by Jim Heskett
“Hey, Serena,” he said.
She was wearing a leather jacket, a little warm for this spring morning. Something on her face didn’t seem right, too. She seemed strained.
“You okay?” he asked.
“It’s been a rough morning.” She opened her jacket to reveal her shirt was bloodied.
“Looks like you had a run-in with a wild boar. Jeez.”
“I need help. And don’t swear.”
He jumped up and ushered her over to the kitchenette, where he turned on the hot water and retrieved soap and clean hand towels. As she pulled up her shirt to expose a gash across her stomach, Harry passed her a towel. He tried not to gawk with envy at her flat tummy.
Serena pursed her lips tight as she swabbed blood from the wound. Harry had assumed she’d been gored or stabbed, but the cut near her oblique muscle was relatively small.
“What happened?”
“I was in Fayetteville,” she said.
A cold chill gripped Harry’s spine. “No.”
“Don’t worry. It’s not that. There was no encounter. I was just spying on them, and I was up on top of a roof, crawling around, and a shingle had an exposed nail or staple and it cut me.”
“They didn’t see you?”
She made a face at him. “Of course they didn’t. You know better than to ask me that. I was in and out without any incident.”
“You’re right, Serena. You’re always right.”
Now, she flattened out her scowl. “Damn straight. But it ruined my plan, so I wasn’t able to glean anything useful.” For a couple seconds, she stared into space as she absently wiped a towel across her midsection. “I’ve felt off my game lately. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
In response to the rhetorical nature of her last statement, he halted his questions and let her clean the wound. She was fifteen years his junior, but she could command a room as if she’d been doing it for her entire life. He sometimes imagined her like a gunslinger in spurs and a ten-gallon hat, wandering into town, ordering a whiskey at the saloon, saying nothing. Her very presence would intimidate the bandits into revealing the location of the mayor’s kidnapped daughter.
But in real life, her status came from Harry knowing what she could do. From what he’d seen her do in their ten years of working side by side. Over a decade, Harry had grown to marvel at Serena’s quiet confidence. Plus, she was really good at killing bad guys.
Harry had hired this former US government assassin to be his part-time muscle in Eureka Springs. Mostly because of a small group of jerks in nearby Fayetteville who considered Harry a problem, and who would just as soon break his kneecaps as allow him to keep on breathing their same air.
“Did you learn anything?” he asked. “Anything at all?”
“Nothing useful.”
“Why did you come here?”
She cocked her head. “Huh?”
“Why drive all the way back here from Fayetteville with this injury? You must have passed two or three hospitals on the way.”
“The mission was to observe and then report back.”
He gave her a sad smile. “We don’t work for Uncle Sam anymore. It’s just us. I’d rather you go to a hospital when it’s necessary, instead of completing the mission at all costs. We don’t live in an active war zone.”
Serena chewed on this for a few seconds as she patted her stomach dry. “I understand. Old habits, you know?”
“Sure.” Harry glanced at the bullet on his shelf.
“Your new neighbor down the strip mall is lacking a front window.”
“Noticed that, did you? He’s refusing to call the cops, which I did think is a bit odd.”
“Racial, probably.”
“Yeah, could be he’s afraid of that, now that I think about it. The cops in this town are mostly white. I didn’t get a chance to ask the barber about it.”
“Are local cops like that?”
Harry shrugged. “Not that I know of. My interactions with them so far seem like they’re a mediocre-but-decent group. They spend most of their time writing traffic tickets and giving talks on public safety at the library.”
With gauze and tape now covering her injury, Serena Rojas lowered her shirt and wandered over toward the window, where Kemba was still sweeping up bits of glass off the sidewalk, head down.
“What a strange town,” she said.
3
While Serena was at the hospital getting proper stitches—at Harry’s insistence—he trudged up the hill to Maria’s Burritos for lunch. The entire restaurant was little more than a cramped apartment with a small back room for the kitchen and office. Most of the cooking was done with a home-sized oven, piled onto plates drawn from the cabinets above. Harry relished that it felt like stopping by a relative’s house for a meal.
