I shrugged. “Research what I can on insurance policies,” I said. “And check on Samantha’s alibi.”
“It’s like one of your old Bogart movies,” Deuce said. “Always chasing after the wrong thing.”
“Yeah,” I said glumly. Just like a movie, but with a critical piece of the plot missing.
I was perched on a bar stool, watching the brothers play when my cell phone buzzed.
“Reed, it’s Henri.” I had a hard time hearing the Frenchman because of the din of rock music in the background.
“Henri, hold on a minute.” I ran outside and stood under the porch eave near the front entrance.
“I haven’t been able to look at the poster in great detail,” Henri said, “but I did some research on the availability of that particular print, as well as some pricing for an original, eh? I have quite a bit of research here, many notes on old posters. I thought you might like to see it all, so I left a message at the office, but I did not hear from you. I hate to bother you on your cell phone…”
“I haven’t been back to the office since I left your store.” I put a finger in my other ear to drown out the noise of people laughing and drinking out on the patio.
“My wife and I are going for a bite to eat, and I will be near your office. I could drop the notes off, eh? You could look and see what a find you might have.”
A sense of exhilaration surged through me. His excited tone meant that Henri thought I might have an original advertising poster.
“That would be great,” I said. I glanced at my watch – 7:30. “The front doors of my office building should be open until nine. Would that give you enough time? You could slip the notes under the door.”
“Yes, that will do. I will finish with this other collector’s memorabilia this week, and I will devote my full attention to your poster, eh?”
“Wonderful,” I said.
I hung up, sauntered back into the bar and shared the news with Deuce and Bob. But even as we toasted my possible good fortune, I wondered why Ned Healy had the poster in the first place. Add it to the other answers that Ned had taken to his grave.
After chatting with the brothers for another hour, I left for the office to get Henri’s notes. I was dying to know more about the poster and how much it might be worth.
*****
The headlights of the 4-Runner cut through the darkness as I pulled into the lot on the south side of my building, illuminating numerous parking spaces. My office was close to the restaurants and bars that littered the surrounding streets, including the 16th Street Mall, a pedestrian mall in central downtown. Parking spaces in the evenings were usually at a premium. But this was a private lot, so I pulled into a slot near a BMW and a Lexus, the only other cars parked there. I got out and locked the door and, after shoving a few bills into the self-pay kiosk, I walked around to the front of the building, passing a lone couple who were headed in the direction of the mall.
I took my after-hours pass key out before I noticed that the green light on the magnetic display pad was on. That meant the doors were unlocked. I stepped up to the glass doors. The right one wasn’t quite shut.
Weird.
The latch was stuck in place. I couldn’t free the lock mechanism, even after poking at it with my keys, so I left it alone. I’d alert the building supervisor about the problem tomorrow.
Most of the lights in the building were off, but at intervals a few fluorescent lights down the hallways glowed eerily, barely illuminating the gloomy lobby. I usually took the stairs to my office, but as I walked in the gray light toward the stairwell door, I had a sudden sensation that I was in some horror movie. The killer is behind the door, and even though you’re screaming at the actor not to open the door, he does it anyway, only to meet a gory death from a crazed madman wielding an ax. I hesitated, then turned and strode across the lobby to the elevators.
“Stupid,” I mumbled to myself as I punched the button for the third floor. I got on the empty car, and the big silver doors slid closed. With a soft humming sound, the elevator ascended.
I stepped out and walked slowly down the hall to my office, resisting the urge to glance surreptitiously over my shoulder. Paranoid about nothing, I thought. Isn’t the human psyche amazing? All it takes is a little darkness and silence to set off waves of fear.
I chuckled as I unlocked the door and let myself into the outer room, stooping to pick up a couple of pieces of paper that were stapled together. I checked up and down the hall, but saw no one. Still, I bolted the door behind me. Just in case the bogeyman was out there.
I crossed to the inner room and flipped on the desk lamp. I sat down and perused the notes Henri had slid under the door.
