staring at the carpet. The nap of the tomato paste rug. A single loose fiber broken free from the ranks rode above the fray, no longer part of the carpeting, now something that had to be vacuumed up in order for the rest to look clean and orderly. I felt sorry for that lost little fiber, little curly-cutie.
I raised my head and pain like a jagged wire suture joined my temple, left eye, and chin. Hit on head no good. Payton no like. Make go way pain.
I crawled over to the bed and climbed up onto it.
By the time I was on my feet again the woman was long gone.
The briefcase was where she’d dropped it after dropping me. Open now, some of the contents spilled out.
I walked around it to get a damp washcloth from the bathroom. I bathed my temple and drank water from the faucet. Took a piss while I was at it and noticed my front pockets were turned out. Both back pockets empty, too.
Tsk
, imagine going through someone’s pockets…
I went back into the room and found most of my stuff scattered on the floor by the open briefcase. Something missing though. My head hurt too much to sort it out. Later. I pocketed what was left.
I let out a low whistle and, with the washcloth pressed to my head, gave the room a quick once-over. Scratch pad by the phone was blank. I tilted it under the light, but no embedded impressions were revealed.
Dresser drawers empty, Owl hadn’t unpacked. I found his suitcase on the floor by the far side of the bed.
Inside were a couple days’ worth of clothing, neatly packed: three white dress shirts, one yellow sports shirt, a pair of tan khaki pants, four pairs of boxer shorts, and five pairs of socks. Only other thing, a zippered toilet bag with a denture brush in it, tooth polish, an old fashioned razor, and a can of shaving cream.
I helped myself to a pair of brown argyles before shutting it up again. Then sat on the bed, unlaced the shoes, and slid them off. The bottoms of my feet were streaked black like I’d been kicking Alice Cooper in the face. I wiped them on the bedspread before putting on the socks. My ankles were bleeding.
I put the shoes back on. It was an improvement.
I went over to the wastebasket and picked out that plastic wristband. It had been stretched apart, not cut. I turned it over looking for outpatient info, but both sides were blank. I pocketed it, I was a magpie for clues.
Back to the bathroom to splash water on my face.
I left the briefcase for last because I already saw what it contained. The contents were like the bottom left drawer of my own desk, full of red wires, black wires, white wires, and gray wires bound with rubberbands. None longer than three feet and each with a different end attachment, a phone jack, a microphone plug, an alligator clip, a suction-cup device, a USB connector—whatever a P.I. needed in the course of his work. A wafer-thin digital recorder. I switched it on, but it was blank.
I sifted through the rest: stopwatch, pocket binoculars, magnifying glass with light attachment, brown work gloves, assorted batteries, a pack of blue Bic ballpoint pens, large and small paper clasps and paperclips, a disposable camera with 24exposures (none of them used), an old mercury oral thermometer, a clear plastic ruler, a compass, and a black plastic box for a .32 automatic with an extra full clip inside and a rag and brush for cleaning, but no gun. Great.
A simple matter, he said. Soft work, he said. Nothing rough.
Sticking out of a pocket sleeve under the lid was a bus ticket folder. Inside was a round-trip ticket, New Hampshire to New York City. He’d expected to go back Sunday morning.
It was nothing I could use, though. What was I missing?
I thought back to the indisputable techniques of investigation my old boss at Metro, Matt Chadinsky, tried to drum into me during some of his loftier harangues. Most of it bullshit on how no one ever rewarded you for doing the job better, that doing the job better
was
the reward. But one of his more useful axioms had been, “Never look just with your eyes.” Poke into every hollow, he’d say. Get dirty. People lose things all the time that drop into tight spots and corners, dirty places they don’t want to reach into.
I slid my hand down into the pocket sleeve, dug to the bottom. It wasn’t dirty inside, it was smooth. At first I thought nothing was in it, until my fingertips snagged on a corner and I pulled out a color photograph.
