The Man on the Washing Machine

by Susan Cox

  So okay, I could follow him.

  I felt glaringly conspicuous for the first fifty yards or so. I was wearing my shop apron—a fairly eye-popping turquoise—and pink ballet slippers. Not that anyone in the neighborhood gives odd outfits a second glance—or that by local standards the outfit was even all that odd. A guy with purple hair and thigh-high white boots passed me. He made up my mind. No one was going to notice me. I took the apron off, rolled it, and tucked it in the back waistband of my jeans.

  I managed to keep at least one person between us and followed him, feeling exhilarated and faintly ridiculous at the same time. It reminded me of the days when I’d spent untold hours stalking reluctant celebrities to capture photographs of them and their newest inamorata. Apparently I’d been lying to Lichlyter; there was still something seductive about the thrill of the chase.

  He didn’t seem to be in a hurry. Every now and again I stopped to look in a shop window, and once, when he went into a bakery, I spent several minutes choosing an orange African daisy from a flower stall. He came out of the bakery carrying a grease-proof bag, and continued on in the same direction as before without looking my way.

  After fifteen minutes we had passed the worst of the SRO hotels, with their front steps occupied by skinny boys in too-tight jeans and tank tops, and were coming up on another stretch of retail stores. There was more litter in the gutters here, and some of the windows had To Lease signs up. The man ahead of me was trucking steadily along, with his turquoise-and-white-striped Aromas bag swinging daintily from one hand and his bakery bag in the other. Then he stopped dead twenty yards ahead of me.

  I did a quick ninety-degree spin next to a run-down Chinese herbal pharmacy, and stared intently through the window. Shops like it are all over the city, not just in Chinatown, in these enlightened days of holistic treatments and acupuncture cures for tennis elbow and childbirth pains. I’m always intrigued by the rows of unimaginable powders in jars and the chunks of unrecognizable and mysterious substances, and can’t help being fascinated by a store where I recognize none of the merchandise. There was part of a thick horn or antler—or something that looked remarkably like one—standing on a shelf next to some glass jars of dried leaves. I buy artisan bread rather than commercial stuff because it tastes better, so I have no clear idea why mass-produced pharmaceuticals from mega-factories seemed more trustworthy than whatever was being mixed up in front of my eyes.

  I risked a glimpse at Mushroom Head. He was searching through his Aromas bag, as if for something in particular. I turned away, shielded my eyes with my hand, leaned against the herb store window, and looked further inside. A woman in a white pharmacist’s jacket was standing behind the counter measuring a brownish-gray powder onto a scale. She already had a pile several inches high of different-colored ingredients, some looked like broken bark and leaves, and there were coarse crumbs of something that looked like chopped dried mushrooms. For all I knew, they were chopped mushrooms. The whole setup brought to mind Mr. Choy and Derek’s hair tonics.

  After I had been staring at her for half a minute, the woman in the shop began to look at me inquiringly and I realized I had to move on—or go in and buy a stomach powder or something—before she came out to ask what I wanted.

  Mushroom Head disappeared into a doorway as I watched him from under my arm. I sidled up to the storefront he’d gone into and risked a quick look through the narrow Venetian blinds. It was an office of some kind, with a sagging sofa under the window and a waist-high fence a few feet inside like the kind in old-fashioned courtrooms. Six chest-high cubicles in two rows took up most of the space, and a small glass office at the back of the room took up the rest. There was a woman wearing a red sweater across her shoulders in the glass office. All but one of the cubicles was empty. My man was halfway down on the left, his back toward me, in the act of hanging his raincoat on a hanger and hooking it over the top of his cubicle wall. I pulled hastily back out of sight as he turned around and sat down. What was he doing? Somehow I’d never thought people like him—whatever that meant—had day jobs. Did he wander around the city all night like some sort of twisted super-villain and, come daylight, turn into a mild-mannered—well, a mild-mannered what?

  It occurred to me to look up. The sign hanging out over the sidewalk above my head said:

  AcmeTax.