He ate the beef-and-bean monstrosity during his walk back, feeling the town swell with more tourists than usual due to the AA conference. He wasn’t used to having to dodge others on the narrow sidewalks, at least not most days. People with name badges and lanyards everywhere. They seemed like a lively bunch, darting around Eureka’s intricate network of laneways and hilltop staircases. The town felt at times like an extended version of a single neighborhood, with walking trails and shortcuts and little secrets everywhere.
Eureka Springs was small enough that you were guaranteed to see at least one person you knew every time you ventured into any public place. Because of the tourism, though, unless you knew someone by name or recognized them from the grocery store, it became hard to tell who was a local and who was only passing through. But the high concentration of tourists gave the town a feeling of transience, like living in an airport or bus station. But with superior burritos, because there was only one Maria’s in the world.
When he entered the parking lot, Harry watched Kemba the barber hanging sheets of plastic wrap over his absent shop window. Each sheet he attached above with a staple gun, popping like a toy pistol with each press of the trigger.
He caught Harry looking and gave him a dip of the chin. Harry responded in kind, then pivoted away and headed toward his office. Replacing a window with plastic wrap seemed like a humiliating task, so Harry didn’t want to stare. Plenty of the passersby were doing that already.
In his office, Harry took a look at his caseload files, the stack directly in the center of his other desk piles. It was a small collection, because Harry only had one active client, with a small-but-steady stream of cases. Not the sort of cases that would rocket him to town fame… in fact, only three people in the world knew Harry had this client. He wanted it to stay that way.
But he was stalled with his current three cases. And with his last box from storage retrieved and no other excuses to procrastinate, he needed to slog through the files again, to see what he’d missed. Not the literal file folders here on his desk, though. The real files were digital, with the ones on his desk filled with plain paper. It seemed like something a real private eye would do… slave over paper documents like a black and white movie.
“You’re not ready for that, Boukadakis,” he said to the room as he took his last bite of burrito. He’d added extra meat to this one, and his belly felt bloated. Maybe he’d skip a meal later today. Probably not, though.
Harry slid into his desk chair with a squeak, then opened the drawer and took out his laptop. But, as soon as the screen brightened his face, a knock came at the door.
He slid the laptop back in the desk and watched Kemba Wood stroll into his office. The bell jingled again as the door shut, and Harry wondered if a jingling bell was the right message to send. Maybe it made people feel like they were walking into a flower shop.
“Hi, Harry,” Kemba said. His face was pointed down, his shoulders turned inward. He didn’t have a hat, but if he did, Harry imagined he would’ve been holding it in his hand. The man looked beaten down in a way that tugged at Harry’s heart strings, like a puppy in the rain barking to be let inside.
Harry stood and pointed a
t the chair across from the desk. “Hey, Kemba. Have a seat and we can talk.”
“Already know why I’m here, huh?”
“I have a feeling.”
Kemba spread a flat smile, and then groaned into the seat opposite the desk. The hulk of a man had no problems seeing over the clutter. He opened his mouth to speak, then halted, and sat back.
Harry waited a few seconds before realizing his visitor needed him to talk first. “What can I do for you?”
“Well,” Kemba said as he hooked a finger behind him and gave an awkward chuckle. His cheeks were heating up. “I got my window busted open, and my place was robbed. I’d like to hire you to find out who did it. Hopefully, get my stuff back, but I’m not counting on it.”
“Why not?”
Kemba chewed his lip for a couple seconds. “I’d rather not say.”
Harry nodded and considered his next words. He’d had this conversation in his head four or five times already since this morning, but now, he felt his heart racing. Thoughts jitterbugged around his brain at a relentless speed and he was mostly operating on instinct.
“I, uh, need you to tell me why you wouldn’t go to the police.”
“Do I have to?”
