“Doc, things just don’t happen neatly for me. Something else kind of nuzzled into the picture before anything happened with my wife. I mean, for the rest of the day things seemed to speed up. Right off the bat, while I was trying to reach my wife on the phone, I got a new client….”
The Client
A shadow washed over the glass window of my door. The gold glittering letters of my name and trade—CLYDE KLICK, I find it quick, PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS—momentarily lost their sparkle.
I said, “Come in,” a hair’s breadth of a second before the feminine shadow’s arm tap-tap-tapped on the glass.
The shadow opened the door and became flesh. A she, nice-looking, too. I tried to smile.
My smile had its usual affect.
“Do you always frown, Mr. Klick?” the lady asked me. Her voice was soft and cooing, like the pigeons my brother kept when we were kids. But it did have a hint of snob in it.
So I gave the smile another try, a real effort. After all, the lady was a prospective customer and that meant money. Maybe.
“Oh dear,” she said, a little put out. Then her lips twitched like someone trying to be polite and then suddenly remembering they don’t have to be polite.
So perhaps I was a little gruffy when I told her, “Yeah, I always frown because I’m a product of a caesarean birth.”
“Quaint,” she said, unimpressed.
“Look, ma’am,” I said tersely, “if you want to insult someone I hear Don Rickles is doing a gig at the Worth Hotel this week. If you want my services, then say so.” She nearly recoiled at the sound of my flat voice. It was a lot like my smile and has the same affect.
“Yes, well, I’m sorry,” she said. “I…I do need your help. I need someone found.”
“Where’d you lose him, Miss…?” I was thinking runaway kid, but she didn’t really seem the mother type.
“Ross, Carla Ross.” She giggled. Well, it was more of a titter. I wondered if she was drunk. ”Mrs. Ross.”
I waited. She didn’t say anything else.
So I said, “Well, like the door says, I find it quick. I know that’s corny, but what that means is if you want your someone found quickly, I can do it. The cost is higher for the quickness. If it’s no rush, then…. But I need to know who I’m looking for, Mrs. Ross.”
For some reason she was smiling. Still standing, but smiling. That was a start. Truth to say, I wished like hell she’d sit down. The way she was dressed was making me blush and it was hard to keep my eyes on her face, ‘cause there were other things to look at.
Her dress, what there was of it, was a red satiny thing that was as tight as a rubber band on a newspaper. It dripped over her shoulders and from there it cut between her breasts and dipped all the way to her navel. And the hem was cut short, high above her knees. I’d heard the mini-look was ‘in’ again.
She wore emerald earrings and a matching necklace. The sunlight spilling into the room made the jewelry and her waist-length blond hair sparkle. I blinked.
I gestured towards one of the chairs. Mrs. Ross walked over and sat. Thank God.
She sighed. “It’s my car,” she announced
“Wait, I thought you said a someone?”
“Well, the man took my car.”
“Know the guy?”
She hesitated. “Randy Fingerroot.” She pronounced it ‘finger-root.’ “He took the car early this morning. My Mercedes. More or less, I guess you could say he’s stolen the car. For ‘payment’ he said.
“Relationship?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who is the guy? Ex-husband, brother—?”
She tittered again, then surprised me with a blush of her own. She was under thirty, but with that V-cut dress and her fancy jewelry, I’d never thought of her as blushing with embarrassment.
She said something so quietly that I had to ask, “What?”
“I said, he is my lover.”
Damn, I blushed too.
I cleared my throat, loudly, and asked, “Are you separated from your husband?”
“No. Why do you ask that?” Her reply was so quiet and deadpan I almost fell out of my chair.
“Uhn, well, I really don’t think I can take your case, but I—”
“I can pay whatever you ask,” she said, finally showing some animation. “I have to have that car back by tomorrow or my husband….”
She stopped there. Then she dug in her purse. I hadn’t seen the purse. It was red with a red strap and had blended perfectly with her dress. I could see her counting, but she didn’t pull out a billfold. Then she leaned over, way over to give me more of a view then I could stand of her bosom, and set a small stack of crisp money on my desk. The money made my desk even dingier-looking, so I snatched it up. And counted it. Twice. Twenty one-hundred dollar bills.
“Mrs. Ross, that’s twice what I normally charge for a quick find, twenty-four hours. If I don’t find what I’m looking for in that time, I just charge a daily rate.” While I was talking I opened my top drawer and put the money in it.
I looked at her again. The dress, the jewelry, the money. I estimated her daily rate at $300, twice the normal rate. Mrs. Ross was smiling.
“If you find him and the car by tomorrow night, I’ll double that money.” She paused, then said, “Does this mean you can help me.”
I smiled then. A real smile. Four-thousand bucks worth.
“Well, I don’t see why not.”
Hey, I have values, but money is money. And it wasn’t like I didn’t do other smutty work. I had a box of negatives that I could sell to any porno magazine. It was a part of p.i. work I had avoided early on, but I had tired quickly of not eating.
Maybe it’d be worse for her if I didn’t help. No telling what kind of husband she had married. I had to help.
Yeah, I almost believed that, too.
5
The doctor was having a hard time getting a handle on Klick. The guy was really sending mixed signals. Klick’s posture had changed completely in the half-hour he’d been in the office. He’d looked like a time-bomb ready to go off at first. You could see the depression on his face. Now he smiled here and there. At moments Rivkin felt like he was in a school debate. Clearly, though, Klick had some kind of radical belief-system.
“Mr. Klick, I really don’t see what that has to do with the way you’re feeling about yourself.”
“You kidding? Good-looking chick like that and practically not-so-subtly tossing herself at any thing walking and you don’t see it coming? Well, I didn’t either. But her and her boyfriend and her husband, they’re the whole story. Okay, Beth’s part of it. And my wife. But what happened….”
“Not the way you’re explaining it.”
“Excuse me. I ain’t never claimed to be no Ernest B. Hemingway.”
“B.? I didn’t know his middle initial was B.?”
“Yeah, for Bigshot. Ha ha ha ha.”
“Really Mr. Klick.”
“Look, I’m not a people-person. I thought I made that clear. I also thought I made it clear Mrs. Ross was kind of, what, exposing