All names, characters, places, and incidents in this publication are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Meter Maids Eat Their Young

© 2012 by EJ Knapp

ISBN: 978-0-9869871-8-2

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

For information regarding permission, email rebele@rebelepublishers.com, subject line: Permission.

First published by Rebel ePublishers 2012

Cover design by Mandie van der Merwe, Love & Sweat

Interior design by Caryatid Design

Chapter headings and title page graphics: © Can Stock Photo Inc. / Colecanstock

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I want to thank the Department of Parking and Traffic in San Francisco, California for towing my car the day after Thanksgiving. Despite the fact that 99.9% of the US population consider that day a holiday and, despite the fact there were less than a dozen vehicles in the entire financial district, you felt my little Fiat, tucked away on a remote back alley, constituted a threat to the smooth flow of traffic.  The germinal idea for this story is your doing.

To the real Tom Philo, whose web page Why Parking Meters Should Be Banned was instrumental in tying this story into the neat package I hope the readers will find it.  Any errors or exaggerations I introduced into Tom’s data are my doing.

To my Attack Cats: The Doubtful Guest, Mooch, Spook, Booth, The Beast, Feral-When-I-Wanna-Be and Puss Cat, and to Dinger, all in Kitty Heaven now.  Miss you guys.  I’ll be along one of these days, tasty treats in hand.

Should anyone recognize my semi-fictional city, all I can say is rearrangement in space and time was necessary.

To Denise Rehse Watson and to Albert. Also the old Harbor House gang. Have a Cuppa Joe on me.

Thanks must be extended to Barbra Annino, Linda Ford, Debbie Hefka, Gail Henigman, A. S. King and MJ Librie for reading various drafts of this story and offering their feedback and to the folks at Backspace for their support.

To Peggy Ford and Eric Ford for help with the Great Escape. To RJ, Susie, Michael and Jennifer, and Cory, Brad, Cameron and Austin, and to the whole Koleda Clan, just because.

Thanks to my most excellent editor Jayne Southern. Your critical eye made MM better than it was and your witty remarks kept me from screaming too long and loud about the changes. I still think ‘silently left the building’ was the better line, though.

And, as always, to Cindy Ford; friend, family, confidant.

This one’s for Debbie Hefka.  She knows why.

There are many forms of extortion used by governments throughout the world. There are many ways to get money from the weak. There are many ways to fool the unintelligent. The tactics range from immoral tax collecting organizations, to police forces, to tiny machines that one might believe allow a person to occupy a certain space for a certain amount of time. Tyranny is not always a bloody affair. It is not always shocking, sometimes it is quite common place and accepted, but it is still tyranny. And so it is for the example of tyranny known as parking meters.

Philosopher Stephan Pacheco

Pacheco Humility Foundation

www.LibertyCore.org

NEWS NEVER SLEEPS

Except for the half-dozen cats scattered about the king-sized bed, I was alone beneath the twisted sheets, deep in an uneasy dream. A gong struck and struck again, the reverberations echoing through the air like a cold wind that lifted me upward toward a starless sky and settled me down in a room aglow in predawn light. The beeper chirped on the bedside table. I reached over and turned it off without looking to see who it was. The page could only be from one person. I fumbled about for my cell phone, flipped it open and pushed the only speed-dial number set on it.

“A little early for a Sunday wake-up call, don’t you think?” I said when the connection was made.

“News never sleeps, Teller,” said Felice, her usual melodious voice muted and somber. My heart began to race.

“Bad news, I suspect.”

“For you especially, I’m afraid. Your friend Harrison de Whitt was found dead in the East River Monorail parking lot.”

I bolted up, scattering cats. Harrison? I’d had dinner with him two nights previous.

“When?” I said, swallowing hard. “How?”

“As to the when, approximately ten minutes ago,” she said. “As to the how, I assume you are asking how was he found and not how he died? I can answer the former but have no information regarding the latter.”

There was a long silence. I could hear a deep inward breath followed by a long exhalation.

“I’m sorry, Teller. That was a harsh way to answer your question. He was my friend as well.”

“I know, Felice, I know.”

“His body was discovered soon after most of the parking meters in the lot went up like Roman candles. I’m afraid I know nothing more, which is why I suggest you get there as quickly as possible.”

I rolled off the bed.

“I’m on it,” I said. “I’ll call as soon as I have something.”

I flipped the phone closed and went in search of clothes.

I dressed in what I could find in the dim glow of pre-dawn. I wasn’t ready for lights. I wasn’t ready for Harrison being dead.

In the kitchen, I poured food in the cat bowls, spilling most of it in my haste. There was a drip supply of fresh water but I checked it anyway, tripping and kicking it with my toe, splashing water across the floor. Cursing, I considered mopping it up but decided I didn’t have the time.

