by Tim Cockey
Pow.
Kate and I fell silent. There was—literally—nothing to say. The ending of the file reports was abrupt and it was final. I wanted to reach out to Kate, but I didn’t dare.
Suddenly Kate opened the folder and began flipping furiously through the reports.
“Something’s wrong.” She grabbed a handful of the reports and began comparing them. “Something’s not right here.”
“What is it?”
“Look,” she said breathlessly. “Look at this. Look at the dates. We noted this earlier. Charley was incredibly methodical about this. Every week. Religiously. Every week he filed a summary report. Some of these are interim reports. But no matter what, he always filed a summary report every single week. Same day of the week. Wednesday.”
I looked at the reports and basically followed along with what she was saying. “So?”
“So this,” she said excitedly. “So I… so Charley was killed on a Friday. I think you can pretty well imagine that I’ll never forget the date. Friday, November eighteenth. But look at this last report. Look at the date.” She poked at the date with her finger. “This is dated November ninth. Wednesday.”
“Yes? All of his summary reports are dated Wednesday.”
“Exactly. So then where is November sixteenth? Wednesday the sixteenth? It’s not in here. It is the only Wednesday that shows no report. That’s not my Charley. That’s not our Detective Russell. You take one look at this folder and you can tell that. Three entire months of reports filed every single Wednesday, and then …” She held her hands out, palms to the ceiling.
“Hitch. Charley filed a report on November sixteenth. I would bet my life on it. And two days later, he was back in that warehouse. He filed a report, Hitch. He had to. And according to the sequence of events we’ve got here, I’m also willing to bet my life that I know what was in that report.”
“The location.”
“The location. The source of that goddamned dirty dirt that someone was so all-fired interested in getting rid of. He found it. Charley located the source of that stuff. He put it in his report. In this folder. And that report is missing. Someone took it.”
“But who?” And since I was asking primary questions, I added, “And why?”
Kate was gathering up all of the reports and stuffing them back into the folder. Her eyes were on fire.
“Somebody got scared,” she said. “Somebody got very scared. I’m going to find out who it is. When I return this file tomorrow I’ll see who was the last person to sign it out. I’m going to find out who stole that report. Maybe they think they’re safe now. But I’m going to make them scared all over again.”
She then did a beautiful thing. She drop-kicked the file folder. A perfect kick. It flew into the air, the pages flying all the hell over the place.
“I’m going to find out who it is.”
Kate stayed over. She was as supple as an oyster as she slid between me and my sheets.
I was awakened in the middle of the night by someone licking my face. It wasn’t Kate; it was Alcatraz. I opened my eyes. My dog’s happy yap took up the entire screen. I was just about to mutter “What is it, boy?” when I heard the front door click. As Alcatraz flipped his head around to look at the door, one of his ears whipped me in the face. Some dogs tell you when people are entering your place. My dog tells me when they’re leaving.
I scrambled out of bed and over to the front door and pulled it open. I heard the click of the downstairs door. Kate was already out of the building. I ran down the stairs, purposely pigeon-toed to keep from tumbling and breaking my stupid neck. Alcatraz was right behind me. By the time I dashed out to the sidewalk, it was empty. She could have gone left or she could have gone right, popped around either corner. The pale moon cast little light on the matter.
A light in the house next to mine flipped on and I saw a face appear at the window. Alcatraz let out a big chesty woof. I looked down at myself. I was incandescent. And totally naked. Alcatraz barked again. A second face appeared at the window. Pale moon or not, I was apparently a sight to behold. Well, what did my neighbors know? Maybe I always take my junkyard hound out go for a naked late night walk around the block.
I squared my shoulders and did a smart about-face.
“Heel!”
To my astonishment, Alcatraz slotted obediently into place.
Shoulders squared, head erect, eyes fixed on the front door … man and dog returned to their home.
