Anonymous Rex (36 page)

“Welcome to Fifty-eight Park, sir.”

I bow in gratitude. “Thank you ever so much … what did you say your name was?”

“That’s another twenty,” he says, poker face glued on tight.

Judith McBride isn’t home. I suspect that such information would have been easier, and probably cheaper, to obtain, but the doorman, like everyone else, is in his racket for the bucks. Can’t blame him. I would have scammed me over, too. I ring the doorbell over and over, knock a few times, whistle loudly, call out Judith’s name, but there is no response.

I could break and enter, I guess—a credit card won’t work on a door this solid, but I’ve got other tricks up my sleeve—but time is short, and I don’t imagine that Judith will have left any wildly incriminating evidence lying around her apartment. I am about to take my leave, to return across town to Glenda’s apartment and try to pick up the search for Jaycee where we left off, when I notice the corner of a yellow slip of paper sticking out from beneath Judith McBride’s doorway. Actually, I’m only able to notice it after I’ve prostrated myself on the floor, shuttered up one eye, shoved a cheek against the plush carpet, and peeked through the crack, but the end results are the same, so what do the means matter?

There is no question as to whether or not it is moral of me to reach in and pick up the note—it is my civic duty to prevent littering, even in others’ domiciles. Especially in others’ domiciles. My costumed fingers, though, are too pudgy to fit beneath the door, so I am forced to bare a claw in order to get the job done.

Package notification. It means that the building manager or reception staff accepted a package for the tenant and is now holding it wherever such items are usually stored. I’ve heard of services like this, but never before witnessed it firsthand. When I was a renter, the closest my building managers ever came to accepting packages for me were angry notes shoved into my mailbox that read
If I gotta hear that UPS guy complain that you’re not home one more time, I’m gonna rip down your front door and let him take a crap on your rug
. I’ve purchased stain-resistant carpets ever since.

I suppose I could locate Receiving, make a big fuss, try to claim the package as my own, but odds are whatever scam I pulled would either land me no useful evidence or a night in the county lockup.

But here’s all the dirt I need, right on this slip of paper. Two separate packages are waiting downstairs, both addressed to Judith McBride. Package number one was sent from Martin & Company Copper Wiring Service and Supply in Kansas City and arrived early this morning according to the time stamped on the note.

Now what on earth could Judith McBride need copper wiring for? Science project? Too old. A bomb? Too rational. Do-it-yourself home improvements? Too prissy. I have a theory, but even as it springs to mind, I dismiss it as nonsense.

Package number two is equally curious, coming as it does from a pool supply company in Connecticut. There’s nothing on the note to indicate what’s actually in the box, but I can’t imagine that Judith McBride has volunteered to spend her time cleaning out the facilities at the local YWCA.

I check it out. After another twenty dollars leaps from my wallet into the doorman’s pocket, he tells me where to find Receiving, and I wend my way to the back of the building. There, another snob extraordinaire waits to rebuff me, but this time I don’t have to worry about dealing with him. I just need to get close to the storage room.

“Can I … help you?” asks the clerk.

“No, no, just taking in the sights.” I lean farther across his desk, and he backs away, startled at my proximity. “They keep the packages in there?” I ask, pointing toward the open space behind him, boxes neatly arranged in rows.

“Yes.… Are you a guest in the building?” he asks, knowing full well I am not.

I don’t answer. I’ve got sniffing to do. I exhale quickly, expelling all my used, useless air into the clerk’s ruffled face, and then begin a long, slow drag, my nostrils fluttering, my sinuses rumbling with the effort. Smells drift in from all over New York, my brain working on full power in an attempt to isolate and sort them out. I orient my nose toward the closed storage-room door and increase my suction. My chest expanding, my lungs filling, I wouldn’t be surprised if I sucked all the available oxygen from the air, causing the clerk to faint dead away. That would make things easier.

