P.J. Morse - Clancy Parker 01 - Heavy Mental

by P. J. Morse

  I decided it was time to see what was going on in Dr. Redburn’s office. It wasn’t breaking and entering if I didn’t actually go into the building.

  So I pulled my pistol out of the glove compartment and shoved it into the waistband of my jeans. After hanging my binoculars around my neck, I locked everything else up in the trunk. I got out of the car and crept across the street in case anyone might see me.

  The chilly wind blew in off the water and darted around the houses. I ducked in between two cars and trained my binoculars on the right side of the house, where I spotted a thin sliver of light escaping one of the windows. I realized I was getting a side view of Dr. Redburn’s office. I was probably in the same place Peggy was when she saw Dr. Redburn kiss me.

  The curtains were open just enough for me to see Jorge’s profile. He was shrugging and shaking his head.

  Then I heard Dr. Redburn yell, “You’re fired!”

  That surprised me. Dr. Redburn said he’d hired Jorge as a bodyguard, but Jorge must have been even worse at protection than he was at taking phone calls. Dr. Redburn never seemed to like Jorge, but I wondered what Jorge had done to piss him off so much.

  “I want my money!” I saw Jorge hold out his hand in a “gimme” gesture. He glowered and spewed out a torrent of words.

  “You know damn well why you don’t deserve my money,” the doctor shouted. I couldn’t see him through the window, but the anger in his voice was rising.

  “I don’t know nothing!” Jorge yelled back. “I sit at this stupid desk with these stupid bitches and I work hard for you, and all you give me is —”

  Jorge’s voice cut off.

  A washcloth smothered my face.

  The wind went dead.

  CHAPTER 29

  A LONG, STRANGE TRIP

  I AWAKENED ON A COLD, HARD slab of a table. Pain radiated from a fault line that ran from the top of my head to the nape of my neck. My legs hurt, too, as if I’d been dragged around like a sack of potatoes. All I could think about was pain, and Clayton Crespo, and, for some reason, Chinese food. I couldn’t quite remember who Clayton Crespo was. I tried to create a mental map. Clayton Crespo pointed to Harold, who pointed to an ice-cream truck, who pointed to a little man, who pointed to Pacific Heights, who pointed to—

  A jolt of pain shot down my leg suddenly, and I moaned. My mental fog lifted only slightly when I detected streaks of moonlight flooding the room through a set of blinders. Despite my pain, I smelled some divine Chinese food, and my stomach growled at the thought of beef with broccoli. I tried to sit up to see where it was coming from.

  Then I realized I couldn’t sit up. All I could manage was a brief shudder. I attempted to twist my hips slightly to give myself leverage. My rear end dug into a hard bed, and I could tell my bones were loosening based on the crackling noises they made, but my arms and legs still felt heavy. I tried to concentrate on my hands, but they were oddly spongy. When I wiggled my fingers and they rubbed against each other, I was reminded of a childhood backyard football game, when I threw around a Nerf ball. With the exception of the pain enveloping my skull, I felt my whole body was made of Nerf—squishy and light.

  And I had another problem. It was completely silent. San Francisco was never completely silent, or at least not the parts I was familiar with. I knew it was night, and I knew I should be hearing drunks, partygoers, the crazy guy who wore flip-flops in winter and who sang show tunes by the Shell station, sirens, the tamale lady whose cart clacked down the street, anything. Even Pacific Heights had the occasional noises of dogs being taken on walks or cars heading to late-night parties.

  Then I heard a strange rustle in my ears. I immediately recognized the sound since I always stuffed cotton in my ears before hitting the stage. Someone had plugged up my ears with cotton balls. I then felt a terrible, sharp pain in my arm where I’d been shot up with something and realized I had to get moving before I got shot up again.

  Since I could wiggle my fingers, I imagined that motion moving up my arm. I was able to lift my arm about an inch, and I realized the only things binding me were the drugs coursing through my veins. I was covered with a heavy blanket, but I managed to work my arm up toward my left ear. I wondered if anyone was in the room with me, but I realized that I’d find that out soon enough. The first priority was to hear again. Seeing, moving and eating would come next.

