Deep Night

by Ambrose Ibsen

  The cafe owner sulked, ducking back down behind the counter and wiping the exterior of the espresso machine with a damp rag. “So, it's like that, is it? And here I thought we were friends!”

  If there was any place in Tanglewood that Harlan Ulrich truly felt at home, it was the jazz cafe, Peter Cat, located just a stone's throw away from his office at the Otterbein building. A small cafe specializing in locally-roasted coffee, Peter Cat managed to pack an incredible amount of atmosphere into its relatively confined dimensions, and since arriving in town it had become the detective's favorite place to sit and think. It helped, too, that the coffee there ranked among the best he'd ever had. Rather than return straight to his office from the pawnshop that afternoon, Ulrich had decided to march on a few hundred paces past it, further down the stretch of Seger Avenue, in search of an espresso.

  The building that housed the cafe was a squat one, not altogether different in shape or size from a typical chain cafe, though, unlike such places, great care had been taken in cultivating an ambiance that was at once elegant and cozy. Many of the fixtures were done in natural hardwood, and the shop's lighting came chiefly from hanging brass chandeliers fixed with Edison bulbs, which filled the space with a warm, pleasant glow at all hours. A great sound system had been installed, through which the proprietor, a Japanese-American retiree named Harry Koyama, played a constant stream of classic jazz from his prodigious collection of vinyl records.

  For the detective, coffee was a way of life, and upon arriving in town one of the first things he'd done was ferret out the local cafe scene. He'd been in love with Peter Cat's offerings since his first sip, but during one of his early visits he'd had a contentious argument with a newly-trained barista about the difference between an Americano and a Long Black, and wasn't sure he'd be allowed back. Thankfully, the kindly owner had interceded, smoothing things over, and the detective now made it a regular stop. Ever since, Ulrich and Harry had become fast friends, chatting about their shared love of jazz and coffee. Sometimes, when things were slow, Harry would even let the detective behind the counter to experiment with the espresso machine, or to grind his own beans.

  After idling in the shadow of the espresso machine a few moments, Harry stepped out and began arranging clean glasses on a shelf. Then, with a slight pout, he noisily rearranged a number of syrup bottles and utensils. “Haven't you ever read a good detective novel, Harlan? All the great ones have confidantes, informants, that they discuss the details of their cases with! Why, don't you want to be a Sherlock Holmes? A Sam Spade? And who better to play the role of informant? I know everyone in town. I'm a shoo-in, frankly.”

  “Be that as it may,” grumbled Ulrich, “I don't work that way. And anyhow, this isn't the kind of thing I need a lot of background on. It's pretty cut-and-dry. I'm doing a little overnight surveillance. That's all.”

  Harry's eyes widened. “Ohhh, yeah?” He walked over to the turntable and flipped through a number of records. When he'd glanced over a dozen or so albums, he finally selected Portrait in Jazz by the Bill Evans Trio. He set the record on the platter and lowered the stylus. “That sounds like proper hard-boiled stuff,” he continued as the music began to play. “You staking out a drug deal? A mobster's hideout?”

  “I haven't been in town two weeks and I already know there isn't a proper mobster within a day's drive of here, Harry.” Ulrich polished off his espresso and then chased it with a sip of mineral water. “Anyhow, wish me luck. The odds of my returning with a sore back are higher than the odds of my getting an interesting story out of this.”

  Presently, the cafe was nearly empty. The only other patron was an elderly man seated far from the counter, back near the bathrooms, who oscillated between his copy of the local paper and his iced tea at regular intervals. Things often picked up during the weekends, though most afternoons this was about as much business as the cafe could expect. As Harry returned to his busywork, Ulrich found a few spare moments to listen to the music and contemplate the job ahead.

  Nancy Pruitt claimed she was being stalked, and that someone had entered her home the previous night. Despite getting the authorities involved two nights running, neither she nor the sheriff's deputy had actually seen the culprit. It was a strange thing, but not so strange as to be inexplicable. Perhaps the trespasser had merely been too fast for the two of them. There was also the possibility that no trespasser existed in the first place, that Nancy was merely imagining things; though, having spoken to her at length, she hadn't struck him as a paranoiac.