CHAPTER 25
Jeff Simons was in serious but stable condition. As rumored, he had suffered a heart attack. The story on the airwaves was that the beloved newsman had been washing his car in the driveway when he keeled over. His heart condition had been diagnosed several months earlier but had been kept from the general public. Simons was under doctor’s instructions not to indulge in strenuous activity. It’s a fair crapshoot as to whether or not washing one’s car should be considered strenuous activity. I suppose one could do it nice and slowly, making an entire day of it.
But it’s a fatuous debate anyway. Helen Simons told Billie the real truth. The veteran newsman’s heart had seized up while he was driving home a point to his young protégée out of Cleveland, Mimi Wigg. As it happened, Simons had been driving home that point in Mimi Wigg’s bed at the time. She was the one who called 911. The car-washing scenario had been quickly fluffed together by station management and rushed out onto the airwaves. Check the tape of Ms. Wigg’s special bulletin and you’ll note the missing earring and the uncharacteristically not-perfect hair, not to mention the misbuttoned blouse. Neither Simons nor Mimi Wigg were married, so on that count, the libidinous activity of two single adults ain’t nobody’s business but their own. But it would look bad. To those critical of the fast-rising Mimi Wigg, it might even look calculating. Or if Simons were to die … criminal.
It was Sunday, and I had an afternoon rehearsal to attend. I tried reaching Kate several times by phone and several times I failed. I headed off to the theater.
Since granting me my pith helmet and funny mustache and Michael Goldfarb and Libby Maslin their mother and son yarmulkes, Gil was now swamped with special requests from other members of the cast. The guy playing Howie Newsome, Our Town’s milkman, had brought his pit bull to rehearsal and wanted to incorporate it into the show. The waitress portraying Lady in the Box was anxious to juggle fruit downstage during scene changes. The guy Gil had picked to play Emily’s father—a pompous locksmith from Lutherville—was lobbying for a silent part for his twelve-year-old daughter, a bob-haired girl of about two hundred pounds. “Why can’t my character have a second daughter? Just set her at the kitchen table and give her something to eat. She doesn’t have to have any lines.” I was fearful that Gil would point out that poor creature was larger than the table itself. But Gil’s razor had been dulled by the onslaught of suggestions and demands. He said nothing.
The part of Mrs. Gibbs was being essayed by Frances Lamm, formerly of Long Island, New York, and formerly a meat eater. Ms. Lamm had suddenly developed a powerful problem with the section of the play where she is tossing seed to the chickens. She told Gil that maybe this would be a good time to advocate the growing of vegetables for our nutritional needs as opposed to the slaughter of innocent chickens. “The script says chickens,” Gil responded wearily to Lady Lamm’s advocacy. “Well you’re the director, for goodness’ sake,” she shot back. “Is Mr. Wilder going to shoot you if you turn his chickens into vine-ripened tomatoes?”
Ms. Lamm pressed. The chickens were scratched. She got her tomatoes.
As I said, I stood as apart from the swells of this sea of insanity as one can hope to stand on the Gypsy Players’ tiny stage. Julia was still absent from the scene and nobody seemed to know where she had run off to. The obnoxious locksmith shoved a straw hat onto the head of his beloved daughter and walked her over to Gil.
“Emily,” the locksmith snarled.
Gil cried, “No!”
“Why not!”
For a moment Gil looked like he was about to disintegrate. Suddenly he shot to his feet and made a gesture as if tossing a shawl from his shoulders—or better yet, a cape … or perhaps his last fragment of sanity …
“Because I’m playing the role of Emily!”
The sound of pins dropping all over the little theater was deafening. Jaws dropped along with them. Even the obnoxious locksmith was momentarily muted. His fat little daughter was grinning from ear to there. Who knew theater was so fun? Gil certainly hadn’t planned it this way, but with this single outrageous shot across the bow he had just regained his directorial control over the production. The old fire reignited in his eyes as his head swiveled around the room, singeing everyone ever so lightly as his gaze slanted by. The first to speak up was Michael Goldfarb. Yarmulke in hand, like a supplicant, he took a tentative step in Gil’s direction.