  After what seemed to be an hour’s worth of fumbling with my numb arm, I managed to dig the cotton out of my left ear, and sweet cool air tickled my eardrum. And then the sounds flooded in. My own breathing. A car passing by. I wondered if I was still in Pacific Heights. I felt a gap in my waistband. My pistol was gone. I wondered about the time. Then I heard voices in the next room.

  “Think it’s about time we juice her again?” someone asked. I detected a squeaky tone and immediately recognized Jorge the Receptionist. I wondered how he laid me out while I was watching Dr. Redburn fire him.

  I realized Jorge wasn’t working alone when a deeper voice replied, “I dunno. Looked like she was out cold.”

  Jorge asked, “What are we supposed to do with her?”

  His buddy replied, “It’s not our problem.”

  Jorge’s voice grew nervous. “Oh, yeah? It will be our problem in a few hours. Somebody’s gonna be lookin’ for a girl like that.”

  I heard Jorge’s buddy burp and slurp down a noodle before he said anything. “Maybe we shoulda wiped her out. Bitches like that can’t keep their mouths shut.” He then adopted a high-pitched female voice. “I’m a girl, no one hurts a girl! Aw, hell, let’s tie the bitch up.”

  “Let’s not!” I thought to myself. Obviously Jorge and his friend weren’t smart enough to tie me up in the first place. I heard footsteps coming toward the door. I knew I could take Jorge, but I didn’t even know how big his companion was. And one of them had to have my pistol. Obviously they were close enough for me to hear them and smell them, so I’d have to think of something. I dragged my arm back down to my side and rolled my head to the left so they couldn’t see I’d lost the cotton from it.

  Then the door opened with a slow creak, and they didn’t turn on the light. They must have been worried about waking me. If they thought they could tie me up quickly, they wouldn’t have cared. Jorge’s friend may have talked tough, but he didn’t want to be face to face with Clancy Parker, rock ‘n’ roll private eye, who was not about to go gentle into that good night. I decided to fake falling asleep. My eyelids were still heavy, and I breathed slowly and deeply. Given my drugged circumstances, my main concern was that I might actually fall back asleep.

  I barely heard two sets of footsteps—one set short and quick and the other long, loping, and clearly belonging to someone tall. The footsteps also lasted a while. I counted twenty steps, which meant I was in a big room and far from the door. Jorge and his friend started talking in whispers.

  Jorge said, “C’mon, Travis. Let’s just give her more chloroform and get out of here.”

  So Jorge’s friend with a deep voice had a name. Travis paused a moment. Apparently no one was going to keep him from his beef with broccoli. “I forgot where I put it. I’m hungry. We got the gun. No big thing.”

  Jorge started whining. “Aw, come on, man.”

  Travis cut him off, “Shut up, dumbass, you’re getting too loud.”

  I very nearly giggled. It was clear that whoever wanted to get me out of the picture was a cheapskate and had hired amateurs who preferred finishing their supper to getting the job done right. I almost felt bad for them.

  But not entirely. By the time they left the room, I was thinking about giving them a little taste of their own medicine. They walked the twenty paces back to the door and slowly pulled it shut. They bickered the entire way about who was hogging the soy sauce packets and how the delivery guy didn’t bring enough of the hot mustard.

  I knew I’d have to be quiet in order to get out of there. Being quiet wasn’t my strong suit, as I was accustomed to amplifiers and guitars. I also di
dn’t have much time to waste. Even though they were indecisive about putting me out, they could certainly change their minds, and I had to make sure I was either out of there or ready for them.

  I blinked and waited for my eyes to adjust again to the light. The pain was still brutal, but I could make out the dim shape of a ceiling fan on the ceiling above me. I tried to raise my head and nearly passed out from the hurt, which further strengthened my resolve. I now officially held a grudge against Jorge, Travis, their chloroform, and whoever hired them to use it.

  I stiffened my spine and imagined a crane tugging me upright. The sheet fell down and I was relieved that I was still in my clothes, and the same ones at that. Sitting up got my blood moving, but I felt dizzy. Resting for a moment, I turned my head to absorb what I could from the room. The wall was covered with a light-and-dark striped wallpaper that had flowery patterns in the light spots. Crown molding lined the tops of the walls. A musty scent mixed in with the Chinese food, and the floor was bare. Wherever it was, it was an old San Francisco building, and it wasn’t Dr. Redburn’s office.

