by Andrew Post
He dropped down onto all fours and reached under the bed and found a plastic container. It took some effort to drag it out; it was filled to the brim with paper. He flipped open the lid and sat on the floor. The first pages were payroll stubs from Mama Wash, a few doctor bills for birth control, a release for her medical history. Beneath that, he found several envelopes from bill collectors and credit investigators.
One envelope jumped out at Brody. It bore no company logo, and the return address was local. He pulled the trifolded piece of paper out of the envelope. The letterhead had a lock and key symbol hanging above Probitas Security Firm in clean sans serif. It was a company he’d never heard of.
It was a cease and desist letter, but Brody had seen enough in his own mailbox to know this one was different. It wasn’t in polite lawyer-speak but a concise, if mildly bellicose, paragraph. After addressing Miss Ashbury, it went on to say that she had apparently been harassing several of the security firm’s clients and that to save time they were sending her one letter representing them all. It instructed Nectar to discontinue using “foul language” with their clients’ employees and being “antagonistic” with their clients’ receptionists. It was signed in a darting, illegible signature below which was printed Jennifer Sullivan, Lead Risk Assessment Engineer.
Brody continued to dig to the bottom of the container, looking for anything that would denote Nectar was travelling, even though a dark cloud had just passed over Brody’s mind that she hadn’t gone anywhere voluntarily. He swallowed and imagined that the simple act was difficult to do, as if his esophagus were under the heavy band of cold, reptilian flesh.
A knock came at the door.
Brody froze, holding his breath.
It came again, three solid knocks.
Brody returned the papers and the lid to the plastic container and kicked it under the bed. He bounded as quietly as he could into the living room. Still holding his breath, he pressed his eye to the peephole. Through the smeary glass he could see two big men in matching blue overalls on either side of a squat man with neatly combed powder-white hair. The old man removed a pocket watch from his tweed vest and stared into its face.
Brody took his chances and opened the door, his hand sliding into the loops of his concealed knuckleduster. He kept one foot behind the door just in case they tried to rush him.
The old man looked at Brody with mild irritation. “Is Nectar Ashbury here?”
Brody glanced at the two men standing next to their apparent leader. He noticed the patches stitched to the chests of their overalls: O’Malley Moving Company. “She’s out for the moment. Can I help you?”
“She’s ten days late on her rent,” the old man said. “That means I have to kick her out, clear the unit for someone who might be willing to actually pay their rent. Are you here to get her things? Because I got these two for the day, and if you have a truck ready, I’m sure if you asked very nicely they’ll help you load it. Otherwise, it’s all going on the curb.”
“I’m just collecting a few personal items,” Brody said. “One minute?”
“Make it fast,” the old man said.
Brody closed the door in his face. He raced to the bedroom and grabbed the tote. As much as he didn’t want to take the heavy container, he hoisted it into his arms and waddled into the living room.
He stopped, wondering if Thorp wanted any of Nectar’s things. He looked around for photos and noticed there weren’t any.
The knock came at the door again, and Brody answered. The men moved forward as if Brody was going to allow them in, but he rushed out first and headed for the elevator with quick, short steps, the bin held against his stomach.
The old man shouted, “Do you have a truck ready or not? All this shit’s going on the curb otherwise. Be a shame for your friend to be out a sofa just because she didn’t feel like paying her damn rent.”
Brody didn’t answer. He got into the elevator as soon as its doors parted.
15
Brody considered going back to the car to read what he had just collected, but his adrenaline had subsided into a fierce hunger gnawing at him. That’s the way it always was with him. In the aftermath of a particularly harrowing ordeal, a reminder to eat came calling.
He carried the heavy container of papers and documents across the street to the Automat.
The place had a few patrons at the counter, a couple blue-collar men with their rubbery waders squeaking each time they shifted on their stools.
Brody went to the back of the Automat and sat in one of the booths with high walls. He pried open the container and started at the top again, taking one page out at a time and setting it aside face-down when it was fully extracted of information.
The Artificial server was at his elbow, her hands folded neatly before her. “Hello there, dear. Welcome to America’s Favorite Automat. What can I get for you today … Mr. Calhoun?” The transaction yesterday had registered, and now she knew his name and how he preferred his coffee. She asked if he wanted a cup, black, the way he liked it.
“What can I get for … ?” Quick math. “Let me rephrase. What’s the cheapest thing on the menu?”
The Artie appeared to study him. For a moment, when all was quiet in the cafeteria and all conversations unintentionally paused at the same time, Brody could hear the hard drive deep inside the Artie’s head spinning. “Toast,” she said. “Two slices of buttered toast and a coffee, our On the Go Special, is only—”
He said yes, that was what he’d like, without looking at her, and she hummed away.
He reread the letter from the security firm. Jennifer Sullivan’s signature had been pressed into the paper so forcefully it looked almost carved into it.
There were no dates on the letter; the postmark was smudged beyond recognition. Nectar could have gotten it years ago when she was going through a protest and boycott phase—or as early as a few days before she split town.