The first page was a color printout of my poster, along with some website addresses that Henri recommended I go to for more information about vintage Hollywood posters. On the next page, Henri estimated that, if it were an original, The Maltese Falcon poster would be worth more than $12,000, depending on the market. Since collectibles were the rage right now, Henri thought his price was on the conservative side. The particular print I had was one of the rarer prints for the movie, with very few good copies available. Henri ended his notes with a paragraph stating that he would still need to do some sophisticated testing before he could determine if the poster was real and not a forgery.
My curiosity was piqued, so I turned on the computer, peering out the window while I waited for it to boot up. People walking down below looked like phantoms, featureless figures moving along the sidewalk. A couple passed under the streetlight, faces glowing.
I typed in one of the addresses that Henri had provided and within seconds, I was hooked. Two hours passed as I perused websites, reading about the golden age of Hollywood and the world of movie poster collecting.
At midnight I finally pulled myself away, shutting down the computer and inserting Henri’s notes into a folder to take it with me. I hurried back into the waiting room, hit the light switch and locked the hall door.
As I walked back to the elevator, my jeans made a swishing sound. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. In the stillness, it sounded like a chainsaw being revved up.
I hit the elevator button and the doors slid open. I was about the get on when I stopped. Was I going to let a little paranoia scare me out of my usual routine of taking the stairs? You bet.
I got in and rode down to the first floor, laughing at myself for being such a weenie. Some detective I am. Maybe if I carried my gun instead of just practicing with it, I would feel better.
The doors eased open and I stepped out.
A faint whistling sound broke the stillness and then my brain exploded. A million stars created a hazy colored pattern in my vision. My legs buckled, and I dropped the folder. I went down with twin thoughts circling in my head. One: Duck before the next blow comes. And two: This couldn’t be happening to me again.
My knees hit the floor and I tucked and rolled, sprawling into the lobby. A piece of 2x4 slammed down with a crack, narrowly missing my head. Wood chips flew past my cheeks.
I ended up on all fours, but quickly got my feet under me. My attacker had on dark clothes, gloves, and a black ski mask. He raised the wood again, holding it over his head like a pick axe. I launched myself upward, my right shoulder hitting him squarely in the stomach.
“Ugh,” a low voice gasped. The 2x4 fell to the floor with a clatter.
We collapsed like two bowling pins, kicking and tumbling over each other. I ended up on top of him, using my torso to pin him under me. He squirmed, but I was able to land a glancing strike off the side of his face. At the same time, his fists flayed out, darting around my face and upper body. A punch connected squarely on my chin. My teeth clanked together, jolting me all the way in my toes. The colored stars returned as I fell off of him, landing on my back with my legs twisted beneath me.
The attacker pounced on me and pummeled me with vicious blows. It was all I could do to ward him off. In a desperate attempt to stop him, I thrust my hands out. I grabbed his throa
t and squeezed for all I was worth. The pounding stopped and he grabbed my wrists, yanking my hands from his neck.
Agile as a monkey, he bounced to his feet. I rolled to one side, sucking wind. A black boot with a steel tip kicked me in the ribs. A searing pain ripped through me, like I’d been stabbed. I gasped for breath, couldn’t get any. Before I could move, he grabbed the 2x4 and whacked me in the back. If I thought I couldn’t get breath before, it was worse now.
I desperately tried to get oxygen as the man hefted the board again. My ribs and back screamed in pain and I barely managed to lift an arm to ward off another blow. My attacker clutched the board like a baseball bat and was about to use me as the ball when he hesitated. He stared out the front doors, then suddenly whirled around. He stooped to the floor and grabbed my file. Just like that, he disappeared around the corner.
I lay helplessly on the floor, my breathing ragged. After an eternity I pulled myself into a ball, scooting on my butt until I could lean back against the wall. Each breath caused a firestorm on my right side. I huddled on the floor, too tired and too hurt to move. I didn’t know where my attacker was, and at that moment, I didn’t care. If he came back to finish the job, at least the pain would stop.
After a bit, I acclimated to the sharp jabs in my side, panting in little breaths so my ribs didn’t expand too much. My head throbbed, and the left side of my scalp felt wet. I touched my cheek and stared at my hand. Blood. It looked like chocolate syrup in the darkness. I touched my head and found a gash above my left ear. It was oozing blood through my hair and down the left side of my face.
