Baby Brother Blues (Sammy Dick, PI Series: Book 1) Page 5

  I, on the other hand, was beginning to sweat everywhere! And I do mean everywhere. Sweat was beginning to run down my underarms, down my neck, down my forehead, and down my you know what. As I said, everywhere! This job was going to be harder than I thought. Just when I was starting to fear that my generous application of mascara might run down in rivulets across my lips, like some kind of moving mystery moustache, Michael made another left turn, passed one store with mannequins in teeny tiny short skirts, then gestured toward an older, well-kept building. Voila, at last! A restaurant, called the Chez Get the Hell Out of the Sun, into which we both stepped inside.

  Ah, sweet, sweet air conditioning! If you haven’t spent time in Phoenix in the summer, you really need to, if only to appreciate your own city more. I immediately excused myself to find the restroom, not wishing to greet his sovereignty, Sylvester Swane, sporting a moving mystery moustache. I told Michael I’d find their table on my own and scuttled into the restroom, where I peered into the mirror. The damage wasn’t quite as bad as I’d imagined. I patted myself dry with paper towels, touched up my mascara, generously stroked on my Luscious Luv lipstick, took a deep breath and stepped back into the restaurant. I’d been in such a hurry to scurry into the restroom that I’d barely noticed its interior before. Now I took a closer look as I searched for Michael and Sylvester.

  Hmmm. This was some kind of Asian restaurant, and I really couldn’t see any people. Just little curtained booths, with flowing orange Hare Krishna draperies hiding the people within. The hostess zeroed in on my lost look and rushed over to guide me. “You must be Mr. Swane’s guest. He instructed me to escort you. If you would be so kind as to follow me.” She wore what looked like a geisha outfit. One of those pillow-like things was strapped to her butt, and I watched it sway, gliding among the Hare Krishna curtains. Her skin was powdered white. She had bright red lips and eyes with clever black eyeliner, much more carefully applied than mine. On her feet were those slide-in high-heeled sandals, as high as mine, popular in Asian countries where the wearer sort of slide glides along the floor without picking up her feet. Probably because her shoes would fall off. I sympathized silently and admired her moves as she led me in a sliding, gliding motion through the blessed dark coolness of the restaurant, the many curtained booths, and the murmuring of voices. Finally, we reached the very back of the restaurant after traversing a long hallway.

  How big was this restaurant anyway? Just as I began to fear that we were going to slide glide right on through and out the back door, we stopped at a grand, ornate door on our left. Someone had painstakingly painted it a glossy, deep red, deeper than the red of my hostess’s lips, and the door handle was a golden ring ensconced within the nostrils of an aggressive-looking bull’s nose. Although I’ve never really seen a ring in a bull’s nose, this is how I’d imagine a ring would look in a bull’s nose. Well, if the ring were gold and in the middle of a Chinese door. Enough! I was digressing into nervous thoughts because who knew what lay behind such an awe-inspiring door? I tried again to quiet my racing brain and nerves.

  At the door, the geisha stopped slide gliding along and bent over to twist the golden ring. This caused her butt pillow to hump charmingly upwards. I stepped back, not sure whether to watch the pillow or examine the door which was carved with dragons and other intricate symbols. It took both the geisha’s hands to twist the golden ring. I guess it was part of a full security mechanism or something. Bringing trays of food into the room must be tricky. I listened as the door mechanism slid into the unlocked position and prepared myself for what lay beyond as the heavy door swung open.

  Chapter 6

  Semidarkness. I squinted, trying to adjust. More curtains, this time of deepest red, a perfect match for the door and the geisha’s lips. These curtains adorned a single, rectangular enclosure in the center of the room. Wordlessly, the geisha slide glided over and parted the curtains to reveal the inhabitants inside. Let the show begin, I said to myself, my eyes still not yet adjusted to the dark, and stepped within.

  Whoops! Unfortunately, that first step was a doozy. I plunged down into a recessed area so deep that when my foot finally touched bottom, Michael and Sylvester’s heads were even with my waist. Luckily, I’m a true athlete. I recovered gracefully, showing no signs that my heart had nearly sprung out of my chest, and found purchase with my foot on the sunken booth’s seating.

