“You know, Sean, when I was little, I thought the worst times of my life were those nights Mom came home with a date. I was wrong. I’d give anything for her to come home with somebody now. She doesn’t even use the bed for herself anymore.”
“Let it be, Matt. We’ve got work to do.”
Their ten-year-old Subaru had all the pickup of a pair of drunken oxen. Like their previous car, they had bought it at an auction for less than a hundred bucks, planned to drive it till it stopped and then get another one. Maintenance had no place in their plans. It was just delaying the inevitable. Like a respirator or a feeding tube. Besides, it cost money.
Mickey Sloan’s office was tidy and well organized. He had a sofa along one wall for his field agents to sit on and read the papers they were going out to serve. He sat facing them inside a U-shaped desk. His desk phone had five lines. A missed call was a job lost and so he carried a cell phone and a pager with him at all times. A copy machine sat on top of a wall of file cabinets. On the opposite wall, next to the window, was a large map of the metropolitan region. Through the blinds, Mickey could see the courthouse across the street; a giant paper factory, without any smokestacks. His computer screen had a screen-saver design of a bearded caveman with a piece of paper in his hands, trotting forever across a barren landscape.
Matt and Sean came in, took their packets off of Mickey’s desk, and sat down to read their day’s work.
First up was a Notice of Judgment against Mohammed Ben Zekri out in Herndon, then a witness subpoena for Vu Tran Nguyen in Falls Church. Vu had seen an automobile accident. Lorelei Petty was going to get a notice of deposition in the divorce case of Truman and Molly Wing. She was going to be asked about her affair in excruciating detail. Truman’s attorney had a very limited imagination, and the mechanics of lesbian love had to be repeated over and over before he got it. A restraining order was today’s bit of sunshine for Gustavo Martin, courtesy of his girlfriend Mirabella Montoya of the bloodied nose and chipped-tooth Montoyas. Last but not least was a subpoena duces tecum for the records of Lowell Gorman, DDS, pioneer in the use of anesthetic-shrouded sex as a dental procedure.
“How much for these, Mickey?”
“Ben Zekri, Nguyen, and Petty are twenty-five each; Gorman is thirty, and Martin is fifty.”
“Anything special we should know?”
“Watch out for Martin. Serve him together. This isn’t the first girl he’s slapped around. He’s out on bond and looking at some time inside for this one. He won’t be in a good mood when you find him.”
Mickey cleared his throat. “Uh, I’ve got a piece of bad news for you guys. You know that case you’ve been working on for Barton and Hammon?”
“Yeah,” they said, drawing the syllable out slowly. They had been working for days to find a way to serve Byron Putnam, who oscillated between his gated condominium in McLean and a security office building on K Street. He was now worth $4.00 an hour and sinking fast.
“They want it back. They know you’ve had trouble getting to Putnam. There’s another agency that says they can get into his building.”
“Who?” Matt asked.
“Amanda Marshall.”
“Right. She thinks one of her ho’s in hot pants and a halter is gonna do the job.”
“Yep.”
The boys shook their heads. “She’s probably right,” Sean said. “The gimp at the gate will go brain dead, drool down her cleavage, and the chemical reaction will make her invisible. I remember reading about that.”
“Hey, I’m sorry. I know you guys put a lot of time on that one, but they’re the clients. They can take the paper back.”
“Fine, fine. It’s out in the car. We’ll drop it by their office later today. Any more good news?” Sean muttered.
“No. That’s it.”
“How about letting us into the ‘Icebox.’ We’ve been here almost three months already. You know we can do the job. How about it?” Matt asked.
Mickey mulled it over. They were leaving soon to go back to school. He wanted to hold it out as a carrot to get them to come back over the Christmas break. On the other hand, they were reliable and hard-working. Maybe a taste of bigger things now would whet their appetite. Christmas gifts could run into beaucoup dollars.
“All right. Here’s the rules. The Icebox has papers we haven’t been able to serve. They may not even be valid anymore. You’ll have to check with the lawyer and the client to see if they still want them served. If they do, and you’re successful, you keep all the money. So check with the attorney on that, too; some are worth more than others. But it’s strictly a sideline — something you do after you hit the current jobs. I like keeping that box small. That means we tag all the fresh ones. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Sean took the box down and sat it on his lap. Matt leaned over as they thumbed through the papers. They were filed alphabetically.
“We’ll come back when we’re done today and research these, see which ones we want to pursue,” Sean said.
“Good hunting. You better hit the streets. One last word about the Icebox, even though I don’t think you need it. One reason I don’t let everybody in there is because of the risk of sewer service.”
“What?”
“Sewer service. I once had a guy claim he’d served a paper when he’d flushed it down the toilet. He figured we couldn’t find the guy so he wasn’t gonna show. Easy money. Well, we couldn’t find him because he was dead. That came up at the hearing. Not a shining moment. I got a reprimand and he got sixty days. My reputation rides along with you two every day, but hey, I don’t need to say that, that’s why I’m letting you into the Icebox.”
Mickey’s office was in one of the faux-colonial buildings that ring the courthouse and public-safety building. They took 66 West from there to the parkway, then across the county over the Dulles access road into Herndon. Matt drove and his brother navigated.
“Right here, Matt, into this development. Take the first left and go straight to the end.”
“Where do we stand, Sean?”
“You’re up thirty-five. I figured to take two of the twenty-fives and the doctor. You take the other two and we’re even.”
“All right. This one’s yours.”
They drove past a row of McMansions, five hundred thousand dollar pseudo-Georgians so close together you’d have to mow on alternate days, looking for house numbers painted on the curb. Sean began to count by twos and started to shake his head. The houses came to a halt just short of the address for Mohammed Ben Zekri. They pulled up to the curb and looked at the hole in the ground, awaiting a foundation. Mr. Ben Zekri was gone along with ten thousand cubic feet of dirt.
Matt got out of the car and walked over to the last house and headed up the stairs to the front door. Sean pulled out the cell phone, looked at the signature page on the notice, and called the attorney.
“Klompus, Bogans, and Hess. How may I help you?”
“Jack Klompus, please.”
“Who may I say is calling?”
“Sean Ellis of AAA Process Service.”
“This is Linda, Mr. Klompus’s secretary. How may I help you?”
“I’m here at the address your office provided for Mohammed Ben Zekri and what it is a hole in the ground.”
Matt stood next to him and mouthed. “Empty for six months.”
“In fact, it’s been a hole in the ground for six months. We’d appreciate it if Mr. Klompus could check his file and see if he has a more current address for Mr. Ben Zekri.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Klompus is on vacation. I’ll leave a message for him. His assistant will call you back.”