Gumshoe


1

“Hey, you remember when you asked me what I wanted to grow up to be
when I was a kid?”

“A detective!”

“Well, a private eye; you know, like in all those books I read.”

“A private detective!” she tittered, “I remember.”

“And you remember, before I landed this job—”

“That ad you placed in the paper?”

“Well...”

“No!  someone's answered it?”

“Yeah, kinda.”

She laughed.  She was enjoying this, enjoying little me.  She came
over and sat across from me, straddling my other kitchen chair.  “So
tell me, my little gumshoe,” she said, “what's the case?” and she
winked, leaned at me on two chair-legs, and smiled.

“Well, I'm supposed to call back: they left a message—she left a
message...”

“Ooh, hey!  What was _she_ like then?  Did she have one of those husky
mysterious receptionist-slash-lover voices, deep and sexy sounding, a
real _femme fatale_?  Was it some kind of cryptic message?  a code?  a
riddle?”

“Aww, shuddup!”

“No, no!  Did the scene fade to black and white, the phone sprout a
curly cord and turn all clunk-shaped in your hand?  A burned-down
cigarette appear between your fingers?  You stub it out into some
heavy glass tray on your desk brimming with ash?  You hang up and
reach into your deep desk drawer, grab the bottle out, lean back and
take a hit...” she sprang up, grabbed a bottle from the cabinet and
held it up, “...of the good stuff?” I jumped up and swung for the
whiskey; she pulled back and laughed, then ran up the stairs to the
bedroom.  I chased her up.  Swung open the door and she grabbed me by
my lapels.

“Well you're Sam Spade enough for me without having a breakfast of
liquor!”

I pushed forward into the room and her legs came up around my waist,
arms around my shoulders; we fell into the bed.


2

I felt like such a schoolboy with her.  She was the one who got me to
place that ad in the first place, you know.  It took a lot of coaxing,
too, to get that confession out.  There we were lying post-coitally
and I'm feeling pretty good about myself, then she asks: “When you
were a little boy, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

Well, after she'd tickled me out of places to get tickled I let her
have something just to make her stop but then the giggling and the
prodding began.  Sheesh, the prodding.  Finally she let up.  She rose
and looked down on me and said, “You know, you hate your job: why not
ditch those fuckers and start out in the private investigation
business?”

And now it was my turn to laugh.  But I couldn't.  If I were like her
I wouldn't have been able to keep my face straight at the words
‘Private Investigation’; but I'm a master of control when it comes to
being submissive, unobtrusive.  I don't think I could burp if I tried.
I yawn with my mouth closed right back into my silent lungs.  I always
wear sneakers.  I move in the dark I don't need a light.  I have as
little impact on my surroundings as possible and still tell myself I
have meaning for those same surroundings somehow.

And you'd think that I'd barely have the guts to throw it in at the
shit job, be brave enough to try something on my own; but she gave me
my confidence.  She wrote the ad too.  Didn't do it a poor thing
either:

	Professional Investigator of Private Affairs.  Handles all
	concerns, no case too big/small.  Clients dealt with in a
	professional and discreet manner.  Loyal to no-one.

then my name and cell.  And sure, maybe that last bit was something
too much, but I let it slide: I didn't expect anyone to answer.
Instead I got a part-time job at the bookstore.  Didn't tell 'Lisabeth
at first, either; but she found out.  She played a little hurt when
she did but I don't think she could actually ever be hurt.  Something
else happened, flitted in the corner of her vision, she was away.
   So why did I bring it up?  Why was I going to get up
and call that husky voice back?  I coulda dropped it.

I couldn't have dropped it.  I knew 'Lisabeth'd be proud of me, and
she had been.  Man, she sure could prove it too.  I thought, this
could work out well between us.  I figured I could stand a little
humiliation and enjoy it, so long as I didn't get too hung up on her.
I could see her leaving but didn't wanna look.

Mmm.  She sure could prove it.


3

Hello husky voice.

“Good morning, Mr Eli.  My employer, Mr Choi, would like also to be
yours.  He assumes since you have gotten back to him this morning that
you wish to accept his offer of employment.  Tomorrow at eleven
o'clock I shall telephone you again on this number with an address at
which you may meet with Mr Choi.  Please be prepared to travel there
on foot immediately.”

“Hey, I've got work tom—I, uh, I have work, other work, to do
tomorrow,”—catching myself—“whole day's booked out for another case
I'm on.  Let's arrange another time, huh?”

“Mr Choi is interested enough in your services to make it certainly
worth your while to give his case your undivided attention.”

“Hey, Miss,”—time to get serious—“if you're asking something like that
you'd better be telling me just what kind of services this Mr Choi is
expecting: I can't just drop everything for his roya—”

“Mr Choi expects to be satisfied.  I shall call for you at eleven
o'clock tomorrow morning.”

Cut off, hung up on.


4

I woke up a little hung over: a good thing Mr Choi was so generous by
not having me report at dawn or something.  I'd stayed up most of the
night over a bottle of something 'Lisabeth hadn't been interested in
sharing.  I guess I was nervous.  She'd gone out instead; was still
out when I collapsed across the bed sheets.  She'd probably gone home
to her own apartment.  I thought about messaging her.  I thought about
how yesterday she'd laughed.

I picked up the phone, but only to put it in my pocket and walk out
the door.  Out the door into the sun.  The air turned sharp in my
nostrils.  I started down the sidewalk.  I went to the store and drank
something carbonated.  Then I went back and bought a paper.  I didn't
go back home: who knew who could have been watching my front door at
eleven o'clock sharp?  Coulda been Choi or Husky Voice or some other
henchmen of theirs or nobody at all.

I practised losing an imaginary tail and hiding behind my paper.  I
sat down on a bench with it and from its cover made mental sketches of
the passersby.  Big Nose had a briefcase with a three-digit
combination lock on each latch, a well cut black suit, black polished
shoes, brown hair cut short and with product, green I thought eyes,
fair complexion, was about six feet tall with a goofy posture and
off-kilter gait, clean shaven.

He had with him two similarly dressed companions: Slight and Stocky.
Slight's suit was lighter, he was Asian—Oriental, Chandler would have
said, with all the connotations that had back then...  His black hair
was combed straight over his eyes, which were fixed before his feet.
His hands stayed in his pockets; he said the least but was keeping up
with the others in their conversation and pace.

Stocky was having a loudish conversation with Big Nose, making
business-noise.  He was in a grey jacket and green tie—my phone rang.

“You aren't in your apartment.”

“I went for a wander.”

“Mr Choi will meet you on the fifth floor of his building at
one-hundred-and-five Queen Street.  You have ten minutes: I hope you
haven't wandered far.”

I practised hanging up on someone.  In five minutes I was ringing the
elevator at Choi's building.  Prince Building it was called.  Seemed
I'd wandered closer.


5

No one had been in the lobby.  There was no one in the elevator car.
The doors opened into a reception area: a fake tree in the corner and
a smile behind the desk to match.  She was oozing out of the top of
her dress like it was the tube and she was the toothpaste.  The air
conditioning was on but she had the fan on too; just so her hair could
flow a little in its artificial breeze.  Disturbingly, she didn't seem
to have been otherwise occupied before my arrival, and the elevator
served me right up before her chillingly patient gaze.

For a while she kept staring.  I took this time to take in my
surroundings and the two steps between me and the desk.  I was at the
desk and she snapped out of it, or into it; whatever happens.

“Mr Eli.” Not a question.  Husky Voice, we meet at last.

“This'd better be worth it.” Not an answer.

“You're a tad early but I'm sure he will see you now.  One moment,”
and she got up by bending over a little then swished out through the
door in the back wall.  I practised pretending to pretend I hadn't
seen anything worth looking at twice.

In a moment she returned, sat down, smoothed her skirt, and she said,
“Mr Choi will see you now.”

 I strode through the door.  Another desk-and-me
situation, only this time I got a seat.  “Sit.” I sat, and then I
re-sat.  I sat and reclined.  I stopped short of clasping my hands
behind my head: that's for the end of the story.  I sat.

“I want you to follow someone for me.”

He was rather European looking for a Mr Choi.  He was big; I bet in
the bottom of _his_ deep desk drawer all you'd find was his gym stuff:
cycled to work for sure.  His face was squarish and his hair neat.  I
guessed he had to shave that face every day.

“She leaves every day from this address”—he pushed a piece of paper
across the desk at me—“at half past eight and I just want to make sure
she's going to work...  like a good girl, if you know what I mean.”

Aww, Jesus.  I stopped my reclining, “Look, uh, Mr Choi; is this task
really as worthy of my time as your—ahem—people have implied?  I'd
hate to think I cleared my schedule this week for something as mundane
as keeping tabs on a dame for her antsy spouse.”

He leaned forward and tapped on the piece of paper, pushed it further
under my nose.  I picked it up; turns out that besides bearing the
address on its face the piece of paper was actually an envelope.  A
heavy envelope.

“I'd hate to have to hire someone a little less discreet than yourself
to chase you down should you take that envelope and run; so don't fail
to follow that ‘dame’ tomorrow morning and to make your report at noon
at this address.  I am sure we understand each other.”

I was already getting up; “Some people would consider that an insult,”
I said, and I left.


 I got back to work at lunchtime.  I could feel the eyes
on my back.

 I cruised by the address on the piece of paper that evening on the
 way home.
It was a hotel/apartment building in the middle of town; not quite
close enough to the waterfront for you to take your mistress to,
unless you were a hack.  For all the questionable facade he'd
presented me with, Mr Choi didn't seem like a hack.

Zen Tower, it was called.  I meditated on it until I fell asleep on
the sofa.

She didn't wake me when she came in.  She didn't wake me when she went
out.  I rolled off the sofa, saw her breakfast dish in the sink: how I
knew she'd been in and out.  She'd probably stopped in on her way to a
meeting downtown.  She was into real estate.

She isn't anymore.


6

Zen Tower.  Plenty of people left the building between eight and half
past, none matching the photograph which I'd found inside the envelope
in the fold of several crisp bills.  Eight-thirty sharp she emerged.
I'd imagined myself cursing outside that door at nine over the shitty
angle that photo had been taken on: nothing to see of the face, just
hair, figure; but there she emerged, damned if not in the very same
outfit.

Her hair was brown and wavy under a big hat complementing her coat;
she cut down that street just like Carmen Sandiego—that kid from the
nineties jumped up in my throat, I folded my paper, put my head down
like hers, began the tail.

She walked east a couple of blocks then south half a block to a cafe.
I really did oughta've practiced more; I was caught with nowhere to
stop between me and that cafe.  I went by, didn't look in lest she see
my face.  There was a newsman on the corner at the end of the block.
I fished him out some change to buy some time.  He looked at me funny.
There was that stupid paper I'd bought for cover while I waited
outside her apartment building sticking out stuffed into my overcoat
pocket.