She had been busy since the letter listed eight separate places she had been identified picketing, but not one of the incidents had been given a specific date. Another strike against Probitas Security’s professionalism, Brody thought. Judges liked specificity, so a list of incidents without known dates would be the same as walking into court and calling eyewitnesses to the stand as “that guy, what’s his name.”
He put the letter in a separate pile he was reserving for things worth looking into, then continued to dig through the container, reaching the bottom where he found Nectar’s social security information—but, sadly, still no ordinateur—and a handful of her expired plastic jigsaw cards.
It was there that he finally got a picture of her. Her first jigsaw card.
She was as he remembered her all those years ago, freckled and strawberry blonde. Next, Nectar at fifteen—freckles more prominent and her hair was short and painstakingly haphazard. A first experimentation with rebelliousness, he assumed. The most current jigsaw was from when she was twenty. The spiky hair was gone, and it had grown back to how she looked when she was younger, long with a faint wave to it. The freckles concealed under a generous layer of foundation. Her eyes were encircled with black eyeliner and mascara, making the vibrant emerald of her eyes shine even more so.
“Doing some homework?” the AFA server asked. She was programmed to say something along those lines, as if to a child toiling at work sheets in a booth alone, that she couldn’t quite articulate with her limited prerecorded set of phrases and questions.
Brody twitched, looked up, and saw her looming there, cup of steaming coffee in her hand. There was no place to set it down without leaving a brown ring on his papers. He removed his coat from the seat beside him and threw it over the mass of papers, then carefully took the cup from her, the handoff awkward and resulting in a scalded thumb.
The Artificial was still peering at the table, as if able to see through the thick navy-blue wool of his coat. Her gaze switched back to him.
He didn’t like the mildly inquisitive look she had on that rubbery face. Who knew what
she could pick up and zoom in on with those eyes, never saying anything about it, but sending the information back to corporate, where it could be scrutinized by a team of bigwigs with too much time on their hands? He stopped himself before his Thorp way of thinking could progress any further.
“Will there be anything else, Mr. Calhoun?” she asked, folding her hands on her apron front and smoothing the material.
“No, thank you,” he said and she scooted off. He didn’t even need to see her slam through those double doors; he could hear it clear across the joint.
He removed his coat, gathered up the most recent expired jigsaw, and wiped some grime from its bar code. He thought about the pirated applications on his phone that liquor store clerks used on their handheld scanners to verify someone’s age, criminal history, or if they had a court-appointed do-not-sell mark on them. His app was altered, though, and he could tap into personal files and police reports if he wanted to, going beyond what was in the realm of legally researchable by the public—without paying.
He took a chance and started the app. He ran Nectar’s jigsaw card under its reader, and his cell’s screen displayed an hourglass slowly emptying from top to bottom, one grain of sand at a time.
By the time Brody finished his coffee he had gone through Nectar’s lease agreement, a gym membership form, and a few recent pay stubs from Mama Wash.
His cell toned, and he snatched it up to see what results it had gathered. Even though the jigsaw itself was expired, the number associated with Nectar Ashbury was the same number she carried from birth to death. The program had fetched a series of files on Nectar, including her arrest record which was surprisingly lengthy.
In the last month she had been given two warnings via phone, and then the hard copy cease and desist letter was sent when another “incident” occurred—or conduct discontinuation packet as the letter called itself. The calls and the letter were from Probitas. The letter didn’t mention who or what she was harassing or who had asked Probitas to intervene on their behalf.
He flipped through her other arrests and found a few for being drunk in public. She spent a weekend in women’s lockup for making a public nuisance at the Bait & Tackle Bar and Seafood Grill. The farther back they went, the less related they became, ranging to her first arrest when she was fifteen, the same age as that spiky hairdo, when she had rendered a fellow student unconscious by bludgeoning him with a lunch tray, because the concussion receiver in question had ceaselessly bullied one of her friends for an entire semester up until that fateful day.
Brody got out of the list of arrests and chose the other files the program had found. There was the claim her landlord had made against her for back rent that was to be taken out of her paychecks by collections whenever she decided to set up the payment plan. Brody scrolled and saw that no arrangements had yet been made. He went into the other case in the group labeled pending and found that she owed a tab to a nightclub called The Glower for precisely ninety-eight credits that was well over six months overdue. That, too, was to go through collections.
Due to his phone’s memory carrying such a hefty app as the ID scanner, it left no room for him to be able to fetch maps or directions. He had no idea where The Glower was, and he was reluctant to call Thorp since he had nothing that his friend would enjoy hearing.
The toast had arrived sometime and he hadn’t noticed. Now it had gone cold, the butter long soaked into the bread and making it soggy. Still, he ate it, both slices at once as if it were a waterlogged sandwich, drained his coffee cup, and motioned for the server to bring the Automat’s nautilus over so he could pay. He gathered up the files as she made her way over, not wanting her to take any more interest in what he had been doing.
After his jigsaw had been scanned, she handed it back to him with the receipt for the scant meal. “Your account has been drained, Mr. Calhoun. I advise you to make a deposit or ask your banking institution for an advance of credits if you want to continue to offer America’s Favorite Automat your patronage.” He was Mr. Calhoun now, not sugar, not sweetie.
