by Ray Garton
Leroy frowned for a moment. “Are you serious?”
“Sure, I’m serious. Of course, if you’re not interested, you just say so, and no harm done. But I think we might be able to stir up some business for each other.”
The frown relaxed and Leroy smiled. “I’m sorry, but I don’t even know your name, or-or what kind of business you’re in.”
“Oh, yeah, you don’t, do you?” Reznick reached under his coat and produced a single business card. “Marcus Reznick of Reznick Investigations. I’m a private investigator. Call me Marc. I’m just two doors down.”
“A real private investigator, how about that. What’s your specialty?”
“At the moment, it’s divorce cases. But I also find people, find things, follow people, do thorough background checks. I’ll even serve papers, I’m not proud. I’m reasonably priced, totally confidential, and I’ve been in the business since I was a kid. It’s second nature to me.”
“You got yourself a deal, Mr. Detective. Hang on.” Leroy hurried down the counter in the long, narrow room, and disappeared through a door in the back. He came back a moment later with a thick stack of business cards. He handed them to Reznick and said, “There you go.”
“Thank you. And I’ll go get some of mine and bring them to you.”
“That’s a good idea, Marc.”
“Hey, what the hell, it can’t hurt.”
Reznick paid the bill for his lunch and left Uncle Leroy’s Homemade Barbecue. He walked back down to his office. A hot, smothering breeze had blown up while he’d been getting his lunch – it was like some darting, invisible mythological creature that sucked the breath from its victims’ lungs, leaving two scorched husks. He stepped up to the door of the office and found someone seated in the chair facing his desk. The person’s back was to him until he pushed the glass door open, then he stood and turned.
“I hope you don’t mind me comin’ in here and waitin’ for ya,” the man said.
“No, not at all,” Reznick said. “In fact, I’m glad you did.”
He was built like some kind of comic book superhero – his muscles seemed to have muscles. But he didn’t quite look like a body builder. Reznick guessed he was in construction, or the timber industry, something like that. His short hair had a sandy color, and he had one of those mustaches that drop down from the corners of the mouth to the edge of the jaw on each side of the chin. He wore work boots, jeans, a long sleeve plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the front unbuttoned, with one of those shoulder-strap undershirts on under it.
“Are you Mr. Reznick?”
“Yes. What’s your name?”
“My name’s Morris Carey, but everybody calls me Mo.”
“Have a seat.”
Reznick went behind his desk and sat down. He put the white bag containing his lunch on the desk. His stomach gurgled.
“Well, Mr. Carey, how can I help you?”
“I’m not sure you can, see, that’s the thing. I never been to no private investigator before, so I don’t even know if this is the kinda thing you handle.”
“Why don’t you let me decide.” Reznick smiled at him.
“Yeah, okay, I can do that. See, it’s my wife.”
“If it’s your wife, Mr. Carey, then I can assure you that it’s the kind of thing a private investigator would handle.”
“Really? Okay, then, I guess I was right in callin’ on you.”
Reznick leaned forward a little, genuinely interested. “Tell me, Mr. Carey – what made you choose me?”
“‘Cause you was in Anderson,” Carey said. “Anderson’s closer to me than Redding. I’m in Happy Valley.”
For a moment, the smile dropped off Reznick’s face. He had a bad memory of Happy Valley – a wooded, rural area west of Anderson – and had not returned there since he’d made that memory. He’d been hired by a couple middle-aged parents who drank too much and probably paid little attention to their children, who wanted him to rescue their son from the bad crowd into which he’d fallen. He’d run away from home, they said, and they wanted him found and brought back. They suspected they knew where he was – they gave him the address. They asked him if he carried a gun, and he said yes. They said he might need it.
Reznick had gone to the address that night, which had been in Happy Valley. It was right off Happy Valley Road – a long gravel driveway led to the house, with glowing windows some distance from the road. There were several cars parked around the house in a big clot. Reznick did not turn down the driveway. He went on and pulled over on a narrow shoulder. He got out of his car, locked it, and crossed the road. He started down the long driveway.
