Crosshairs

by Harry Hunsicker

  With my stomach lurching and sweat stinging my eyes, I again stumbled out of the rank concrete tube and went to the shady side, out of sight from the road.

  I sat down and looked at the wad of material clutched in my hand. It wasn’t lint. I worked it apart and saw it was a business card that had been through the laundry. It had been folded over a couple of times. A name and number were written on the back in barely legible lettering.

  Roxanne or Roseanne. The letters were all but indecipherable. The numbers were worse. Eight, one, and that was it. The funny part was that the washing hadn’t made them unreadable; the penmanship had. I recognized the cryptic message for what it probably was: a drunken barroom notation to call Roxanne or Roseanne or whoever.

  I flipped the card over and found what I wanted.

  Name: Patrick Toogoode.

  Address: Camp Bowie Boulevard, Fort Worth, Texas.

  Occupation: Roofing and general contractor.

  And the best part, a hint that there might be a another witness out there.

  Name of the Company: Toogoode and Toogoode, Contractors. Brothers working together since 1997.

  I smiled and walked back to the VW.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I pulled into Anita Nazari’s driveway and got out. Even though it was late in the afternoon and very hot for the time of the year, the street was active.

  Children on bikes. Suburbans and minivans slowly going by. Attractive thirtyish women pushing strollers and walking golden retrievers.

  I nodded hello to an elderly couple in matching baby blue running suits as they power-walked down the street, elbows a blur pistoning in time with their steps.

  Anita opened the door before I got across the lawn. She didn’t say anything, motioned for me to enter.

  “Hi, honey, I’m home.”

  She frowned. “What?”

  “How was the Beaver today?” I stepped inside. “Did that little scamp do his homework?”

  She shut the door, a confused look on her face.

  “How about a beer? Been a long day.” I hadn’t had a drink in a month or more. I added another tally to the mental score sheet: Back in the life an hour? In handcuffs. A half day as a PI? Drinking again.

  She wrinkled her nose. “You smell.”

  “It’s dirty work, this private investigating.”

  I followed her into the kitchen.

  Mira sat at the kitchen counter, a notebook open, pencil between her teeth. She looked at me and smiled.

  Anita stood behind her, one hand on the girl’s shoulder in a distinctly protective manner.

  Mira coughed, a deep bronchial-sounding eruption. When she stopped, her breath was a wheeze.

  “When did this start?” Anita said.

  “It’s nothing, Mom.” The girl bent over her notebook.

  “Allergies getting to you?” I smiled.

  Mira smiled back and coughed. “It was a red ozone day.”

  “Go wash up.” Anita rubbed her eyes. “We’re having an early dinner.”

  Mira stood up.

  Anita placed her palm on the girl’s head. “Use your inhaler.”

  “I’ll be okay.” Her daughter headed for the back stairway.

  Neither of us spoke until Mira was gone. Then Anita said, “She is not well.”

  “She looks healthy.”

  “Her immune system is compromised. Environmental pollutants make it worse.” Anita waved a hand at nothing. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

  “Try me. I’m not as dumb as I look.”

  “What did you learn?” Anita went to the refrigerator and got out a bottle of white wine and a beer.

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”

  She was in midpour with the wine but stopped.

  I took the beer and opened it. “I’m going to Fort Worth tomorrow, see if I can track down a guy. Can I take the Range Rover?”

  “No.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Do I want or need to know the details about what you are doing?”

  I shook my head. Anita Nazari was more street smart than she let on.

  “Feel free to take the Volkswagen, then.”

  “Okay.” I drank some beer, a Bass Ale. It went down smoothly, like an old, much-missed friend.

  “My baby girl.” Anita seemed to say the words to herself rather than me. She finished pouring the wine.

  I drained the beer and put the empty bottle on the counter. “Do you have a gun?”

  She took a drink but didn’t say anything. Her eyes were wide, unblinking.

