by Mic Palmer
“Sounds like quite an education,” observed Jack.
“I was just a kid, man. I didn’t even know what they were talking about, but here’s the punch line. They were mother and daughter.”
“Oh shit,” said Bundy.
“That bothered me,” continued Gomez. “Families aren’t supposed to be like that.”
Appearing to have heard one too many stories such as this, Jack was unfazed. “Ya ever turn on the television during the day? That’s all you see.”
“Where’s their self respect,” said Bundy, as he played back one of the scenes with the woman undressing.
“What self?” said Gomez. “A lot of them don’t even know who they are. That’s why they yell - to hear themselves, to make sure they’re there, and if someone’s yell’n back, even better, cause then they know someone’s listening.”
Bundy let out a chortle. “And what about you? You come from that neighborhood.”
“I don’t need to be yell’n and fight’n, man. I know God’s listening.”
“Here we go,” said Bundy, “just when I thought you were making some sense.”
Knowing exactly where he was going, Gomez couldn’t help but smile. “What’s the problem?”
Bundy’s big grey blood shot eyes stared back at him in amazement. “Why can’t you just take credit for your own accomplishments? Why do you always have to bring up that bullshit?”
Still grinning, Gomez was determined to stay calm. “Because it touches on everything; it’s all part of the plan: you, me, the recording we just watched; once you accept that, things kind of have a way of working themselves out.”
“Oh yeah, where was the plan when your mother died?”
“Why do you always have to get personal?” griped Jack.
“That’s alright,” said Gomez, now sitting on his desk. “Things happen for a reason.”
Bundy was smirking. “How’s that?”
“You want an example? Alright. When I was a kid I used hang out with a bunch of fools, real troublemakers, my older sister too. You wouldn’t believe the shit we got into. I’m embarrassed to even think about it, but then our mother died, and yeah, we were angry, but we had two younger siblings to take care of, and just like that something clicked. After all the warnings from our teachers and threats from the cops, we finally understood. We got jobs, went to school, and left all that other nonsense behind us. My older sister’s a nurse now, an RN, and the babies – they’re in college, one at Columbia! God knows math, man. Four lives for one.”
Turning away from the monitor, Bundy pulled at his collar. “Wouldn’t it have been a whole hell of a lot easier just to let your mother live and give you a job? Better yet, why not let you win the lottery? Hell, why not let everyone win the lottery?”
“I could’ve hit the mega-fuck’n jackpot of the universe and nothing would have changed. Within five years I would have been dead or in jail, and I got the friends to prove it.”
Bundy swatted a gnat on his face, leaving a bright red hand print. “Come on. You’re talking stupid!”
“You think some of the people I hung out with didn’t get rich?”
Bundy was tall – nearly six four – but after a lifetime of crushing disappointment had acquired a rather severe stoop. In his teens he lost a basketball scholarship, in his twenties an infant child, in his thirties a business, in his forties a lung, and in his fifties whatever remained of his humanity, and with each passing catastrophe, he drooped a bit more, until finally he slouched his way down to the very average height of his impassioned colleague. “You’re talking about criminals!”
“Yeah, so?”
“What the hell’s that got to do with com’n into money legitimately? Do you even know what you’re talking about?”
“Why does this kind of talk make you so angry?” blasted Gomez, his powerful frame hidden below a loose fitting lumberjack shirt and freshly ironed blue jeans. “Does it scare you?”
Now extending himself to his full height, Bundy turned up his head and pushed out his jaw, which had the disturbing effect of transforming the fatty inner tube around his neck into a precariously elongated strip of flesh. Stretching from the top of his sternum to bottom of his chin, it had the fragile almost paper thin quality of masking tape. “Why can’t you ever answer a simple question; are you that God damn stupid?”
“Go to hell!”
“Screw you!”
Standing between the two, in a blue Double X sweatshirt and black dungarees, Jack began to push them apart. Rather tall and heavy, he seemed made for scenes like this, but the truth was that his lower back was in spasms and one good shove would have probably laid him up for a week. “Come on, guys. How many times are ya gonna do this?”
Plopping into his chair, Gomez was smiling again, only now he appeared almost childlike, even mischievous. He crumpled up a piece of paper and tossed it at Bundy’s head. “Let my people go.”
Taking it in the spirit it was intended, Bundy told him to stick it where the sun didn’t shine and then returned to the DVD.
“Nothing changes,” Jack thought to himself.
Chapter Two
While Bundy was still toying with the DVD, Carl Bullick arrived. He was the boss and a decent one at that.
“That’s interesting,” he told Bundy, on his way to his office.
“You don’t know the half of it,” responded his senior investigator.
“Some other time,” Bullick replied, appearing a bit preoccupied.
Even if he wasn’t the most amiable person in the world, he was always clear in his orders and fair in his criticisms. Nevertheless, Jack couldn’t stand him. He was too confident, too complaisant, and not once had he given Jack the slightest bit of encouragement. In truth, however, it was Bullick’s success that got to him.
With a beautiful wife, three adorable kids, and a distinguished career as a homicide detective, he was everything Jack wasn’t, but was that enough? Of course not.
