THE VESTIBULE OF MY APARTMENT BUILDING looked shabbier than usual when I rolled in. The tiles were mud streaked and the grout a few shades smudgier than when I’d left. The mailbox area looked like a flea market, littered as it was with free newspapers, delivery notices, and piles of take-out menus from Wong Fu’s Wok and Gianella’s Pizzeria. Both rows of boxes were festooned with yellow sticky notes and scraps of taped paper, temporary tags meant to identify permanent residents.
My mailbox wore a clean, computer-generated label I had slotted neatly into the cutout provided for that purpose. My life felt like a mess in so many ways, I figured I’d try for neat and tidy wherever I could find it. The inside of my box was another story. When I keyed it open, it looked like a cross-section view of a trash compactor. As near as I could tell, the postman loaded the narrow boxes from the top, making the envelopes fit by jamming them down with a pile driver. Anything that didn’t fit-magazines, catalogues, tax returns, divorce decrees-went into the communal pile on the floor and ultimately into the trash if not promptly claimed.
I dug out the slug of mail and locked the box. I pulled two magazines from the pile that were mine. With arms full, I maneuvered my key into the front door, made my way to the elevator, and punched the button with my elbow. It wheezed into action, sounding much the way I felt. After three days on the road, including two nights of surveillance, I was anxious to get off my feet.
Inside the elevator, I rejiggered my cargo so I could sort through the mail. One of the magazines was from the Wolfborough Gun and Hunt Club. I couldn’t get used to seeing my name on anything with the wordgun in the title. Stranger still was the presence in my mailbox of theWings Report, the official publication of the Union of Professional Flight Attendants. Labor relations in the airline business are on a par with those of coal mining, and I had spent fourteen years on the other side of the table as a manager. If anyone had told me I would be a member of the UPFA, or any labor union, I would have thought that person clinically insane. It just wasn’t in my background.
My apartment when I opened the door was dark and cool, which meant I had left town once again with the window open. The damp air from outside had pooled in my one-bedroom unit, but it wasn’t cold enough for the radiators to kick in, and I was glad to be wearing long sleeves. I flipped the switch in the entryway and immediately felt warmer for the light.
I dropped the mail on the kitchen counter and went to close the window. The old wooden frame was warped and stuck. When I finally banged it loose, it slammed shut. The thick old leaded glass shuddered but held firm. I turned on a lamp in the front room and searched around for the remote for the stereo. It was never where it was supposed to be, which was a strange problem for someone who lived alone. The search took me into the kitchen and past my answering machine, where not a single message had come in during my absence.
I needed a dog.
The remote was not in the kitchen, so I manually started the CD player, going with whatever disc was already in there. It was the Blind Boys of Alabama. I loved the Blind Boys, the way their gritty and imperfect voices blended perfectly in songs about sin and salvation, eternal damnation, and the promise of redemption. I cranked it up so I could hear them in the bedroom, where I went to peel off my uniform. I found a soft gray sweatsuit in the pile of wearable play clothes, the ones I didn’t use for running. In what was becoming my favorite part of every workday, I went into the bathroom, ran the warm water, and washed the makeup from my face. During my long hiatus from work, I’d gotten used to the way I looked without powders and pastes. Wearing them now made me feel like a rodeo clown.
Marginally rejuvenated, I went out to the couch and dug out my laptop to do some work. Harvey had e-mailed a new batch of surveillance photos from one of our contractors in Florida and he wanted me to review them. I had little energy for the task. I was tired of looking at the same faces on the same women, strutting, primping, and going about their business as if I had not spent the past two months trying to get each and every one of them fired.
While waiting for the computer to do the mysterious things it did when called upon to wake up and be useful, I went through my daily ritual of self-flagellation. What had possessed me to give up a good corporate career with a very agreeable income to become a private investigator? On what evidence had I concluded that I could successfully perform a job for which I had no training, no background, and no support, except from Harvey, who leaned on me almost more than I did on him? How did I expect to support myself, who did I expect to hire me, and would I ever have made this decision had I known the cost of health benefits for a self-employed individual? In summary, what the hell did I think I was doing?
The photos were up on my screen. Here was Sylvie Nguyet, the French-Vietnamese exotic flower, wearing a liquid blue silk dress that hung on her delicate shoulders from wispy spaghetti straps. She was caught in the embrace of her client, laughing like a child, her face more animated than her usual serene demeanor ever allowed. When Sylvie was on a date, she seemed to have a need to convince herself she was having a good time.
Not so with Ava Ashby. Ava, cool and lithe, had the boneless quality of a boa constrictor and the personality to match. She looked as if she could squeeze herself in or out of any situation. Her silver lamé dress-sleeveless with a choker neckline-clung to her like a second skin as she uncoiled from the limo.
I plowed through the batch, clicking faster as I went, putting names with faces and generally ignoring the photos of the men nuzzling the women’s necks or glancing out furtively from inside the limos. When I got to the end, I closed the file, but then I clicked it open again almost instantly. Without knowing why, I went straight to the shot at the end, the last one I’d seen. I had given it no more weight than all the others, perhaps less. When I pulled it up and studied it more closely, I understood what had drawn me back, and what I saw there made me smile because I knew we had finally caught a break. I knew I had something to work with, and that feeling, all by itself, was enough to get me through tonight and all the way to tomorrow, when it would be time to ask again what the hell I thought I was doing.