Steel Guitar (27 page)

Same amount of information, too. Zero. I thought about missing kid cases, wondered whether I'd seen the girl on the back of a milk carton.

It was the briefest of thoughts. I shoved the three photos underneath the blotter. I guess I don't feel right about tossing photographs. I keep them around, the way I save leftovers in the refrigerator.

The fourth photo arrived on the tenth of April. My Winchester correspondent had the U.S. mail figured better than I did. When I drop something in the blue box, sometimes it gets delivered the next day. Then I mail a letter from the same place and it takes a full week to make it to the same destination.

Number five, when it appeared, was definitely a birthday photo. A cone-shaped hat was tilted to one side of the girl's head, secured by an elastic band under her chin. Was I going to get a new picture of this child every Friday for the rest of my life?

Kid was a heartbreaker, no doubt about it. It wasn't any one of the features; it wasn't the features at all. The eyes were too close together, the nose small and unformed. It was the grin, a light-up-the-eyes squint that could have melted polar ice caps. Maybe somebody was sending them to cheer me up at the end of each week.

Probably not.

They stayed on my mind, like a measure of half-forgotten music, a melody tantalizingly out of reach. Almost a week later, on Thursday, I spread the photos across my desk and went over the lot with the magnifying lens, speculating about relatives. My mother had no family, except for Aunt Bea, and she was dead. Aunt Bea had never married. I'd lost touch with my father's kin even before his death. He'd never had much use for them. Was some long-lost cousin trying to slowly acquaint me with his or her offspring? Was this the opening salvo of a charity touch?

I do have a little sister, not a blood relation, but a sister from the Big Sisters Organization. Because of a sticky situation with her mom, I haven't seen Paolina for over four months. Could the Big Sisters be trying to soften me up to accept a replacement child?

Forget it.

I put away the magnifying glass with a sigh, sarcastically congratulating myself on some truly momentous discoveries: The child's face had thinned out as she'd turned from baby to toddler to little girl. Her hair had grown. The anonymous photographer had managed well-composed, centered shots with no chairs or lamps growing out of the kid's head.

Brilliant detective work. With the photos laid out like a hand of solitaire, I could watch little raisin-face begin her transformation into a curly-haired, blue-eyed, blond American princess.

Paolina, my little sister, is Colombian, with chocolate eyes and shiny dark hair. Her face is too round for perfection, and will probably stay that way even after her cheeks lose their baby-fat chubbiness.

So who wants perfection?

I gathered the snapshots together like a pack of cards and aimed them at the wastebasket's gaping mouth. At the last minute, I held the shot. Not that I figured they'd lead anywhere, but I found myself more intrigued than irritated by their presence.

After that night, I no longer thought about tossing them. I don't trust anything to the trash.

Not since the attack of the garbage thief.

2

Yes. The garbage thief.

I know it's hard to credit. If I hadn't been leaning out the window, I wouldn't have seen it. If I hadn't seen it—if, say, Roz had reported it to me the next morning—I wouldn't have believed it. And if I'd been wearing any clothes, I'd have stopped it.

“If” is one of my least favorite words.

As it happened, I was bare-ass naked, seated cross-legged on a doubled-up futon that serves as a couch, my elbows propped on the windowsill, my face turned to a flickering sliver of moon. All the lights in my second-floor bedroom were off and my modesty, such as it is, was further protected by some twenty inches of wall separating the low futon and the sill.

A night-chilled breeze brushed my hair. If I closed the window, the screech of badly joined wood would break the silence and send a shiver up my neck. Instead of the deep sky, the barely budding elm tree, the moon, I'd catch a reflection of my sleepy face in the glass. Wide-set hazel eyes that I call green. Pointy chin. A nose broken often enough to acquire either “character” or a bump and a tilt, depending on the relative merits of flattery and honesty.

I left the window open. If I stared hard, I could see the full circle of the moon, the dark part defined by the silver crescent.

I'm an insomniac, a card-carrying member of the club. Since enrollment is secret, I'm the president of my own chapter and I make up the rules. Number one: “Don't lie there. If you can't sleep, get up and do something else.”

I recited the other commandments in my head.

“Get plenty of exercise.” Well, I sure do. I play killer volleyball three mornings a week. I swim laps at the YWCA pool.