  Thinking more about this enigmatic perpetrator, something began to wriggle in his subconscious. The detective sought to keep it there—to bury the idea before it could be fully realized—and he guzzled down the remainder of his icy Gerolsteiner to distract himself. Don't even think about it. That's all behind you now. That's why you came here, to Tanglewood, after all. To get away from...

  Harry turned up the volume another click, leaning against the counter, chin resting on his palm. “You hear that? No one plays like Bill Evans. No one. This third take of 'Blue in Green' on the album is my favorite, no contest. There's a perfection to it that just doesn't exist in the other takes. It's the freest of the three, has the best swing. You hear that? The constant splash of cymbal in the back there? And the bass, boy, it just walks here—that's the stuff. The tightest trio in jazz, hands down.”

  “Sure,” replied Ulrich, standing and pulling up his sagging slacks, “it's a fine piece, no doubt. You know who I really like, though? Sonny Clark. Now there's a pianist. You ever hear his version of 'Deep Night'? Music doesn't get better than that. You have a copy of 'Cool Struttin''? You should put that one on next time.” He slipped a few bills beneath his empty cup.

  Harry shooed the detective towards the door with his bar towel, shaking his head all the while. “You watch that mouth of yours, now. Bill Evans is tops. I'm not above throwing you out for suggesting otherwise.”

  Ulrich spared a lazy wave, backing out the door into the warm summer sun. “Thanks for the coffee, Harry.”

  “Good luck with your case, Mr. Detective,” added the owner, cranking the music up. “When you're through with it, I wanna hear all about it!”

  So that he might avoid an encounter with the unpleasant woman who ran the bookshop on the first level, Ulrich slipped into the Otterbein building once again through the side door. He held his breath as the door swung shut—left his fingers in the jamb to keep it from making a clatter as it closed.

  No sooner had he entered did he find himself faced with Richard, her husband, who'd been rearranging magazines on a shelf near the counter. The pair locked eyes, seeming to share the same fear, and then the bookseller relaxed.

  “Coast is clear,” Richard assured him, removing his newsboy cap for a moment and stroking the sparse hairs underneath. “Dorothy went home for the day. Wasn't feeling well. She left me to close out the shift and lock things up, though I'm thinking about heading out myself. We aren't likely to see another customer, not this late.”

  Ulrich made his way to the stairwell. “Business slow?”

  “Always is,” replied Richard.

  The couple that ran Page Turners was an interesting pair. Dorothy had taken an immediate dislike of the detective; even as he'd sought to make inroads towards civility, discussing books and the weather, her standard response had been to ignore him. On those occasions when dialogue was necessary, she'd work in as many insults as possible and drive him off in a fit of cursing like a stray dog. Her husband, the affable Richard, was much easier to get along with, and when Dorothy wasn't around the two enjoyed their neighborly chats.

  Bidding the bookseller a good night, Ulrich rose to the second level. On his way up, he met Emma and some of the other Gore Accounting staff, who were on their way down.

  Emma tugged on his sleeve as he ascended. “You outta here, Mr. Ulrich?”

  “Just about,” replied the detective, stepping aside and making room for the rest of the accounting staff to shuffle by him on
the landing.

  “Any interesting plans tonight? Working any interesting cases?” she asked, leaning against the handrail.

  Ulrich smiled. “Yeah, something like that. And you?”

  “Oh, not much on my end,” she replied, adjusting her purse. “I was thinking of having some friends over to my place. One of them just picked up one of those things... what do you call them?... They're used to talk to ghosts?”

  Ulrich nearly missed the next step, only narrowly avoided wiping out.

  “A talking board!” she elaborated. “You ever use one of those, Mr. Ulrich? My friend swears by them, but I think it's a bunch of bologna. She wants to bring it over to see if we can talk to the ghost of someone famous—maybe Michael Jackson, or the orca from Free Willy.”