“Which paper was it you wanted, sir?”

I looked over my shoulder.  “Oh, this, uh, this is my copy, I'll have
another for the office, thanks.”

Smooth.  But my plan had been to look at the paper there on the corner
and so kill some time waiting for the mark to come out of the cafe;
now I was stuck there looking like an idiot with two copies of the
same godforsaken paper in my hands, stumbling between heading back
towards her and continuing around the block.

Instead I crossed the street, gaining some time courtesy of the little
red man, and walked slowly back up towards my mark along the opposite
side of the street.  Thanks be, she came out before I leveled with her
once more; thanks again, she turned left out of the cafe and back the
way she'd come so that I didn't have to double back on myself a second
time in the street that I was already the conspicuous fool of; or else
loop round the back and risk losing her.  I kept it nice and slow so
that when she crossed the top of the block and continued east I was
still behind her.

She had a paper cup of coffee now, streaming white steam over her
shoulder as she cut along block after block.  She made a couple of
turns; I noted them down in short on my phone as we went, but pretty
soon it became obvious we were headed downtown.  Then we were on Queen
Street.  Then we were at one-oh-five Queen Street.  She went into Mr
Choi's building.

I stepped into the convenience store renting the building's frontage.
I came out, slammed the caffeine thing, crossed the road.  I knew
there was no way of escape out back except for the fire escapes, all
alarmed: I'd checked after my visit with the proprietor.  There wasn't
really anyplace I could stay across the road for the full three hours
left on my watch, though.  I spent twenty minutes in the record store
before I felt I couldn't avoid the poor morning shift guy's wary looks
any longer and left.  The only places left were restaurants not open
yet and bank branches.

How about killing some time phonying along a couple of bank employees?

“Hello, what can I do for you, sir?”

“Ah, well, yes: I'm not exactly with your, uh with you; I'm with
So-and-So, Ltd., but I'm thinking of changing...”

“Certainly, sir; please have a seat in the waiting area and someone
will come out to help you with your decision shortly.” So far, ten
minutes.

“Ah, good morning, sir: you were interested in our services?  Please,
step into my office.  Can I get you anything to make you more
comfortable?” Five minutes.  “So, Jessica says you're with So-and-So,
Inc.  Are you interested in seeing our competing packages, or is it a
different type of account you are interested in today?”

“I, uh...” I'd say, “I, um, need to open a savings account, I guess;
but, uh, I guess it couldn't hurt to see how your chequing account
looks too: it would make it easier to have everything with the same
bank, wouldn't it?”

“It certainly would, and I think that with our packages you'd be
better off, too!  Now,” and he'd launch into the questions about my
income (none), my living arangement (parasite), my interests
(embarrassing, pursuing boyhood dreams for no reward), &c., &c.  (it
goes on and on), and I'd be sitting there muttering, “Yeah, I suppose
it'd be easier that way,” and as he'd be explaining his business he'd
pause and I'd say, “Hmm?  oh, sorry, I was looking out the window;
this stuff rather puts me to sleep, I'm afraid,” and he'd have to
start again and I'd have to pretend to pay attention again—and what if
she came out in the middle of that inextricable situation?  “Oh, um,
look, awfully sorry, but, uh, I have to go...  just doesn't seem like
what I'm looking for, really.  Real sorry...  bye.” No. Call myself on
my phone?  No.

No, no.

Fuckit, I bought another can of soft drink and a paperback, sat in the
bus stop for the couple of hours.  By the end of it I was wondering
whether I should even bother going up to report.  She hadn't come out;
not for a smoke, not for nothing.  If she had I'da been sitting right
there across the street, waiting to be made: some private
investigator.

My thoughts in the last half hour turned to 'Lisabeth.  What the hell
had she gotten up to last night?  She was the one had got me into this
absurdity, and ever since I'd landed this first big case I'd barely
shared a meal with her.  I reminded myself that she had her own
apartment, job, life before me and I couldn't just vanish them away;
not this early.  But, dammit, I'da thought she'd be as eager as
anything to keep up to date with the whole private eye thing...  Then
again, she does have some strange moods, keeping to herself: I usually
take it as encouragement to look after myself for a change.  I've
never done it, but I'm afraid that if I asked her what's up when she's
like that she'd lash out or something.  Well, for her I'd go up there
and show what I had to show for.  For her I'd at least finish the job.

I hammered the call button once with my fist and stood slumped,
waiting for the elevator.  I planned on meeting Fake Plastic Smile
with my head lowered this time, but when I got to the desk there was
another company's name across the front of it.  I doubled back.  A
freighting airline?

“Sir, can I help you, sir?”

“Uh, can you tell me which floor Mr Choi's business is on?”

“Mr Choi?  that's Prince Corporation, right?  That's floor six, sir;
next one up.” Smile.  Smile.  “Thanks.” Oh god.  It was floor five
yesterday, wasn't it?  Is this guy fucking with me, or what?

Sixth floor.  Next one up, sir.  Here she is: same desk, same smile,
same plant.

“Good afternoon, Mr Eli.  Have you anything interesting to report?”

“Hadn't I better be reporting to Mr Choi himself?” I said, trying to
get over the vertigo which that single-floor trip had set in motion.

“Certainly; if it is interesting.  Mr Choi wishes only to hear of
anything out of the ordinary; otherwise you are to continue your
surveillance as you see fit.”

“Hey, how the hell am I supposed to know what this guy's ordinary is?
The mark entered this building here three hours ago and hasn't left
since: you can tell your boss to rest assured that his employees
arrive at work punctually and well breakfasted.”

She smiled.  “I hope it wasn't me Mr Choi had you follow.” I smiled, I
guess.  “In the future you needn't wait three hours: you may consider
your task done once she is in the building and check in with me at ten
if you like.  Mr Choi's words were that you would judge for yourself
what is ordinary and report anything else to him.  He has here an
envelope for you and another for every further day for which you are
engaged in this matter.”

I stepped up and put my hands down on the desk either side of the
envelope.  I leaned over.  “Don't worry,” I said, “it wasn't you I was
following: I remember how you went through that door yesterday.  One
more question: wasn't that door, this desk a floor beneath us then?”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Mr Eli.  Prince Corporation
has always been on the sixth floor of this building.”

“The hell it has!” and I pushed that envelope at her, stormed away.
The whole effect was ruined by the fact that I had to wait there in
front of her patient and unperturbed stare while the elevator car came
back up.  I cursed the damned thing the whole ride down.

All six floors.


7

Back at the bookshop the guilt started to pile on.  Sean, the owner,
grimaced at me from behind his desk piled high with receipts and order
forms as I absentmindedly shelved Joyce and Jamie Oliver together in
the Martial History section.

When I got home I didn't have anything to do and 'Lisabeth wasn't
around.  I tried to finish the paperback I'd bought; couldn't.  At
last I sighed and poured a drink.  As I lifted it to my lips I heard
'Lisabeth's key in the door: I downed it quick and filled the glass
with water, sucked half of that down as well.

“Hi.  You weren't going to do anything for dinner, were you?  I picked
up some Chinese.  You have to tell me all about the big case you're
on!” So she got changed and I pulled the wine glasses down and we sat
in the living room talking and eating and seeing how long we could
keep the lights off for as the sun dipped away for the evening.

 “So you just left the money there and walked out?”

“Yeah.” I hadn't told her about having to wait for the elevator car.
“The rest of the day I've been beating myself up about it; not because
of the money but 'cause I guess I was trying to be all hard-boiled and
it just came off as rudeness.”

“Well it is kinda weird that she was on a different floor just one day
later.  You're sure it was the fifth and then the sixth today?” I
nodded yes, yes.  “And she's the same, the one from the phone call?”
Yes, I winked.  The one from the phone call.  Husky Voice, I call her.

“Well, so if you've been feeling guilty all day does that mean that
you're going back tomorrow?”

“Yes, I suppose it does.”

 And it did: morning times I dragged myself up into the bathroom,
scraped around then out the door.  Hung around outside Zen Tower and
there she was cutting down the street again just like Carmen Sandiego.

Gave her a more generous lead this time.  When she ducked into that
cafe I stopped at a sandwich stall and stood glaring at the newspaper
guy on the corner, munching on sprouts and rye, glancing every now and
then at the mark.  She came out again and sliced along the same route
all the way to Prince Building, into which, with a tantalizing toss of
that hair underneath that fantastic wide-brimmed brown hat, she
disappeared.  I hit the convenience store up again and hung out on the
corner a while.

I walked into the foyer and read the elevator listings.  I hunted
around for some stairs but there weren't any so I rode the elevator up
one floor at a time.  Floor one was a foodcourt, which was strange
because you wouldn'ta known it.  The elevator listing had said only
‘Klim’s' in embossed labelling peeling off behind the glass growing
cloudy with age.

Maybe it was only the building cafeteria.  People few that there were
were drearying around pushing carts swabbing tables sleeping behind
counters.  If there were any customers they were either still in their
offices hanging out for lunch or slumped in the booths rumply heaps of
bum clothing.  I'm betting Mr Choi, slick as a powdered gum wrapper,
wouldn't be caught dead in this joint.  Why he kept it in his building
I hadn't a clue.  Did Mr Choi own the building?  I couldn't remember.

Floor two was offices, same set-up reception-wise as old Husky Voice';
different name pasted above a different girl.  Long red fingernails
getting a fresh coat, curly bobbed-up hair, big old gob of not-Choi
gum getting punched in on itself then pushed aside for those red lips
to release around it, “Help you, sir?”

“Am I on the right floor?” I said a little sheepishly, looking round
back at the cozy elevator.  She pointed up at the words, which I
hadn't taken in yet, and said, “Local papers, hon; every suburb here
westward: whatcha wanted?”

“Uh, not sure.  You do the city paper?”

“Nope, city paper makes money, not us.” She looked at her nails as
though she'd put on another coat if only she were working for the city
paper.  “Herald's two blocks down in their own building and Inquisitor
is on Albert Street, 'think; 'luck, hon'.”

I thanked her while my lack of will punctured the lungs of my impulse
to lean over the desk and ask whether she'd like to share a bottle
sometime.  I got back in the elevator.  Each floor I went up the car
returned to the ground and I had to wait longer for it to get back up
to me each time: no point in making that extending wait the more
uncomfortable.

The next floor was the same set-up again, but no words, no girl, no
nobody.  Plain white cubicles; I wandered around a bit in their glory,
their blandness.  They'd cleaned those tough grey carpets; I scuffed
my heels on 'em.  I looked out the glass, which hadn't been cleaned;
but I hear those crazy abseilers charge dearly, and the city hasn't
gotten less sooty ever.

Back in the elevator I looked at the time on my evilphone and figured
that at the ten minutes a floor I was averaging I'd get up to Choi
bang on time.  Fourth floor; the elevator served me up.  Same set-up:
reception desk, words above, girl at.  Husky Voice at.  I spun round
and sure enough ‘4’ was still what was illuminated on the 'vator dial.

