A Firing Offense (10 page)

When her breathing became more rapid, and her lips turned cold, I hooked a soapy finger into her asshole and she straightened against the wall, eyes toward the ceiling. She yelped, then shuddered, and buried her teeth into my shoulder, while I shot off with a spasm that traveled down my legs.

We held each other until the hot water began to expire. She put on her bathrobe and dried me with a large blue towel.

Sitting on the warm radiator, I watched her in the bathroom mirror as she carefully combed my wet hair. Then I was in a deep, dreamless sleep.

I
WOULDN’T HAVE
minded dying but that would have taken too much energy. I had dry-mouth and my stomach had less stability than an African government. My hands smelled like a woman and my hair hurt. The part about the smell didn’t bother me much.

Lee roused me, handed me a glass of Alka-Seltzer, dropped two aspirin in my hand, and said that breakfast and coffee awaited me in the kitchen. I sat up and washed down the pills with the seltzer.

She had folded my clothes for me, and I began to dress, pausing often to sigh and rub my forehead meaninglessly. She was not wearing my shirt, a morning-after ritual that I find neither cute nor practical, and I suddenly liked her even more for that.

I made it into the kitchen and sat with her at a small table. She looked fresh and was dressed for school in jeans and a gray sweatshirt. I took a sip of the black coffee.

“So,” I said, “did you take advantage of me last night?”

“Repeatedly.”

“And where am I?”

“Tenleytown,” she said, and after watching my expression as I looked around the nicely appointed apartment, added, “Yes, Mommy and Daddy take care of the bills.”

“You’re from where? New York? Jersey?”

“Long Island. And I’m Jewish. And I go to AU. Do I fit the profile?”

“Yes,” I said, gamely forking in a mouthful of runny eggs. “I usually don’t go out with Jewish girls.”

“Why’s that?”

“Generally,” I said, “they turn me down.”

She chuckled and gave me the once-over. “I doubt that. Though I wouldn’t try asking
anybody
out for a few days.”

“My eye, you mean? Is it that bad?”

“It’s not pretty. But it’s not terrible.” I got up to pour another cup of coffee, and she asked, “Anybody going to miss you from last night?”

“Only my cat.”

“Johnny told me about your one-eyed cat.”

“I guess he told you I’ve been married, too.”

“Yes, he mentioned it. But I would have known anyway. By the way you held me last night when we were sleeping.”

“Forget about the sleeping part,” I said. “Was I a gentle lover?”

“Yes,” she said. “Well, sort of. Like a gentle freight train.”

“Sleeping with my wife—I mean, literally sleeping with her—was probably the best part of being married.”

“You must miss it. Even the bad parts must seem pretty good now.”

“Time heals all wounds? Bullshit. I miss some things. But I don’t think I miss the bad parts.”

I stewed about that for a while, and she let me. After she finished her coffee, she put on her jean jacket and hung her
knapsack over her shoulder. “Your keys are on the counter and your car is on the street behind this building. I called Louie and told him you’d be late. Do me a favor and wash the dishes, and lock up on your way out.”

“Sure, Lee.”

“I had fun,” she said, in a way that both explained and negated the entire evening. She kissed me on the side of my mouth and exited the apartment.

IT WAS NEAR NOON
by the time I finished my third cup of coffee, read the
Post,
and did Lee’s dishes. I phoned Gary Fisher in the office.

“Fisher,” he said, short of breath.

“Fisher, it’s Nick.”

“What’s up?”

“I need a favor. How about we meet for lunch today, at Good Times, say a half hour from now?”

“Lunch is fine. What’s the favor?”

“Before you leave, go into my desk, top drawer. Collect all the business cards from the media, I’ve got them all grouped in rubber bands. Bring them with you to lunch, okay?”

“Why can’t you come in?”

“I was out last night, things got a little crazy. I got my eye dotted in a bar.”

“Okay, Nick. Half hour.”

A LINE AT THE
bank machine made me late. When I walked into the Good Times Lunch, Gary Fisher was already seated at the counter, drinking coffee and hot-boxing a Marlboro. A couple of beer alkies sat near him and stared straight ahead.

I sat on Fisher’s right. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail. He was wearing brown corduroys with a tan poly shirt and a brown knit tie squared off at the end. He checked his cigarette,
determined there was some paper left over the filter, took a final drag, mashed it, exhaled, and patted the pack in his shirt pocket.

“What’s going on, Nick?”

“Nothing much,” I said, removing my sunglasses. He checked me over and shook his head.

Kim walked over with a green checkpad in his hand to take our order and gave me his usual blank nod. In the mirror above the register I noticed the poster of Billy Dee Williams, smiling over my shoulder. Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” was blaring from the tinny speaker of the store radio. Fisher ordered a burger and fries. I asked for the fish and a bowl of soup.

“Mr. Personality,” Fisher said as Kim walked away.

“He’s the Korean Charles Bronson. It’s a big responsibility.”

“Here,” he said, handing me a paper bag filled with business cards.

“Thanks.” I placed the bag on the counter to my right. “So, what’s happening in the world of electronics retailing?”

He shrugged. “The manufacturers are trying to soften the blow of price increases by policing ‘minimum advertised prices’ in the newspaper. In other words, they’re trying to fix retails by controlling the giveaway artists. It’s a good idea, but the FTC will stop that shit real fast once they get enough consumer complaints. If everybody’s in the paper with the same price, all the business will go to the house with the biggest advertising budget, the power retailers. Let’s face it, the days are numbered for the independents and the ‘mom and pops.’”