  By now my eyes were adjusted, and I could discern a myriad of tiny votive candles clustered together in the center of the table. Cool! I’m into ambiance and this was doing it for me. I sucked in a deep breath of votive smoke, flipped off my heels at last, squirreled my stockinged feet down under the table, fervently hoped my feet didn’t smell, and settled my butt with authority on the cushioned bench.

  I looked up to see Michael’s topaz eyes glittering like a tiger’s to my left, and Sylvester’s Nordic blues shimmering like ice floes to my right. All four eyes assessed me silently over the flickering of the nearly countless, votive candles. All eyes on me, the unknown quantity. My kind of lunch!

  “I’m honored to be included in your luncheon today, so I can clarify your expectations of my investigation.” I wasn’t so great at true performance consultation, but, hey, I could consult with the best of ‘em when it came to throwing out consultant-like lingo.

  Sylvester took control of the situation. He was obviously the big cheese here and would probably dominate almost any room. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Michael. Michael’s eyes had shifted off of me and were pinned warily on Sylvester.

  As Sylvester began to speak, his voice could only be described as gravelly. I don’t know if he’d had a bout of throat cancer or some other medical issue, but his voice emanates from deep within. The whispery quality of the sea.

  “So we meet again, Sammy. I’m so glad you were free to help us expand our eyes and ears within Swann. As I told Michael, you’re particularly suited for an investigation like this, given your business background and your uncanny ability to read the deeper motives of human beings.” He said this graciously in his half whisper, extending his hands to clasp both of mine in his. No handshake here, but an all-encompassing enclosure around my smaller hands. A bird trapped in a gilded cage, I thought, but accepted the enclosure looking directly back into his ice-blue gaze.

  Sylvester is in his late fifties, but he’s a hunk, pretty much by anybody’s standards. He has retained most of his hair, which is white on top, gray on the sides with near black sliding down the back of his well-shaped skull like an arrowhead. The receding hairline at his temples serves only to make him look more intelligent, omniscient even, especially in concert with his aquiline nose and craggy cheekbones. I didn’t know if he still smoked. He used to smoke incessantly when my dad knew him in their younger years, but Sylvester either worked out or watched his weight carefully because his body was fit and V-shaped, almost as perfect as Michael’s much younger body. All three of us, I imagined, harbored a respectful awareness that we were in the company of other fit athletes within this shadowy room. Either that or egomaniacs. Probably both, I concluded, and withdrew my hands gently from Sylvester’s lengthening clasp.

  I decided to take the offensive. Surprise, surprise. “Yes, gentlemen, I’ve already made some interesting discoveries in my first few hours that I’d like to reveal and explore a little further with the two of you.” I watched as they both leaned in toward me almost like dogs panting for a treat. Wow, knowledge is power, even pseudo-knowledge. I smiled, enjoying my advantage.

  Then Sylvester immediately sat back and pulled out a pack of unfiltered Camels from the seat beside him. He knew better than to offer one to either of us as he transferred the cigarette to his left hand, reached into his pocket and conjured a carved jade lighter. It was adorned with symbols snaking all over it that looked like dragons, or maybe they were lions and tigers and bears. Who knew? I was out of my depth on many fronts here, but fascinated at the same time and pretty much game for whatever happened.

  Sylv
ester flicked flame from the intricate lighter and swayed it gracefully across the tip of his cigarette until the tip caught. He inhaled, closed his eyes with exaggerated slowness, like a hood-eyed hawk savoring the marrow sucked from his newly caught prey. Then those startling blue eyes shot open again and he trained them on me at full force as he exhaled.

