I had no idea what Mr. Stackless’ real title was, but there he was behind the public intake counter as another businessperson registered with him. They had to get their pound of flesh, and their fees, anyway they could. Mr. Stackless, undoubtedly, had jurisdiction over my area, and I was an illegal, unregistered business in his eyes. Many people used the “I’m only a consultant” line to circumvent the laws. It never worked, but it could buy you time until you got the means to get the required licenses.
He never saw me enter the Clerk’s office and take my seat in the waiting room, after taking a number from the bright dispenser by the door. The waiting room was packed when I arrived, and it was packed with over seventy people, two hours later, when my number was called.
“140!” Stackless yelled out.
He still didn’t notice who I was until I was standing inches from him on the opposite side of his counter.
First, his face turned bright red, as he knew I wasn’t there to register. He stared at me, not knowing what to do. He couldn’t run, but he could call out to the big policeman outside the doors standing guard. The first move was mine.
“Your plan to jack me up with the police failed, so this is what you’re going to do,” I said to him in a hushed, but unpleasant tone. “You’ve tried to upset my business twice. Do you know what it’s like to be the little guy in a supercity trying to get something going? Or have you been a government worker troll all your life and have never made an honest day’s living? I don’t have a cushy government job or a cushy corporate one, but you don’t see me complaining. You don’t see me hanging out on the street, like a sidewalk johnny. I’m trying to make things happen. So this is what you will do. I’ve solved a corporate case, and I’ve solved a case from an Average Joe. I need a case from a government guy to round out my virtual storefront reviews.” I pointed at him. “You’re going to get me that client for being an insufferable bum and to redeem yourself. I want and expect that referral from you. So what’s it going to be?”
While I was talking, the redness of his face subsided. He was fully relaxed when I finished.
“Do detectives make payoffs for people?”
“Payoffs?” I asked.
“Yes…if someone’s being…blackmailed. And they want someone to make the payoff for them.”
“Yeah. We do that.”
Chapter 32
Phishy
“HERE, PHISHY PHISHY.” I’m sure that was the playground tease Phishy had to endure as a child, but I never once joked about his name. I never teased anyone about their name. It was beneath me. It felt like childish stuff, and I didn’t do childish stuff. I’m sure that’s one reason Phishy always wanted to hang with me. I treated everyone the same, no matter the title or status. He appreciated that. And now I was partners with the crazy cat.
“Phishy!” I yelled and threw the wad of cash at him.
He was hanging on the street with his crew of sidewalk johnnies, like he always did, planning a scam, talking about a scam, or whatever. Phishy jumped in the air and snatched that wad of cash as if he had a bionic hand of steel. Then he transformed before my eyes and had a look. It was like when I threw a piece of chicken to this feral cat as a kid. The cat pounced on that piece of meat as if it had never eaten before and had this look, accompanied by a low, guttural growl. The piece of chicken was in a death-lock in its mouth, and if anything came near it, even its mother, it would scratch its eyes out. Phishy’s face looked like that.
I stood there, watching him for a moment, until Phishy’s psychotic mood passed.
“Oh.” His smile returned. “I’m okay.”
“You didn’t look okay,” I said.
He turned around and was fiddling with the groin area of his pants—I assumed the zipper.
“What the hell are you doing over there?” I yelled.
His sidewalk johnny buddies were in a laughing uproar. Phishy was jumping up and down, his back to me, fiddling with his pants. He stopped, did something, and then looked to pull up his zipper. By this point, his crew was rolling on the wet ground laughing so hysterically I thought for sure they’d have heart attacks.
Phishy turned around to face me. The wad of cash was gone from his hands.
“I’m really okay now,” he said.
“Don’t even tell me you did what I think you did.”
He laughed.
“Girls hide it up there,” he said, rubbing his chest. “We put it down there.”
“Phishy, it’s called a wallet, and it goes in your pants pocket or your jacket pocket. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nah, you get robbed that way. No one’s going to reach in there. Not even the police.”
“Okay, enough Phishy, I don’t even want to hear about your personal body security measures.”
