Rubbed Out

by Barbara Block

  “Fine.” I put both hands up. “I’m going. You mind if I leave my business card?”

  “Put it on the bar.”

  I did. I certainly wasn’t going to argue with him, especially since he looked as if he could shot-put a small building.

  “Call me if you think of anything,” I told Alima.

  She sniffed and turned back to the man she’d been talking to. When I left, she had taken his hand and was leading him to the VIP room for a lap dance. A sign on the wall said, TWENTY BUCKS PER SONG. When you considered the fact that a song usually lasted no more than three minutes, I decided I was definitely in the wrong field. I wondered if this was how Alima and Wilcox had met, and if he was the only guy she was playing. Somehow I didn’t think so.

  I drove back to the store, picked up Zsa Zsa, went home, and watched old Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell movies till three in the morning while I drank Scotch and ate a bag of chocolate chip cookies. It was a surprisingly good combination. I passed out on the sofa with Zsa Zsa snuggled up behind my knees.

  I woke up to the phone ringing. I opened one eye and stared out through the picture window. It was dark. The streetlights were still on. It felt like four in the morning, and I felt like shit.

  “What?” I croaked into the receiver.

  “Did you find anything yet?” It was Wilcox.

  “What time is it?” I was still logy. My head was throbbing and my throat was dry.

  “I don’t know. Seven o’clock.” I wondered how long he’d been up.

  I groaned. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “You said to call.”

  “Not this early.” I hung up and burrowed my head in the pillow. I was just falling back asleep when the phone rang again. Why I answered it, I don’t know. It was Paul.

  “How’s the Janet Wilcox thing coming along?” he said, speaking way too loudly.

  I moved the phone away from my ear. “Why are you up this early?”

  “I never went to bed.”

  I turned onto my back and rubbed my eyes. It didn’t help. Everything still looked blurry. Maybe I was getting nearsighted in my old age.

  “Robin, are you there?”

  “I’m going back to sleep. Call me later.” And I hung up.

  The phone rang again. Probably Paul. But it could have been the Pope for all I cared. I disconnected it, stumbled upstairs, and crawled into bed. Zsa Zsa jumped up and curled up on the pillow next to me. When my alarm went off at nine o’clock, I felt marginally more human. Four cups of coffee later, I was ready to function. I spent the rest of the day making phone calls from the store, trying to track down Janet Wilcox and failing.

  I started with her daughter, Stephanie, who was down in New York City. She sounded even more annoyed with me this time around.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from your mother yet?”

  “No. I haven’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m on the other line.” And she clicked off. Bet she didn’t send Janet a Mother’s Day card.

  I spoke to two of her cousins. Wilcox had been right. They just corresponded over Christmas. They’d stopped trying to get Janet to come out and visit them a long time ago.

  “What’s the point?” one of them said. “All she does is complain.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “Everything,” she replied. “Absolutely everything. And then she denies she said anything. She’s a very difficult person.”

  I managed to locate three members of her book group. They didn’t know anything about Janet Wilcox either. They didn’t discuss their personal lives when they met. But they could say this about her: She was always well prepared for their discussions, unlike some people they could mention, who actually lied about reading the book. If I could imagine that. I said I could and tried Janet Wilcox’s physician and got as far with him as I had with her psychologist.

  At this point it was four o’clock in the afternoon, and I decided to go over the credit card receipts Wilcox had collected for me again. I’d done it before and nothing had popped up at me, but I was running out of options.

  It was a fairly simple task because Janet Wilcox didn’t charge that much. Most of her purchases seemed to center around her house and involved things like dishes and sheets and picture frames. She bought her clothes at Talbot’s and her shoes at Easy Spirit. Both stores that catered to conservative, suburban women of a certain age—as the French like to say.

  Occasionally Janet Wilcox splurged and bought herself a couple of boxes of chocolates and a book, but I could tell from the receipts that the books were paperbacks. Her only real luxury appeared to be getting her hair done every week at the Final Cut Beauty Salon.

  I was musing about the name being one I would never have chosen for a beauty parlor when it hit me. Sometimes women tell their hairdressers things they don’t tell anyone else. A cliché, but that didn’t make it any less true. I got out the phone book and looked up the address for the salon. It was over in Eastwood. Close enough. I told Manuel I’d be back in an hour and drove over.

  The place had that familiar permanent-wave smell. It took me back to when I used to go to the beauty parlor with my mom. I’d hated every minute of it, from the shampoo to the dryers, which burned the back of my neck. My mother always wanted me to get my hair curled. I always wanted it straight. The last time I’d gone, I’d come out looking like a poodle. That was when I was thirteen. The next time I’d gone back, I’d been twenty-six.

  The salon was tiny. A strictly two-person operation. Two sinks. Two cutting stations. A line of chairs along the far wall. A large wicker basket filled with kids’ toys. Another one filled with magazines. It was the kind of place that catered to the locals. The walls were painted lilac and hung with framed photos of Tuscany landscapes. A vase at the reception counter was filled with a bouquet of ferns and spider chrysanthemums.