  As I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, I realized it was more of a sofa. One by one, I lowered my feet to the floor and pushed the blanket back. I tried to stand, but my legs were so rubbery that I let myself collapse to the point where I could crawl.

  I kept crawling along the edge of the room until I reached the door. The cold knob was narrow and ornate, carved like in all the old San Francisco homes. I wondered if I could make a break for it if Jorge and Travis were immediately on the other side. And, if they had my pistol nearby, were they quick enough to get off a shot?

  The slurping and eating noises gave me cause for hope. Greasy fingers and guns don’t mix. When I turned the knob and pulled the door, I prayed to the gods of WD-40 that it would stay quiet. I created just enough space to crawl through.

  I got lucky—I found myself on all fours with Jorge and Travis’s backs to me. They were watching Cheaters on the television set, which meant it was late. Cheaters wasn’t exactly prime-time programming. Those two were absorbed in the story of a woman who was being followed by a camera crew as she canoodled at a mall restaurant with a man who wasn’t her husband. At that moment, I wished I were involved in something as simple as a stakeout at a mall.

  Jorge and Travis were sitting on folding chairs with two large brown bags of Chinese food and my pistol between them. Judging from the slurping, they were at the soup stage and getting ready to move on to the main course.

  I finally had a better idea of what Travis looked like. He was twice Jorge’s size and completely bald. All muscle, no brains, I hoped.

  “Kinda sucks that you got fired,” Travis said, mid-slurp.

  “Eh, you got the girl,” Jorge replied. “That’s gotta count for something.”

  “When we get the money,” Travis said. “We’re going to Orlando. Always wanted to go there.”

  Jorge’s mouth was full, but I heard him say, “Gotta sell the necklace first, man.”

  “Fuck that,” Travis said. “We find it ourselves, and we sell it. I know people.”

  “You know people?” Jorge asked. “Whatever.”

  Gotta sell the necklace? Then who was going to buy it from Jorge and Travis? Sabrina said Dr. Redburn was going to auction it, but I doubted that it involved Sotheby’s. Travis didn’t seem like a Sotheby’s guy.

  I focused on my slow crawl. I saw an open door with a stairway just outside. If I could make it there, perhaps I could outrun them to the street.

  I also saw a shovel propped up against the door frame. It had a little dirt on it. I thought these guys were buffoons, but I began to take them more seriously when I realized they might have been digging my grave.

  Alas, even more basic bodily functions than fear kicked in at just that moment. The smells of sweet and sour soup and egg rolls were more than I could take, and my stomach released a plaintive growl.

  Jorge looked at Travis. “That you?”

  Travis looked back. “No.” Then he turned around and saw me. “Dammit!” He stood up and promptly spilled hot soup all over his thighs. “Dammit!” he roared a second time, bending over and instinctively trying to pull his pants down. The gun was on a side table, but Travis was far more concerned about his steaming pants. Jorge was flapping his arms, completely adrift when Travis was out of commission.

  The gun was out of my reach, so, despite my rubbery legs, despite my headache, I sprang for the shovel. Travis, really mad, lumbered toward me, with his pants around his knees and clutching his scalded crotch. He was wearing a pair of boxers with hot dogs printed on them.

  I could have run, but I had unfinished business to accomplish. I opened my eyes wide and imagined I was Clayton Crespo receiving the pitch of his life. I screamed, swung that shovel toward Travis’s bald noggin, and hit a home run, sending him to the floor.

  Jorge finally wised up and tried to reach for the pistol, but I managed to nail him in the side. That was my pistol. And that Chinese food was going to be my supper.

  Jorge tried to regain his balance, and he groaned. He went for the pistol again, but his arm was useless. “I’m not through with you, Jorge!” I screamed, aiming the shovel right for his arm. I’d shatter his arm before he could touch my pistol and my food.

  Instead of facing an irate, hungry, drugged woman armed with a shovel, Jorge chose to break for the room where I’d been drugged. I was tempted to go after him, but I let him slam the door behind him. I thought he should cower away like the chicken he was. Then I ran out the door after grabbing the pistol, the bag of uneaten Chinese food, and the shovel for good measure.

