Copyright © 2006 by James
Pearce. All Rights Reserved. Any use without the consent of the author is
strictly prohibited.
Poets Row
A Novel by
James Pearce
1
On a
typical day at Max Beatty Investigations I come into the office once, maybe
twice, and that’s usually just for a cup of coffee. My business, if that’s what you could call it,
is out on the streets, in the barrooms and back alleys of this place they call
the
But sometimes the level of need out there fluctuates, and as a result, business is cyclical. Sometimes the phone doesn’t ring for days at a time and I’m left with nothing to do but sit alone at home or go to the office, where my faithful secretary Eliza, excuse me, executive assistant Eliza, keeps me company.
On this particular day, which was not a typical day in the least, I had a blank page in my day timer and nothing in particular to occupy my time. Eliza had snapped at me earlier and I had been squirreled away in my private office ever since, wary of any “company” she might provide. I occupied myself by first paging through the newspaper, then trying to nap with my feet up on the desk and my head resting on the back of my plush executive chair.
I was in this position when the intercom buzzer jarred me awake. I reached out a tired hand and put the call on speaker. “What?” I croaked.
“There’s a woman out here who wants to see you.” Eliza said. I could tell from her tone that she was annoyed and trying very hard not to show it. The woman who wanted to see me must have been hovering right over her, listening to every word.
I opened my eyes and dropped my feet to the floor. “Am I on speaker?” I asked.
“No,” Eliza said.
I leaned back into a long stretch that culminated in a loud yawn.
“Then have her set an appointment,” I said.
“I tried that already. She insisted on seeing you now. She said she knows you.”
I was confused. “Knows me? What’s that supposed to mean?” I said. “What’s her name?”
“Hold on.” The speaker crackled as Eliza muffled the phone and I could hear indistinct voices talking, louder on the other side of the door than on the intercom. Eliza came back on the line and said, “Abby Joo-nay.” There was a pause as the other woman said something, then Eliza clarified, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “Sorry, Jeunet. It’s French.”
“I’m sorry, Eliza, but I don’t think I know anyone named Abby.”
“Uh huh,” Eliza grunted, not amused. “I’m sending her in.”
A few seconds later, there was a knock on the door.
“It’s open,” I called, then watched as the door creaked and Abby Jeunet poked her head through, looking around before nervously stepping into the room. I recognized her instantly, but I couldn’t even remember where I had seen her before.
She was an attractive woman, a girl really, probably not a day over thirty. Her eyes were dark, deep set, rimmed with black eyeliner. Her hair spilled down to her shoulders in dark curls streaked with blonde highlights. She was wearing a baby doll T-shirt that rose above her navel and a small jean jacket, showing off an inny belly button with a dimpled scar from a piercing that she no longer wore. Her pants were leather, skin-tight, and they hung low off her wide hips, conforming to every flattering curve. It was difficult to judge her height because of the platform boots, which weren’t as big as Paul Stanley’s but gave her a few inches. She looked like she belonged in a night club, not in the dreary office of a private eye.
“Are you Max?” she said taking a tentative step towards my desk. Her dark eyes looked down on me with equal parts hope and trepidation.
I stood up and extended a hand. “I am, and you must be Abby. I don’t think we’ve met.”
She looked over her shoulder towards the door she just came through, “Yeah, sorry about that. Your secretary refused to let me see you, so I said I know you. It was stupid, I know, but hey, it worked.” She shrugged and giggled, then bit her lip and looked at me like a teenager waiting for a lecture.
“Have a seat,” I said.
She dropped her purse on my desk and sat down in the chair across from me. She looked around the room, noting the blank walls, then her eyes fell on me. They studied me for a minute, sizing up my credibility, then looked away, squirming uncomfortably in her chair. She noticed the ashtray on my desk.
“Can I smoke?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She tapped a cigarette out of a pack of Newports, then lit it with a cheap childproof lighter. I let her take a few drags before I pressed on.
“So how can I help you, Abby?” I asked gently.
“I don’t know if you can,” she said with a harrumph. “I explained my situation to Tony and he’s the one who suggested I see you.”
“Wait,” I said. “You know Tony?”
She nodded.
I suddenly
realized where I had seen her before.
Fletcher’s was a smoke and sawdust saloon a few blocks stumbling
distance from my house, owned by a friend of mine, Tony Kosic. Most people think he’s Russian, but he’s
really from
“Yeah okay,” I said, now with the program. “You’re in that band.”
“That’s right,” she grinned, proud but not boastful. She was loosening up a little, losing some of the edge she had when she bullied her way through Eliza, which is no small feat, believe me. “Lead guitar and vocals.” She made a little air guitar motion with her hands and smiled.
“I’ve seen you play a few times,” I said. “You’re good, just like Angus but taller. And better looking, too.”
“Thanks,” she said, pretending to ignore the flirty compliment, but nodding appreciatively anyway. She gave a modest shrug and said, “We’re not bad.”
“So you’re in a band. What do you need a private investigator for?”
She fidgeted in her seat, puffing on her cigarette. She wasn’t aware of it, but she started anxiously scraping away with her thumbnail at the black nail polish on her pinky. “I’m not sure I do,” she said finally.
“But you talked to Tony about your, uh, situation and he said to come here. I’m not a shrink so if you don’t know why you’re here, I can’t really help you. But if you have something specific in mind, something for me to do, I can usually figure out a way to do it. So what’s going on?”
She took two drags of her cigarette before she answered. “I think I’m being stalked,” she said. “Look, it’s really hard to put into words, but there’s this creepy guy who’s been following me around lately. I’ve seen him at the bar, on the street by my apartment. I saw him at the bus stop. I see him everywhere.” She shivered as if to shake off some horrible thought and looked away, staring at a space far beyond the walls. For a moment, she was someplace else, and then she snapped out of it and turned back to me. “He’s really starting to freak me out.”
“Do you know him?” I said.
“No, and I don’t want to.”
“Has he ever made any threatening gestures towards you?”
“He’s never even spoken to me. He just follows me around and stares. And I know he’s not one of those weird lonely guys, you know, the kind that come to the shows and don’t blink the whole time, but they’re too scared to actually approach you. Those guys are just fanboys, shy but harmless, but this guy…he’s something else, something creepy.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Alright, two nights ago I had a show, not at Fletcher’s but at another place down on Grant. It’s maybe four blocks from my house, just a weeknight gig, nothing major. Halfway through our set I look out and see that creepy guy standing in the back, leaning against the wall. I was so scared I almost forgot the words to the song I was singing. I mean, there he was, the creep, just standing there staring at me again. I just kept playing, trying to ignore him. I looked back a few minutes later but he was gone. I didn’t see him for the rest of the show. But afterwards, I asked my friend Jackie – she plays drums – to walk me home. As we were walking, I just happened to look behind us and there he was, a half block behind us, just following us. I could have died. We practically ran to my building, I was so scared.”
She heaved out a breath and looked at me, waiting for some kind of response. I felt my eyebrows go up incredulously and I said, “So some creepy guy has the hots for you. Doesn’t sound too bad. Give him an autographed picture, he’ll be happy.”
“Not this guy. You know Queen Soopers, right?”
I
nodded. It was a grocery store off 9th
and
“Well, I needed a lot of stuff, and since I had a few bags, I called a cab. I live maybe ten blocks down the street and there was no way I could carry all of it. So the cabbie dropped me off at my building, and when I came around the corner to the front, guess who was sitting there on the front steps.”
“Ozzy Osbourne?”
“No, ass,” she said, trying to remain serious but letting the slightest glimmer of a smile appear on her face. “The creep. Just sitting right there on my front step. A day after he followed me and Jackie home, there he was, in front of my building, looking down at the Capitol. Yeah right, he was looking for me, that’s what he was doing.”
“What’d he do when he saw you?”
“Nothing. He just kind of yelped, then he got up and walked away. Didn’t say a word.”
“He yelped?”
“Yeah, he
knew he was caught. He was waiting for
me. That’s the way I always come home,
right down
I nodded. “Yeah, sounds like you got plenty of reason.” I lit myself a cigarette and puffed on it while I looked at her. With the way she looked, she was probably used to being ogled. A certain degree of attention was welcome, but there was a line and with this creep it had apparently been crossed.
“ So where’s your apartment again?” I asked, fishing for information she hadn’t yet given me.
“10th
and
I knew exactly where it was.
“Ah, Poets
Row,” I said, referring to a well-known block of
They called it Poets Row because the buildings were named after different American literary figures. They were all three-story walk-ups, secured as far as I knew, brick reminders of an art deco past that now mostly appealed to hipsters and itinerant twenty-somethings still trying to find their way in life. They looked like nice enough places. I had been inside an apartment in the Mark Twain building once, but it was years ago, when I was a teenager fresh out of high school, but I don’t remember the name of the girl who lived there, if I ever knew her name in the first place. More recently, I had served divorce papers to a fugitive bride who took up a studio in the Robert Frost. I didn’t make it inside an apartment, but I had a feel for the building.
“It’s a secured building right?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“I think I’ve been in that one before. Buzzer. No names on the mailboxes. The doors have deadbolts and a chain. Does that sound about right?”
She nodded ruefully.
“Look, Abby,” I said, blowing a lot of smoke, “I’m not sure I can help you. I track down deadbeat dads and bust insurance scams. I—“
“I know it’s not your usual thing. Tony told me that, but he also said you do a lot of things, not just insurance scams. He said you were…flexible.”
I gritted my teeth. “I don’t know what he told you, but—“
Abby laughed, easing some of the tension. “Relax, he didn’t say anything else. He said you could help me and if you couldn’t, you knew someone who could.”
“Alright,” I said begrudgingly. “What did you have in mind?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe you can find out who it is and break his legs.”
“I’m not that flexible, Abby,” I said. “I can look for him if you want. If I could ID him, I could do a background check, talk to a few people, make sure he’s not a danger. Good enough?”
She tilted her head and sucked on her lower lip. “Can you get him to stop following me?”
“I could talk to him,” I said. “Nothing drastic.”
“Do you really think that will work?”
It was my turn to shrug now. “It might.”
She stubbed out her cigarette and looked at me with flat eyes, not impressed with my answer. “And what if, while you’re looking for him so you could have your little talk, he breaks into my apartment and rapes me?” The sudden acidity of her tone startled me. And I thought she was starting to like me.
“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that,” I said.
“But I am worried about it. If I really thought it was no big deal, do you really think I would be here? I’m really scared and I don’t know what else to do.”
I didn’t want to state the obvious but I did anyway. “You could go to the cops.” The statement hung in the air for a moment, giving me plenty of time to consider how stupid it sounded.
She shook her head. “They won’t do anything,” she said. “My brother-in-law’s a cop. I asked him about it and he said the cops wouldn’t get involved until after the fact. He said I should just move.”
“That’s a bit extreme,” I said with a wry grin, “but it would solve the problem.”
“No it wouldn’t,” she said. “He knows where I work. He could follow me home again and find out where the new place is. And besides that, he knows where I work. What am I gonna do? Get a new job too?”
“If this creep is half the nuisance you think he is, it might come to that,” I said. “But let’s not go and do anything rash just yet. Let’s keep the status quo for now. Go home, go to work, just like normal.”
Abby rolled her eyes and turned to stare at the wall, letting out a long cool sigh.
“I know,” I said, “but hey, what else are you going to do, go into the witness protection program?”
An involuntary smile cracked on her face and she thought about it for a minute. “Okay,” she said, turning back to look me in the eye. “Then what?”
“You call me,” I said. “Whenever you go anywhere alone, day or night, you call me. I’ll meet you wherever you are and escort you where you need to go.”
Her eyes lit up like high beams on a country road and the smile that had been playing on her lips now burned to its full intensity. “Like a bodyguard you mean?”
“Something like that.”
“You’re going to escort me, Max?” she teased. “That’s so…chivalrous.”
I drummed the fingers of my left hand on the desk to draw attention to my ring finger and the gold band around it. “Not quite,” I said with a wink. “It’s business. My job is to make you feel safe. That’s it.”
“Of course,” Abby said. “But you’re really going to take me wherever I need to go? Like a chauffeur?”
“Chauffeur, bodyguard, take your pick,” I said. “The important thing is that you’re not walking around the neighborhood by yourself, right?”
“I guess.”
“If I’m going to get this guy off your trail, I’m going to need a description,” I said, grabbing a pen and a stray piece of paper.
“Um, he’s probably five ninish, maybe shorter. He’s not very big, about as tall as me and that’s not very tall. Bulky and heavy though, two hundred pounds at least. Thick, but not ripped. Uh, let’s see, he has short brown hair, brown eyes. Facial hair, trimmed real close and starting to go gray. Glasses, gold frames.”
“How old do you think he is?” I asked, writing all this down.
“Thirties. Hard to tell really. He has a kind of young face.”
“You think he lives in your neighborhood?”
“He has to. That’s the only place I see him. He rides the Zero bus a lot, and one time I saw him on the Fifteen, so I don’t think he has a car. He might be a street person for all I know.”
“You’d recognize him though. Even in a crowd?”
“Definitely,” she said. “I’ll never forget that face. You don’t think he’s going to come to another show, do you?”
“It’s possible,” I said, “but I think it’s just as likely that you scared him off for a while with your close encounter. It’s hard to tell. I don’t think you’re in any immediate danger though. Do you?”
Abby shifted in her chair. “Well, not really, but to be honest I do kind of feel better. I’m going to have my own bodyguard. That’s so rockstar.” She smiled, trying not to be too pleased with herself.
“Well, don’t get too carried away. There is one other matter we should discuss.”
“What’s that?”
“My fee,” I said
“Oh.” She didn’t take it too hard, just shrugged and reached for her purse. “I knew that was going to come up sooner or later.”
“I usually get paid by the hour, like a mechanic, plus expenses,” I said. “And there’s a small nonrefundable retainer fee.”
Abby dropped her purse in her lap and looked down, disheartened, again flicking at the stubborn nail polish. “How much?” she said with an inconsolable sigh.
“Two fifty.”
She looked up, her mouth open in horror. “Two hundred and fifty dollars? Per hour?”
“No, for the retainer.”
“Oh my god, you just gave me a heart attack.” She clutched her chest and let out a relieved laugh. “You have to remember, my band plays in bars, not sold-out arenas. I do have a job, but I get paid mostly in tips and some nights are better than others. I can pay your retainer, but what are you going to charge me after that?”
“I gotta be honest with you,” I said. “I don’t usually get too many private citizens coming in here with their random problems. Most of my business is industry level stuff, you know, companies. Companies with accounts payable departments. They don’t mind paying a seventy-five bucks an hour for my services.”
“Be careful. You’re starting to sound greedy.”
“It’s a different economic scale, that’s all,” I said.
“Well I don’t have an accounts payable department,” she said, extracting a leatherbound checkbook from the purse in her lap, “but I’m sure I could afford at least a few hours of your time. If you have time for a private citizen with some random problem like me, that is.”
