axioms had been, “Never look just with your eyes.” Poke into every hollow, he’d say. Get dirty. People lose things all the time that drop into tight spots and corners, dirty places they don’t want to reach into.
I slid my hand down into the pocket sleeve, dug to the bottom. It wasn’t dirty inside, it was smooth. At first I thought nothing was in it, until my fingertips snagged on a corner and I pulled out a color photograph.
A 4x6 snapshot of Owl standing with a thin young girl about twelve years old with shoulder-length dirty- blonde hair, a flattish nose, and big ears. He was crouched so their heads were at the same level. Both mugged for the camera, teeth bared in fierce smiles. The girl’s nose was wrinkled-up in a snarl. The flash camera colored both of their eyes hellhound red.
They were casually dressed, the girl in a pink t-shirt and blue jeans with swirly embroidered rhinestone designs.
Owl wore a plaid sport coat, open-collar shirt, and gray slacks. Behind them was a large potted rubber-tree plant and a pale-blue wall with a partly visible sign, the word GATE in black letters.
I turned the photo over. No date written on the back, only one word in blue block letters: ELENA. I pocketed it.
Still hadn’t found what I was looking for, what I needed. A scrap of paper or anything with a local phone number or address that would lead me to Owl’s friend, the client he owed a favor, connecting me to the job he’d hired me for. But nothing.
My force of purpose going down the drain, nothing left behind but the gurgle. No job, never was really hired anyway.
I didn’t know what I’d been thinking, maybe couldn’t know. Do dogs think when chasing a squirrel? It’s just part of them, an impulse that defines what they are. Problem was, some chased their tails with equal enthusiasm.
Practical matters came back into sharper focus. I had to get back into my office and only two people in the metro area had a spare set of my keys, and one of them I hadn’t spoken to in over five years.
I reached for the bedside phone, read the instructions for an outside line, dialed out, and then the number. It rang only twice before she picked up. Gone were the days when my upstairs neighbor slept until noon, Tigger had a bambina now who got mommy up early.
I simply told her I’d locked myself out, not wanting to get into it over the phone. Would she buzz me in?
“Good thing you did it this month, Payton, and not next.”
At the end of the month, Tigger and Company were moving out—not just out of the building, but the city. I refused to think about it, I didn’t even answer her, I was in locked-down denial. It was like facing an upcoming operation, a scheduled amputation. With any luck, I’d get struck by lightning first and never have to face up to it.
I told her I’d be there in a few minutes.
I stared at the cigarette butts in the ashtray. A pack and a half worth of Marlboro Lights.
I had another call to make, but put it off until later. Not a conversation I was looking forward to.
About to get up, I noticed the tiny red message bulb on the phone was lit. I followed the instructions for retrieving the message and heard a woman’s slightly accented voice say: “All set for 11:30, Yaffa Cafe.”
I checked the nightstand clock. Quarter to eleven.
I closed Owl’s briefcase and took it with me.
At the hotel room door, I stopped for one last look around, feeling like I was forgetting something. My eyes went to the rumpled bedspread. Nothing was on it.
The newspaper I’d tossed there was gone. She must’ve taken it with her. Not that that had to mean anything. If she’d taken the gun, she would’ve needed something to carry it out in.
I was just puzzling over it when the bedside phone rang and I nearly jumped out of my borrowed socks.
I went over, picked up, said hello.
“Michael?” A woman’s voice.
“Yes.”
“May we speak to her?”
We? Her?
I said, “Ah, she just stepped out.”
“We have that number for her.” She sounded official.
“Oh, I can take it.”
“No. Have her come by or call us here at the pier office.”
“Sure, but—”
She hung up on me, not so much as a have a nice day.
Who the hell was Michael?
I shrugged and filed it away. I left the room with Owl’s briefcase grasped in my hand. I felt like an upright citizen off to do an honest day’s work, which in a way I was.
I now had a time and a place. I had direction.
Somewhere out there in the city was a billable client.
And I was going to find him.
Chapter Four: HOMEWORK
Leaving the lobby of the hotel, I almost collided with someone coming in. A stubby old man with bulbous features but no chin, black hornrim glasses, and a stiff gray pompadour. He was dressed in a white short-sleeve shirt and black trousers.
We danced a few steps of the back-n-forth polka attempting to get out of each other’s way. My head couldn’t take the jostling. I turned sideways and let him pass. I grinned, but he didn’t make eye contact.
Outside, I turned right and headed up Third, cut down the diagonal slice of Stuyvesant Street, back over to Second Avenue and Tenth.
A passenger airliner shrieked and moaned overhead. I looked up to see a peerless blue sky, not a single shred of cloud in any direction, absolutely clear.
It made me uneasy.
The gleaming white airplane seemed kind of low. It must’ve been in a holding pattern for JFK. I watched it slowly creep across the narrow column of airspace above me. I was the only one around who seemed to take any notice. I was like a housebroken dog forever shy of rolled-up newspapers.
When the plane finally passed out of sight beyond the edge of a roof, I moved again, breathing evenly.
The briefcase barked against my left knee twice. I switched hands and it barked against my right knee. I couldn’t get the hang of it, just wasn’t executive material, I guess.
I stopped on the corner a block from my building, by the end of the churchyard gate where for at least a dozen years the little black lady, Evelyn, used to station herself, bouncing change in her paper cup and exchanging friendly words with anyone who passed. She had died that January.
I rattled my pockets for coins, none. Fished in my watchpocket and came up with a quarter, Oregon back. I left it right where she used to sit.
Ahead, at the corner of East Twelfth, the commotion had died down, everything back to normal. People crossing the street, cars repeating that same sharp right onto Second, over and over where Owl’s body had been. As if nothing had happened.
I walked to my building and pushed the buzzer for T. Fitchet, Penthouse.
The intercom speaker clicked.
“Who is it?”
“It’s the plumber, I’ve come to fix the sink.”
Speaker click.
“Who is it?”
