1
VALERIE
Martin had a migraine. I was fighting sleep at my desk with my third cup of coffee and games on my phone. We’d been out until 3am last night on the Russell case, making quiet conversation over the late-night jazz station while we took bets on who was using the family lake house without permission. I had guessed partying teens, or a family of clever raccoons, but it turns out it was Mr Russell and one of his students using the place for a little after-hours tutoring. After a year with the Wade Agency, Perrine’s only licensed private detective agency, I should have guessed as much. Martin would meet with Dr Russell later in the week and go over the photos with her. I think it was a combination of muggy September weather and lack of sleep and a little bit of dread that left him useless, locked in his office with the lights off and a cold rag over his eyes. The day after a stakeout was always brutal.
I’d come back to Perrine two years ago under what my brother Deacon called “mysterious circumstances,” arrived in Upstate New York after a three-day bus ride, wearing my pajamas and jacket and Doc Martens, without even a phone charger. I’d moved back in with my Aunt Gina, slept in Deacon’s old bedroom, tended bar and wrote articles for the online music magazine High Wire. I met Martin on one such assignment; turns out the PI in the dusty little office above the vape shop on Becker Street used to be known as Basil Wise, infamous frontman of the French Letters, a brief flash of a band that was once destined to take their place in the post-punk court of jesters alongside The Smiths, The Replacements, U2 and R.E.M. I interviewed him and he brought me along on a couple of little cases, but in the end, I decided not to send in the article, let him keep his cover and instead joined the Wade Agency as his assistant. It was just part-time work at first, filing and taking appointments and going to the bank and post office, but in the last few months, he’d started letting me in on some of the secrets of the business, asking me to help with a tail or swap out a few hours of a motel surveillance mission so he could stretch his legs and get a bite to eat. He’d even let me take on a case when he had the flu.
And for the first time in my life, I actually liked my job. I made enough money to move out of Gina’s, I bought a little beater of a car so I didn’t have to take the bus, and I liked Martin. He was witty and dry, he played piano or put on records in the waning afternoon hours, he made good coffee and paid for lunch a few times a week. I’d hated leaving my alt-weekly back in Memphis, but at least I’d found a safe place to land.
I must have fallen asleep for just a moment, because when the buzzer rang, I nearly jumped out of my skin. A groan came out of Martin’s office. I answered the intercom before it could ring again. “The Wade Agency, how may I help you?”
“Janice Archwood for
Mr Wade, please.”
Martin didn’t have any appointments scheduled for the afternoon, but walk-ins weren’t uncommon, especially in the divorce trade. “Please hold.”
I knocked gently on Martin’s door and slipped inside. He was stretched out on the couch, tie and watch in the desk’s “Out” basket, jacket thrown over the arm of the blue chair, cuffs loose. “There’s a Janice Archwood at the front door,” I said. “Should I buzz her in?”
He sat up slowly. “Appointment?” he asked.
“Walk-in.”
“How long was I out?”
“About an hour.”
He let out a slow breath. “I think the worst of it has passed,” he said. “Send her in.”
2
MARTIN
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew Ms Archwood from somewhere. There were plenty of gaps in my memory; nineteen years of sobriety couldn’t restore what was lost in half a decade of addiction. She was slim and pretty and young, maybe mid-twenties, with hair the color of midcentury furniture piled high on her head. Hardly my usual clientele – shifty-eyed soccer moms, anxious husbands and stiff-armed corporate types angered about scaffold laws and workers’ comp claims. But she had that nervous look I knew too well, her eyes flitting from the piano to me, the record cabinet to Valerie, then back to the piano. If I wasn’t positive the slightest sound would detonate the dynamite kegs inside my skull, I might have directed Valerie to put on some music, just to fill the silence.
“How do you take your coffee, Ms Archwood?” Valerie offered.
“Black, please.”
I motioned to Valerie to make it two. Normally I took mine with cream and sugar, but I’d learned that a client opens up a little easier if you give them something to subconsciously bond over. A shared drink order was a quick way to establish this, and I needed the caffeine – unsweetened, undiluted.