  “You might consider getting one.” I turned and walked to the front door.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Before my premature retirement from the investigator gig, I was partners with a sharp-tongued woman named Nolan O’Connor, the niece of my dead mentor.

  Nolan was danger personified, a raven-haired, denim-wearing temptress who possessed a beauty usually only seen in the glossy pages of fashion magazines, and a right hook worthy of a Golden Gloves contender.

  With a few expert jabs, she could put a three-hundred-pound biker on the floor in a quivering mass and not smudge her lipstick.

  She could also drink a Teamster under the table, shatter a beer bottle from across a crowded bar with one bullet, and cause arousal in a sexually ambivalent man twice her age with the arch of an eyebrow. Not long before I’d dropped out, she’d done all three in a single night.

  She also had a pool of insecurities deeper than Loch Ness, evidenced by her romantic choices: emotionally retarded, often abusive narcissists close to her own age, or men old enough to be her father.

  A month or so after I took my hiatus, Nolan married a seventy-year-old retired venture capitalist named Rufus. They had known each other for a week. She and Rufus lived in a big house near the Dallas Country Club.

  Nolan drank too much and tried to fit in with the social scene and swirl of charity parties inherent in her new station in life. She bought expensive clothes from the hoity-toity boutiques in the Highland Park Village, conveniently located only a few blocks away.

  She swore she was happy, but don’t we all.

  I left Anita Nazari’s neighborhood and headed toward the Dallas Tollway. As I drove I called Nolan’s cell phone. She answered on the fourth ring, her voice shrill and slurred at the same time.

  I asked her if I could borrow a computer, Internet access, you know. Needed to do a little research. She said sure thing, c’mon over, and hey, are you back in the biz again? I hung up without answering, put the VW on cruise control, and headed south on the Tollway. Commuters making their way to the suburbs clogged the northbound lanes like rats fleeing a burning ship while traffic the opposite way was blessedly sparse.

  I turned on the CD player and sang along with Madonna until my exit.

  Rufus had made a bunch of money leveraging this and merging that and had bought himself a large, Spanish-tiled home on a tree-lined street where the acre lots backed up to a serene creek.

  I wheeled the Beetle into the circular driveway and got out. The front beds were freshly planted with spring flowers and looked like an impressionistic painting. Two sago palms in planters the size of hot tubs flanked the glass-and-wrought-iron front door.

  I rang the bell.

  A middle-aged Hispanic woman in a light blue maid’s uniform answered the door.

  “Hola,” I said.

  She cocked her head and grimaced at my one-word attempt at Spanish. “Yes?”

  “Would you tell Nolan that Hank is here?”

  She didn’t move.

  I smiled.

  “Señora Nolan?” She raised one eyebrow.

  “Yes.” I nodded and tried not to look impatient. I’d been to the house several times before and received the same treatment. The staff was very loyal to the one writing the checks.

  “Uno momento.” She disappeared to the left, where I knew a large study was located.

  Thirty seconds later my former partner appeared at
the door. She wore a peach and green sundress that stopped about midthigh and several rows of gold and sparkly jewelry on each wrist. Her former wardrobe consisted of faded jeans, a white blouse or T-shirt, and a gun in her back pocket. Times change.

  “Heya, Hank.”

  “Uhh…hi.” I tried not to look at the tiny pucker on her left leg from a bullet she’d taken during our first time working together, a bone-white scar against tan flesh. Instead I stared at her chest, which was at least three cup sizes bigger than the last time I’d seen her.

  “Getting an eyeful, huh?” She brushed a few strands of hair behind one ear.

  “What the…?”

  The maid was standing by the stairs. She made a hissing sound.

  “Let’s go in there.” Nolan pointed to the study.

  I followed her into the wood-paneled room. She shut the door behind us and plopped down on a leather sofa by the fireplace.

  “They’re too big, aren’t they?” She cupped a breast in each hand.

  I swallowed several times. They were gigantic, as if there were four of us in the room: me, Nolan, and the twins.

