Once inside, he gave my office a sweeping glance. Something about its barrenness made him smile.
“Take a seat,” I said, indicating the club chairs as I went behind my desk and sat down. The light on my answering machine was flashing four new messages, but I didn’t play them now.
Windmann looked at the answering machine, too, inclining his head slightly as if to say, “Go ahead, don’t mind me.” But I did mind him.
I picked up the pouch of loose tobacco and started to roll a cigarette.
Windmann smiled wryly, reached into a breast pocket, removed a thin silver case, and pushed a button which flipped open the
“Have one of mine?”
Dunhill Blue. I selected one from the side near his thumb and lit up. I drew deep. After my harsh diet of roll- your-owns, the filtered cigarette was like smoking morning mist.
“How can I help you, er…Paul?”
He told me. And within thirty seconds, I pegged him as a wrong client. I recognized the signs because I’ve had a few over the years. Evasive, reluctant to give details, curious about what method will be used, restrictions on what they want done, and, above all, no police involved.
The most typical wrong clients a P.I.—especially a one-man operation—has to contend with are stalkers. They want to hire you to do one specific job, either get an unlisted phone number or find the new address where someone has moved to, and they’re willing to pay for it; money is no object (as long as you tell them how you do it, so next time they can do it for themselves).
All of which you sometimes get with a right client as well. But the decider is the story. A wrong client always has a story prepared. A right client, half the time, doesn’t know what he wants done. He has a problem, and by coming to you shows he’s run out of ideas on how to solve it. Getting his story is like removing shrapnel from a fleshy buttcheek with tweezers. Grab a bit here and drop it in the dish—kaplang—grab another bit there—kaplang —and probe deeper into the meat for a missing piece that might connect the two. Sometimes it requires more skill and finesse than the actual job itself.
But a wrong client’ll always tell you a tale.
I leaned back, smoking, and listened to Paul Windmann’s.
“Two nights ago,” he said, “I was robbed. I went for a drink with a business associate at this place that just opened on Rivington Street called The Parallel Bar. We had a couple of drinks and then my associate left around ten p.m. I stayed for another and while I was drinking it, this blonde woman came over and started talking to me. A real hottie. Sounded foreign, sort of a thick accent, but she didn’t say where she was from. I bought her a drink and we seemed to connect, so we had a few more. By midnight, we were both a little drunk. I had an early appointment the next day, so I decided to call it a night. I asked for her number so we could hook up over the weekend.
“But she made it—how shall I say—very obvious she didn’t want our evening to end. She suggested we go back to my place. Now, that’s important, because it was her idea, not mine. Not that I didn’t immediately concur, but generally I like to get to know someone first. When a woman is that eager, it usually means she does that sort of thing a lot, and I’ve no interest in catching an STD. But as I said, I was under the influence and she was very attractive and very willing, and well…I relaxed my caution. We took a cab back to my place.”
“And where’s that?”
“I live at the Crystalview. Do you know it? Well, it’s a relatively new condominium on the west side, just below Canal.”
He gave me the exact address and I jotted it down.
“Well, on the way, she practically raped me in the cab. I had to peel her off me in order to pay the fare. By the time we got up to my apartment, I was more than ready.
“But as soon as we walked through the door, she cooled off, didn’t act nearly as drunk as she had been—or as I felt. She wanted to talk, listen to some music, have another drink. She said she had this special drink she wanted to make for me.”
I arched an eyebrow.
Windmann said, “You can see where this is going. She made up these drinks that looked like Cosmos. She downed hers in two gulps and I followed suit. Suddenly she had her dress off and was taking my clothes off, and we were both naked on my couch. I tried leading her to my bedroom, but I couldn’t keep my legs straight under me, and she was laughing and laughing. That’s all I remember clearly until about dawn.
“I woke up naked on the floor. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I only realized when I was about to call out to her that she’d never told me her name. And I felt sick, sicker than any hangover I ever had. She must’ve drugged me with some sort of date-rape drug.”
“A roofie.” Rohypnol, one of the benzodiazepines. Better living through chemistry.
“Whatever, only she didn’t rape me, she ripped me off. All my money was gone, credit cards, two wristwatches, and my iPod. All gone. The little bitch.”
I sat forward and planted my elbows on the desk.
“Did you report it to the police?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Well…to be honest, I’m afraid to.”
“Afraid of what?”
He smiled sheepishly. He had even white teeth. “Well, in retrospect, I’m not a hundred percent sure whether she was eighteen or not.”
“You’re saying she may have been underage?”
“I’m not sure. They were serving her at the bar, so I figured she was old enough. But if not, well, I might end up getting arrested myself.”
I nodded. That made sense even if nothing else did. I reached for my pouch of tobacco to roll a cigarette, but Windmann got his engraved silver cigarette case out again and offered me another of his. I took one, but not because I really needed a cigarette. I wanted to see his case again. Looked like real silver to me. But if he’d been robbed, why hadn’t it been taken too?
I lit up and smoked. It felt strange not to be constantly picking shreds of tobacco off my tongue.
I asked him, “You’ve cancelled your credit cards?”
“Naturally.”
“So, what you want me to do,” I said, anticipating the payoff, “is find the woman.”
But he surprised me.
“What? No. No. I never want to see her again. I just want my…things back.”
“Still means I’ll have to find this woman.”
“Does it really? I hoped you might have…other ideas.”
“I always have other ideas. Have you got a list of everything that’s missing?”
He blinked one, two, three.
“No…I mean, well, most of it I don’t care about. Actually, all I really would like returned is my iPod. You see, my entire music collection is on it. I’ve been assembling it for years. And like an idiot, I never backed any of it up on my computer.”
“What about the wristwatches?”
He waved it away. “They’re both old, and one doesn’t even work anymore.”
I nodded. I thought it over.
A private investigator confronted with a wrong client typically should respond by showing him the door and telling him never to come back. That’s if the P.I. wants to safeguard his bond and keep his license. Okay, so maybe this guy wasn’t a stalker, but he was something, something wrong, possibly even dangerous.
I told him, “I’m sorry, Mr. Windmann—”
“Paul.”
“Yeh, Paul, but I don’t see how I can help you, given that you don’t want me to do anything.”
Windmann crossed his legs, straightened his pantleg, uncrossed his legs again, then leaned forward.
“May I speak frankly to you, Mr. Sherwood?”
“I wish you would.”
“I…this morning, I got a phone call. It was from a man who knew about my being robbed the other night. He