I gestured my client into the office and she sat in the blue chair. “This consultation is free,” I began, easing behind my desk. “It doesn’t obligate me to take your case and I don’t take cases where drugs or violence are involved.” That usually weeded out about a quarter of the clients, anxious parents who wanted us to search a teenage bedroom. Then there was the occasional tough guy who spoke in wink-wink terms about “taking care” of a neighbor or his ex-wife or a boss who fired him. I made sure to pass those kinds of clients along to an associate of mine, Captain Liam Hollander, Perrine PD.
Valerie brought in the coffee on a wooden tray. She brought two bottles of water too, and a small origami cup, made of notebook paper, with an Excedrin hidden inside. I set them aside. She gave me a look that said take the pills. Maybe later.
“It’s nothing like that,” said Ms Archwood. “My father was a drug addict who abandoned me and my mom. In the last few years, we’ve reconnected, but lately, he’s been pressuring me to move back home. I’m studying violin at Raines, and I’ve only got another semester left. Does that make me an awful daughter if I just want him to… to back off a little bit?”
“Do you think he’s dangerous?”
She shook her head. “No, just… overbearing. Like he’s trying to make up for lost time. But my foster mother, she says she thinks he’s trying to ask for money. I guess I just… don’t know what to do. I’m not entirely sure he’s still sober. He says he is, but…”
“But you’ve heard that before.” So had I. Said it more than once myself, until I did the work to make sure I made it the truth. But it took the people I hurt time to believe that too. “So, what is it you want me to do?”
“I guess I’m not really sure,” she said. “Maybe follow him for a bit, see if he’s drinking or using?”
“I’m not a babysitter.”
“Of course.” She sighed. “If I gave you his number, would you call him and tell him to back off a little bit?”
So it was a White Knight gig. Easy enough. I got them every so often, skittish people who just needed an authoritative voice to speak up for them from the netherworld between a cop and lawyer, when lines were crossed but laws weren’t. “Leave his name and number with my assistant,” I said. “I’ll call him and ask him to wait out your answer. Hopefully, he’s a good enough dad to give you some space.”
I tried to give her a reassuring smile that felt instead like a knife splitting my mouth. “In the meantime, I’ll call on him in the next twenty-four hours. Valerie will handle the deposit and set you up for a follow-up appointment later in the week.”
I stood. She stood. She looked more familiar than ever. I scanned her like a TSA agent, searching for wires, searching for the faintest hint of who she might be. But if I was someone she knew, she didn’t let on. “Thank you, Mr Wade,” she said.
“Happy to help,” I said. I held the door for her, directed her to Valerie, and closed the office door behind her. I sank back down on the couch, fighting dizziness. I cracked open the bottle of water. I swallowed both pills in one gulp.
Valerie knocked again. I let her come in. She handed me the memo. “Lem Chesterfield,” she said. “He’s staying at the Vanguard Hotel. She left his cell phone number, too.”
My head throbbed. It wasn’t from the migraine. Even that name had a ring of familiarity to it, lost and hollow. A half-forgotten movie, perhaps, or a name in a high school yearbook. A drug dealer, a session player or a roadie, a record executive’s signature along the dotted line. Could be anybody. Could be nobody at all.
“C’mon,” I said, pushing myself to standing. “Let’s get lunch. I’ve reached the starving portion of this damn headache.”
“Flower House?” she offered. “I bet Malee has something on the menu that could set your
head right.”
She was probably right, but I was craving grease and salt like it might absorb my physical misery. “Next time,” I said. “Let’s go to the Red Top.”
3
VALERIE
We sometimes joked that the Red Top Diner was our other office. We were there frequently enough, and sometimes I even let Martin pretend like he discovered the place. When I first started working for him, he frequented Danny’s, a greasy spoon where the cockroaches were such a common sight that they might as well have been busboys. I brought him to the Red Top and changed his mind. Well, maybe not so much me as Joan, the owner. I suspected he had a thing for her and I wouldn’t blame him. Joan was the kind of woman a pulp writer might have described as a broad, a big redhead with a wide mouth and a hearty laugh and a heart to match all of it. There wasn’t a man who came into the Red Top who wasn’t in love with Joan.