  The man on the washing machine was an accountant.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I lingered on the sidewalk holding the daisy and positioned myself so I could see into his cubicle. Fortunately neither he nor the woman in the back office looked up. He was staring at a computer screen looking exactly the way I look when I’m fooling with the Aromas computer—bored. Every now and again he tapped his teeth with the end of the pencil he was using to tap on his keyboard. He had a muffin or something in a drawer and he was chewing lumps of it and compulsively gathering little piles of crumbs and pressing them together and sucking them off his fingers. I watched him in frustration. It felt anticlimactic to leave, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I’d been known to shinny up drainpipes in my quest for the right photo, but I couldn’t see that helping me much here.

  I looked around for inspiration. There was a tiny shop across the road with brightly colored plastic merchandise spilling onto the sidewalk outside—cheap laundry baskets, dishpans and kiddie chairs, and toilet brushes standing upright in a plastic wastepaper basket shaped like a flower. Everything was sheltered under a clear tarpaulin puddled with raindrops. I gave Mushroom Head another quick glance and crossed the street to ask them—whatever I could think to ask them.

  The place smelled strongly of plastic and was jammed with shelves almost to the ceiling.

  The Asian woman behind the counter smiled and bowed as I crossed the threshold, and watched me carefully as I knocked over a pile of plastic sandals in little gold plastic mesh bags.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, and stooped to straighten them. I could have used a pair; my ballet slippers were soaked, scuffed, and sorry looking. My feet were freezing, too.

  “Okay, okay! Can I help you?” She was slender and bright-eyed.

  “Uh, not … I was wondering about the place across the street.”

  “Empty store? To lease?” she said.

  “No. The tax place.”

  “Ah. They very good.” She said something unintelligible, which I realized must be someone’s name.

  “Tell her we send.”

  I looked at the bilingual card she handed me. I was evidently in the Happy Day Company, Marilyn and George Goh, proprietors.

  “I prefer to deal with a man. Is there a man there?” I offered my apologies to the potentially vengeful goddess of working women and held my breath as Marilyn—only the owner ever controlled the cash register in mom-and-pop stores like this one—paused to consider.

  A faint shrug. “Mr. Obwiyen.”

  “Mister—?”

  “Obwiyen.”

  I thought rapidly, anxious not to offend. “O’Brien,” I said firmly. She nodded. “Mr. Obwiyen. He okay.” Again, the faintest of shrugs.

  What had my burglar said? Something about the luck of the Irish? “Is Mr. O’Brien a short, bald gentleman?”

  She nodded again. “No hair. But no short.”

  I judged her to top out at five feet, so it could still be my quarry. “Well, I’ll look around if that’s okay.”

  “Sure.”

  I walked up and down the tiny aisle, worries about my own abandoned business beginning to resurface, but still thinking about what the hell an accountant could possibly …

  I watched Marilyn as I peered through the wavy lenses of a pair of neon green plastic sunglasses. She was pretending to straighten her counter display but one eye, at least, was following me. This was stupid; it was time I got back. I reluctantly considered calling the police. But without a report of the original incident, would they do anything? Besides, now that I’d seen him respectably at work, I was having my doubts.

  I put the sung
lasses down and started to leave, carefully skirting the pile of plastic sandals, when unbidden, a hasty, daring little plan sprang full-formed into my mind. I ran my fingers over a display of hair ornaments. O’Brien saw me once, for a couple of minutes in the dark, when his night vision was destroyed by the utility room lights and when I was wearing glasses instead of my contacts. I picked up a pair of the sandals. But I didn’t have my wallet. I automatically patted the front of my jeans. The change from lunch and my daisy purchase was crumpled in my pocket. Well, I thought with a sort of inner shrug and an undeniable tremor, maybe the thrill of the hunt was more addictive than I knew.

  I picked up some of Marilyn’s ridiculous merchandise on my way back to the cash register, paid for it, and asked if I could use her restroom. She nodded toward the back of the store. It was typical of the minute spaces we spare from the selling floor—two folded strollers in plastic bubble wrap took up most of it, and a gargantuan plastic pack of toilet paper rolls took up the rest. Not that I felt superior. Most of my similar facility was crowded with folded cardboard cartons and Davie’s bicycle.