“You’re in luck,” I said. “These days, I have nothing but time.”
“Take a check?”
“Sure,” I said. “Two Ts in Beatty.”
She grabbed a pen from the jar on my desk and started writing. “You never did tell me what you’re going to charge me hourly.”
“We can talk about that later,” I said, fully intending never to mention the subject again.
With what she made in her band, Abby couldn’t pay me my normal hourly rate, and I wasn’t going to deplete any savings she might have for a lot of wasted time. Tony had sent Abby to me because she was scared and that threatened his biggest act. She had reason to be scared, but she was probably in no danger. He knew there wasn’t much I could do for Abby but give her peace of mind, and peace of mind shouldn’t cost seventy-five dollars an hour.
“Seriously,” she said. “I need to know.”
“I’ll waive it as a favor to Tony for the referral. It’s the least I could do, right?”
She eyed me suspiciously as she tore the check from the pad and handed it over. “You sure about that?”
“It’s not the first time I’ve worked pro bono,” I said, looking down at the check in my hands. Two hundred fifty dollars didn’t exactly make it pro bono.
I opened the top drawer of my desk and got out my business card. “This has my cell number and direct line in my office,” I said sliding the card across the desk. “There are rules, though. Try the cell phone first. I’m rarely here. If I don’t answer, leave a message. Don’t call the office looking for me. Eliza doesn’t like that.”
“She’s your secretary?”
“Executive assistant,” I said. “She can be…severe. You probably got a taste of it earlier.”
“So that’s what it’s called.”
“She means well,” I said.
“So this calling thing, you’re serious, right? I can call you anytime, night or day?”
“Of course.”
“I tend to keep odd hours.”
“Okay.”
“Even for something as stupid as going to the store? Or getting some dinner, renting movies, even for that?”
“Uh huh. I mean, use your best judgment.”
She laughed. “Wow, I bought you cheap,” she said.
I ignored that comment. “Are you going to be alright getting home?”
“Yeah, I borrowed my friend’s car to get here and I have to bring it back to his house. He’ll give me a ride home. I do have a show down at Fletcher’s tomorrow though. You gonna be able to make it?”
“It’s my job,” I grinned. “What time?”
“Show starts at eight, but I should be there around six-thirty.” She flicked my business card with a black fingernail. “I’ll give you a call.”
She gathered up her cigarettes and her purse and little jean jacket and headed for the door. I got up and opened it for her.
“It was nice finally meeting you,” she said as we walked through the reception area. “I really appreciate you, you know, helping me. You have no idea.”
Eliza looked up as we came into the room, then promptly went back to whatever mundane clerical task she had been involved in prior. The scowl never left her face.
“It’s what we’re all about here, right, Eliza?” I said. “People helping people.”
“If that’s what you have to tell yourself,” she grumbled.
Though she was only twenty-six, Eliza was what more mystical people might call an old soul, wise beyond her years, shrewd. She was pretty, too, with round Latin cheeks and eyes as black as her sense of humor. It was her no nonsense attitude and tight discipline that made her invaluable to me. On the other hand, the same quality made her a terror to her three children.
“Eliza, can you clear my schedule tomorrow night?”
“Done,” she said. She hadn’t moved an inch.
“See what I mean?” I said to Abby. “She’s so difficult.”
Abby laughed but felt guilty about it so she tried to hide her smile with a fist.
“I’ll tell you what’s difficult,” Eliza said. “Working for you.”
“Now be nice,” I said, setting Abby’s check on the desk in front of Eliza. “We have a client present.”
“Hi,” Abby whispered. She was already inching towards the door, eager to escape our little catfight.
Eliza smiled but it was missing all trace of sincerity.
“You’ve already been acquainted,” I said. “Good. Now we can all be friends.” I threw Eliza a stern look, then turned to Abby. “Call me tomorrow?”
Abby nodded a few times, then tossed her purse over her shoulder and her jacket over her forearm. “Bye,” she said, giving a silly parade route wave and ducking out the door.
After she was gone, I came over and sat down on the edge of Eliza’s desk. She pretended to ignore me for a moment and when she finally looked up, she was smiling.
“What?” I said.
“She’s cute, huh?”
“Shut up,” I said. “That has nothing to do with it.”
“Sure,” Eliza whistled. “Then where’s the contract?”
“Shit, I forgot about that.”
She started shaking her head in disapproval.
I smirked at her. “Anyway, I’m going out. Hold my calls, will ya?”
2
It was
almost
I heard lumbering footsteps on the other side of the door and then a pause as he checked the peephole.
“Come on, man,” I said. “Open up.”
The deadbolt gave way and the door swung open, revealing Micah, all six feet two of him, wearing only his bathrobe and boxers, his wiry red hair twisted into a bedhead afro. He glared at me with one blue eye, the other still half closed and bleary. “What do you want?” he grumbled.
Though he wasn’t technically on my payroll, Micah often worked for me on a subcontractor basis, usually menial errands like transporting documents or tracking down records. The arrangement was informal, since Micah was more of a friend than an employee, but it worked to our mutual advantage.
I shoved one of the coffees into his hand. “You’re gonna need this,” I said, “and some pants.”
Micah yawned, then let me in. I followed him down the long hallway that led to his living room. The shades were pulled, making the room dark and cavelike. The only light source was the black light in the hundred gallon aquarium, which bathed everything in surreal fluorescent colors.
Micah collapsed on the loveseat and stared off into space, still coming to terms with consciousness. He remembered the coffee in his hand and took a tentative first sip.
“What time is it?” he asked as if in a daze.
“Lunchtime,” I said. “You hungry?”
“I don’t know. Yeah, kinda.”
“Get dressed. I’ll buy you breakfast at Fletcher’s.”
Scratching his head, Micah said, “Fletcher’s? You sure, man? I just woke up. I don’t if I can start drinking again.”
“Not to drink. Breakfast.”
“Do they even serve breakfast? I want some eggs, bacon. Hashbrowns.”
“It’s lunchtime. You might have to settle for something off the menu.”
“Forget about Fletcher’s. Let’s go to IHOP. They have that breakfast thing.”
“We can’t go to IHOP,” I said. “I need to talk to Tony.”
“Tony?” Micah ‘s brow furrowed in confusion, then he had an epiphany. “Wait, Tony the bartender?” I nodded and the confused look returned to his face. “Why do you need to talk to Tony?”
“He referred a client to me. I want to ask him a few questions.”
Micah took a big gulp of coffee and leaned forward on the love seat, perking up. “So it’s a job then?”
I grinned at him but didn’t answer. Yeah, it was a job, but there wasn’t any money in it. If Micah knew that, he might opt to go back to bed instead of out for breakfast. It would probably be better for his hang over than some greasy bar food anyway. But I needed a second pair of eyes and Micah’s baby blues would do just fine.
“Come on, Max,” he persisted. “It’s a job isn’t it?”
I shrugged, let the question dangle even more. “Let’s get that breakfast.”
“Goddamit, I knew it. What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t get excited,” I said. “It’s more of a favor. This girl that works for Tony, she’s in some trouble. She just needs someone to watch her back for a while.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Nothing we can’t handle,” I said.
Micah nodded and sipped his coffee. “Who’s the girl? Anyone I know?”
“Probably. Abby Jeunet, plays in a band Saturday nights. We’ve seen them.”
“That chick band?”
“The Heartbreakers,” I said nodding.
Micah was still having trouble processing all of this. “Not the singer.”
“Yes, the singer. She plays guitar too.”
His eyes lit up. “Dude, she’s the hottest one. She’s in trouble?”
“Kind of,” I said, downplaying the situation because I still wasn’t sure how to play it. “An over-exuberant fan has been giving her the heebie-jeebies. She just wants some protection. That’s all.”
Micah hopped to his feet. “I’m in then.”
“You awake now?” I said amused by Micah’s sudden eagerness. “You ready to go?”
“Five minutes,” he said whisking past me.
It took him
less than two to emerge from his bedroom fully dressed, wearing an oversize
Hawaiian shirt and a pair of faded
He came into the living room and started pawing around the shelves of the entertainment center, looking for something. Not finding it, he moved to the jumble of remotes and empty beer cans on the coffee table.
“You seen my wallet?” he asked.
“Is that it?” I said, pointing to a black leather trifold sitting on the kitchen counter. Micah grabbed it and slipped it into his back pocket.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.”
3
Fletcher’s
Bar and Grill was on East Colfax, on the far end of a street that cuts a path right
through the city from the foothills of Golden all the way out to the Eastern
plains outside
Motels left over from the days before the interstate had, after decades of neglect, now become roach-filled fire-traps full of low life drunks and dead end losers. The saloons that had greeted travelers and locals alike back in the day were now dives with blacked out windows and faded neon signs.
Fletcher’s
was no exception, except that it had no windows. It was a cheap wooden building plopped on the
corner of the parking lot of a small strip of Mexican markets. The only sign that it wasn’t condemned was
the big Budweiser banner hanging along the eaves. A primered
“Place is jumping,” Micah snorted as we got out of the car.
Inside the bar, it wasn’t as dead as the parking lot would lead you to believe. A long mahogany bar stretched along the left wall and behind that lay a cluster of orange vinyl booths.
Two men were sitting at opposite ends of the bar, both huddled over their beers and neither talking to anyone.
Another man, at least seventy years old, sat in the rear booth, picking at the label on his long neck. He was curiously watching the two brown youths at the jukebox as one fed the machine a wrinkled dollar bill while the other flipped through the selection.
They could have been Mexican, but they were probably born further south. They had the wide faces and large noses of their Incan ancestors and the dark sun-starched skin of someone who earned their living under the hot sun.
The old man looked up at us as we came in, but then turned his attention back to the South Americans. They were still having trouble with their dollar.
Tony recognized us immediately as we sidled up to the bar. His thin lips spread into a crooked grin showing off a row of crooked front teeth. “Max!” he said, sounding like an Italian chef greeting his best customer. He was a short man in his late thirties, with a round jovial face creased with the wrinkles of age and a million smiles.
“I never see you this early,” he said, holding out a hand. His English was passable, having been in this country for over ten years now, but he had never been able to shake his accent or the sometimes peculiar phrasing he used in his words.
“Tony, good to see you.” I shook his hand and nodded towards Micah. “You remember my friend Micah Cohen.”
“Sure, sure,” Tony said, waving a hand at Micah. “You guys want a drink?”
“I’m alright,” I said.
“No,” Micah said, “but is your kitchen open?”
“Sure,
sure.” Tony was an amiable man, always
smiling. “What do you want?” he said,
beaming. “
“You got any eggs and hashbrowns?”
“Sure, sure,” Tony said. “Eggs, hashbrowns. What else you want? Some pancakes? Blueberry muffins?” Tony laughed and waved his hand again. “I’m joking. I’m joking. You want eggs and hashbrowns, we make you eggs and hashbrowns. Max, you want something?”
“I’m good,” I said. “Thanks.”
“You guys are easy,” Tony said, his smile never dimming. “A few more customers like you and I go broke. Be right back.” He stomped off through the kitchen door, shouting at his nephew, who was also his cook, in Serbo-Croatian. He returned a moment later, shaking his head. “Benny,” he said. He put his thumb and forefinger to his lips as if he were smoking a joint and said, “Smokes too much. You know” Then he laughed. “But don’t worry. Your eggs and hashbrowns will be fine.”
The man too our left finished his beer with a loud “Ahhhh,” and slammed the empty bottle down to get Tony’s attention. He sat there playing with his ballcap until Tony grabbed the empty and gave him a fresh one.
“So what brings you here this time of day, Max? You didn’t just come to feed your friend, did you?”
“Yes,” Micah said.
“No,” I said. “I actually wanted to ask you about Abby.”
Tony nodded. He lowered his head, looked both ways, then whispered, “I hope I wasn’t intruding on, you know.”
“No, don’t worry about it,” I said. “I appreciate the business.”
“Girl comes to me for help, I try to help her. I know what kind of work you’re in, so I send her your way. You can help?”
I shrugged and looked over at Micah. He was leaning on the bar, watching the South American guys. They had gotten the machine to take their dollar and were bickering over the song selection in some language that wasn’t Spanish. It could have been Quechua for all I know. A few moments later, the opening licks of Welcome to the Jungle blasted out of the PA at full volume.
“Hey!” the old man bellowed from his booth. He covered his ears and sat there with a sour face, shaking his head.
Tony chuckled at his grumpy customer but turned the volume down on the stereo unti behind the bar anyway. The South American guys didn’t seem to mind. One of them was putting together a rack on the pool table and the other was selecting a cue stick.
“Thank you!” the old man croaked.
Tony tipped him a two-fingered salute and turned his attention back to me.
“I was actually wondering if you could help me,” I said. “You know this creep that’s bugging Abby, you ever see him around here?”
“One time,” Tony said, holding up a finger. “After her first set, Abby came to me and said he was making faces, so I threw him out.”
Micah laughed.
I looked at him and he covered his smile with a fist.
“What do you mean, making faces?” I asked.
“I don’t know. That’s what she tell me, making faces. I say okay and then Mario get rid of him. I have to make the talent happy right?”
“When did this happen?”
“Um, Saturday. Yes, of course, Saturday night. The Heartbreakers were playing.”
The kitchen doors opened and Micah’s nephew Benny came out holding a plate and a bottle of ketchup. He looked like a mini-version of his uncle, the same stocky build, the same round face, only the eyes were different. Where Tony’s were wide and expressive, Benny’s were blood shot and hooded, as he had just woken up, or more likely, just smoked a joint.
“Here he is,” Tony said, taking the plate and setting it in front of Micah. Benny glared at his uncle, then turned and walked back through the door to the kitchen. “My nephew,” Tony said. He rolled his index finger around his temple and said something in Serbo-Croatian.
Micah was busy stuffing his face so there wouldn’t be anymore interruptions from him.
“Do you think you could describe this guy, the Creep?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look at him,” Tony said. “He was a big guy, not very tall though.”
“What’d he look like?” Micah said, his mouth full of eggs.
“He had brown hair, facial hair too. Not a full beard, just this.” He drew his fingers over his mouth mimicking a mustache and goatee. “Short hair, like Caesar, you know. That’s all I know.”
Micah nudged me with his elbow. “Pass the salt,” he said.
“Please,” I said as I slid it down to him.
“Hey, I noticed you have this place wired,” Micah said, pointing with the salt shaker at the video camera mounted above the bar. There was another one over the entrance and another over by the jukebox. “You wouldn’t happen to have tape of the night you threw the guy out, would ya?”
I looked over at my friend, who was now salting his hashbrowns, and felt proud. Asking about the surveillance video hadn’t even occurred to me. I put a hand on his shoulder and said, “That’s why I bring you along.”
Micah smirked and stuffed a forkful of potatoes into his mouth.
“I don’t know,” Tony said. “I could check. Hold on.” He went to the kitchen door and cracked it with his boot. “Benny!” he called, then started rambling out instructions to his nephew in Serbo-Croatian. He came back shaking his head. “He look for it,” he sighed. “Boy is useless. Useless.”
