by Mark Lingane
"Where's Spikey?" I asked them.
They looked at each other. Eventually the woman spoke, lifting her nose and closing her eyes. Her thin, angular face emanated calm and assurance, and her voice was more suited to commanding than conversing.
"Are you Mr. Avram?"
I nodded. She shifted her focus and studied the lettering on the door.
"What does the H stand for?"
"Halitosis."
"Counsel, perhaps, for the uninitiated and unanticipated? Or perchance a method of entreating sympathy?"
"A warning. Don't stand close."
"We shall risk the sea of uncertain, dread exhalation, and hope we can converse in words comprising a minimal collection of hard consonants." Her face wriggled around. I assumed she was cracking a joke, and her mouth was trying to join in on the excitement. "May we intercourse with you in your multipurpose abode?"
I shrugged and let them in. If nothing else, maybe my vocabulary would expand in unusual ways.
The lady sat in my visitor's chair. The man twitched around my office chair. I gave him a warning look and he retreated to the safety of the corner behind his captor. I looked at them. Even though they were as different as warring neighbors, there were some facial similarities.
"My associate recessed into provision is Mr. Bird. As you see, he is divertingly petulant due to the circumstances."
"You got a name?" I said.
"You may call me Ms. Early. I hope we're in time."
"In time?" I gave them a matching set of quizzicals, one each.
"We're experiencing undue distress with a particular individual who has been causing difficulty for an extended duration. A difficulty that's apparently embedded within the descent of her genealogical fraternity."
"Nepotism can often be like that." The two people in front of me looked like perfect advertising for the fact.
"I, we, are the recipients of a cavalcade of commentaries and interpretations, even descriptive intelligences about said individual, with whom you may be associating. Do you know this woman?" She handed me a photo of a young lady who was throwing a scared glance over her shoulder. It was Angelina. "And are you aware of her current locale?"
"I haven't seen her."
She handed over another photograph of the two of us talking.
I looked at it and spun it back at her across the desk. "It's not me."
Ms. Early stared at me, tapping her long nails on the old desktop. Mr. Bird seemed to be experiencing his own kind of trouble. Behind Ms. Early's back, he danced in a bizarre movement that looked part ritual and part drunken wedding guest. It was distracting, but not as distracting as Ms. Early's next line.
"We believe she may be in possession of some particular family heirlooms that she has acquired without going through the appropriate procedures. It has been related to me that the monetary reward is handsome, if you find yourself able to contribute to our knowledge of said individual."
I'm always a sucker for that kind of argument.
"Monetary reward?" I tilted my head, trying to block out the distracting behavior behind her. But only partially. It never pays to completely block out a psychotic who might be carrying a weapon.
She withdrew a battered leather purse from a cracked and brittle handbag. She opened it and took out a century, waving it in front of me. She laid it down and smoothed it out.
"This is an untithed gift for you. Consider it an expression of regret over our unexpected appearance."
Ms. Early then took out another nine bills and laid them across the desk. They took up the entire width of the wood. It was almost enough to buy the office outright. It was two-thirds of the way toward a bungalow out past the 'burbs, a peaceful place where I could live out my existence in a bubble of serenity.
Mr. Bird continued dancing his bizarre steps, his arms flapping over his head. In its own mesmerizing way, his actions made her request reasonable. That's when I knew something odd was up.
I slowly opened my lower drawer and took out the silver-plated cigarette lighter in the shape of an illegal Luger 311. I knew it was out of fluid so there weren't going to be unexpected flames appearing and ruining the illusion.
"You know what this is?"
Mr. Bird stopped his insane flapping and focused on the gun. His beady eyes tracked the barrel with intense concentration. Ms. Early pulled a face of disgust and peered down her extensive nose.
"I haven't heard or seen her." The reiteration seemed to sink in.
"You could've just said that," Ms. Early said. "The offence initiative with the hand-held weapon is not a requirement of the expedient completion of this interaction."
