The secretary’s left hand picked up the telephone handset while-I swear it’s true-her right hand kept typing, covering both sides of the keyboard with one hand. Never missed a beat. Talk about a focused woman.
We walked down the carpeted hall into a large conference room with a rectangular table that would have seated about twenty people. At the other end, a big JVC monitor and tape player sat on a portable gray metal wheeled rack.
I sat my briefcase down on the table and opened it. “I went ahead and got an invoice ready, Phil. I ran into some pretty sizable expenses, equipment rental, mileage. No hotel bill, though. I slept in a van.”
“No problemo, amigo,” he said from the other end of the room as he turned on the monitor. “We’ll take care of it right after the meeting.”
I took out the videotape and slid it down the length of polished tabletop. The door opened behind me and two other guys stepped in, both in suits, striped power ties, the whole corporate costume.
“Harry, meet Rick Harvey and Steve White. They’re the field investigators who were assigned to this case.”
Great, I thought, so they already hate me. I went out and did their job after they screwed up. May as well make the best of it.
“Hi. Harry James Denton,” I said cordially, hand extended. “Glad to meet you.”
We did the corporate introduction ritual and immediately afterward I forgot which was which. They were both midtwenties, clean, well-groomed, polished. Probably applied to the FBI Academy and didn’t get in.
“How much did you say you got, Harry?”
I settled into a seat and tried to relax. “Little over an hour’s worth of him actually out of the chair. I spent a week up there staking the guy out. It took a change in the weather to get him on his feet.”
“Oh,” one of the investigator clones said, “so that explains why it was so easy.”
“It wasn’t that easy,” I answered. “I’m still scratching the chigger bites from laying in the grass for so long.”
“Yeah,” the other one said, his voice a caricature of a cop movie. “Stakeout’s a bitch, all right.”
Right, I thought. Barney Pife in a suit and tie. Guy probably carries a bullet in his shirt pocket.
Phil popped the tape in and started it. Immediately the backyard in Louisville jumped on the screen, with the bricklayer in the wheelchair off to the side watching the action. The other adult male and the teenage boy passed the ball around, shot a few. Then the bricklayer held the ball.
I’d seen it all before, so watched the other three to check the look on their faces when the guy jumped out of the wheelchair. When it happened, the two young suits set their jaws and tucked their chins down toward their chests. This was, after all, the tape they were supposed to have produced.
Phil, however, howled like a true basketball fan, especially when the bricklayer did his three-sixty and slam-dunked the ball.
“Guy’s good, ain’t he, fellas?” Phil commented, looking around at his two investigators. “ ’At’s a dang fine jump shot, too.” I turned back to the screen, trying hard to disappear.
We sat there for the better part of the next hour, until finally the bricklayer’s wife came to the sliding-glass door, saw her husband bouncing around, and chewed his butt so hard the tiny video microphone caught parts of it. His shoulders slumped and all three men, caught and scolded, walked back inside. We saw the sliding-glass door slam shut and then the slide of drapes as the door was covered up.
“Holy cow, look!” Phil called. “He left his durn wheelchair outside.”
I grinned. “Yeah, just watch.”
In a moment the drapes were pulled again and the door slid open. The bricklayer ran back outside sheepishly, flopped down in the chair, then strapped himself in. As the wife stood there with her hands on her hips, locked and loaded in the pissed-off position, the poor guy drove his wheelchair back into the house.
Even the two suits behind me at the table were laughing now. Phil slapped the table hard and shook his head from side to side, his massive cheeks shaking with laughter.
“Oh, boy,” he sputtered. “This is great. We not only got him, we’ve nailed his wife and the whole durn family for conspiracy to defraud. Harry, you deserve an Oscar for this one.”
“Glad you like it,” I said. “I haven’t prepared a written report, but will be glad to if you’ll tell me what form you need it to take. I can also be available for affidavits or court testimony if needed.”
“You think legal’ll turn this over to the DA?” one of the suits asked.
“Well, buddies, this is some pretty dang blatant fraud going on here,” Phil said. “I ain’t seen nothing like this in a long time.”
“It’s a good one all right,” I said, pulling my invoice out of the briefcase. “You got the guy dead to rights.”
“Heckfire, maybe the guy’ll move to California and try out for the Lakers,” Phil said as I slid the invoice across the table.
He opened the envelope and unfolded my bill, then let out a long whistle. “Dadgum, Harry, this is a pretty good hit here. Five thousand for a week’s work?”
One of the young suits let out a disgusted snort, like the insurance company was some kind of benevolent organization that was always being taken advantage of.
“My deal with you was that if I didn’t get the evidence, you paid nothing, and if I did, you paid double my normal rate as a bonus.”
“Well, what in the hell’s your normal rate?”
“Four hundred a day plus expenses,” I said. “On par with the rest of the industry. Five days, plus mileage, expenses, and the videotape charge. And you got a twenty-four-hour day out of me, rather than the standard ten.”
I fought my normal codependent urge to seek approval by lowering the bill.
“Phil, when you consider what I’ve saved you by not having to pay this joker disability for the rest of his life-not to mention scaring off other people who’d like to try the same thing-my fee’s a pretty good deal.”
“Yeah, well, I just hope I can get this by accounting.” His voice had dropped, in tone and volume, and became filled with what he hoped I’d interpret as concern. Nice act.
“Why don’t I touch base with you tomorrow and see how it’s going,” I suggested, standing up. “I can provide you with receipts and further documentation if you need it.”
Then I tightened my gut and let fly with the next one. “How long do you think it’ll take your accounting department to cut the check.”
“Oh,” he drawled. “They’re pretty quick. Generally takes about forty-five days, maybe sixty if they get backed up.”
I swallowed hard; sixty days, assuming they’d pay the bill at all. In sixty days, they’d have to send the check to me in care of the homeless shelter. There was no way I could float that long.
I got this real bad taste in the back of my mouth.
“I’m sorry, Phil, but I’m afraid I’m not comfortable with that. I’m a small, one-man operation. Sixty days is going to cause me some real cash-flow problems. I was thinking more along the lines of ten days.”
Phil shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing I can do about it, buddy. Procedure … It takes as long as it takes.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the two suits grinning. You little bastards, I thought, you’d probably scream like scalded dogs if your paycheck was an hour late.
What could I do? Powerless little man confronts faceless corporate bureaucracy. Powerless little man goes down the dumper. I could be a real jerk and demand the tape back, but then I’d lose the account forever.
Next thing I know, I’m on the elevator, jammed in next to a crowd of exiting employees at five-thirty, fuming, frustrated, hacked off once again. So much for this being a glamorous business. Wonder how Doghouse Riley did it all those years?
I stepped out onto the sidewalk, amid the throng of people heading back to the parking lots to begin the long commute home. I wondered where the hell next month’s rent was coming from.
“Damn it,” I muttered. Then I saw it. A wire-mesh trash basket on the sidewalk about three feet high, one of those heavy-gauge metal city-owned types with a black-and-white sign on it that said PLEASE DON’T LITTER.