He was wearing a blue shirt with a stiff white collar like those cones vets put on dogs so they don’t bite their stitches.
His husky shout sounded tinny over the phone’s tiny speaker.
“So, you’re Sherwood?”
I looked above the videophone at the woman holding it.
“What is this? You want me to talk to an appliance?”
“Hey! Don’t talk to them, dummy, talk to me!” The inch-high face shouted in its mini-bellow. “I’m the one asking the questions and I asked are you Sherwood?”
I didn’t say anything.
Moe said, “What are you, stupid? John, tune him up!”
The man walked behind me and lifted my pinned arms up over my head, twisting until fire shot into my shoulder sockets.
The woman sighed, said in a bored voice, “He’s Sherwood.”
Moe said, “I know all about you, Sherwood. You’re a fuck-up, a joke in this business.”
“Saw my résumé on HotJobs.com? I gotta update it.”
“Wise-mouth and smartass. I heard about you. All I want to know is why Owl came to see you this morning.”
“Who?”
“George Rowell. I know he was at your place this mornin’. And now he’s dead. And you’re going tell me what happened or it’s going to get ugly.”
“It’s ugly already. You’re the best argument I’ve seen for going back to rotary phones.”
“Tell me what—”
“Fuck you,” I said. “Instead of asking what he came to see me for, ask yourself why he didn’t go to you, Moe. What was it he didn’t think he could trust you with? Or maybe you were too busy playing with your toys to help out an old friend. Ask yourself that, but first get these two turds out of my office!”
The phone must’ve been a cheap model, because the face on it seemed to have tinted purple.
“You’re done in this city, asshole! You hear me? Done!”
Bang bang bang.
Chapter Twelve: A PROCESS OF ELIMINATION
Someone’s fist hammered on my door. It was the prettiest sound in the whole wide world.
BANG BANG BANG.
“Open up! C’mon, Sherwood, I know you’re in there.”
It was Matt Chadinsky. He banged some more. He bellowed, “What’s with the closed curtains? Whatcha doin’ in there, pullin’ your pud?”
It cost me a kick in the ribs, but I croaked out a loud, “Just a second!”
“That I believe!”
He banged on the door again, three times hard. He wasn’t going away. My playmates had to eat it.
“It’s my probation officer,” I said. “He’ll probably need all your names, what should—”
Moe Fedel said, “Okay, you guys get out of there. But, Sherwood, we’re not finished. Not by a long shot.”
The cell phone videoscreen went to black.
John Dough lifted me by my shoulders to my feet.
Jane Dough brushed off my shirtfront as her partner cut the plastic wrist restraints behind me. She patted me gently on the chest.
“No hard feelings,” she said. She’d dropped her Midwestern accent, replaced now by an easygoing New York twang. “Just business, right?”
I massaged my wrists, working out the lingering bite of the restraints, and tried to think of a cutting comeback for her, but couldn’t. My heart wasn’t in it. So then where was it?
I said, “So none of this—all this was a set-up. Jane’s not even your name, is it?”
“Jane Doe and John Doe, get it?”
“Yeh, I got it.” I rubbed a bruised rib. “So then…you two aren’t really…”
“Looking for a background check on our nanny? No, sorry to disappoint you.”
“I was going to say married.”
Standing by the door, John Dough laughed.
“I think he wants to ask you out. Must like the way you roughed him up.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. I felt a little like I was back in high school.
Matt banged three more times on the door.
“Open up, I need to piss!”
“So what’s your name?”
She turned around, let her eyes roam my dilapidated office before they rested back on me. She shrugged.
“You’re a detective, figure it out yourself.”
“I will.”
She nodded her head once, then turned to her partner, who opened my office door and stood to one side. She stepped into the hall. He waited a moment then followed her out.
I heard their footsteps echoing in the stairwell as Matt walked in. He looked around my darkened office, at all the drawn curtains.
“What? Don’t tell me I missed the fucking slideshow?”
I went around opening the curtains again.
“How’d you get in?” He hadn’t buzzed.
“In?” he said, his face a mask of mock innocence. “Oh, your downstairs door. I used this.” He wiggled the pinkie of his right hand. “You should have your landlord put a better lock in. Your forehead’s bleeding.”
I touched it and it stung over my right eye. Bright red blood filled in the arches and whorls of the fingerprints of my forefinger and thumb. I headed for my bathroom.
Matt said, “You should apply—”
“I know what I should apply.”
“Oh, right. I forgot. This is what you do best.”
I wanted to wish him into the cornfield just then, but I was imagining I might need his help. I ran a towel under cold water and pressed it to my forehead until the bleeding stopped.
When I came back out, Matt was standing behind my desk.
I went to sit down and he didn’t move.
“Do you mind?”
Matt shook his head. “No. I don’t mind.”
I squeezed by him. By the time I was seated he was on the other side of my desk.
“So, who were those two?”
“Don’t you know?” I asked, airing out a nasty hunch.
He narrowed his eyes. “How would I know?”
“They work for Moe Fedel.”
“No shit.”
“They wanted to know what George Rowell came to see me about.”
“No shit.”
“Yeh, no shit.” I walked up to Matt, stopped a foot away. “The shit part is how’d Moe find out Owl came to see me this morning? Unless you told him, Matt.”
I faced him. He was a head taller than me and a foot wider. Trying to read his expression now, I realized I’d never really looked this closely at Matt Chadinsky before. Never had to, never thought I had to; he was always just Matt, I knew who he was.
Looking at him now was like seeing a stranger. I never noticed that mole on his left temple before or that the whites of his eyes were dullish gray like pearl-inlay, nor that his ears were slightly crenulated like arugula.
He didn’t utter a word, just looked at me like I was something he’d picked out of his teeth but couldn’t remember what he’d eaten that was that shade of green.
I said, “You sicced Moe Fedel on me and he sent those two glamour ops of his over here to pull my teeth. Then you show up, pounding on my door, all Mighty Mouse, here-to-save-the-day.”
He squinted at me. “What, are you high?”
“I don’t hear you denying any of it.”
“Deny what, you paranoid piece of shit? You’ve gone off the deep end. Why would I rat you out to Moe?”
“He was pretty quick off the mark setting up those two to rough me up.”
Matt’s mouth twisted into a sour smile.
“Those two roughed you up? What’d they fucking do, rap you on the knuckles with their goddamn Blackberries?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I also didn’t tell you there’s no fuckin’ Tooth Fairy. Some things you’re just supposed to know.”
“So how’d he know so quick that Owl came to see me?”
“He didn’t have to know, you cockfart! He runs one of the biggest detective agencies in the city, he found out. What did you fucking expect? One of his oldest friends—a private investigator—gets hit by a car and killed practically on your fucking doorstep. All he had to do was open the Yellow Pages to make a connection.”