“Y-you’re Emily?”
The locksmith finally found his voice. “You’re going to play my daughter?” Gil nodded. “But… but you’re a man!”
“Hasn’t anyone here heard of alternative casting,” Gil snapped. It was his “concept” voice. He had found it. “It’s standard in New York. I think we rubes might be able to stretch just a little, don’t you?”
He wasn’t bluffing. I could see this quite clearly from my perch behind the lectern. Gil Vance was voyaging.
“But you’re a man!” the locksmith groaned again.
“That’s right,” Gil said. He grabbed hold of the two-hundred-pound girl and flipped the straw hat off her head. “And the milkman is now a woman.” He pointed to the guy with the pit bull. “You’re not the milkman anymore. I don’t care what you do, but you’re not the milkman. She is. Will there be anything else?”
The question was intended for the entire troupe. No one spoke. After one more triumphant glare at his cast, Gil clapped his hands. Over his head. Flamenco-style.
“Okay. Let’s get started.”
People moved quickly and silently to their places. Libby Maslin was near tears. Betty, the prop mistress, was already rummaging for wigs, muttering under her breath.
I didn’t wait for a cue. I rapped my lectern harshly with my pointer and began the show. “The name of the town is Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, just across the Massachusetts line: latitude forty-two degrees forty minutes …”
There was still no word from Kate when I got back. And she still wasn’t answering either of her phones, work or home. I had a wake scheduled, so at least I had something to occupy my time while I waited to hear from her. The deceased was a fiftyish man named Harvey Sprinkle. I know that’s a funny name. It’s even funnier in light of the fact that Mr. Sprinkle had apparently taken the name to heart over the course of his life, taking three wives from whom he begat a total of nine children. As if this weren’t enough—and apparently it hadn’t been—the old goat had accompanied each of his marriages with an extramarital affair, spawning exactly one child per mistress, for a total of three Sprinkle bastards. Grand total, a dozen Sprinkle kids, three wives and three mistresses. A grand old party. Apparently the prolific Mr. Sprinkle had kept in active contact with all of these various factions for they all most certainly got word of the man’s untimely demise (heart attack, no real surprise) and they all showed up for the viewing. We certainly had to pull open the curtain for this one; it was a two-parlor affair with Sprinkles and near-Sprinkles and former-Sprinkles from wall to wall.
When the crowd finally began to disperse I was able to duck into my office. My phone machine was blinking furiously. The first message was from the coffin salesman in Nebraska who had been after me to try out a few of his new models. I hit the fast-forward. The next message was from Kate. It was all of three syllables long.
“Hitch. It’s Kruk.”
Kruk?
I rewound the tape and listened to the message a second time. Maybe she had said “crook,” though that would have made no sense.
But the second time around, she still said Kruk.
And that made no sense either. I phoned her at both numbers but she still wasn’t answering. Kruk? I just couldn’t make sense of it.
No sooner had I hung up the phone than it rang. I snatched it up.
“Hello!”
“Bonjour mon chou. Comment ça va?”
It was Julia.
“Jules! Where the hell have you been!”
“Ici et là.”
“English please.”
“Here and there,” Julia said. “Mainly there.”
“I see.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me where is there?”
“Julia, I’m really not in the mood for your games.”
She clucked her tongue at me. “Mon Dieu. Are we in a pissoir mood?”
“Okay. Where?”
“Do you remember our honeymoon?”
“Vaguely,” I said. “I wore gray, you wore nothing.”
“Well that’s where I’ve been.”
“You’ve been to Paris? What in the world were you doing in Paris?”
Her tone went coy. “Well if you’d come out and play I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Jules…”
“Oh all right. Be a mudstick. I was hoping you’d say, ‘Julia, darling, how fantastic that you’re back. Let’s go get drunk and you can tell me all about your amorous adventure.’ ”
“I’m waiting for a phone call,” I said. I felt sort of foolish saying it to her. “It’s important,” I added.
