by TG Wolff
“Let’s get on with it,” I said, tossing my credit card on top of the check. It’s always a crapshoot as to whether or not I’ve reached my credit limit, but since I’d uncharacteristically paid it off a couple weeks earlier after a minor payday, I figured I was in the clear. Goldblatt had been making noises for several weeks about getting a “company” card, “for tax purposes,” he explained. But I didn’t see him making a move to apply for one and I sure as hell wasn’t going to sign on for a card where I’d be on the hook for any expenses he chalked up.
“So,” he continued, “not long ago, she goes off on this trip to San Francisco. You know, one of those things where she’s gonna find herself. Anyway, she’s hanging out in that old hippie district…”
“Haight-Ashbury.”
“Yeah, that’s it. She meets this guy. Nice guy, she says. Turns out he’s into the same shit she is and he’s even from back here. He’s out there for the same reason she is: to find himself. I guess there are lots of lost people out there, right? Anyway, she likes him a lot and he likes her well enough so when they get back here to the city, they start to go out. After a couple dates she falls for him. Hard. According to her, he falls hard, too. One night they have this date to go dancing downtown only he doesn’t show. She gets worried, ’cause she says that’s not like him. She keeps calling, but he doesn’t answer. She leaves messages. He doesn’t call back. What can she do? She figures he skipped out on her. She’s heartbroken, of course, but what can she do? A week or so later she gets a call from some woman. Says she’s his sister. Kate something or other. Tells Rachel her brother died.”
“Died?”
“Yeah.”
“Murdered?”
“Nah. She says natural causes. Heart attack or something sudden like that. She tells Rachel he went just…” Goldblatt snapped his fingers, “like that. Poor kid. She can’t even go to the funeral because it’s already over. They cremated the body, so she doesn’t even have a grave she can visit.”
“Sad story, but would you please get to the point where you tell me why you need to hire me.”
“Keep your shirt on. I’m getting there. So, he croaks and she’s heartbroken, I mean really torn up. Bad. She’s an emotional chick anyway but I’ve never seen her that bad. She loses weight ’cause she’s not eating. She can’t get out of bed and when she does she barely makes it to the couch. She sleeps most of the day. You know the drill. She’s so depressed she goes to a shrink. He gives her a prescription for one of those anti-depressants. Doesn’t work. She don’t know what to do with herself so she winds up wandering the streets. Day, night, it don’t matter. She’s out there looking for something but she doesn’t know what it is.”
“There’s an end to this story, right?”
“Yeah. I’m getting there. Anyway, she figures the only way to snap out of this is to maybe reconnect with him in some way, so she calls his sister. She talks to her and it seems to help a little ’cause Rachel starts to feel connected to the dead guy. They call back and forth a couple, few times. You know, like they become telephone pals. One day, when she tells his sister she’s still feeling really down about the whole thing, the sister mentions this fortune teller named Madame Sofia. She tells Rachel how she went to her when their father died and how she really helped by giving her closure. Don’t you fucking hate that word? Like it’s some kind of real estate deal. Anyway, Rachel, who believes in this kind of crap, decides she’s gonna try it too.”
“You mean going to this fortune teller?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Like I told you, Rachel’s not only a little spacey but by this point she’s pretty desperate. I mean, when better living through chemistry doesn’t work, what else is there? She’s willing to try anything to get rid of the pain, right? Even something like this. So, she goes to this fortune teller and this chick tells Rachel she can make contact with the guy.”
“The dead guy?”
“Yeah. Right. The dead guy. Now you gotta understand this about Rachel. She believes we don’t really die when we leave this mortal coil. She believes in an afterlife. Like, we don’t really die we just move on to ‘another room.’”
“Another room?”
“Yeah. Like another dimension, maybe. You don’t really die, according to Rachel, you just move to another place. It can be a better place or it can be a worse place. But it’s a different place. So, this fortune teller supposedly finds the ‘room’ this guy has moved on to and she supposedly makes contact with him.”
“Makes contact?”
“Yeah.”
“And Rachel believes this?”
He nods. “She believes, all right. Now Rachel may be woo-woo, but she’s not stupid. She had to be convinced, but she was. Evidently, according to Rachel, this Madame Sofia knows stuff about the dude and about her and him that she couldn’t possibly know.”
“Like what?”
“You’ll have to ask Rachel. But evidently it was enough to convince her that the chick really has made contact. At the end of that first session she tells Rachel she can only continue if Rachel can come up with some dough.”
“Big surprise.”
“Yeah.”
“How much?”
“Like twenty-five grand.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I wish I was.”
“For what?”
Goldblatt, the man of a thousand faces, made one of them. “You’re gonna love this one. It’s for a fucking ‘time machine.’”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. But Goldblatt, dead serious and not too happy about the situation, wasn’t laughing with me.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Like a heart attack. You and I know it was for that trip around the world and a Rolex watch and maybe a diamond pendant but Rachel, by this time she’s under some kind of spell. She’s bought everything this gypsy woman told her, hook, line, and sinker.”
“Didn’t she question the money thing?”