“You remember what time you tossed him?” I prodded, figuring that information would be useful cueing up any footage of the Creep.
“After first set, that’s all I know.”
Benny came through the kitchen door with a pair of video tapes in each hand. “There’s two for Saturday,” he said. “Which one do you want?” His heavy-lidded eyes showed absolutely no interest in the answer.
“Both,” Tony said. He snatched the tapes out of Benny’s hand and waved him away like a petty servant. Grimacing at both me and Micah, Benny backed towards the kitchen and disappeared through the door without saying your welcome.
“Now, Max,” Tony said, “these tapes are important. You can borrow them, borrow them, but I’m going to need them back.”
“Got it,” I said. “I’ll bring them back tomorrow, if that’s fine with you.”
Tony nodded.
“And your bouncer, Mario. I’d like to talk to him, too. Is he going to be around tomorrow?”
“Sure, sure. He’ll be here later tonight, too. He only works weekends.”
“I’ll just talk to him tomorrow,” I said. “I’m booked later.”
Tony’s eyes flared. “Hot date, huh?”
“Something like that,” I shrugged.
“You know, I think I’ll have that drink now,” Micah said. He had finished his breakfast and was wiping his mouth with his napkin. When he saw the look on my face, he said, “What?”
“Nothing,” I shrugged.
Tony poured him a glass and set it in front of Micah.
“Tell your nephew that was excellent,” Micah said, licking his lips. He sucked off the foam and gulped down a quarter of his beer in one sip. “You got this, right, Max? I didn’t bring any cash.”
“On the house,” Tony said.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“No, no. Small favor for a friend.”
“I’m your friend, too,” the man in the ballcap said. “Don’t I get a free drink?”
Tony grinned at Micah, wagging a finger at him. “See what you started? Alright, everyone, next one’s on the house.”
The guys at the bar cheered, while the South American guys, not understanding English, hardly interrupted their game to pay attention. The old man in the back booth bowed his head in gratitude but didn’t get up to claim his prize. All told, it would cost Tony a half dozen beers, small price to pay for some customer loyalty.
“I don’t care what they say. You’re alright, Tone,” the drunk in the ballcap stuttered.
“Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to protect.” He turned back to us and said, “Are you guys coming to the show tomorrow?”
I looked at Micah and said, “Yeah.” We hadn’t actually talked about that part yet. He frowned but didn’t say anything. “We’re going to come early, stay late. That kind of thing. Abby wants me to take her home. That’s not going to be a problem, is it?” I didn’t want to impinge on Tony’s ability to run a safe establishment.
He smiled and shook his head. “No problem,” he said. “You help Abby, you help me. Whatever you need.”
“Alright,” I said, swiveling in the bar stool. “We’ll be by tomorrow. Thanks for the, you know,” I gestured to the empty plate in front of Micah and the beer in his hand. Then I tapped the video tapes on the bar. “And these too.”
“Anytime,” Tony said. “You take care of that girl. She’s a good kid.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said, then I tapped Micah on the shoulder. “Drink up,” I told him.
4
Ten minutes later we were back on the road.
“So what’s the deal with tomorrow?” Micah asked after brooding about it for a few blocks. “We’re going to a show at Fletcher’s?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Abby’s playing tomorrow night.”
“I gathered that part.”
“We’re going to be her protection,” I said, giving it a sarcastic spin. I was serious about my work, but it sounded silly. Abby wasn’t some big rockstar with an entourage and security detail. She just needed someone to watch her back and make her feel safe.
“What does that entail exactly?”
“Vigilance,” I said. “We’re going to be on the look out for any stocky guy with a goatee and a Caesar haircut who happens to show up.”
“Then what?”
I shrugged. It was becoming clear that my friend was thinking this through much better than I was. He was seeing ahead, whereas I could only see a helpless girl, a beautiful helpless girl.
“First, we need to get a look at him,” I said, deliberately pulling the reins back on my enthusiasm. I handed him the videotapes Tony had given me. “I want you to go through those tapes and see what you can find. Supposedly it happened after the first set, so you can start looking there. I want to see his face.”
Micah tapped the video tapes on his knee. “I’ll look, but you know those surveillance videos. You can’t really see anything.”
“I know,” I said. “But look anyway.”
“You got it, boss,” Micah said.
I hated it when he called me boss, and he knew it. But I didn’t say anything.
We drove in silence for a while, and then when we got into his neighborhood and pulled in front of his building, Micah said, “You know, she really is a pretty girl, Abby. I mean, when’s she’s playing guitar and all that she’s fucking hot, right, but you can still tell that underneath all that, she’s a really pretty girl.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
He grinned at me for a moment then got out of the car.
5
When I got back to the office, Eliza was already gone. She had left a pair of sticky notes on my office door at eye level where I could see it. The first one, written in a small girlish script, read:
Max,
The
contract for the Jeunet job is on your desk. I’m not cashing that check until we have all
the necessary paperwork on file, so make getting her signature your first
priority.
E.
The second one was in all caps.
PS.
YOUR WIFE CALLED.
“Yes, boss,” I mumbled, crumpling the note and making a bank shot off the filing cabinet into the trashcan. The truth was that I didn’t mind Eliza’s bossy tone because if the day to day business operations of Max Beatty Investigations, LLC were left to me, we would be bankrupt, closed down and probably locked up. Eliza kept me honest and in line, and I respected that.
But she didn’t know about the special arrangement I had worked out Abby, and the contract that she prepared probably had the same language as my standard contract, which spelled out my usual rates, which of course Abby would not pay.
The office was dark, but I flipped on the desk lamp and soon the room was filled with diffuse fluorescent light. The contract was there on the desk, and after paging through it, I discovered that it was unusable because Eliza had in fact assumed that we negotiated the normal fee. I sighed loudly and crumpled the sheaf of papers into a big ball. Swish, nothing but net.
I got out a pen and a sticky pad and wrote a note of my own.
Eliza,
I
had to make a few changes to the contract, but I’ll get a signature tomorrow
night. Cash that check!
Max
I went out into the main office area and stuck the note on Eliza’s computer screen. Her desk, hidden from visitors beneath the counter, was clean and orderly, as usual, but there was a pile of pink message carbons tossed in a heap in front of a picture of her kids.
I picked
one up and read it, but it was old, from last year, so I put it back down. Curious, I picked up the book with that day’s
calls. Eliza was meticulous about recording
every call that came in, even personal ones.
At
Then at
I sat on the desk and grabbed the phone, dialing my wife’s cell phone number. It rang through to voicemail but I didn’t leave a message. Instead, I called home on the off chance that she was there, but there was no answer. It was still early afternoon, which meant she was still at work, probably in a meeting.
The dinner was a little tradition of ours. Once a week, we carve a night out of our busy schedules and go to a restaurant we’ve never been to before, although after four years of marriage, we have had to make allowances for any favorites. La Cueva, a Mexican restaurant on Colfax, was one of our repeats and usually made it into the rotation once every couple of months.
I booted up Eliza’s computer and called up the standard contract template in the word processor. Every client of Max Beatty Investigations, LLC is required to sign one, no matter how big or small. Though it’s legally binding, it’s nothing drastic, mostly a way to outline how I’m going to be paid as well as clear up any liability issues so I don’t get sued by an unhappy customer. For Abby’s contract, it meant that I had to change most of the language to show that the two hundred fifty dollar deposit was the only payment expected.
About halfway through editing the document, I was interrupted by the ringing telephone.
“Max Beatty,” I answered.
It was Karen. “Sorry I missed your call. I didn’t have my phone on me. Did you get my message?”
I nodded
even though she couldn’t see me. “La Cueva, yeah. Sounds
good.” My eyes were reading a sentence
in the contract but my mind wasn’t registering the words. I blinked and turned away from the
computer. “
“Let’s make it eight,” she said. “I’m going to be held up here for a while. Have you seen the news?”
“Not lately.”
“Some
asshole got himself shot by a couple of uniform patrolman down in
“Another police shooting, huh?” I said dryly. “Must be some kind of record.”
There had been a lot of them the last few months. It seemed that a shoot first, ask questions later policy had arisen in each division of the Denver Police Department, and people were getting killed left and right. Karen tried to keep a handle on it in the Internal Affairs division but she wasn’t exactly a cop, not anymore. Her official title was legal adviser, and in that capacity, she was often called out to advise detectives investigating police shootings. She didn’t get her hands dirty. She just “supervised.”
My wife, the bureaucrat.
“It’s a big city,” she said, as if that explained anything. “This one doesn’t look dirty, though. The suspect was brandishing a weapon, an actual weapon, a gun, and we have tape of him trying to rob a nearby bank. Sounds clean.”
Clean,
which was important because so many weren’t.
In one case, the
I didn’t say anything about this latest example of lethal force. The problems of the Denver Police were the furthest thing from my mind.
Karen seemed to sense this so she said, “What are you doing?”
“Reworking a contract. I got a new client today.”
“I heard,” she said, her tone changing.
Oh shit, I thought. Here we go.
“Oh yeah, you heard?”
Karen sighed and said “A hooker, Max?” with such disapproval it reminded me for a moment what it was like to be a child.
“What?” I laughed.
“Eliza said some hooker friend of yours came in and hired you to protect her from some overzealous john.”
“It’s not what you think,” I said. “First of all, she’s not a—“
Karen cut me off. “I know, I know,” she said. “You just know her in a professional capacity.” I wasn’t sure if she was giving me a hard time or actually accusing me of something.
“She’s not a hooker,” I said. “She’s in a rock band. And I don’t know her, she knows me. Once again Eliza doesn’t get her facts straight.”
“Yeah, well,” Karen said because she didn’t know what else to say. Eliza’s penchant for exaggeration had been well established and Karen knew it. There was an uncomfortable moment of silence on the other end of the line. I could hear cops talking about cop things in the background.
“It’s a favor for Tony,” I said, a little falsehood that had a kernel of truth in it. “Her band plays at Fletcher’s.”
“Uh huh.”
“And it’s an overzealous fan, not a john.”
“Okay, Max.” She didn’t sound convinced. The cop voices got closer and one of them addressed her. Karen clammed up. “Listen, I gotta go. I’ll see you at eight.”
“Alright,” I said. “Love you.”
“Yep,” she said, businesslike and impersonal, then click, she was gone, not even an I love you too. In an office filled with alpha males who had slaved their way up the echelons of the department, Karen was the only she-wolf in the pack. She-wolves rarely have time for such marital niceties.
6
A few hours
later, I was driving down
It was Micah.
“Max!” He always started phone conversations by blurting out the name of the person he was talking to. I don’t think he was even conscious of it.
I responded in kind. “Micah!”
“I watched the tapes, man,” he said. “One’s a porno tape. I only watched a few minutes of it, but liked what I saw.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I wish I was. The label says Saturday, but I’m telling you, it’s a porno. The other one is a surveillance tape, but it’s dated the week before. I just scanned through it long enough to see that it’s not going to help us. It’s the wrong day.”
I chewed on my fingernail. “How’s the camera?” I asked, hoping there was something still salvageable in the surveillance angle.
“Crap,” Micah said. “Low res black and white, maybe six frames a second. Add the low light in the bar and you get shadows and shapes, not faces. It’s like I thought, useless.”
“It was worth a shot though.”
“And not a total loss,” Micah said with a salacious chuckle that could only have referred to the bonus on the other tape.
“Yeah, alright,” I said, not wanting to get into a discussion about the finer points of adult videos. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Thanks, man.”
I disconnected the call and tossed the phone on the passenger seat next to me. The mournful song on the radio echoed my disappointment but it was mild. Even if by some wild chance the camera had captured the Creep’s ejection from the bar, it would have meant nothing if the image itself was unusable. Wow, a shadow on a tape, very impressive.
A new song was playing on the radio now, but
it didn’t fit the mood so I changed it over to AM and scanned the frequencies
looking for a news station. I caught the
tail end of a story about the president’s trip to
I rolled up
the window and turned the volume up to hear better. “Reports indicate that the suspect attempted
to rob a bank on
I was about to change the station back to music, but there was another story that caught my ear.
“In other news,
police are warning residents of Capitol Hill to be on the lookout after a
brutal sexual assault left a thirty-four year old woman in critical condition
early this morning. A man police
described as a white male in his 30s broke into her
“Jesus Christ,” I said before turning it back to the FM station in disgust. Trigger happy cops and Capitol Hill rapists. It was almost too much to bear.
7
At 8:15, I was sitting at the bar inside La Cueva, a half warm cerveza in my paw, one eye on the Nuggets game playing on the TV mounted behind the bar and the other on the reflection of the front door in the mirrors behind the whisky bottles. I had been snacking on chips and salsa so I wasn’t hungry, but I was starting to get impatient.
I had already been sitting there for a half hour, seeing as I was trying to be the good husband by being fifteen minutes early. I lit a cigarette and glared at the TV screen. The Nuggets were down by six points in the fourth, with Carmelo riding the bench in foul trouble. My beer was starting to taste soapy.
There was a clang of the doors and I turned around to see Karen walking in, shaking her hair out of a tie and breathing a sigh of relief. She was dressed for work, wearing business slacks and a button up blouse under the standard FBI issue trench coat she insisted on wearing year round. She looked good, like she just stepped off the set of Law and Order. .
When she smiled at me and I saw her green eyes flash, I forgot all about being forced to wait. Fifteen minutes was nothing for that smile.
I got up and hugged her, kissed her on the cheek. “Hey baby,” I said, wrapping my arm around her waist. She collapsed into me and moaned with relief.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said. “Sorry I’m late.”
“No problem.”
I waved to the hostess, who had already grabbed a pair of menus, and she escorted us to a small private table behind a partition of glass bricks. Karen let out a big heave of breath when she sat down and the hostess, still hovering, asked us what we’d like to drink. Karen ordered a cocktail. I asked for a water and a fresh beer.
“Tough day?” I asked, even though the haggard look on her face told me all I needed to know about the answer.
Karen rolled her eyes and growled. “You have no idea. I spent the whole morning in budget meetings. There was no particular reason why I should be there. I’m not part of the budget committee, but I was there anyway. Then this bank robbery happens.” She tilted her head back and feigned tears.
A waitress appeared with our drinks and asked if we were ready to order. Karen, already sucking on her straw like her drink was the very water of life, ordered a burrito and then shrugged it off to me. I asked for the enchilada combinación, no onions.
“Bank robbery?” I said after the waitress left. “I thought it was a police shooting.” I grinned smugly.
“You don’t have to be so cynical all the time, Max. It was a bank robbery before it became a police shooting.”
I held up my hands in surrender. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it,” she said, hiding behind her drink. It was now mostly ice, all the alcohol having already been siphoned off by Karen’s thirsty lips.
“Unless you want to.”
“Not particularly, no.”
“Okay then,” I said.
