Feelers (23 page)

“Hmm?”

“Her uncle, the one that lived on Vanderhoosen.”

A lightning bolt cracked through my skull.

“Trux?” My voice quavered, and sheer astonishment may have filled my eyes, but Silvia’s mind was elsewhere, so I don’t think she noticed.

“Well, that is Fanny’s name, silly.” She batted her eyelashes at me. “I want a strawberry daiquiri.”

“Of course, as many as you wish.”

“She lives in that white four-story five blocks toward the avenue, on the sunny side.”

“Silvia, you are a gem.”

I turned to go, my smile replaced with a grimace. I know, because I saw it in one of the mirrors.

I began to make quick work of the five blocks on foot, the lightning bolts splitting my brain every time I spat the words “Fanny Trux.”

This goes to show you how important it is to inspect a woman’s driver’s license on the first date. Usually, I do this to confirm her age and address. The age I need to know because some of them are very good at looking younger than they are, and as a general rule a man desires a woman at least a little younger than himself. You want the address because if she passes out in your car or is impossibly drunk, you want to be able to take her home without going through her purse. A woman can grip her purse with uncommon force even in an unconscious state. In an advanced state of intoxication, they can be idiotically coy and not tell you where they live, and at that point all you want to do is get rid of them because it is likely they will puke on your floor mats—if you are lucky. Do not think less of me for this tactic: the person in the passenger seat is the one who drank eight Fuzzy Navels, not me.

I generally manage to examine a woman’s license by showing them mine, pointing to my picture, and saying how bad it is.
Then they say theirs is worse—almost always—and you tease them into finally showing it to you. A furtive and informative little game.

So Fanny was Trux’s niece. She seduced me to get at the money. She canceled our date and, once she knew I would be out at Oscar’s, came to search the place. When she did not find the money in my apartment, her next move was to sleep with me again and then in the dangerous after-sex conversation ask about the money and try to get some details. Once I was asleep, she snuck out of bed and stole the new key on the ring, the only one that did not fit my car or my apartment.

Perhaps she noticed the new key appear on my key ring after our first date. She would have to be very observant to notice such a trivial thing, but I find women are often keenly perceptive of the little things, sometimes to the exclusion of the big things.

If she knew of the cash in the first place, though, why did she not retrieve it after her uncle died and before I got there? She was not in my industry and would not have had contact with the day laborers to know that I found money in her uncle’s house. She must have known about it before I cleaned the house to have followed this so closely, and as soon as I was done cleaning the house, she sought me out to see if I found it.

Ah.

But if she is Trux’s niece, then Danny could be her brother or cousin, because it was Danny’s uncle’s house where the money was. Trux was uncle to both of them.

Ah.

Danny’s last name is Kessel, so he cannot be her brother, he must be her cousin. Danny would be Uncle Trux’s sister’s son.

Did this mean Danny had sent Fanny? That they were working together in this very sneaky way?

Ah.

What made Fanny take the key when she could not possibly know where the locker was? The document under the battery. She may even have found that first. Was taking the key to make me come to her? To make me find her, where Danny would be waiting to make me take them to the locker? Or bargain with me?

Ouch.

My brain hurt, a gray blob bulging with all the treachery and variables. All I wanted to do was find a bar and drink until what was going on somehow became clear. Drinking, of course, is a man’s first impulse when he is overwhelmed. A man fights with his girl, walks out, where does he go? A man is fired from his job, where does he go? A man wrecks his sports car, where does he go? Unfortunately, the only thing drinking makes clearer is the futility of not drinking, which is not much help and only results in a bad hangover on top of your other problems. We know this, of course, but do it anyway, much the same way a dog eats grass and vomits.

I pushed on down the boulevard and could see the white building ahead, the one with the furniture store on the ground level.

My phone rang, and it was the giant mouse.

“Morty? Hugo.”

“Hugo, I am still rather busy—” I was picturing a squirrel puppet on the other end of the line.