“Good morning, Mr Eli,” she husked out.  You'd think she'd be caught
as off guard as I was, given I was now an unexpected twenty minutes
early, but not a damned thing could fluster that woman.  I regained
myself, kinda, walked up to her desk, leaned on my elbow, “Morning,
Miss, ah..?  You sure do shift your offices a bit round here, don't
you?”

“Wouldn't know what you're talking about, Mr Eli,” she said, curling
her hair with a casual finger.  “Tell me, I thought it was only all in
books that private eyes were each of 'em a hard-drinking womanizing
no-good with a big heart; that not true?”

I smiled, “I wouldn't want to let on that it's all an act courtesy of
Mr Hammet, Miss, ah..?”

“It's Ms Archer; Joni.”

“Look, Joni, I get the feeling it's you putting on airs and not me, so
I'll just tell you my mark behaved very well this morning and collect
my envelope, if you please.”

“Certainly,” she said, leaving the hair and reaching into her drawer.
She came out with two envelopes and held them up one in each hand.
“This one,” she said, handing it to me, “is yesterday's.  This,” she
explained, allowing her newly freed hand to return to twirling a
strand of hair, “comes with an extra obligation.  Mr Choi, on account
both of your sterling work so far but also of the fact that it has
nevertheless not produced any interesting facts, would like to extend
your duties to include a reciprocal surveillance in the evening, if
you understand the meaning of that.

”The ‘mark’, as you call her, departs this building at five: you are
to telephone me here before I leave at six, to make your report.  Is
that clear?  This envelope is of course accordingly fuller,“ and she
released the hair from her twirling finger so that I realized she now
wanted me to turn around.  I did, I suppose; then she tapped me on the
shoulder with the 'lope and I grabbed it without looking back and
strode up to the elevator door.  That damned thing was always ruining
my exits.  At least at only the fourth floor it was a little more
merciful.

Inside I was smiling until I turned the envelope over to find Ms
Archer had printed her phone number there.


8

I just kicked around till five.  Didn't have a shift at the bookshop,
so I dropped into a bar once one was open.  The girl fed me drinks
between getting the place ready for when the proper customers came in.
When they did in their stream of just-got-off-the-jobness, in their
clothes and their property, propriety, I left.  I drifted down Queen
Street and bought a soft drink to sober up on.  Then I waited for her
to come out.

For whom?  In one pocket I had the envelope with a slowly depleting
fold of bills in it, with the just-enough-of-a-likeness photograph; in
the other I had the new envelope, with fresher bills, and Husky Voice'
phone number on the back.  For a while I fished one out then the
other, then made myself stop that before I creased either too much.  I
stuck my hands in some different pockets and waited.

The mark came out with her hat and her hair and her coat, just like,
well, you know.  I gave her half a block and just as I started after
her there came Husky Voice through the automatic doors.  That was
strange, I thought.  She wasn't s'posed to leave until six, she'd
said.

She'd pulled a coarse-fibred grey coat around her shoulders against
the shortening day and the way it was cut I could still admire that
swish and imagine the popping toothpaste-tube dress she had on
underneath.  I'd stopped, drawn up against a wall as she turned in the
opposite direction to my mark.  I patted both of my pockets.  I pulled
my eyes off Archer and caught the mark just as she disappeared round a
corner.  Nothing for it, I pursued the mark.

As we cornered block after block and I tried to keep my mind on the
task I noticed Carmen was taking a slightly different route back to
Zen Tower.  Then she was gone.  I swear I was following closely
enough, but there I was halfway along a block and no idea where she'd
went.  Like a base-runner in a pickle I went first down to one
intersection, then back to the other, eventually paralyzed between the
two, cursing.

It was a sign.  I should have followed Husky Voice.

I should have followed Joni.


I made my last couple of curses and turnings on the spot then strode
homeward, grumbling.  A couple of blocks on my way and I heard my name
being called out across the street, ”Miles, over here!“ It was
'Lisabeth.  She was sitting at a table on the street in front of one
of those cafebarrestaurants they have up city lanes closed to
vehicular traffic.  She had a friend and they were sharing a couple of
expensive beers in those glasses that look like oversized wine glasses
beaded with perspiration and floating on a thick coaster.  I jaywalked
my way over there.  Before I'd reached the table I had a waiter going
off to get me a beer just like theirs.

'Lisabeth got up and gave me a hug.  I know I'd had her last night,
but it felt damned good, a long-missed hug.  Then she turned to her
friend and introduced us.  ”Selma, this is my boyfriend,
Miles.“—teehee, boyfriend—”This is Selma Inkholm, friend of mine from
way back.“ Selma pushed some gum out of the way, said, ”Pleased ta
meetcha,“ and stuck her hand out.  I shook it and told her we'd
already met.  ”Nah,“ she said, putting her hands on her substantial
hips and leaning back in her chair to better size me up.  It was the
gum, the bobbed-up hair, the painted fingernails like talons in my
handshake.  It was the girl from level two.

”Oh, you!“ she uttered, snapping her head, her whole body, like a
whip, the words flying out at the top.  She sat down and crossed her
legs, leant over her drink at 'Lisabeth and told her the story about
the handsome man getting off the elevator at the wrong floor and
giving her quite the pleasant diversion from the drudgery of her
nine-to-five.

”You didn't tell me it was Prince Building you were staking out,“ said
'Lisabeth.  ”I coulda told you Selma works there, given you a hook-up
to the inside word.  Tell her what you were doing there, Miles.“

So I turned to Selma and started to tell her about the strangely
Caucasian-looking Mr Choi and his perverted requests.  'Lisabeth made
a big deal out of the fact that I was trailing after some girl and
confided in Selma that she thought Husky Voice had a thing for me.

After a while Selma burst out into long-held-in laughter.  ”It _is_
funny how he's not Asian, isn't it?“ she squealed.

”What?“ asked I.

”I'm friends with Tony—uh, Mr Choi,“ she explained.  ”We went to
school together.  He was adopted, see, by this Asian businessman and
his wife.  His adoptive father dabbled in all kinds of ventures:
importing, accounting, property management, anything there was a
possibility of making money at.  And he helped Tony out by bequeathing
him his name and the quaintly named Prince Building.

“They'd bought the place when they immigrated, and started out in the
convenience store out front, but soon they were running all their
myriad of entrepeneurial schemes out of the building, one for each
floor.  And Mrs.  Choi, old Mrs.  Choi the widow lives on, and she's
the one who keeps all those balls in the air even now, just as she did
while her husband had been alive.  Goodness knows why they wanted to
adopt a child, but Tony was the perfect fit and now he just sits up
there somewhere in the quiet bowels of his autonomous empire and
dreams up schemes of his own; lucky son-of-a-bitch, really.  But he
was kind enough to set me up with a job.”

“Well it's some circus act he's got me performing in, I'll tell you
what,” I said.  “But I'll take his money.”

“Ooh, what's he paying?”

“Well, I don't know what the standard rate is, but what he's giving
seems to be quite substantial.  Here,” I said, having a slight mental
panic as I made sure to pull the right envelope out of the right
pocket, “I think pay's judged by weight in this profession, anyway.”
And Selma snatched the envelope off the table and hefted it with an
impressed-looking gesture.  “I've been dipping into that already,
too,” I said as she opened the envelope cheekily.  “You know, for
expenses,” and I winked at 'Lisabeth, trailing off.  Selma had found
the photograph and as soon as the first giggle escaped from behind
that wad of gum she and 'Lisabeth were huddled round it in girlish
joy.

“Wow, Miles, this is some hot quarry you're chasing there!  Do you
know her crime?  There must be a girl or two who wants her dead, huh?
Or is it the boyfriend?  Is this Tony's latest fling and he's finding
it hard to keep her under his thumb?  I bet that's it, huh, 'Lisabeth?
Are we right, Miles?  It's a shame you can't really see her face, but
I can tell she's smoking, isn't she, Miles?  Bet you just love this
kinda work, huh?”

Well, what can you do when you're being made fun of by two attractive
women over a third?  “Sure,” I said, watching 'Lisabeth's reaction.
Then I spread my palms after a good drain of the beer, “But I don't
know.  This Tony Choi of yours has me just following her to the
building every morning from her apartment, and now I'm doing the
journey back too.  In fact,” I sighed, “I've just now lost her when
you called me over.” I polished the beer off in a gesture of despair
which was only half mock.  “But, hey, the guy's got to be fucking with
me, right?  I mean, it's probably just one of those schemes you say
he's always entertaining himself with.  And the money's real enough:
whether I do the job particularly well is especially beside the point
when there isn't any point to speak of.” Wow, that beer worked quick;
I just kept going on and on.  At least the other two seemed amused by
the whole thing.

“Well, that could be it,” said Selma between chews, “I've just never
saw that kind of sick humor in Tony, 'sall.  You want me to check with
him next time I see him at work?”

“Nah.  I mean, if you pick up anything you can let me know, like you
could be my undercover operative, or something.  But I think maybe I
shouldn't let on I know anything more than what he's grudgingly
allowed me himself.  It's almost a welfare scam.  Let's just let it
play out, shall we?”

I flagged the waiter and the course of conversation changed for the
rest of the night.  The drinks kept coming.  'Lisabeth kept smiling at
me over hers.


9

I had 'Lisabeth again that night.  We walked Selma home and rolled in
the door tripping over ourselves and falling flat on the floor.  We
stayed down there for a while, then tried out a few of the other
rooms.  The night dissipated and we woke in the morning simultaneously
and each with a smile looking at the other.

And it went on in this blissful way for a good few days.  I'd leave
her lying there dozing sweetly and tail Carmen down to Prince
Building, find what floor Ms Archer was on and drop in to say hi, make
it back to the apartment around eleven in time to snuggle back into
bed with her or make her breakfast and simply exist with her there in
the apartment.  Then after four I'd have to get back down to Queen
Street, follow the mark back up to Zen Tower (I'd gotten much better
at that), make my phone call to Joni and get back for dinner and a
bottle of wine.

I'd stopped entertaining fancies involving Husky Voice and Ms Inkholm
with her painted nails: why I'd ever allowed myself to in the first
place was an unfathomable mystery in the bliss of 'Lisabeth's succour.
And the work was becoming just work; I started to feel actually like a
Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, or Rick Blaine, rather than some little kid
playing detective.  I felt like I knew what I was doing.  And since I
knew what I was doing I just did it, and in the meantime enjoyed a new
spring-time in my relationship with my girlfriend 'Lisabeth.


Well, you know, how long did you expect that to last?  At first she
was there every day and every night.  Then just every night.  Then it
got to be most nights then some nights.  The only reason I didn't just
grab her when I did see her and beg, “Why are you doing this to me,
'Lisabeth?  It's not just that you've actually got to go to work every
now and then, it's that you're damned well avoiding me!  What are
these goddamned moods?  Snap out of it, will you?  or into it;
whatever happens, just let it happen!” was the fact that the bottle
was still there every night, and every night I took what I could get.