  A collection of vintage Bakelite and rhinestone jewelry was neatly displayed in a glass case below the cash register. ASK ABOUT OUR PRICES, said the hand-lettered sign standing by them. A badly bleached blonde somewhere in her seventies was getting her hair cut when I walked in.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” the hairdresser said to me as he lifted a lock of her thinning hair and snipped at its ends.

  I sat down on one of the chairs and waited. The man trimmed and studied his cut. Hair rained down on the black plastic cape covering the woman’s shoulders. Occasionally she’d brush a piece off her nose.

  “Chris, I think you’re going to like this,” he said to her, his face a picture of concentration.

  “You’re sure?” the woman said. “I want to look nice for my niece’s wedding.”

  The hairdresser patted her shoulder. “You’ll look gorgeous, darling. I promise. You’ll be the belle of the ball”

  Somehow I doubted it. The woman had a receding chin and the eyes of a basset hound. But that was what she needed to hear because she beamed. The hairdresser put down his scissors and reached for a bottle of conditioner. He squirted a dab of it into the center of his hand, then proceeded to massage it into the woman’s scalp.

  “So,” he said to me as he worked. “What can I do for you?”

  I told him.

  “Janet,” he said as he turned on his hair dryer and began fluffing out the woman’s hair. “Of course I know Janet. She’s a regular.”

  “So you think you’ll be able to help me?”

  “Possibly.” He assessed my hair with a practiced eye. “You need to have your split ends trimmed.”

  I reached for my ponytail and studied the ends. “They’re fine.”

  “They’re damaged.”

  “No more than a quarter of an inch,” I conceded.

  Over the years I’ve noticed that people tend to be chattier when they’re comfortable, and they’re comfortable when they’re doing the things they’re used to doing. Usually I cut my hair myself, but if I needed to get my hair trimmed to get the information I wanted, so be it. I’ve done a lot worse in my time.


  “No problem,” he said before turning back to his customer.

  I watched while he finished her up. He back-combed her hair, then brought it forward and sprayed each curl into place. It was like watching someone construct a building.

  “You work it, girl,” he said as the woman reached in her purse to pay.

  She was still giggling as she walked out the door. He had made her feel good. Maybe that was why Janet Wilcox had come here each week. To get what she couldn’t get at home.

  “Remember,” I reminded him as I sat down in the chair. “Not more than a quarter of an inch.”

  He picked up my hair, weighed it in his hand, then undid the rubber band, fanned it out, and studied it some more. “Half. You should use a better conditioner. Your hair is really dry. I have one you might like.”

  “Fine.” I’d take it out of my expense money along with the haircut. “Janet Wilcox.”

  “My. Aren’t you the persistent one.” He sprayed water on my hair with a mister. I felt like a fern.

  I must have made a face because he said, “Just wetting it down, dear. By the way, my name is John, and yours is—?”

  “Robin.”

  “You have a card?”

  When I gave it to him, he glanced at it and slipped it into his pocket. “A real private detective. The boys at the club are going to love this.”

  And him too, I’d wager. He had closely cropped hair that had been bleached white, a diamond stud in his left ear, and a tight ass his black pants showed off. His black T-shirt hugged his ribs. Very Manhattan. Just like Janet’s daughter Stephanie.

  “Okay John. How long have you’ve been doing Janet Wilcox’s hair?”

  He twisted the silver AIDS bracelet on his left wrist around. “You mean that Palm Beach crash helmet do she insists on having?” He rolled his eyes. “God. I’ve been spraying those curls for ten—no, eleven years. Or is it twelve? I don’t want to do the math. It’s too frightening. Scary how fast time goes, isn’t it?”

  I agreed that it was.

  He gestured with his free hand. “The principessa has a standing appointment every Thursday at nine-forty-five in the morning. Not that her majesty is ever here on time.”

  He fastened a black nylon cape over my shoulders and told me to look down. Then he began to cut. I could hear the snick-snack of the scissors.

  “Frankly,” he continued. “I’m surprised she left. I didn’t think anything could pry her out of that house of hers. The way she talks, you’d think it was the Taj Mahal.”

  I looked up.

  “Don’t do that,” John said. “I don’t want to cut you.”

  I went back to looking at my knees.

  “Well, at least her husband is having a rest,” John added.

  “I take it you don’t like her.”

  “Let’s just say that she wants me to do back flips through burning hoops and then doesn’t tip me.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I just couldn’t imagine living with her. She’s one of those people that polish their grievances up like precious stones and take them out every time they have a chance.”

  “It sounds as if she and her husband were a match.”

  He grunted, put his scissors down, and ran both hands through my hair, pulling it out to either side as he studied my reflection.

  “Do you think she’s suicidal?” I asked thinking of what Wilcox had told me.

  “Oh, please. She’s a bitch.” He pronounced it beatch. “People like that don’t kill themselves, they drive other people to it.”

  Okay.

  “Do you have any idea where she could have gone?”

  He laughed. “Oh, yes. I think I can make a pretty good guess.”

  And he told me what I wanted to know.

  Chapter Twelve

  Except for a woman wading through a snowbank to get to her car, the sidewalk was empty when I stepped outside the salon. The weatherman had promised it wouldn’t get below twenty. The weatherman had lied. It felt as if we were into the single digits, but maybe that was because of the wind, which had kicked up again.