  I ruffled my hair and worried the bangs until they stuck out at odd angles, then pulled it back at one side and checked the effect in the mirror. The change from dignified shopkeeper to wild woman was a little surprising. I made a small grin at my reflection.

  I gave the orange daisy to Marilyn and left the little store with a few cents in my pocket, and the memory of her gratified, if puzzled, expression.

  Four pairs of eyes glanced up at me as I walked into AcmeTax, and a man with his back to me was pouring coffee into a Styrofoam cup. The office needed some TLC—there were faint patches on the beige walls where old posters or memos had been torn off leaving little scraps of paper and tape, and a few of the floor tiles were curling at the edges. Computer cables, attached to the floor with duct tape, snaked across the aisle between the two lines of desks. The place was murmuring with the sound of tapping keyboards and it looked—ordinary.

  O’Brien’s black raincoat, meticulously buttoned around a wooden hanger, still hung behind his desk. His dark gray suit looked freshly pressed. A peak of pale blue in his breast pocket looked spiffy with his navy blue tie, not to mention the freshly laundered pale blue shirt with charcoal and white stripes, complete with impeccable French cuffs. He was still intent on his computer screen, but every now and again he made a little rat-a-tat on his desk with the eraser end of his pencil.

  “Bay I hep yew?” the receptionist said miserably. She had “Maryanne” embroidered on the collar of her blouse.

  “I’d like to see Mr. O’Brien,” I said.

  Charlie O’Brien, alias Mushroom Head, aka The Man on the Washing Machine, looked up at the sound of his name, scuffed his files together in a pile as I approached, and half rose from his seat. He looked at me expectantly but, I was relieved to see, with no hint of recognition. I sat gingerly in the folding metal chair he waved me into and took a deep breath.

  “I’m planning a small business and I need someone to help me with my books and taxes and so on. I happened to mention it to someone and he gave me your name.” I licked my dry lips. I was more nervous than I expected. Suppose he recognized my voice?

  Folding his pudgy hands together on the desktop he simply said in a completely even tone: “What kind of business are you in?” He was resting his sleeve in a small pile of crumbs.

  “Uh … small baked goods. Cupcakes. Muffins. Things like that.”

  He grunted and reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a printed form of some sort.

  I watched him closely. I’d never seen anyone who looked more like an accountant in my life. The lines in his face were different from the night before, slack, instead of anxious, and definitely unhostile. It made him look different. I experienced another tiny doubt. Maybe I was wrong about this. He picked a pencil from the pot in front of him and reached for a yellow legal pad. The pot was decorated with little shamrocks. And he was still wearing his shamrock lapel pin. And now I could see a bruise on his forehead where my pot of oregano had made landfall.

  “And the address?”

  “Excuse me? Oh. Before I go into that, I was wondering if you could give me a couple of references. Clients,” I added when he looked at me blankly. “You know, people for whom you’ve worked.”

  He looked vaguely around the surface of his desk, as if a few of them were going to materialize next to the telephone. “Well, lemme see. Around here, d’you mean?”

  I nodded. I’d been thinking about it. This guy had been skittering around on our roofs. And if Sabina’s fever-induced memory was right, he’d been there more than once. Climbing up there from the street was impossible without a man lift or scaffolding; he must have been in one of the buildings backing into Fabian Gardens. So he had a client, or a friend or knew someone in the neighborhood, didn’t he? I’d gotten that far when I realized I still didn’t have a clear motive for what I was doing. If I didn’t plan to tell the police I wasn’t going to put anything I learned to any practical use. Still, he might not know it, but I’d paid him back for the fright he’d given me.

  “Sure. Well—” He nibbled the end of his pencil. “I’ll write down a couple and … er … I guess you could ask them if our work is okay. Is that what you mean?”

  “That’d be great,” I said, and fiddled with my sunglasses.

  What could he possibly have been doing in my nearly empty apartment? I was trying to look unconcerned and doing my best to read his file folder labels upside down, when I heard a vaguely familiar voice. I ducked my head and pretended to adjust my haircomb. I could feel the nylon antennae quivering and the tiny pearls bobbing around.