“Give us a handshake,” he said jokingly as he walked to me like a zombie with his hand outstretched.
“Get away from me, Phishy.”
He kept coming, and I ran away.
Chapter 33
The Wans
WHEN I WAS A KID IN school, I never got into fights. There were plenty of bullies, but my world never really intersected with theirs. Actually, I was too busy with all my off-school hobbies and interning to care much about anyone or anything at school. Run-Time was the same, which is why we became such good friends early on. School was a pit stop on the road of life and an insignificant one, at that.
However, as you grow older, one’s style starts to take form. That’s when I started wearing fedoras. Back then, elaborate hair-styles were the rage, so it was unthinkable to cover your hair with a hat, which was exactly why my contrarian-self did it. And that’s when I became a target of the bullies. They did the unthinkable—they tried to snatch my hat. It was a mistake they didn’t make ever again, because I beat up the first three so badly, even my few school friends, like Run-Time, were shocked. I think he started wearing his flat caps sometime after I got the reputation in school, “Don’t touch Cruz’s hat. He’ll go psycho on your ass.” My rep was so widely known that local gangs came all the way to school to try to recruit me as an enforcer, which made me laugh. “I’m a germophobe, so hitting strangers with all that blood and sweatiness is nasty,” I told them. I thought my logical explanation had kept the gangs away only to learn, many years later, that it was the Principal and my Pops who “went after them” and made it crystal clear never to come to the school again for me or to recruit any other kids.
Don’t touch my hat. Don’t grab my hat. Only I had the power to remove it and place it on my head. Any transgressions relating to my hat would evoke psycho behavior, very similar to my response for scratching my vehicle. It was a place you didn’t want to go.
Speaking of psychos, Dot’s father, Mr. “I’ll cut you” Wan came to my new office, and I wanted to know why. I could have ignored it, but I felt if I ignored it, he and Mrs. “I’ll poison you” Wan would feel they could stop by anytime they liked. My future parents-in-law had to know there were boundaries, and the only way to do that was to visit their business. Fair is fair.
The Wans were ridiculously rich, like anyone else who lived in Elysian Heights. I did my own research on them, though not as thorough as I’m sure they did on me. They made their fortune in computers, but now dabbled in practically everything, which seemed was to give themselves something to do, rather than making money. I would never have guessed it, but they owned one of the major Chinese food chains in Metropolis. They owned tons of businesses, but a Chinese food chain? It seemed so…beneath them. All the good Chinese food chains were owned by Jamaicans. In all my life, did I ever eat Chinese food from a Chinese food store owned by Chinese? I don’t think so.
I was playing real detective. I had tracked them from one business to the other until I got to their Fantasia Chinese Food TakeOut and Restaurant chain store. I even parked in the same parking lot they did and, waiting until they were out-of-sight, headed for the elevators. Neon Blues was a working class mixed-use business and re
sidential district like Woodstock Falls, but again, the rich didn’t frequent working class neighborhoods, only other rich ones or richer ones. Besides, since I was still in the doghouse with Dot, the time was right for a potential confrontation with her parents.
It was my luck I picked the day that it was raining heavier than normal to tail them around the city. I didn’t do umbrellas, but with my fedora and my jacket, I always kept dry underneath. A little moisture on the face was healthy as far as I was concerned. Fantasias were all alike—restaurants with their donut style tables with stools around them and benches along the storefront so people could sit and eat, looking out the main street. You saw one and you saw them all, ground-level food establishment.
Because of the rain, my head was tilted further down than it normally would have been as I walked to the store, and then it happened. A man burst out the establishment and crashed into me. Both of us fell onto the wet pavement. He fell back; I had braced my fall with my hands. The brown-haired man with a goatee was in a shiny-black, trench coat slicker. There I was, in a push-up position to keep my entire body from touching the wet asphalt ground. Then he did it. The stranger grabbed my hat from my head and ran away!
“What!” I jumped up to my feet.
I was about to run after him when someone else bolted out of the store and crashed into me. We fell to the wet ground. It was Mr. Wan.
“He stole my hat!” I yelled.