“Nope. She rationalizes. Tells herself, ‘everyone has to make a living.’ Me, I look at it as a killing, not a living.”
“And Rachel was able to come up with the dough?”
“She was. And a lot more. Because you know the drill. Once you’re on the line, they’re not about to let you off the hook.”
“Where was she getting the money?”
“Inheritance from her father. He was some kind of big-shot lawyer. He died before I met her. That’s probably why she married me. You know, what with me being a lawyer and all. Maybe she connected me with her dead father.”
The idea that Goldblatt could remind anyone of their father struck me as odd at best, but women are a strange lot. As Freud said, “women, what do they want?” In this case, at least for a few months, I guess it was Goldblatt.
“What was this so-called time machine supposed to do?”
“It wasn’t an actual time machine. You know, one of those H.G. Wells thingies that’s supposed to send you back in time. It was some kind of otherworldly apparatus that was supposed to make a clear connection between them while he’s in this other ‘room.’ I’m sure you know what comes next.”
“The time machine isn’t quite enough, right?”
“Bingo. She asks Rachel for another twenty-five grand.”
“For?”
“Now that she’s made contact, she needs to build what she calls a ‘golden bridge’ across the dimensions, so Rachel can ‘visit’ the ‘room’ where this guy is parked, probably for eternity.”
“Give me a break.”
“Yeah, real Twilight Zone stuff. But Rachel bought it. She believed she could actually communicate with the dead guy.”
“So, she came up with the dough?”
“Yeah. But now when she sees nothing’s happening, she starts getting a little suspicious.”
“About time.”
“You’re telling me. So, she tells me the whole story and wants to know if I t
hink maybe something’s fishy. I practically have a fucking heart attack…I mean, that’s a shitload of dough.”
“And here I would’ve bet it was food that was gonna get you.”
“Very funny. Anyway, she starts crying, because in her heart she knew all this was just a load of bullshit. But the poor kid was lonely and she wasn’t thinking straight. She feels worse now that she was taken for such a sucker so she makes me promise to get her money back.”
“Which is where I come in.”
“Right. I could probably do it myself but if I found this quack I’d probably kill her.”
“What do you mean, ‘find her’?”
“You don’t think after taking Rachel for all that dough she’s gonna stick around, do you? Rachel goes back to the storefront to confront her to try to get her money back and abracadabra,” he snapped his fingers, “she’s gone.”
“Storefront?”
“Yeah. She worked out of one over on First Avenue, near the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, or whatever they’re calling it now. Only it’s not there anymore.”
“What do you mean it’s not there anymore?”
“It’s a Subway sandwich shop now. So, partner, you gotta help me out by helping Rachel out.”
My gut response was to say no. I didn’t want to get involved in Goldblatt’s life any more than I had to. Besides, this sounded like a no-win situation. The chances of finding this woman were pretty slim, the chances of getting the dough back even slimmer. But I knew I couldn’t say no to Goldblatt. It wasn’t just that we were partners, even though the idea of that turned my stomach, it was that he’d helped me out in the past and although I would never admit it to him, I did owe him something. And it might give me a unique opportunity to find out more about Goldblatt, My Man of Mystery.
But if I took this on, I had to set firm ground rules because if I didn’t, he’d be hovering over me like a helicopter mom, second-guessing my every move. Getting all up in my face.
“When can I meet with Rachel?”
“I’ll give her a call and set it up.”
“Just give me her number and I’ll take care of it.”
“And you’ll let me know so I can be there, right?”
“You’ll just get in the way.”
“She’ll be much more comfortable with me in the room. Otherwise, she’ll clam up and you won’t get anything from her.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. I’m pretty good at getting people to give me what I need.”
“She don’t know you, Swann. She’s skittish.”
“Look, Goldblatt, this is nonnegotiable. Either I meet Rachel alone or you can find someone else to help her.”
“You’re threatening me?”
“It’s not a threat. It’s how I conduct business. You want me to do my best, don’t you?”
“And your best means I don’t tag along?”
“Exactly.”
He was thinking it over. I knew this because he grabbed for the last roll in the basket, split it in half, buttered it generously, and took a couple bites. This is what he does when he thinks. Eat.
“Okay. I get it. I don’t like it but I get it. But let me talk to her first so she doesn’t get spooked.”
“Fine by me,” I said, trying to remain calm as I imagined the fun that might be in store for me in meeting the former Mrs. Goldblatt.
Click here to learn more about Swann’s Down by Charles Salzberg.
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Chapter 1
Tyler Garrett slid behind the wheel of the patrol car and shut off his overhead lights. Ahead of him, the car he’d stopped a few minutes ago pulled tentatively back into the roadway and headed on its way. The driver had been a grocery clerk, just off shift, and she’d drifted through a stop sign on her way home. Garrett had given her a friendly warning. He didn’t write tickets to working people.
Garrett reached for the microphone and depressed the button. “Charlie-three-sixteen, I’m clear.”
“Three-sixteen, copy,” came the dispatcher’s reply.