  Ulrich turned, his harsh gaze raining down on her from above. “I wouldn't if I were you.” The earlier, easygoing tone was gone. “That stuff is bad news. Throw it out and watch a movie instead.”

  “Oh...” Her big eyed widened like a child's. “Well, what's wrong with it?”

  Ulrich shook his head and continued clopping up the steps. “That stuff just isn't safe. I wouldn't go near it—and, believe me, I know a thing or two about that sort of thing. Don't bother. It's not worth it.”

  Having made it to the third floor, Ulrich paused a few moments outside of his office, his mind reaching into the past and allowing various memories to surface. Memories of dark, abandoned places... Memories of things that should not have existed—that no living man had been intended to see.

  He would speak of it to no one, and cared little to revisit the topic in his own thoughts, but one of the chief reasons he'd recently left his hometown had had to do with just the sort of stuff Emma had been thinking about dabbling in. The supernatural.

  For awhile, he'd done decent business in Toledo, working out of a small office and doing reasonable jobs for his clients. He would have been happy to keep on that way, to live out the rest of his days there. But then, suddenly, things changed.

  His work changed.

  He began encountering things in the line of duty—that is, he began rubbing elbows with people long-deceased. Somehow, the fabric between this world and the next had grown thin enough for him to pass through on occasion, and in such cases he'd witnessed horrific things. Shadowy specters beckoning at the edge of night; ghostly images of murder victims re-living their final, grotesque moments, day after day. Finally, after being unwittingly caught in a number of such cases, he'd skipped town, cut ties with all of his old clients and set out for greener—and less haunted—pastures.

  None of that mattered anymore. It was ancient history. He let the details of those cases fade into the recesses of his memory. Someday, maybe, their outlines would blur and he'd truly forget all about them.

  At that moment, he was thankful for a normal case. Looking out for a flesh-and-blood stalker suited him just fine, compared to all of that paranormal hullabaloo he'd left behind. Hell, compared to some of what he'd seen back in Toledo, he might even enjoy it!

  He entered his office, packing his messenger bag and searching for the cat. “Beardsley, you little devil, where have you gone to?”

  The cat peeked out at him from behind a box of toner—a box which, in his boredom, he'd thoroughly chewed the corner of—and mewled.

  Taking the red leash from his bag, Ulrich gave it a jingle and then linked it to the collar around the cat's neck. “Time to punch out, friend.” With the leash in one hand and his bag in the other, Ulrich draped his suit jacket over one arm and set out into the hall, stopping just long enough to awkwardly lock the office door.

  Beardsley paced lazily about the carpeted hall, walking laps around the detective's legs and then stopping to stare down the way at an open closet. From within there came a loud burst of shuffling, followed by a deep grunt. A thin man in a sleeveless T-shirt and khaki shorts stepped out from its dark recesses, bringing with him a broom and dustpan. It was the building's janitor, Percival, getting ready for his shift.

  “Oh, how's it going, Harlan?” asked the janitor, leaning into the closet door and pushing it shut. He was an older man with a silvery grey ponytail and a pair of cheap headphones hanging around his neck. He always began his work in the early evening, around the time the workers on each level were heading home, and often worked into the wee small hours, listening to music and smoking cigarettes just outside. In that sense, he operated as a kind of unofficial night watchman for the Otterbein, too. At sighting the cat on its leash, Percival couldn't help but chuckle. “Man, does he really walk home for you that way? Cats seem too stubborn for that.”

  Ulrich led Beardsley to the stairwell, nodding to the custodian. “My new place is small. There isn't much room in there for him to get exercise. He's a lazy so-and-so, and if he doesn't get some activity in, he's going to balloon up. Until I can afford a bigger apartment with more space for him, this is the best compromise I can think of.”

  “Ah, right on,” replied Percival, putting on his headphones. “You have a good night, Harlan.”

  “You too, Percy.”