  Holy shit! When his eyes pinned on me with such force, his intensity almost made me back away to avoid falling under his power but I restrained myself and pulled a look of calmness over my face like a Zen screen and returned his gaze unwaveringly. Apparently the no-smoke laws don’t apply to the Sylvester Swanes of the world, or maybe he owned this restaurant as one of his many enterprises, so he did what he damned well pleased. At any rate, I tried not to cough or grimace as the smoke billowed out between us. Normally, I would object because my body is my citadel, and a fine citadel it is, that requires healthy care and feeding. However, this was my client and a humongous amount of much needed bucks were on the horizon if I succeeded, so I just blinked my eyes once and plunged into my spiel. I’d had no time to plan, as I hadn’t been expecting lunch today with the big boys. No worries. Planning wasn’t my forte anyway. Time to hurtle forward into a speech designed for big boys.

  “Before I begin, I want to lay a few ground rules. You are employing me to observe and investigate your business and the people within it applying my fresh perspective.”

  I halted there. Took in a breath and scanned their faces to see if they were buying my pseudo-smoothness. So far so good, so I plunged on. “If you were already certain of everything you needed to know, you wouldn’t have hired me in the first place. My experience, though, is that when people have questions about their business or personal life, they often already suspect or even know the answers, but are unwilling to face the hard facts of those answers.”

  They were both silent. Alert. All eyes on me, so I decided to go for the jugular early. “Please indulge me as I give you a somewhat gruesome example, given the circumstances.” Michael reeled back somewhat as if I were about to belt him, and in a way, I was.

  Better that he accept this early, though, than me not getting paid. “Psychological statistics reveal that nine out of ten cuckolded spouses can name the person with whom their mate is having an affair, including times and often places, yet they will hire a private investigator to confirm the facts. And when those facts are revealed, it appears to come as a complete and devastating blow, and they are often quite angry and resentful at the investigator for delivering the truth to them. The very truth they suspected all along and are paying to receive.”

  During this difficult little speech, Michael blanched visibly, even in the relative darkness of our surroundings and beneath his mocha skin. I glanced quickly at Sylvester who was sucking on his Camel and grimacing. I continued.

  “Devastating business revelations are often greeted with the same anger, surprise, and resentment, even when clear facts delineate the unwelcome truth of the situation. It is not a pleasant experience to have the problems of your organization revealed to you. However, it is the only way that you’ll be able to uncover the corruption or deceit, if there is any, and permanently exorcise it.” I gazed around the room. The big boys were spellbound, even Sylvester, so I proceeded with my improvised words to cover all the bases.

  “And, even if there is no corruption or deceit, then the investigation puts your minds at rest and you can proceed with business as usual. Or, as a middle ground, you give your business a minor tune-up and move on.

  ”However, if I begin revealing the hard facts of those kinds of answers to you, and confirm the difficult, inescapable truth of what you may not be willing to take in as of yet, my expectation is that you will not shoot the messenger, moi.” As I said the word moi, I placed my right hand across the swell of my left breast, ostensibly over my heart, rather fetchingly I thought, and waited.

  Neither man spoke and each seemed to be mulling over my revelations and the implications. Silence ruled the room. I waited several beats. Silence. Hmmm… I decided to ratchet up the sales pitch a notch or two. Maybe I was losing them. Time to embellish with half-truths.

  “Considering that in only a few hours, I’ve uncovered potential avenues that, if researched more deeply, may lead to considerably improved profitability for both of you, I recommend you sign this contract I happen to have in my handbag.” At this point, I reached into the depths of my bag where I keep all of my important stuff, as opposed to my briefcase which so far I’d managed to keep empty, and extracted a carefully worded five-page contract that Michael and I had created as a rough draft on Friday. My intent was to get it signed by both of these men today.

  I moved my tea cup aside and stretched out the somewhat crumpled contract on the tablecloth. Then, I looked into Michael’s topaz eyes. They held a look of fear. “Michael, this contract exactly mirrors the one I gave you to read carefully after our initial meeting.”

  I’d learned quickly and painfully in my brief history as an investigator that a contract needs to be in writing—not verbal—and it must be fully executed at the front end of a business relationship, not somewhere midstream and certainly not at the tail-end of an investigation, when you have to keep running after the client to play catch up, trying to get them to sign up for the services you’ve already delivered. Clients who neglected or refused to sign a contract at the beginning of a relationship were highly unlikely to pay you at the end of one. If they didn’t sign now, I was prepared to exit the smoky room, go to the gym and aerobicize Swane’s smoke out of my lungs.