Fisher had been predicting gloom and doom since I’d met him. For him it was just an excuse to work longer hours and smoke more cigarettes.

“How’s our business been?”

“We’re up from last October.”

“What about our turns?”

“We’re at about eight turns. But our ‘open to buy’ status shows us at a hundred grand in the hole. I’m telling you Nick, the barn is so full it’s ready to burst.”

We had our lunch. Fisher ate his quickly, as if it were a barrier standing in the way of his next cigarette. My fish was tasteless, as usual, but the soup was thick with beef stock and fresh vegetables, and I began to feel human.

“How’s McGinnes?” he asked, pushing his plate away and lighting up.

“He’s good.”

“Best retail man I’ve ever seen,” he said almost dreamily. “Sonofabitch could sell an icemaker to an Eskimo.”

“They miss me at the office?”

“Nobody’s throwing themselves out the window. Marsha asks about you.”

“How’s my desk look?”

“A ton of messages.”

“Throw them all away when you get back, will you?”

“That’s very professional of you.”

“And one more thing.”

“Another favor?”

“No, just a question. You remember that kid used to work in the warehouse, Jimmy Broda?”

“Yeah?”

“When I got back from vacation, he was gone. I borrowed a tape from him, I want to give it back. I heard he didn’t show up for work a few days in a row, they let him go.”

“I know who you’re talking about,” he said, “but that’s not why they aced him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was a gonif. They caught him with his hand in the fuckin’ cookie jar.”

I thought that over. “What did he steal?”

“A third world briefcase, what else? Same thing you would have hooked if you were nineteen. He lost his job for a boogie box.”

I turned the check over, which came to seven and change, and left ten bucks on the counter. Kim watched me pay up. There was a gleam in his eye as he stared at my shiner.

*     *     *

MY CAT, TRYING TO
act bored as I approached her on the stoop of my apartment, blinked her eye and looked away. I sat next to her on the stone step and scratched behind her ear. She lay on her side and stretched. It was a fine, warm October day.

I changed into sweatpants, throwing my dirty clothes into a mounting pile next to my dresser. I boiled some water, made coffee, took the mug along with a pen and pad of paper, and sat down next to the phone. In the white pages I found the numbers for the bureaus of licensing in Maryland and D.C.

I dialed the Maryland number and inquired about the requirements for a private investigator’s license in that state. A cool, efficient voice explained that one must have had at least five years’ experience as a police officer or served under a licensed investigator in an apprenticeship arrangement. I thanked her and hung up.

The woman who answered the phone at the D.C. bureau reluctantly ran down the requirements. “Basically,” she said, “you come into our office and pick up a private detective agency package. There are several forms to fill out, and a blank application for a surety bond. You’ll need four full-face wallet-sized photos of yourself when you come in. They can’t be more than three months old. And you’ll need to be fingerprinted down on Indiana Avenue. After that we do a background check as to any felonies or misdemeanors you might have. That takes at least a couple of weeks. If you check out, you get a license.”

“What does the license give me? The right to carry a gun?”

“No, you
cannot
carry a weapon, by law. The license and certificate that comes with it merely legitimizes you.”

“Where’s your office and what’s it going to cost me?”

“Two Thousand, Fourteenth Street. Third floor. The application fee is one hundred and fifty-eight dollars. Fingerprinting fee is sixteen-fifty.”

I thanked her and replaced the receiver. Then I dialed Pence’s number. The old man answered on the second ring.

“What’s the dope, Mr. Stefanos?” he asked anxiously.

“I may have gotten a lead last night,” I lied. “I’m going to follow it up this evening. Have you heard from Jimmy?”

“No.”

“Mr. Pence, has Jimmy ever been in trouble with the law? Vandalism, shoplifting, anything minor like that?”

It took him a while to answer. “Not to my knowledge, Mr. Stefanos.”

“Good. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, then,” he said, and hung up.

I dumped the rest of my coffee and walked into my bedroom, the largest single area of my apartment. In my gym bag I located my rope.

I moved my rocking chair from the center of the room, put Tommy Keene’s EP, “Places That Are Gone,” on the turntable, cranked up the volume, and began to jump rope. After twenty minutes my T-shirt was soaked through.

I had a hot shower, shaved, put on clean jeans, a deep blue shirt, and a gray, light wool Robert Hall sportjacket I had picked up at the thrift shop for twenty bucks. On my way out I carried the cat in one hand and her dish in the other and placed both of them on the stoop. I climbed into my car and headed towards Connecticut Avenue.

THE STORE WAS STRANGELY
quiet when I entered. Lee was behind the counter reading a textbook. Lloyd was sitting on a console watching the soaps. He turned his head, looked me over, and returned his gaze to the television.

Lee looked up from her book and smiled. I walked around the counter and touched her arm, leaned into her and said, “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” she said. I kissed her. “You look better. Do you feel better?”

“Yes.”

“What are you up to?”

“I came in to correct the proofs for the weekend. Then I’ve got an appointment downtown.”

“The courier delivered this an hour ago,” she said, handing me a thin white bag filled with tear sheets and proofs.

The art department at the
Washington Post
was a sweatshop, and showed it by the manner in which eighty percent of my proofs were returned to me. In this particular proof, several different type styles were inexplicably set, art was shot upside down, key words were misspelled, and most of the phone numbers for the stores were incorrect. For this and other services my company paid a major account “discount rate” somewhere over $120 per column inch.

I corrected the proof, using the standard editing symbols, then called ad services to tell them where to pick it up. McGinnes arrived at the counter as I hung up the phone. His eyes were watery and he was very pale. He took my jaw in his hand and turned my face to the right.