I reached for the bedside phone, read the instructions for an outside line, dialed out, and then the number. It rang only twice before she picked up. Gone were the days when my upstairs neighbor slept until noon, Tigger had a bambina now who got mommy up early.
I simply told her I’d locked myself out, not wanting to get into it over the phone. Would she buzz me in?
“Good thing you did it this month, Payton, and not next.”
At the end of the month, Tigger and Company were moving out—not just out of the building, but the city. I refused to think about it, I didn’t even answer her, I was in locked-down denial. It was like facing an upcoming operation, a scheduled amputation. With any luck, I’d get struck by lightning first and never have to face up to it.
I told her I’d be there in a few minutes.
I stared at the cigarette butts in the ashtray. A pack and a half worth of Marlboro Lights.
I had another call to make, but put it off until later. Not a conversation I was looking forward to.
About to get up, I noticed the tiny red message bulb on the phone was lit. I followed the instructions for retrieving the message and heard a woman’s slightly accented voice say: “All set for 11:30, Yaffa Cafe.”
I checked the nightstand clock. Quarter to eleven.
I closed Owl’s briefcase and took it with me.
At the hotel room door, I stopped for one last look around, feeling like I was forgetting something. My eyes went to the rumpled bedspread. Nothing was on it.
The newspaper I’d tossed there was gone. She must’ve taken it with her. Not that that had to mean anything. If she’d taken the gun, she would’ve needed something to carry it out in.
I was just puzzling over it when the bedside phone rang and I nearly jumped out of my borrowed socks.
I went over, picked up, said hello.
“Michael?” A woman’s voice.
“Yes.”
“May we speak to her?”
We? Her?
I said, “Ah, she just stepped out.”
“We have that number for her.” She sounded official.
“Oh, I can take it.”
“No. Have her come by or call us here at the pier office.”
“Sure, but—”
She hung up on me, not so much as a have a nice day.
Who the hell was Michael?
I shrugged and filed it away. I left the room with Owl’s briefcase grasped in my hand. I felt like an upright citizen off to do an honest day’s work, which in a way I was.
I now had a time and a place. I had direction.
Somewhere out there in the city was a billable client.
And I was going to find him.
Chapter Four: HOMEWORK
Leaving the lobby of the hotel, I almost collided with someone coming in. A stubby old man with bulbous features but no chin, black hornrim glasses, and a stiff gray pompadour. He was dressed in a white short-sleeve shirt and black trousers.
We danced a few steps of the back-n-forth polka attempting to get out of each other’s way. My head couldn’t take the jostling. I turned sideways and let him pass. I grinned, but he didn’t make eye contact.
Outside, I turned right and headed up Third, cut down the diagonal slice of Stuyvesant Street, back over to Second Avenue and Tenth.
A passenger airliner shrieked and moaned overhead. I looked up to see a peerless blue sky, not a single shred of cloud in any direction, absolutely clear.
It made me uneasy.
The gleaming white airplane seemed kind of low. It must’ve been in a holding pattern for JFK. I watched it slowly creep across the narrow column of airspace above me. I was the only one around who seemed to take any notice. I was like a housebroken dog forever shy of rolled-up newspapers.
When the plane finally passed out of sight beyond the edge of a roof, I moved again, breathing evenly.
The briefcase barked against my left knee twice. I switched hands and it barked against my right knee. I couldn’t get the hang of it, just wasn’t executive material, I guess.
I stopped on the corner a block from my building, by the end of the churchyard gate where for at least a dozen years the little black lady, Evelyn, used to station herself, bouncing change in her paper cup and exchanging friendly words with anyone who passed. She had died that January.
I rattled my pockets for coins, none. Fished in my watchpocket and came up with a quarter, Oregon back. I left it right where she used to sit.
Ahead, at the corner of East Twelfth, the commotion had died down, everything back to normal. People crossing the street, cars repeating that same sharp right onto Second, over and over where Owl’s body had been. As if nothing had happened.
I walked to my building and pushed the buzzer for T. Fitchet, Penthouse.
The intercom speaker clicked.
“Who is it?”
“It’s the plumber, I’ve come to fix the sink.”
Speaker click.
“Who is it?”
“It’s the plumber! I’ve come to fix the sink!”
Click.
“Who is it?”
I hollered, “IT’S THE PLUMBER, I’VE COME TO FIX—”
The door buzzed and I pushed it open.
At the first landing, I stopped at my office door, tried the knob—yep, locked—and set down Owl’s briefcase, then went up the next flight to get my spare keys from Tigger.
Her door was open and I walked in.
She wasn’t in the front hallway. She wasn’t in the living room, either. Her array of computer monitors unmanned looked like an abandoned UFO console, hard copies of design projects draped over lamps and chairs like hastily discarded alien star charts. I went further in, calling out, “If you’re naked, I warn you—I brought my pastels.”
I turned the corner into the kitchen nook and Tigger was seated at the table with two men with shiny black hair dressed in shiny blue suits, a sheaf of legal documents spread out before them.
She stood up—a short trip, she’s only five-two— dressed in a belted blue-striped cotton dress and black regulation-issue army boots. She swept out her right arm, flashing her four-aces wristband tattoo.
“Payton, this is my realtor Mr. Ecuador—”
“It’s Acquidar, actual—” Mr. Ecuador tried to assert.
“—and my accountant, Midge,” Tigger swept on.
“How’ya doin’,” Midge said.
“Hi.”
“My downstairs neighbor, Payton Sherwood. A noted investigator, no doubt in disguise at the moment. We’re finalizing details on the closing. I’ll get your keys.” Her grin was so wide and cunning, her silver and turquoise septum-pierced nose-ring tapped her two front teeth.
She got me the keys and walked me to her door. I asked where the little bambina was. Her 18-month-old, Rue, was off with her father; Retz’s visiting parents—Rue’s grandparents—were off “taking in” the Museum of Modern Art.
“I told them she’s too young for it. Better off plantingher under a tree in the park for an hour.”
“She’d like the mobiles.”
Tigger grunted, non-committal.
“What’s with the Charlie Chaplin shoes?” she asked.
“You’re the second person today to tell me I look like a clown.”
She raised a pedantic finger and corrected.
“So far. I’m the second person today so far—it’s not even noon yet. So what’s with the shoes?”
I told her how I found the shoes after locking myself out, but nothing about the accident, Owl’s death, or what I’d done after. Partly because it would take too long, mostly because I didn’t trust her reaction. The thing with Tigger Fitchet was: never did know which way that tree was going to fall. More often than not, right smack on top of you.