“I can’t compel you to tell me the truth, but it’s a lot easier for me to do my job if I have all the facts. Otherwise, I’m just shooting in the dark and it’s a waste of everyone’s time.”
Kemba winced. “Okay. I get it.” He blew out a sigh before continuing. “I kinda had some cigars, and they were given to me from a buddy back east, but it’s not something I’d want to have the cops look at, know what I mean?”
Harry wasn’t a cigar expert, but he knew there were lots of various trade regulations and tax issues with different countries. “I think I understand what you’re saying.”
“Technically, they’re smuggled goods, but it’s just cigars. Nobody’s getting hurt. Besides, when you look like I do… cops and I don’t have a great history. I like to stay away from them whenever I can.”
“I understand, Kemba. Can I ask why Eureka Springs? You’ve been in town for about a week, as far as I can tell. With your background and means, you could be anywhere. Why a tiny, artsy tourist-trap town in Arkansas?”
“Man of means,” Kemba said, musing on the phrase with irony in his smile. “I know you think I’m set for life because I played pro football, but it’s not like that. I’m in debt, just like everyone else. And I picked Eureka Springs with a dart.”
Harry raised his eyebrows. “As in, you threw a dart at a map?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have a lot of trust in fate.”
Kemba emitted a morbid chuckle. “I wouldn’t call it trust. I like to take big swings, I guess. Shake things up every few years, or I get bored. So, I packed up, put my condo on the market, put a map on the wall, and threw a dart. Eureka Springs was the closest dot on that map, and I’d promised myself I would accept wherever it landed.”
“Lucky you. You could be living in the sea right now.”
“I probably would’ve let myself throw again if I’d hit blue the first time around. I don’t know. It didn’t come up.”
“If I take your case, I need to know that there won’t be anything held back.”
The large man hesitated, then nodded. The big guy was like an ebony statue, his face mostly flat, his eyes blank.
Harry sat back for a few seconds, thinking over his next question. Kemba had expressions that were too hard to read, and it made Harry second-guess himself. “Have you had any interactions with people since you’ve been in town? Anything notable?”
He shook his head. “I’ve barely spoken to anyone aside from my realtor, the house inspector, and a couple people at the grocery store. There are no enemies that I know of, if that’s what you’re getting at. I don’t have an angry ex-wife on my tail or anything like that.”
Harry grinned. “Sounds like you read detective novels.”
“A couple. Don’t have much time to read these days.”
“I’ll need a list of everyone you’ve given a haircut to over the last week or so.”
“I can do that. It’s a pretty short list.”
“Did you see anything? I mean, you weren’t that far away when the window was smashed.”
Kemba nodded, a pained expression. “No. The sun was in my eyes, and as soon as the glass broke, it was all a blur. Maybe I saw something moving, but there was too much chaos.”
Harry tore off a piece of paper and wrote down a number. It was half of the fee he’d promised himself he should charge, but something made him change it. He slid it across the desk. “This is my daily rate. Most likely, if you don’t already have a strong suspicion who stole your cigars—if not a vengeful ex-wife, then maybe a certain bad apple family member, or someone else with a grudge—then it was random. Probably a neighborhood kid, maybe a tourist, saw a chance to make a quick buck and just did it.”
Kemba took the paper but didn’t look at it yet. “Why are you telling me this? Sounds like you’re trying to convince me not to hire you.”
“Because you should know before you agree to my fee that there’s a good chance I’ll never find anything. I bill for my time, either way, so I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding later.”
“Do you have this talk with all your clients?”
Harry cleared his throat. “Sure.”
Kemba opened the paper and his eyes widened. “I can pay this rate for a day or two… will it take that long?”
“I know this isn’t what you want to hear from someone you hire by the day, but I have no idea how long it will take. It's no trouble for me to provide updates, if you like. And we can stop at any time.”