“He stole my money!” Mr. Wan yelled, and he grabbed the gun that fell from his hand.
Another figure came out of the store. It was Mrs. Wan.
“Get up! He’s getting away.” She was also armed.
The three of us looked at each other.
“That bastard stole my hat, and he’s mine.”
“Go away, you bum!” Mrs. Wan yelled at me. “He has our money. He’s ours.”
“You have no gun, so go away, bum for my daughter’s boyfriend.”
“That’s fiancé to you!” I pulled my gun from my jacket—surprising the heck out of them—and ran after the robber.
People don’t run through the streets. Criminals run away. Gang members run after each other. Normal people walk. But I don’t suppose I or the Wans were normal. We were going to get that robber. I could chase him forever with my OCD-self. I suspected the Wans were made of the same DNA. That robber was in serious trouble and didn’t even know it. Besides, he wasn’t armed, but we were.
I was only ahead of the Wans, because I surprised them and dashed away first, but they were right on my heels. Crowds of gray or black slickered pedestrians were everywhere; we had to dodge people and umbrellas. He was like a wild rabbit as he went around the corner, with us in hot pursuit. I was gaining on him, and he glanced back. Then he suddenly stopped, turned, and took a knee. That meant only one thing: he was armed and, of course, shot at me.
I didn’t stop, duck, or dodge. But the next shot made me slide to a stop as I fought to keep my balance. I had a choice. Shoot at him and fall into a massive dank puddle of water or keep from falling altogether. That puddle was nasty, so my choice was made for me. I didn’t even realize the consequences of the choice I made. The robber aimed at me again. A shot came from right next to my ear. Mrs. Wan blasted my hat right off his head.
“My hat!” I yelled.
The robber jumped up and ran when Mr. Wan shot him right in the butt. In grabbing his backside, he dropped his gun.
This time, the Wans ran first after him, and I stopped briefly to pick up my undamaged, but damp, hat. I wasn’t putting it back on my head now that it touched the ground.
“That is the last time I’m getting shot at by a stranger!” I yelled and continued the chase.
The three of us chasing this robber down the city streets was mad. My parents couldn’t run like the Wans were after this robber. I think he knew they were going to assassinate him if they ever caught up to him. But now, another sneaking feeling came over me. The robber wasn’t running away from us. He was running to some place. Where? What was he planning? People die every day in Metropolis. I had a new mission with getting my hat back. I had to keep the three of us alive. Dot couldn’t come home after a long day and have a peace officer waiting for her at home to tell her that her parents and boyfriend-fiancé were gunned down chasing some fast-finger freddie robber.
The robber ducked into a storefront.
“Don’t follow him!” I yelled at Dot’s parents.
They either didn’t hear me or ignored me and ran right into the dark place after him. I had no choice, but to follow.
If I knew what was waiting for me on the other side, I’m not sure I would have crossed that threshold. It was obvious as soon as my eyes adjusted to the dim light; we had run right into some gang den. The Wans had their guns pointed at the robber. The patrons of whatever the heck this place was, maybe a bar, were pointing guns at them. They saw me and turned. I was sick of being shot at it. So I went gun crazy.
I shot at them until there were no more bullets, and the Wans did the same. Incredibly, the robber ran out the back as his comrades got shot full of holes. How was this robber getting away after getting butt-shot? Everyone not shot by us were running out of the establishment, like a stampede. I looked and the Wans were gone out the back. I wanted to run with the crowd out of the place, but I had to see this through and ran out the back after the Wans, because they were out of rounds, too.
From madness in a darkened bar to madness in a back-alley with pouring rain. The robber was beating the Wans with some metal pipe! He didn’t see me as I charged at him and smashed him against the wall. He tried to get up to hit me with the pipe, but I remembered what I did when those bullies tried to take my hat in school. I could fight dirty-vicious and kicked him, not in the head—I kicked him in the eye, the nose, the front of his teeth, in his left eardrum. He dropped the metal pipe and realized I was the one he should be scared of and was smart enough to block my kicks.