  “Everybody has them,” she said. “It’s like you have to. You know, to fit in.”

  “Right.” I stared at her chest. “Fit. In.”

  “You came to borrow the computer, remember?” She pointed to a large partners’ desk by the bay window overlooking a koi pond in the side yard.

  “Yeah, thanks.” I stood up and blinked. Shook my head a few times.

  “You want something to drink?” Nolan went to the wet bar in the corner. “Rufus has got some fancy single malt. Only make like one bottle a year or something like that.”

  “No, thanks.” I sat down behind the desk and tapped the keyboard, erasing the screen saver, a picture of Rufus and Nolan on their wedding day at the Bellagio in Vegas. I double-clicked the Internet Explorer icon as Nolan poured a measure of Skyy Vodka into a highball glass.

  I got to Google and entered the name of the contractor.

  A couple thousand hits. Several mentions on Craigslist about shoddy work performed on a remodel job. Same mention on a forum devoted to home repairs. No contact information at all. Other than that, nothing relevant in the first few pages.

  I tried several variations, using geographical modifiers.

  Nada.

  Nolan came over and sat on the edge of the desk to the left of the monitor, facing me. She crossed her legs, causing the hem of the already short dress to ride up. She took a sip of her drink.

  I returned my attention to the computer. Nolan and I had always existed in an uneasy sexual truce, each keenly aware of the other, only a very thin line keeping us apart.

  “Rufus is at the club.” She jiggled ice cubes. “It’s domino night.”

  “That so.” I typed in the Internet address of a commercial database, one of those find-anybody things. I’d prepaid for a year’s worth of searches and still had a few months to go, so I entered my user name (doctorofluv) and password (mother’s birthday).

  “I might get on the board for the Cattle Baron’s Ball.”

  I stopped typing and looked up. “What on earth for?”

  The Cattle Baron’s Ball was near the pinnacle of Dallas society. Rich women with nothing but time on their hands vied in a ruthless competition to get on the board. Once there, they spent millions in order to raise thousands for the charity du jour, usually some internal organ in need of repair. Heart, lungs, etc.

  I’d gone a couple of years before, at the behest of a very wealthy man who was afraid his latest wife was having an affair. She was. With the man’s son. It got really icky in a hurry.

  “Why not?” She took a long drink of vodka. “I miss hanging out with you, Hank.”

  I ignored her and returned my attention to the screen, typing in the name of Mike Baxter’s daughter. A few seconds later an address current as of a month ago appeared. I wrote it down before typing in the name of the contractor from the almost disintegrated business card.

  “I miss the juice, busting open a case,” she said. “Sticking it to the bad guy.”

  “Not me.” I hit ENTER.

  “Bull. Lie to your mother, not somebody who knows.” She leaned closer, propping herself up on one arm, the movement pulling the material of her dress taut against her new breasts. “You live for it as much as I do. It’s what you’re good at.”

  “Whatever.” I watched as nothing materialized on the screen except for a hit in North Carolina, a onetime residence for Patrick Toogoode. I tried to figure out what that meant. Very few people were truly invisible, completely off the grid. I tried different spellings. Nothing.

  “What are you doing, anyway?” Nolan peered at the screen. “Trying to track somebody down?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you’re working again?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying.” She drained her glass and set it down on the desk.

  “It’s a quick job. Nothing really.”

  We were both quiet for a few minutes while I tapped. Then Nolan said, “Why didn’t you ever take a shot at me?” Her words were definitely slurred now. I wondered how many of those vodkas she’d had before I’d arrived.

  “It wouldn’t have worked out.” I stood up and patted her on the shoulder. “We’re the same person. The juice would’ve burned us out.”

  “I miss the juice.” She looked at me, green eyes welling with tears.

  “You mentioned that already.” I leaned over the keyboard and for the heck of it entered Anita Nazari’s name. The doctor had a long trail, address after address, bouncing around most of the United States, it seemed.

  “Let me help you.”

