“Ho ho,” she says. “I heard you had an interesting night.”
“Interesting?”
“Nate says you ditched him for some doctor’s girlfriend.”
She’s smiling at me with a look I’ve seen before, generally when my rap has crashed and burned.
You’re cute and I might sleep with you, it says, if I was a loser devoid any self-respect. Whatever window I had with K. is now closed.
“It wasn’t exactly the night I planned,” I say coolly.
“The night we planned, actually.”
“You knew I had a boyfriend.”
There might be some regret in the way she’s said it, but I’m in no mood to see it. I can’t think of anything else to say that doesn’t sound desperate, vindictive, or just plain pathetic, so I continue up to my room.
Under normal circumstances, I am a big fan of the long postcoital shower. As sick as it probably sounds, washing dried sex off my body makes me feel like a man with a mustache who discovers a few crumbs from last night’s delicious meal. But I don’t want to think about last night anymore.
Despite the unspeakable luxury of having the communal bathroom all to myself, I scrub quickly and return to my room.
The Motorola is buzzing on the bed. A Long Island number I don’t recognize. I throw on some clothes, grab a handful of change, and walk downstairs to the Mexican res-taurant.
“Kings Park,” says the receptionist on the other end of the line, quickly clearing up the identity of the mystery caller.
“Daphne Robichaux, please.” Two more quarters go into the phone before she speaks.
“Hiya!” Daphne says brightly. “How’s America?”
It’s a line from Sid and Nancy, a call-andresponse we’d appropriated as our own. “Fucking boring,” I finish. “Now, who are you, cheerful person, and what have you done with Daphne.”
“She met fluoxetine. And let me tell you, it was love at first swallow.”
Daphne’s bubbly take on life in the loony bin makes it sound more like F Troop than One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I actually find myself getting envious of her life, spent with colorful characters in what sounds like a stress-free environment. Maybe not entirely stress-free — when my father finally called the police to drop the charges, they told him she still faced possible criminal prosecution — but Daphne’s last conversation with Larry has her feeling confident that at least there won’t be any jail time.
I’ve just about run out of quarters when she asks me if there’s been any news about her father. I promise to call the private investigator, which I do as soon as I hang up. This conversation turns out to be a lot shorter.
“Glad you called,” says Henry Head. “Why don’t you swing by the office?”
The office is in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen. On the second floor of a storefront promising fake IDs and Live XXX, I find the door with Head Investigations stenciled on the tempered glass. There is no receptionist, just the Head-man himself, leaning back in his chair, feet on the desk. He wears a track-suit that looks more ironic than functionalHenry Head must weigh three hundred pounds. He notes my arrival, washing half a Twinkie down his throat with a Snapple. “Brunch,” he explains, gesturing toward a couch splattered with mysterious stains. “Make yourself at home.”
I play it safe, resting my ass against the armrest.
A radiator clangs noisily in the corner, pushing the temperature about five degrees higher than comfortable. It really does feel like home.
“Do you have any idea how many Peter Robichauxs there are in the tristate area alone?”
Head asks.
I shake my head.
“Me neither. Maybe someday with the computers and all that we’ll have some way of knowing. Until then, we got the white pages.” He holds up a weathered phone book.
My internal temperature rises to match the room.
“Let me get this straight,” I say. “I just paid you five hundred dollars to skim the phone book?”
“You ever hear of Occam’s razor? The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”
“Actually, Occam’s razor says the simplest explanation is usually the right one,” I say, drawing on my single semester of philosophy.
“No shit? Then what do you call the thing about the straight line?”
“I think that’s just ‘the thing about the straight line.’” He holds up his palms in mock self-defense. “I never claimed to be a scholar.”
“So is Peter Robichaux in the phone book?”
“Fourteen of ’em.” Head consults a spiral-bound note-book, which is encouraging. “A couple of ’em died in the five boroughs, meaning they got death certificates in Queens. I can’t tell you how much easier it is when the guy you’re looking for has got a death certificate.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“I’m just saying it’s easier, is all. Anyway, I don’t think any of the dead Robichauxs are your Robichaux. Too young, too old, too black. You said he was a white fella, right?”
“Glad to see you were paying attention. What about the living Robichauxs?”
Head nods and refers back to his notebook.
“One’s in jail upstate on a murder beef. But I don’t think it’s him on account of who he murdered, as in his whole family. Your girl’s still alive, right?”
“She is.”
“Another’s in the service … Germany. I got a call in to him. Long-distance — you’ll see when you see the bill. As for the rest … squadoosh.” Head rubs his hands together like a magician. Another ironic gesture. “By a variety of reasonings I was able to eliminate each of the rest as potential candidates.”
He jams a second yellow pastry into his mouth.
“Okay, assuming that’s true, where does it leave us?”
“Like I said,” he manages in between bites, “I got a call in to Germany.” He wipes his mouth with a handkerchief. “It’s a long shot, which is why I called you here. Our investigation has reached the proverbial cross in the road.”
“You mean ‘fork.’”
“How’s that?”
“The expression. It’s ‘fork in the road.’” Head dabs his forehead with the handkerchief.
“That don’t sound right. Fork’s got three points, maybe four. We only got two options.”