  Once I was outside, I read the street signs and realized I was in the Sunset district. Hardly anyone was out, but I managed to flag down a cab driver with the shovel. I explained my plight to the driver, a hippie who was grooving on KPFA, Pacifica’s community radio station. He told me, “You’ve been on a long, strange trip, sister. This ride’s gonna be free.”

  Back at the apartment, while sitting at my kitchen table, I looked at the clock on the microwave. Two a.m. I lingered over Jorge and Travis’s beef with broccoli and drank several glasses of water to drain my system of the drugs. I kept spilling the water because my hands were still slightly numb, and I couldn’t believe I had the strength and the rage to take down two men with a shovel. Then again, those two deserved a segment on America’s Dumbest Criminals.

  After finishing the beef, I emptied the plastic Chinese food bag of all its contents. I had a fortune cookie and a receipt. I decided to crack open the cookie. The message inside made me giggle. It read,

  In your life, you will meet many interesting and artistic people.

  “I guess that’s not the case tonight,” I laughed.

  Then I read the receipt for the food. At first, I assumed that Jorge and Travis would have used cash, but that was giving them too much credit. A name and an entire credit card number was printed on the white paper. I got lucky—not all restaurants had caught on that they weren’t supposed to print those numbers. Jorge Vazquez had a Mastercard. Even though a lump was throbbing on the back of my head, I was left feeling that the night was a triumph.

  CHAPTER 30

  DOUBLE AGENT

  WHEN I WOKE UP, I started researching Jorge Vazquez. If I could find him, then maybe I could find the necklace. At the very least, I’d be a lot closer to it.

  I did some digging on the Internet and found a phone number and address for the Jorge Vazquez who had a Mastercard with the same digits. When I saw where Jorge was from, I clapped my hand over my mouth and immediately pushed myself away from my computer. Standing up to tell Harold the big news, I tangled my left foot up in a computer cord and wound up on my face.

  I didn’t care. I bolted down the stairs and cried out, “Harold!”

  Harold staggered out of bed, his wiry hair sticking out all over the place. “Where’s the fire?” he asked.

  “You know what I found out?” my hands were flapping, and I was
jumping up and down.

  “Wha?”

  “Jorge Vazquez lives in Sacramento! Sacramento!”

  “And that means what? He has a long commute?” He wandered into the kitchen for some cereal.

  I felt a little deflated. “It means that he might work for Sabrina’s husband. Mr. Buckner! The UC chancellor! And he worked for Dr. Redburn. He’s a double agent!”

  “I hate to tell you this,” Harold called from the kitchen, “but I don’t know who Jorge Vazquez is.”

  “That’s why I need your help!”

  Already eating out of his cereal bowl, Harold headed for his breakfast nook. “As long as I don’t get hit by an ice-cream truck.”

  I realized that Jorge Vazquez and the man driving the ice-cream truck had similar small builds. “I think I made the person who drove the truck very sorry last night.”

  “How so?”

  I smiled. “I hit him with a shovel.”

  Harold set his bowl down on the table and applauded. “Now that perks me up considerably! If you find him, can I have a crack at him, too?”

  I took my own bowl and began helping myself to cereal. “If I’m right, you’ll have plenty of chances for schadenfreude. Wanna see the shovel?”

  “Uh, okay,” Harold replied, scratching his head.

  I ran upstairs and brought down my prize for the evening. “Look! It’s blood!”

  Harold jumped back, and some milk dribbled down his chin. He peered closer at the blood that had crusted on it. I added, “It’s either Jorge’s or Travis’s blood.”

  He gulped. “Is your dad right? And who is Travis? Is your job getting dangerous?”

  “Maybe a little,” I said. “Can you help me? All it would take is a phone call, and I would listen in.” I shoved my business card with Jorge’s number scrawled on the back of it Harold’s way. “Just ask whoever picks up if he’s Jorge Vazquez. Tell him that you have his Mastercard number and you want to give it back. He knows my voice, so I can’t do it. Jorge knows my voice, so I need you to do it. It’ll be fun. Please?”