by Steven John
“So let’s take it from the top, huh?”
“I … yes.” She stammered, setting down her coffee mug. “I guess I just … start…” She looked at me imploringly.
“Talking,” I said softly. “You just start talking.” I pulled a pack of cigarettes from my desk drawer, took one, and offered her the pack.
“No thanks, I don’t—don’t want one. Thanks.”
Well, that was odd. She had almost covered it up.… I made my first note of the day … aside from her clothes and persistent beauty.
“Okay. Um … Okay, Tom. The dead man. Samuel Ayers. He was murdered about … two weeks ago now. Maybe twenty days. I’m not sure, but I can figure it out if you need me to.”
“I’ll need you to.”
“Right. Of course you will. He was killed in an alley off of Eighth Avenue. No witnesses, of course, and I … I don’t know a motive or anything.… I just know that the man they have in prison didn’t do it.”
“We’ll get there. Tell me more about Mr. Ayers. Everything you know.” My eyes drifted to the gentle rise of her breasts, not quite concealed beneath her jacket.
“What? Well … not much, I’m afraid. He…” She caught me staring and faltered. “He was middle aged; he worked some job for the government. I don’t know much about him.”
“Where did you get fifty thousand dollars?” I tried to catch her off guard with this. It seemed to have worked, to an extent.
“I … don’t know if that matters, really. I have the money. I can prove it.”
“Rebecca, how? How do you have it? Dirty money stains every hand it touches. I need to know about it. Now.”
She took a sip of coffee. I could see her fight not to purse her lips against the bitter, tepid beverage. “My parents were rich. They died and then I was … rich. I don’t have much left now. But I have enough to pay you and—”
“Why come right out with a number that high? Hmm? Just seems odd to me. You walk in off the street and throw that sum in my lap? Why?”
“Because … the police wanted even more to complete their investigation. I didn’t have more. So I offered you what I could. Because the police won’t want you asking questions about this. You’ll want all that money when it’s over.”
“Well, that’s reassuring.” I took a long, slow drag off my cigarette and laid it down in the ashtray. It’s pewter and shaped like a shallow bowl with a large flat lip and has only one groove carved in it to hold a smoke.
She looked away; her eyes traveled around the room, from the file cabinet to my cigarette to the door.
“Okay, who’s the guy in jail?”
She looked up at me. Sighed. Looked like she might cry for a minute. This was certainly a different girl than I had seen two nights ago. But she was smart. Deceptive. I could tell, and knew that likely—very likely—both sides of her were beards for some deeper, hidden person. Some self-serving, self-sustaining core. Hook me with a sexy red dress, soften me with moist eyes, and then snap the trap closed. My guess was that this was a no-money trap. I fucking hated no-money traps. They come, use you, and disappear into the fog. I knew she was using me but couldn’t figure out what for. I felt that maybe there was some benefit for me, even without the cash. Maybe an insurance policy. If I knew who was behind her, it might help keep my bones intact.
I repeated myself: “Who is in jail?”
“He’s innocent.”
“What’s his name, and what’s your connection?”
“His name is Fallon. We … I love him.” I leaned back in my chair, taking a drag and then stubbing out the cigarette. Well, there it was. Knew it, called it, got it.
“Right.” My face was placid. Eyes cold. It was so strange to see her here, nervous, fidgeting, dressed like a secretary and acting like a scared kid. Even if it was just that, an act, if I had met her today for the first time, I would have been sold. I pulled a pen and one of my yellow pads from a creaky desk drawer and started scratching down notes. No info on Ayers aside from middle-age and government job, police asked for large bribe, Fallon is jailed suspect, lover … I noted how she was acting and dressed … scribbled all this down for a couple minutes, letting her squirm a bit.
“Okay … how are you certain of Fallon’s innocence?”
“Well, he was with me the night it happened. Every night. And he’d never hurt a fly even if I didn’t have a perfect alibi for him. He—”
“What’s his last name?” I interrupted.