Just then there was a rapping at my office window. I looked up. Through the blinds I could see a person standing outside tapping on the glass.
Julia was saying on the phone, “You look so handsome in that suit.”
I went over to the window and pulled up the blinds. It was Julia. She was wearing a cranberry beret and holding a tiny telephone to her ear. She gave me a little wave.
“Just one little drink?”
“What happened to your hair?”
Julia and I were in the Admiral Fell Inn. Julia likes their martinis.
“You like?”
“You look like Louise Brooks.”
“A truly wonderful man would have said, ‘I love your hair!’ ”
“Aren’t you going to miss fiddling with your braids and all that?”
“I’ve already caught myself grabbing at phantom locks. But I’m getting used to it.”
“You got it cut in Paris?”
“Yes. Three hundred dollars. Isn’t that obscene?”
It was a pageboy cut. Bangs and pointy V-shaped sideburns.
“What would that have cost in Baltimore?”
“I wouldn’t have it done in Baltimore. It’s a souvenir of my trip.”
“I understand those Eiffel Tower thermometers come in at a little under the three-hundred-dollar mark.”
“Watch out, Hitchcock. You’re beginning to remind me why we divorced.”
“Julia,” I said. “I love your new haircut. It makes your breasts look even bigger.”
Julia turned to our waiter, who had just come over with our drinks. “This man is trying to seduce me,” she said, batting her eyelashes outlandishly. “And he’s very good at it.”
Julia and I drank martinis and got caught up. She asked me about Our Town. “Gil left a number of bizarre messages on my phone,” she said, popping an olive into her mouth.
“Bizarre pretty much sums it up. He’s taken your part away from you.”
“I know. I’m so crushed I could dance. Do I gather from his giggles that he is going to play Emily?”
“It’s a concept, Julia. You understand.”
She laughed. “I say go for it. Gil will bring something new to the role.”
“Julia. Gil is bringing a penis to the role.”
She told me about Paris. I had already guessed who had financed the spur-of-the-moment jaunt. Peter Morgan.
“It was one of those impulsive things,” Julia said, rolling the martini olive around in her mouth. “Peter and I were having dinner at Marc
onis. He had been telling me how renowned the place is for its sweetbreads. Well, they were out. Okay. But Peter got all huffy about it.”
“Huffy over a restaurant’s running out of calves’ glands?”
“I know. I should have seen it right there. But I didn’t. One thing led to another and before I could cry ‘Insane!’ I was sitting up in the lounge of a Paris-bound seven-forty-seven sipping champagne and getting a foot massage from my millionaire boyfriend.”
I know about these foot massages of hers. “You can spare me the carnal details,” I said.
“You’re no fun.” She smiled at the waiter as he brought over a fresh pair of drinks. “I have to say though, Hitch, I had more fun in Paris on our honeymoon than I did this time. I’m not a snob or anything, but too much money really does take the edge off. We started off at the Ritz, which when you get down to it is boring. I finally convinced Peter that we should go to Les Marais, but I could tell he didn’t like it there.”
“Too bohemian?”
“But it’s not bohemian. I don’t know what his problem was. We had a mouse in the house—in our room—and he got all uppity about it. Please, it’s a mouse. I was leaning out the window looking up the block at Place des Voges. Peter was taking a bath and he was bitching about it. Too small or not enough hot water, I can’t remember. Okay, so it wasn’t the Ritz.” She laughed. “Suddenly this mouse appeared on the windowsill right next to me. His little nose was going. I swear, Hitch, he was looking up the block too. Like he was curious to see what I was looking at. It was very cute. You know these French mice. And then suddenly Peter comes charging out of the bathroom and flips his towel at it like a whip. He knocked the poor thing right off the windowsill and down to the street.”
She took a sip of her martini. “Beginning of the end.”
Julia went on in this fashion. She’s a very elaborate storyteller. I followed her down the side streets and cul-de-sacs of her various tales.