“Eat right.” Definitely a failing. I'm a junk-food addict, and the thought of a nice warm glass of milk before bedtime makes me want to puke.

“Always go to sleep at the same time.” Sure. I'm a full-time private investigator, but when I can't pay my bills, I drive a cab nights. There is no soothing regularity to my schedule.

“Don't nap.” Who has time to nap?

“Cut out the caffeine.” Pepsi is a way of life to me.

I did quit smoking. I give myself extra credit for that.

Not for the first time, I considered sleeping pills, the scattering of Dalmanes and Halcions I'd inherited along with Aunt Bea's house. I rejected them, as usual. Live with an addict and you grow wary of medication. Marry and divorce one, you practically convert to Christian Science.

“Exercise.” I went back to the second commandment because I thought I'd read somewhere that you shouldn't try any strenuous activity within four hours of going to sleep. I glanced at my bed, shadowy in the moonlight, at the sheet-draped form of Sam Gianelli. Maybe he was my problem. Making love isn't supposed to count as late-night exercise. It relaxes you, right? Makes you sleepy.

Hah. It makes me feel loose, slippery, and warm. But not sleepy.

I considered tossing a pillow at Sam's head. Why should he sleep? Specifically, why should he sleep at my place when he could go back to his Charles River Park apartment? I padded over and kneeled down to reach for my guitar case. I'd ease it out quietly, go downstairs, and practice some finger picking.

The guitar was beyond my reach, centered under the queen-size mattress. Dear God in heaven, Roz must have vacuumed under the bed.

I crawled back to the futon and watched the moon disappear behind a sea of brightening clouds.

The car didn't have its headlights on.

I heard it before I saw it, the closest streetlamp being twenty-five yards away. The motor sputtered to a stop near my driveway. The carburetor needed work.

A car door opened, but the dome light didn't flash. The next sound puzzled me until I realized it was the creak of the trunk. Maybe the driver needed a jack to change a flat tire.

In pitch blackness?

By this time the car had my full attention.

I craned my neck, realized the limitations of my nakedness, and wondered where my clothes were. I felt like yelling “What the hell are you doing down there?” I kept quiet, realizing that the fast-moving moon would soon tell the tale.

It reappeared in a V-shaped break of cloud cover.

A heavyset guy was lifting one of my garbage cans into the gaping trunk of his car. I blinked and shook my head. When I opened my eyes, he was still there.

In my Cambridge neighborhood, barreling is an old and time-honored tradition. The rules are clear. Residents put out big items—old chairs and rickety tables and clunky washing machines—the last Thursday of the month.

It was the third Thursday of April. No one would expect to mine gold in a third Thursday trash collection. And who would rummage for the odd unreturned five-cent-deposit soda can in the middle of the night?

“Stop!” I hollered as loudly as I could. I didn't want the sucker to get away with the trash can. I have only two of them, big wheeled ones that cost $39.95 apiece at the local hardware store. He turned his face and I ducked instinctively. I didn't want to turn the lights on till I found a robe.

I scrabbled around on the floor until I touched cloth. Sam's shirt—hardly long enough, but something to shroud me while I searched more diligently.

I snapped on the light. “Sam!”

“Huh?” He didn't even roll over.

I grabbed my red chenille bathrobe, the one that clashes with my hair, out of the closet. How'd it get in the closet? Roz must have really gone on a cleaning binge.

“Wha'?” I heard Sam mutter as I ran barefoot down the steps.

I have three good locks on my front door. You can't even get
out
of my house without a key for the deadbolt. My purse, with keys inside, was probably on the kitchen counter. Might as well have been on the moon. I ran to the living room and snatched the extra key from the top drawer of my desk. Then I raced back and let myself out in time to see the car two-wheel the corner and disappear.

With both my trash cans.

I stood at the edge of the driveway, in the same spot the cans had occupied a moment before, cursing under my breath, staring at empty darkness but seeing the speeding car, the screeching turn, the mud-smeared license plate. Four. Eight. The last two digits: a four and an eight. Definitely.