She stumbled. “He—his what?”
“His last name. What’s his last name? Shouldn’t take you so long to answer, kid.”
“Samson. It’s Samson.”
“Okay. It’s Samson,” I said, jotting that down and noting her awkwardness. “So … Fallon Samson is with you every night.… Who’s blaming him for killing people out in the fog, then?”
“I don’t know. He was arrested and they wouldn’t tell me anything, because we’re not married or anything. And you know what it’s like trying to learn about trials and get answers from the government and all these days, I’m sure.”
“Yeah. They don’t like questions, do they?”
She shook her head, smiling ruefully, and took a sip of coffee. She choked it down, looking at the dirty linoleum floor.
“Rebecca.” She looked up. “You don’t have to keep drinking that shit to be polite. I know it’s awful.”
Her smile turned from wistful to bright for a fleeting moment. She set the mug down and dabbed at her lips with a gray woolen sleeve. “It’s, um—yeah, it’s a bit rough.”
“It’s horrible. Years I’ve been renting this little box of an office, and it’s consistently the worst fucking coffee you can find in a city full of awful coffee.”
She leaned back, seemed to relax a bit.
“How did you know my bar and my drink? How did you find me?” I asked.
“I … I watched you. I wore a hat, sat there … I watched you from a booth. That’s all. I swear. Nothing sneaky, nothing—”
“Spying on me long enough to know my drink and my habits isn’t sneaky?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. There’s no one that can help people with this kind of thing anymore. You know that. You’re a dying breed, Tom.”
I nodded, looked away, and pretended to be reflective. Pretended to be satisfied with that answer. But really, I was uneasy: she had not been watching me from a booth in Albergue. I notice strangers. Always. The first time she and I had ever been in a room together, she had been a red-dressed, cigarette-smoking seductress. More lies, sweetheart. Fuck. I needed to see proof of the cash. A hefty advance. Soon.
“Okay. Fine. You watched me. How did you know I was someone worth watching? I find my clients these days; they don’t find me.”
“Yeah, I thought you’d be concerned about that. Here—” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a carefully folded piece of paper. I took it from her outstretched hand. It was yellow with age, fragile … familiar.
“No fuckin’ way,” I muttered as I gingerly unfolded it. But there it was.
THOMAS VALE
PRIVATE DETECTIVE &
CLAIMS RECOVERY
My old ad. Sure enough, there was my office number—still 1023—and the number of the phone I keep unplugged except when I want to call out. The last phone book circulated, what, five years ago? I think it was five years back … the same year I first rented out the cell we sat in now.
“Wow … there’s memory lane for you.…” I held the sheet of paper for a few moments longer and then refolded it and handed it back to her. “Same number and everything.”
“I tried to call a few times.”
“Yeah … the phone hasn’t been plugged in for weeks. Maybe months. I keep it in a drawer, in fact.” I pulled open the bottom drawer on my desk and raised the ancient beige telephone to show her, setting it down on the desk between us like some artifact to be pondered. “I plug it in only when I want to make a call and then put it away as
soon as I’m done.”
She nodded. I sat still, looking at her for a few seconds. For a bit too long, actually. She makes that easy to do.
“What else do I say? I mean … where do we start? Or do you start?”
“How old are you? Twenty-six?”
Her face flushed slightly, and she swallowed before answering softly. “Yes.”
“What do you do?”
“I … I don’t, really. To be honest. I manage my parents’ estate. What’s left of it, anyway.”
I had to ask the hard question next: “Did they die when the virus struck?”
She looked down, her eyes falling, unfocused, on the phone. The moment hung heavily in the stale air. “My father did. My mother died more recently.”
“I’m sorry.” I paused. “How?”
“Is it really—?… She had a … an embolism, the doctor said.” She looked up at me while she spoke, and then away again as soon as she fell silent.
