Circulate. What a way to live. “Okay. Any idea where this Dooley lives?”
“Sure. Same floor as Robin and Gayle. Across the hall and down a little.”
Iffy. But in a blond wig, Giants ball cap, glasses, maybe not. And they’d had plenty of time to get into the apartment and out of sight, unpack the baggie, get the drugs going.
“Show me?” I said.
“Like … for ten dollars maybe?” she said hopefully.
“Sounds fair.”
I followed her to a door facing First Street. She opened it with a key and we went inside. A wall in the foyer held a long row of mailboxes with names on the front. Four rows of sixteen, so sixty-four apartments. Best guess, five hundred a month, so the place could take in almost four hundred thousand a year. The headaches of having to deal with sixty minimum-wage tenants in an old building would make it barely worthwhile, if at all.
“Which floor do you live on?” I asked.
“Second and third, mostly.”
Jesus. “Okay, what about this Dooley?”
“Third floor.”
“Is Dooley his first name or last?”
“I don’t know. Everyone just calls him Dooley.”
I scanned the third-floor mailboxes. No Dooley on any of them. “Let’s go have a look,” I said.
We went up a stairwell. “You … you could stay a while,” she said. “Like, for maybe an hour.”
I shivered. This was a different proposition than what I got from Rosa in the Green Room. Rosa wasn’t serious. This was. I felt so far out of my element it was like the walls were closing in. Some gumshoe I was. Spade and Hammer were somewhere up ahead, looking back at us, yukking it up, poking each other in the ribs. Twenty-five feet off the street and here was an entirely different world. An odor of urine lifted from threadbare carpet covering the stairs. I lived in a world generally untainted by urine, where educated people owned their homes, held jobs that supported those homes, paid into 401(k)s, made enough to hate the IRS, had term life, owned mutual funds or had enough saved up to weather a three- or four-month bad spell, had a backyard, lawn to mow, fence to keep it reasonably private.
I didn’t answer her. I didn’t feel fully in my own skin. We reached the third floor, went through a fire door, and walked down a dimly lit hallway. Another fire door with a red glowing exit sign was at the far end.
“This’s my place,” Mira said, stopping at number 304. “I mean, Robin’s and Gayle’s.”
“Not so loud,” I said softly. “Which one is Dooley’s?”
“Over here.” She went another twenty feet and pointed to number 307, other side of the hall from 304.
Good enough. End of the line. Time to get out. Or I could knock on the door and ask Dooley and Precious what kind of drugs they’d scored at Wildcat, see if they were in the mood to share. Probably not. I heard the mutter of a television coming through the door. Could’ve been any one of three dozen reality shows, none of which were as true to life as Hogan’s Heroes.
We returned to 304. I gave her ten dollars and kept going.
“You could stay,” she said.
I looked back. She was by the door, looking at me. I went back, gave her another ten. “Thanks for the tour.”
“You could. Like—for a while. It’s Saturday. They won’t be back for at least until midnight.”
“You should get some real food in you,” I said, using the dregs of my social worker repertoire. I went to the stairwell and looked back. She stood outside the door, watching me without expression. I went down to the first floor.
In the foyer I found the name on the mailbox for apartment 307: G. Orwell.
Great.
Either George was still kicking, or Dooley was an English major. Neither of which seemed likely.
* * *
Two names were on the box for 304: Riggs/Jarecki.
Out the door, east on First to the parking garage, up the stairwell to the fifth floor past laughing young people on their way down, over to the Toyota. I got in, fired up the engine, put it in reverse, hit the brakes to avoid running over a dark shape standing almost behind the car.
Mira.
Swell.
I powered down the window and she came closer. “What?” I asked.
“Are you … gonna get something to eat?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Can I come?”
Now what? No? Buzz off? You look about half-starved, but you’re on your own, kid, I can’t be bothered. I’ve got a job, a real home, a half-assed car, a freakin’ 401(k), and I don’t want your dim and messy world to touch any part of mine?
