Chapter Six: THE RIGHT CLIENT

I walked, steady enough, retracing the route back to the townhouse the woman had entered. I stopped, again steady enough, but no mistake, I was feeling fine. That good was tequila was good, that tequila was.

I opened the gate and mounted the steps lightly, Vesuvius milk swishing and swaying behind my belt and spreading all through me a warm, cascading buzz. I pressed the bruise on my temple and it hardly hurt.

On impulse, I pushed the single intercom button, no idea what I was going to say when someone answered. I guess, if not for the shot of tequila, I might’ve handled it differently. First gone back to my office and thought about it, maybe done something else.

But I can’t entirely fault the liquor. She shared in the blame. And was the more intoxicating from the very first sip.

It’s not that I believed in love at first sight, just that as I saw her for the first time up close, I believed in nothing else.

She came outside to see me rather than speak over the intercom. Hot, smooth, and languid as honeyed liquid, she slipped out and closed the door behind her. Softly, she leaned her back against it.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

Her frank eyes were almond-shaped and black as a bird’s. Eurasian? A dark complexion, deeper than tan. Maybe the gypsy curtains were more than mere decoration. A small flattish nose over thin lips, the ends of which curled into an arousing smirk. A wicked, impish chin and a slender downy neck with deer-taut tendons and a lively, animated throat.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes yes yes.”

Some wise old freak once said, you can have anything you want in the world, all you’ve got to do is want it so badly it means more than anything else. Lot of people you talk to have no idea what that means. If you’ve never been hungry ever in life and you want a sandwich, you don’t really want that sandwich. But when you’ve been hungry for weeks, starving, no relief in sight—and you come across a sandwich, a stacked, lightly toasted club sandwich, so fresh there’s beads of dew on the pert overhang of lettuce? You want that sandwich.

That kind of want. But fuck the sandwich. I wanted her.

On top of the way she looked, I sensed something I never could resist. She was and/or was in trouble. And I could see from the look on her face she was trying to figure out just what I was. Would I be her knight in shining armor or another dragon?

A low sound in her throat, not a laugh, more like a confused cough. I couldn’t stop staring at her and she wouldn’t break eye contact with me. Like when someone’s got a grip on a high-voltage wire and can’t release it, and the people around watching him, his brains frying, sparks shooting out his ears, are all thinking to themselves, Why doesn’t he just let go?

She blinked and broke the spell, or at least suspended it.

“Who are you looking for?”

“You. Well, not exactly.”

What had I been thinking? She wasn’t all that pretty. Her features heavy, her nose a lump. Really kind of ugly, or else that was all just from the ponderous frown she leveled at me.

“Not exactly,” she repeated. She had some trace of accent I couldn’t place, but not American, more guttural, her words spoken under her breath. “Could you be exact?”

“Possibly. Given time.”

“I do not have time, I’m about to go out.”

“But you just got back in.”

She cocked her eyebrow, but ignored the deliberate provocation. “And now I go back out again.” She pushed the intercom button and, when she heard a crackle from the speaker, said, “The door.” The latch clacked and she pushed the door open behind her and took a backward step.

“That’s in,” I said, feeling playful.

“What?”

“You’re going in. You said you were going back out again, but that’s in you’re going. I learned all about it. From this guy, Grover. Shaggy blue hair, red nose, thin dangly arms? No? He also taught me about near and far. If you like I could teach you sometime.”

“Yes. Let us begin with far.” She started to swing the door closed.

“I have information.”

Her eyes narrowed. She stepped out again, keeping one hand behind her back. I heard the door shut.

“Who are you?”

I reached into my back pocket and she stiffened, her shoulders tensing, until my hand came forward with my wallet. Her reaction made me uneasy—what had she expected, what sort of thing was she used to?

I opened my wallet, keeping my thumb on the snapshot of Owl, while I extracted one of my business cards, one of a batch I had printed last year. Nicer than the old ones. Heavy cardstock, raised lettering. Nine boxes of them left. Hardly ever gave them out to strangers, even felt a little odd handing one over to her now, like an indecent exposure.

My head started to ache again, the tequila buzz was wearing off.

She read my card, her fingernail flicking its edge.

“Private…investigator.” She said it like she was tasting the sound, as if she never had the opportunity to say the two words together aloud before. But she didn’t repeat it, the novelty already stale on her lips.

“And you are?” I asked.

“My name is Sayre Rauth.” Oddly formal, like a ritual recital. “You said you have information for me?”

