up the passageway between cubicles from the opposite end, stop when I see the nameplate affixed to cube wall fabric.
The camera, long lens attached, rests on the desk. My first instinct is to grab the whole rig, but then I realize there’s no need for felony theft when a misdemeanor will do. I slip into the cubicle and open the back of the camera, pop out the CompactFlash card. When I step back into passage, hands in my pockets, the man I assume is Hamilton is coming toward me.
“Can I help you?” Definitely the adjuster’s voice from the phone. He’s an unremarkable specimen, round head, brown sidecar hair, suspicious eyes.
“Restroom?”
He looks into his cubicle, seems relieved. Like I could hide the camera in my sock. Or maybe he was afraid I took a dump on his chair. “It’s out on the landing.” He points with his chin. “To your left.”
He has no idea who I am. Something to be said for doing business strictly by phone.
Back at Ruby Jane’s, I hand her the camera card, ask her if she can download the pics.
“Easy peasy.” She leads me back to her office and plugs the card into the CF jack on her computer. After a moment, a blank window appears on the monitor. Ruby Jane shakes her head.
“There’s nothing there.”
I sit back. It only makes sense they already downloaded the pictures.
“Don’t panic.” RJ snatches the card. “This is a coffee shop. If there isn’t a geek sitting out there right now, there will be before the afternoon is over. I’ll find someone who can undelete whatever was on here.” She leaves me there, stewing in my own techno-cluelessness.
I turn to Google, hoping to redeem myself by trolling for background info among the dot-govs. An hour later, about the time my eyes are boiling out of my head from reading too many poorly formatted web pages, RJ is back with the flash card and a CD. “There were a lot of fragmented files, but we were able to recover some photos from a couple of days ago with intact metadata and one picture from last night.” She inserts the CD into her computer, and this time the window opens populated with thumbnails.
The first dozen or so are of the couple in the cob across from my stakeout. I remember when they started building these cob structures around town, oddly shaped public benches tarted up with ceramic-shard mosaics and glaze. Some guy appeared at my door one day, all breathless as he explained that I, too, could join the cob revolution and transform my front yard into a community living room. I live in the kind of neighborhood where people grow grapes and sweet corn in the parking strips, so a mud-and-straw bench with a thatched awning wouldn’t draw a second glance. But when it became clear I’d be responsible for construction and materials, I told the guy to go sell crazy somewhere else.
Others don’t share my reticence, including the folks who run the kitchen store across from Starbucks. And amazing to an old curmudgeon like me, people actually use the cobs-and not just my humping couple.
As I’d suspected, the photos are murky, but I can make out the guy leaning back on the cob bench, the woman straddling him. Their faces are in a shadow, but that doesn’t really matter. Even in the dark the radioactive cheez framing the woman’s head is unmistakable. I click through the images. In the last, the couple has turned to face the camera. On to me.
I click again and there’s the ninja in front of Starbucks. Better light, better focus. Hair hidden by the hoodie, but it doesn’t matter. The face is clear enough.
“What do you want me to do?” RJ asks.
“Fire up the printer. I got some calls to make.”
I catch Hamilton at his desk, which saves me the trouble of shakedown via voice mail.
“What can I do for you, Kadash?” No Detective, no Mister. His tone suggests it had better be nothing, but I disappoint him. I tell him to meet me at the Night Light at 6. “Ella can tell you where it is.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Don’t be coy.” I hang up without saying goodbye.
The Night Light’s main area is smoke-free until 10, so I’m not surprised to find the gang tucked away in the back room. Zeke sits in the rear of the circular booth, taking up space and refusing to make eye contact. Ella is to his left, a beer in front of her and a smoldering Parliament in her hand. Hamilton sits hunched to Zeke’s right, nursing something urine-colored and on the rocks. When I arrive, Ella blows smoke my way. I slide in next to Ham.
I wonder if the coffee I ordered last night will finally appear. “Should we get appetizers?”
Hamilton isn’t in the mood. “Get to the point.”
I chuckle and toss the CF card onto the table, along with some printouts from Ruby Jane’s inkjet. In the first, Ella’s face peeks out from inside the ninja hoodie. In the others, her hair shines out from the cob like a flame.
“What kind of a perv are you anyway, taking pictures of people like that?”
If Ella expects me to blush, I’ve got news for her. “I’m not the one screwing in the community’s living room.”
She looks like she wants to argue, but Hamilton is on point. “You were supposed to be watching Starbucks.”
“Is that you?” I tap the silhouette of Ella’s cob partner, then drop another sheet of paper on the table before he can answer. Hamilton snatches it up. He can read, but I don’t want to leave the others hanging. “Quotes from a half-dozen glass vendors to replace the window broken at Starbucks last night. You might notice a number there from Allied Commercial Glass.”
“So?” Hamilton says, but Zeke is shaking his head, disgusted. I’m warming to the great oaf.
“It’s a lot less than the insurance payment you authorized to Allied for that same window earlier today.”
Hamilton and Ella exchange looks. I can see the wheels spinning, the hamsters scrambling. “You requested these quotes?”
I nod.
“There was probably more to the job than you realize.”
What Hamilton doesn’t know is I had help with the quotes. RJ’s friend of a friend, the Starbucks manager, has been dealing with these broken windows for years. He knows exactly what’s involved in the job.
Ella swallows beer, breathing smoke into the glass. I wonder if she’ll give up cigs when the big ban kicks in next year. She doesn’t strike me as one to go down easy.
“All you had to do was watch the store for five nights,” she says, “and then get paid.”
“Sure, help you guys cover your ass with a little sham due diligence for Mutual Assurance management. Almost worked too, especially with you feeding me crap about a coffee war. If not for these photos, I never would have guessed you were running a low-rent insurance scam, arranging to overpay a Leggett Partners glass company to repair your own vandalism.” And if the Red and Black happened to go down in the blowback, a Hot Leggett’s could anchor redevelopment there quite well. I don’t want to get into speculation, though, nor my suspicion that the scam is running at more than just Seven Points Starbucks. “What I am curious about is what the hell you were doing in that cob.”
“She wanted to spy on you.” Zeke’s voice has a bitter edge. “She thought it was funny. It never occurred to her you’d turn the camera on her.” He drops his chin. “You stupid bitch, I told you to stay away from this guy. But no, you and doinkus here”-he thrusts a thumb at Hamilton-“have to go draw his attention. And that retarded stunt last night… well, he ended up with the pictures anyway, didn’t he?”
That shuts everyone up. Ella stubs out her smoke. Zeke fumes into his chest. Hamilton picks up the CF card, gazes at it with a rueful smile. “So, what do you want, detective?”
Detective. I’m back on the case.
When I was still a cop, that question wouldn’t have even come up. My job was to make cases, not express personal desires. But now I’m a guy living on a barely sufficient pension, without prospects. I don’t give a shit about their scam. “I’ll settle a full five night’s pay, and the promise you’ll throw me a little work every now and then.” I look Hamilton in the eye.
“And I’m telling you right now, I don’t write invoices.”
GONE DOGGY GONE BY JAMIE S. RICH & JOELLE JONES