As I gazed at my hand, at the blood – my blood – anger rose in me like bile. So did my desire to live. I didn’t know what had scared my attacker away, but I wouldn’t be here if he came back. I slowly pushed myself up the wall until I was standing. I tested my legs. They supported my weight. My ribs and head I wasn’t so sure of.
I took a tentative step and felt woozy, but I cautiously made my way to the building entrance, bent over like Quasimodo. I favored my right side as I shambled outside and down the sidewalk to the parking lot. I fully expected to run into someone, but thankfully no one saw me. I rounded the corner and snuck between the cars to the second row.
The 4-Runner sat near the end and even in my foggy state I could see that something was amiss. As I approached my car, I saw glass sprinkled around the front end. Someone, gee I wonder who, had bashed both headlights to smithereens. I shouldn’t have been shocked, but I was.
I stared at the place where a light bulb should have been, wheezing, trying to ignore the stinging in my side. Laughter drifted toward me from the street, interrupting my reverie. I lifted my eyes to the front windshield. A crackling pattern covered the passenger side window.
I cursed as I dug my keys out of my pocket. I traipsed around the side of the 4-Runner, checking for further damage. The taillights had received the same treatment as the headlights. Red pieces of plastic floated in a muddy puddle. I stepped over the puddle and tripped, landing in a heap beside the car next to mine. A thousand pieces of light shimmered across my vision as a thousand tiny volts of pain hit me from various points in my body.
“Hey mister, are you okay?”
I wasn’t sure the voice was real. I shakily stood up and fought a wave of nausea as I angrily scanned the ground and saw what had tripped me. A piece of 2x4 approximately three feet long lay half in the puddle. I picked it up. Amongst the dirt and rainwater on the wood, I saw flecks of blood. I unlocked the car and hurled the two-by-four onto the back seat. Not that I would find any fingerprints or anything on it. As evidence, it was useless. As motivation, it was priceless.
“Oh my gosh, Mark! He’s hurt.”
I turned from the car and stared at a middle-aged man and who I assumed was his wife. They stared back at me, their faces a mix of concern and horror. Mark slowly moved towards me, his wife clinging to his elbow.
“Did someone attack you?” Mark asked. His voice sounded far off.
I nodded mutely. I didn’t want to say so, but Mark and his wife didn’t look so good. They were both out of focus, hazy at the edges. I grabbed Mark’s arm. “You look terrible,” I said. He frowned at me.
“Call an ambulance,” Mark said.
Good idea. He needed one.
The wife pulled a cell phone from her purse.
“No,” I mumbled, shakier with each movement. “I’ll be fine. I just need to sit down.”
Mark’s face twisted into a Picasso painting. Suddenly I was on the ground, not sure how I got there. The voices faded and I blacked out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The bright lights hurt my eyes. The sight of Willie Rhoden did not.
“What happened to you?” she asked, concern etched on her face.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, not knowing where ‘here’ was. I turned my head to one side, instantly regretting the movement. A dull throb pulsed behind my eyes. An oxygen tube poked up under my nostrils, and something warmed on my brow. “Where is here?” I asked, scrunching my eyes shut.
“You’re at Denver Health,” Willie said, laying a gloved hand on my forehead. “An ambulance brought you in a while ago. Seems like a nice couple saw you pass out and they called for help.”
That explained how I ended up at the hospital.
“What time is it?” Wasn’t it night? I gazed at Willie. “What are you doing here?” I repeated. She usually worked at Saint Joseph’s Hospital, at the front desk.
“I’m moonlighting here.” She pursed her lips as she daubed a piece of gauze on my head. “Reed, what happened to you? You’ve got a gash the size of Texas over your ear, and your face looks like a bruised banana.”
A fog surrounded my brain. I shut my eyes, but I couldn’t remember what had happened.
“I went to the office,” I said. “But I don’t remember why. I remember seeing stars. Pretty ones, blue, green, orange. A man skiing, you know, with a black mask that covered his whole face. And the parking lot. I remember the parking lot,” I said triumphantly.