"I was born that way."
"I will leave the money for you, as authorized. It will guide your decision."
There was a moment again, like with Silbi. It hurt to decline the temptation. Saying yes would make all the troubles go away, and I'd be content in that little bubble of happiness.
"Take it with you."
"Are you certain?" Her voice dripped with honey.
The pain hammered down. Compliance wanted to slip off my tongue. What was Angelina to me? Just some bent woman with a broken understanding of her place in the world. The small seed of doubt at the back of my mind burned, and the spot between my shoulder blades began to itch like tomorrow was slipping off the menu.
"Remember my name." I cocked the pistol.
Mr. Bird went crazy, shrieking and howling.
"We won't forget, Mr. Avram." Her voice was as cold as yesterday's coffee.
"Who sent you?"
"That we can't tell you."
I wiggled the pretend gun at them. I could see their reflections bouncing off the silver. Both of them were damned concerned by it. I'd seen shakers before, and none of them were ever put in a flap over a gun being drawn on them. They all knew it took a big set of fluffy dice to pull the trigger. Normally the people with the dice don't wait. They extract their firearm du jour and shoot you. It's never a part of the conversation; it's the closure from a person who doesn't like to talk too much. Or doesn't want you to talk too much either. Up-state marriages used them a lot.
"What if I shoot you?"
"Then we definitely won't tell you," Ms. Early said.
"I didn't say both of you."
There was a moment of unfriendly silence in the room. I didn't like it, and it wasn't welcome. I put down the gun.
"Tell me or go."
"Will you take the case? She is not the person she says she is. Look into her past and you might be surprised by what you find."
Mr. Bird let out another high-pitched squeal that upset everyone in the room, including himself. Ms. Early gave him a sharp look.
"You might be interested to know that most people around you are not who they appear to be." She paused, momentarily lost in thought. Then she did her weird smile-thing at me. "It's for the greater good. Will you help?"
I picked up the photograph of Angelina. I flicked it back onto the table. "No."
"Then we shall go. Good day, Mr. Avram."
As the door closed, the pain lifted from my head. It was an interesting message they purveyed: threat and warning wrapped up in a warm burrito of candy. She had left a century on the table. I picked it up and looked at both sides of it. It could be handy down at the Stylus. It might even cover my bar tab.
I thought about the pair as strange as a set of joke spectacles with the wobbling eyes on springs.
20
I jumped up and ran out the door. Spikey was vacuuming the carpet like nothing had happened.
"Where'd you go?"
He gave me a blank stare. "I ain't been anywhere."
The two weird ones had obviously slipped the three of us into a parallel dimension; while they were here the world had continued to spin without us in it. Or maybe Spikey was only saying it to cover a quick smoke with the lemon-squeezer man.
I sprinted down the corridor and forced him to express me down to the first floor. I ran to the front of
the building and asked the doorman which way they'd gone. He looked at me blankly. The parallel dimension theory was gaining credibility. I described a sour-faced woman all in black and her towering, thin offsider.
"How could you have missed them?" I said.
He shook his head.
I ran out into the busy sidewalk traffic, then into the road, much to the annoyance of the diesel dimboxes smoking past. A couple honked. A couple swerved. I scanned the sidewalk both ways. Then I saw them.
Ms. Early glanced over her shoulder at the hullabaloo going on in the road. I ducked behind a thirty-five, avoiding her gaze.
I moved down the opposite side of the street, tracking them in the crowds. They hitched onto the back of a bus heading toward Gayme, and I jumped up onto the following one. Twenty minutes later they slid off the back and made their way into a deserted old building. Ms. Early's confidence ensured they didn't look back. I followed them in, stepping through smashed walls and fallen ceiling beams. Puddles wept by malfunctioning plumbing were dotted around the broken floor. I could make out their footsteps, two sets winding their way through the debris.