But then, the Wans jumped him, and he did the incredible.
“Help! I’m being robbed! They’re going to kill me! Help!”
The robber was yelling for police on us! Real life can just be so wrong. We were going to pound this guy until his body parts pushed through the ground, the center of the Earth, through the hot magma, until he pushed through the other side of the planet in China. But then we froze as the spotlights beamed down on us.
“THIS IS THE POLICE! Put your hands up or be fired upon and killed!”
I had never been so scared in my life. The words from the police, as they descended from the dark rainy sky, made my blood freeze. I had gone my entire adult life, until this day, not hearing those words. I hadn’t ever gotten a speeding ticket in my life, but now I was in a holding cell in the furthest corner at the front with my face pressed between the bars. Mr. Wan and I were in jail. But we were in jail with a lot of other guys. I was like a big, wet rat trying to squeeze through the bars. My mind was flooded with all those stories you heard growing up about what happens to people who go to jail. “News at 11. Six-foot-tall, three-hundred-pound Navy Seal sent to jail was found dead and stuffed in his coffee mug.” “News at 12. Man named Butch was sent to prison and came out as a woman, named Sally. Authorities say they only left him unattended for five minutes, so they don’t know how it happened.” I could barely keep from shaking, because I had a quick glance at the other guys in the cell with us before I pressed my face against the cell bars. Every last one of them looked like multiple-murderers in their prime.
Mr. Wan, God Bless him, was yelling at them in Chinese a mile a minute. They hadn’t jumped us yet, because they were still trying to figure out if he was cursing at them or casting a voodoo spell on them or reciting the best recipes for an authentic Chinese meal. We must have been so funny to them, a real live sitcom before their eyes.
He turned toward the police outside. We couldn’t see them, but they were there. “That criminal stole my money!” Mr. Wan yelled. “I should let criminals steal my mo
ney? I should let criminals steal the shirt off my back? Here, take the shirt off my back!” He proceeded with ripping off his fancy dress shirt and then pulled off his T-shirt. He bundled them together, snapped the jail cell bars like a whip and continued to yell at the two police who walked into view. “Here, take the shirt off my back!”
The prisoners were getting such a good show, and one of the serial killer looking guys laughed so hard at the agitated Mr. Wan, he collapsed to the floor. It didn’t stop there as Mr. Wan yelled, “Here, take my pants too.” He undid his pants.
“Hold on there, sir,” one of the officers yelled. “We are not interested in a strip show from the likes of you!”
He began to furiously slap the cell bars with his shirt and T-shirt, yelling at them in Chinese. Then we heard an eruption of yelling in Chinese from Mrs. Wan in the holding cells from around the corner. The cops just looked at each other, not knowing what to do.
“Here take my shirt! Take my pants! You the criminals!” Mr. Wan yelled at them.
“Shut up, or we’ll stun you!” one police officer yelled.
“Stun me!” Mr. Wan yelled and whipped the bars with his clothes.
“Shut up!” the policeman yelled.
“Stun me!” he yelled again.
“Shut up, both of you!”
“Stun me!”
The Wans’ screaming in Chinese and English was relentless. The only reason I wasn’t trying to dig out my own eardrums was because my mind was someplace else. It was the reason I was pressed at the outer edge of the cell. Germs! My germophobia wasn’t an off-again-on-again figment of my imagination. It was real. At one point in my childhood, my parents had considered putting me in those bubble communities—hermetically sealed communal communities for those with no physical immune system to live in the natural world or those, like me, who psychologically were the equivalent. What had saved me was a nice child therapist lady, who taught me how, in a self-hypnotic Zen way, to re-order my mind. Unfortunately, the technique only worked if my mind didn’t cross into that “zone.” It was too late—my jitters had started. All I could think about was all the reports of how trash offices are cleaner than the local jail, and how the average prisoner carries ten times the unhealthy microbes than the average person. My mind was fixating on Ebola and every other contagious disease known to man. Then images of the Nose Chunk Flu came into my mind. I could feel my legs giving way. I closed my eyes and tried to summon every nano-unit of composure I had left in me.
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