He put the car into gear and drove with the air conditioner cranked and the windows down. It was a habit he developed over the years to better connect with his environment. He wanted to be able to feel, hear, and smell the neighborhoods as he drifted through them looking for crime.
Garrett smiled as an image of Marvel’s Luke Cage popped into his mind.
“Yeah, I’m Power Man,” he muttered to himself. “A regular crime fighting machine.”
He guided his patrol car through East Central Spokane, a neighborhood just south of Interstate 90. It was an eclectic mixture of black and white, with a growing Russian population. Spokane was a predominantly pale city but East Central bucked the trend. Almost everyone he knew either grew up in or had connections to the neighborhood. Even though he no longer lived in that part of the city, it was a personal mission to keep watch on this neighborhood.
DJ Khaled’s “I’m the One” softly played while he drove. Garrett whispered the words and bobbed his head, his eyes scanning for any illegal activity. With a light ding, a call for service popped up on the Mobile Data Computer to his right. A quick glance told him it was a noise complaint between two neighbors on the South Hill, Spokane’s wealthiest part of town. Garrett shook his head. He planned to take a break in a few minutes to stretch his legs. He didn’t want to listen to some Richie Rich complaining. Let someone else take it, he thought.
He hooked his finger over the top of the ballistic vest that was underneath his uniform and tugged it down. While he sat in the car, the vest had a habit of riding up until it touched his throat. Most of the time, it didn’t bother him much. However, on a hot August night, the vest was a nagging irritant that threatened to put him in a foul mood.
It was shortly after midnight and vehicle traffic had thinned out in the neighborhoods. A white male rode a BMX bike across the street in front of him, a TV balanced precariously on the handlebars. He considered stopping him, but knew it almost certainly meant some sort of paperwork. If the guy didn’t have an arrest warrant, then either the TV or bike was stolen.
Or both.
Garrett grinned. If he had a nickel for every scraggly white guy riding a BMX while carrying a TV in Spokane…
A Chrysler 300 lurched out onto Thor Street from Ninth, cutting him off. Garrett tapped his brakes to slow his car. It was the second time Garrett had seen the car tonight. It was hard to mistake it with the front-end damage and the spare tire running on the front left. The Chrysler immediately turned west onto Eighth without signaling, cutting off a newer pick-up truck headed in the opposite direction. The Chrysler accelerated, its engine roaring in the quiet of the night.
Garrett turned in front of the now stopped truck and caught the eye of the BMX rider. Both the driver and the cyclist were watching so Garrett accelerated to catch up with the Chrysler which was doing its best to avoid him. The engine of his patrol car whined as he gained ground for several blocks.
Garrett grabbed his microphone and keyed it. “Charlie-three-sixteen, a traffic stop.”
“Three-sixteen,” a radio dispatcher responded. “Go ahead.”
“A white Chrysler 300 at Greene and Eighth,” Garrett said, before he phonetically read the letters of the license plate. “Code Four.”
“Greene and Eighth. Code Four,” the dispatcher repeated, verifying his instruction that a back-up officer was not needed.
Garrett activated his emergency lights, and, for a moment, the Chrysler accelerated before its brake lights flashed on and off several times as the driver tapped his brakes. The Chrysler continued the length of the block, his speed consistent.
He’d seen this many times before. The guy was deciding whether to run.
“Don’t do it,” Garrett muttered. “Just pull over.”
The car turned right when the street ran into Underhill Park. Garrett keyed his mic. “Charlie-three-sixteen, he’s still rolling. We’re at the park.”
“Copy, Sixteen. Charlie-three-twelve to back?”
Officer Ray Zielinski’s gravelly voice immediately responded to the request for back-up. “Twelve, copy.”
The Chrysler suddenly pulled over and stopped on the right side of the street. The park was on the opposite side of the street and an older home with a for sale sign stood on the right. Garrett immediately parked his car behind the Chrysler and hopped out, watching for signs that the driver might run into the park where he had played as a child. He keyed his shoulder mic at the same time. “Sixteen, we’re stopped. Still Code Four.”
“Copy, Sixteen. Charlie-three-twelve, disregard.”
Zielinski clicked his mic in response.
The driver exited the car and turned to face Garrett. A tall, skinny white man, he wore only knee length shorts and tennis shoes. A single thick gold chain hung around his neck. Highlighted in blue and red by the splashing rotator lights of Garrett’s patrol car were various tattoos that covered his body.
“What is your problem, man?” the driver yelled.
“Get back in your car,” Garrett ordered him.
The driver waved his hands around as he yelled. “You think you can do anything? The mighty five-oh. I ain’t afraid of you. You can’t do nothing to me. Why keep pretending?”
Ty dropped his hand onto his Glock and repeated, “Get back in your car. Now!”
“I’m not taking this anymore!” the driver yelled and reached behind his back.
Garrett unsnapped his holster and freed his Glock.
A shot rang out and the window in his driver’s door exploded. Garrett’s mind froze for a split second. He hadn’t seen the driver fire, but instinctively, he pointed his gun at him.
A second and third shot rang out. He snapped his head to the right in the direction of the shots. They were coming from the vacant house.