She came by our table with the coffee pot and didn’t even ask if we wanted coffee before she filled our cups. She knew the answer was yes, it was always yes when it came to coffee at the Red Top Diner. Though a whole series of high-end coffee shops had sprung up by Raines College, there wasn’t a barista in Perrine who could make a cup as good as the one you got for $1.25 – with unlimited warm-ups, of course – at the Red Top.
“Haven’t seen you in a few days,” she said. “Was starting to think you’d gone back to your old ways at Danny’s.”
He laughed a little. “Valerie would never let that happen.”
She reached over one manicured hand and smoothed a mess of stray silver hair off his forehead. “Big case?”
I could hear his heart pounding over Christopher Cross warbling “Arthur’s Theme” on the radio behind the counter. “As big as cases get around here,” he stammered.
“Then I guess I’d better get you guys fed,” she said, pulling out her notepad. “What’ll it be?”
Martin ordered breakfast. I ordered lunch. I watched her walk away, wondering if that wiggle was how she had always walked or if that was just for him. “When are you going to ask her out?” I asked in a low voice when I was sure she was out of earshot.
“She’s not saying anything to me that I’m sure she doesn’t say to all her other regulars,” he said, pretending to be very interested in the yellow legal tablet in front of him. “Besides, it’s generally not my policy to date married women.”
“Her husband left her two months ago,” I said. “Affair with one of his flight attendants. Surprised she didn’t put you on the case. Could have racked up those frequent flyer miles.”
Martin looked surprised at this revelation. His eyes darted towards the clock, then to the specials on the board, then to her left hand to see that, sure enough, she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. “Sorry to hear that,”
he said. “I’d hate to think of anyone hurting her.”
That made two of us. Joan was always protective of the kids of Perrine, especially the ones like me and Deacon when we were growing up, kids who had seen some shit. I took a sip of my coffee. “How’s your head?” I asked.
“Coffee helped,” he said. “Meds are starting to kick in too.”
“So talk to me about the case.”
“It’s not quite a stalking case,” he explained. “Non-custodial parent, trying to make up for lost time. She might be having second thoughts, wants to make sure he’s not just trying to get money out of her.”
“Seems a little low-stakes for hiring a private eye.”
Our plates came momentarily between us, set down by a waitress with a face too old for the rest of her body. I wondered if she was another of Perrine’s seemingly endless supply of junkies; cash tips were a good way to fix up, and there wasn’t a kitchen in Perrine that didn’t have at least one dealer supplementing his income with the hard stuff. But more than a theory, it was the way Martin avoided looking at her that told me my hunch was right. He had just passed nineteen years of sobriety and it didn’t take a PI license for him to spot a fellow zombie. “You think Joan knows?” he asked.
“Doubt it,” I said. “She wouldn’t keep her around if she did.”
He looked back at Joan one more time and gave her a sweet, sad little smile. “C’mon, Martin,” I chided. “Just ask her out. You don’t have to marry her. Just take her to dinner. She clearly adores you.”
“We’ll see,” he said in a tone that told me the conversation was, for the time being, over.
With nothing left in that line of inquiry, I hit him with the big question. “It sounds like it’s just a telephone call,” I ventured. “Why are you so anxious about it?”
He stopped like I’d thrown a bear trap on his plate. “Because I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen her before,” he admitted. He loosened his tie like he was trying to cheat the hangman, rolled his skinny shoulders slightly forward, mopped up egg yolks with a piece of toast and ate a little before he answered. “But I don’t know where, and it’s chewing me up inside.”