Soon I had quit collecting my envelopes; it had become more of a chore
than an adventure, that minx strolling down to the cafe like clockwork
and thence to bloody Prince Building and straight back at five sharp.
I'd had enough.

And, besides, it was getting harder to get up that

early.

First Joni called, then Choi himself.  I gave them the brush-off.  But
then 'Lisabeth dropped in, casually as though we'd last seen each
other yesterday and not two whole weeks ago, and she found me lying in
the sofa amidst the sea of empty beer bottles which the living room
had become, a couple of serious vessels littered amongst them, and a
tea-saucer full of ash on the coffee table amongst a graveyard of
stubbed out cheap cigars and cigarettes.

She was not impressed.

“Hiya—what the hell's happened to this place?  Since when do you
_smoke_?  Oh, Miles.  Miles, Miles, Miles.  Get the hell up!” and she
yanks me out of the sofa, where I leave both my stomach and my brain.
I cough a little dramatically, throw my hand up towards my mouth a
little late, so that I am convinced I've just lost through my nose a
cloud of particles of my own brain matter.  They fall to the floor
like eraser dust.

She drops me in disgust and I'm a heap again, this time on the carpet,
which is somewhat stained of late.  It must have been that scowl and
whimper I issued when she then strode over to open the curtains wide
and let in the light to finish me off that made her soften at last.

She came over and helped me back up onto the sofa, sitting me up and
putting an arm around my shoulder.  She cooed into my ear, “There,
there, now what's the matter?  Why are you all holed up in here?  You
know you can't take this detective thing too far.  Just because they
drink and smoke all the time in the books doesn't mean you have to as
well.  Next we'll have you dressing in grey flannel suits and donning
a trilby hat.”

I couldn't help but smile at that.  I tried to mutter something about
Choi being a rat bastard, but I wasn't up to communicating with words
yet, so I just kept smiling up at her until I drifted back to sweet
restful slumber in her arms.


10

When I woke up again I was a little angry at the impressive inroads
'Lisabeth had made on getting my living room back into a livable-in
state, but I'd decided to make it up to her by bringing the whole Choi
situation to a head so that I could at least say I'd closed the case.
I checked with her that it was still a weekday and rang Joni at Prince
Building.

“Mr Eli.”

“Look, uh, Ms Archer, I think I owe you and Mr Choi an apology.”

“Oh, Mr Eli, that's really not necessary.  Mr Choi was very satisfied
with the work you did for him, while you were working for him.” She
sounded different.  She sounded like maybe the polite thing to have
done would have been to ring her on the number she'd printed on the
back of an envelope once, a long time ago.

“Well, if he'll have me back I'd love to stay on the case.”

“Oh,” she paused, my heart plummeted.  “I'm afraid that won't be
possible, Mr Eli.  It is no longer of concern to Mr Choi, the matter
he had you engaged in.”

I hung there for a while, and then I couldn't think of anything else
to do but hang up.

“What is it?” asked 'Lisabeth.

“I can no longer be of service to Mr Choi, he would have it.” She made
a noise of compassion but I'd had enough of her comforting.  “But fuck
it,” I said, “I'm gonna do it anyway; what do you think of that?  I'm
not going to let my first case be my last case and a cold case at
that!”

She smiled.  That's the spirit, Miles, that's the spirit.

We spent the rest of the night cleansing the house of binge residue.


11

Quarter past eight the next morning found me inconspicuously loitering
outside Zen Tower as if nothing had changed.  But this time I was
resolved to find out just why this lady was so important to Mr Choi,
and I guessed the best way to do that was to deprive her of her
disguise.  This time I was taking matters into my own hands.

Eight thirty on the dot she emerged, in the usual outfit, and I began
the tail.  I allowed her her breakfast stop but was too focused to
grab anything to eat myself.

Once she entered the elevator at Prince Building I strode into the
foyer and watched the dial go up.  When it stopped the number ‘6’ was
lit.  Then it started coming back down.  I got in the car and slammed
‘6’.

Husky Voice was about to call me Mr Eli as I made to go round her desk
and through the back door into Choi's office.  But when she saw this
her unperturbed gaze was replaced by a look of panic.  “Miles,” she
whispered as I brushed past her, but there was nothing she could do: I
was through the door and I closed it behind me.

There was Choi behind his desk, looking a little shocked at my
entrance, and there on top of his desk rested the very hat of Carmen
Sandiego.

 “'Lisabeth?” I stuttered.

She wouldn't look at me, but with her hat on the desk and her coat
over the back of her chair it would have been pretty hard not to
recognize my own girlfriend.  The brown wig hung over the edge of the
table, the way it flowed down from beneath the removed hat turned the
symbolism I'd associated with it upside down.

“Miles,” she whispered.

My mouth was dry all of a sudden, and the drought was chasing itself
down the back of my throat towards my heart.  Choi smiled and stood
up.  “Well,” he said, “it had to happen eventually.  Let's explain.
Have a seat, Mr Eli; Miles.” I wasn't in any shape to do anything else
and so I sat.  Now I couldn't bring myself to look over at 'Lisabeth
either.  Choi sat back down and made sympathetic looks at me.

“Now, Miles, let's first off be clear that our intent was never to
hurt you.  To some extent you have brought this upon yourself, and I'm
afraid I'm not going to be able to let you forget it.

“You see, Elizabeth and I have been in a relationship for some years
now.” Rage.  Absolute rage.  I am across the desk throttling his good
for nothing neck.  I am pushing my thumbs firmly down on his Adam's
apple.  I can feel his last feeble heartbeats trying to force blood
through the constricted arteries, his last gulping attempts to suck
some air down into his desperate lungs.

I am stuck in my chair, paralyzed with rage.

“And well, I have, shall we say, wide-ranging interests, which I
indulge by concocting experiments which combine them in situations I
consider intriguing.” I can't believe I am letting him say these
things, can't believe 'Lisabeth is.  He continues, unabated, “and so
I'm afraid you're the star of my most daring experiment yet.  I guess
I needn't go into details, but perhaps it will make more sense if I
tell you that I met Elizabeth at university, in Psychology class.”

This breaks the spell and I whirl on her.  I look at her in what must
seem pitiful disbelief.  ‘Elizabeth’?  I thought it was 'Lisabeth.
This can't be true.  All those post-coital moments of pure openness
between two hearts, all those frantic, wine-fuelled late night
discussions about everything and anything.


When I was about twelve I made a new best friend.  I was new to the
neighbourhood, so I needed one.  Well, this guy was a South African by
the name of Gustav, and he and I had the longest walk home from the
bus stop of all the kids in our part of town, so we had a good chance
to get to know one another.  We started going over to each other's
house after school playing games and talking kicks.

And every lunch time at school we'd sit together, just the two of us,
and eat our sandwiches together, talking about everything and
anything.  Then on the playground we'd do things like see which of us
could drink from the water fountain non-stop the longest, and be there
till the last bell pretending we could breathe and drink at the same
time.

Now, Gustav was in the age group one year below me, which wasn't a big
deal at all, but at some point I got delusions that maybe I could hang
out with the cool kids.  And I was elated to find after a couple of
minor forays that it seemed these cool kids might tolerate my company.
But they had their own lunch-eating arrangements: they'd sit around in
a huge circle and horse around, throwing food at eachother and
stashing chip wrappers and wads of plastic wrap in the cracks in the
benches and under the bushes.  Just littering and horsing around.

Well, there came a day when I decided that I was cool enough to start
sitting with the cool kids.  But, dammit, come the lunch bell I'm
heading over to their spot and there's Gustav sitting on our bench,
sandwiches in hand, looking at me expecting me to come over like I do
every lunchtime and sit with him.  But today I am sitting with the
cool kids, and as I continue to move towards their spot I watch his
face fall.  As I eat my own sandwiches amongst the popular people I am
painfully aware of the fact that Gustav is eating his resolutely,
Stoically, alone.

 The way my friend looked at me when I was twelve must have been the
 same way I am looking at 'Lisabeth: betrayed.
And in her face I can see the pain I felt in so ruthlessly abandoning
such a good friend for a multitude of fake ones.

I can't stand it anymore.  Maybe Choi plans on continuing his
exposition; well I don't plan on sticking around to hear it.  And
since I don't know what to say to 'Lisabeth I just get up and go out
the door.

On my way out I notice a third person in the room who had escaped my
attention because of the shock of recognizing 'Lisabeth when I
entered.  Or, rather, I didn't notice the third person in the room as
I left.  Only as I was replaying the torturous experience countless
times in the midst of a renewed sea of beer bottles did I recall that
there was a man sitting in the back of the room by the door, that he,
unklike Choi, was actually Asian-looking, and that as I had passed
him, fleeing the horrible situation, he had snickered.

Miss Joni Archer was standing in the room beyond looking at me
guiltily but I just rang for the elevator viciously until it arrived.


12

I got back to my apartment and swung in through the door laden with
booze to find the answer machine blinking with two messages: I could
think of exactly two people who would have left me messages.  I'd felt
the same two people buzzing in my pocket on the way over.

I kicked the machine off the table hard enough that it sailed across
the room, yanking the cord out of the wall so that it snapped in its
wake like a plane's tow wire after the glider has been released, and
taking the phone with it, trailing it along the floor like a ship
dragging anchor.  It hit the wall and landed in a heap of wires and
dial tone.  I wrenched the phone jack out and silenced it, then tossed
the cellphone I'd killed on top of the heap.

I dumped the booze on the coffee table and went over to the radio.  I
hit it on its head until it started playing the classical station.  I
cranked it.  Then I went over and cracked a beer.  I left another out
and put the rest in the fridge.  I got back and cracked the second,
rolled the empty across the floor at the heap of telephony against the
wall.

I had Tchaikovsky on my side.


It wasn't for a couple of days and until Pärt's _Tabula Rasa_
came over the airwaves after lunch that I plugged the phone back in
and listened to the messages.  'Lisabeth's was just beginning to tear
at my heart when it had been cut off; by Choi, no doubt.  Archer's was
hushed, whispered over the line, quavery.  “Miles?  what just
happened?” she husked as soft as she could.  “Please call me at the
number I gave you: I want to know what the hell's going on, and Choi,
he won't tell me a damned thing.  Shit, here he comes,” and she cut
herself off.

Well, all the prettiest music couldn't make me care much about that,
so I kept the phone off the hook and went out for another crate of
beer and a bottle of whiskey.

 A few days later I let my eyes open eventually and reached towards
 the coffee table for the usual revival hit of whatever I'd been
 drinking before I passed out.
It was a stale half-full mix of rum and ginger ale: I knocked it back.
I felt it course its cool way down through my throat and into my
tortured innards.  Like Popeye I burst out of the sofa, causing a
small cacophony as I landed in the sea of empties.  I cleared myself a
little patch of carpet and did some jumping jacks.