  I shut down the Web browser. “Women who work as PIs don’t get to be on the Cattle Baron’s board. I looked it up in the rule book.”

  “Screw the c-cow women, okay?” She hiccoughed and put one hand on my shoulder. “Take me with you, please. I need to do something other than sit around this place all the time.”

  I nodded, as if I were pondering the offer. I said, “How is Max?”

  She frowned. “What about him?”

  Max was Nolan’s stepson, Rufus’s only offspring. Max was a thirty-two-year-old nerd who lived with his mother. He was also supposed to be a pretty good hacker.

  “What’s he up to these days?”

  She laughed. “He’s never had a date in his life and spends all day staring at computer code. I bet he’s at home.”

  “Let’s go pay him a visit, then.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I drove. Nolan gave directions.

  After a few minutes, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed. From the half of the semicoherent conversation I heard, it appeared she was letting Max know we were coming over. Something about turning off the sensors.

  I put the top down on the Beetle. The wind whipped Nolan’s hair, and she smiled for the first time that evening. The sun was low in the west, the sky streaked with orange and violet.

  I headed west on Lovers Lane toward Dallas Love Field, through the heart of the Park Cities. Small, upscale shops lined either side of the street. A few blocks after Inwood Road the stores became a little dingy. I turned right and headed north. The homes in this area were small, most built right after World War II.

  Max lived in a garage apartment behind his mother’s house, a few miles west of Rufus’s mansion. After a couple more turns I pulled the VW into a narrow driveway underneath a towering live oak. The house was one of the smaller ones on the block, probably a two-bedroom, and the mortar between the bricks had started to fall out. An oscillating sprinkler at the end of a faded green hose fanned water across one half of the lawn.

  Nolan dialed her cell phone again. “It’s me…Yes, we’re alone.” She looked in my direction.

  I nodded.

  Nolan hung up. “Max tends to be a little antisocial.”

  “No fooling?” I got out. “Lead the way.”

  She slammed the passenger door and
walked down the driveway running along the side of the home. The house appeared empty except for the faint blue flickering of a TV through a slit in the drapes.

  The structure in the rear was two stories, occupying a corner of the overgrown backyard. The bottom half was a double garage; an outside staircase led to the upper floor.

  A late-model Chevy Impala was parked next to a black Nissan Xterra. On the back of the SUV was a bumper sticker that read MY OTHER VEHICLE IS A ROMULAN WARBIRD.

  Nolan stopped near the bottom of the stairs. After thirty seconds or so, the upstairs door opened, and Max stepped onto the landing. He wore a gray T-shirt that was a size too small and bell-bottom jeans made to look dirty even when they weren’t. His hair was in a ponytail, and he had a scraggly beard on the underside of his chin.

  He didn’t say anything, just looked at us with a half sneer, half smile plastered on his face.

  “Can we come in?” Nolan put one foot on the bottom stair.

  Max nodded once.

  She walked up. I followed and tried not to stare at her legs underneath the short dress. When we got to the top, the three of us stood in a tight little circle on the landing. Max kept the door shut. He stared at Nolan’s chest. Every few seconds he would glance at me and frown before returning his attention to his stepmother.

  “So are we going to just stand here?” I said.

  Max didn’t say anything.

  Nolan snapped her fingers.

  Max blinked and looked at me, the sneer returning. “Yeah, c’mon in.” He opened the door, and we followed him into the upstairs apartment.

  The place was one big room, a lot cleaner than I expected. The sleeping area was to the right side, closest to the street. A double bed was in the corner next to a sofa and coffee table. Several posters were tacked on the wall by the bed: X-Files, Rage Against the Machine, and a Lord of the Rings movie advertisement. A small kitchenette was in the corner. The rest of the place looked like the War Room at the Pentagon.

  I stopped counting at eight screens and monitors.

  “What do you want?” Max spoke to me but looked at Nolan.

  “Is that foil on the windows?” I walked to where glass should have been overlooking the driveway.