Halfway there, he was accosted by an ugly, familiar smell – a smell like someone painting a car. It was the smell of a meth lab in operation.
“Holy shit,” Reznick muttered.
Reznick was not a coward, and he was willing to take a risk now and then when it was necessary. But he was no idiot. He did not mess with people who had meth labs. He did not mess with the meth freaks.
He turned around and found himself looking down the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun.
“Who the fuck’re you?” the dark figure holding the gun said. That’s all he was, a dark figure with what looked like long straight hair, broad shoulders – and that gun somehow sticking out of the dark, vivid in front of Reznick’s face.
“Marcus Reznick, private investigator. I’m looking for a young man named Rodney Pope. I was told he might be here. His parents want him to come home. I’m not here to make trouble.”
“You a fuckin’ cop?”
“No, not at all, I’m a private investigator, I’m not affiliated with law enforcement in any way. In fact, I usually have an adversarial relationship with them.”
“Stand right where you are.”
“All right.”
The tall shadow moved around him, then poked him in the back with the shotgun. Reznick started walking.
“You get the fuck outta here, you hear me?” the man said.
“Yep.”
“You come back here, I’m gonna be the first one to find ya, and I’m gonna blow you in half, you unnerstand me?”
“I understand perfectly.”
The man moved his face close to Reznick’s ear and said quietly, “I mean it – right the fuck in half.” His breath smelled of garlic.
“You’ll never see me around here again,” Reznick had said.
“You just keep walkin’.”
He’d never walked faster.
Meth-heads were utterly unreasonable and dangerously violent, usually psychotic. Reznick had no intention of getting near any again, and if he suspected he might, he would turn the case down, no matter how much he needed the money.
Rather be poor than dead, he thought.
“Where in Happy Valley?” Reznick said.
“Right off Happy Valley Road.”
Reznick nodded. “A lot of people live right off Happy Valley Road.”
The warm, tangy aroma of the barbecue filled the office. But there was something else – Reznick could smell the baked beans, too. Not as strong as the barbecue, but it was there. It was making his stomach growl its head off.
“Have you had lunch, Mr. Carey?”
“Matter of fact,” Carey said, “I haven’t. This is my lunch hour, but I’m skippin’ it to see you. Is that barbecue you’ve got in that bag?”
“It sure is.”
“‘Cause it’s makin’ me crazy.”
Reznick laughed and said, “Yeah, me, too.” He quickly cleared away most of the top of his desk, then reached into the bag and brought out two dinner rolls wrapped in plastic, the Styrofoam cartons and the foil-wrapped ribs. Also in the bag were napkins, a plastic fork, toothpicks in plastic and a chocolate mint. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “This is a pretty generous order for one.”
Reznick got up and went to the cupboards, got a couple plates, a couple forks, a couple paper towels, and returned to his desk. A few minutes later, th
e only sound in the office was that of two men eating – teeth tearing meat, lips smacking, forks clacking against plates.
Finally, Reznick said, “Is this the best barbecue you’ve ever had?”
“It’s fuckin’ delicious, if you’ll pardon my French,” Carey said. “Where’d you get it?”
“Two doors down, Uncle Leroy’s Homemade Barbecue. There’s a stack of business cards. When your hands are clean, take a few and pass them out to friends. Stop and get some, take it home for the wife so she doesn’t have to cook.”
“Don’t worry, she probably won’t be around long enough to cook.”
“What’s the problem, Mr. Carey?”
“Oh, you can call me Mo.”
“I’m Marc.”
As they discussed Carey’s problem, they continued to eat.
“The last year or so, see,” Carey said, “my wife Alicia’s been goin’ out with her girlfriends.”
“What do you mean by that?” Reznick said. “Where do they go?”
“Well, she always told me they’d go out to a bar, or maybe to the Win-River Casino. A concert once in a while. Always drinkin’, they always go to a bar or club and drink.”
“Do you have children?”
“We have a little four-year-old girl.”
“Really? And your wife still goes out – how often?”