Then it hit me, right under the ribs.  I doubled over and started
shoving my fingers up under there as far as they would go, probing for
the source of the pain, as though I could stub it out if only I could
reach it.  No good.  I fell down on my side in the little patch of
carpet.  That was no good either.  I couldn't stand still.  I couldn't
stand but I couldn't lie.  I reeled around hunched over myself cursing
and groaning.

I reeled down the stairs; couldn't handle the elevator; and out the
door of my apartment bulding, having a sudden bout of claustrophobia.
But the air was fresh, too fresh out there; it assaulted the walls of
my nose and windpipe.  But I stumbled on.  I was really worried for my
life, and delirious: I had to find a doctor.

The streets seemed dangerously empty.  I'd say they were quiet but my
ears were ringing with whatever had set off the pain.  Was it the
booze first thing in the morning?  or the bout of exercise on top of
it?  It was like a stitch but magnified beyond comprehension.

I staggered into the first shop on the block: a knick-knack joint with
a grey-haired old thing behind the counter.

“Where's the nearest doctor?” I asked, “I need to get to the doctor I
really don't feel well.”

“Dear, you don't look well,” she replied, not trying to hide her
fright and digust at beholding my pale face wet at the corners of the
eyes hunched over my centre of gravity.  Then she put the end of her
pen between her teeth, “The nearest I think is way at the bottom of
this street—” I knew the one; nothing closer, then.  I left before she
could offer to call for an ambulance I couldn't afford, grunting my
thanks.

Back outside I became aware of the sun now way up in the sky beating
down on me oiling my movements with chilling sweat.  I got halfway
down the next block then had to stop.  I sat down on a low wall
fronting the sidewalk and put my head between my legs.  I tried to
breathe.

And then all of a sudden I felt fine.  All of a sudden I felt silly
for thinking I was going to die then and there on the sidewalk.  I
felt silly for frightening that poor old lady.

After a few moments I began to enjoy breathing again.  A few more and
I could get to my feet.  I moved back towards my apartment building,
my posture straightening with every stride: like those picture
progressions depicting evolution, I straightened up from ape to man,
and by the time I got inside my building I was even trying to suck in
my gut.

Inside the apartment I looked around, trying not to come off the way
'Lisabeth had when she'd confronted a similar situation a week ago,
but failing.  I cursed, but under my breath, not like I'd been cursing
all my waking hours since I'd fled Prince Building.

I cleaned away everything and tried to get the room airing out.  I had
to use extra bags for all the bottles that needed recycling.  I didn't
think my head could handle the whine of the vacuum cleaner yet, so I
left that, but I wiped down the surfaces, cleaned what few dishes I'd
managed to accumulate during my stint.

I came out of the shower and put some clean clothes on, had a shave
and looked at my hair, then I flopped down in a sofa chair and
contemplated the envelope sitting across the room on the desk.

The remaining envelope.  It was empty.  Its precursor had been emptied
long ago and thrown away.  I'd pinned the picture of 'Lisabeth in her
Carmen Sandiego getup to the centre of the wall with a thumbtack and
thrown my empties at it.

But this envelope remained on the desk.  I went over and picked it up.
I put the phone back together and dialled Husky Voice.  Dialled her
cell.


13

“Miles?” she said.  She must have recognized my number; or her phone
had: whatever.  It still didn't sound right when she used my first
name, so I tried “Ms Archer,” but that didn't sound right either.
“Are you okay?” she asked, “You looked really upset the other day.” I
winced, hunted around for the persona I'd had back when they still
called her Husky Voice.

“I just want the dirt on your boss; I'm not upset.  I'm just tired.
I'm tired of playing his games and you're going to dish the dirt.”
Well so I resorted to a cliche; I was rusty.

Her voice went soft and sympathetic, like a girl letting you down.
She said: “Miles, I don't know what to say.  I wish I could help you
but I feel like I'm more in the dark than you: there ain't no dirt to
dish, you might say.  Besides,” and she paused while I listened over
the line, “Choi fired me the day after you came in.”

That was interesting.  A quick comment was about to come to me but she
swept on: “But we could meet up, if you like: compare notes.” And that
settled it.  We made a time and a place and hung up.

I tried to read a book while I waited for that time to come.


Come lunch time I was sitting outside a cafe casually spruced up.
Joni came along and sat down opposite me and a waitress dropped off
some menus.  The winter sun tried to beat down on us from afar but
from about as close as he was going to get that day.

We ordered and waited quietly.  For some reason neither of us seemed
to want to get down to the matter at hand just yet.  Instead I let
myself take in Miss Archer properly.

She wasn't wearing any make-up; or if she was it was seriously toned
down from what she'd by comparison laid on in slabs in the already
artificial light of Choi's offices.  She had a plain face but
pleasantly proportioned.  Her dress wasn't as tube-like as what she'd
worn on the job: her body seemed more able and athletic under the
loose-fitting but still tasteful arrangement.  It gave the effect that
she was holding her clothes up herself, though gracefully, and not her
clothes holding her up.

What she was probably going for was an air of disregard and style,
leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs, holding a long slim
cigarette to her lips every now and then and gently bobbing one knee
upon the other as though being there at that table was a chore, but
one she was enduring for a time.

That's probably what she was going for, but the way it came off was
tenseness, strung-outness, impatience.  The knee was bobbing a little
too energetically, the cigarette being sucked down into ash a little
too quickly.

At last the food came and it was safe to start talking.  I watched her
pick at the edges of her panini and asked, “So you were fired, huh?”

“Yeah,” she said, finally spearing the thing with a fork and picking
up the knife for to saw.  I looked down at what was in front of me and
decided to have another sip of water.

“Well, how come?”

She looked at me.  “Because I was stupid to take it in the first
place, wasn't I? Just like you,” and she finally jammed some of that
spinach and bread in there.  I supposed that made it my turn again, so
I went for the water again.  She got a couple more forkfuls in and I
refilled my glass.  Finally she put her utensils down and I looked at
her like I was ready to listen.

“Look, he told me from the start it was a temp job, but that's all I
could manage at the time.  I turned up with a bit of make-up on and he
hired me.  He told me to sit in that chair up the front and play
solitaire until you came in.  He said there wouldn't be anything else
and he told me what to do with you and I did it.  I could go home
after you'd gone and I'd still get paid a regular secretary's wage.
So I sat there and used his computer to hunt for jobs, which is more
depressing than solitaire, really, and dealt with you and collected my
pay in cash every day just like you.”

Just like me, I mused.

I nodded.  “Just like me.  Tell me, the night you first told me to
start calling at six; I saw you come out of the building at five,
right after—” and I tried not to choke on the food I hadn't touched
yet: “right after 'Lisabeth.”

She smiled sadly.  “Was that her name?  I got the impression you
weren't supposed to know much about her.”

“I wasn't.  Turns out I didn't either.  There I was thinking she was
in love with me.”

She went white.  Whiter than even a very good actor would if she were
still being paid by Choi.  I told her 'Lisabeth had been more or less
living with me for a couple of months but that the whole idea had been
some kind of sick scenario drawn up in the otherworldliness of the
inner chambers of Prince Building.  I told her it hadn't been my kind
of fun but that I wasn't given much say in the matter.

“That's terrible,” she said, and I shrugged, finally got round to
poking at the crumbling breadstuff on my plate.  She let me do that
for a while, straightened the fork on her now-empty plate, folded her
hands on her lap, and kept watching me do that.

Soon there was no more on my plate to poke around with.  I looked up
at her.  “It's no big deal,” I lied, watching her take in my lie and
recognize it for what it was, “I'm actually just as tough as I try to
seem.”

“I'm sure you are.”

“Well, why did _you_ keep on with his bull, anyway?”

“Why do you think?” she said; “Money.”

I nodded.

She picked her fork back up and pointed it at me.  I grimaced at the
shred of tortured spinach stuck painted to one of the tines.  “And
you?  why do you do it?  Are you really a private dick?”

I blushed.  “I suppose I'm trying to be.  It was my first case, to
tell you the truth.” She raised an eyebrow at me over the top of the
fork still leveled across the table at me.  “Okay,” I admitted, “that
was her idea too.  She put the ad in the paper for me.”

“More like Choi's idea,” she muttered in reply, lowering the fork back
to its resting place on the plate.

“You're probably right,” I admitted.  “So, no, I guess I'm not really
a private detective.”

She grabbed the fork back up in a flash and this time thrust it
scarcely an inch before my nose, lunging across the table.  “I didn't
ask if you were a private detective; I asked if you were a private
_dick_!” then her mouth went from a jutted bottom lip to a wide smile
and she leaned back in her chair, dropped the fork on her plate with a
clatter.  “I'm just kidding, Miles.  You know, I really like you.  If
it weren't for you I wouldn'ta kept on at Choi's.  You came on so
tough you had me going to the video store to get out as many _film
noir_s as I could get my hands on, just so I could answer in kind.”

I smiled too.  “I won't lie, Joni, I had to refer to my Chandler every
now and again.”

“It's charming, even though you don't dress for it.”

I smiled wider.  I thought about her change in dress.  I wondered
whether she had done the make-up for me or Choi or just the job,
whether this was the real Joni Archer sitting across from me,
supporting her clothes; but I didn't voice any of it.  All I voiced
was: “You wanna come back to my place?” and by that time my wide old
smile had become a giant leer.


14

I got her coat; that grey thing she'd huddled up in that other night
when I'd stuck to 'Lisabeth and let her go off into the dark streets
alone.  I was glad I'd tidied, though she looked a little puzzled, and
maybe a little upset, at all my telephonic goods still heaped against
the wall.  I tried to remove the pinned-up picture of 'Lisabeth from
the wall without her noticing but it came off like some sit-com sight
gag.  Hell, she'd seen it already; was the one what gave it to me.

I offered her a drink.  I don't know why: I knew there wasn't anything
in the house.  I'd known that the past few nights running.  I rummaged
in my recycling bin and found an inch of gin.  The night before I
would have chastized such laziness; today I was as grateful as a
euthanasee.  Suddenly I remembered why I'd offered her a drink.

I came out with two glasses done up nice with lime slices and all.  I
handed her the one with gin in it and apologized, “I'd have asked what
you wanted, but gin is all there is, I'm afraid,” and I took a sip of
mine, pretending it was more than icewater.

“Pretty nice digs,” she said, sitting down on my pretty nice sofa.

“You know, it occured to me as we came over,” I said, staying
standing, “that you never answered my question.” She looked at me
blankly.  “Why you left at five that night when you'd told me to ring
you at the office at six.”

