a sign, black letters on a green plaque. It read HANSON INVESTIGATIONS.
Inside Marvin was behind his new desk and a middle-aged woman was sitting in the client chair. She turned and looked at us as we entered. She was good-looking in a church lady, next-door-neighbor kind of way. She was dressed well, but not fancy, and her hair was a little too red and so were her cheeks. She looked as if she had been crying. She had a tissue balled up in her fist, a piece of it escaping between her fingers as if the stuffing was coming out of her. I assumed this was the client he had asked us to meet.
There was a young man with her. He was pouring coffee into a Styrofoam cup. He was tall with shaggy black hair and looked fit and had an air about him that made you think he might be tough and know it. At the same time, he looked like something for the girls. He stirred his coffee with a plastic spoon, came over, and sat in another of the client chairs. That was the end of the client chairs. That meant Leonard and I had to stand. I decided I didn’t want to do that, so I went around and shoved my butt onto the edge of Marvin’s desk and rested there. This put me so I was right in front of the guy. Leonard leaned against the wall, near the door, not too far from the lady. He put his hands in his pants pockets.
Marvin, who no longer needed his cane as of a month back, got up from behind his desk and limped over to the water cooler and put some water in a paper cup and brought it to the lady.
He looked at us, said, “This is Mrs. Christopher, and this is a family friend, Cason Statler. He works for the newspaper over in Camp Rapture. Folks, this is Hap Collins and this is Leonard Pine. If they say something embarrassing, understand they’re friends of mine and I have to put up with it.”
“Nice introduction,” I said.
Mrs. Christopher smiled a little, sipped at her water.
Marvin said to us, “They’re clients. They want us to check into something.”
From the way the woman acted, I figured she had some romantic problems, a husband straying, or perhaps her husband had died and something was unresolved and we were supposed to resolve it. Whatever, I figured it would be simple and pretty near honest work.
“So, you’ll look into it?” the lady asked.
“I will,” Marvin said. “I’ll put these two right on it.”
“They look tough,” she said.
“They are,” Marvin said.
“What I mean to ask is,” she said, “are they detectives?”
“They are operatives,” Marvin said.
I thought: Yeah, baby. Operatives. That’s us. We’re so operative, our operative wears a hat and tie.
I glanced down at the desk and saw a check there in front of Marvin. It had Juanita Christopher’s name signed on it. Better yet, it had a juicy figure written on it. I wondered how much of that was mine and Leonard’s.
“Satisfaction guaranteed, or we give you half your money back,” Marvin said. “By the way, how’d you find out about us?”
“I saw your add in Cason’s newspaper.”
“Just curious,” Marvin said, “so I have some understanding of how my advertising works. What drew you to the ad?”
“Your last name. My maiden name was Hanson, but since you’re black and I’m white, maybe there’s no connection.”
I thought to myself there might be a lot of connection. In this part of the country the richer branch of the Hanson family had been slave owners, so it wouldn’t have surprised me to discover there were some woodshed relatives.
“Oh,” Mrs. Christopher said, “I didn’t mean that to sound the way it came out.”
“It didn’t sound any kind of way,” Marvin said. “Don’t worry about it.”
She stood up from behind the desk and stuck her hand across at Marvin and he shook it.
She didn’t sit back down, and she didn’t shake our hands. “I think I’ve explained everything, Mr. Hanson. I’ll let you fill your men in.”
Hanson nodded, and she started for the door. Statler stood and spoke to her. “Do you mind if I meet you in the car, dear? I want a word with the gentlemen. You can handle the stairs fine, can’t you? And watch how slick it is.”
“I’m not an invalid,” she said. “I’m just sad.”
“Of course,” Cason said, turning on a smile that if it had been an inch wider and a smidgen brighter, might have knocked out the local electric grid.
After she went out, Cason waited a moment, picked up the check she had written from the desk, and returned to his seat and rested the check on one knee with his hand on top of it. We all watched the check like buzzards discovering what was thought to be dead might still have some life in it, and just might get away.
Cason said, “I know what she told you seems like an impossible job, because of the time factor. It’s a cold case. But I want to say, she’s serious. I brought her over here because she’s a friend of my mom’s and because I know a little about her subject. I’m a newspaper reporter. I’ve looked into this case, there’s something to it.”
“So,” Leonard said, “what you’re saying is don’t just cash her check and hang out here drinking coffee?”
“Something like that,” Cason said.
Marvin said, “I not only resent that, I resent it enough to come out from behind this desk and slap the shit out of you. Even if one of these boys has to hold me up to do it.”
“It might take more doing than you think,” Cason said.
“My goodness,” Leonard said, “you must have had an extra bowl of oatmeal this morning.”
“You want to be first?” Cason said.
“Hey, Cason,” I said. “You look like a guy might be tough, but you mess with Leonard, when they’re cutting you open and putting your ruptured liver in a jar, your ghost will still be trying to figure out what truck hit you and when.”
Cason looked at Leonard for a long moment. Leonard said, “What he said.”
Cason smiled, studied Leonard. “You two are buddies. That is so sweet.”
“Yeah,” I said, “we’re tough, and when times are rough we can sew our own clothes and grow a garden.”
“Really?” Cason said.
“No,” I said. “But we’re tough.”
Cason smiled. “All right,” he said. “We’re all tough guys. It’s just that Mrs. Christopher is a friend of the family. Was my third-grade teacher. Her family has money, though she doesn’t look like it or act like it. Her dead husband was in oil, and he was in a lot of it. She came to me for help because I used to work for a paper in Houston doing investigative reporting. Now I’m over in Camp Rapture, writing a bullshit column. I decided she needed help that could be on it twenty-four seven, and that wasn’t me. Camp Rapture doesn’t have a private investigator, but she saw your ad. I was a little reluctant, but I didn’t know what else to do for her.”
“Good to know we’re deeply wanted and widely respected,” Leonard said.
“I put those ads in every paper in a fifty-mile radius,” Marvin said. “Your paper got me the only response.”
“Try the online ads,” Cason said. “More people read those these days. I’m lucky I got a job, way newspapers are changing. But, the thing is, I knew a lot of investigators when I worked for the paper in Houston, and I didn’t think much of them. They mostly took up time and took up money. So I wanted to make sure you really would look into things.”
“You can bet we’ll look into them,” I said. “Marvin is so honest it hurts our feelings, and we’re so honest we hurt our own feelings.”
Cason grinned. “Mr. Hanson has my number. You need anything, give me a call. I have a friend who is a bear for research. Maybe we can help you.”
“We’ll keep it in mind,” Marvin said.
Cason put the check on the desk, smoothed it out where he had wrinkled it by pressing his palm across it twice, and went out. As he closed the door Leonard said, “Please do be careful of the stairs.”
When he was gone, I said, “Damn, he’s out of our sight, what, three seconds, and I miss him already.”
“Too bad he isn’t gay,” Leonard said. “For him, I could ditch John in a minute. He wears Old Spice. I like Old