From over her shoulder, the intercom speaker crackled a little. But it didn’t have to mean anything, could’ve been stray radio-dispatch noise from a passing taxicab.

“I have information. Maybe it’s for you. Do you know this man?”

If she had glimpsed Owl’s picture inside my wallet before, she hadn’t reacted. Now I handed her the photo, made her look at it.

“Who is he?” she asked.

Strike one.

“George Rowell. His friends call him Owl.”

She looked up at me sharply, as if I were trying to confuse her again, then back down at the photo. She unfolded it so the young girl was in the photo, too.

“He’s another private investigator,” I told her. “Do you know him?”

She shook her head, not lifting her eyes. But I saw a reaction, a tiny tightening of the muscles around her lovely, lovely jaw.

“Are you sure?” I leaned in.

She looked up. “Yes.”

Strike two and strike three, caught looking, I was out.

I sighed.

“You don’t know me,” I said, “so I understand if you’re cautious and holding back. That’s only natural. But you can trust me.”

She laughed, no confusion in the sound this time.

“You are trying to find this man?” she asked.

“No, I’m not.” I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea that I was after George Rowell. If she was keeping her association with Owl a secret, she’d deny anything about him. “Do you know him?”

She shook her head, still looking down at the picture. I had to ask her to hand it back in order to make her look up again.

“Is that all you wanted? To ask me if I know this man?”

“No, there’s more. I wanted…I came to tell you about a man who followed you back here from the cafe this morning.”

She said nothing.

I tried again. “He was watching you from across the street. He waited for you to leave. Then he followed you all the way back here.”

Calmly, she asked, “How do you know this?”

“I was watching him. I followed him.”

“So…where is he now, where’s my stalker?” She leaned forward. I watched the fine, taut and tender line of her neck. A fresh flowery scent wafted by me and I inhaled deeply.

She looked to the right, she looked to the left, her dark eyes settled back on me. I liked having them there. “I don’t see anyone. The only man I see who followed me is you.”

I winced. She had a point there.

“So you don’t want my information about this guy?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Is this really what you do, follow people who follow people and then ring their doorbells looking for work?”

“Yeh,” I said sourly, “that and chase parked cars.”

“I don’t understand. The photograph of the old man, who is he? Why are you looking for him?”

“I told you, I’m not.” I met her eyes and held them, then dropped the D-bomb. “He’s dead.”

It was a cheap maneuver, not designed to get me anything worth having, even if it hit its mark, like swinging away at a pitch after already being called out. And missing again. Strike four.

She had no reaction. Unless she was the world’s greatest actress, had incredible control. Or else didn’t believe a word I said so it didn’t matter. Or…

Or she was simply telling the truth, she didn’t know Owl, he was a complete stranger to her, she wasn’t his client, it was all just my wishful thinking, and I’d somehow gotten it completely wrong.

The extent of just how wrong began to dawn on me, though dawns are seldom so bleak: what if I’d followed the wrong ones from the cafe? The people I was meant to tail long gone now, along with the only link to Owl’s client.

The woman’s voice softened. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“You look so…I didn’t realize. He was close to you?”

“I hardly knew him. He hired me only this morning to follow this guy and report where he went to ground. Except now, I’ve got no one to report to, he’s dead. Unless I can find whoever hired him.”

She nodded her head, pursed her lips. “I see. And you thought I was this person?” She said it like she was diagnosing my particular mental disorder.

“I thought you might be. But that doesn’t matter. There’s this guy following you, see? I thought you’d like to know.”

She appraised me with a tolerant air, her smile kinked at one end.

“Let me ask you, do you think it’s the first time men have followed me?”

I took her question seriously, looking her up and down. That body hadn’t been overnighted to her, she’d grown up with it, grown up in it. No answer required.

I heard a sound I recognized and looked to the sidewalk in time to see the blond kid again, gliding by on his skateboard and yakking on his cell phone, not even looking over at me. It could’ve been a coincidence, I suppose.

Yeh, a coincidence, like when it rains you get wet. He must’ve been tailing me.

She called my attention back. “What does he look like, this man you say is following me?”

I described him without using specifics, only color, weight, and build, but she seized on my sketchy phantom.

“I know this man, he is a friend of mine.”

“Why was he following you then?”

Her lips sought the taste of an explanation, something with the flavor of truth in it. I watched her tongue’s pink nib.

“He is not quite right. But harmless.”

“My description fits a lot of people, how do you know it’s the same guy?”