“Well, again, I’m sorry.” I lit a cigarette and leaned back in my chair. “We start like this: I need to know exactly where and when Ayers was killed. So figure that out as soon as you can. I need to know how he died.”
She looked up at me as I exhaled a thin trail of blue gray smoke. “He was shot in the back. Three shots from very close range, they said.”
“The police said?”
“Yes.”
I leaned forward quickly. “Why did the police tell you a detail like that? They don’t tell me shit, and I know some of them. I served in the army with some of them, and they won’t give me the time of day when I go snooping around uptown, so how could you know that, Becca?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was flirting to get information.”
“I can see how that might work. What I don’t see is any kind of envelope or parcel or anything in your hands. One with a lot of cash in it, maybe?”
“I promise you’ll be paid. If you don’t want this, then I’ll just leave now.”
I nodded a few times and took one last, long drag before violently stubbing out my smoke. I exhaled through my nostrils. “Okay. Good enough for now. I need to know more about Fallon. How long you’ve known him. Been with him.” Her eyes darted down and to the left as I spoke his name. “I need to know everyone you’ve talked to since this shooting happened. What you were doing and who you saw in the days before. I need to know lots of things. So why don’t I go get us more shitty coffee.”
4
The orbs came alive as I walked down Seventh Ave. The fog wasn’t bad, and I could see a full three spheres ahead undulating yellow and ocher before settling into their orange glow for the night. The air was colder than it had been in days. It felt good. I buttoned my heavy gray jacket as a shiver ran through my chest, relishing the bracing temperature. It let me know I was awake, aware.
I crossed a few streets, staying on Seventh. In one of the intersections, an older guy nearly walked into me, focusing on a book he held just under his nose. He let out an awkward gasp as I stopped short to avoid a collision, then composed himself, nodded, and ambled on, eyes back on the pages. I wondered if it was a lifelong habit adapted to the mist or if the old guy had begun his literary strolls in the new world.
When we were first placed under quarantine—the few hundred thousand of us—the city took on the aspect of a prison. A massive, Byzantine prison, but captivity nonetheless. Then, when this gray veil slowly drifted down, thickening until it was a shroud over us all, the feeling of the city as a prison was gradually usurped by a general feeling of directionless wandering. When you can’t see ten feet in front of you, the road could just as well go on forever as it could stop after eleven more steps. Landmarks lost their status as points of reference. North, south, east, and west became concepts, unencumbered by attachment to a floating sun or silent moon.
The city became a series of tunnels. You were never held in one place, and you never seemed to be going anywhere specific. All any of us could do was wander around, never quite trapped but with no prospect for escape. It was as liberating as it was crushing.
I needed to sleep. I had been doing too much thinking all afternoon. Without pills and a healthy dose of whiskey, it was going to be a long time before dawn. I was even more confused about Rebecca than before, and had no idea what to make of her story—it was all over the place. She had dodged questions left and right. She changed the subject or answered each question with one of her own. She was thinking on the fly.
We had talked for an hour or so, until I had enough to start putting pieces together on my own. She had been growing more and more nervous the longer she stayed in my office. Fidgeting … looking around as if someone might be watching us there in that windowless room. When she finally got up to leave, there was relief in her eyes. I didn’t take it personally. And she didn’t mean it that way, either. I really did get the feeling that she wished me no ill will. But in a way, that only complicated things. If there was no malice aimed at me, why lie and play games?
I had opened the door for her and moved aside. She smiled and said nothing, stepping past me. I caught her by the left elbow and turned her to face me. She was startled, eyes like an animal about to break and run. I had leaned in close to her lovely face and said, very quietly, “Rebecca … I don’t think I trust you.” Then I let go of her arm and gently placed my hand on her shoulder, ushering her out the door. She stuttered and tried to respond, but I had smiled, almost wistfully, and shut the door in her face.
We were to see each other again in two days. Same time, same place. So that left me time to see what I could find out, to start cross-referencing her facts, check up on her details.
