by E. Z. Rinsky
“I’m guessing Silas isn’t going to be thrilled with the prospect of cooperating.”
“That’s where your unprofessionalism comes in,” she says.
“There are guards, no? Loony bins are basically prisons.”
“For three hundred thousand dollars, I suspect you could get creative.”
This is a lot to process. While my gears are still turning, she sits back in her chair and conveys something with the slightest upturn of her lip that may be flirtatious but reads more likely as disgust. Her smudged makeup does nothing to mar her beauty. On the contrary, the imperfection gives her the slightest air of vulnerability. She glowers at me and lowers her voice.
“And once I have the tape,” she says, “you will have me. However you want.”
Her face is completely deadpan. Betrays no hint that this is something she would enjoy in any way. It’s just another part of the generous compensation she’s offering. My poker face is wilting, my heart screaming, pushing blood to every corner of my body. Controlling myself is taking every inch of concentration. Both legs are shaking. She frightens me.
“Ten thousand up front, but another five for expenses,” I practically squeak. “And make it three fifty. Only half of that is for me. I’m going to need help.”
She weighs this for a moment. “Who?”
My mouth is dry. I can’t tell if this thing seizing me is lust or terror. Either way, I suddenly want her out of my apartment, away from Sadie. I clear my throat.
“I had help on the Orange case, never could have done it alone. Courtney Lavagnino is the best tracker I’ve ever worked with. Honestly, he’s a genius.”
“Courtney?” She spits his name out like it’s bitter. I catch a glimmer of fiery orange in her eyes. “That’s a man?”
“He was the brains behind finding the forgers,” I gush, eager to change the topic. “He’s brilliant. Speaks like seven languages. He once found a ninety-year-old Nazi hiding out in New Zealand, based only on a water-damaged black-and-white photo of him from the war. He worked briefly for the DEA, gathering evidence against drug moguls, but quit because he needed to work at his own speed. He was hired by a hot sauce manufacturer to find a pepper seed—a single fucking seed—rumored to grow into the hottest pepper known to man. He found it. If you’re serious about getting this tape back, you’ll pay for both of us.”
She runs a gloved hand through her hair. I want to say she’s calming herself down, but really she never actually flipped out. Did she ever even raise her voice? She’s able to project this terror just with her eyes.
“Then give me his information. It sounds like he’s the one I need, not you.”
I shake my head. “If you want to find a truffle, you can’t just hire the pig.”
She raises an eyebrow. I clarify: “For Courtney, it’s all an intellectual exercise. He’s a pure tracker—not always a man of action. If you want someone to locate the tape, hire Courtney. If you want someone to get the tape, you need both of us.”
Greta mulls this over. I sense the additional fifty grand is inconsequential to her if it means a higher chance of her holding the tape in her hands.
“Where was the seed?” she asks.
“In the safe-deposit box of a South American dictator. Courtney wouldn’t tell me which one. He was apparently a connoisseur and collector of peppers, bought it on the black market for millions. As I said—he found it. I believe he was working with someone like myself, who figured out how to actually steal the thing.”
If I’m underselling Courtney’s competence in the field a bit, it’s more than offset by failing to mention his occasional interpersonal gaffes. He almost derailed our search for the forgers by growing impatient with what turned out to be a key witness, pointing out inconsistencies in that poor, confused girl’s story with the callous logic of a poacher doing his taxes. Nearly broke her, and it took me hours of comfort and coaxing to finally extract what we needed out of her.
Greta reaches into her purse and removes a large wad of hundreds. Counts them out and plops them on the table.
“Well this time, locating it is not sufficient. I want you to hand it to me. Here is ten thousand up front, plus five for expenses. After three days call me on this number”—she scribbles it down on a page in the police report—“and report your progress.”
“Don’t you want to sign—”
“No contracts. Just get me the tape. Call me sooner if you discover anything important.”
I can hardly stand up to let her out. My legs are trembling, and the tips of my fingers are numb. By the time I manage to pull myself up, she’s already out the door, the click of her black boots receding down the staircase. I stare at the pile of money on the table and try to remember if I ever actually agreed to this.
I PICK UP Sadie from school the next day, and we walk to the coffee shop a few blocks from our apartment to meet Courtney Lavagnino. We spot him sitting in the darkest corner he could find, a mug in his hand, eating lentils out of a Tupperware container and reading a thick Russian paperback. Sadie and I walk to the counter to order. Courtney is so wrapped up in his book, he doesn’t even notice us entering. Some detective.
I order a red-eye and scone for me plus a bran muffin for Sadie. The barista has a pierced nose, and the tattoos on her arms make me shudder, thinking about Savannah’s face up on the slab. The barista blinks when I try to pay with a hundred.
“I don’t have change for this,” she says.
“So keep it,” I say. “We come here a lot.”
I pull up an extra seat at the small wooden table, and Sadie and I sit down across from Courtney. Far from startled, he sets down his novel—appearing disappointed by the interruption—and takes a smooth sip of tea. He still has that hideous ponytail. My theory is he knows it’s stupid but keeps it as a tribute to the freedoms of self-employment.