“Well, that’s the thing, see. At first, it was once every month. Then pretty soon, it started to be once every couple weeks. Then once a week. Now it’s a couple, three times a week, sometimes more.”
“Have you told her you don’t like this?” Reznick said. “Does she know how you feel?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve tried. That never goes over well. It always turns into a fight.”
“What’s her argument?”
“Her argument? She says we married real young, and we did. Just outta high school, Melanie got pregnant, and we got married. The baby was stillborn. We waited a long time before tryin’ again. I thought the marriage – that we – I thought everything was great, y’know? But somethin’s wrong if she’s doin’ this two-three times a week. I’m afraid she might be gettin’ herself a drinkin’ problem. Mention that to her and she flies into a rage. I think she might be takin’ drugs.”
“Was this sudden,” Reznick said, “or were there warning signs? Can you look back now and see things happening that might have led up to this?”
Carey’s eyebrows were pretty bushy, and they huddled together thickly in the middle of his frown. “Y’know, there have been things, and I’ve noticed all of ‘em, and I’ve even brought a couple up to her, but it was always a mistake.”
“What kind of things?”
“Well… “
Carey was hesitating because that was private stuff, and he was reluctant to discuss it with a stranger.
Reznick’s head bobbed up and down and he said, “I’m sorry, I should’ve pointed out to you by now that everything you say in this office is absolutely confidential. Everything you say stays within these walls. So you shouldn’t be afraid to say anything.”
Carey nodded. “Okay, I’ll buy that. It’s just that – see, these days, most people’re real eager to go on TV and talk about how crazy their families are, y’know? But that’s not the way I was raised. I was raised to keep my dirty laundry off the outdoor line, where it didn’t belong in the first place.”
“That’s very respectable, Mo.”
“Thanks. Course, it ain’t gettin’ me nowhere with my wife.”
“What about your wife, Mo?” Reznick said. “What do you want me to do?”
Carey dipped his roll in the baked beans and took a big bite. He chewed for a while, then said, “Last week, I’m sittin’ at home with our daughter, watchin’ a rerun a some dumb show I didn’t like the first time I saw it, when I realized, why should I do nothin’ while she’s out kickin’ up her heels?”
As Reznick listened, he ate his last rib, and forced himself not to groan happily at the flavor of the barbecue.
“I know all the husbands and boyfriends of her girlfriends, see,” Carey went on. “I figured I’d call ‘em over and we could play poker, or play video games on the X-Box, or somethin’ – anything besides wastin’ another second on television, for cryin’ out loud. So I call the first one – name’s Ted Haker. Him and me went to high school together. We even dabbled in college together over at Shasta College. It wasn’t for me, but Ted went off and got himself a business degree. Now he owns a small chain of electronics stores here in northern California. Ted’s always fulla good stories. He’s dealt with a lot of strange people over the years, and he’s fulla real funny stories. So he’s always fun to have around. So I call Ted. I ask him if he wants to come over and do somethin’. Ted acts kinda funny, and he says, ‘Tonight?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, tonight.’ And after awhile, he says, ‘Okay, yeah, I guess so. What’s Melanie gonna be doin’?’ I thought that was a funny thing for him to ask, and I said, ‘Huh?’ And he said, ‘What’s Melanie gonna be doin’ while we’re playin’ video games?’ And I said, ‘What the hell you talkin’ about, she’s out with your wife and the others.’ And Ted chuckled and said, ‘My wife’s right here with me.’ That’s when I got this cold feelin’ inside. I called the other husbands and chatted, found out their wives were home, too. That feelin’ got worse. That helpless feelin’ you get when you realize something important to you is out of your hands, beyond your control, y’know? Somethin’ that’s not really lost, but that maybe you never had. It’s like bein’ in a earthquake. Ever been in a earthquake, Marc?”
“Yes, I have,” Reznick said.
“It’s a helpless feeling, ain’t it?”
Reznick nodded.
“So is this feelin’ ya get when you know somethin’s real wrong, somethin’ outta your hands. Somethin’ bad.”