“Well, where did he go? I’ll tell you if that’s where my friend lives.”

Our eyes met and I felt something stirring in my chest, something strong and horrible. Maybe prelude to a heart attack, but my left arm wasn’t the appendage that was tingling.

I gave her the address where my squirrel had nested. “Number twenty-seven Avenue C.”

And, just like that, my assignment was over.

She nodded several times. “There, see, that is the same man, I told you. That’s where he lives.”

“Oh. Then I must’ve got it all wrong.”

She nodded.

“And I’m just wasting your time here.”

She nodded again.

“Then I will get out of your way.”

“Wait…”

I stopped my descent and looked back.

“You…interest me.”

I grinned.

She frowned.

“Not you, exactly. Your job.”

I kept on grinning, unaware of any difference.

I noticed rat-furtive movement from the building’s top story and looked up in time to see a curtain falling back into place behind a closed casement window.

She said, “Maybe I could…use you. How much do you charge?”

“Fifty dollars an hour.”

“You joke?”

“I get a lotta work from lawyers. I have to charge that much or they’d think I wasn’t working. Half’m wouldn’t roll over in bed for less than $100 an hour, let alone get out of it.”

She gazed at me as if fascinated.

I pointed to the polished brass plate beside the door.

“Rauth Realty. Is this your family’s business?”

“My family? No, it’s my business.”

“You’re kinda young to be running your own real estate agency.”

“Thank you. I’ve been very fortunate with… investments.”

Behind me, a car pulled up at the curb and came to a skidding stop. I gave it just a brief over-the-shoulder glance—a gold Grand Cherokee four-door, tinted windows and whitewall tires—before I turned back to her.

I heard the car doors open, but none shut.

Two or three pairs of hard-soled shoes suddenly slapped the sidewalk like a spontaneous round of applause.

The gate didn’t make a sound opening, well-oiled. The hard shoes came up the steps in quick snappy hops.

A hand landed on my shoulder, that or a brick.

A hand. It spun me around. Bricks don’t do that.

Stocky, thick-necked, cold-eyed, his mouth concealed behind a black mustache the shape and size of a satchel handle. His auger-edged voice barked, “Tell me where is Michael Cassidy?”

“Who?” I answered stupidly. “I don’t—”

English was not his first language, nor his second. His thick base accent was Russian, presumably his native tongue. But he was also fluent in violence. He seized my throat and squeezed, shutting off all air. Not a squeak.

“Where is she?”

My eyes swelled. Don’t panic. You need air to breathe. I know, I know. Don’t panic, you have time—always that false premise. She? Deafening pulse pounding in my ears.

He released me. Air again.

“Tell,” he barked. “Where is she? Or I mess up your pretty face.”

I swallowed and stammered, “You…you think I’m pretty?”

He walloped the back of my head with his open palm, a fat gold ring on his middle finger ringing my chimes.

Behind me, the woman shouted something and he stopped dead.

Her use of his language seemed to surprise him more than the sudden appearance in her hand of the silver-plated .22 automatic. It was squarish and the size of a cocktail lounge’s ashtray (if cocktail lounges had ashtrays anymore, which they didn’t—thanks to Mayor Droopy Dog banning smoking in all our fine city’s restaurants and bars).

I hated the gun on sight, like she’d reached behind her and pulled out a bloody fanged stump blindly chomping.

She wasn’t pointing the gun at me but it was still pointed at me, at anyone in front of her, anyone in her way.

Black mustache said something in Russian that I thought sounded innocent like maybe, What village you from?

She answered with a more universal turn of phrase. She cocked the pistol’s hammer. No translation required.

He thought it over. Would she shoot, wouldn’t she shoot, was it worth finding out? He seemed to make up his mind. What he wanted from me could wait. He said something to the two behind him, and they all retreated down the steps. Got in their car and drove off.

When I turned back to her, the gun was out of sight again. Some kind of holster concealed at the small of her back.

I asked, “Are you Russian?”

“No, but they are.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” I told her, trying to keep my voice level. “I could’ve handled them.”

“You don’t handle them. They handle you.” She smiled. “You blushing?”

I wasn’t blushing, but no doubt my face was red. I guess I should’ve been grateful, but I wasn’t. I didn’t know exactly why, unless it was the emasculation of being saved by a woman.

“This isn’t the wild west,” I told her. “You can’t just pull a gun out in the middle of the street. Pull that again and I’ll take it away from you.”

She gave me a dark look, like she wanted to pull it right now and use it, too.

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.