  I jammed my hands in my pockets and headed for my vehicle. By the time I got there—a minute at most—my earlobes were stinging. After I pulled out onto James Street, I called Walter Wilcox at his office, but his secretary informed me he’d already gone home. I tried him there.

  He picked up on the third ring. “Mike,” he said, sounding out of breath, as if he’d just run up the stairs.

  “No. This is Robin Light.”

  “Sorry.”

  An SUV cut me off. “Idiot!” I yelled at the guy.

  “What?” The phone crackled.

  “Nothing.” I tried the heat. It still wasn’t working. By the time it got going, I’d be where I had to go. “I might have a lead on your wife.”

  Wilcox exhaled. “Thank God. I’ve been so worried. Where is she?”

  “Down in the City.”

  “You mean New York City?” Alarm undercut the relief in his voice.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Not according to my sources.”

  “But she hates that place. I could never get her to go down there.”

  “Well, she’s down there now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Moderately.”

  “All those people.”

  “Eight million.” Or was it more? Or less? I forget.

  “How will you find her?”

  “I think I can narrow down the odds considerably.”

  Opera was playing in the background. I wondered if Wilcox ever listened to anything else. I wondered if he had a glass in his hand. I was willing to wager he did.

  “Then you know who she’s staying with?”

  “I’ve got a name.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “From her hairdresser.”

  “Janet’s hairdresser?” I could hear the question in Wilcox’s voice, and then he spelled it out. “You’re sure she’s reliable?”

  “He,” I corrected as I sped through a yellow light because I was afraid I’d skid out if I stomped on the brakes.

  All those years and Wilcox still didn’t know anything about someone his wife had seen once a week every week for at least ten years. If that didn’t encapsulate the problem with his marriage, nothing did. “Yeah,” I said, remembering the hairdresser’s tone when he’d spoken about Janet. “I think he’s reliable. And anyway, it’s the only lead I’ve come up with so far.”

  “That’s good. That’s very good.” I could hear the slur of alcohol in Wilcox’s voice. “I want you to go down there and find her.”

  I thought about leaving the store. I thought about the fact that I’d been spending too much time away from Zsa Zsa. I thought about the fact that the weather forecast was predicting a nor’easter coming up from the Carolinas. I thought about the fact that I’d been running on four hours of sleep a night for the past week.

  “Sorry, but you’re going to have to count me out. I’m sure Paul can find you someone to take over.”

  “I don’t care if he gets me Sherlock Holmes. You’re the person I hired, you’re the person I want.”

  “Listen. . .”

  “It’s just going down to the City, for God’s sake.”

  I heard ice cubes clinking in a glass. Wilcox must be refreshing his drink.

  “I know what it is.”

  I pulled into the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. I needed a large coffee and two chocolate-peanut doughnuts, and I needed them badly. I also needed to sit someplace warm and defrost my toes and my fingers. Especially my toes. Which felt like pieces of wood.

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  “Then you go.”

  “I can’t. I have things to do up here.”

  “So do I.”

  “This is important.”

  “I realize that, Walter,” I began when Wilcox interrupted.

  “God love you. I won’t forget this,” he cried. His
vowels had become softer. He was starting to run his words together. “Call me the moment you’ve located her. And whatever you do, don’t talk to her. I don’t want to scare her.” And he hung up before I could reply.

  I stared at the phone for a minute. Paul could deal with this. Wilcox was his client, after all. I went inside and got three doughnuts instead of two. I sat by the window and ate them and watched the lights of the cars going by and thought about New York City at dusk. When I lived down there, it had always seemed like the loneliest time of the day to me. It still did. I crushed my napkin, stuffed it into my empty coffee cup, tossed the cup in the trash, and drove over to Paul’s office.

  The State Tower Building was emptying out as people went home for dinner. Paul was on the phone when I walked through his office door.

  “Wilcox,” he mouthed. I moved some newspapers off a chair and sat down while he told Wilcox not to worry. That he’d take care of everything.

  “Get someone else. I’m not going,” I announced to Paul when he got off the line. “I already told him that. He just refuses to listen. Or he’s too drunk to listen. I don’t know which.”

  “Not even for a two hundred and fifty dollar bonus?”

  “Get real, Santini.”

  “Okay. Five hundred.”

  “I may be cheap, but I’m not that cheap.”

  “A thousand extra for two days’ work? Robin, come on. It’s not that big a deal,” Paul said. “Manuel can fill in for you.”

  And he reached in his back pocket, took out his wallet, counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills, and laid them on the desk one at a time. Watching him, I realized he looked tired. Maybe it was the light, but the lines around his mouth looked deeper, the circles under his eyes darker.

  The money was too good to turn down, which I’m sure Paul knew. And besides, it had occurred to me that maybe I needed to get out of Syracuse for a while. Sometimes any change of scenery is a good one. Especially when everywhere I went reminded me of George.

  “Why do you care about Wilcox?”

  Paul drummed his fingers on the desk. “I don’t. I just like to keep my clients happy. Besides, he has some important friends.”