“No thanks.”
“They come knocking, you best hitch up your pants and get to working. You don’t know how close both of us came last night.”
“I think I do, but I’m asking how much money I owe you for your detective work.”
“Is that what I was doing, taking you down to Barnabas’s place?”
“Sure. Every lawyer needs a PI, and for that night at least, you were mine. We agreed on twenty an hour, I believe.”
“We did, for truth, yes, but that was before I learned that I would be working as an official private detective. Got to raise my rates for that, don’t you think?”
“You have a license?”
“What do you mean, license?”
“Then no.” I pushed open the door on the ground floor and headed south, toward my bank on Walnut Street. Derek followed on my flank.
“Dangerous work, detecting,” he said. “No telling what kind of trouble you can find yourself in. People always putting guns in your face.”
“Anyone put a gun in your face?” I said.
“Not yet, but the way you making enemies by the fistful, it bound to happen if we continue working together.”
“Not much chance of that.”
“I figure what you get per hour should be the starting point. How much you get?”
“What I get, as a trained and experienced criminal defense attorney, trained and experienced enough to keep your butt out of jail, isn’t relevant. I have to maintain an office, I have to pay Ellie, I have a lot of expenses just staying licensed.”
“And I got to keep my wardrobe up.”
“Twenty an hour is what we agreed on.”
“Fifty.”
“Should we turn around and go back?”
“Twenty-five, then.”
“Because you were actually pretty helpful, and because you stuck your neck out for me, and because your doing that put your neck on the line, I’ll go up to twenty-five. But that’s it.”
“All right, now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s see, we got three and a half hours the one night and then two more last night.”
“I didn’t hire you for last night.”
“All part of it. And I don’t do partial hours. You get a piece, you pay for it all, like a plumber. I did a lot of stuff you didn’t see.”
“And I’m glad of that. All right. Twenty-five times six is one-fifty.”
“Plus expenses.”
“I paid for the drinks and the goat.”
“Bo.”
“How much?”
“Another forty.”
“What for?”
“Incidentals.”
“You got receipts?”
“Do I look like the kind of man that’s always asking for receipts? Got to keep up a reputation, you want to do effective detection. You should know that.”
“Okay, forty for expenses, just so long as you agree to one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t say another word, please. Just keep your mouth shut. Now, there’s the ATM right across the street. Stay here. I’ll go over and get the cash.”
“Maybe I’ll come along.”
“Maybe you won’t. I don’t need you looking over my shoulder and stealing my code.”
“You don’t trust me. That hurts.”
“And then, before you get the cash, we’re going to fill out some tax forms.”
“Come again?”
“A Form 1099.”
“What say?”
“Derek, it’s called a job. You get money for work, I file documents, I get a deduction, you pay taxes. Those are the rules.”
“That wasn’t part of our deal.”
“Wait here,” I said.
“I’m not paying no taxes,” he called out after me.
“Say it a little louder, maybe the government cameras didn’t catch it the first time.”
I left him scanning the light posts for spy equipment as I crossed the street and headed to the ATM on the side of my bank.
Usually there wasn’t enough money in my account to withdraw all I pleased, but lately, because of a questionable retainer I had been accepting as part of a case that most likely would never require my services, my account was flush. It was how I had redone my office, paid my secretary, bought my new pleather couch and flat-screen television, how I had paid the cable bill. I wasn’t wealthy by any means, and my lack of wealth still rankled like a thorn in the eye, but for a few more months at least I could pass for a modicum of success, and a modicum was about as high as I could ever hope for anymore. No longer was I worried that the little insufficient funds message would pop up on the screen. Now I put in my card and tapped in my PIN and asked for a few hundred dollars and heard the sweet grinding of the gears as the crisp twenties were dealt out one after another after another.
It was almost pleasant, until I felt something sharp, like the point of a pen, press into my ribs.
I froze. Something moved behind me. A hot breath washed over my right ear.
“Take the dollars,” said a soft, accented voice with a pronounced lisp, “and put them in your pocket.”
“My pocket?”
“Your pocket.”
“Shouldn’t it be your pocket?”
“Shut up and do as I say.”
I did as he said.
“Now turn this way, and together we walk down the street.”
I turned, and as I did, I caught sight of him, and whatever fear had lodged in my ribs from the feel of that pen point blossomed like a beastly rose when I recognized Sandro, Gregor Trocek’s Cadizian thug.
His left hand was in the pocket of his leather jacket now, with something very much like the shape of a knifepoint pushing out the leather. He jabbed me in the ribs again and indicated that I should walk west.
I walked west.
He followed close behind. I tried very hard not to collapse into a heap as I walked, but even so, my legs felt strangely rubbery, like the bones were melting. I thought of the fingers on ice in upstate New York, and I wobbled.
“Keep going,” said Sandro. “It’s over there.”
And there it was, the predatory gray Jaguar, parked aslant, headfirst in front of a hydrant. As we got closer, the rear door opened, and Sandro pushed me roughly toward it. I ducked my head so as not to slam it into the roof, and there, inside the car, now face-to-face with me, was Gregor Trocek, smiling warmly.
“What’s wrong, Victor?” he said. “Why you avoiding me? You don’t want hear my funny story?”
25
Sandro drove. He drove slowly, through the narrow streets of Philadelphia, turning here, turning there, going no place in particular, which just then was about the worst place I could imagine.
“I was waiting for your call,” said Gregor Trocek. “It was so lonely, waiting like that. My feelings are bruised.”
“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I’ve been a little busy.”
“And I hope your busyness was profitably spent. So what have you found for me?”
“Not much.”
“Ahh, Victor, you disappoint,” he said, sitting uncomfortably close to me in the rear of his Jaguar. “I don’t enjoy being disappointed.”
“Join the club.”
It was quite a car, that Jaguar, with its new-car scent, its ivory leather seats, its burled-wood trays and flat screens in both front headrests. Even as I felt the fear he wanted me to feel, I also felt the old longing to get my piece of the pie, my seat at the table, my own damn Jaguar. Nothing slakes fear like raw greed. Gregor Trocek was leaning on me to get back his one point seven million dollars. How many Jaguars would a piece of one point seven million buy? One was enough, with cash left over for down payments on a town house here and a vacation home in Florida and half enough gas to get me from one to the other.
“So now, Victor, are you ready to hear my funny story?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“Okay, so there was woodcutter in my country named Ivan. Ivan is biggest cuckold in village. Every afternoon Ivan’s neighbor, he strides into Ivan’s house and lies with Ivan’s wife, and Ivan does nothing. Nothing, you understand. So one afternoon Ivan comes into his house with ax in hand and finds neighbor’s bull in bed with his wife. Ivan, he raises ax over his head and slams it down, just missing bull and chopping bed in two. The bull, he quickly jumps out of bed and says, ‘Why you get so angry? My owner, he come in here every afternoon to fuck your wife, and never from you a peep.’ And Ivan, he says, ‘But you I can eat.’”