And just as I think I can’t inhale any more, just as the clerk, who
has recovered from his confusion, is about to call Security down upon my sorry behind, I catch the slightest scintilla of the scent for which I am searching:

Chlorine. No doubt about it, the nose knows. A few cubes of chlorine tablets, wrapped within tissue paper, shrouded in Styrofoam, enclosed in cardboard, packed in a brown paper wrapper. Yes, I’m that good.

“Glenda, we gotta go.” I have just paid a cabbie three times his fare in order to rush me back to Glenda’s apartment and wait downstairs while I grab a few necessary items. He was more than happy to take my money, but I have serious doubts as to whether or not he was able to understand my instructions and actually remain in place. “Got a cab idling on the curb. Hopefully.”

“You might wanna take a look at this,” she says, and hands me a light, waxy sheet of fax paper three feet long, minuscule numbers and letters scrolling down and across every inch.

“What is it?”

“All the telephone calls from your house for the last month.” She peeks over my shoulder, points to a singular 1-900 line. “Goddamn, Vincent, you got yourself a psychic friend?”

“Only once,” I say absentmindedly, too concerned with this new evidence to defend myself.

There it is, the call I’m looking for—early this morning, four in the
A.M
. Collect, but still registered on this sheet, and it’s to the 718 area code. “That’s the one,” I say, pointing it out to Glenda. “Right there.”

“That’s what I figured,” she says. “So I checked it out already. You got three guesses where it goes.”

“A child care clinic in the Bronx?”

“Hey …” she pouts. “You’re not supposed to get it on the first try.”

“I have some insider information,” I tell her. “You get an address?”

“Sure did. Shit part of town and everything.”

“Great. Come on, maybe we can get there before the floor show begins.”

The cabbie has indeed waited downstairs, and fortunately for us,
he doesn’t want to practice his English with his customers tonight. I ask him to turn the radio up, and he puts on a charming Indian song that, by all indications, is being sung by cats in heat. Perfect—I can tell Glenda my story without worrying about having to whisper the whole way to the clinic.

“Here goes,” I say, and launch into the tale.

“T
hat’s gotta be the strangest shit I ever heard,” says Glenda after I’ve laid it all out for her, piece by piece, theory by theory. I must admit, it’s quite the doozy. We’ve pulled up just beyond that familiar alleyway in the Bronx, the child care clinic looming across the street. It waits for us, beckoning. I empty my wallet to pay the cabbie. “Bar none, weird city,” she continues. “So that’s it, right? No more surprises?”

“Well …” I hedge. “There’s this one little thing I haven’t exactly let you in on. But hey, a guy’s gotta be sure before he goes blabbing to his friends. I’m not the kind of PI to investigate and tell. Hey, maybe I’m wrong.”

“Yeah, well I hope you got your head up your ass on this one, ’cause if you’re right about what’s going down, I don’t wanna think about what it’s gonna do to us.”

We step out of the cab, onto the street, and stare up at the clinic. Boards cover the windows like wooden eye-patches, the aluminum sliding bay doors clamped down tight. The crazies are out in full force this evening, and the occasional vagrant pinches Glenda’s rump as we walk by. I have to restrain her from attacking anyone.

“Keep your nose open for danger,” I say. “Last time I was here I ran into a little problem.” A big, snarling, toothy problem is more like it. “You catch a whiff of barbecue, you let me know.”

Casually, we move across the street, trying to look for all the world like two nonfelonious humans out for a nice stroll in the back alleyways of the Bronx at ten o’clock at night with no visible weapons or means of defense. “Move quickly,” I caution, “but real natural-like.”

The few lights on the outside of the clinic had been knocked out by vandals long ago, so we are able to take our first leg of the journey in darkness. We reach the front door. Closed. Locked. And once again, those sliding metal monstrosities off to each side would make too much noise in the stillness of the evening.

Glenda glances about the building, gauging its size. She says, “There’s gotta be a back entrance around here. There’s always a friggin’ back entrance.”