They had ventured up a set of stairs that were barely more than rusted beams held together with the hope of slow decay. I placed my foot on the first step. It crunched under my weight. I wondered how they'd gone up without falling through. I stepped carefully on the beams at a point closest to the wall. There was some solidity there, and I crept up one step at a time. With a sigh of relief I made it to the top. I made my way out into the remains of the upper floor, following the damp footsteps.
I slowed when I heard voices ahead. A deathly quiet enfolded the place. Ms. Early's voice pierced the broken spaces, echoing around the building, making dust fall from the beams like construction dandruff. I leaned against a wall and a series of pigeons took off, screeching into the air.
The voices went quiet. I stood stock-still. After an agonizing few moments they continued. I crept closer. They were hidden behind a short wall. I crept to one end and glanced around the corner. I could see Ms. Early, in her perpendicular deportment, with Mr. Bird standing to attention, looking at someone in between us. I moved silently to the other end of the wall, and glanced around. There was another man standing there anonymously, with his back to me. His hands were on his hips, like a commander of all he surveyed, but without the useful services of actually surveying anything. He wore a crumpled brown jacket and had wiry, curly hair.
His thick accent gave away who he was: Chief Inspector Rami Watcher.
I kept my breathing under control, closed my eyes and focused on the conversation.
"He wasn't any help?" Watcher said.
"He has a ridiculous chip on his shoulder." This was spoken by a voice I didn't recognize but it was full of annoying tics and stutters. I assumed the speaker was Mr. Bird.
"What about the money?"
"He didn't accept it," Ms. Early said.
"Give it back to me, I'll return it to the evidence store. Those stupid internal-audit fools are always checking it out now. It was much easier in the old days."
A fattened and diseased pigeon with a disfiguring growth on its foot waddled up to me and started to peck at my shoe. I flicked it away. I tried to focus on the conversation.
"Does he have any idea?"
"About what's coming and his--"
The pigeon had come back and stabbed into my shoe. I kicked it away. It took to the skies and flapped out through one of the many holes in the rusted steel roof. I shrank behind the wall. I heard footsteps, and braced for a fight.
"Let's get out of here. I never liked this part of town," Watcher said.
I heard the footsteps retreat and diminish into silence, which wrapped around me. My heart rate eventually descended out of the stratosphere. I scouted the area. There wasn't much to see beyond muddy footprints and a few birdseeds. The glint of something caught my eye. I squatted down and found a small golden cross with an even smaller deity attached to it.
There was a deep growl behind me. I turned slowly to face a big black dog.
"Who's a good boy?" I tried to say in strong, deep and commanding tones.
It growled at me, baring its fangs. They were long and dark. They had seen a lot of meat. I hoped it hadn't been human. No voice would be strong, deep and commanding enough for this creature. Its sleek, shiny coat stretched across its enormous lean muscles. Every inch of it was a deep black. It would be impossible to see at night. I reminded myself to never go out in the dark again. Set against its dark hair was a pair of red eyes filled with malevolent intelligence.
It was a hound straight from hell.
I moved. Its muscles flexed like silk, and it moved in complete silence. It stalked around me. I scanned the area for the fastest exit. I could only see one way out, and it was going to hurt. But hurting was better than being eaten alive.
I faked a quick movement to the right. The dog intercepted me with a low growl. I twisted back and gave it a kick in its side, turned and sprinted toward the wall. It was decayed beyond any use and I smashed right through it, with the hellhound snapping at my heels. I plummeted to the sidewalk below. The hound stopped short of following me into the abyss.
It was a surprise to land on jamoke-man, although not as surprising as it was for him.
He looked up at the hole in the second-story wall. "Next time you want to drop in, let me know in advance. Maybe in writing."
Besides ruining his suit, I had to buy all the coffees I managed to spill. The century came in handy, and jamoke-man had the best day sales ever.
"If you wanted a cup of joe so bad, you should've called." He gave me an expression hitting up between damaged merchandise and light-hearted humor.