Karen’s eyes took on a mischievous glint, emboldened by the drink. “So tell me about your day,” she crowed. It was her turn to be smug now. “Tell me about the hooker.”
“I told you, she’s not a hooker.”
“Right, she’s in a rock band.”
“Yes, and her name is Abby.”
“But dresses like a hooker,” she said narrowly.
I shrugged. I didn’t think Abby dressed like a hooker, but I could understand how others might have a different view. “It’s part of the act, I guess.”
“And you know her how again?”
“We went through this.”
“Oh yeah, you don’t know her. She knows you.”
“So you were listening.”
“Of course I was, but I’m still a little fuzzy on one thing. How does she know you?”
“Tony,” I said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Ah yes, your ‘friend’ Tony,” she said, putting the quote marks over friend with her fingers. Karen had always doubted that Tony genuinely liked me. She thought he was friendly only to keep me coming back for more drinks. If she had known him better, she might have felt differently.
But I didn’t want to argue the point, so I said, “She was referred to me. What does it matter if it was through the yellow pages or through someone I know?”
Karen stewed over the ice cubes in her drink, rethinking her strategy now that she had been shut down on that particular line of inquiry. She was already mad, but deep down she knew she had no reason to be so she was groping for anything. Not finding anything, she caught the waitress’s eye and ordered another cocktail.
It arrived the same time as our food.
“Looks good,” she said as the waitress placed a steaming plate in front of her.
Inhaling the warm aroma of the enchiladas in front of me, I could only grunt, “Uh huh.”
We didn’t speak much as we ate. Karen drained her second drink after a few bites, then made a comment about the green chili being hot tonight. I nodded and offered a drink of my water. She ordered another drink instead. That was three.
“You’re going to need a ride home,” I said with a grin as the waitress delivered it and refilled my water glass. Karen had enough drinks in her to think it was cute and she smiled. Some of the rationality that I loved so much in my wife was returning now that the alcohol had dulled her misguided anger.
“Good thing you’re going where I’m going then, huh?” She tipped her glass at me and drank.
Drink number three only lasted about a minute, a minute in which we sat in stony silence, Karen drifting off to her own land of drunken reflection and me watching her watch me. Her eyes were getting glassy, unfocused. Her tired frown had been replaced with a bemused smile.
“You’re not really upset about my new client,” I said, “but something’s really bothering you. You should just come out and say it.”
The smile faded for a moment but returned in a muted form as she said, “I’m just trying to unwind after a very long day. I’m not mad about your client. I’m glad you got one. You’ve been complaining about being bored. Well, here you go. Something to do. And Max, you really think I’m worried about some pretty young thing swooping down and stealing my husband? Sorry, honey, but I’m not afraid of a skanky bar bitch.”
“Careful. She’s my client.”
“Sorry, but it’s true. You’re a professional and you know how to handle yourself. And really, Max, I don’t care. ” She shook her head and then felt the need to repeat it, this time with emphasis. “I…don’t…care. Is that clear enough?”
“So what is it?” I prodded, not letting her evade the question. “The shooting?”
She dropped a fist to the table and sneered, “Come on, Max. I’m a professional too. That’s my job.”
“But it gets to you after a while,” I said. “Just look at me.”
“I’m not a—“ But she stopped herself.
“A what?” I said. “A burnout like me?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Another drink and you might have.”
Two years and a career change couldn’t erase the disappointment my wife still felt after my I had burned out on policework and got myself kicked out of the department. I left; she remained and moved up the ladder to a position of some authority, well at least one that didn’t require a uniform. It was a cudgel she used to beat me with from time to time.
She saw the sting on my face and said, “I’m sorry, Max.”
I shook it away. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.
Karen looked at her empty drink and said, “Yeah, let’s.”
She slipped off to the ladies room and I went to the cash register to pay the bill and arrange for Karen’s car not to be towed. I had to promise to be there first thing in the morning to pick it up, small price to pay to avoid a DUI. I wandered around the lobby until Karen returned from the bathroom. Her face was flushed and sour, her eyes watery. Beads of sweat rolled down her forehead.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I am now,” she said. “Take me home, baby,” she said latching onto me. Her breath smelled of vodka and stomach acid, but her trip to the ladies room had sobered her up some.
She was able to make it outside, but I carried her the rest of the way.
8
When we got home, she guided herself to the bedroom. I followed her in and helped her undress.
Climbing under the covers, she said, “Are you coming to bed?”
“Not right now,” I said. “I’m not really tired.”
She had started to nestle her head into the pillow. “Come cuddle with me,” she said with a contented smile. She smoothed out my side of the bed as I hestitated. “Come on.”
I took off my clothes and shut the lights. When I got into bed, she scooted towards me until her back was on my chest and I wrapped my arm around her. Her body was warm and soft against mine as I held her. Soon, she was asleep and I would have been too, if I hadn’t heard the muffled ringtone on my cellphone.
I fumbled in the dark through the heap of clothes at the foot of the bed and managed to answer it before it went to voicemail.
“This is Max, ” I said quietly as I walked out of the bedroom.
The voice on the other end of the line was loud in the silence of the house. “Max, it’s Abby.”
Now in the kitchen, I said, “Is everything alright?”
I could hear the clink of glasses and the snap of a cue stick. “Huh? Oh yeah, yeah. I just got off work. My real job, that is.”
“Where are you?” I asked. “You need a ride?”
“No,” she said. “No, my friend Jeff is going to take me home tonight. I was just calling to make sure you’re still coming tomorrow. You know, to the show and all we talked about.”
“I was planning on it,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “Good.”
Suddenly things had gotten awkward. I wondered if her friend Jeff was hovering because she wasn’t saying anything and when she did it was suitably brief and vague.
“So tomorrow then,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said.
Neither of us said anything for a while. Achy Breaky Heart started playing in the background.
“Alright then,” she said. “Good night.”
“Bye,” I said, pushing the END button on my phone. I tossed it on the kitchen table and got back into bed with my wife. The phone call had rousted her and she was now sitting up on her elbows.
“Who was it?” she asked sleepily.
“My client,” I said.
“The hooker?”
I didn’t answer.
9
In the morning, I slipped out of the house as Karen slept and walked two blocks to Colfax, where I stood by the bus stop sign and smoked a cigarette. It was still early, but the sun had already peeked over the plains, casting streaks of orange fire in the sky and swirls of purple smoke over the mountains. The Fifteen-L bus pulled up about ten minutes later and I got on.
It took me through the awakening city, the shop fronts still closed, the streets deserted, and dropped me off a block from La Cueva. Karen’s car was sitting in the parking lot behind the building, untowed and untouched as promised. Wanting to kill time before going back home, I took the car out onto Colfax and drove the other direction, toward downtown.
Once past Monaco, I cut over to 13th Avenue, a one-way street with paced lights that would take me all the way through, and before long had crossed Colorado Boulevard into Capitol Hill. I drove past the high rise condos and Victorian townhomes until I got to Sherman, where I made a left and went down a few blocks.
Up ahead, I could see the row of nearly identical brick buildings known as Poets Row. Across the street, loomed twin buildings called the Belmont and the Buckingham, set back off the street with a wide ornate lawn in the front. I slowed to a crawl as I passed the buildings, reading off the names to myself. The Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Mark Twain, the Louisa May Alcott, the Emily Dickinson. The building named after Robert Frost, Abby’s building, was the last one on the block. Across the street, the Eugene Field and the Robert Browning glared enviously at their literary brethren, the only poet buildings stranded on the east side of the street.
I parked the car in an empty space around the corner and got out and went around to the alley. The basement exit had a heavy steel door with no handle and I couldn’t get it open even after trying for a few minutes. All the basement windows had security bars on them and thick curtains that hid anything inside. I circled through the tiny a parking lot between the two buildings and came around to the front steps.
It was here that Abby had her encounter with the Creep. I tried to picture him sitting there, then glanced around to take in the view. From wherever he was on the front steps, he had a great line of sight, both ways down Sherman and straight down 10th, and plenty of advance warning to see whoever was coming The only blindspot was behind him, around the corner of the building, which was the direction Abby had been coming from the night she startled him.
How many times, I wondered, did he sit right there in that very spot waiting for Abby to come home, only to slink off into the shadows undetected?
A shiver unrelated to the weather went up my spine as I went through the front door into a small lobby. The mailslots and the buzzbox were on the same wall, and both were identified by number only. The other door was made of heavy glass and had a strong electro-magnetic lock. I peered through it into a white hallway with blue carpeting and apartment doors on either side. A flight of stairs immediately inside the doorway led up to the second floor.
Presumably Abby was home, most likely sleeping, but I wasn’t sure which unit she lived in and I hadn’t planned on saying hi anyway. But curious about the security measures, I pressed the button for number 207 and waited for a response.
A moment later, a groggy voice crackled on the box. “Yeah?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said in my most officious voice, “it’s the mail carrier. I’ve got a package that needs a signature. You wanna buzz me up?”
“Uh, sure, man. Hold on.”
A loud buzz came from somewhere inside the building and the door lock clicked. I didn’t think it would be so easy. He hadn’t even asked me if the package was for him. I pushed through the door and walked into the hallway of the first floor. The smell of sizzling bacon wafted from under one of the doors and when I got to the second set of stairs at the end of the hall, the pants and groans of morning love-making came out from another.
I took the stairs up to the second floor. A door halfway down the hall was wide open, number 207. A dreadlocked head peaked out of the apartment and spotted me.
“Yo, man. You seen the mailman?” the man asked, scratching his head.
“Yeah, he’s down in the lobby,” I said, walking around to the stairs that would take me to the third floor. The man scratched his head again and went back into his apartment.
The top floor looked the same as the other two but I walked the length of it anyway. By the process of elimination, I had ruled apartment 207 out as belonging to Abby, but all the others were still on the table. I realized that if I wanted to know so bad, I could just call her. I had saved her phone number into my cell phone, and even if she didn’t answer, I could probably hear the ringing telephone through the flimsy walls and pinpoint her that way.
But that’s not what the Creep would do. For one, he wouldn’t have her phone number. For another, he wouldn’t have the courage to actually make the call. And as this thought occurred to me, I started to feel awkward. I only wanted a feel for the place, wanted to see if the Creep could get in the front door. I hadn’t wanted to become the Creep.
Now that I had my answer to the security situation, it was time to go. On the way downstairs, I passed the neo-hippie who lived in 207. He was still waiting for his package, but this time he didn’t say anything to me. I slipped down the back stairs into the basement. The hallway opened onto a small laundry room before abruptly ending at a door marked Boiler Room.
I passed a few other doors, apartments maybe, as I walked into the alcove behind the stairs. Dim alley light filtered through the bars on the windows, providing a colorful view of the trash dumpster. I pushed through the steel door, inspecting the mechanism that would swing the door closed. It started swinging the heavy door back as soon as I let go, but before it could fully close, I caught it with my shoe and eased it back with my fingertips. Sometimes a door closer will pull a door closed but not have the power to engage the lock.
This door didn’t have that problem. It slipped off my fingertips and fell into its frame with a loud slam. It was doubtful it could be propped open without a lot of preparation. I stepped back and looked up at the brick wall of the building. All things considered, the place was a fortress.
Walking back to my car, I reassured myself that Abby’s apartment was reasonably safe, not impregnable, but secure enough to require a lot of effort on the Creep’s part to get in. Based on what I knew about him, that wasn’t likely.
He was a coward. He was comfortable lurking in the shadows. He might loiter around the building entrance, but he wouldn’t go inside. He wouldn’t even want to. The fantasy was too important.
At least that’s what I hoped.
10
When I got home, I found Karen lying on the couch, a pillow tucked between her legs. Her half-closed eyes were passively watching a Saturday morning cartoon on the television but when I walked into the room, they swiveled up to me. A weak smile came across her face, but then she turned her attention back to her show.
Karen was still wearing the sweat pants and t-shirt she had slept in and looked like she had no interest in changing into anything else. She yawned and unfurled an arm in a long stretch. “Where’d you go? You were gone a while.”
“I went to get your car,” I said. I sat down on the loveseat and put my feet on the coffee table. My drive through the neighborhood had put me in a quiet, reflective mood and I didn’t think Karen needed all the details of my morning, especially my little tour of Poets Row.
“Oh.” She frowned as if she had forgotten why I needed to get her car, then her face cleared and she said, “Thanks.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything.
“I said thanks.”
Apparently she hadn’t seen the nod.
“I nodded,” I said in my defense. “But you’re welcome.” I rolled my eyes, hoping she didn’t see that either.
She turned to look at me then, and I could see in her eyes something that told me trying to be funny or cute this morning wasn’t going to fly, not in her condition. Her glare started to hurt.
“What?” I said.
“Please don’t start with me, Max,” she said. “I have a huge headache and I’m just not in the mood.”
“I didn’t even say anything.”
Karen sighed. “Max.”
“Alright, sorry,” I said. It wasn’t convincing, but that’s all the apology I could muster. If life was fair, I wouldn’t have been the one apologizing anyway.
She turned back to the TV, focusing her attention on the cartoon, a sour look on her face. I watched her for a moment, wondering how such a lovely creature such as my wife could justify in her own mind unconscionable acts of bitchiness. After a while, the color and sound on TV sucked me in and we sat there in silence, two grown people watching cartoons.
During the commercial, an ad for a new romantic comedy starring Matthew McConaughey caught Karen’s eye. After a scene that featured his bulging muscles, she said, “We should go see that tonight.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I’m working tonight,” I said.
“On a Saturday night? You gotta be kidding me. What are you doing?” She had sat up and was now scowling at me. The irritation in her voice was like a presence in the room.
“Going to Fletcher’s,” I said like it was nothing.
Incredulous, she said, “You’re going to Fletcher’s…for a job.”
I held up my hands to show I wasn’t hiding anything.
“The hooker job?” she said.
I nodded. “She’s not a hooker. She’s in the band.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that.” She crossed her arms and started tugging at her lip. After a while, she said, “Micah’s going with you, isn’t he?”
I looked up at her to see if she had some kind of special apparatus which allowed her to read brain waves. She knew me and the company I kept way too well. “Yeah, so?”
“I knew it.” She shook her head, disgusted. “You know, you don’t have to make up all this stuff about a job if you want to go drinking with your friend.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a job. I explained this to you already. The girl, the creep stalking her. Remember any of that? Why are you making this a big deal?”
She breathed deeply, trying to put the words together in her mind before sending them to her mouth. Then she said, “You want to know why I’m making this a big deal? It’s Saturday night and you don’t want to spend it with your wife.” She tried to conceal the hurt in her voice, but a quaver gave it away. “You’d rather go see some band at a bar.”
“It’s a job,” I said. “It’s my job.”
And I love my job. The thought brought a devious smile to my face which Karen interpreted as a sign of my insincerity.
She spoke with a contained angry voice. “Do what you want, Max. I don’t care.”
“Since I have your permission,” I said, getting to my feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Outside,” I said. “To mow the lawn.”
