She crossed her arms over her thin chest and looked at me and through me with one poisonous, icy glance. “Get out. Stay away from me and stay away from this house. If you ever come into my room when I’m sleeping again, I’ll kill you with my bare hands. I swear to God.” She just sat on the edge of the bed and delivered it like it was the weather, but I could see her skinny body trembling.
I didn’t bother reminding her that what she was doing when I came in wasn’t exactly sleeping. I just went out to my car. I looked up and down the street, but the Freud nuts had given up and gone home. The sky was murky, the clouds were gnarled over the sun. A damp wind swept over the hills behind the house, chilling my neck. It was going to rain. I rolled up the windows of my car and drove back downtown.
CHAPTER 11
THEY WEREN’T EXPECTING ME TO COME STROLLING IN THE front lobby at the Office. They never are. When I told them my name at the front desk, the guy they sent out to meet me wasn’t Morgenlander, or Kornfeld, or anyone else connected with the Stanhunt case. It wasn’t a guy at all. It was a dame, a dish, a bird—I never know what to call them when I want to be other than rude. Because I’m always rude. But she made me want to be other, made me want to be someone I wasn’t.
I got up from the seat I was in, and she stepped towards me, and suddenly we were closer than we should have been. I liked it, but it was too close. She couldn’t even put her hand up for a shake. I backed off a bit. I may have been wrong, but I came away with an impression of the warmth of her body against me, as if she’d left a kind of heat-print on the front of my jacket and pants.
“My name is Catherine Teleprompter,” she said. “What brings you in, Mr. Metcalf?”
The question told me her full name was Inquisitor Teleprompter. I’d met a couple this young, but none this pretty. I straightened out the lewd expression on my face and said: “Let’s talk in your office.”
She led me down a couple of hallways and around a couple of corners to her office, which was a room about the size of a shot glass. I guess she was new. She went behind her desk and I sat down on a chair in what little space remained.
She leaned back in her chair, and the black curtain of her hair swept over her shoulder, revealing a throat I could have spent an hour on. An hour a day, or maybe an hour every five minutes. We had a hard time getting the conversation started because of it. I was looking at her and she was looking at me looking, and she knew it and I knew she knew it and the whole thing again, squared. She broke the spell by turning to her console, the purplish light illuminating her face as she squinted at the screen. I had a feeling she needed glasses but didn’t want to put them on in front of me.
“Conrad Metcalf,” she said.
“That’s right.”
“Private inquisitor. License up for renewal in May. Our last entry is signed by Inquisitor Morgenlander. He says he had to kick you off a case.”
“I don’t know why they call this place a bureaucracy. That was yesterday. Congratulations.”
“So I suppose you want to talk to Morgenlander.”
“I did until you came along.”
“What should I say it’s concerning?” she asked curtly.
“You can say I need a jump start and I was wondering if he had a set of cables.”
She opened her desk drawer. “Pass me your card, Mn Metcalf.”
I dug in my pocket. “You see—”
“Your card,” she interrupted. I passed it over.
I waited while she ran it through a decoder.
“You don’t have the karma of a man who wants to be barging in here giving dopey jokes as answers to my questions, Mr. Metcalf.” She put my card down on the desk in front of her.
“It’s about this case,” I said. “I’m supposed to lay off, only the case keeps rubbing up against my ankles and purring. I need to let Morgenlander know I tried to follow his instructions.” I offered one of my better smiles, and she took it, but slowly.
“I’ll see if he’s in the building,” she said.
“No, don’t. Let me ask you a couple of questions first.” I reached across the desk for my card, but she put her hand over it. I almost put my hand on top of hers but thought better of it at the last minute.
“About Morgenlander,” I said, trying to keep my mind on the case. I was functionally non-male, and the sight of a pretty inquisitor shouldn’t make me forget it. The limb I was going out on here was one I didn’t possess. “Who’s pulling his strings on this case, and why? He’s an outsider, from another district; why bring him in at all if you aren’t going to let him work?”
She looked at me hard. “You shouldn’t ask questions like that without knowing who you’re asking them of. You might get more than answers.”
“I’m not sure I’d mind that.” I couldn’t stop myself.
“I’m sure you would, if you knew what I was talking about. Here.” She slid my card to where it was within my reach. “I’m getting you out of my office. I can’t afford to be having this conversation.”
She pushed a button on her console and asked for Morgenlander: When he came on the line, she said my name and asked him to have me seen out, then broke off the connection.
“Too bad,” I said. “We could have made beautiful dialogue together.”
“You used to work for the Office, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Inquisitor.”
“That’s the only way to get licensed as a P.I.”
She looked me over as if for the first time. “What happened?”
“Either it’ll happen to you or you wouldn’t understand the answer to your question,” I said. “I’m not going to try to explain it.”
There was a knock at the door, or rather a scraping of knuckles against wood. Inquisitor Teleprompter nudged a button on her desk and the door slid open, revealing Inquisitor Kornfeld, the quiet one who’d glowered around in my doorway while Morgenlander talked. Apparently he and Morgenlander were still working together, despite the tension I’d sensed between them then. He nodded his head knowingly at Catherine Teleprompter, as if I were nothing more than some kind of unwieldy parcel that needed delivering, and then jerked his thumb at me and the door, in that order.
I took my card and slipped it into my jacket pocket, where I found a few dog-eared business cards. I drew one out and put it on the desk where my karma had been sitting. “Give it a call,” I said, and then I couldn’t think of a reason in the world why she ever would, so I just nodded and smiled and left it at that.
Kornfeld didn’t look too impressed. He held the door open so as to make it clear I shouldn’t linger over farewells. Inquisitor Teleprompter looked at me without blinking and said: “Don’t wait underwater;” But her nostrils were flared when she said it, and I had a feeling her legs were crossed under the desk. I’d gotten under her skin in return, at least a little.
Kornfeld almost closed the door on my heels. I was expecting the bum’s rush, so it came as a surprise when he took my arm and turned towards the bank of elevators, away from the front entrance. I experienced a surge of paranoia as I realized I was being ushered into the dark heart of the Office, without knowing why. Not that the place had changed any since the days I walked the halls. It was precisely that pervasive sameness that made me want to pull my arm loose and run for the nearest exit.
We got inside the elevator. Kornfeld leaned against the wall and pushed at the buttons, and I stood against the back, thinking, my mind elsewhere. When the door closed, he turned to me and his eyes lit up for a second, and he came towards me with a fist coiled up at his waist, and smashed me right in the middle of my stomach.
It was the closest thing to language that had passed between us. I guess I should have been grateful to the guy for opening himself up to me like that. I doubled up completely, more out of breath than in pain, though there was plenty of pain. Kornfeld leaned back against the side of the elevator car, apparently finished. The guy was laconic even in his violence.