Just five years shy of qualifying for his full pension, he left the force, took out a second mortgage, and opened C. Bullick Investigations.
The price for such boneheaded impulsivity? Nearly seven figures a year.
By comparison Jack felt worthless, but that didn’t stop him from trying to ride his coattails.
They had met while Jack was still at Inter-Oceanic Insurance. Although Bullick was on their panel of approved investigators, he could never make any significant inroads, just a case here and there. Then, out of the blue, he began receiving a couple of assignments a week, all from Jack, who before long asked him for a job. In return, he’d use his contacts to continue the arrangement, and initially it worked out very well. Bullick got the assignments, and Jack got to feel he was doing something exciting, even if he spent most of his time drinking coffee and reading newspapers.
“Can I see you in my office?” asked Bullick.
“Sure,” said Jack.
Not quite five foot eight, Bullick slid a chair across the room and told Jack to have a seat. “I want to show you something. Remember that Zubkin assignment?”
The sound of the air releasing from the cushion could be heard as Jack sat down. “The subpoena?”
“The workers compensation claim.”
“Right, right. The woman with the broken foot.”
“It was a man with a bad back.”
“Sure, the Nigerian.”
“He was Russian. Can’t you tell by the name?”
“Right.”
Bullick had been patient with him over the years, but today he had reached his limit. “How can you not remember? It was only three days ago for Christ’s sake!”
“I remember now. The guy from Bayridge. I was there all day and got nothing.”
“Exactly.”
Jack felt a bit off kilter, as if the chair was lopsided. “Ok, what about it?”
Bullick turned the computer monitor so that Jack could see it.
On the screen was a man in a car.
“That’s me,” Jack realized, his stomach beginning to churn.
The thing about being a professional snoop is that everyone you know is a snoop or has access to a snoop, making it very risky to go off script.
“Look familiar?” commented his boss.
Early on in his employment Jack played it safe, worried that there might be someone checking up on him, but after a time, once he saw how the place operated, he put the possibility out of his mind. If he was going to get caught, it would have been years ago, not now that he was comfortably established.
Out of reflex Jack tried to stand, but a gentle palm to his shoulder told him that he should remain seated.
“Just watch,” said Bullick, his voice soft yet assertive.
“How did my face get so fat,” Jack thought to himself. With a firm brow, straight nose and strong jaw, he used to be fairly photogenic, but now he barely recognized himself. Where did his hair wander off to and what had become of his hazel green eyes? Having shrunk over the years, they seemed to have been replaced by two mounds of dark puffy flesh.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered. The camera must have been right in front of him.
The recording was surprisingly clear, much better than the one they had just watched in the other room.
Intoxicated by the light of a brilliant sun, a blue jay could be seen dancing along a white stockade fence as a rainbow of leaves fluttered from the branches of a lonely Maple tree.
Within the left lower corner of the screen was a running clock reading 8:25 am. Within the company’s unmarked white Ford Expedition one could make out Jack in the process of sketching a nearby house; it was dilapidated, full of ivy, the perfect subject.
“Ok,” he told himself. “Nothing to be ashamed of,” and yet his hands trembled at the realization that he had absolutely no recollection of what followed.
“What’s the worst that could’ve happened,” he rationalized. “So maybe I nodded off for a few minutes, big deal.”
The problem was that he had fallen asleep at the most inopportune time. For just as he did a tall burly-looking fellow with a mop of coarse black hair began yanking on the cord of his lawn mower.
“That’s not the mark,” uttered Jack. “I remember that guy. He lived next door.”
Bullick didn’t speak. Walking quickly to his desk, he opened a drawer, pulled out a stack of papers, then slammed it shut. “What’s this?”
“That’s the assignment sheet.”
“And what’s the address?”
“Oh,” said Jack, matching the number with the address on the screen. “I must have read it wrong.”
“You do that a lot,” said his boss, “and what about the guy’s appearance? Did you even bother to read the profile? He’s six five, two hundred and eighty pounds, with a scar on his chin. How could you have missed something like that?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack, hoping that was it.
Bullick’s eyes were steely, insolent, even a bit playful. Glancing at Jack and then back toward the screen, he seemed to be hinting at something.
The lawn mower sputtered and stalled, causing the operator to bend over to take a look at it. Showing no hesitation whatsoever, he didn’t even bother to bend at the knees.
“The guy’s flexible,” said his boss. “It’s a shame you weren’t awake to see it.”
Still under surveillance, the man flipped the mower on to its side and pulled out thick green clumps of wet grass.
Bullick tapped the screen. “He’s got the height set on low so he only has to cut it every other week; that’s why it conked out.”
Jack weakly smiled. “I’d probably do the same.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised,” said his boss, “and yet it makes it harder to push.”
“That’s true,” Jack conceded, recalling the years he had spent cutting his parents’ lawn.
“Not something you would expect to see from a person with a spinal injury,” said Bullick.
Rubbing his palm up and down his cheek, Jack realized that he hadn’t bothered to shave that morning. “Oh I don’t know,” he temporized. “It’s not like he’s power lifting or anything.”