“Hey champ,” I say. “Thanks for coming down to my end of town.”
“Hi Frank,” he says warily, like he’s expecting bad news. In fact, his entire pale, horse-shaped face looks like it was designed specifically to react to unpleasantness: skeptical eyebrows, wide, sad eyes, and a thin mouth that tends to default to a dour frown. Eventually I learned that the frown just means he’s lost in thought, but anyone who sees him pouting on the subway, lanky arms crossed across his sunken, flannel-clad chest, corners of his mouth pointed at the floor, probably takes him for a miserable hipster. Irony is, I doubt he even knows what hipster means.
I guess he’s the closest thing I have to a work friend. We only worked together for seven weeks on the Orange case, but during that time we hardly left each other’s side. Unlike me, Courtney seems to have made a deliberate decision to be a snooper. He’s certainly smart enough that he could have done anything he wanted. Ponytail aside, he wouldn’t look out of place in professorial tweed, lecturing about Camus. Or he probably would have made a hell of a beat reporter.
We haven’t spoken since wrapping up the case for Orange Julius over half a year ago. I’d considered trying to get in touch with him since, just to hang out, but had no idea what to invite him to. He doesn’t drink alcohol or coffee, so what do I ask? If he wants to meet up for a round of putt-putt?
And besides, contacting him is itself an ordeal. He doesn’t have a phone or computer. He’s accessible only by email, which he checks two or three times a week at a library in Harlem. He has some sort of weird paranoia about technology, which he explained once while we were on the road. Being reachable 24/7 is part of it. He says he can’t read, think or sleep knowing that someone could call at any minute. But also, all his time spent tracking people has made him aware of the digital trail we all leave in our wake, as conspicuous and easy to follow as elephant footprints. He doesn’t want anyone to be able to find him. Hiring him for a PI job is like trying to get a reservation at a fancy restaurant. But he seems
to have enough of a reputation in the right circles that suitors will put up with the inconvenience.
“You must be Sadie?” he asks my daughter with a weird smile. I’ve never seen him around kids, but I’m starting to suspect he’s one of those guys who treats them like little adults. He sometimes seems like he learned how to interact with people from reading sociology textbooks.
Sadie nods slowly.
“Your dad talked about you a lot when we were working together. Here, I got you something.”
With a flourish, he produces a little silk sack from his pocket and hands it to her. Sadie glances up at me.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Probably.”
Sadie tentatively reaches out to grab the bag then pulls it close and opens it, her forehead crinkling first in apparent confusion, then her eyes widening in awe. It’s a handblown glass vial that glows royal blue even in the dim light of the coffee shop.
“What’s it for?” Sadie asks, the colors seeming to swirl and shift as she rotates it in front of her face.
“I’m not sure exactly,” he explains proudly. “I found it in a Moroccan market. It was just so beautiful that I had to have it. You can keep anything in it: jewels or spices or pearls. Whatever secret treasures an adventurous young woman like yourself happens upon.”
“Awesome,” she whispers.
“What do you say, Sadie?”
“Thanks, Mister, uh—” she says, still staring at it, mesmerized.
“Just Courtney,” he says.
“Yes, thanks, Courtney,” I say. “That was very thoughtful. Alright now, Sadie, do you have a book with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you go read your book at a different table? Courtney and I need to have a private talk.”
“Okay.”
She scampers off and sits down on the other side of the tiny café. There’s only a young man on his computer between us, but he’s bumping to whatever is on his headphones; I’m not particularly worried about being overheard.
“What are you drinking?” Courtney asks.
“Red-eye. Black coffee with two shots of espresso.”
The corners of his lips turn down.
“I thought you said you were going to cut down on caffeine once we finished that job. That’s disgusting. And terrible for your heart.”
“You must have misheard.” I take a big gulp just to piss him off and smack my lips. “So where did you really get that thing? You know what that is, don’t you?”
“What?” Courtney looks confused. “What do you mean?”
“You bought that in a market in Morocco?”
“No, I said I found it.”
“Where, in a drug den?”
Courtney’s face drops.
“That’s a heroin vial,” I say. “Although I suppose in a cinch it could also be used to hold cocaine or meth.”
Courtney’s face contorts. “I’m so sorry, Frank, I had no idea—”
“It’s okay.” I wave dismissively. “You washed it, I hope?”
He lowers his head into his palms, and his fingers dig into his scalp. “I’m so sorry, I was just trying to do something nice—”
“Listen, forget it.” I take a big bite of scone and, with my mouth full, ask, “What were you doing in Morocco?”
He glances over at my daughter playing with his drug paraphernalia, shakes his head in disbelief. Finally sighs and explains:
“This was right after the Orange job. I was following fifteen pounds of top-shelf ecstasy—tipped off by an old friend. He told me that the DEA had been trying to get this guy for a few months, then he fled the country, and they gave up. I found his operation in the back of a dried fruit stand in Tangier but didn’t get anywhere close to the drugs. As soon as I figured out I’d found them, a gentleman was kind enough to break my jaw and hit me in the kidney.