A 4x6 snapshot of Owl standing with a thin young girl about twelve years old with shoulder-length dirty-blonde hair, a flattish nose, and big ears. He was crouched so their heads were at the same level. Both mugged for the camera, teeth bared in fierce smiles. The girl’s nose was wrinkled-up in a snarl. The flash camera colored both of their eyes hellhound red.
They were casually dressed, the girl in a pink t-shirt and blue jeans with swirly embroidered rhinestone designs.
Owl wore a plaid sport coat, open-collar shirt, and gray slacks. Behind them was a large potted rubber-tree plant and a pale-blue wall with a partly visible sign, the word GATE in black letters.
I turned the photo over. No date written on the back, only one word in blue block letters: ELENA. I pocketed it.
Still hadn’t found what I was looking for, what I needed. A scrap of paper or anything with a local phone number or address that would lead me to Owl’s friend, the client he owed a favor, connecting me to the job he’d hired me for. But nothing.
My force of purpose going down the drain, nothing left behind but the gurgle. No job, never was really hired anyway.
I didn’t know what I’d been thinking, maybe couldn’t know. Do dogs think when chasing a squirrel? It’s just part of them, an impulse that defines what they are. Problem was, some chased their tails with equal enthusiasm.
Practical matters came back into sharper focus. I had to get back into my office and only two people in the metro area had a spare set of my keys, and one of them I hadn’t spoken to in over five years.
I reached for the bedside phone, read the instructions for an outside line, dialed out, and then the number. It rang only twice before she picked up. Gone were the days when my upstairs neighbor slept until noon, Tigger had a bambina now who got mommy up early.
I simply told her I’d locked myself out, not wanting to get into it over the phone. Would she buzz me in?
“
Good thing you did it this month, Payton, and not next.”
At the end of the month, Tigger and Company were moving out—not just out of the building, but the city. I refused to think about it, I didn’t even answer her, I was in locked-down denial. It was like facing an upcoming operation, a scheduled amputation. With any luck, I’d get struck by lightning first and never have to face up to it.
I told her I’d be there in a few minutes.
I stared at the cigarette butts in the ashtray. A pack and a half worth of Marlboro Lights.
I had another call to make, but put it off until later. Not a conversation I was looking forward to.
About to get up, I noticed the tiny red message bulb on the phone was lit. I followed the instructions for retrieving the message and heard a woman’s slightly accented voice say: “All set for 11:30, Yaffa Cafe.”
I checked the nightstand clock. Quarter to eleven.
I closed Owl’s briefcase and took it with me.
At the hotel room door, I stopped for one last look around, feeling like I was forgetting something. My eyes went to the rumpled bedspread. Nothing was on it.
The newspaper I’d tossed there was gone. She must’ve taken it with her. Not that that had to mean anything. If she’d taken the gun, she would’ve needed something to carry it out in.
I was just puzzling over it when the bedside phone rang and I nearly jumped out of my borrowed socks.
I went over, picked up, said hello.
“
Michael?” A woman’s voice.
“
Yes.”
“
May we speak to her?”
We? Her?
I said, “Ah, she just stepped out.”
“
We have that number for her.” She sounded official.
“
Oh, I can take it.”
“
No. Have her come by or call us here at the pier office.”
“
Sure, but—”
She hung up on me, not so much as a have a nice day.
Who the hell was Michael?
I shrugged and filed it away. I left the room with Owl’s briefcase grasped in my hand. I felt like an upright citizen off to do an honest day’s work, which in a way I was.
I now had a time and a place. I had direction.
Somewhere out there in the city was a billable client.
And I was going to find him.
Chapter Four: HOMEWORK
Leaving the lobby of the hotel, I almost collided with someone coming in. A stubby old man with bulbous features but no chin, black hornrim glasses, and a stiff gray pompadour. He was dressed in a white short-sleeve shirt and black trousers.
We danced a few steps of the back-n-forth polka attempting to get out of each other’s way. My head couldn’t take the jostling. I turned sideways and let him pass. I grinned, but he didn’t make eye contact.