Her affect was flat. If I said no, she would look at me for a moment, processing the no, but her expression wouldn’t change. She had been turned down a thousand times in a thousand ways, expected it. She would leave without a word.
Sonofabitch. And to show what a nice guy I am, it took me six seconds to open the passenger door and say, “Hop in.” Six seconds to do for her what I would do in half a second for a hungry dog. This is the world of noninvolvement, of safety and paranoia, which isn’t an unreasonable way to operate given the way things are turning out.
She got in beside me, shut the door, didn’t say a word. Was this getting me closer to Joss’s $13,600 problem? If so, I didn’t see how. This was a side trip, a little complication to work out along the way. It took me a while to decide to back the car out and head for the exit ramp. Down and around, down and around, four levels to the street. I gave the attendant two bucks for the thirty-two minutes I’d been there, nosed the Toyota onto First, and headed west, past the Truckee River Apartments. We got to Arlington before I finally said, “What kind of food you like?”
“Whatever. Anything.”
Tells a story. When you’re hungry, it’s just food. You can be picky when you’re rich. And I was spoiled. Most of us are. Hit the switch and the light is supposed to come on. I like having the light come on. If it doesn’t, the world isn’t right, it’s damned inconvenient. So, spoiled. We expect things to run smoothly. We hate power outages. We turn the faucet and there’s water. Open cupboards or the refrigerator and, hey, there’s food. My guess is it isn’t like that in much of Somalia.
“When did you last eat?”
“I don’t know. I think maybe yesterday.”
Barely a hundred pounds. Skinny arms and legs, almost no chest on her, thin face. Faded blue jeans with a designer rip or two in them, except the jeans looked old and the rips looked real. Low-rent sneakers that might’ve cost two bucks at Goodwill. Thin short-sleeve pale yellow shirt, no coat.
But piercings, too much makeup, and she’d offered to take me into room 304 for an hour. None of this was my problem. I had what I had, and she had what she had, and I didn’t have any reasonable way to share. That’s not how the world works. With all their billions, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates weren’t at her side, giving her a hefty wad of hundred-dollar bills, enough to change her life. Her being hungry wasn’t my fault, or Warren’s or Bill’s. I could feed her, but I couldn’t fix her.
I took her to Gold Dust West, a casino west of downtown that had a brightly lit coffee shop with cheap but reliable food. They served a twenty-four-hour breakfast, so I suggested something along those lines. She shrugged, happy enough to be sitting in a booth with the prospect of food sometime in the next half hour. So I ordered for both of us, same thing—three scrambled eggs, link sausage, toast, side order of pancakes, milk. Protein and carbs. Survival food. No fettuccini alfredo, no lobster thermidor.
The food arrived. She tucked into it like a Marine in boot camp, but with quiet intensity and no snarling “back-off” wolf sounds like you get with Marines. From time to time she gazed up into my eyes. No words, but she looked grateful. Took her a while, but finally the pancakes slowed her down.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m sort of a pig.”
“Pigs just eat to eat. Hungry is different.”
She leaned back, looked down at her han
ds, then back up at me. “At that club, outside when you grabbed me, and I couldn’t breathe for a moment, you said I could do better.”
“Not just you. We all can, trust me.”
“No one ever told me that before.” She gave me a funny look. “I, uh … I don’t even know your name.”
“Mort.”
“Mort? That’s funny.”
“Funny how?”
“I don’t know. Just funny. It sounds funny.”
“I guess it does at that. You should hear it with the ‘imer’ my misguided mother tacked on the end of it.”
“I’m not a hooker.”
I blinked. “I didn’t think you were.”
“I mean, it’s not like I do that kind of thing all the time. Like when I asked if you wanted to, you know, stay for a while.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I just don’t want you to think that I, that I …”
“I don’t. Mira Tanaka.”