“I’m at the airport,” he squeaked.

“The airport?”

“I have a confession.”

“Confession? Hugo, what are you talking about?”

“I found Frog. Here, at the airport.” When he squeaked the word “airport” it sounded like a rusty screen door opening.

“Really? Where is he going?”

“He’s not going anywhere. Now.”

“Hugo, you are being very mysterious, and I do not have time for any more mystery in my life at the moment. I will call you—”

There was a noise and the call dropped on his end. I had full bars. Just as well. I hated to hang up on him, but as you know, I was focused on that double-crossing dirty-dealing flimflamming Fanny.

I challenge you to try saying
that
three times fast without saying “Flammy” at the end at least once.

I was approaching the entrance to her building when I saw the door open and Fanny step out. She was looking in her purse, not where I was, so I veered into the furniture store.

Through the front window, over a particleboard bed inset with fake zebra, I watched as she stepped up to the curb next to the hydrant. She was waiting for someone to pick her up.

I circled around to the matching zebra pattern dresser and vanity, further hidden from view. My eyes were glued to her, my mind racing. She was in a short black skirt, a pink tank top, a bright green hoodie, and pink sandals. Her hair was up with one of those big clawlike fasteners, I do not know what they are called.

Her purse dangled from her right elbow. A pink suitcase was in her left hand.
Going somewhere, are we?

If I confronted her now, would she give me the key? Of course not. Why should she? If I tried to take the key by force—assuming she had it and not Danny by this time—fellow Brooklynites would step in to help her, or the police would. I had the advantage. She did not know whether I knew she had taken the key, or that I was watching. Besides, something told me that whoever it
was that came to pick her up would explain a lot about what was going on. Would it be Danny?

But once she was picked up by this mystery person, how would I follow? I had left my car five blocks away. An alternative mode of transportation was what I needed.

“Nice set, isn’t it?” A kid about twenty with an aspiring mustache was at my elbow. From his manner, his clip-on tie, and our surroundings, I gathered he was a furniture salesman.

“For your wife?” He gestured at the zebra bedroom set. “You can’t put a price on class, am I right?”

I eyed him, sizing him up. Well, he was young, and young people are liable to agree to anything. “Perhaps you would care to make an easy hundred?”

He looked concerned, as if I were suggesting sex or something.

“See that woman? I need to follow her, but my car is five blocks up the boulevard. You have a car here?”

Now the lad looked at Fanny, then at me, then back to where his manager was struggling with a vending machine.

“Motorcycle. But I’m not giving it to you. I dunno you.”

I pulled a hundred bucks from my wallet and looked at his name tag. “Scott, do you really think I go around all day stealing motorcycles from furniture salesmen? Here is my driver’s license, you can hold onto it.”

He looked at Fanny again, then back at his boss, who was banging on the vending machine.

“You know how to drive a bike?” He was staring at the money.

“Yes, of course.” That was no lie. My first car was a motorcycle. Well, you know what I mean.

“Two hundred.” He was biting his lip but still staring at the money.

“Scott, this is all I have on me. I will give you another hundred when I return with your bike. Then you will have two hundred. Yes?”

“Are you a private detective or something?”

“Not exactly.”

“What did she do? Cheat on you?”

“She cheated me, yes. So we have a deal?”

He sighed, still wary. So I took his hand and placed the money in his palm. This technique works a lot of the time to make a deal go through. Has to be cash, though. Checks do not work. “Where’s the bike?”

He fished a small set of keys from his pocket and placed them in mine. “Up the block. Green, helmet on the back. I need it back by five. We close at five.”

“Got it.”

“Better hurry.”

“Hmm?”

“There she goes.”

I looked out the window and saw an orange car pulling away, Fanny missing.

While haggling with the no-mustache kid, I had missed seeing who picked her up.

I dashed out the door.