I expected some kind of remark, but she just looked up at me, her bloodshot eyes watery, a stern expression on her face.
“Is that okay with you?” I asked.
She looked away, focused on the TV, trying to pretend I wasn’t there anymore. “Yeah fine,” she huffed under her breath.
I waited for more because I knew it was coming, but amazingly she had nothing else to say. The cartoon and her anger had captured her attention. I was just another deadbeat husband who leaves his wife home alone on Saturday nights, and so I could be ignored.
I started to walk out of the room, but paused and turned, poised to say something I couldn’t take back later. I thought better of it and instead, just walked away without another word.
11
After mowing the lawn, I trimmed the edges and pulled some weeds in the flower beds. I plucked off all the dead buds and added some compost. I picked it the trash that had blown under the bushes along the fence.
As far as I knew, Karen was still inside on the couch, still in her jammies, still watching cartoons, or maybe now she was watching golf. I didn’t bother to go inside to check.
After I finished with the lawn, I went for a drive to get cigarettes. I topped off the tank even though it was already half full. I got a car wash. I stopped by the post office and bought some stamps from the machine. I went to the thrift store and thumbed through the old records. I took my time.
When I got home, Karen was gone, no note, no message on my cell phone, so I stretched out on the couch and closed my eyes. I wasn’t quite asleep when I heard knocking at the front door. I sat upright and glanced at the bouncing figure silhouetted through the frosted glass panel.
“Come on, Max. Open up,” Micah said urgently. “I gotta piss.”
I undid the locks and opened the door. Micah bolted past me and disappeared into the bathroom. He didn’t bother to close the door and so I heard his struggle with both the toilet seat and his zipper, and then when he finally got himself in position, I could hear the tinkle and Micah’s relieved moans.
I glanced at the clock. It was almost six.
“Did you eat?” I said.
The toilet flushed and then I could hear water running in the sink. “No, not yet. I figured I’d pick something up from Fletcher’s. Maybe Tony will pick up the tab again.”
I rubbed my chin, not finding the prospect of bar food too appetizing, but realizing there was little time for anything else. The rumble in my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten all day.
He came out of the bathroom, shaking his wet hands. “You ever hear of towels?” He flicked his fingers in my direction, sprinkling me with droplets. “Where’s Karen?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Ah,” Micah said, leaning his head back with a knowing glaze in his eyes. “You guys are fighting again.”
“Are we that bad?”
“Not any worse than any other married couple I know. What’d you do this time?”
“I’m hanging out with you tonight instead of her.”
“Come on, man. I know your wife doesn’t like me, but Christ, get over it already. That’s nothing.”
“She doesn’t like Abby either.”
Micah dismissed that idea with a wave. “You know women,” he said. “They concoct all kinds of reasons to hate each other and most of the time it’s just bullshit.”
“And there’s something else, too” I said.
“There’s always something and half the time they don’t know what it is either,” Micah said, the all-knowing sage of advice.
“Karen was called out to a police shooting yesterday. I think that might have something to do with it.”
Micah’s eyebrows perked up. “No shit? That bank robbery from yesterday? I heard about it on the news.”
“That’s the one.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Karen wouldn’t talk about it.”
“She didn’t…you know, pull the trigger, did she?”
“No, man. She doesn’t even carry a weapon anymore. She was called out to the scene afterwards.”
Micah shrugged. “You’ve seen one crime scene, you’ve seen them all. What’s the big deal?””
“No clue,” I said. “Maybe the disillusionment is setting in.”
Micah knew what disillusionment I was talking about because he had felt it before me, not as a cop but in the Marine Corps. At first you believe, with every cell of your being, and you put up with the bullshit because you’re serving a higher cause. But after a while, you start seeing the hierarchy in a different light. The ugly cracks and scars are exposed, and that’s when the disillusionment starts. You either have to get yourself out of the situation, as Micah did after the end of his commitment to the Marine Corps, and I did when my career in police work ended.
Karen, on the other, was still hanging on, still a true believer in the good of the system, trying to ignore the cracks and the scars. It was only inevitable that disillusionment would creep in.
“Maybe,” Micah said. “Don’t worry about it though, Max. She’ll get over it.”
“Yeah.”
Micah clapped his hands. He was done talking about my wife’s troubles. “So are we walking or what?”
It was only two blocks to Fletcher’s, so I said, “Might as well.”
“Then let’s get the show on the road.”
12
A short but massive Mexican was guarding the door. He was probably three hundred pounds, at least a hundred of that in his belly, but not all of it fat. He was wearing an Oakland Raiders T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, showing off massive protein-shake enhanced biceps. A tribal tattoo wound down his arm from his shoulder, ending at the end of his wrist. He was wearing sunglasses and didn’t look amused.
He took one look at me and one look at Micah and then held out a thick paw.
“ID,” he said.
He scanned both of them, then handed them back.
Micah tapped the pair of videotapes in his hand. “I’m going to give these back to Tony,” he said, then looked at me with a mischievous grin. “I’ll let you girls talk.” He patted my arm, then ducked through the doors and leaving me alone with the intimidating doorman.
The door man stared at me, his face pinched in insult.
I said, “You’re Mario, right?”
The door man tilted his head towards me. “Yeah, who’re you?”
“I’m Max Beatty, Tony’s friend. I was hoping I could ask you a few questions about a guy you threw out about a week ago.”
“Yeah,” Mario said, nodding. “Tony told me some dude would be asking me about that fool. I don’t know what to tell you, man. He pissed off the wrong people and had to go, so I booted him. Don’t ask me why.”
“You didn’t see him doing anything?”
“Nope, I was watching the door. Boss told me to do it, so I did. I was just doing my job.”
“You think you could recognize him again if you saw him?”
Mario’s brow creased in a frown. “Oh hell yeah, man. That motherfucker is banned for life.” He pointed at his temple and said, “You don’t ever get out of here. I got an eye for faces, man. I never forget em.”
“You ever talk to him?” I realized that I had taken an unconscious step backward.
He grinned, showing off a gleaming gold grill that must have cost him a fortune. “Nah, not really,” he said. “Just enough to get him through the door, never got his name or anything like that. I do know that he spent some time inside, though.”
“How do you know that?”
“He told me.” Mario slid his sunglasses down his nose, revealing the tear drop tattooed at the corner of his left eye. “When he saw this, he thought we were brothers or something. Shit.” The grin reappeared, glinting in the fading sunlight. “I did two years for stealing cars when I was nineteen, bro. I ain’t proud of it. It is what it is. But it don’t make me brothers with every poor motherfucker that gets chewed up and spit out by the justice system.”
I nodded. “He say where he did his time or how recent?”
“Nah, man. We didn’t go into it. He just said he did time. Doesn’t surprise me either. He’s got that look to him. That caged animal look, you know. Those motherfuckers are dangerous. You never know what they’re going to do. To tell you the truth, I hope I never see his creepy ass again. If I do…” He slammed a meaty fist into his palm.
I put a hand on his shoulder and a twenty dollar bill, folded to a sliver, in his fist. “That makes two of us,” I said. “If you do see him, let me know, huh?”
A flash of gold showed his appreciation and he held the door open for me. “Sure thing,” he said.
“Good man,” I said, stepping inside.
13
The bar was crowded. Saturday nights always bring a different scene to Fletcher’s, especially when the Heartbreakers were playing. The old drunks and migrant workers were gone, replaced by bikers and rock chicks dressed in black. A few hipsters and punk enthusiasts, many of them female, were sprinkled in for flavor.
I found Micah at the corner of the bar, leaning in to talk to Tony over the cacophony of bar noise. He started when I put a hand on his back and turned around ready to deck me.
“Max!” he said.
“Can I get a Corona?” I asked Tony.
He got a fresh one from the cooler, popped the top, and placed it in front of me with a lime wedge. “Your friend was just explaining to me how Benny used camera system to copy dirty movies,” he said, shaking his head. “So sorry, Max. I had no idea.”
“These things happen,” Micah said, winking at me.
“So that’s what happened with the porno, huh?” I said.
“Benny promise never again,” Tony said. He wiped a hand through the air to show he was serious.
I nodded.
Micah pointed up at the ceiling and said, “It’s working properly tonight though, right?”
Tony nodded. “I assure you.” He kissed his fingers.
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” I said. “The Creep’s not getting in here tonight. I just talked to your bouncer, Mario. He remembers the guy and isn’t letting him back in. Banned for life, he said.”
“Mario never forgets a face,” Tony said, “and no one gets past Mario.”
“I believe that,” I said. “Anyway, Mario also told me an interesting little fact. Our boy has done time.”
Micah raised an eyebrow, understanding the implication.
“No specifics, but Mario said the Creep bragged about his stretch.”
“Did he say how recent?” Micah asked. He was thinking along the same lines I was.
I shook my head. “No specifics, just the history.”
“What’s that mean?” Tony asked.
“It might help us identify him,” I explained. “Depending on what he did and how recent it was, there should be a paper trail a mile long. He could be on probation or something. He might even be required to register as a sex offender.”
Tony nodded but his brow was still furrowed in confusion.
“The system makes it very easy to track those guys down,” I said. “We run the names and then it’s just a process of elimination from there.”
“But that’s quite a process,” Micah said, frowning. Getting the list would be the easy part. Making the phone calls and knocking on doors to whittle it down would be time-consuming and labor intensive. In theory, the list could have hundreds of names.
“It’s something,” I shrugged.
“Yeah, a lot of work,” Micah said with a crooked grin.
“We do what we have to do, right?” I said, not relishing the prospect myself. “Hey, have you seen Abby? Is she here yet?”
Tony nodded and pointed across the bar to the sound booth in the back corner. It wasn’t much of a booth, just a card table with a mixing board and a receiver, but it was cordoned off with old-school velvet ropes. A man with stringy blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail sat yawning in a chair behind the sound board.
“Where?” I asked.
But then I saw them, four beautiful women at the adjacent table, four rock stars in various poses, the table strewn with empty glasses and cigarette butts. Even in the context of the club, they didn’t look like they belonged to this particular reality, with their tight revealing stage clothes and wild hair. They looked like they just stepped out of a music video, or came ripped out of the pages of a magazine.
Abby was dressed in strategically ripped hip huggers and a Thin Lizzy tank top cut off at the midriff and tied under her breasts. Her two-tone hair was a mass of glamorous curls around her head. She looked good, not like a hooker at all. She looked like a cover girl currently going through her punk phase.
“Alright,” I said. “I see her now. Excuse me, gentlemen.”
Micah grabbed my elbow. “Shouldn’t I come with you? We’re working the case together and all that.” There was a sparkle in Micah’s eye that betrayed ulterior motives lurking beneath the suggestion. I suspected he just wanted to meet Abby in the flesh.
“Come on,” I said, and we started walking towards her. We the passed the dining area, which had already been cleared of tables and set up to resemble a stage. Two Marshall stacks and a small center speaker were arranged around a double bass drum set and an array of microphones and guitar stands. A huge banner with a screen printed graphic of a broken heart hung behind the drum kit. Everything was ready to go. All the stage needed was a band.
Abby spotted us and got out of her seat to greet us. “He’s here!” she said. “Max, come on over, have a seat. I’m so glad you’re here. Whew.” She waved a hand under her chin to flush away the heat. The motion stopped the moment her eyes came upon Micah, then she looked at him sideways, then back at me. “A friend of yours?”
“A good friend of mine,” I said. “His name’s Micah.”
Micah smiled awkwardly, his mojo thrown off in the presence of four beautiful girls he desperately wanted to sleep with. “Hi,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m helping Max tonight. Pleased to meet you.”
Abby politely took his hand and nodded, but she still looked skeptical. “Okay,” she said. “Nice to meet you too.”
“I’m a huge fan,” Micah said.
“Thanks.” Abby smiled and I could see for the first time that she had glitter on her cheeks, not a lot but enough to notice up front. “Oh my God,” she said. “How rude of me. I didn’t introduce the girls.”
She went around the table with introductions. Using her drink as a pointer, she went down the line. “That’s Jackie,” she said, indicating a girl with dark tightly wrapped curls. “I think I told you about her before. She’s our fulltime mother and part time drummer.”
“That’s so not fair,” Jackie said, but she was laughing and so were the other girls.
“I’ll introduce myself, thank you very much,” said the one in a devil girl costume. Her skirt would have violated most dress codes and the fishnet stockings only made her legs look juicier. “I’m Christina,” she said. “Bass guitar and voice of reason.”
“Yeah, right,” the redhead next to her said. “You’re the one who suggested we cover Tom Petty.”
“What do you mean? Free Fallin is a great song,” Christina said.
“Not for this band,” Abby said.
“I think that would be cool,” Micah said, smiling timidly at Christina.
“We don’t even have an acoustic guitar,” the redhead said.
Abby jutted her chin in her direction. “That’s Rebecca, the real voice of reason,” she said. “If I’m Angus, she’s Malcolm.”
I nodded, understanding the comparison perfectly.
“Thank you,” Rebecca said. “You hear that? The voice of reason.”
“You know, honey,” Jackie said to me, “I keep telling my girl she needs to get professional help, but you’re not exactly what I had in mind.” The other girls, all except Abby, started giggling immediately. I missed something in the joke, but grinned anyway, looking to Abby for explanation.
She rolled her eyes and said, “Jackie here thinks you’re some kind of gigolo.”
Micah chuckled behind me.
“I didn’t say that,” Jackie said.
“You said rent-a-date,” Christina chimed in. “That’s the exact phrase you used, rent-a-date.”
“Yeah, okay,” Jackie said, laughing, “that’s what I said.”
“Same difference,” Abby said dismissively.
“I’m a private investigator,” I said.
Jackie lit up, sensing an opportunity for more jokes. She leaned forward, feigning interest. “Like Magnum PI? Do you solve murders and shit like that?”
“Oh my god, you watch way too much TV,” Rebecca said, rolling her eyes.
“It’s not that flashy,” I said. “There’s a lot of paperwork and it gets pretty boring actually. That’s why I do this rent-a-date thing on the side.”
Abby smacked me on the arm. “You guys are seriously making me feel like some kind of spinster or something,” she said. “Max is here to make sure that creepy guy doesn’t show up again, so be nice. Be nice to his friend, too. I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”
“Micah,” he said, stepping forward.
“Well have a seat. Get a drink. We’re going to be playing pretty soon. What time is it?”
“I don’t know,” Jackie said.
As we sat down, Abby leaned back in her seat and called over to the man behind the sound board. “Yo, Jeff, how much time we got?”
Jeff looked at his watch, which was turned to the inside of his wrist like Marty McFly, and said, “About ten minutes.” He had a protruding adam’s apple that bobbed when he spoke and a strange nasal voice that made me cringe.
Could it be? I thought. Was this the Jeff that accompanied her home the night before, the “friend” that I had assumed was her boyfriend? I looked at Abby, trying to picture them together. It didn’t fit, but as I turned it around in my head, I became aware of a knot growing deep in my stomach. I wasn’t sure what emotion I was feeling, only that it was strong and immediate.