She smiled, then fell silent.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Twenty-two.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, what’s with the goth look? The black lipstick and makeup? I never understood that.”
“Think it’s kinda, like, creepy?”
“A little. I just don’t see how it helps.”
“Helps what?”
“You.”
She thought about that for a moment. “Guess it doesn’t.”
“So, why?”
She shrugged. “It’s, I don’t know. Just a way to be. I don’t always. I was at Lori’s this morning. She let me put this on, so why not?”
“Lori?”
“Girl in 211 on the second floor. Where I stayed last night.”
“Circulating.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So tell me about this Dooley guy.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You see him at that place a lot, Wildcat?”
“Sometimes. When I go there. Sometimes he hangs out for a while and sometimes he just buys from Ramon and splits.”
“Have you seen that girl with Dooley before? The one he was with tonight.”
She shrugged. “She’s been around.”
“Okay. Now back up. Who’s Ramon?”
“Just this guy. Sort of older.” She hesitated. “He …”
“He what?”
“He told me to try to get your wallet.”
Cold fingers walked up my spine. “Black hair? Thin? Has a soul patch about this long?” I held a thumb and index finger an inch apart.
“Uh-huh.”
“He told you to get my wallet?”
“Uh-huh. I think he wanted to know who you were. Like if you were a narc or something.”
So I’d caught the exchange and put a faint glowing spot on his radar. Little switchblade whippet fucker was not the kind of guy whose radar I wanted to be on.
“You do what this guy Ramon tells you to do?”
“If you don’t, you can get hurt.”
“And you go to his club?”
“It’s not his, but … yeah. I mean, there’s other places I can go but they’re all pretty much the same. He goes there, too.”
“What’s Ramon’s last name?”
“I don’t know. I never heard it.”
“Do you know what Dooley bought? What kind of drugs?”
“Most likely meth. Ramon doesn’t deal a lot of coke these days. I think he has some angel dust, but not much and only if you ask for it and he knows you.”
Jesus. “Mind if I say something from the heart, Mira?”
She pursed her lips. “I know, but go ahead.”
“What do you know?”
“I know what you’re gonna say.”
“How about, get cleaned up, lose the black makeup and the eyebrow piercings, smile, get a job, eat more, keep away from Ramon and anyone like him.”
“Knew it. How’m I supposed to do all that?”
“Just do it. Make a decision. You’re young. Start with the makeup and the piercings. You can fix that in half an hour. The purple hair should probably go too, but I’m not sure about that. Depends on the job. Then go out and ask around. Keep at it and eventually someone will hire you. And no one is forcing you to go to Wildcat or those other places.”
“Sure.” She said it with very little force. Life comes and it goes, doesn’t leave much residue along the way.
I left a few bills on the table. We got up, went outside, and I drove her back to the apartments, dropped her off at the curb.
She got out, bent down, and looked in at me. “Thanks. You know, for the food and the advice.”
“You’re welcome. See you around.”
“Yeah, I guess.” She shut the door.
I checked for traffic in my side mirror and pulled out. She stood on the sidewalk and watched me go until I finally turned a corner and she was gone.
* * *
I drove home. I felt disoriented, back in my safe world with Mira’s world still clinging to my thoughts, giving me a case of the megrims.
I shook it off. It was 10:05, Saturday night. I could maybe sleep, but it felt too early for that. I could spend an hour or two in the Green Room at the Golden Goose, but … why? The thought of beer didn’t have much appeal. Nor did sarsaparilla or O’Roarke’s grousing about my using free-drink coupons.
But the house was empty. Too empty, too quiet. I missed Lucy. I wandered the rooms, finally decided to leave because the place had too many ghosts gliding around. Jeri was gone and the house used to be hers. Lucy was out of town. Quiet was a kind of unearthly vapor, seeping out of the walls.
So, Mort, go sleuth something.
