Instead she reached for the intercom again and pushed the button. Without her having to say anything this time, the door latch clacked behind her and she opened the door and shut it between us with a slap.
So much for that. I wouldn’t be getting any work from that direction. Ms. Rauth didn’t need my help, Ms. Rauth clearly could take care of herself.
Whatever spell she’d had over me was broken. I felt glad. Like I’d just dodged a bullet.
Chapter Seven: THE WRONG CLIENT
I stopped at the first mini-mart I came to on Avenue B. Bought a small bottled water and stripped off my dress shirt as I paid, telling the clerk, “It sure turned warm.” He was a stocky, middle-aged Middle Easterner with a puckered scar on his left cheek and gold in his smile. He nodded and grinned full agreement like he didn’t understand a word I said.
On the way out, I untucked the green t-shirt I’d worn underneath and put the paper painter’s hat on my head, tucking up my loose hair. Altering my appearance in case those goons in the gold Grand Cherokee were circling the block for me. I traveled back facing the oncoming traffic along one-way side streets.
I re-entered Tompkins Square Park at the Ninth Street entrance by the handball courts and the dog run. Stopped and leaned against the fence to check out the dogs and their owners and see if anyone I knew was around, but all I saw were the faces of young strangers.
At the base of a high wooden chainsaw-sculpture of a femur bone, a black Yorkie was digging furiously into the cedar woodchips exposing dark soil beneath. A tawny Great Dane loped up behind it and sniffed the little dog’s ass. Then, like a man on stilts bending down to tie his shoes, the Dane squatted low on his bunched-up hind legs to mount the Yorkie with amorous intent. But before even the first thrust, the little black dog scampered away from him and darted off across the dog run, leaving the Dane, awkwardly over-balanced, dry-humping the empty air.
I turned away. I knew how he felt.
Exiting the park at the St. Marks Place entrance, I returned to the Yaffa Cafe. This time, I went inside and ran the name of George Rowell past the hostess, asking her if he’d made a reservation or if anyone had asked for him.
She was a dumpy woman in her early twenties and had copper-orange hair and harlequin eyeglasses with seashells and tiny starfish glued around the edges. She shook her head no.
I ordered a take-out cappuccino. The purchase left my wallet with two fives and three singles. Lucky me.
I walked up First Avenue to Twelfth Street and turned left, passed the fenced-in blacktop behind Asher Levy Elementary School where kids were filing in from recess, their cumulative voices a high-pitched roar.
At Second Avenue, I stood on the same corner Owl had three hours ago. In the road the tar and pavement was partly worn away, torn up by snowplows and the patches never setting, so the cobblestones beneath peeked out like bare ribs through a tattered shroud.
I waited for the light to change. It only took a minute, and I wondered again what had taken him so long to make it from the phone to my door. What could account for that two or three minute lapse before the accident?
Again the only answer I came up with was a sudden attack of disorientation. But could it have been another sort of attack?
I didn’t wonder about it long because at the front door of my building a tall, well-dressed man with curly blond hair was jabbing one of the buzzers, and as I got closer, I saw it was mine.
I thought maybe it was one of Tigger’s team of financial advisors pushing the wrong button. He had a long, lean, handsome face. Ten years younger than me and four inches taller, wearing clothes that would’ve covered my rent. Five hundred dollar suit, three hundred dollar shoes, hundred dollar hair grooming, a fifty dollar tan, and twenty dollar aftershave, of which, as the breeze changed, I figured he wore ten bucks’ worth.
I approached, consulting my empty cupped hand like it held a piece of paper, and rang my own buzzer.
He turned, looked at me, and said, “Mr. Sherwood?”
So much for playing it cagey. He knew me by sight, but I’d never seen him before in my life.
He said, “I’ve been trying your bell for the last five minutes.”
“Oh. How do you like it?”
“What?”
“Skip it.” I put my key in the door and opened it. “What can I do for you?”
“My name is Paul Windmann. Two N’s, M-A-N-N. I need to hire a—” he lowered his voice “—a detective.”
I stepped into the entryway. He followed on my heels. In the closed space, his cologne reeked like concentrated formaldehyde. My nostrils revolted against it. I breathed in through my teeth.
“Well, then you better come up, Mr. Windmann.”
“Please call me Paul, Mr. Sherwood. But before we go further, I need to know, are you free today?”
“No. But I’m reasonable.”
He forced a chuckle. “Bad choice of words. What I meant is, are you available to help me?”
“That depends on what kind of help.”
He waved that away. “I mean, will you be able to act immediately? Give it your full attention? You aren’t, by chance, working on anything else that would… conflict?”
I shook my head.
“Nothing but a recovery.”
“A recovery?”
“My own.”
“You’re joking.”
“Good on you to spot it. Most don’t.”
“Well, it’s funny you should say that, because the help I need involves a recovery. But, you’re sure you aren’t engaged? It needs your undivided attention.”
I was getting a bad feeling about this guy. I said blandly, “I’ll worship it as a deity.”
“Please, there’s no need for sarcasm.”
“Isn’t there?”
“I merely stress the point because I don’t want to waste time—yours or mine—discussing it with you if it happens you’re busy working on…something else.”
“How did you come to choose me?”
He blinked, one two three.
“You were recommended.”
“By whom?”
“One of your satisfied customers, of course.”
If only he knew what a short list that was.
“And who would that be?”
Blink, blink, blink.
“I’d rather not say. Privacy, you understand. But does it matter? Maybe I should’ve said I picked you out of the phonebook. Do you check references on all your clients? I thought it worked the other way round.”
He was getting exasperated with me and I was getting sick of the smell of his cologne. I was going to have to light a match soon.
I bowed my head. “You got me. Come on up.”