“They dragged me to some hotel room where a guy asked me questions in Moroccan Arabic and kicked me a few times in the face each time I answered, apparently displeased with my dialect. I learned Arabic from a Lebanese woman—totally different language. Then he stabbed me in the thigh and left me bleeding on the hotel room floor. It’s a miracle I managed to crawl to the phone.
“I spent a month in a hospital in Tangier—not an experience I’d recommend. No AC, in the middle of a North African July. And that’s to say nothing of the quality of care. Anyways, I finally got back to the city with nothing to show for my efforts but a few nasty scars and that interesting little vial, which my assailant left behind. Must have fallen out of his pocket during the beating.”
I click my tongue. “Tell me, how can someone who has worked for the fucking DEA not recognize a heroin vial?”
Courtney shrugs. “Finding drugs is just like finding anything else. I don’t need to know anything about it except that I find it, tell my employers where it is, maybe take some photos, and am paid handsomely. Except with drugs my efforts take it out of circulation, maybe even save a few lives.”
“You’re a regular Mother Teresa.”
Courtney raises an eyebrow—his equivalent of a smile—but it’s gone in an instant. And then the time for small talk is over.
“So.” He taps his long fingers on the rim of his mug. “What have you got?”
He slides out of his jacket and lets it sink behind him on the chair, as if expecting the excitement of a new job to get his literal blood flowing. With the jacket goes the illusion of physical normalcy. His long head is perched on top of a body that looks like a bunch of twigs sewn together and draped in flannel. Whenever he stands up it reminds me of a praying mantis rearing before it kills something.
I summarize my encounter with Greta for him—omitting only her physical description and the enticing offer I’d been unable to get out of my head all night, thinking maybe Courtney will accuse me of only saying yes as a personal favor to my shlong. But either I’m a bad liar, or Courtney is incredibly perceptive. Probably both.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Courtney says, depositing a forkful of lentils into the slot between his scraggly mustache and what could only generously be called a beard.
“What?” I act surprised and turn to check on Sadie to avoid making eye contact with him.
“She overpowered you with her beauty, obviously. If she weren’t beautiful, you wouldn’t have let her walk out of there without some more answers. Don’t even bother denying it—it’s written all over your face.”
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Yeah, she’s gorgeous.”
“Do you have the case file?”
I slide the thick folder across the table to him. He flips through it. I can tell when he hits the full glossy postmortem, because a deep, distant sadness fills his large, wet eyes. He shakes his head.
“Oh my. Tattooed face,” he says. “This is pretty ugly. I’m not sure I want to get anywhere near this.”
I smile to myself. He’s trying to convince himself, not me. This is sick, sure, but he’s seriously intrigued. Time to reel him in.
Casually, I say, “Three hundred fifty grand is the bounty.”
He physically spasms, jerks up from the folder, and stares at me, as if trying to figure out if I’m serious.
“Already gave me fifteen for upfront and expenses,” I add. “Cash.”
He blinks a few times. His face says that’s life-changing money.
“But . . . You mentioned that you don’t totally believe her story. If she’d lie about what happened, how do we know she’ll pay? Should we set up a managed account with a lawyer to make sure the money’s there?”
I shrug. “She’d never agree to that. I can tell. And besides, it was just my gut feeling. Felt like she was omitting things. Maybe she just didn’t think they were important.”
Courtney stares at me. “Start second-guessing your gut feelings abo
ut people, Frank, and you’ll cripple yourself.”
I roll my eyes. “Thanks, Mom. Look, in all likelihood it doesn’t even matter. The tape probably isn’t real, or it’s ruined or trashed. We’ll just get paid $15K to confirm that.”
Courtney takes a long drink of tea and pokes at his dwindling lentils.
“You don’t believe that,” he says.
I glare at him. “Did you bring your own lentils here in Tupperware? You can’t fucking do that.”
Courtney grins. And the only time he ever actually smiles is when he knows he’s right about something. It’s absolutely infuriating.
“If you really thought it didn’t exist, you wouldn’t have brought me on board. Doesn’t take two of us to tell her we didn’t find anything.”
I tap on the edge of my mug and shake my head. “I’m just trying to be realistic. This is probably a wild-goose chase.”
Courtney inspects the depths of his tea for a moment then looks back up at me, brow knitted thoughtfully.
“Why would someone tattoo their victim and then record them as they died?”
“Because they’re nuts. That’s why.”
Courtney doesn’t seem to hear me.
“Reminds me of something I read recently. They found an Egyptian mummy, from around 700 AD. Also a woman. She’s presently on display in the British Museum. What’s most interesting about her, Frank, is a tattoo on her thigh of an angel and the name ‘Michael’ written beneath in ancient Greek. Michael is the most powerful of the angels. They think the tattoo was meant to protect her in the afterlife.”
I finish off my scone, glance over at Sadie to make sure she’s doing fine. She appears to be buried in her book, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s been eavesdropping a bit.
“You’re giving this guy Silas too much credit, Courtney. He’s a nutter, plain and simple.”
“I don’t see why you’d assume that. Thoughtfulness, subtlety and patience. These are an investigator’s greatest assets. I don’t see why I’d commit to work on a job with someone who displays such—”