  “Thanks a lot, Maryanne,” the voice said, and the owner of it—complete with rough profile, leather jacket, and gold earring—threw his Styrofoam cup into a wastepaper basket and started in my direction. I bent to adjust one of my new plastic sandals and he hesitated as he drew level with Charlie O’Brien’s desk, but his stride picked up and he passed me. I heard him say something and the young receptionist giggled, the door closed, and I breathed easier. Not that I expected my new tenant to recognize me; we’d only met once and at that in the half dark of Coconut Harry’s. Still, I was glad somehow he hadn’t seen me in my fantastic plastic.

  “I wouldn’t get all hot and bothered, he’s probably gay,” someone said from the front of the office.

  I almost opened my mouth to argue before I realized the remark wasn’t aimed at me.

  “He id nod!” Maryanne said indignantly.

  I wouldn’t bet on it either, I thought. I’d have to ask Nat what he thought. And then I wondered why I cared.

  “Here’s a list of some of my clients,” Charlie O’Brien was saying. “I’m sure they’d give us a good reference.”

  He didn’t actually look all that sure; he erased one of the names, blew the eraser crumbs all over me, and handed me the list. I stuffed it in my bag and stood up.

  “Good to meet you, Ms. Er—”

  “Holmes,” I said. And barely stopped myself from groaning aloud.

  “Good to meet you, Ms. Holmes. I hope you’ll be in touch.” He held out his hand for me to shake and I took it as briefly as I could. It was soft and warm. His small brown eyes looked smug and unsuspicious. I decided I had pushed everything as far as I could. There was no point in lingering.

  And then the whole charade blew up in my face.

  I got halfway across the aisle toward the front door when I tripped over a computer cable. My sunglasses flew off in one direction and my haircomb in another, and both pieces of finery slithered along the floor out of reach. Maryanne picked up my haircomb.

  While I was trying to grope for my sunglasses without showing my face, Charlie O’Brien took a few heavy steps in my direction.

  “Hey, wait!” he said.

  I pushed the glasses onto my face and turned back and he held out my plastic shopping bag—the one with my ballet slippers and Aromas apron in it.

&n
bsp; “You forgot your bag,” he said. He was frowning. I clutched it to me hastily.

  “Thanks. Thanks very much. Talk to you soon.”

  “Here’s your cobe,” Maryanne said. “Are you okay?” She giggled.

  I grabbed it and threw it in the bag.

  “Thanks. Gotta go. Thanks, everybody,” I babbled, and blundered through the door and onto the street.

  Charlie O’Brien was still standing in the aisle. I saw his expression change as I ran past the window of AcmeTax.

  He looked as if he’d been kicked in the stomach.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When I got back to Aromas, Haruto was alone in the store, sweeping something off the floor. Obviously his bamboo fence had gone well, or the surfing had been good, because he was humming to himself. He was wearing a green kimono jacket over his jeans and his ponytail was wrapped into a samurai knot with raffia. He looked up with a professionally bright smile as the doorbell jangled. His change of expression when he recognized me was comical.

  “Let me know if—? Theo?”

  “It’s okay, Haruto. What got broken?”

  “The Waterford jar of lemon soaps is no more, a hundred and seventy-four bucks, retail.”

  “Damn.”

  “Davie said you flew out of here at a speed a notch below supersonic—I’m paraphrasing, but that’s what he would have said if he’d thought of it. Said you knocked it over as you leaped over the counter like Wonder Woman.” He grinned at me.

  “Right, I remember now.” I limped into the office and collapsed into my chair. My walk home from AcmeTax had been sobering. I’d done a reality check and drawn a couple of conclusions, none of them comforting. Charlie O’Brien was a nut. Maybe a dangerous nut. If he crawled around on rooftops regularly, maybe he was the one who shoved Tim Callahan to his death—if Tim was murdered, which Lichlyter had implied was all too likely. So Charlie O’Brien was a nut and a possible murderer. And if I’d judged his expression correctly, he’d recognized me. And he knew where to find me. I groaned and put my head in my hands. I felt sick from adrenaline rush and my head was thumping.