by Sue Perry
In its day, this building was a knockout, a head turner; or maybe a head craner, if you wanted to admire all ten stories of its elegant lines. The hall carpets were costly and tasteful enough to qualify as antique rather than threadbare. On this floor, each office entrance door was a luxurious mahogany with a milk glass insert for the firm name. Scrolled brass framed the inserts and the milk glass transoms above the doors. One more twist in the scrollwork would have been too much. These designs were just right.
The building, like the neighborhood, was past its prime but enjoying revival. Miraculously, over all the years of disrepair and disinterest by owners and tenants, no remodeling abomination had occurred. From floor to floor, house paint smothered the occasional brass fixture, but that was the worst of it. Apparently I wasn't the only one who felt deferential to these halls. Not that there were many tenants nowadays. When a tenant vacated, the office stayed vacant, except for occasional lackluster signs of refurbishing. I guessed the current owner was biding time to make a killing in the next real estate boom.
The owner wouldn't make any money off me. My uncle had a 99-year lease and when he died, I learned that he put my name on the lease, too. All those times we went exploring in here - every floor has different craftsmanship, different materials - meant as much to him as to me. So here I was with a dirt-cheap perpetual lease: eternal unless I got it terminated because I ignored the clause that forbids tenants to live in the office. If that happened, then my suite would join the majority. Vacant.
I couldn't let that happen.
2. As Stable As Old Dynamite
I hadn't locked my outer office door but I had definitely shut it. Now it was ajar. I stopped jogging. Had Mathead and Scabman returned? Voices from inside reassured me. They didn't sound like the tweakers' voices, and whoever was in there wasn't trying to hide their presence. Good news and good news.
I stood for a moment just outside the door. The paint announcing my firm's name was fresh enough that it still released fumes to coat the back of my throat with a bad taste. I had been lying to myself for months, but only recently felt ready to lie to the world. S.T.A.T.Ic. and Watkins, Private Investigations. As it always did, seeing Watkins, my uncle's name, gave me a sudden douse of sadness followed by a quick spray of chutzpah. He had always been my staunchest supporter and I missed him every damn day. Private investigator. He'd love it. We'll see how long I stick with it. I've had more jobs than all my friends, combined. But this one feels different. It feels right. And I need one that feels right.
Correct, my last name is an acronym. My full name is Veronica Sheridan Taggart Ambrose Taggart Ickovic. Just about everybody calls me Nica. My acronymic identity is constructed of family, first love, big mistake, ever hopeful (wishful thinking) revisit of first love, tragic true love. The last couple years of my life have been as stable as old dynamite, so I was happy to discover this acronym, this promise of no more disruption. I adopted the acronym as part of my effort to find my next step - and a direction worth heading. Someday I might go back full circle and become S.T.A.T.Ic.S., but for now I don't want to move past Ickovic. I haven't washed Ick's last load of laundry, either.
My office is like Philip Marlowe's. My outer door is rarely locked and opens to a small outer waiting room for potential clients. In the waiting room perched a middle-aged couple who looked even more uncomfortable than they should have been from sitting on the no-frills wooden chairs. The couple seemed familiar, but I couldn't place them until the woman raised her chin, a gesture of pride against scrutiny. I had seen that gesture some minutes and halls ago. This was the couple that had argued with the substitute custodian.
"Good afternoon," I said noncommittally.
The man wore a loose embroidered overshirt, summer garb for a Mexican gentleman. He had a shy smile which he used in lieu of umming or you knowing as he spoke. He didn't seem confident speaking in English, although his grammar was good and his accent was weathered. "Are you [smile] senorita Static, we are in need of a [smile] private detective."
"Yup, that's me. Let's talk in here, it’s more comfortable." I unlocked the door to the inner office, which was sparse but not Spartan. The desk matched the file cabinets and the chairs were upholstered. The couple looked around at the seating options, and of the four chairs, chose the pair closest to the door. A fifth seating option was my futon, currently folded into a lounge chair. I didn't want potential clients sitting on my bed, so during the day I kept it littered with papers as though that is where I sat to do my work.
