The afternoon came and went, and the pounding in my head slowly changed from a sledgehammer to a hard rubber mallet. The sun was about to call it a night when the nurse came in with my clothes and announced that I could leave. I got dressed and found my wallet untouched in my back trouser pocket. That was a bad sign. Whoever had jumped me hadn’t been interested in taking my cash. I didn’t have much hope that I’d find my backpack.
When I checked out, I gave the desk nurse my address and told her to mail me the hospital bill. It was going to make a nice addition to my collection. Eventually, I hoped to have unpaid bills from all fifty states and Puerto Rico.
I called the police from the hospital. They picked me up and took me back to my speeder. My backpack was gone — the countess’s statuette and twenty-nine thousand dollars with it. I gave the police the information they needed to fill out a report, but it was useless. They had already interviewed the people in the diner, and no one had seen anything. I spent a couple of hours checking around on my own, but it was as if the incident had never happened. No one had seen or heard anything. If it had happened in my town, I would’ve had connections to consult and a grapevine to listen in on. Here in Brownsville, I had squat. There was nothing left to do but fly home.
I reached New San Francisco with mixed feelings. It was something of a relief to be home, but my head was pounding and my stomach was tied up in knots. I wasn’t sure if I should tell the countess that her statuette had been stolen a second time, but I’d tell her what happened and maybe she could get a Brownsville flatfoot to pick up the trail. I began rehearsing my pitch, how the whole miserable experience had cost me most of my retainer and that I’d appreciate it if she’d at least compensate me for time spent and bodily injury. Once again, I had ignored the credo of smart business: Get it in writing.
It was after midnight when I landed my speeder in front of 2429 Filmore. The neighborhood was dark and quiet. Before leaving the speeder, I paused. Maybe it would be better to come by first thing in the morning. No, I wanted to resolve this situation as soon as possible.
As I walked to the door, I passed a Century 22 For Sale sign planted in the front lawn.
An unpleasant tingling went down my spine. I climbed the front steps and rang the doorbell. After the third ring, I moved to one of the front windows and peered in. It was pitch black inside, but from what I could make out, the room appeared to be absolutely empty. I checked all the entrances and finally had to break a window at the back of the house to get inside. The power was off. Using my Zippo as a tiny torch, I walked through the mansion.
It was completely cleaned out. With the exception of some cardboard boxes and several small potted plants, there was nothing… until I reached the sitting room, where I’d met the countess a week before. Everything was the same as it had been. I walked to the fireplace and touched the ashes. They were cold. Week-old cold. I’d been set up.
UAKM — CHAPTER FIVE
I woke up after a brief twelve hours, feeling sore and unrested. Being grifted always had that effect on me. I stumbled into the shower and tried to think. The hot water pounding on the back of my neck jump-started my brain, but didn’t help me come up with any answers. The countess had obviously been phony. I hadn’t thought about it at the time, but I should’ve suspected something when her photo of the statuette was clearly a bad copy. I suppose I’d been too eager for the case to ask myself any bubble-popping questions. A clear violation of the PI Rules.
I stepped out of the shower and dried off. The effects of my shower massager started to fade, and I took a painful inventory of my wounds. My back was still sore from the landing outside the Dulce Vida, my head felt like it was hosting some kind of aneurysm tournament, and my backside was sore from the long flight home. On the brighter side, I’d smoked less than a pack over the past eight days. My lungs and sinuses were in the pink.
After I got dressed, I fired up the coffee machine and walked to the door. On the floor, under the mail slot, was about a week’s worth of mail. I’d been too tired to deal with it the night before. I gathered up the pile, crossed the warped hardwood floor, and flopped into the chair behind my cluttered desk. Pushing aside a pile of legal pads and assorted note scraps, I tapped the envelopes into order like an oversized deck of cards and started shuffling through the bills.
On top of the pile was a handwritten, practically illiterate, and nearly unintelligible note from my landlord, Nilo. In King’s English, it essentially read: Pay the rent or go find another dump to live in. This was Nilo’s official pre-eviction notice. I’d been expecting it, which is why I parked my speeder by Louie’s café and taken the back-alley route to my office. The longer Nilo didn’t know I was home, the more time I could buy before having to smell his pig-feet-and-pork-rind breath as he told me what would happen if I didn’t fork over some cash.
Of course, any reputable place would’ve booted me out weeks ago. Luckily, Nilo had a hard time holding onto tenants. Not that he was the slightest bit compassionate or flexible regarding payment arrangements. He was merciless in his pursuit of back rent and took every available opportunity to extort it from me. Countless times I’d tried to explain to him the nature of freelance work, how when it rained, it poured. I also tried to make it clear that, for the moment, I was too broke to pay attention and that he couldn’t get blood from a stone. Unfortunately, analogies were lost on Nilo. He’d stare at me stupidly, muttering a seemingly random mix of threats and obscenities, and go back to ogling his porno mags.
I decided that rent was in the lower third of my list of priorities and turned my attention back to the pieces of mail. The second item was from the Zebra Speeder Finance Corporation. I knew what they wanted. Unfortunately, I didn’t have it. With any luck, their repo man wouldn’t stop by until I’d manage to get a case that actually paid off. The third bill was from West Coast Bell. Even without any long-distance charges, the amount due seemed unreasonable. Next in line was an application for a Master Express credit card. I’d have been tempted to send it in if it weren’t for that annoying disclaimer: subject to credit approval. My credit rating had gone bad about the same time as the cartilage in my right knee and my hopes of playing first base for the Red Sox.
I continued on through an ad for a dating service, a form requesting a donation to the Humane Society, and a coupon booklet featuring discounts on dry cleaning and Et Tu Brute pizza. It wasn’t until I reached the bottom of the pile that I found anything of interest. First, there was another credit card application, this one for the Radioactive Shack. What made it different was the word Pre-approved stamped on the form. I’d never really thought much of Radioactive Shack, but they’d recently opened an outlet (no pun intended) just down the street, which made it convenient. Besides, I’d always wondered what it would be like to charge something. I decided I might give it a try and stuck the form into my desk drawer.
The final envelope wasn’t a bill or junk mail. My name and address were handwritten in block letters. There was no return address. It had been postmarked at the downtown USPS office on November 30, exactly one week earlier. I crushed the last inch of my Lucky Strike into an ashtray and tore open the letter. Inside was a blue card, the size of a standard index card. On one side, the anonymous correspondent had written BXK+A261184. I turned the card over. There was nothing written on the back. There was nothing else in the envelope.
I wouldn’t be in analyzing mode for several more hours. I set the blue card aside. There were other, more pressing things on my mind. Coffee, for one. I poured myself some instant breakfast and walked to one of the windows that looked out over majestic Chandler Avenue.