Abby saw something in my eyes and said, “That’s Jeff, our sound guy.”
“Ah,” I said, still looking at him, still trying to wrap my head around the sensation. Then it hit me: I was jealous, immaturely, inexplicably jealous. It was the kind of jealousy that springs up out of nowhere, for no reason, a gut reaction, and it didn’t seem to matter that he was Jeff the sound guy and not Jeff the boyfriend.
I pushed the thought to the back of my mind, ignoring for the moment whatever inner turmoil may have been the cause. There were only ten minutes until showtime, and I had to make the most of it.
I scooted my chair closer to Abby and leaned in so she could hear me better over the constant din in the room. “So any close encounters of the Creep kind since we last talked?” I asked.
“No, thank god,” she said. “I was home all morning and when I left this afternoon, I left in the van with these guys.”
“And we didn’t see him,” Jackie said. “We were looking too.”
“You’ve seen him before?” I asked.
Heads began shaking in a chorus. They had all seen him.
“That motherfucker followed us home one night,” Jackie said. She nudged Abby. “Remember that? All the way from that bar by your house.”
Abby shivered in revulsion and said, “Ugh.” She had recounted the story to me in my office. I had forgotten that Jackie had been along for that particular adventure.
“You have nothing to worry about,” I said. “I talked to Mario and he’s not letting the Creep in tonight, or any night for that matter. And if somehow, the Creep gets past Mario, which let’s face it isn’t going to be all that easy, then he’s going to have to deal with me or Micah.” I jabbed a thumb in his direction, which he took as his cue to start speaking.
“You’ve got layers of protection,” he said, “so all you need to worry about is rocking.”
Jackie snarled and pumped a fist. “You don’t have to worry about that,” she said. “That’s what we do.”
“Five minutes,” Jeff said from his perch.
“Oh shit,” Jackie said. “Five minutes, girls. Let’s get our game faces on.”
The girls sucked down the last of their drinks and stood up from the table.
“Excuse us,” Jackie said, snatching Christina’s arm and leading her towards the ladies room. Rebecca grabbed her purse and followed after them. Jeff got up and went over to talk to a long-haired guy with funny sunglasses at another table. Abby remained behind, cracking her knuckles and shaking the tension out of her hands.
She breathed out deeply and smiled tensely. “Showtime,” she said.
“Nervous?”
“No, not really,” she said. “It’s more like nervous energy. I hear the stage calling.”
Jeff reappeared next to Abby with the guy in the funny sunglasses in tow. Now that they were closer, I recognized the guy in sunglasses as Dr. Feelgood, the guy Tony had hired to be the master of ceremonies. He provided campy band introductions and sometimes a skit or two between sets. Jeff whispered something in Abby’s ear that prompted a nod.
“I gotta go,” she said. “I guess I’ll talk to you guys later.”
“You’re gonna be great,” Micah said, raising his beer glass.
Abby smiled, then followed Jeff and Dr. Feelgood into the crowd.
“Abby,” I said before she was out of earshot. When she looked over her shoulder, I flashed her the universal devil horn sign with my fingers. She stuck her tongue out and held her own devil horns up in the air.
When she was gone, Micah said, “That was cheesy.”
“What?”
He laughed, then made a funny face and mocked the way I held up my horns. “That,” he said.
“We can’t all be as cool as you,” I said, tipping my beer in his direction and then taking a sip.
The music faded out and a crackle of feedback whined through the club. Heads turned toward the darkened stage as a peal of deranged laughter came over the PA. The spotlight flicked on, revealing Dr. Feelgood on stage with a mic in his hand, now wearing a white lab coat to complement the sunglasses. He grinned maniacally into the audience.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said theatrically. “Whether you know it or not, you’re in for a very special treat tonight. I’m Dr. Feelgood and if you’re looking for the cure for what ails you, I got it, baby. And I’m not talking about the little pharmacy I got in my back pocket, I’m talking about the hottest rock band in Denver.”
As he spoke, the girls took the stage and picked up their instruments in the shadows behind him. Abby, standing next to Christina just out of the spotlight, strummed a few silent chords on her guitar. Her smiling face glowed with excitement.
Dr. Feelgood continued. “They’ve played all over the country, opened for Ratt and Brett Michaels, and you can see them on this very stage every Saturday night. Last year they won the battle of the bands and tonight, they’re going to make you’re ears bleed.”
Jackie, now behind the drums, seconded that with a drum fill.
Micah tapped me and leaned in closer so I could hear him over Dr. Feelgood’s spiel. “So I wanted to ask you, if the Creep’s not getting in here tonight, what the hell are we doing here?”
I glanced up at the stage, where Abby was talking to Christina while Dr. Feelgood rambled through his introduction, then looked at the front door and the people still streaming in. A newly arrived couple let the door swing long enough for me to get a glimpse of Mario, standing watch out front, his tattooed eye peeled for any sign of the Creep.
I turned to Micah and shrugged. “I guess we just enjoy the show,” I said.
On stage, Dr. Feelgood was wrapping up his introduction. “Ladies and gentleman, I give you the Heartbreakers!”
The stage lights flashed on, washing the stage with multi-colored light and revealing the Heartbreakers in their full glory. With a courteous bow, Dr. Feelgood ceded the stage. Abby squinted out into the crowd and stepped forward, her Gibson SG special slung over her shoulder.
“Thanks for coming out tonight,” she said to a few expectant cat calls. “My name’s Abby and we came here to have a good time.”
As if on cue, Jackie started counting out a 1-2-3-4 on her drumsticks, and the band started playing the opening riffs of Motley Crue’s Shout at the Devil. The crowd cheered and whistled as they recognized the song, and some started chanting along.
“Shout…shout…shout.”
I looked over at Micah and despite his apprehension about being there, he was one of them, his head bobbing, a satisfied grin on his face. “I love this song,” he said when he saw me looking at him strangely.
I shook my head, laughing at him. One of Micah’s more virtuous traits was the ability to adapt to any circumstance. Another was his love for Motley Crue. He sang along with the words he knew, mumbled the words he didn’t, and pumped his fist at all the appropriate parts.
By the time the Heartbreakers finished that song and were halfway through Van Halen’s Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love, even I was under their spell. I stopped scanning the faces in the crowd for goatees, stopping watching the door every time someone came in. Instead, I watched Abby, unable to blink.
She tossed her hair about and leaned into her guitar, belting out the lyrics with more heart than David Lee Roth and more talent than Vince Neil. Every time she looked over at our table with that big gaping smile, I felt a shiver of excitement, like I’d been noticed by the star, like she was playing just for me. Judging from the other males around me, all of them staring at the stage as if in a trance, everyone else felt the same.
Soon I forgot I was working. Van Halen gave way to Guns N Roses and Micah went to fetch us another round. The crowd had swelled to peak capacity by now, and by the time he got back, the girls had already played their way through a Skid Row ballad and started a bluesy rendition of Roadhouse Blues.
When Micah returned, he handed me my beer and clinked his against mine. “We need more jobs like this,” he said.
I agreed with a nod and a gulp of my Corona, although deep down I recognized that if I relied on clients like Abby I would quickly go broke. Sooner or later, I realized, I would have to tell Micah about the special pay arrangement. Right now I didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm.
The band finished Roadhouse Blues to a crescendo of cheers and shouts and instead of launching into another song, they let their instruments fade out. Abby stood at the mic for a moment, looking out into the crowd and then she said, “You all having a good time out there?”
“Yeah!” Micah howled along with about a hundred other people. I sat back, watching this rock cliché play out with mild amusement.
“What was that? I can’t hear you. I said, are you having a good time?”
The “Yeah”s were much louder this time, including Micah’s, but they could have been more convincing.
Abby wiped her brow and said, “Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. We’re going to take it down a notch right now, try something we haven’t really tried before. Before we do, we just wanted to thank Tony for having us on this stage tonight, and thank you out there. We got a lot more where this came from.”
She nodded to Christina, who started picking her way through a riff on her bass before being joined by some heavily chorused arpeggios from Rebecca’s guitar. The song sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it. It didn’t sound like another eighties hair metal standard, but I had heard it before somewhere.
After contemplating it for a few minutes, I leaned in to Micah and said, “Who is this?”
He looked confused, but I realized he hadn’t heard me over the music.
“This song? Who is this?”
“The Cure,” he shouted back.
I sat back with a “Hmm” and tried to think of which Cure songs I knew. No titles came to mind. I was about to ask Micah which song it was, but then I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. When I looked up, I didn’t expect to see Mario, who should have been at the door, leaning in.
His sunglasses were gone and the look on his face was serious. I knew immediately what he had to tell me before he said a word. I let him speak anyway.
He said, “Your boy’s here.”
14
I pushed through the door and stalked out to the sidewalk, squinting down both sides of the street. My heart was racing and I could feel the butterflies of confrontation in my stomach, but there was something else too, something dark and scary. I turned to Mario, who was right behind me.
“Where is he?” I said, my tone more sharp than I had intended.
He looked around, then said, “He was just right here.”
But he wasn’t there now.
“Alone?”
“Yeah.”
Micah emerged from the bar with a confused look on his face. “What’s going on?” he said.
“Creep sighting,” I said, still looking down the chaos of Colfax Avenue at night, seeing lots of cars and vague human shapes, but nothing I could identify as the Creep. I turned to Mario. “What happened?”
“Nothing. He just walked up with his ID and I turned him away. He started begging, so I told him I’d go ask the boss. That’s when I grabbed you. I thought he’d be right here when I got back.”
“Who was watching the door?”
“No one,” he said.
I gritted my teeth, angry at Mario’s casual incompetence, but I opted to choose my battles carefully. I took two deep breaths and said, “So you didn’t see where he went?”
Mario shook his head and pointed at a spot on the sidewalk. “Nah, man. That’s where he was when I left him.”
I paced on the sidewalk, thinking about what to do next. If the Creep had fled, he didn’t have more than a few minutes head start. That is, if he was on foot. In a car, he would be gone already, but I didn’t think the Creep had a car.
“Yo, there he is,” Mario said, pointing across the street. A block and a half down from Fletcher’s, on the other side of the street, a man walked in the shadows, his hands in his pockets, his head down. The dark night made it hard to make out his features, but eve from this distance I could tell he was a white male with dark hair.
A sudden surge of adrenalin hit me like a smack in the neck. “You sure?” I said.
“Yeah, man,” Mario said. “That’s him.”
I tapped Micah. “Come on,” I said, as I started jogging along the sidewalk, placing my footfalls carefully until I made up more ground. Micah hurried to catch up behind me, grumbling at the prospect of running. We gained a block, then cut through a dead spot in the traffic to reach the other side of the street.
Ahead of us, the Creep kept walking, oblivious to our presence.
“What are we going to do, Max?” Micah asked. He saw something in my eyes that made him cautious.
“Talk to him,” I said.
As we got closer, we slowed to a trot, then finally just a fast walk. The Creep didn’t look back, didn’t speed up, didn’t even acknowledge us or the world around him. His head pointed down, his back hunched.
When we were ten paces behind him, I made my move.
“Excuse me,” I said.
The Creep stopped and slowly turned. Micah and I kept up our brisk pace to close the gap between us.
When I saw his face, it struck me how well he fit the description. Dark hair, glasses, mustache and goatee. Short but muscular. And the look in his eye, not like an animal in a cage, but like an animal cornered and ready to do anything to survive. Even if that means going down fighting.
“Can we talk to you for a second?” I said, now close enough to touch him.
He looked at me, then looked at Micah, shrinking back from both of us. The look in his eye was fearful, alert.
I reached out a hand in what I intended to be a nonthreatening gesture of greeting, but the Creep flinched as if I had reared back to slap him. I splayed my fingers to show I was no threat, but he looked at my hand as if it were a weapon and turned his back.
I reached for his shoulder, and opened my mouth to say something, but then I felt an elbow in my ribs and, a moment later, a palm in my throat.
I fell to one knee from the force of the blows, coughing and choking to catch my breath. Micah lunged to grab the Creep, but he slipped away and took off running for his life.
Micah chased after him for half a block, but the Creep was too fast.
A moment later, I felt Micah’s hand on my shoulder. “You alright, Max?” he asked, crouching to check me out. I had fallen to the ground and was gazing deliriously at the bright twinkling lights in front of my eyes.
I tried to take a few deep breaths before answering, “Yeah, I’ll live.”
Micah helped me to my feet and I looked down the street in the direction the Creep had fled. There was no sign of him.
“He’s gone,” Micah said.
“Motherfucker,” I said, spitting a wad of bile onto the street. There wasn’t any blood in it, which was good, but my throat was starting to ache in the area of the Creep’s Buddha Palm move. I was still a little taken aback by the skill with which he launched his attack, all in one fluid unthinking motion, first the elbow, then the palm. A pre-emptive strike, improvised, but effective.
Rubbing my neck, I said, “Did you get a good look at him?”
“Enough to know him if I see him again.”
“Good,” I said. That was going to come in handy when we started looking through mug shots. With Mario’s ID and the unprovoked attack, I was convinced that I had just crossed paths with the man who had been stalking Abby. Now I knew what he looked like, but he still had a name and an address that were waiting to be discovered. And then the skeletons in his closet would come back to haunt him in ways the Creep could never conceive.
15
Once back inside Fletcher’s, my head started to throb. The music was loud enough to shake the walls. It wasn’t something you heard, but something you felt, vibrations deep in your bones, vibrations that hurt if you had just been socked.
Micah led me back to our table, where my beer was still waiting for me, sweaty with condensation and still cold. Micah asked if I wanted a fresh one, but I shook my head. The alcohol wasn’t going to alleviate the ache that was setting into my temples, so I just asked him to get me some water. And an aspirin, if Tony had aspirin.
The song the band was playing seemed familiar, but I was too disoriented to place it. Something fast, definitely metal. Metallica, maybe?
Micah swam through the crowd and washed up at the bar. He was now leaning in to be heard by Tony. Tony cocked his head and had one hand on a stack of clean beer glasses, ready to move as soon as he got the word.
I turned to the stage.
Now drenched in sweat, Abby pounded on her guitar strings, holding down the rhythm as Rebecca ripped into a fretboard melting solo. Flailing her hair, Abby stepped up to the mic and started singing another verse. I concentrated on the lyrics, watching her mouth more than listening to the PA.
It wasn’t until the chorus that I nailed it, Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden. A smile parted my lips in appreciation of Abby’s musical choices. Old school, but not what you would expect from a band of hot chicks.
Abby looked over at the table and our eyes met. She winked and gave me a little gesture with her picking hand, which I took as a sign that she missed me. I hadn’t been gone long, but it was long enough to notice if she was keeping tabs. I raised my beer and nodded to her, a signal that everything was okay. The news of what had just transpired would have to wait until after the performance.
Micah returned with my water and a fresh glass of beer.
“No aspirin,” Micah shouted over the music. He sat down in the chair across from me and studied me with bemused concern over the foam of his beer. “You gonna be alright, man?”
