by Matt Rogers
Chapter 38
The voice on the other end of the line was definitely not what he expected.
“Hello?”
Whoever she was had one of the most pleasant phone tones he’d ever had the privilege to hear.
“Oh, hi. I’m trying to reach a Mr. Jonathon Johnson.”
“Is this Detective Smith or Detective Wesson?”
Whoever she was with the beautiful voice was in the game so he played his hand.
“This is Detective Smith.”
“Okay, please hold on for one second.”
While he waited he began piecing together where the other phone was located. He could hear an intercom in the background and there was definitely more than a few people milling about so he narrowed it down to a mall, subway stop, bus station or airport. He could hear the phone exchange hands.
“Hello, Detective Smith?” he heard and was surprised how average undefined sums of money could sound.
“Yes, is this Mr. Johnson?”
“In the flesh. Congratulations on finding me so fast. I’m really glad we picked your team because, well, if we didn’t things might have gotten a little out of hand.”
Smith didn’t know what to say because he literally had no idea what was going on.
“I’m sorry, did you just say you picked us?”
He was having a slight anxiety attack because he wasn’t all too certain if a man hires you to find him was it technically a missing person’s case? He was going over in his mind the contract he had Vivian LeTorque sign and was trying desperately to remember if it specifically identified a missing person as the subject.
“Yep, we picked you all right. Okay, if you want to get down to the bare facts I didn’t really have anything to do about the picking part but I was the one who picked the pickers so in the end I guess you could say I was the main pickee.”
Smith was becoming more confused with every word the man said.
“Huh?”
“Huh what?”
“I didn’t understand a word of that.”
“Really? Huh? I would’ve thought it’d been easy to figure out by now. Well, it doesn’t matter the way you got here only that you’re in the game and I think you did a splendid job. Now, you’ve only got one more thing to do and then you can go and write a big old number on that check of yours.”
Smith was confused but he wasn’t hard of hearing. The man had mentioned the check and at no time did the process of reneging on the deal arise. He felt his heart quicken in anticipation of choosing a number in the range of enormous but not so big it would seem ludicrous.
“What last thing, Mr. Johnson?”
“You’ll need to make a phone call.”
He wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.
“A phone call?”
“Yep.”
“To who?”
He could both hear and sense Mr. Johnson getting interrupted. He listened closely and heard a small child asking something but couldn’t quite make it out but when Mr. Johnson answered the child he learned something which he’d wondered about.
“Go ask Aunt Melissa.”
The man they were looking for was indeed in the company of the beautiful blood-screener.
“You still there, Detective?”
“Yes” Smith replied.
“All right, I need you to call Nat.”
“Nat?”
“Yes, Nat.”
“You don’t want me to call Miss Vivian? She’s the one who hired us after all.”
“Nah, you don’t need to call her. She right here with me as we speak.”
Smith immediately became worried. He’d met enough crazies in the world to know they were never easy to pick out of a crowd. The real lunatics, the dangerous ones were downright devious in their dealings with the public. They would come across as just an everyday average Joe right up to the time where they’d take a knife out and slit your throat for the pleasure of seeing you bleed. He was worried Johnny Johnson might be one of the bad people in the world.
“May I please speak to her, Mr. Johnson?”
The way he said it got Wesson’s attention. He’d been listening to one side of the story and was felling pretty good about things mostly after Smith had given him a thumbs up gesture indicating the universal sign for unspecified wealth becoming specified.
“Who, Vivian?”
“Yes, please.”
“Oh, uh sure. Hold on a second.”
He could hear the confusion in the man’s voice and immediately felt a sense of ease as he heard Johnny Johnson yell “Vivian! Detective Smith wants to talk to you!”.
He was beginning to suspect there was something not quite right with the lot of them. Every one of them, from the incredibly sexy women to the giant men. No one seemed real. It was almost as though he’d entered another world from the moment they’d set foot inside the LeTorque manor till the time he was at that very second.
“Hello. Detective Smith?”
“Miss LeTorque?”
“Yes?”
“Are you okay? Are you in any danger?”
He actually heard her laugh. He’d never heard such an adorable one in his lifetime and immediately wondered what it would be like to spend one’s life listening to the wonderful sound of female enjoyment.
“Why, Detective, are you worried about my safety around Johnny?”
He didn’t know what to say because things were most definitely not as they seemed. She was the one who hired them to find the man she obviously already found. He wasn’t positive of a lot of things but he was pretty certain if the party writing the check finds their man before the detectives assigned to do the locating then generally speaking the price of success went down in a hurry. But as far as he could tell they were perfectly willing to allow Craft and Sons the opportunity to enrich themselves for performing a job which was already performed by the paying client.
“Okay, Miss LeTorque, I have no idea what is going on and I would like an explanation.”
He said it in his most serious tone. He was experienced in phone work and knew sometimes coming right to the point and acting as an authority figure could get the job done.
“You’ll find out soon enough. So long, Detective.”
And sometimes it backfired in his face. He was prepared for the dial tone, the annoying sound he’d become an expert at hearing so was a bit surprised when Mr. Johnson once again took up the phone.
“Detective, Smith?”
“Yes.”
“Good, you’re still there. Okay here’s what I need you to do. I want you call Nat and give him a message.”
“A message?”
“Yep.”
“What message?”