"We are Aurelio and Norma Garcia. We are [smile] ... we must find ...[smile] -"
Norma jutted her chin and interrupted. "Our goddaughter is missing. Please find her."
"How old is she?"
"She has fifteen years."
"How long has she been missing?"
"Six days."
"Did her parents send you here?"
"There is only her mother. And her mother says wait until Edith comes home, she will come back when she is ready. But the time is too long."
"I think you are right to be concerned. Do you know why she may have left?"
They paused to think about this. "We think [smile] she had a fight with her mother."
"I will need to speak with the mother."
"Does that mean you will help us?"
Rubber, meet road. I had had this debate internally, without resolution. I wanted to be a detective and thought I could be a good one. I had the right innate skills and personality. I simply lacked the license and okay experience and maybe training. I figured I could learn on the job. So I decided to call myself a detective and see what happened. But I hadn't anticipated such high stakes as searching for a missing child. I knew from watching Without a Trace that every hour was precious in such a search.
"Your first step should be to file a missing person's report with the police," I hedged.
"They will not accept one from us, only from the mother. And we cannot convince her to make the report."
"Alright, I will try to help you."
Their relief filled the room like helium from a leaking balloon pump. "How much, please, will we pay?"
"Two hundred a day plus expenses. But you will only pay me when and if I get results," I added, a futile effort to appease what was left of my conscience. "I saw you arguing with the custodian. What was that about?"
They looked at each other and Norma replied, "That is Karina's father. Karina is a friend of Edith. We tried to convince him to ask Karina what she knows."
"I'll start by talking with him."
"He does not speak good English. May we translate for him?"
"Good plan." That might help me get to know the Garcias a little better. I knew enough Spanish to detect bogus translations. Every client of every detective hides something. It would help to know what the Garcias opted to hide.
They believed Karina's father was on his lunch break. As we hammered arrangements for them to bring him to my office, the light above my door blinked, alerting me that the outer door had opened.
I had kept the inner office door ajar, so I saw him before he saw me. Thick brows, several shades darker than hair currently the color of MacDonald’s fries. The bad haircut looked freshly sheared. He always had the same shaggy uneven cut that hugged his head like he'd slept on it wet. His anti-style. Today's ne'er-ironed cotton shirt was taut over the hint of Buddha belly and across the well-pumped shoulders; it billowed like crepe paper across his back.
When he saw me, he reacted with one of his giant smiles that crinkled his cheeks then lit his eyes like a flashbulb light. I released my breath. Typically he was sober when he made that smile.
He entered the room like he always did, like this was the door, the entrance that would change everything. "Hey, kiddo, I been looking for you since - oh, pardon me," he discovered the Garcias, who had tensed like he might activate eject buttons.
"This is just my brother," I reassured them, and wondered whom they had feared would walk in.
"
I’m Ben." He extended his hand to each Garcia, too briefly to find out whether they would reach out to shake. "Hate to interrupt, but may I talk to you for a short minute, please?"
As soon as we reached the hall, he launched his pitch. "Little sister," he began.
I could tell I would nix whatever he was about to propose. "I won't."
Pause. Rewind. Replay. Consider. Was I saying no already? "'S'cuse?"
"I won't do what my big sister done."
"Oh. Ha. Good one. Nica, let me crash with you. Just for this week. I can see you are busy. Just give me the key and the address and I'll have dinner waiting for you."
So few words, so much subtext. He hadn't figured out that I was living in my office. It continued to rankle him that I had secretly moved to my (now secretly previous) abode without telling him where that was. He was in a jam and needed a hideout. Or perhaps he just needed to know that I trusted him again. Trusted him enough to reveal my address to him. Except I don't.
"I can't, Ben."
"I'm good now, Neeks. I'll prove it to you. You'll see."
"Okay."
"You need to get back," and he was gone before we got awkward.