"Did you see two people?" I described Bird and Early. He shook his head. These two were slipperier than a basket of snakes in monsoon season.
The fall had knocked the small golden cross out of my hand, but I caught its glint and retrieved it from its precarious position above a storm drain. I gave it a polish on my sleeve and stared at it.
"You giving me more gold? I bought a house with that door handle."
"I'll keep this one."
"I've seen those before."
He took it out of my hands, without so much as a free cup, and twisted it around. He sat down on the sidewalk, for a moment lost in thought. Eventually he came out of it with a snap of his fingers, like he'd woken from a trance.
"Those skinny blond hookers collect these," he said, handing it back. "I was in one of those nests a long time ago and saw a whole pile of them."
I still had a few hours before the city hit second gear, stuttering out of its bleary-eyed reveille and coming alive. I headed back to my office with a complimentary half-cup from jamoke-man. This was developing into a non-unilateral exchange.
When I got back to the office, lemon-squeezer man gave me a familiar nod, half tranced by the smell of fresh beans. My office door was open. I looked in at the turmoil inside. The first thing I checked was the gold record. It was still safely hidden under the floorboards. I spent the next hour cleaning up the office and fixing the lock. I made a note to get a new one.
Finally, I sat down at the desk with a fresh cup of coffee and examined the gold record in its exalted frame of prominence. Another little clue that we all craved popularity. I often wondered why we were so driven by a desire for acceptance. It was like something tragic had happened in human evolution and we were all afraid of being left alone, abandoned on the beaches of life. Animals handled it all the time. Humans? The exact opposite.
I looked at the title of the song. "Looking for Love." You had to laugh. The frame looked solid enough and the record was stuck on good and strong. I flipped the frame around and looked at the back. Fresh scratch marks around the screws meant they had recently been delicately extracted with uncommon finesse and replaced. I searched through my desk drawer until I found a screwdriver. I gently took out the tiny golden screws, laying them neatly on the desk in a row. Ther
e was nothing inside except the record, and some flecks of dirt and lumps of poorly applied paint.
I held my breath and flipped the record over. The reverse side was blank. Just a plain black vinyl record; there wasn't even any writing. I exhaled. I ran my hand over it, but there was nothing. I ran my hand over the inside of the frame. There was nothing. I sat looking at the collection of pieces in front of me, drumming my fingers on the desk. The record was lying flat on the desk. There was nothing under the label, no mysterious lumps. Except for the dust. I ran my hand over the dust to wipe it clean. The dust didn't move.
I took a closer look at the front of the record. All the lumps of dried paint were the same size and shape. I took a closer look. They weren't lumps of paint. They were seeds. Seeds of truth, Jorgen had said.
I spent an hour looking at those seeds, searching for a pattern or clue. The sun rose and slipped in through the window. I gave up. I threw the record on the desk and stared out the life on the street below. A couple of mouthfuls of tepid joe didn't help. A bird flew past the window, casting a shadow over the desk.
I glanced back at the record, hoping for a moment--or at least a seed--of truth.
The seeds were casting shallow shadows over the record's surface. Something odd caught my attention with some of the outer seeds. I twisted the record slowly. The shadows stretched and spun until some, in a certain fashion, formed the shape of an elongated number. I picked up the record and looked along the flat edge. I tilted it slowly. I rotated the disk, and before my eyes the seeds lined up, making a number, a phone number.
I picked up the receiver and dialed. It rang. It was answered by an early-morning voice. I hung up.
Angelina.
21
The phone rang. I gave it a dirty look, but it didn't get the message. I tried to ignore it by drawing moustaches on the photographs on page one of the paper, but curiosity was always going to win. Curiosity sat everywhere lately, in every person I'd met to every place I'd been. An undeniable veil of obfuscation and complication lay over every move, every word, and every breath. I wouldn't answer the damn phone.