“Lovely, thanks,” he said, returning the files to the bin. “I’ll look into it.”
Across the street was a pile of Nectar’s things. Her couch, with armloads of her clothes piled on top of it, now covered in a fine layer of snow. Her dresser and TV pulled from its wall mounting lay mercilessly next to her vanity on the curb among the row of trash cans. The movers were maneuvering her box spring down the front stoop as Brody passed.
A pang of sadness harpooned him at the sight of all her stuff getting cast out on the curb and casually preyed upon by neighborhood thieves like an unmanned yard sale. There was no way he was going to be able to tell Thorp about it.
He walked the length of the block to where Seb’s Fairlane was parked and found it just as he left it. He heaved the container of files into the backseat and got inside. He fiddled with the screen on the car’s dashboard and located an archaic version of GPS. He talked at the screen to find The Glower nightclub a few times before he realized it didn’t take voice commands. With the touch pad, he typed in the name. It fetched no results; the car’s particular version of MetroTab GPS apparently had been installed before The Glower had set up shop.
Desperately wanting a cigarette, he searched the interior of Seb’s car and discovered a pack in the glove compartment. Stale and menthol. He opened the window and lit one.
He wanted to call Thorp and tell him what he had found, but he knew it would just throw his friend into a deeper spiral of suspicions and theories. The news hadn’t been good, and the leads weren’t that great. He stared up the street to where he could just make out the corner of Nectar’s vinyl couch sitting on the sidewalk, rapidly rounding at the edges with the steady accumulation of snow. He flicked the ashes off into the cup holder.
Everything he had just read recycled in a ceaseless loop. The warnings from Probitas seemed like the only possible lead, but with Chiffon carefully watching his records of which restaurants he had been scanned at and keeping a spotty trail of his movements, he didn’t want to stroll right in through the front doors of anyplace, Probitas or otherwise.
He finished the cigarette and dropped it out the open window, exhaling the last drag slowly. Dead end.
A man walked down the sidewalk in full winter regalia, with a stocking cap and earflaps, trying to operate his cell phone with his gloves on. He stopped mid-stride, removed the gloves. He continued on, holding the phone to his ear. As the man passed by the Fairlane’s window, Brody heard one snippet of what the man said: “Hey, relax—I don’t think making one little phone call is going to hurt anything …”
The man with the earflaps was right.
Brody took his phone out and searched for the security firm. There was only one listing.
“Probitas Security Firm. How may I direct your call?”
“Uh, hi there. I was wondering if I could speak to Jennifer Sullivan, please.”
“May I ask what this is in reference to?”
“I’d like to steal a moment of her time to talk to her about something,” Brody said, trying to sound innocent as if he were dating Miss Sullivan and the call was to schedule a lunch date.
“Are you currently one of our clients, sir?”
“Actually, I’m not. I want to speak to her for a second about my friend.”
“Any risk assessment requests should be made via e-mail,” the receptionist said. “If you’re trying to contact her regarding the current status of a conduct discontinuation packet for an ex-employee, spouse, or relative, again I encourage you to contact her via email.” She then said without taking a breath, “Okay?”
“Can I ask who it is you represent?”
“I’m sorry, but our list of clients is strictly confidential.”
“I got this letter that said I should leave somebody alone, but if I don’t know who it is, what am I supposed to do? Never talk to anyone again?”
“You were issued a conduct discontinuation packet?”
<
br /> “Yes, yes, I was and I would like to know who it is from.”
“We’re sorry, but unless the requestor has been cited on the packet, we can’t give out that information. We list specific incidents in our packets so the receiver will be able to recognize who the letter is from without saying as much. We consider this the best way to remain as tactful as possible to all concerned parties.”
“Look, lady. I speak my mind. I put my foot in my mouth so frequently I’m surprised that I’m not getting these letters by the hour. I just want to know who it was who sent it, so I can discontinue my conduct.”
“If the requestor has not been cited, then I’m afraid they have chosen to remain anonymous. Perhaps now would be a time to reassess your personal interactions with others. If you go to our website, you will find that we offer a list of references to many psychologists and selfhelp professionals who may be able to steer you to a more productive and peaceful relationship with the world—”
“How much would it cost to become a client with you guys?” he interrupted. “Do you represent just anybody?”
“What is the name of your business?”
“I don’t own a business.”
“I’m sorry, but the Probitas Security Firm doesn’t take on individual clients.”
“So you only represent companies or businesses?”
“That’s correct.”
Brody took the phone away from his ear and scrolled to pull up Nectar’s priors. Only two cases named businesses as the prosecutor. He brought the phone back to his ear. “Do you currently represent”—he double-checked—”Bait & Tackle Bar and Seafood Grill?”
“I’m sorry, but we cannot give out that information, either.”
“What about The Glower?”
“Again, we’re sorry but—”
01:29:59.
“Sorry, have to run.” Brody pressed end on his phone.
He punched in Bait & Tackle on the Fairlane’s touch screen, and the GPS found it immediately. He started the car’s rumbling engine and pulled out into the snow-slick street. Navigating the city by the firm, female voice of the car’s navigational computer, Brody began his approach toward the north side.