She smiled and took a sip big enough to make me worry about the next
round.  “Oh, that.  Well, I really shouldn't have let that bastard
Choi talk me into giving you my home number, but perhaps I knew I'd
get to like you,” and she winked at me.  I suddenly felt
self-conscious standing up.  I fell into the sofa chair a little
dramatically, punctuating her comment with poorly veiled bashfulness.
She continued: “Besides, Choi's reason; if it was his reason, though
certainly not his only; still held: night security come on at five and
they like the building empty, so we could all best play out our parts
in Choi's egotistical play if you thought you were dialling his office
but I was really working from home.  I was really only ever in the
building those mornings to meet you.  That evening I had gone back to
ask for some pay in advance.  I'd met my landlord in the hallway...”

I tried to ignore this last part.  “So now I have both of your
numbers: all that's missing is your address and your father's
consent.”

She smiled.  I think we each thought we were in our element.  Probably
we were both out of our depth.

“You can have one and forget the other, if you play your cards right
tonight, gumshoe.”

She sure made that old sofa look a lot more attractive than it used
to.  Lately it had been just a convenient place to ship a dirty drunk
for a night while he slept it off.  Now it looked like Venus' freaking
clamshell.  But I had just one more question.

“Just one more question, my lovely.” She nodded like she wanted to get
it over with.  Well, so did I: “That day; you know the one; there was
someone else in Choi's office.  An Asian looking guy sat in the
corner.  Know him?”

The couch didn't look so comfortable now.  It was her fault.  It
didn't have her arm tossed over its back any more.  It didn't have her
lovely body pushed back into it; she now sat on its edge, both hands
clasping the glass of gin, her elbows on her knees.  She finished the
drink and grasped it harder, turning her knuckles white.  I was afraid
it would implode.

“That.  That was Klim,” she said.  I wanted to make a joke but it
didn't seem like the right thing to do.  I wanted to do something.  To
make her comfortable.  To get her back into that sofa.  But she was
pulling herself out.  She said she had to go.  I caught the glass
before it fell from her hand.  I helped her on with her coat with a
brisk movement I hoped hid my discomposure.

She left.  And she'd taken with her all the liquor.

 I sat, wondering if I should have called her a taxi, and lit a
 cigarette.
I thought a little about something I'd heard a scientist once say.
He'd said that there would a guy be, choking down a cigarette,
cruising in his car with no seatbelt on, listening to talk-back, and
over the airwaves some hysterical neo-con'd be postulating about
terrorist threats and the menace of big government and the guy'd be
all got up about those things when the things that'd probably actually
kill him were sitting there between his lips and bearing him along at
a break-neck pace over miles of useless hard seal.

I lit the next off the butt of the first.

Of course, I remembered that ‘Klim’s' had been what was printed on the
wall at floor one of Choi's building.  So that was what I thought
about.

I smoked and thought about it until my head felt dizzy with one or the
other and then I fell onto the sofa, trying for a whiff of scent left
on a cushion or something, and finally curling up, doing that thing I
hadn't done for a while: waiting for sleep to come semi-naturally.


15

Next morning I found myself down in the lobby of Prince Building.  I'd
already asked myself on the way over how many more times I was going
to re-enact this already well played out scene, so that by the time I
found myself in the lobby there wasn't anything left to do but ring
for the elevator.

It arrived, I got in, and I played the same trick I'd done what seemed
like all those days earlier but was probably only a few more than a
handful.  I was going up.  One floor at a time.

Before I got out of the car on the first floor I checked just to be
sure: yes, ‘Klim’s' was exactly what it said next to the button with
‘1’ printed on it: ‘Klim’s' in little embossed script on a piece of
metal tape like years ago you would have churned out of one of those
old label makers.

I got out of the car and strolled in right to the centre of the big
empty foodcourt.

The same bunch of rags was getting its beauty sleep in one of the
booths; the handful of others were expending a bit of elbow on benches
that would never be spotless.  I picked one at random and went over to
him.

“Only just turn on the frier, mister,” he said, while I tried not to
stereotype.

“Not hungry.” He looked at me I suppose the way I would have looked at
an imbecile like me if I was a slightly-more-than-teenage kid just
come on the shift at a place I hated, working for a guy I didn't know
and could care less than nothing about.  So I tried to come on
politely.

“Look,” I said, not quite putting on a smile, “I can't say I've got an
appetite for whatever it is you put in that frier of yours; I just
want to know a thing or two about your employer, Mr Klim.”

“Oh,” he looked bored.  More bored, if that was possible.  “Mr Klim
not our employer; he just rent us the space.  Discount price.  But you
know that if you have business here.  We not usually get
street-people; usually only building-people here.”

I nodded.  “Tell you what, you probably wouldn't see a bunch more
business were that not the case: this place is a dump.”

“That make you scavenger.”

I reached for that tone I knew was finding itself closer to my reach
every passing day: “You're smarter than you seem, kid; but I'm not
asking you to be smart.  I'm asking you about Klim.  What's his deal
and what's his whereabouts.”

The kid shook his head.  Don't ask me, said that headshake; you think
a guy like me knows much more about the guy than how often and how
much he wants paying off?  it quizzed.  That shake of the head was
right, and I didn't know what I'd expected out of a foodcourt anyway.
I looked at the other poor guys and girls stuck behind counters
getting ready to dispense barely palatable food to even less so
customers.

I must have looked forlorn.

I got in the 'vator and hit ‘2’.


16

And there she was, Miss Selma Inkholm.

“Hello, Miles,” she said.  I wondered for a second or two at how not
very guilty she seemed.

“You,” I said.

“I.”

And then I decided that action could speak louder: I leaned over her
desk, made sure she was playing solitaire on her computer, then
started strolling loudly down between the cubicles.  To tell the
truth, I was a little surprised to find them crammed with office types
in pressed shirts shuffling papers and clicking at screens, but I
wasn't going to let that ruin my stage show.

Halfway down one of the aisle I turned, still walking, backwards now,
and spread my arms out, shouting back at Miss Inkholm, glad to see I'd
finally achieved something which would make her give her jaws and that
gob of gum a rest, “Wonderful job, Mr Choi!  Such efforts expended!
Offices filled with real people, businesses that change floors,
foodcourts with nobody to feed: all for the sake of mere”—and here I
leaned in close to the ear of one of the ‘workers’ and whispered,
though still plenty loud—“verisimilitude!”

Now Miss Inkholm was striding towards me.  “A newsroom!  Local
Papers!” I crowed, “More like a pack of extras from the Great Choi
Theatre Company!  Hell, I'm sure he met you all at school; in drama
class, no less: it makes oh so much sense!”

By now she had caught up to me.  She grabbed me by the arm and hissed
just what the hell did I think I was doing and dragged me to the end
of the corridor of cubicles to where there was a small walled in
office.  The short way there I gave the office types a silly grin,
then she threw me into the office, stepped in herself, and slammed the
door behind her.  I peeked over her shoulder to see whether they would
go back to pretending to be office workers or wouldn't bother now that
the game was up.  Miss Inkholm grabbed _my_ shoulders and pushed me
down into what should have been a reasonably comfortable chair.

It just didn't feel too comfortable too me.

“Whatever your delusions otherwise, Mr Miles Eli, this is a very
legitimate business.  You are right that it is a concern of Mr Choi's,
but why you think that justifies your storming in here and disturbing
his otherwise happy employees is quite beyond me, since I can assure
you it justifies only quite the opposite.”

I slumped in the chair, as though defeated by her tirade, playing the
naughty schoolboy role it seemed she and Choi had conspired to cast me
in.  Then when she eventually moved far enough from the door to make
it possible I jumped up and blocked it with my body.  I was polite
enough not to push her back as she had me, but I glared at her in the
right way for her to understand what was going on.  She sat in the
chair of her own free will.

I relaxed a little, but still leaned on the door.  She smoothed her
skirt and resumed the chewing of that gum.  It made it seem like there
were now just two human beings in a room and they were about to have a
nice friendly conversation.

I started: “Look, maybe I got you wrong; maybe Choi does own a
foodcourt and an airline: goodness knows he doesn't make money out of
suckering poor saps like me.  But I have been suckered, and it's not a
nice feeling.  Now I don't want to have to _make_ you tell me just
exactly what his deal is, but right now I'm feeling that if the urge
to get tough comes on I might just give in.”

She laughed nervously and said, “My, but you are the real deal!” I
looked at her in a way which communicated that the nervousness in her
voice had been justified, and she buckled.  “Okay, so maybe Liz and I
were playing you a bit the other night.  Maybe it's not just me knows
Tony from school: maybe you're right and we all met at the drama club.
Hell, you're upset.  I guess I'd better tell it.”

I nodded.

“They'll kill me when they find out I've spilled.  But then you look
kinda bloodthirsty yourself.”

I kept that bloodthirsty look on my face, she saw I wasn't going to
let up until she spilled, so she smoothed her skirt again and began to
spill.  She gushed.

“So there we were hanging out one day and Tony noticed Liz had a copy
of ‘Double Indemnity’ in her bag, and when she then said that her new
boyfriend, you, I believe, had lent it to her and how much he was into
such things, we drafted a little play, you know, as a nice diversion
to show how much she cares for you.  And so here you are in it: I was
going to play the secretary but Tony wanted to do the floor-switching
thing and so I had to be the girl in front of all the other
‘businesses’ in the building, while he hired a real secretary to sit
in front of his own office.  He likes to do that: mix reality into his
scripts; but this,” and she nodded at me still blocking the door,
“this is a little _too_ real, and if it means that I break the spell
for you earlier than it was s'posed to be broken, then I'm sorry, but
I'm uncomfortable.”

I warily came away from the door.  “I didn't mean to frighten you,
Selma.  You're right, I got caught up in the act a little.”

“You mean you know?” she asked.  I ignored it.

“So you were both the airline girl and the newspaper tease?”

She nodded.

“You're good.  I'm impressed.”

“Wonderful what a bit of make-up and a wig can do, isn't it?”

I cringed, remembering the wig beneath that wide-brimmed hat on Choi's
desk.  I said, “And how was it supposed to end; before you ‘broke the
spell’?”

She had relaxed a bit.  “You were supposed to get close enough to
recognize you were tailing your own sweetheart; simple as that.
Elegant, really; a stroke of genius on Tony's part.  You know, you
really should pretend I didn't spill to you and maybe play out the
ending when you follow her home tonight.  That'd keep everyone happy.”

I swallowed.  My throat was getting tight.  “When was the last time
you saw her?” I asked.

“Liz?  when we had drinks the other night with you.”

“And Choi just has you stay down here playing your role indefinitely?”

She smiled.  “Well, I do actually work for Tony.  The business; it's
not anything to do with freight or newspapers.  It's his accountancy
firm.  Let me tell you, those accountants were not pleased about
shifting floors.  But Tony gave them a bonus that week.  I'm usually
on the desk, so, yeah, he keeps me down here, if that's how you want
to put it.”

