I kick the door and the top hinge rips from the frame. It bangs open and hangs skewed from the lower hinge. He's sitting on the can, his hands in the air.
– I didn't do it.
– We got to stop meeting in bathrooms, Philip. People will talk.
I make him sit in Dobbs's chair while I go over the body. He was strangled. It's not exotic, but neither is it as easy as it sounds. Nothing's been kicked around in here, so it wasn't a fight that got out of hand. Someone did him. Someone got behind him in his own office. Figure it was someone he knew or someone he took at face value. He let them in the office, turned to go to his desk and got a forearm around his neck. Looks like a forearm job, lots of bruises. Someone strong and quick.
I try to get the scent, and have a bad moment when I can't find anything, but it's there, the smell of whoever did Dobbs. It's not much, someone well scrubbed, but not scented. It's not Daniel's Wraith or whoever it is that's trying to freak me out. Heck, no reason this has to have anything to do with me. Could have been Joe Blow who was screwing someone's wife and didn't want Dobbs to show the husband the keyhole pictures he'd been taking. Could have been Dobbs was working a shakedown on someone that didn't like being shook. But figure that's not likely. I toss the body. Keys, half a roll of Rolaids, lip balm, wallet with ID, couple credit cards, a few ATM receipts. No bank card.
– Where's his bank card, Phil?
– Uh, jeez, Joe, got me. I mean, I just came by to talk to the guy about a piece of work and-
– Didn't ask for your story yet, we'll get to that line of bull. I asked where's his card?
– Like I was sayin', Joe, I just came in 'cause the door was open and there he was and I turned to get the hell out, 'cause, hey, a guy like me in a room with a dead body? You got to know that ain't gonna go over well with no one. But before I could split I hear someone on the stairs, and I guess now that was you, but not knowing that, I just thought I better go hole up in the commode, and then you bust the door in and I ain't even barely looked at the guy let alone touched, I mean, rollin' a corpse is pretty low and not somethin' I'm apt to do seein' as dead people give me the heebie-jeebies.
I shift Dobbs's head to get a better look at the bruises on his neck, and a toupee slips from his head. Dobbs, you just get sadder and sadder.
– Phil. You make me come over there, turn you upside down and shake you by the ankles, and I'm gonna get sore.
He stands up and starts to dump junk onto the desk.
– Turn 'em all inside out.
On the desk is a pile much like the one he made on the floor of the Niagara's bathroom a few nights ago: baggie of pills, some scraps of paper covered in phone numbers, a creased discount admission card for New York Dolls, his tin of Nu Nile, some change and about ten bucks.
– See, Joe? Nothin'.
– Come here.
– Uh…
– Just come a step closer, Phil, I'm not gonna hit you.
He takes a step closer and I slap him across the face, grab the back of his neck, bend him over the desk and pat him down. Nothing. I let go of his neck. He stands up and takes a step back, rubbing the spot where I slapped him.
– Jeez, Joe.
– I'm gonna make you strip you don't come clean.
He holds his arms out to the sides. Christ on his cross.
– Joe, nothin', I swear.
– Strip.
He shakes his head.
– Uh-uh. I know what you think, Joe, you think I'm a coward, and sure, sure I am. But even a coward, even a coward has limits. Even a coward has pride, Joe.
He juts his chin at me. I take a step toward him. He starts to unbutton his shirt.
– I'm doin' it, I'm doin' it.
He strips to a dingy pair of boxers and points at them.
– Skivvies?
– God no.
I go through every article of clothing, run my fingers over seams and under flaps. I find a bindle of crank rolled and slipped into the stay slot on the underside of his shirt collar, but that's it.
– OK, put 'em back on.
He's wiggling his skinny ass back into those impossibly tight 501s when I remember his shoes.
– Let me see the wingtips.
– Huh?
– The shoes.
– Yeah, shoes.
He tries to dip his hand inside the right one before he passes it over and I grab his wrist and twist. A card drops out of his fingers and flips to the floor. It lands faceup. A Chase bank card: Amanda Marilee Horde.
Phil stares at the card.
– Wow, where the hell that come from?
– Where's the girl, Philip?
– I don't-
– Where?
– I don't-
– Phil, don't make the mistake of thinking I give a crap about you. I don't. At the best of times I don't like you. And right now I'm pissed. Pissed and really fucking hungry. Where's the girl?
– I don't-
I stuff Dobbs's toupee in his mouth.
– Mlumph. Mlph.
I reach in my back pocket, pull out my switchblade and thumb it open.
– I'm gonna do it old school, Phil. Poke one of your arteries, cover the hole with my mouth. It's like hitting from a beer bong.
My mouth starts to water as I talk about it. I don't want to suck on a scumbag like Philip, but I'm getting hungry enough to seriously consider it.
– Or I could haul you up to the roof, dangle you over the side and if I don't like the answers I get, I can just drop you. Let some bottomfeeder lick you off the sidewalk. You get the picture, Phil?
-Ylmph.
– So where's the girl?
I pull out the now slimy toupee.
– I swear, Joe, I swear!
I start to shove the toupee back in his mouth.
– No! Mlph. Nlmph. I swearmph.
He's trying to keep his lips pressed together so I can't get the toupee all the way in.
– Didn'tmph. No onemph. Said. Mph. About. Girlmph!
I yank it out.
– Who said what?
– They didn't say nothing about no girl!
– What did they say, Phil?
– Nothing. They said take a look, take a look around is all.
– Who, Phil?
– I don't-
– Predo?
He jumps like a cat with a cherry bomb up its ass.
– Yeah, Phil, that's what I thought.
He gets dressed and I toss the rest of the office and find nothing that helps. Dobbs was an old-timer, probably had his prime back when I was hanging with Terry and the Society. I've heard of the guy in the way you hear about people that are in similar lines of work. Dobbs was mostly a straight-up skip tracer and window peeper, but he did a little rough stuff; push a guy around, collect a debt, that kind of thing. There's no reason to think he knew much about what goes on, and no reason why the Hordes would have hired him in the first place. Take it a step further, when I look in his file cabinet there's no Horde file at all. And while Dobbs may have been old school, there's an extra phone line sticking out of the wall that's not attached to anything, and an empty laptop case in the closet. Figure whoever did the choke job took his laptop so they wouldn't have to worry about any files on the hard drive, along with whatever hard copies were in the cabinet. But the asshole missed the bank card. Or didn't know about it.
– Phil.
He sticks his head out of the bathroom where he is once again resurrecting his pomp.
– Yeah?
– What say I buy you a drink?
We go across 14th to the Beauty Bar.
We needed to get out of that office, never a good idea to hang around too long with a dead body.
A corpse in an office is going to lead to cops sooner or later. And cops are a problem. Cops get ahold of you and you're in their system: go where they tell you to go, when they tell you to go. Cops nab you and it's impossible to control your environment. Try telling a cop you're allergic to the sun and he'll make you stand outside at high noon with a tanning reflector held up to your face just to teach you a lesson about smarting off. More to the point, try getting some blood from another con in a holding cell and that's it, game over. So no cops. Ever.