He liked to tell a story, this Mo Carey. Reznick wished he would pick things up a bit. “What was your somethin’ bad?” Reznick said.
“Melanie wasn’t out with her friends – she was out with… well… someone else.”
“Any idea who?”
“None.”
“You want me to find out?”
“Yeah, that’s right. On top of her goin’ out so much, she’s been buyin’ stuff. Just things now and then. But they ain’t all that cheap, you know? A dress here, some perfume there. Pricey stuff. And I don’t know where she’s gettin’ the money. Then I got to thinkin’… maybe she ain’t buyin’ ‘em. Maybe somebody’s buyin’ ‘em for her.”
They stopped talking to eat more coleslaw and beans and ribs. Then Carey said, “I don’t know where she goes, but I think her girlfriends do now. I think they’re all in on it, tryin’ to hide it from me.”
“You think she’s seeing another man?” Reznick said.
“What else would she be doin’ at night?”
“You might be surprised how many bad things people can get up to at night without having affairs. You want me to follow her?”
“Yeah. I don’t know when she’ll go out again. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow night. She comes home from work, throws somethin’ together for my dinner, feeds the kid, and she’s gone. Usually by six-thirty, seven o’clock. Not every night, but often enough for it to be… well, you know, outrageous. Here she is my wife, and I hardly see her anymore. I pick the baby up on my way home from work – she stays at my mom’s during the day – then go home. I get there ‘bout the same time she does. Before I know it, she’s gone again.”
“Give me your address in Happy Valley, tell me what kinda car she drives,” Reznick said. “I’ll wait for her to leave, then I’ll follow her. I’d also like a picture of her, if you have one.”
Carey stopped eating and wiped his hands and face on the paper towel. He took his wallet from his back pocket and started looking for a picture.
“What kind of work you do, Mo?”
“Construction. I’m workin’ on the new jailhouse in Redding.”
“Ah. And your wife?”
“She works in a dentist’s office.” He handed Reznick a picture of Mrs. Carey.
“What’s her name?” Reznick said.
“Alicia.”
Reznick nodded.
The woman in the picture was smiling, but she had the kind of face that would look angry and mean if she weren’t. She was a plain woman with straight, stringy, dirty-blonde hair. She had a broad face with small blue eyes perched above chubby round cheeks that became more pronounced when she smiled.
“Look,” Carey said. “Before we go any further, I gotta know – how much is this gonna cost me?”
Reznick told him his rates and how much he’d need up front.
“Okay, well, that’s a little steep for me. But I’ll handle it.”
“I assume you want me to start right away,” Reznick said.
“Tonight, if you can. Like I said, I don’t know if she’ll go out or not. If she ain’t gone by seven, she’s probably not goin’.”
“How has this affected your marriage?”
Carey shook his head. “We ain’t had sex in a long time. She’s never interested. That’s another thing makes me think she’s seein’ someone else. Hell, she don’t even seem that interested in our little girl. And she’s been actin’, I dunno, kinda… kinda unstable lately. Mood swings, know what I mean? One minute, she’s fine. The next, she’s yellin’ and screamin’ at me, or even our daughter. Then, the next minute, she’s cryin’. Real weird. I been tellin’ her to see a doctor, but she won’t do it, says there’s nothin’ wrong with her.”
Carey had stopped eating and wiped his hands on the paper towel. He was getting himself worked up. His big hands closed and opened and closed into fists as he spoke.
Reznick decided to change the subject. “What’s your little girl’s name?”
“Brandy Michelle.” Carey smiled then and his hands relaxed. “Brandy Michelle Carey, and she’s the most beautiful thing you ever did see.”
“I’m sure she is. Does she notice her mother is gone so much?”
“Oh, hell, yeah. She’s always askin’, ‘Where’s Momma? Where’s Momma?’ And I don’t even know what to tell her.”
“And you’ve confronted your wife about this?”
“Oh, yeah. And it always turns into a fight. Next time I talk to her about it, I want to be able to show her pictures, tell her I know exactly what she’s up to, and she better stop it or I’m gonna get a divorce.”