It was not quite nighttime. Just enough light bounced around off the fog, coming down from the sun somewhere high above, to render the streetlights impotent. I always loved the magic hour between light and dark. It reminded me of something from a dream: the way the lamps shine but cast no shadows, the sky blue but sunless and the land still colorful but faded. On the streets with blowers, a bit of that essence remained.
The orbs winked at me from alleys and side streets bisecting Eighth Ave. Little wisps of haze reached out toward me, as if for me, from these darkened roads, and then twirled about themselves, dancing back into the mist or gently dispersing into nothing. I think if I had my choice and I could make the fog go away, the first thing I would want to see would be twilight with just a few stars piercing the blue gray canopy. I wanted to watch night creep over the dome of sky and wrap around us all, and then, in the morning, the sun would rise and I would never again be angry to have it on my shoulders or in my eyes.
I had stopped walking and stood, lost in thought, in the middle of the street. It must have been true night above by now—I cast a shadow in the pale light of the streetlamps, and the soft glow of the few open stores and restaurants spilled out onto the sidewalks before them.
The door to Carol’s apartment was close by. I knew she’d let me in. Earlier in the afternoon, I had thought it was what I wanted. What I needed. But as I lingered there in the twilight haze, I couldn’t bring myself to take those last few steps. To ring the bell, to make the small talk and drink the wine and see her bright green eyes on me, free of judgment but full of pity.
It must have been Rebecca that drove me the other way down the street. I knew why I had sought Carol—knew I would have pretended she were someone else. It wouldn’t help anything. Just make things more complex. I lit a smoke and made my way quickly toward Salk’s pharmacy and my bottle of fixes.
* * *
Salk was, by all accounts, an ugly man. He was fifty, maybe fifty-five, and had aged with the grace of a bulldozer. His remaining hair was more yellow than gray or white. His skin greasy and sallow—jaundiced. The pores of his nose massive. Just massive. I’d never seen anything like them. If he lived another twenty years, he’d be able to smuggle pills in those things.
He said he was a doctor once. A pediatrician. He was a nice guy in a pathetic, beat-down kind of way. In our ex
changes, no matter how brief or protracted, all he tended to do was quietly complain. It wasn’t whining. It was more of a lament. He lamented the state of things and took what the world had come to very personally. It was leveled at him, he seemed convinced. He wouldn’t say “I wish we could still get tomatoes” or “I miss tomatoes” or anything like that. Instead he would sigh and whisper, shaking his head, “Tomatoes are gone forever.”
A depressed, depressing guy. But I wasn’t exactly Mr. Shot-in-the-Arm, so usually I was polite but laconic with him. I needed booze, smokes, and pills. And maybe some canned food so I wouldn’t have to leave the house for a couple days.
I stubbed out my cigarette on the bricks in front of his store. Every time I passed under the faded sign above the boarded-up window, I’d smile sardonically. In tall block letters on a cracked white display that was once illuminated was the word DRUGS. The vents in the alcove were old and weak, wheezing at the offending air.
I blinked and rubbed at my eyes to adjust to the interior light. A few fluorescent tubes shone above, casting a cold pall across the half-empty shelves of the dilapidated place. An old woman shuffled down one of the aisles, reading the labels on various bottles. The place was empty except for her.
I walked to the far wall and grabbed two fifths of scotch and a handle of vodka. Then I stepped in front of the big, hazy sheet of glass that separated Salk from the rest of us. He sat with his back to me on a strangely ornate wooden chair. It was fine wood—maybe oak—and intricately carved with flowery protrusions along the armrests and back. It was a singularly peculiar sight: this middle-aged man in a fancy chair surrounded by rusted metal shelves stacked with bottles of pills.
I knocked gently on the glass. He straightened up, then set down a book and rose, not yet having turned or looked back at me. Salk stretched his fleshy neck and slowly trudged toward the glass, eyes cast downward. When finally he lifted them and recognized me, both warmth and pity played across his repellent face.