  Heading out of the building, Ulrich walked the cat down Seger Avenue for several hundred feet, then hooked around the corner towards his apartment complex. There were a few hours yet before sundown, and Ulrich planned to make the most of them. If he was going to spend the night cooped up in his car, doing surveillance, he wanted to enjoy a good meal and a bit of television. A shower, too.

  The complex he'd moved to was a smallish one called Wood Ridge, on Monclova Drive. It was comprised of something like twenty studios, all lined up in neat, single-story rows. The apartments were cramped and offered few amenities, but the one thing the cash-strapped detective couldn't complain about was the price. What's more, Ulrich had lucked out in securing decent neighbors; to the left of him lived a med student who spent more time at the local hospital doing clinical work than he did at home, and on his right there lived a middle-eastern man who traveled a great deal and so was rarely home. As he strode into the cracked, narrow parking lot, he began counting off the numbers on the units he passed, seeking out his own, #1212.

  Beardsley made a triflingly short walk into a frustratingly long one, insisting on stopping every other second to sniff at things, but even so the detective arrived at his place within twenty minutes. Almost showtime, he thought, unlocking his door. Time for a little relaxation before the work starts.

  6

  Relaxation just wasn't in the cards.

  For starters, Ulrich had neglected to go grocery shopping and had little to eat at home. Though he puzzled for a time in his tiny kitchenette, looking for ways to make a proper meal out of a few bread heels and a jug of dijon mustard, he ultimately had to postpone his dinner. There was no choice but to pick up something on the way to Nancy's.

  The matter of entertainment was hardly a brighter spot. Throwing himself down onto the bed, he'd tried to pull up Netflix on his aged laptop for a few minutes of mindless amusement. The computer had creaked and wheezed in seeking to follow his commands, only to display a message he knew too well. The credit card he'd been using to pay for his streaming had been maxed; the account was currently on hold.

  Taking this as a sign that he needed to hurry up and get working, Ulrich filed off into the shower with a grumble. When he'd finished washing off the grime of the day, he stepped into a pair of black slacks, threw on another white dress shirt and a black tie with tiny diamond patterns on it. These and his other dress clothes had been purchased in Toledo shortly before his departure, at various thrift stores. Ulrich had long been a fan of more casual dress, but in the interest of looking the part of detective and making a more professional impression in Tanglewood, he'd scraped some money together and gone searching through local second-hand shops for more sophisticated garb. Lacking fashion sense, he'd based his new work wardrobe after a handsome model he'd seen in a men's health magazine—a model who'd looked something like a young Alain Delon. Though Ulrich couldn't claim to look quite s
o sharp as Le Samouraï, the new duds suited him rather well.

  Combing back his hair and inspecting himself in the mirror, he turned his attention to Beardsley, who'd been walking circuits between his legs from the moment they'd walked in. His purring had reached a fever pitch. “Yeah, I get it,” muttered the detective, “you're hungry. Come on, you mongrel, let's get you fed.” In the kitchen, he measured out a portion of water and food, then watched as Beardsley dove into the meal with gusto. Not a piece of kibble was spared.

  Ulrich sought out his keys and wallet, then pulled his shoes on. “I won't be back till morning,” he told the munching cat. “That isn't license to claw up the futon again, by the way.” With that, he locked up and hiked across the darkening lot to his car.

  The sedan—an early 90's model—had seen better days. The engine hiccoughed more than it purred, and parts of the ceiling sagged, partially blocking his view through the back window. The tires were balder than Mr. Harden, but as far as he was concerned it was a perfectly fine vehicle. It still ran, after all. He drove less these days, as Tanglewood was a small, walkable town, and he hoped to get a few more years out of her.

  Turning out of the lot, Ulrich went looking for a quick bite. Within minutes he happened upon a burger joint, where he picked up a combo through the drive-thru. He scarfed it down in the parking lot over a bed of napkins—careful all the while not to drop ketchup or mustard on his clean clothes—and then, when he'd triple-checked Nancy's address, he set off to meet her.

  Sidling up to the curb, Ulrich cut the engine and gave the house a once-over.