  The room remained silent, so I just sat there, waiting. Finally, Swane looked up at Michael. “Have you read through this contract in full?”

  Michael hesitated. Seldom does anyone, but the legal department, read through a contract word by word, and this wasn’t the kind of contract, because of its nature, that you trot over to the legal department for a look-see, since everyone in the company could be under suspicion. I waited breathlessly in the empty space of Michael’s prolonged hesitation. Finally, Michael leaned forward and looked from Sylvester to me. This was a good sign. The body language of acceptance.

  Michael said, “I’m comfortable with the terms of the contract. After all, Sylvester, her second bonus is predicated on significant profitability we hope to gain, year over year, and even if she’s unable to uncover information that enables us to make extra profit, the weekly check, for one to two months, is well worth it to me just to put my mind at rest as to the overall, uh,” he hesitated again and seemed to be searching for the appropriate word, “soundness of our business.”

  Having said that, Michael receded back against the cushions, spent. Perhaps my speech had cost him all his energy. Now, he and I both waited in the empty space created by Swane’s hesitation.

  Sylvester seemed to sense and enjoy our discomfort. He took another long drag on his Camel, exhaled for a few beats. Tapped his intricate jade lighter a few taps against the table, then drawled, “Well, Michael, I trust your judgment. Sammy, did you bring a pen in that big bag of yours?”

  I tried not to jump up on the table and pound out a banshee celebration dance, knocking all the votive candles and the delicate tea service every which way, singing “Yay, Yay, Yay, Yay!” This was by far the biggest contract Geo and I’d ever won!

  Sylvester scrawled with a large, illegible flourish and Michael with a more refrained, legible and elegant hand. When they’d both finished signing, they passed the contract back to me. I laid it again on the table, deftly rotating the document, as if I did this every day, so that it was positioned correctly. I then penned in my own signature at the bottom and dated it. I noticed my signature resembled Swane’s more than Michael’s. Yikes.

  From that point forward, the geisha entered several times bringing a variety of delicious dishes. We shared and passed them around the table, keeping the conversation light.

  When lunch was finished, we heard the massive door bolt twist in the elaborate red door one last time and
in sashayed our geisha. No bill was delivered. I decided there must be a standing arrangement between Sylvester and the restaurant. As a parting gift, the geisha handed fortune cookies to each of us.

  I watched each man’s reaction to the cookie. Sylvester made a show of declining to open his cookie and set it down near the table center as if it didn’t exist. Michael looked as if he might have opened his cookie, but was following the mighty Swane’s lead. I, on the other hand, found some of Swane’s disdain silly. I ripped mine open—with great panache. I always give myself an important question before I read the answer in a fortune cookie. Silently, I posed the question of the moment before peeling back the little folded paper: How successful will I be in this investigation?

  Both men watched me in the votive candle light while I unfolded the story of my life in the days to come. Confucius says: After great tragedy comes peace. Yikes! Who did their cookie writing here anyway? No wonder Sylvester didn’t open his.

  I kept a straight face and then broke into a smile. “It says I shall have success in all my new relationships!” I laughed lightly, looking them each directly in the eyes one after the other. Then I stuffed the creepy, little piece of paper deep down in my bag and motioned with my body language that I was ready to leave.

  Chapter 7

  Kathy lay trembling on the tar roof, listening to the explosion catapult the remnants of her building, her job, her life, as she had known it, all over the streets of Newark. Kathy prayed the prolonged contact with the burning hot roof wasn’t permanently disfiguring her cheek as she waited for everything to subside. She felt fairly confident that St. Pierre, if that was his real name, hadn’t seen her leap and for that she was deeply grateful. Kathy lay still until the plummeting fragments finally ceased falling around her. Then she tentatively stretched her legs out straight, checking for broken bones. She could hear the wailing of sirens in the distance converging toward her. They seemed to be coming from every direction.