Willie looked at me like I’d lost more than a little blood. “You probably have a concussion. That can affect your short-term memory.”
“Someone assaulted me,” I concluded, as any great detective would. As I talked, I became aware of my side hurting.
She gave me a no-shit-Sherlock look. “Who?”
I opened my eyes, squinting at Willie. “I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”
She worked on the side of my head, cleaning out the cut. I gritted my teeth and focused on something other than my body hurting. My attacker was male. Either that or a very masculine female, a la the 1970’s East German athletes. The last thing I remembered clearly was playing pool with the Goofball Brothers. That was it.
“They need to take some X-rays,” Willie said, breaking me away from my thoughts.
For the next hour I endured a series of tests that determined that I indeed had a concussion, along with two broken ribs and a bruised back, but no damage to my lungs or kidneys. I received eight stitches on my scalp, complete with the obligatory shave around the wound area. The rest of my hair wasn’t long enough to cover the wound, so that part of my anatomy looked akin to the Frankenstein monster’s head. I had a black smudge under my left eye, a couple of other small bruises on my cheeks, and a tiny cut on my chin that required nothing more than a Band-Aid. Now I just wanted a lollipop and my own home.
“Here’s your insurance forms,” Willie said. I leaned on the bed in one of the emergency room cubicles. As Willie helped me ease back into my shirt, she did a first-class job of avoiding eye contact. “They need you to sign a release form out front. I called a taxi for you.”
“Hey, what’s wrong? I’m the one who’s hurt.”
Willie stared at the floor. I tilted her chin up and gazed into wet emeralds as tears formed at the corners of her eyes.
“What?”
“This is exactly what I was talking about,” she said, her lower lip qu
ivering. “What if we started going out and something happens to you? Something worse than this?”
“I could get hit by a bus, too. We take risks every time we go out our front doors. As a matter of fact, our own homes are more dangerous than a lot of places.”
She sniffled. “You’re not funny.”
“I’m not trying to be.”
She jerked her head away, and grabbed a clipboard off the end of the bed. “My father was a cop, Reed. When I was little, I worried what might happen to him. Every day he left for work, I didn’t know if he would come home. It’s a terrible way to live, the not knowing.”
Without turning around, she squared her shoulders and scurried out of the room.
*****
Something squawked. I rolled over and immediately regretted it. A gray filter of light oozed in between the cracks in the blinds. Rain pattered lightly on the roof.
Damn birds, I thought. Don’t they know only Gene Kelly sings in the rain?
The squawk sounded again, only shriller. This time I diagnosed the noise correctly.
“Hello?” I said, picking up the phone from the nightstand.
“Hello, dear.” My mother’s high-pitched voice carried over the phone lines like a parrot on cocaine. “You sound groggy. Why is it every time I call, you’re asleep? Does this have something to do with that detective work? Are you on drugs? Paul,” she yelled away from the phone, “your son’s on drugs, I just know it.”
My mother’s worst fear, other than the fact that I might not marry and produce offspring, was that I was secretly doing drugs. It didn’t help that I’d never had a history of drug or alcohol problems, nor that my worst experience with illicit chemicals occurred more than ten years ago in college, when Cal and I bought a package of tortillas smothered in flour and wrapped in foil from a man on the street, thinking we’d purchased a brick of Columbia’s finest. And how she always managed to call right after I’d had some kind of mishap, I’ll never know.
“I’m not on drugs, Mother.” Except for some pain medication, and that came from the emergency room doctor. I had left Saint Jo’s in a taxi with enough pain pills to last until I could get a prescription filled. Once I got home, I woke up the Goofball Brothers, explaining my predicament – I had a concussion and needed to be monitored. After some haggling, they decided that Deuce would stay with me through the night, and then Ace would check on me in the morning, and then both would periodically come by to see me, as their schedules permitted. I dozed on the couch and Ace woke me every two hours throughout the remainder of the night, following the instructions I was given for treating the concussion. The next morning, Deuce filled my prescription once the pharmacy opened. Each brother checked on me a couple of times, both in person and over the phone. The last time, when Deuce came, we decided that I was doing better, and I crawled gratefully into bed and let sleep take me. Until the phone rang.
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