I ran through scenarios in my head: a con artist; a wronged party from an old case now seeking revenge; an illegitimate daughter, conceived on a bender or a backstage fling, waiting to reveal her identity until she was sure he was her Real Dad before she put the squeeze on him. For all of what Martin refused to talk about, I wondered how much
of it he even remembered. Heroin had got him fast and held him hard, haunting him even now. The track marks were long since gone, but there were scars on his soul that time would never heal.
“I could look into it,” I said. “Make the call, keep you out of it, just in case.” I couldn’t help but be protective of him. Somebody had to be, and he’d bounced me out of trouble plenty enough. I owed him one. Hell, I owed him a couple if we were really keeping score.
He waved me off. “Thanks for the offer,” he said. “But it’s my name on the door. I’ll make the call.”
He didn’t sound happy about it.
He paid the check, we said goodbye to Joan, and he drove us back to the office. He dialed the hotel number Ms Archwood had given me, putting the call on speaker. “Vanguard Hotel, how may I direct your call?”
“I’m looking to speak with a Lem Chesterfield,” he said.
The desk manager didn’t answer right away. “I’m sorry, sir, there’s no one here by the name,” he finally said.
An alias, perhaps? And why? I’d learned early on that the client could be just as shifty as whoever they wanted investigated, as if they were testing to see if we’d really put it all together. We always did. No sense trying to trick the brilliant mind of Martin Wade, Private Investigator.
“Did he check out recently?”
“No one has registered under that name,” he repeated. “Is there anything else I can assist you with?”
I knew that look. Something had just clicked inside Martin’s head. He ran the tip of his tongue across his upper lip and cleared his throat softly. “Maybe he’s registered under a different name,” he said. “Try Ron Carlock.”
“One moment, please.”
The phone began to ring. A man picked up. “Ron Carlock speaking.”
Martin went as white as a wedding dress. “Ron,” he said slowly. “It’s Martin.”
4
MARTIN
There are names you hope you never hear again. Voices you want to leave in the past. Nineteen years ago, another lifetime, one sometimes I imagined I dreamed. But unlike dreams, life has consequences. A dream can be forgotten. A life cannot be outrun.
The line got so quiet that I thought maybe Ron had hung up. I was hoping he would. He was the last person on this goddamn planet I wanted to hear from, now or ever. But after a moment, he spoke. “Martin,” he said softly. “It’s good to hear from you.”
The pieces were all coming together, almost too quickly for me to catch hold of. I should have known it was Ron the second I heard that name, the same name he used to check into hotels under. And that meant Janice Archwood was really Janie Carlock, Ron’s daughter. I could have kicked myself for not recognizing her. Now all grown up, she looked just like I remembered her mother, Sharon, used to look. But where did Archwood come from? Even that had the faintest taste of familiarity. “What are you doing in Perrine?” I asked.
“I came in to see some friends,” Ron said. “I didn’t know you lived here.”
“Those friends include Janie?” I said.
Ron didn’t respond right away. Valerie looked like she wanted to shrink out of the room. I wished I hadn’t put the call on speaker. I wished I’d never taken the case. She gestured to a legal tablet just past my left hip. I shook my head. No need to take notes. No need to have any record that any of this ever took place. “I just wanted to see my daughter,” he finally said. “Is that so wrong?”
“It is if she told you she needs a little space to think.”
“How are you involved in this?” Ron asked. “Why now, after all these years, do you even give a shit?”
“Because she hired me,” I replied. “She asked me to mediate, to tell you she needs a little time to respond to your offer.”
I was shaking, but I wasn’t sure if it was from surprise or rage or fear. Why had she lied to me? Did she even know who I was? I was always Basil to her, the middle name I used on stage, the name I left behind.
The life I left behind.
Ron let out a sound that was more a bark than a laugh. “Sure,” he croaked. “Sure, Martin, whatever you say.”
He hung up. I set my phone down as gently as a baby in a crib. “Care to fill me in on what that was about?” Valerie asked.
“Not especially,” I said, sinking into my chair. The room was spinning. Sweat was beading up all over my body like condensation on a cold beer. I had to hold it together long enough to get her out of the room so I could collapse into my own thoughts like a dying star. “Do me a favor and set up an appointment with Ms Archwood for tomorrow. I’m going to close out this case. We’ll give back her deposit and destroy all the records.”