“Yeah,” I croaked. “Just knocked the wind out of me.”
Micah grabbed my pack of cigarettes and lit one. “If I stopped smoking these, I might have been able to catch him.”
I grabbed one too. Each breath of toxic smoke hurt, but I pretended I needed the cigarette to relieve stress. We sat puffing on our cigarettes, not saying anything, our eyes watching the band.
As much as I loved the music, it hurt too much. When they finished with Number of the Beast and started blasting through the opening riffs of Pantera’s Mouth For War, an appreciative roar moved through the crowd, but for me, it just elicited a slow groan. Normally I would have been howling along with them, but right now it was more heaviness than I could take.
I couldn’t wait for the show to be over so I could get out of there and get some aspirin for my splitting headache. And so I could talk to Abby.
Mercifully, after they finished playing Mouth for War, the band lingered before starting the next song. Abby stood in front of the mic, catching her breath and soaking up the whistles and cat calls.
“Thank you, thank you,” she was saying. She shielded her eyes from the spotlight and peered into the crowd. “We’re gonna take a little break now, but don’t you go anywhere because when we come back we got more of where this came from, and maybe if you’re lucky we’ll some of our own stuff. It’s gonna be a long night, baby, so stick around.”
Somewhere a switch was flicked and the jukebox came on. It sounded muffled and tinny, and whatever country song was playing competed with the ringing in my ears. The lights on stage went down and the girls set their instruments down. Behind the sound board, Jeff was furiously turning down knobs to silence any feedback.
Micah turned to me. “Damn, they’re good. Fucking Pantera? You gotta be kidding me.”
I ignored the comment and focused on Abby. She stretched, snagged a drink of water, and hopped off the stage. She was accosted by an excited fan and talked to her for a few minutes. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Abby smiled a lot and nodded her head.
When she finally made it to the table, she was beaming with pride.
“So what’d you think?” she said.
“Loved it,” Micah said, even though she wasn’t really talking to him. “Fucking awesome.”
She gave him the same polite smile she had given her fan, then turned to me. “What did you think?” she said, being more specific.
“I think Micah’s right,” I said. I tried to smile, but it made my face hurt. “Sit down.”
Her smile disappeared and she pulled out a chair. She looked at Micah and saw that he wasn’t smiling anymore either, then turned back at me. “Alright, what happened?” she said looking at me sideways.
“I had a run in with the Creep,” I said.
Her eyes flared in terror.
“Not in here, outside. On the street.”
“Oh my god,” she said, her mouth agape. She said it again, then again, as if that was the only thing she could think to say. Then she said, “He was here, the Creep?”
“He tried to get in, yes,” I said. “But Mario didn’t let him in.”
“And what do you mean a ‘run in?’ What happened?”
“When I tried to talk to him, he just hit me,” I said.
“He hit you?”
I nodded.
Abby sucked in a deep breath and reached a hand out to my face. “Oh my god, you got in a fight? I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
“Look,” I said, holding up my hands and wiggling my fingers, “I’m fine.” I told her step by step exactly what happened up to the point where the Creep attacked me, leaving out the part about falling down on the sidewalk.
“Jesus Christ, Max. You just wanted to talk to him and he just lashes out like that? He could have really hurt you.”
“But he didn’t,” I said.
“That’s not a normal reaction,” Abby said. “I mean, I can understand being a little defensive, but to just haul off and hit someone. That’s…” She searched for the word.
“Psycho,” Micah added.
“That’s way fucking psycho,” Abby said. “Imagine what he’d do to me!”
I had no want or need to imagine what sick depravities the Creep had in mind for Abby, but I could imagine none of them were good. He had already shown a talent for violence, a talent I didn’t want Abby to see up close and personal. The memory of the physical strength contained in that squat body of his, the cold blooded rage of it, shuddered in the back of my mind.
“He’s not going to do anything to you,” I said. “I saw him with my own eyes tonight. And so did Micah. With that and what we learned from Mario, we might be able to find this guy.”
She looked at me, considering the weight of what I just told her. She wasn’t convinced and, if I had been honest with myself, neither was I.
“And then what?” she asked with a skeptical glare in her eye.
“We press charges,” Micah said. “Assault.”
I floated the idea with a shrug, then said, “We could do that. If he was on probation, it would get him violated. He’d have a hard time trying to crash your shows when he’s in jail.”
The skeptical glare in Abby’s eyes softened and was replaced by something else, hope maybe. She smiled, then leaned in to kiss me on the cheek. Her hair brushed my cheek and I took in her smell, stage musk and perfume colliding in a pheromonal cloud that lingered long after she returned to her chair.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Micah grinning devilishly as he watched this interaction. For the moment, he had opted to keep all smart remarks to himself.
“Thanks, Max,” she said.
“For what? I haven’t done anything yet.” I was still concentrating on my tingling cheek and the scent still hanging in the air. “Except absorb a few blows.”
“For everything, I don’t know,” she said, crossing her arms and frowning. “A few days ago, I thought I was going to have to move, quit my job, leave the band, do something drastic to get away from this guy. Now…I don’t know.” She sighed, frustrated by her inability to put it into words “All I know is now I don’t feel so helpless, so thanks.”
“Your welcome,” I said, taking a sip of my water. The act of swallowing made me wince. From the reaction, you would have thought it was a medical emergency. Micah leaned forward in his chair, ready to catch me and start administering CPR if necessary.
Abby grabbed my hand and said, “Are you going to be okay?”
“Oh yeah, definitely.” Then to change the subject, I said, “You look thirsty? Let me buy you a drink.”
“Just let me have some of your water.” Before I could say yes or no, she took the cup from my hands and tipped it back, gulping three times before setting it down, wiping her mouth and letting out a satisfied, “Ah.” She let out a small burp, then said, “It’s important to stay hydrated when you’re engaged in a strenuous activity like rocking.”
“I can’t believe you played Pantera,” Micah said, sitting back in his seat and shaking his head. “You girls are crazy. Fucking Pantera?”
Abby cocked her head back and said, “Hell yeah, man. We only play the best.”
“I love it,” Micah said, his grin a mile wide.
Abby turned to me for my opinion. I squinted at her and said, “You wouldn’t happen to have any aspirin, would ya?”
16
The second set went much like the first, except this time my head throbbed with every cymbal crash and snare beat. A half hour before closing, the waitstaff went around to announce last call and shortly thereafter, the Heartbreakers wrapped up their set. The crowd applauded as the band gave their bows, and several people started calling for an encore, but the house lights came on and soon all glasses and bottles were rounded up and people were herded out.
The ladies in the band milled around afterwards, talking to people, posing for pictures and signing various body parts with markers. As the crowd thinned, they went to work, tearing down the stage. After zipping their guitars into their gig bags, the other girls helped Jackie dismantle the drum kit. They tore at it like Amazon warriors ripping an enemy to pieces.
I wandered over to the stage, thinking I could make myself useful.
“What’s the protocol here?” I asked. “I just pick something up and carry it to the van?”
Abby looked up from the snare drum she was packing into its cover. “Don’t touch a thing,” she said, waving a finger.
“We don’t let anyone touch our equipment,” Jackie explained. “It costs too damn much.”
I held up my hands, feeling no need to argue. “Suit yourselves. I’ll just stand here and watch.”
It took them a half dozen trips a piece, lugging armloads of equipment, to get it all into the van. Micah came over and gave me a cigarette. We leaned on the stage, watching the girls work, smoking.
After her last trip, Abby came over and sat next to us, out of breath, her brow sweaty again.
“Can I have one of those?” she asked.
Micah shook one out from his pack and I lit it for her.
“All done?” I asked.
“For now,” she sighed.
“You should hire some roadies,” Micah suggested. “Let them do the heavy lifting.”
“I tried to volunteer,” I said. “She refused.”
“If we ever get big enough, we’ll hire some roadies. Right now, we’re just four girls playing music on the weekends. If it wasn’t for Tony…” She took a drag of her cigarette without completing the thought, then said, “Fletcher’s is our home. If we didn’t need it for rehearsal, we’d just store the shit in back.”
“Speaking of home,” Micah said, stretching. “I’m beat. You don’t mind if I split, do you?”
“Hold on a second,” I said. I nudged Abby. “You need a ride?”
Abby looked over her shoulder at the door, then smiled. “I was just going to ask you that. I told the girls they could go home. They all live in Park Hill, so dropping me off is a little out of the way.”
“It’s out of the way for me, too, but I promised you I’d chauffeur you around if you need it. Sounds like you need it.”
Abby nodded and let out a tentative, “Uh, yeah.”
“I’m parked two blocks away,” I said.
“Let’s go.”
Micah and I headed to the door. Abby stopped by the bar to kiss Tony on the cheek and say good night. The night air outside was cool and bright, illuminated by a full moon and blocks of streetlights. Abby came out a moment later and grabbed my arm.
“So where are we going?” she asked.
“This way.”
I led her across the street and down my block, with Micah trailing behind. As we walked, we made small talk, me complimenting me on her performance, her complimenting me on how I manhandled the Creep.
“You went right up to him,” she said. “You weren’t afraid to confront him. That took some balls.
I tried to play it down, reminding her that it was I who got manhandled, but the hero myth stuck in her head. I could have dispelled it had I tried, but I didn’t really want to. It’s only human to take a certain pleasure in being worshipped.
When we got to my house, we stopped in the driveway. Micah got out his keys and jangled them to his car door. He said, “We’ll see ya later, kids.”
“You alright to drive?” I asked. It was a stupid question that Micah answered with a dismissive wave. He was probably over the legal limit, but he wasn’t going to take a cab home. Of course, I could have taken him home if he would have let me, but Micah was an obstinate one. A few beers wasn’t going to stop him from driving.
If anything, it was going to make him drive more carefully.
“Drive safe, man,” I said.
“I’m not that drunk,” he said, feigning a slur and exaggerating his motions. He laughed then got behind the wheel.
“He’ll be fine,” Abby said as Micah peeled off. She waved at the house. “Is this where you live?”
I nodded.
“The Beatty Estate. Two bedrooms, one bathroom. And as you can see, we have a big yard.”
“Not bad. I figured you lived in a better neighborhood though.”
It was the usual crack whenever someone found out where I lived. But like the rumor of my death, the reputation of my neighborhood was greatly exaggerated.
“I like to live among my people,” I said.
“Is your wife home?” Abby asked, jutting her chin towards to the two cars parked in the driveway.
“I think so,” I said. The curtains over the bedroom windows glowed with soft light from the reading lamp beside the bed. Karen was home, and she was still up. “Yeah, she’s home.”
“If it wasn’t so late, I’d introduce myself,” Abby said.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” I said. I went to the car and opened the passenger door. “Let’s get you home.”
17
Temporarily parked in a no-parking zone, we sat in the car outside Abby’s building. I put the car in neutral and engaged the parking brake. Abby gathered her purse and keys, then froze. She looked over at me and grabbed me with her eyes.
“You think you can walk me up?” she asked.
At that moment, I would have done anything she asked.
“Sure,” I said, killing the engine.
We got out and walked up the front steps into the entryway of her apartment. I hadn’t told her that I had been there earlier that morning, so I had to pretend it was my first time. We fumbled through the security door and I followed her up the first flight of stairs. On the second floor, I glanced at the door for 207, wondering if Dreadlocks was home.
The thought brought a smile to my face, which I quickly had to hide once we got to the third floor.
“Three-oh-nine,” Abby said, jabbing her key into the lock. She pushed open the door and flipped on the light. Leaning in to toss her purse on a chair, she said, “You want to come in for a minute?”
I was stuck to the carpet in the hallway. I started to stutter out an answer, but the only thing that came out was polite bullshit.
“I really shouldn’t,” I said, blushing as all the blood pumped into my face. “My car’s parked down in a –thanks, though.”
Abby drew her lips into an irresistible smile, and she laughed. “I guess this is goodnight then,” she said, as she leaned in to kiss me on the cheek. I stood there, mesmerized as a trickle of her hair fell across my forehead and her lips dabbed my face. Up close, she smelled like sex and rock and roll, and I breathed her in. Our eyes locked as she withdrew, and went glassy as we didn’t blink. Her lips went flat as she tried to play the innocent, as if the peck on my cheek didn’t mean anything, as if it was just a good night kiss to a friend.
“’Night,” I whispered, reaching out to stroke her cheek. She closed her eyes as my hand touched her face. She let out a breath, and tilted her head back, her lips parting for mine as I kissed them. She returned the kiss, wrapping her arm around my neck and tugging me close to her. She fell against the doorway but I put out an arm to brace us, and we stood there smothering each other passionately with kisses.
Finally, she stopped and looked at me, her chest heaving. She wiped a loose strand of hair out of my eyes and said, “So are you going to come in or not?”
Looking down on her, I whispered, “I can’t.”
She seemed to shrink before my eyes. Her arms dropped and she looked at the floor.
“I’m sorry.”
She looked up at me, and I could see the emotional storm brewing behind her eyes. Soon, there would be tears. Anything I said at that point would only make it worse, but I tried to assuage her disappointment anyway.
“I really want to,” I said. “I just can’t.”
Abby nodded, trying to understand. “Right. You’re married,” she said.
“Among other things,” I said. “You haven’t mentioned professional ethics.”
“Max.”
But before she could say anything else, I kissed her again. After a few moments, we came down from the clouds for some sunshine. Abby’s eyes, tilted up at me, were hopeful.
“Okay,” I said. “I gotta go.”
“Okay,” she said, biting her lip. “I’ll call you later, I guess.”
“Soon,” I said.
I kissed her one more time, then fled down the stairs before I made an even bigger mistake. Abby leaned over the railing and watched me go. She waved as I disappeared onto the first floor.
I didn’t breath until I was outside.
18
When I woke the next morning, it was still dark outside. Karen was sleeping peacefully in a fetal ball on her side of the bed. I lay there for a while, staring at her back, feeling out the aches and pains from the night before. There was a tender spot the shape of a fist on my throat. It hurt when I probed it with my fingers, but not when I swallowed, so I didn’t worry about it. The clock said it was just past five.
It wasn’t until I got out of bed that I felt the bruising around my ribs. Nothing was broken, I was sure, but that didn’t make the pain any less. Every step was like walking into a boxer’s right cross.
I padded carefully into the kitchen, and went about making some coffee and a few slices of toast. My injuries made the task more difficult than it needed to be and by the time I was finished I was exhausted.
Not wanting to go back to bed, I stepped outside to the back patio. It had rained during the night and the molded plastic patio furniture was slicked with droplets of moisture, but the morning was pleasant, purple skies as the sun peaked over the horizon behind me, a cool breeze.
I set my cup and plate on the small table between the chairs and gave one of the chairs a wipe before sitting down. Leaning back in the chair took the pressure off my chest and I let out a sigh of relief. I lit a cigarette and inhaled the fresh morning air and tobacco smoke.