IT WAS AT THIS TIME
, while waiting for Charlie’s lawyer to arrive at the precinct, that the cops finally put out a bulletin to their troops about Danny. The description the Luna Motel clerk had given them. Tall, dark complexioned, turtleneck, sport jacket, white scar on lip, women’s sunglasses, possibly dangerous.

It Was also at this time that while waiting in the interrogation room, Charlie collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. It seemed his daughter was right, he should have been better at taking his heart medicine every day.

It was also at this time that in Queens, at the airport, Hugo was under arrest for charging through security and assaulting Frog as he awaited his flight. Like Charlie, Frog was in an ambulance on his way to the hospital.

MOTORCYCLES. I DO NOT LIKE
them. Yes, I used to ride one, and like all motorcycle riders I have an accident story. Only I am scared straight by my terrifying ordeal, not boastful of it.

It was wet, after a light rain, and I was on the Long Island Expressway, behind a tractor trailer that slammed on its brakes and jackknifed. I swerved around it only to encounter the reason the tractor trailer jackknifed: A pile of construction debris had fallen off the back of a dump truck. I hit the debris, rode over it in a jump like Evel Knievel, and when I landed lost control and skidded on my side. Fortunately I was wearing leathers and was not that torn up.

But as I looked up from where I lay with my bike, I saw the tractor trailer sliding sideways over the debris, right for me. I knew I did not have time to stand the bike up or to scramble away. My number was up. I just covered my face and awaited my doom.

There was a whoosh, a shadow, and the smell of burning rubber.

When I looked up I saw that the trailer had passed over me and that the other cars behind it had stopped.

A miracle.

I never rode a bike again.

Now here I was climbing onto a bright green racing bike, yanking on the matching green helmet.

Well, to me it was like a racing bike, one of those that require the rider to lean forward, legs hiked up like a jockey on a Thoroughbred. It howled when I started it, and kicked forward like a spirited horse out of the gate. I just made the first light and could see the orange sedan that had picked up Fanny. It was stopped two lights ahead. I got stopped at the next light and took a moment to look over the bike’s instrumentation. Compared to the Yamaha I rode eighteen years before, this was like piloting an alien spacecraft. All the instruments were glowing orange and digital. I adjusted my helmet, squeezed the brakes a little to get the feel of them a little better, and saw the traffic light change. I continued down the boulevard of three-story brick commercial buildings with residential above, past Tangles. That mousy girl with the black gooey hands would be disappointed Saturday at Octavio when I did not buy her those strawberry daiquiris.

I was trying to throttle back and not get too close, but it was difficult because the driver of the orange car was moving slowly. Its back window was tinted, so I could not make out anything of the occupants.

Then I realized that with my helmet and tinted visor, the occupants would not be able to make me out, either. Speeding up, I maneuvered into the left lane and began to move up alongside the orange sedan. It was an old car, with a growling V-8 and dual exhaust, and the left side had some dings and fiberglass patch work. Whoever Fanny was riding with did not have much money. If they did, they would have at least changed the faded orange primer paint job, to say nothing of fixing the body. Yet it
was the kind of car that was common in Brooklyn. The junker muscle car with primer paint job. They were in the Hispanic neighborhood where I grew up, and still are. The hot-rodders who owned them formed clubs based on the models and would park with their hoods up as a group by the park, tinkering with their carburetors. This one would have been part of the Malibu club, because that was the model.

The lights on the boulevard are synchronized, so that we continued without a red light. We passed the street where Mary’s real estate place was. If Danny killed her, I hoped he met with a nasty fate.

I was waiting for a red light so that I could pull right up next to the driver’s window and get a good look. When you want a red light, one does not come.

There was a beep behind me. A silver BMW was impatient with my slow progress, so I dropped back behind the orange Malibu and let the BMW pass. This was just as the Malibu drifted further right and made a wide right turn. I cut in behind, only looking over my right shoulder as I did so.

A tractor trailer blared its horn—I had cut off a semi, and I heard its brakes lock, smoke billowing from the tires.