Heading back through the anteroom gave me time to lock the vault on my emotions before I faced the Garcias, who were standing and ready to depart. They dispatched themselves to fetch Karina's father and all too soon left me staring at the vault door.
It was so easy to fall into Ben's version of reality, where life was always a gas. The first time I realized he needed help was when I tripped over him where he had passed out with a needle stuck in his arm. Ya think? I like to believe that I would never again be so foolable. But the only way I had a hope of not getting sucked into his whirlpools was to stay away from the water.
3. Wary Of Clouds
Something tickled my arm and when I rubbed my skin, I felt a hard knob of a critter. Smash cut to fifth grade science camp and the tick that burrowed into my arm and needed three teachers to remove - I barely screamed then or now and the crimson panic jolt smeared to pink blush. The critter was a ladybug, traversing my wrist. It must have hitched a ride from the roof garden. I cupped my hand to keep it from flying away and headed out to return it to its proper surroundings on the roof.
I collided with two strangers at the door to my waiting room. Preoccupied with memories of tick hell, I hadn't noticed the flashing light that meant someone had opened my hall door. Maybe Marlowe did it right, maybe I should use a buzzer instead of a light.
People, be careful for what thou may wisheth. Only yesterday I had rued the fact that my office was always empty.
"I beg your pardon come in give me a moment please." I preceded them into my office and went to my window. If I freed the ladybug in the building hallway, it would never find its way outside. With a hand still cupped over the ladybug on my arm, I tried to open my window, but my sole available hand was not enough. The ancient window pulley had a broken weights mechanism and the window could only be opened with brute strength. One of the strangers was immediately beside me to provide the brute. The stranger’s hands raised the window as though it weren’t heavy and awkward. I leaned over the sill, uncupped my hand, and gave a quick blow at the ladybug's butt to propel it back toward the roof.
Curling back under the window into the room, I became aware that the air had changed. My office smelled like a forest just after a flash flood, when everything is power-washed and tree trunks are smeared with riverbed mud. Fresh and wild.
It took much strength to gently lower that window, but the stranger's arms - all sinew and muscle - showed no strain and his lips maintained the hint of smile with which he had watched the ladybug depart. I took a step back to get a fuller look and to get farther away.
He was a wolf. I don't mean a predatory flirt, I mean he was long and lean and fast and dangerous: coarse black hair, ice-gray eyes, smile full of teeth, supreme confidence backed with survival instinct.
"Please sit down," I suggested or pleaded as I retreated behind my desk. As he complied, muscles flexed inside his garments, a loose cotton tunic and drawstring pants that were as gray as February.
She sat down, too. My other visitor was a princess: not as in daddy's spoiled girl, as in future queen of the fairies. She was as ethereal as he was earthy, exotic but I couldn't place the ethnic background. Cornsilk hair, slanted eyes like unpolished silver - now green now blue now pewter. She had thick Slavic cheekbones but was otherwise delicate unto frailty, her skin like the penny you've always kept in your pocket for luck. Her tunic looked handwoven and was white as a desert sunrise.
"We are in need of your detective arts," she said.
"That tends to be why people come to this office." The joke was stillborn. "I'm usually good with accents but I can't place yours." They sat as though I hadn't spoken. Okay. Scratch the indirect. "Where are you from?"
"I first arrived in the place you call Kansas," she told me.
"Huh." I've been to Kansas and there is nobody like her there. I decided I would not call her a liar and looked to him expectantly.
"Knowledge of my ancestry provides no value. We have need of your assistance," he said, in a voice that never needed help from anybody.
"Okay."
"The fate of the free worlds is at stake," she added with a calm that belied the words, in a voice like the first spring breeze on snow.
"Oh-kay. Um. Where did you hear about me, by the way? I haven't had the business long uh in this location."
Note to self, cancel ad in Nutjob Quarterly.
"We learned about you from your building."
"Excellent, I am so glad to hear that. At last! You wouldn't believe how long it takes to get a name added to the building directory!" They looked at me without comprehension. "By the elevator. It shows the names and room numbers. The list in the lobby."