The worst part wasn’t the lie. Lies were the core piece of my business – hell, I’d told
enough of them in my life to not take them personally. The worst part was how good it was to hear my partner’s voice, as though the last nineteen years had been dust, easily blown away by a whistle. No, I told myself. You put each other through hell. Do not go down that road again.
Valerie read me well enough not to argue with me. She left the room and through the half-opened door I could hear her on the phone with Janie. I opened up my laptop. Janie had mentioned last seeing Ron at her mother’s funeral. I did a quick search and sure enough, Sharon Lovette had died two years ago at her home in Santa Monica. Ovarian cancer, just shy of her fifty-first birthday. I wish I had known. I wish I had sent flowers. I wish I’d said a real goodbye nineteen years ago instead of just packing my piano into a U-Haul and disappearing to Minneapolis with a new phone number and no forwarding address. Like a fugitive. Like a coward.
Valerie knocked and let herself back in. “Ms Archwood will be in tomorrow at 11am,” she said, arranging herself in the blue chair, one foot slung over the arm. “Are you going to be OK?”
I wanted to tell her. She knew little fragments of my past – that I was in recovery, that I had been a musician – but I was always hesitant to let out too much of myself. Just like I made her cover her tattoos so she wouldn’t be recognizable in the field, I kept my own identifiers hidden. Anything that could hurt me. Anything that could be used against me somewhere down the line. “I’ll be fine,” I said, and changed the subject. “Plans for the evening?”
“Tacos at Topsy’s,” she said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been over there. Besides, I’m too tired to cook. You want to come with me? We can drink Dr Pepper and fill up the jukebox. I got a hook-up.”
I liked Topsy’s – Valerie’s aunt Gina booked good bands and we swapped stories from our previous lives as touring musicians, but tonight was the last night I wanted to spend toe-to-toe with temptation. “Think I’ll go to a meeting and call it an early night,” I said.
She did a quick tap-dance on her phone before I could even reach for mine. “There’s a 6pm at the First Presbyterian Church,” she said. “You could still make it. Or there’s a 6:30 tomorrow morning.”
I glanced at my watch. Time enough so that I could run home and get changed beforehand. Better than cutting my morning coffee short, and having to wait out a long evening. I lifted myself to standing once I was sure the shaking had settled. “You’ll close up?”
“Of course,” she replied with a decaffeinated smile. “Call me,” she added. “If you need anything.”
5
VALERIE
The best part about my day was always getting undressed at the end of it. I used to love showing off my tattoos, the full sleeves and ink on my thighs, but ever since Memphis I’d kept them all covered. I didn’t want to be remembered, didn’t want anyone to get the false impression that they knew me by the ink on my skin or the words I wrote. All of my work for High Wire had been published under “Staff Report” or, when absolutely necessary, the vague “VR Jacks.” Working for a PI was the perfect cover, a career where no one was supposed to see you or recollect your face when they did. There are some things you just have to disappear from. But that moment when I could close my door and admire my brother’s art always felt like the end of a long Halloween party, taking off a costume to reveal my true self once again.
Deacon had taken up tattooing right out of high school, apprenticing with a couple of award-winning parlors in Albany and Ithaca before coming back to Perrine to open up Arc Tattoo. He’d always been the more artistic of the two of us, illuminating his notebooks like historic manuscripts; test tubes and fire for chemistry, dancing bubble numbers in math, portraits of Shakespeare and Poe for English. And I was his willing canvas, traveling with him to expos and shows to stand at his booth in shorts and a tank top, skin bare and beautiful. You’re a nerd who never goes outside, he told me. Your pasty-white skin is perfect.
Luckily, the scars of Memphis had missed the date on my wrist, 7/13/94, the matching ink Deacon and I had, the day our parents died. But going twenty-four hours without proper medical treatment had left a puckered white line nearly six inches long, ...
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