His boss slammed his fist against the desk. “Cut the bullshit. You should’ve been awake and you should have had a camera on him.”
Watching the powerfully built claimant lumber across the screen and turn toward the camera, somewhat reminiscent of the famous Bigfoot video, Jack suddenly remembered how odd the man’s skin was, how rough. Having the striated quality of a coconut, it got him to wondering whether he hadn’t been involved in a fire.
Feeling a headache coming on, Bullick rubbed his eyes. “You got the sound of the lawn mower, not one but two garbage trucks, the incessant thumping of a kid playing basketball, and yet somehow you manage to remain asleep. It’s beyond comprehension.”
Recalling what came next, Jack could feel himself willing the recording to dissolve into a blur of static. Given all they had on him – not to mention the big Russian fellow – was it really possible that they sat around waiting for him to wake up?
“I blew it,” he admitted, “but let’s not act like I’m the first guy to fall asleep on the job. I mean it’s an occupational hazard.”
Bullick took a deep breath. “Don’t give me that. What we’re talking about here is a serious, maybe even pathological, inability to focus.”
“Pay attention!” his father used to tell him. He even sent him for chess lessons to try to improve his attention for detail, but no matter how well he’d play or how close he’d come to checkmating his opponent, he’d always wind up losing, usually because of something ridiculous, such as giving up his queen to a pawn.
For whatever reason, he had a blind spot for the obvious, making his ability to draw nothing less than wondrous, and yet even he would admit that he wasn’t much of an artist. What he had rather was a definite gift for reproduction, and if it weren’t for the invention of the camera, he might have had a splendid career.
Stingy for their want of particulars, his renderings were uncluttered, clean, simple, while still managing a sense of the whole, but that was just his problem. Taking everything in at once, Jack often missed the everyday minutia that brought the world to life.
“What’s wrong with me?” he’d often wonder. What really angered him though was the fact that he could do so much better if only he had the presence of mind to be cognizant of what he should be focusing on.
“Study what you’re looking at!” he’d sometimes tell himself; “Listen!” he’d beg; “Break it down!” he’d insist, and then he’d do fine, but there was something in his nature, a fundamental slothfulness, that made these types of efforts not only difficult but repugnant.
“Are you paying attention?” said his boss. “This is where it gets interesting.”
Apparently the monitoring had continued, causing Jack to let out a sigh of resignation.
The time displayed was 11:40 am and Jack was awake, but feeling somewhat bored, he decided to strike up a conversation with the very individual he was supposed to be watching. Having just gotten back from a walk to the corner store, he was sitting on his front stoop with a miniature cigarette in his hand.
“How ya doin?” said Jack, holding a clipboard.
His cover was that of a traffic investigator, which in his mind meant monitoring vehicle flow for the purpose of estimating the lifespan of the roadway. Whether the position actually existed, he wasn’t quite certain, but he had used it before and just as always, it worked like a charm, explaining not only his inactivity – he did after all work for the City – but his need to take notes. He even kept a dummied up log with an hour by hour accounting of the number of cars and trucks that had passed, just in case he was questioned.
“What’s that you’re smoking?” he asked.
The audio was crisp. You could make out every word.
“A Capri,” said the man, as he held out what appeared to be a smoldering toothpick between his thumb and forefing
er.
“There’s not much to it.”
The man slowly ascended, his voice a scratchy baritone. “I try to cut down.”
“How many do you go through a day?”
“’Bout million.”
Just then a woman from the neighborhood appeared. She had chestnut eyes, cherry-colored hair, and a long lean body. Pushing a laundry cart in a loose-fitting house dress, she kept her eyes on the sidewalk.
The Russian had a big smile on his face. “Nadia, kak vashi dela?”
The woman ignored him, increasing her pace.
“She like me,” said the man. “She just mad cause I no call her.”
“You’ve been out with her?”
“Oh yes.”
“She’s beautiful,” uttered Jack, not believing a thing he had to say.
“Of course. One of many.”
Standing next to the larger man, with one foot on the stoop, Jack asked to try one of his cigarettes.
The man reached into his pocket. “Be gentle. Otherwise you crush it.”
Jack laughed.
“How about you?” asked the middle-aged Russian. “I no see a ring. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Not at the moment.”
“You’ve got to get out there, my friend. It’s like ducks on a lake.”
“This Friday I have something going.”
“Pretty?”
“I think so.”
“From the computer?”
Jack hesitated for a moment. “As a matter of fact yes.”
The Russian made his lips flutter. “I never found need for that sort of thing; too impersonal.”
“Actually, you get to know them pretty well,” offered Jack. “What I don’t like about it is how you always have to be selling yourself. You never get to feel the person out. Everything’s too up front, too rehearsed. They’ll tell you how smart they are, how creative, how attractive, and if you don’t do the same, they’re not interested. You’ve got to be happy and successful and most importantly, you’ve got to like to travel.”
The Russian blew a ring of smoke into the air and put his finger through it. “They all want to settle down, but never want to be home.”
Jack laughed. “All of their pictures are in front of the Eiffel Tower or Golden Gate Bridge, but if they really wanted to impress me – I think most guys – they’d be sitting in an easy chair watching television.”