Evelyn Joss hired us to find out why her partner, Michael Volker, had taken almost fourteen thousand dollars from their operating account without letting her know. That was the job, not Mira, not Ramon, not Dooley and Kimmi, and definitely not Soranden’s skull.
The night was young. I could accumulate another few hours by staking out Volker’s house. I might get lucky and he would go somewhere relevant, like to a casino Sports Book where he might drop a few hundred dollars on the horses or on basketball games—or off to see a new girlfriend who was bleeding him as long as his blood stayed green. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was lucky. And unprofessional. And a maverick.
Good enough.
I left the Toyota at home and drove Lucy’s Mustang back to Volker’s. I parked eighty feet up the street facing the house. Lights were glowing on both floors. The BMW was no longer in the driveway, but the beat-up Honda was there. So add it up, big guy. Kimmi partying with Dooley. The Beemer might be in the garage. If not—and you won’t know one way or the other—then Volker was out running around, in which case the sister, Marta, was in charge of Derek, and you won’t know that either unless you go ring the bell, which you’re not gonna do.
Which is as far as I got, and it added up to nothing.
Wish Ma were here.
Nearest streetlight was a hundred yards away. It was dark where I was sitting, opposite a house with not one light showing. I tuned the radio to that oldies station, started off with Ricky Nelson, then got Simon and Garfunkel, sixties anti-war stuff, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke, Beach Boys.
Gumshoe rock.
Then, in the midst of boredom and music turned down low, with a belly full of food, I drifted off to sleep.
* * *
And jerked awake when a cop rapped on the window with a nightstick. The flashlight was blinding. “Proud Mary” was on the radio. I shielded my eyes, powered the window down, and got John Fogerty and Creedence under control.
“How you doin’ there, bud?” the cop said. He was forty-something, heavy, in a black RPD uniform with patches on both shoulders, web belt loaded down and creaking, patrol car behind me with the bubblegum lights sending red and blue lights across houses on both sides of the street.
“Fine,” I said. “Doin’ real fine.”
“Been dr
inking?”
“Had a few beers three or four days ago.”
“Smart ass, huh. Let’s see a license and registration.”
I fumbled out my wallet and, of course, got the wrong one, the one with a single lousy dollar left in it and no ID. Perfect.
“Oop,” I said. “Wrong wallet.”
And sure, everyone carries two wallets. Isn’t that de rigueur these days?
Guess not.
“Please step out of the car, sir.”
Polite, these guys, unless you start waving a gun. It’s all that political correctness training. We didn’t do PC in the IRS. We did IYF—In Your Face. So I got out of the car. Maybe that two-wallet thing wasn’t de rigueur after all. Or maybe it was the big guy sleeping in an expensive neighborhood in a ragtop Mustang with a roof patched with duct tape, a car registered to a girl by the name of Lucy Landry. That might do it. He would have run the plate before rapping on the window.
“We can clear this up real fast, Officer,” I said.
“That would be a first this week. And not very likely.”
“Can we give it a try, save you some work? Paperwork’s a bitch these days, isn’t it? All those i’s to dot and t’s—”
“You need to keep your hands where I can see them, sir.”
“A phone call? Just one, then we’ll both laugh at this.”
“I seriously doubt that. Some girl called it in. Said a guy was in a car, asleep, looked like he might be drunk or casing the neighborhood.”
“Casing while asleep? You see a lot of that?”
His eyes narrowed unappreciatively at the logic.
“What girl?” I asked.
“We don’t give out that kind of information, sir.”
“One call, Officer? It won’t take long.”
He shrugged. Maybe he didn’t like paperwork. He looked more like the kind of guy who liked patting people down then running them in, but that also involved paperwork, so …
I called Russell Fairchild.
“Jesus, now what?” he answered sleepily.
“Got a little problem, Russ.”
“Can it wait till tomorrow? I was in the middle of a dream that was working out okay.”
“It’s hard to get those restarted.”
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