“I don’t know. Last time I tried to find one, I got … sidetracked.”

Glenda heads around the side of the building, and I follow, heart already thrashing away against my chest in anticipation of another attack. Great snorts of the surrounding air don’t deliver any of that burning plastic scent to my olfactory nerves, but one can never be too careful. I continue my constant vigilance, glancing behind every corner and outcropping before stepping past.

There is no trace of my battle from last week, though the Dumpster has been moved, either by the cleanup crew once they arrived to take the skeleton away or by sanitation engineers whose truck was slightly out of alignment. We shuffle past the scene of my near demise.

A small metal fence bars our way to the back of the clinic, and Glenda prepares to climb it. Her hand reaches out—

“Wait!” I call, dropping my voice back to a whisper. “Test it.”

Glenda turns, confused. “Test what?”

“The fence. They’re not kidding around here; a stupid little wire fence like this one isn’t going to do much good keeping out anyone who wants in. And I’ve seen the guard dogs they keep at this place.” Tentatively, I reach out with an extended finger, nearing the metal diamonds …

Pressure, pulling finger down, trying to make me grasp the wire, drawing in my arm—I’m yanking it back, grimacing, fighting for my own appendage—

I win the battle and fly backward, slamming into Glenda’s chest,
both of us falling into a heap on the ground. Rolling off the Hadrosaur, I help her to her feet.

“What the hell …”

“Wired,” I say, rubbing my arm, which is growing more sore by the second. “Electric fence, and from the way it grabbed hold I’d say we’re dealing with some pretty lethal current.”

No fuse box in sight, no way to short-circuit the fence, no breaches or holes in the structure itself. “Back around front?” Glenda suggests.

“No point. It’s not going to open magically by itself.” Unless … I look up, squinting through the darkness, and notice a small window ledge just above the top of the fence. “Glenda, can you hoist me up to that drainpipe?”

“I can hoist six of you up to that drainpipe. But how’s that gonna get me in?”

“I’ll work my way in through the back and open the front door. Come on, give me a lift.”

After the requisite warnings to each other to play it safe, be careful, watch our backs, etc., Glenda lifts me onto her shoulders like a mother hoisting up her son to watch a parade, and I’m able to grab hold of the drainpipe. It’s attached to the side of the clinic by some flimsy L-brackets that quiver as I let my full weight sink against the piping. Good thing I haven’t had much time to eat recently; one burger in my belly might send the whole kaboodle crashing down. The brackets shake, shimmy, and shiver, but they hold.

A short climb—the pipe threatening to break away from the wall with every inch I gain—puts me in reach of the window ledge, and it is only after I have pulled myself up and onto it that I realize that much like the other windows in the clinic, this one, too, has been boarded up. Great wooden beams bar my way. And me without my buzz saw.

Glenda has already turned the corner, out of earshot, heading toward the front entrance to wait for me to open the door, so I won’t be getting any help from that end. My only option at this point is to jump, but it’s a good twenty-five feet down. If I could just unfurl my tail, the added muscular support might be enough to cushion the blow somewhat, but …

Well, heck, why can’t I unfurl my tail? Rules are made to be broken,
and if ever there’s a time for rule-breaking, it’s now. Grasping a knot in the wooden boards to steady myself, I quickly pull off my pants and my underwear, scrunch down the back of my polysuit, and release the upper portion of my G series.

Lord, it feels good to have my tail out in the open again! The cool night air caresses my hide, bringing me back to last night with Jaycee, the way she rubbed me all over, using her body to … Okay, work, Vincent, there’s work to be done. But this freedom does feel particularly nice, I have to admit, and I can only hope that I have the chance to frolic in the open air like this in some place other than the Eighteenth Street Child Health Care Clinic.

The specter of that long jump to the hard ground below is certainly helping to stall my efforts, but I have to get moving. Making a quick prayer to the gods above just in case I’ve been wrong my whole life about their nonexistence, I steel myself, take a baby step onto the edge, and hop.