Kemba swallowed and closed the paper. “Probably doesn’t include expenses, either, I bet. Thank you for your time, sir, but I’ll have to pass. I’ll figure something out.”
When he stood, Harry got a good look at the man’s tree trunk arms, and a revelation came to him. For a few milliseconds, a debate raged inside Harry’s head. But he had to act fast. The man would walk out the door, and with him, Harry’s brilliant idea would fizzle.
“Wait. Sit back down, please.” Harry’s palms felt slick, his chest thudded, but he was also flush with the excitement of opportunity. He leaned forward. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Okay.”
“To be honest, I’ve only had a few solo cases before yours. I’m pretty new at this.”
Kemba’s eyes flicked all around the room, with its sparse decorating and D&D battle miniatures and woefully unopened cardboard boxes. Slowly, he nodded. “I can believe that.”
“So, here’s the deal: I have a bodyguard, but she’s only part-time. She travels, sometimes unexpectedly. I’ll take your case pro bono, if you consider being my muscle when I need it. I can’t see me needing it often. But it’s nice to know you’re only a few doors down.”
Kemba pursed his lips and sighed, staring at the floor for what seemed like an endless number of seconds. Finally, he looked up. He stood and thrust out one of those girthy meat hooks. “You got yourself a deal.”
4
As per usual, Serena Rojas completed an exterior sweep of the house before entering. She had no reason to believe Harry’s mother’s house in small-town Arkansas was being watched by snipers or had explosives buried in the yard. But old habits died hard, so Serena performed the sweep for her own peace of mind.
She kept a P320 in her concealed carry holster, with her hands in her pockets, strolling through the grass. The humid spring weather made her skin glisten, but not enough to sweat. Birdsongs chirped from trees all around her. Serena actually kinda liked it here. People waved in the (chaotically arranged) streets whether they knew each other or not. Hard to find that back in San Antonio or Washington, DC.
Unfortunately, she didn’t get to be here often, due to her other commitments. But it wasn’t hard to imagine why Harry had traded the frenzy of the east coast for a smaller footprint
here in the breadbasket of the US. Less traffic, pollution, crime, and you could see plenty of stars on a clear night.
And now, standing on the front porch steps, she waited for Harry to arrive. The house was a bed-and-breakfast shade of yellow, with faded paint. Wooden porch consisting of warped planks and a collection of wind chimes. White columns held up the second floor where it hung over the porch. She noted an open outdoor outlet near the west end of the porch, with loose wires dangling from an electrical box. The place needed some work, for sure.
His car pulled up a minute later and Harry emerged from the driver’s seat. “Hey. Waiting long?”
“I just got here,” she said.
“You make a sweep?” When she nodded, he snickered. “I assumed you would.”
“Makes me feel more comfortable. Open areas have their dangers, but so do confined spaces. I never take anything for granted.”
“Sure, sure.” He pointed at his stomach. “How is your…?”
“I didn’t actually need stitches. They cleaned me up and sent me on my way.”
“Good, good,” Harry said as he plucked keys from his pocket and waved Serena up toward the house. In the light, his wiry beard looked more gray than brown.
“You know I haven’t been in the house before,” she said.
He cocked his head, looking confused. “Do I have to invite you in, like a vampire?”
She shrugged and almost smiled. “Just saying, I’ve been here a few times to pick you up, and you’ve never invited me in.”
Harry frowned as if this were a grave oversight, then he tilted his head toward the door. “Let’s fix that. I’ll give you the grand tour.”
“You’re not worried about what the neighbors will think?”
“Are you kidding? You’ll be the most attractive person who’s ever set foot inside this house. Maybe if people hear about it, they’ll ask me to join the country club.” He paused and then caught himself. “Sorry. That was inappropriate.”
She waved him off. “Totally fine.”
He hopped up the steps and opened the front door as he ushered Serena forward. She entered a house that looked nothing at all like she had expected. She’d expected a man-cave bachelor pad, and instead she found what looked like a museum dedicated to old-people culture.