I nodded.  Then I opened the door for her.  “Well, Ms Inkholm, I'm
sorry to have distracted you from your work.  I suppose you can pass
my apologies on to your coworkers?  I shall certainly take your advice
regarding 'Lisabeth: perhaps we'll have another drink together
sometime soon.” She smiled and went through the door.

We walked back to the front of the offices and I rang the elevator,
pressing the ‘down’ arrow.  I smiled at her as she settled back into
her solitaire and winked, getting into the car.

When I'd ridden it to the ground floor I didn't exit but rang ‘3’.  I
was getting better at this detective stuff.

Floor three was the same as it had always been: an empty maze of
corridors.  But so were floors four and five.

On floor six, the top floor, I got the same.  The only thing left in
that office of Choi's was his desk, emptied.

Once again I was ringing for that damned elevator, cursing.


17

There are a lot of Chois in the phone book.  There are even a lot of
T. Chois; or was it A, for Anthony?  I threw the book, which was
probably the last telephone-related item in my household, across the
room to land in the pile against the wall.

So Selma was in on it but didn't know the twist at the end, Choi's
twist of the knife; Joni was in on it without knowing it, but a little
shook up over this Klim character, who seemed to be a friend of
Choi's; and I was knee-deep in what felt like quicksand.  Maybe last
week, before Archer, before Inkholm, I would have felt willing to let
myself drown in it, peacefully as one can.  But now, just as the
sucking force is taking hold, now that the chance of making an escape
has passed and any attempt will just hasten my demise, now on the firm
shore appears a glimmer of tantalizing hope.  'Lisabeth's willingness
to deceive me was, according to Ms Inkholm, out of love, not malice.

I sat and replayed the scene a few more times in my tired head.  I
noted more than Klim's presence this time: I noted 'Lisabeth's
silence.  I'd thought at the time she had been too embarrassed at
having her treachery exposed, but now it came to seem perhaps she'd
been unable to speak up for herself in Choi's presence.  Maybe he had
something on her strong enough for him to say she was his without her
denying it.

Maybe I was just projecting my hope back onto the events, shaping my
memory of 'Lisabeth's behavior in order to set myself up for even more
disappointment.

In the back of my mind I felt a nagging urge to go find a drink
somewhere.  In an effort to ignore it I went over to the pile of
telephony and started to reassemble it.  I got the handset on its
stand and the machine on the little table.  I plugged everything in
and put my mobile on to charge.  The phone book went into the drawer
in the little table.  I had just pushed the drawer shut when something
made me open it again and pull the directory back out.

There were only two entries under ‘Klim’.  It had sounded fairly
unusual.  Of course one was for the foodcourt in Prince Building, 105
Queen Street.  The other one was an apartment in Zen Tower.

I put the book down on the coffee table.  I went to the kitchen and
poured myself a tall glass of water.  On the second refill I brought
it back into the living room and put it down next to the directory.

I looked the name up again.  I ran my fingers across the dots enough
times making sure they led to the Zen Tower address that the ink was
starting to come off the newsprint.  I memorized the apartment number,
put the phone book away in the drawer, and downed the third glass of
water.  By then I really had to relieve myself.

When I came out of the bathroom I looked at my watch.  It was half
past six; in that season that meant it was already getting dark
outside.  I put my coat on, switched off the lights, and went out the
door.


18

On the way over to Zen Tower I'd dreamt up a few daring plans for
getting into the building's lobby, but by the time I was approaching I
didn't know which, if any, I'd dare to enact.  So I was thankful when
all I had to do was smile at a guy just ahead of me going in and he
held the door open for me.  In other cities that wouldn't fly, I
suppose.  It wasn't even too hard answering all his small-talk as we
rode the elevator up.

The floors were labelled by alphabet.  My companion got off at ‘D’.
Klim's was apartment P2. I saw ‘P’ was the highest button you could
push.  What it was about these characters that had them always
situated on the top floor I did not know.

Now I thought Zen was about minimalism, or something like that, but
this joint was pretty lavishly decorated.  Even the carpet in the
lobby, which in other buildings would long ago have been scraped to
the threads under the combined feet of the entire occupancy, was in
this building plusher than the most unfrequented regions of any
carpeted floor I'd ever before had the pleasure of treading.  Inside
the elevator the same carpet found its way onto the ceiling.  Then it
was spotless mirrors on each wall down to the equally spotless brass
rail which ran around the car.  Then folds of pink silk-like cloth
draped the rest of the wall down to the sand-colored floor.  The cloth
was a pinker shade of the deep red of the carpet in the lobby and on
the ceiling.  The elevator controls weren't cheap plastic, the kind
that with age and the pressing of innumerable thumbs clouds over so
that one can no longer tell what number each button represents without
counting up from the bottom; these were made out of cut glass.

It was the strangest elevator I'd ever ridden.

When I finally hit ‘P’ I was greeted with more of the same carpet,
plusher still, if that was possible.  There was more of that pink
cloth about the place and the light was soft and yellow; none of those
harsh modern bulbs or incandescent tubes.

‘P2’ wasn't far along the corridor.  I raised my hand, but stopped
myself before letting it fall on the door.

What was I doing?  In all this time I hadn't even attempted to contact
'Lisabeth.  Sure, in the beginning I'd been angry, but I'd been
convinced she'd just dumped me in maybe the cruellest fashion
possible.  Now I knew; or thought I knew; that that wasn't the case,
that Choi was putting the bite on her and she'd had no choice.

So why was I now about to burst in on this Klim fellow on the mere
hunch that he could give me some more information?  I'd kept my
distance long enough messing around with the two girls from Prince
Building.  Sure, maybe Joni had seized up at the mention of Klim, and
it seemed there was some connection there to Choi and his twisted
business, but 'Lisabeth, my real concern, was probably just sitting at
home too afraid to try to call me again, and I too cowardly to try
myself.

Well, there was no reason to play detective anymore: I'd already
played fool at it, in any case.  No reason to keep playing coward,
either.  I let my hand fall back to my side and went part-way along
the corridor back towards the elevator.  I reached into my pocket and
pulled out my mobile phone.  It had had some chance to charge.  I
dialled 'Lisabeth.

It rang for some time.  If it had been off it would have gone straight
to voicemail.  If it had been on her person she would have picked up
by now.

Just as it went to voicemail the elevator dinged and out came two
characters dressed warmly against the cold night they'd just come in
from.  They were Choi and 'Lisabeth.  I mashed the buttons on my phone
and shoved it into my pockets.  'Lisabeth recognized me and Choi
checked her, holding her by the arm.  I stepped towards them.
'Lisabeth shook her head and said softly, tugging at Choi's grasp,
“Miles, don't; just leave it alone.”

“Yes, Mr Eli, I thought we'd made it clear to leave us alone.  I
thought we'd made it clear to you that she is my girl, not yours; that
it was all a cruel joke, an experiment.”

This time I was ready to stick up for myself; but I don't know how he
did it: how he signalled him, or whether Klim had simply sensed the
action and had stepped out to see what it was all about, but I heard
the door open behind me and turned around to see him coming towards me
rolling up his sleeves like he meant business.

I didn't know how I'd missed him sitting in the corner of Choi's
office: the guy was built like a brick wall.  I didn't fancy getting a
closer look than that.  I swung around.  Now Choi had her clasped even
tighter towards him and a bit in front, and in his left hand there
glinted something cold and black.  My breath caught when I realized
what it was.

I didn't think of what I was doing as I threw myself to my left,
through the nearest door.  It wasn't locked or anything: it wasn't a
door to any apartment.  It yielded to the weight of my shoulder and I
tumbled through into the stairwell which was sunk between the two
elevator shafts.  What I did think was, Christ, Miles, what have you
gotten yourself into.  This isn't fun and games anymore.  That was a
real gun.  It looked like it had real bullets in it.

I felt like Selma must have, stuck in that office with me blocking the
door.  This was too real.

By the time I'd allowed myself all this cognition I was flying down
the stairs, flight after flight.  The loudest single sound I have ever
heard clattered after me and my heart, my breath, my hearing, all just
stopped.  So did my legs and I fell down to the next landing.  Rubber
arms somehow pushed me back up onto my feet and I was flying down
those stairs again faster than ever.  From behind the wall of silence
the gunshot had caused I could hear 'Lisabeth screaming.  I didn't
have time to hope they were just trying to scare me off; I didn't have
time to hope 'Lisabeth knew that was all they were trying to do.  I
didn't stop when I hit the lobby to see whether the elevator was
plummeting after me: I spilled out onto the street, round the nearest
corner, then zigged and zagged until I was a few blocks away at least
and hailed a cab.


19

Inside the taxi-cab my hands were trembling, cold sweat dripped in
slow beads down my sides, and my breath came fast and unevenly; but at
least it was still coming.  The cabby looked a little concerned but I
told him to just go and I'd get more specific later.  Then he went and
straightaway started back along towards Zen Tower.  I screamed at him
to turn the thing around, and he did, but then he pulled over and
wouldn't budge until I could calm down and convince him I was not a
madman or a drunk.  I tried as hard as I could to appear rationally
minded and we finally moved off towards downtown.  I tried to slow my
breathing in the hope that my pulse would then follow.

We were getting pretty close to downtown.  I probably wasn't thinking
straight yet, but I pulled my phone back out.  I rang Joni.

“Miles.  Hey, I'm sorry about—”

“Look, don't worry about the other night,” I urged.  “The only thing I
regretted was not getting your address: can I meet you tonight?”

“Well, I could head over to your place...”

“That won't do, I'm afraid.  Can I come over to yours?” I hoped she
could sense enough desperation in my voice to yield her address and
not so much as to refuse it to such a creep.

She gave me a number on Upper Queen.  The cabby grunted and swung his
hack around.  With shaky hands I counted out the fare, making ready to
leave him a big tip.  He nodded when I handed it to him, dumped me on
the sidewalk, and wheeled around noisily to tear off back into the
night.


20

She buzzed me up and when I got to it her door was ajar.  I went in
and pushed the door closed behind me.  I followed the aroma of
stir-fry to her kitchen, where she stood with a bag of rice in one
hand and a wooden spoon in the other.  It smelled like green curry.  I
said “Hi” to get her attention.

“Oh, hi, you're here.  I was just putting this together when you
called; I've doubled the recipe but it'll be ready soon enough: you
hungry?”

I told her she needn't have bothered but that something to fill my
stomach would probably do me good and green curry smelled like just
the ticket.  She insisted she didn't need a hand, so I left her to do
that and checked out her apartment.

I didn't get very far.  It was a small place.  A very small place.
She dished up and we could barely fit both plates onto her tiny table
or both of us into the corner she called her dining room.  I wasn't
being critical; I was just surprised she could turn around in there.

“Pretty nice digs,” I said.  The food was good.  Half the rice was
hard and half mushy, but it was hot and filling.  Just what I needed
after my brush with death.