I can be a babbler when I'm nervous. Devoid of expression, they continued to watch me babble. They exchanged a look and she made a slight nod.
She seemed to be giving him permission.
"We have need of your assistance," he repeated. "Tonight you must accompany us to a meeting."
"Tell me more. Where is the meeting? Who will be there?"
"That is not information I can relay at this time."
"Because you don't know or you don't want me to know?"
"Because -" he began, then stopped when her hand stiffened. The wrist stayed on the chair bur the fingers poked into the space between their chairs, as though the conversation was a canal and she was the sluice gate. He looked at her hand and the wrist tilted so that the fingers pointed at the skylight.
The room darkened. I rocked back in my chair and through the skylight watched a voluptuous tower of a cloud slide across the sky, briefly blocking the sun. "Looks like we might get thunderstorms this afternoon," I acknowledged that we were all watching the sky. They nodded and spoke not a word. He stood and went to the window to keep tracking the sky. When the cloud cleared the skylight, he positioned himself so that he could watch it continue into the distance.
She watched me watch him watch the cloud. After it disappeared, he checked the other direction, pivoted, and strode to his seat with a blunt nod to her. He picked up the conversation as though there had been no gap.
"Tonight we will employ your guidance to reach an - associate. We will explain all when it is time to do so."
She continued to hold my gaze. When she blinked and looked over to him, I realized he had asked me a question. "Missed that one. Repeat please?"
"We have not told you - cannot tell you - what you seek to know. Will you trust us nonetheless?"
I looked from one to the other, she as languid as he was taut. And for reasons unknown, I found it easy to reply, "Yes. Yes I will." I was the only one surprised by my answer.
"Your remuneration will be one thousand for 24 hours. We understand you may require eight hours or more sleep. Is that amount acceptable?"
"Very much so." I had no clue what I was getting m
yself into here, with this pair who were wary of clouds. Yet as we made plans to meet here at 7 tonight, I felt calm and rational.
My bafflement surfaced after they left, like a turtle in a murky pond. I realized I hadn't confirmed she meant 1,000 dollars per day. No matter. I felt such a pull to see them again, I would have agreed to 1,000 cents. It was generous regardless. After all, I would be permitted to sleep every single day.
Wait. The building could be locked by 7, so my office could be inaccessible when they tried to return. We needed an alternate rendezvous plan. I vaulted over my desk and slammed out both doors to catch up and advise them. I caught up with them around the corner, right before they disappeared. I don’t mean the elevator door closed between us to block them from view. I mean. I rounded the corner, found them standing about as far as I could throw an aspirin. They each held a small apparatus like an asthmatic's inhaler. They clenched these in their teeth, they inhaled, and they faded away.
As they disappeared, he saw me and lifted a hand in farewell. She began to do the same, then her fist clenched and she stared behind me with a look of bravado or fear. I turned around and found the object of her stare. It was the building cat, whose nametag listed an out-of-service phone number and a name I refused to use, Queen Desdemona.
"Hey, Dizzy," my voice sounded relieved. The cat headed toward me and I expected Dizzy to rub my legs in a figure eight - that would be her normal routine. But I did not feel that sleek shrug of fur against skin. Instead, the cat walked to the spot where the woman had stood, then sat like an Egyptian tomb carving, more still than when she heard a mouse in the walls.
I stomped over to the cat to pet her. I would have normalcy, dammit. Dizzy flopped and contorted in order to clean her butt. Now, that was business as usual - and gave me hope that I had not just witnessed what I had just witnessed.
Usually, when I pet Dizzy's belly she attacks my hand. I reached to pet her belly. Today, I would welcome the sting of claws, simply because it was expected. I didn't get the usual that I craved, though. As my hand reached for Dizzy, the elevator pinged. Nothing spooks Dizzy, really, but she can be dramatic. At the subdued ping she bounded away, leaving me stooped over reaching for nothing.