My gut reaction: Why me? I'm no rocket scientist. I have nothing to hide. And then I thought, goddammit, yes I do! I have plenty to hide. I don't want anyone to know how much mocha almond ice cream I eat in a week, much less a single detail of my correspondence. I particularly don't want the names of my clients spread around. They hire me for confidential reasons, and, within the law, I do my damnedest to preserve their anonymity.

I did a quick inventory of what I'd been tossing besides the cat's junk mail. Had I received any checks lately? What cases was I still trying to collect on?

A missing husband whose wife should have thrown a farewell party for the bum instead of paying good money to find him living with her stepdaughter. A runaway son-in-law. A habitual bail jumper every private eye in New England has taken a run at …

I tried to catalog the trash, but my mind blanked at the scope of the task. And maybe the garbage thief wasn't even after me. Maybe some garbologist was doing a study of Roz's reject artwork. To me, it always looks like Roz frames and attempts to sell every botched endeavor, but what do I know about postpunk art?

Hell. I didn't care if the target was Roz or me. I didn't care if some grad student was doing a thesis on banana-peel disposal in the 02138 zip code. Whoever it was, the garbologist was going to have to research somebody else's garbage.

I wiped my bare feet on the damp grass. Four-eight, four-eight, four-eight, I repeated. With my eyes closed, I teased my memory for details. Color: blue, maybe gray. Rectangular taillights.

I'd have to put a hook near the front door, hang the deadbolt key on it. Should have done it long ago, in case of fire. Of course, with the key hanging there, any burglar who came through a window would be able to open the door and steal the big items—the couch, the bed, the goddamn refrigerator, if he wanted it—as well as the usual small stuff.

I thought about thieves. I thought about garbage. I thought about thieves who steal garbage.

Now, empty trash cans have their uses. Landscapers use them to haul dead leaves and branches. The hawkers who sell soda outside Fenway Park use them to store ice.

But this moron hadn't tried to dump the trash on my front lawn. He'd sped off with Hefty bags full of juice cartons, catfood cans, and old newspapers smeared with parakeet droppings.

If he'd wanted the cans, why steal the garbage? If he'd wanted my garbage, why steal the cans?

3

What with the garbage thief and insomnia, I didn't stir until eleven o'clock the next morning. Sam had long since returned to Charles River Park, complaining that he hardly ever felt rested after a night at my place.

As I groggily crossed the hall, listening to a throbbing hum in my head and hoping the shower would ease it, the day's mail hit the foyer floor with a thud.

Friday. Terrific. Time for another snapshot of little Miss Winchester. Well, she could wait till I'd washed up, eaten breakfast, lunch, or both, depending on the contents of the fridge. She could wait till I'd started my pursuit of the garbage snatcher.

How many light blue, or possible gray, late-model Firebirds had a four and an eight for their final two license-plate numbers? Was I sure it was a Massachusetts plate?

The thought almost drove me back under the covers. Instead I stood in the shower for ten minutes with the temperature at lobster-boil. Then I put in a full two minutes under ice water because somebody told me that cold water is better for rinsing conditioner out of your hair.

Dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a turquoise cotton sweater, I headed downstairs. I pass through the foyer on my way to the kitchen. No harm in stopping to take a peek, I decided. Give me an opportunity to bend over and shake out my wet hair, which I comb as infrequently as possible because it's too thick and too curly and it hurts. I could view the day's photo while chugging orange juice. No time wasted.

I sorted through the pile twice to make sure, but there was no blue envelope. I felt curiously deprived, as if I'd come to the end of a novel borrowed from the library and found the final chapter razored out.

The throb of my headache met its match in the smack of a hammer against a nearby nail.

“You like this here?” The voice came from an unlikely height. Perched on a chair, my tenant, Roz, had gained about a foot in stature. She's short and I'm six-one. Our eyes were now on a level.

I said, “I thought you were going to check with me before you hung any more paintings on my walls.” To contrast with her fright-white hair, which she dyes more often than I shampoo, Roz was wearing skin-tight black pants and a redder-than-red T-shirt emblazoned with N
INE OUT OF TEN MEN WHO'VE TRIED
C
AMELS PREFER WOMEN
. I read it twice to make sure I'd gotten it right. I don't know where Roz finds her enormous wardrobe of bizarre T-shirts. Maybe secret admirers send them. She has a body, particularly in the T-shirt slogan area, that earns much admiration.