pages I found the numbers for the bureaus of licensing in Maryland and D.C.
I dialed the Maryland number and inquired about the requirements for a private investigator’s li Sigaght='cense in that state. A cool, efficient voice explained that one must have had at least five years’ experience as a police officer or served under a licensed investigator in an apprenticeship arrangement. I thanked her and hung up.
The woman who answered the phone at the D.C. bureau reluctantly ran down the requirements. “Basically,” she said, “you come into our office and pick up a private detective agency package. There are several forms to fill out, and a blank application for a surety bond. You’ll need four full-face wallet-sized photos of yourself when you come in. They can’t be more than three months old. And you’ll need to be fingerprinted down on Indiana Avenue. After that we do a background check as to any felonies or misdemeanors you might have. That takes at least a couple of weeks. If you check out, you get a license.”
“What does the license give me? The right to carry a gun?”
“No, you cannot carry a weapon, by law. The license and certificate that comes with it merely legitimizes you.”
“Where’s your office and what’s it going to cost me?”
“Two Thousand, Fourteenth Street. Third floor. The application fee is one hundred and fifty-eight dollars. Fingerprinting fee is sixteen-fifty.”
I thanked her and replaced the receiver. Then I dialed Pence’s number. The old man answered on the second ring.
“What’s the dope, Mr. Stefanos?” he asked anxiously.
“I may have gotten a lead last night,” I lied. “I’m going to follow it up this evening. Have you heard from Jimmy?”
“No.”
“Mr. Pence, has Jimmy ever been in trouble with the law? Vandalism, shoplifting, anything minor like that?”
It took him a while to answer. “Not to my knowledge, Mr. Stefanos.”
“Good. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, then,” he said, and hung up.
I dumped the rest of my coffee and walked into my bedroom, the largest single area of my apartment. In my gym bag I located my rope.
I moved my rocking chair from the center of the room, put Tommy Keene’s EP, “Places That Are Gone,” on the turntable, cranked up the volume, and began to jump rope. After twenty minutes my T-shirt was soaked through.
I had a hot shower, shaved, put on clean jeans, a deep blue shirt, and a gray, light wool Robert Hall sportjacket I had picked up at the thrift shop for twenty bucks. On my way out I carried the cat in one hand and her dish in the other and placed both of them on the stoop. I climbed into my car and headed towards Connecticut Avenue.
Thestore was strangely quiet when I entered. Lee was behind the counter reading a textbook. Lloyd was sitting on a console watching the soaps. He turned his head, looked me over, and re S ov I turned his gaze to the television.
Lee looked up from her book and smiled. I walked around the counter and touched her arm, leaned into her and said, “Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” she said. I kissed her. “You look better. Do you feel better?”
“Yes.”
“What are you up to?”
“I came in to correct the proofs for the weekend. Then I’ve got an appointment downtown.”
“The courier delivered this an hour ago,” she said, handing me a thin white bag filled with tear sheets and proofs.
The art department at the Washington Post was a sweatshop, and showed it by the manner in which eighty percent of my proofs were returned to me. In this particular proof, several different type styles were inexplicably set, art was shot upside down, key words were misspelled, and most of the phone numbers for the stores were incorrect. For this and other services my company paid a major account “discount rate” somewhere over $120 per column inch.
I corrected the proof, using the standard editing symbols, then called ad services to tell them where to pick it up. McGinnes arrived at the counter as I hung up the phone. His eyes were watery and he was very pale. He took my jaw in his hand and turned my face to the right.
“Not too bad,” he said.
“No. It will be gone in a couple of days.”
“I wish I could say the same. The guy who dropped me knew what he was doing.”
“You hurting?”
“Some,” he said. “I pissed a little blood this morning.”
“You should have a doctor check it out.”
“I’m on medication right now.”
“I know,” I said. “I can smell it on you.”
I shook his hand and said good-bye to Lee. Lloyd kept his eyes on the television, his mouth piped and jaw ajut, like an emaciated Douglas MacArthur.
I spent the remainder of the afternoon running between offices downtown, standing in lines, being fingerprinte d, and filling out forms in triplicate. By the time I was finished my hangover was gone, and the previous night’s activities had become a romantic memory. Which is to say that I was ready, once again, for a drink.
But first I had to make another stop, to see a guy McGinnes and I knew, a whale of a man who went by the alliterative name of Fat Fred.
NINE
Souvenir City was a small shop on Ninth between F and G run by Fat Fred, whose real name was the somehow even less appealing Fred Bort. Fat Fred had worked with McGinnes and me on the Avenue for a brief period in the late seventies, until the company got hip to the fact that he was fencing goods stolen from the store. He stayed in the fencing business, opening this store as a thinly veiled front. McGinnes called the place, which sold an indescribably garish inventory of useless trinkets, “Souvenir Shitty.”
Fat Fred had been a fair retail salesman, though he lost more than a few deals due to his appearance and lack of hygiene. Besides hovering at an indelicate two eighty, quite a load for a man who stood five feet seven, he smelled like an ashtray and apparently showered only on a novelty basis.
Fat Fred was in the rear of the shop when I entered, a lit weed in his hand. He took a deep drag from it and blew a cloud my way as I walked up to greet him. He was still buying his clothes from the “Work ’n’ Leisure” department at Sears, and his hair, which was plastered to his scalp in topographic sections, resembled black spinach.
“Nick,” he said.
“Freddie. What’s happening?”
“You’re looking at it.” He waved his club of a hand the width of the store. “Slow tourist season. Must be the murder rate thing.”
“What about your other business?”
He grinned, then wheezed, “What can I do for you, Nick?”
“You still do licenses?”
“Sure. What did you have in mind?”
“I need a relatively authentic private investigator’s license, D.C. style. Can you swing it?”
“Yeah, not a problem.”