She laughed.  “It's cozy, if that's what you mean.  And at least it's
cheap.  I try not to stay cooped up in here too long: cramped spaces
aren't good for your health.  When I'm not out trying to get a job I
try to go for walks, but with winter the days are so short now I'm
stuck in more than I'd like.”

I finished getting the food in there and sat back.  I could feel it a
nice warm spot in my middle emanating good things outwards.  “What's
up?” she asked.  I put my hands on the table.  They were still
shaking, but I watched them for a while and soon they stopped.  That
was the food.  I got up, took the half step to the kitchen, and filled
a glass with water.  Another half step and I was back in my seat,
sipping the water.

“I've just been shot at.”

I could tell her food was going to get cold.  I chastised myself for
not waiting for her to finish.  “Choi?” she asked.

Choi, I nodded.  “And his buddy, he was there too, looking mean.
Klim.”

She looked away.  There wasn't anywhere to look but across the two
feet that counted as the living room and through the small black
window set into the wall.  Out there was the city: black, painfully
lit, a joke, like a white man with a yellow man's name.  But I guessed
that if I threw myself out that window, whether this small girl in her
small flat would scream or dissipate into air, if I hurled myself just
right, straight like an arrow, making sure I got through that tiny
black gap, I guessed that my joke city'd still be real enough when it
caught me, when it took my brains for finger paint and turned my soul
to dust.

And I guessed if a joke like that were real then why not a joke like
Choi?  A joke like Choi taking a shot at me to scare me off or not, a
joke like Klim being tough enough to scare not just his poor tenants
at the foodcourt but even eats-nails-for-breakfast Eli.  I told it to
Archer.  She didn't laugh.  I told her to eat her food before it was
cold.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“You're still not eating your food,” I replied.  She relented and put
a forkful in.  “I'm fine,” I said.  “I didn't get shot; I got shot at.
Now, you, you are going to finish your meal and then you can tell me
what the deal is with Klim.”

She started going blank behind the eyes again, so I reached across and
shoved the plate further under her nose, leant back and folded my arms
to wait.  She ate.  I watched the sticky morsels go down her throat.
She finished and I cleared the table without leaving my seat.  I
looked at her like it was time.

She shook her head.

I got up, went round the back of her chair.  I looked at my hands
hovering above her shoulders and they were shaking again.  I put them
where I thought we could both benefit from it.  I felt her jump
beneath my touch, just a little.  I heard a long breath and then I
felt her relax her shoulders.  I kneaded them gently, very slowly.

“Is it money?”

I felt her tense again, then she relaxed again.  That meant I was off
but not by far.  She shook her head.  I was close enough to smell her
hair as her pony tail jerked back and forth a few times.  It smelled
nice.  She said, “Not just money.” She said it very quietly.

“How much, how often?”

“Enough that I have to squeeze myself into this coop.”

“And that's when you have a job.”

Her shoulders shook once, in a small way.  I rubbed them with my hands
a little more firmly.  I had no idea what I was doing.  She put her
hand on top of one of mine and I stopped.  She stood and turned to
face me, still holding my hand gently in the clasp of hers.  The chair
was between us: she knelt on it, bringing her close to me.  She put
her other hand on my chest and she was very close to me now.  She put
her head on my chest and I put an arm around her, holding her that
close.  She looked up at me and I kissed her long and slow.


21

I hadn't meant to let myself fall asleep there.  The bed was small,
like everything else in her small apartment.  Last night it had been a
good thing, because it kept us close.  This morning I woke up from
falling out of it.  She must have rolled over.

She woke up as I tried to extricate myself.  She said my name and that
stopped my futile escape attempts.  With her help I hauled myself back
up next to her.  We couldn't both lie on our backs shoulder to
shoulder and still be on the bed, so she adjusted herself around me
and I stared up at the ceiling by myself.  She looked down at me.

“What has Klim got on you?” I asked.

“Must I tell you?”

“You aren't my client, so I suppose you don't.”

“But you're not Choi's client anymore, surely.”

“No, I suppose you are right about that.  But you can't afford me.”

“_You_'re right about _that_.  Not at the rate Choi was paying.”

“You looked inside those envelopes?”

“I didn't need to: they were heavy.”

“Yes,” I mused, “and the bills weren't small, either.  But perhaps I
could do some _pro bono_ work.  I think we can both agree I need a
little more experience in this line of work.  And for you the price is
right, so now I've got a reason to insist: what has Klim got on you?”

“Can't I employ you without giving you that?  It's not like you need
to know why he's blackmailing me, just that he is and maybe you can
stop him.”

“Haven't you read any detective stories?  I must be in full posession
of the facts before I can proceed in my investigation.”

“Maybe I shouldn't employ you, then.”

“I'd forgotten it was your choice.”

We were quiet for a while.  Then she said quietly, “I'm behind on my
payment.”

I rubbed her arm.  “You leave that to me,” I said.  Then I got out of
bed and began to dress.

“What are you going to do?”

I turned and looked at her helplessly.  “I'm going to the cops.”

“What?  You can't!”

“Look, I don't know what I'm doing, and you can't keep going on like
this.  The police know how to handle this kind of thing: you should
have gone to them when he first put the squeeze on you.  And I should
have stayed at home, alone, re-reading my James M. Cain from the
safety of my sofa.”

“You can't.  I won't let you.” And she grabbed my shirt off the floor
and clutched it like a child.

“Don't be a kid.  Look, it's safe: Klim doesn't know me, doesn't know
I know you, the police will be discreet; he'll never know I tipped
them off until it's too late, and he'll _never_ know you were
involved.”

“Yeah, right,” she sneered, “You've been snooping round his restaurant
business, haven't you?”

“You know about that?” She threw a scowl at me.  She followed that
with the shirt.  I caught it.  “What does that have to do with
anything?” I asked, putting it on, “It still doesn't tie me to you.”

“Look,” she scowled, “I don't care.  You wanna go down to the cop shop
and jeopardize my”—she gestured about her prison-cell-sized
apartment—“already fairly dire predicament, you go ahead.  Maybe I'll
just fly this coop, take care of myself, like I always do.  Here I was
thinking I'd found a nice man to look out for me—”

“Don't go.  Stay here, I'll come back.  I'll come and go discreetly,
I'll be back and everything will be okay.” I didn't wait for the next
rebuke, I cut out of there, still struggling with my last button.


22

The police station was a couple of blocks away.  I told the young guy
at the desk I wanted to report blackmail.  I sat down for a while then
got shown into a small room with just enough furnishings to make it
better than what the bad guys probably got.  A lady in uniform came in
with a folder and a pen and notepad.  In the folder were some
brochures.  She sat down opposite me and pushed a couple towards me.

“These are some support services available,” she said, in a caring but
bored way.

I pushed them back at her, “I'm sorry, I'm not the victim here.  I'm
just coming to you on her behalf.”

She left the brochures out on the desk.  “Her unwilling behalf?”

I nodded.

“She doesn't want to get into any more trouble with her blackmailer
than she's already in.  That's normal.  We exercise all necessary
precaution when it comes to blackmail, but you know that, and that's
why you're here in spite of your friend's fear.  Tell me what you
can.”

I told her what I could.  She went out for a while.  I refilled my
paper water cup a couple of times.  She never came back.

Eventually somebody came.  He was older than anybody I'd yet seen.  He
had that policeman's moustache and everything.  He had a folder too,
only it looked heavier and more important.  He sat down.

“Good morning, Mr... Eli.  Firstly, thank you.  It's not every day
that we get a good samaritan reporting an actual crime: you were right
to come to us.  Unfortunately, there isn't much we can do for your
friend, if indeed it is your friend who is the victim.” He winked at
me and continued: “But you and your friend may not think it
unfortunate: Mr John Klim, the person you say has been blackmailing
your friend, was shot dead last night in his apartment building.”

I blinked.  I took a sip from the paper cup I'd drained dry two
seconds ago.  I looked at this old war-horse.  This friendly-looking
cop.  He went on.

“He was running a harem out of his cousin's building on Queen Street.
His cover was a foodcourt, believe it or not.  Fancy business types
would order the chef's special, as it were, and there'd be a key in
the bottom of their glass; a key to an office upstairs, where they'd
find their dessert.

“If your friend; a girl, I understand; was caught up with this guy she
probably has a few colleagues who'll also be relieved to hear the
news.  To tell the truth, we are too.  We were in the process of
breaking up the ring; the homicide boys don't have a suspect, but
they're probably not going to put themselves out over that.

“Well, of course it's not a huge relief to us: with scum like him
there are always a hundred others clammering for his place.  But for
you; unless that doesn't sound like your friend's predicament, unless
you think she won't think this the best solution for all, you should
go.”

I stared at him blankly.  My mouth was dry.  I had to go to the
bathroom.

“I mean, technically, I should ask you a bunch more questions...”

I shook my head.  I forgot to find the bathroom on my way out.


23

I made my way back to Joni's in a daze.  I forgot about all the being
discreet I'd promised, but that didn't matter now.  Choi had shot
Klim.  His cousin, Klim.

She didn't answer the buzzer.  I rattled the door.  I went round the
back to the fire escape.  I climbed past seven other small square
windows to hers.  I looked in.

I could see she'd cleared out.  Most rooms when you empty them they
look a whole lot bigger: not this one.  But it was definitely empty.

I was about to put my elbow through the glass but I stopped myself.  I
sat on the sill instead and stared out over the city in its
mid-morning bustle.  I rang Archer's cell, knowing she wouldn't pick
up.  I left a message: “Joni, Klim's dead.  Choi shot him,” but I
never saw her again.

I sat on that window sill for a long time, thinking about whether
'Lisabeth had gotten tangled up in Klim's dirty business, what made
Choi shoot his own cousin in that hallway I'd found myself in last
night.  I wondered about how 'Lisabeth and I had found eachother,
whether any of it was real.  Maybe her cruel plot with Choi had been a
plea for help like Joni's and I'd been too dumb a pretend detective to
notice.  Maybe Klim had been upset at seeing an adopted guy get the
family business, maybe animosity was mutual but Choi's hands were tied
by family ties and he wanted me to figure out something was up and
alert the law, only I was too late.

I didn't know.  I don't know now, and I didn't and I don't care.  I
knew that if I went back to Prince Building one more time _all_ the
floors'd be empty.  Floor one would be POLICE-taped.  Maybe I wouldn't
even be able to get in the front door.  But I knew it would be empty.
Even the accountants wouldn't be there.  I knew I'd never see Selma
Inkholm again.  I wondered whether every girl I'd met in the past
month was a whore.

Let's be kind: an unfortunate.

I stared out across the city.  I never got my denoument, but I put my
hands behind my head anyway, and leaned back against Joni's window.
It held: I didn't fall back into that tiny apartment onto a bed of
broken glass.  It held and I stared out over the city.

I felt the sun should be setting or something, but it was near
mid-day: the sun was beating down from afar but from about as close as
he was going to get that day.