The events of the previous night played again in my mind. I fast-forwarded through the attack by the Creep, having the bruises to remind me of that, and went straight for the juicy part: Abby’s doorway, the look in her eye-- kiss me, it said—the smell of her hair, the sweat, and the perfume she wore to cover it up.
I closed my eyes and tried to relive the moment again. Maybe this time my good judgment would win out and I would just shake her hand and say good night, turning my back on any other temptations, real or imagined. But in my imagination, the moment played out just as it had the night before.
“You fucked up, Max,” I heard myself say. I looked around to see if anyone had heard what I thought had been an internal remark, but everything was still. The only one within earshot was a squirrel that had scrambled along the fence to get away from me.
Since I was alone, there was no one to disagree with me. I had fucked up, and I could understand why the squirrel, or anyone else for that matter, wouldn’t like me.
A line had been crossed. Getting romantically involved with a client was the stuff of romantic comedies and sitcoms, not the behavior of a professional. And I knew I would do it again in a heartbeat, vows of fidelity or professional ethics be damned.
And this had the potential to be the last straw in a series of last straws when it came to my marriage. Infidelity was infidelity, regardless of whether it was consummated with an awkward kiss in the hallway or with sex. There would be no technicalities with Karen on this one. It didn’t make one difference if I slept with Abby. I had kissed her, and I would have slept with her if I hadn’t been tired and beat up and in a bad mood.
That’s just as bad as if I had slept with her, lust in my heart and all that mojo.
It was then that I decided that Karen must never know. If she knew, she would leave, and she would be right. I would have no defense. I was unfaithful.
As the purple sky shifted to a dark blue that faded into orange way off in the horizon, I smoked cigarette after cigarette. I drained my coffee, but didn’t go in for more. I didn’t want to move. I wanted to sit there and heal and watch morning after morning stream across my yard.
I wanted to give up this case, go back to sniffing out insurance scams and digging up background history reports, but I couldn’t even do that.
Not yet.
19
The houses in the new Stapleton neighborhood were all different. A faux-adobe two-story with a Spanish tile roof next to a colonial with a wrap-around porch, next to a gothic castle-like structure with a stone façade. The variety was part of the point, a hallmark of New Urbanism, the insidious concept behind the redeveloped neighborhood.
Suburbs were passé, New Urbanism declared. People want to live in smartly designed urban communities that aren’t cut off into cul-de-sacs, homes designed for the 21st Century, a family friendly utopia of pedestrian delights. At least that’s what the brochure said.
Driving through the newly paved streets, I had to admit that they were onto something. What once was Denver’s main airport, Stapleton was now a theme park of upscale condos and half-million dollar homes. The different styles in the buildings added a certain amount of charm, but it was still too new, concrete sidewalks still chalk white from a recent pour, the grid pattern still visible in the sod on the green belts, sticks stuck in the ground that would someday become trees. It was new and trendy and strangely empty.
It didn’t help that it was still cut off from the working class neighborhood to the south, with their simple 1950s houses and weed-filled lawns. That’s the neighborhood where I lived, in a house my wife thought was too small, too old, even though I spent a fortune updating it. At the time we bought it, it was all we could afford, but times have changed. Karen often looks lovingly over at the new houses in Stapleton and whispers sweet nothings that I always ignore.
I can understand why she wants to live there, but I had no idea why homicide detective sergeant Bob Gibson, a friend of mine from my days with the Department, decided to move there. He was divorced now, no children, definitely not trendy. The big houses in Stapleton seemed like too much for him.
I parked in front of his house, one of the castle looking ones, and strode up the front walk along the short front yard. It was still early, but Gibson was an early riser like me. He also wouldn’t be surprised to see me show up on his front door at six o’clock on a Sunday morning. He knew I lived right around the corner.
There was a scowl on his face when he opened the door, but when he saw that it was me, it softened a bit and he managed to fake a half-hearted smile. He wasn’t a short man, but he stood hunched over, as if the world had beaten him down, making him seem smaller than he was. He wasn’t old, but his beard was now flecked with gray and lines had started to form around his eyes. Laugh lines, they called them, but the way Gibson carried himself, it was obvious they didn’t come from laughing.
He held the door to let me in. “Holy shit,” he said. “The infamous Max Beatty graces my doorstep. Come in, come in.”
“Morning, Bob,” I said sheepishly. “Got a few minutes?”
We were standing in Gibson’s living room, leather couches and a big screen TV taking up every inch of available space, but I could sense that he didn’t want to settle here.
“Sure,” he said. He shifted his weight uncomfortably until finally he clapped his hands and said, “Coffee?”
“Absolutely.”
I followed him into the kitchen, and took up a spot by the fridge. Gibson brushed past me to the table, where a three ring binder lay open next to a steaming coffee cup and an ash tray with a Marlboro smoldering on a pile of used butts. He stubbed out the cigarette and snapped the binder closed and pushed it under a stack of newspapers at the back of the table.
“Fucking work,” he grunted, then grabbed a cup from the sink and washed it out under the faucet.
“It’s your day off,” I said. “You should be watching TV.”
“There’s nothing worth watching on TV anymore,” Gibson said wearily. He poured fresh coffee into the cup he just washed with coffee and handed it over to me. “And work never stops.”
I took a look around the kitchen, noting the conspicuous lack of a feminine touch. Everything that was on the counters was there because it served some purpose, not because it was pretty or added some needed dimension to the room.
This was the first time I had talked to him since the divorce had been finalized. I called him once last year when I heard that he was having marriage troubles, but he didn’t really want to talk about it. I was never quite sure if it was because he was just upset about the split or if the split was a subject he just preferred not to discuss with me. We had never really been that close, not even when we worked together.
“So how have you been, Bob?” I asked gingerly, not sure how he would react. The word on the grapevine had been that he had taken the split particularly hard.
He leaned back and sighed. “Well, ya know,” he said. “Keeping it together.”
“You look good,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.
“I see enough mirrors to know that’s bullshit,” he replied. He pulled a pack of Marlboro reds out of his breast pocket, tapped one out and lit it? “Smoke?”
“No thanks,” I said. “Brought my own.” Seeing as the moment was right, I took one out.
“You haven’t quit either, I see.”
“I would,” I said, “but I’m not a quitter.”
Gibson nodded, one eye closing to get out of the smoke. “You still smoking the other stuff?”
He was alluding to the four failed drug tests that had eventually been my swan song with the Department. I had heard enough from Karen to know the stories floating around police circles said I had been strung out on meth or smoking crack between calls, exaggerations that were so ridiculous that I didn’t even feel the need to respond to them. The truth was more benign.
“I indulge now and then,” I said. “Who cares? I’m a civilian now.”
“A businessman,” Gibson said, “and doing quite well from what I hear.”
“What do you hear?”
“You got yourself set up as a private eye, with your own office, a secretary, a few guys who work for you sometimes, the whole thing. Of course I don’t get the details exchanging pleasantries with your wife in the hall, but I’ve heard enough to know what you’ve been up to lately.”
I nodded. “You heard the important parts.”
“What I want to know, though, is why you didn’t pick another line of work, go into food service, or carpentry, or landscaping, or construction. We both know where old cops go to die. The PI racket. That part I can understand. But you, you were never a cop, and won’t be getting a pension. It doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense?”
“You, man. You hated being a cop, remember?”
“I didn’t hate it.”
“Yeah, you did. You hated it so much you got yourself booted and now you go into the rent-a-cop business? But without the pension. Help me understand that one. My head is spinning.”
He looked at me like I never thought about that myself. I told him the thing that I had been telling myself ever since I took my first insurance ticket. “It’s what I know,” I said with an audible weariness.
Gibson tilted his head, disappointed with the answer. His face reacted to a thought he had in his head, but he let a moment go by before he put the thought into words. “That’s bullshit, Max.”
It was almost funny how right he was. I wanted to laugh, but instead, I gestured with my cigarette and said, “Well, what do you want to hear? I could have gotten another job, working for someone else, but why? I make a living and I’m my own boss. It’s not champagne and caviar, but it’s enough to cover my overhead and throw in my half of the mortgage.”
“But it’s the same work,” Gibson said. Then he shrugged and added, “Basically.”
“It wasn’t the work that got under my skin,” I said. “It was the institution. Funny enough, that’s why I’m here.”
“I don’t follow.”
“That institution, fucked though it may be, has certain resources which I can’t get my hands on. You follow me there?”
“And I thought you were paying a social call, Max.” He said it dryly, but he was serious nonetheless.
“I’m self-employed, Bob. In my line of work, there’s no such things as social calls.”
He chewed that over for a moment, then said, “What did you have in mind?”
“I need you to pull some files.”
Bob shook his head once, whistling a long note as he considered the risks. “I don’t know, Max,” he said, stroking his beard in a deep thought. “That’s…that’s tricky.”
“I know,” I said.
“Why don’t you ask your wife? She can pull files just as well as I can, and if she gets caught, she can always work for your agency when she gets out of jail.”
“She’s next on my list, if you say no.”
“And if she says no?”
“There’s no ifs about that,” I said. “You know Karen. She’s by the book.”
“And me?” Gibson asked. “I’m some kind of loose cannon who doesn’t care about the rules?”
“Not at all,” I said. “You care. That’s why I come to you, Bob. Here it is, Sunday morning and you’re not at church, you’re not at the park, you’re not sleeping in. You’re sucking down coffee and reading through case books.” I nodded towards the stack of newspapers on the table that covered the binder Gibson tried to hide when I came in. “It’s not about the rules,” I said. “I need your help, Bob, and you know as well as I do that you can’t ignore the call. Not this time.”
Gibson looked at the papers, his face haunted by the case files that lay hidden beneath them. He took a long drink of his coffee and wiped his mustache with his lower lip. He turned to me and said, “What do you got?” Then he jabbed his cup in my direction like a finger. “And, Max, it better be good.”
“You want the whole thing or just the basics?”
“Give me the whole thing.”
“My client’s a musician,” I started. “She performs around town and has a little following, including this creep who’s been tailing her home after shows.”
“So she’s being stalked,” Gibson said, impatient with my set-up.
“That’s one way to put it,” I said. “He’s a real creep. I ran into him at her show last night. Real nice guy. He hit me with two good ones and knocked me on my ass, judo or something. I’m still smarting.”
“And that’s why you want to find him?”
“It’s not revenge,” I said. “I want to press charges.”
“Why don’t you go to the cops?”
“You’re a cop,” I said.
“Yeah, but,” he looked at me and offered a cockeyed grin, “I’m in homicide. I can’t help you with that, man.”
“A beat cop can’t either. I need to ID the guy before I press charges.”
“You don’t even know who it is?”
“Nope. Just some creep, up to no good.”
Gibson nodded. “Some creep, uh huh. And you’re going to bring him to justice?”
“I’m just trying to do my job,” I said. “I’ve got a good description, and a little piece of information that might whittle it down a little. He’s a parolee. And the best part about it, an assault charge just might lead to violation. He goes to jail, my client goes home happy. My job is done. So what do you say? A quick search, that’s all. A list of names, pictures if you can get them.”
“An official report might help you on that.”
“An official report on some unknown dude who knocked me on my ass?” I said with the same dismissive smugness he gave me about going to a beat cop. I didn’t like how Gibson was shooting holes in my plan. I just wanted a yes.
“It might help,” Gibson said with a shrug.
“I need an ID first,” I said, “and that’s why I need you.”
“Alright,” Gibson said with the faintest hint of a sigh. He reached over the table and grabbed the small legal pad he had been using to take notes. He folded the top page over the back and clicked a pen. “I’ll pull some files. Give me some details.”
I listed things off as Gibson wrote them down. “White guy, brown hair, brown eyes. Between five eight and five ten, but no more than that. Over two hundred pounds, but it’s mostly muscle. In his thirties. And he just got out of jail four months ago, probably still on parole. That should narrow it down some, don’t you think?”
Gibson’s eyebrows went up about an inch and he said, “You’d be surprised.” He clicked his pen shut and tossed it and the pad on the table. “I’ll see what I can do. When do you need this?”
“Yesterday,” I said.
“I’ll try and have it for you tomorrow.”
“Good enough,” I said. I set my coffee cup on the counter and stuffed my hands in my pockets. “I really appreciate this, Bob.”
Bob stopped me with a hand. “Stop. Don’t think you’re getting a freebie here, pal. You’re gonna owe me.”
My hands came out of pockets and into the air. I said, “I’m in your debt. You do this for me, Bob, and you’re definitely the man.”
“I’m a cop,” he said. “I’m used to being the man. Stay for breakfast?”
“I’d love to,” I said, my voice indicating the exact opposite, “but you know I got the wife, and she’s probably wondering where I am.”
Gibson stepped forward, nodding, and put his hand out for a shake. “I used to have that problem. I pity you, Max.”
“Don’t pity me too much. Just enough to get me those pictures, and names. I need the names.”
“I’ll do my best.”
We shook hands and he walked me back through the house to the front door. Before I stepped through it, I flipped him my card and said, “Call me tomorrow, give me a progress report.”
Gibson nodded and stepped out on the porch with me. He put another cigarette in his mouth and lit it. “Take care, Max,” he said, sneering a little bit.
“Yeah,” I said, lingering until it was awkward, “You too.”
I got in my car and took off, wondering if my old buddy Bob Gibson was going to help me or string me along like a freshman romance.
20
When I got back home, I was greeted by a voice, gentle but simmering with annoyance. “Where’ve you been?” it said, and when I froze in the doorway, it added, “I woke up and you were gone.”
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly, stepping in and closing the door behind me.
Karen was sitting at the dining room table, nibbling on a cream cheese bagel and reading a fashion magazine. She had her glasses on and one of my old heavy metal T-shirts, her hair pulled back as if she had just rolled out of bed.
“Where’d you go?” she asked.
“Over to Bob’s place,” I said. If I had brought back a prop, like flowers or a jug of milk, I might have had a better excuse.
She was confused. “Bob’s place?”
“Bob Gibson.”
“Oh,” she said and went back to her bagel. Then, “Bob Gibson?”
“Yeah,” I said, avoiding an explanation. “Bob Gibson.”
“Max.” She didn’t sound like my mother, more like my first grade teacher when she caught me eating paste.
“What?”
She looked at me for a moment, gauging whether or not she should pursue it, then she gave her magazine a flip, straightening it out in front of her. “Nothing,” she said, taking a bite out of her bagel and turning the page.
“Okay then,” I said, dropping the car keys on the table. I didn’t feel like arguing with her, so I dropped the subject too.
. Finally she draped herself dramatically in the doorway and announced she was going into the bedroom to take a nap. I looked up from the screen long enough to register the weariness in her eyes, but didn’t say anything.
I waited about ten minutes before grabbing my wallet, my keys, my cellphone and walking out the door.
Striding down the street like I was escaping from something, I dialed a number. It rang a few times before there was an answer.
“Micah,” I said. “You up?”
“Barely,” Micah said. “I wasn’t, until the phone started ringing.”