As I stepped out the front door it struck me that the light in the stairwell leading to the upstairs flat was out. The darkness gave me pause. That light burns 24/7, one of those low-watt forever bulbs and its being out meant something. As an investigative reporter, I’ve learned that a healthy dose of paranoia is a good defense mechanism.

Standing there, the dawning sun broke and shone through the balustrade, casting slanted shadows up the stairway, stirring up fragments of dream memory. For a moment I could smell a hint of L’Air du Temps in the air. But that wasn’t possible. I knew it wasn’t my boarder’s perfume. She wore a fruity blend of something I couldn’t quite distinguish.

I closed the door behind me and hurried to my car, that hint of L’Air du Temps following like a phantom.

METER MAIDS EAT THEIR YOUNG

Twenty minutes later I was sliding the Altima into a parking space a few feet from the fluttering yellow caution tape the police had set up across River Avenue. I sat for a moment, listening to Lyle Lovett lamenting about having two wives and the sheriff on his tail. As I dug around in the center console for some change to feed the meter, a homeless guy rapped on my window. I grabbed a couple of extra quarters, got out the car, handed him a buck in change and used the rest to avoid a ticket.

Parking enforcement was brutal in this town. Give no quarter – ask for none, was their motto. Had they been at the Alamo, Santa Anna and his bunch wouldn’t have made it close without a pocket full of pesos.

As I slipped coins into the slot, I wondered if it was true that meter maids eat their young. Hundreds of what I thought of as lifeless automatons cruised the city streets in blue and white Cushman carts seeking prey. Merciless, unafraid: Writing ticket after ticket with the cool efficiency of a Texas executioner. Once, I saw a meter maid write a ticket on another meter maid’s cart! Now that’s brutal.

Chaos reigned as I crested the hill and looked down on the monorail parking lot. Set in a deep depression in the landscape, it looked like a wok covered in grass and asphalt, with the Grecian-style Monorail Station as its handle. Those homeless not fortunate enough to escape when the police arrived were sitting in a tight knot off to one side of the lot, guarded by several cops.

There were a hundred parking meters in all in the lot, over half of them melted and still smouldering, reminding me of the candles we used to burn in empty Mateus bottles back in the sixties. The line of scorched meters ended where the greatest concentration of cops were milling about. My heart did a little two-step when I spotted the tarp in the middle of a cordoned-off space near the far end of the lot. It looked like a crumpled yellow daisy tossed onto a field of oil.

The CSI van was on the scene, the guys in white coveralls surfing the immediate area for clues. As I made my way down the hill, I spotted the coroner’s van rolling into the lot. On the far side of the hill, the TV vans were setting up their antennae. Three cops were holding the reporters back a good distance away from the scene. If I headed down there, I knew I’d be stopped. Those CSI folks are very possessive of their crime scenes.

I turned and glanced over at the Dazzler Donut shop. I wasn’t interested in buying anything, not that they’d be open this early anyway. I had my Peet’s coffee in a metal thermos clipped to my belt, so life was good. My interest was the donut shop doorway, which was the preferred nighttime refuge of a young, homeless woman I’d met on my first day back in town. If she wasn’t too tweaked, she may have seen something. I headed in that direction.

No sign of her. The doorway smelled of donuts and stale sweat and was lined with a layer of cardboard boxes, grease-stained and picked at; ragged pieces littered about. I felt my heart fall through an old trapdoor when I spotted a pint bottle of Jack Daniels sitting in the corner. Need scratched at my insides. You’d think after two years that need would disappear, or at least diminish. Fat chance. Buster Booze, as I’ve named my little craving, is always somewhere about, hiding in the shadows, turning up at unexpected times to whisper in my ear or give me a swift kick in the ass.

I started going through the other stuff Skeeter left behind. A stained, dog-eared paperback, its cover missing, lay next to the door alongside an empty book of matches. I picked it up, looked at the spine. Homeboy, by Seth Morgan. I felt a prick of envy. He’d had his book published. I’d been working on mine for the better part of ten years and all I’d managed was a stack of rejection letters thick as a New York phone book. Published, yeah. And then he’d gone off and splatted himself against a wall on his Harley. That would be my kind of luck.

Beneath a corner of the cardboard I found a crumpled Marlboro pack with three twisted cigarettes and half a dozen butts inside. I considered this. She must have left in a hurry to leave the booze and cigarettes behind. And the book.  Skeeter was a voracious reader and books cost money.

Peering back over my shoulder at the flickering lights of the patrol cars down in the lot, I wondered if she had been busted. No. Had she been, her sleeping bag and that huge backpack she lived out of would still be here. Reluctantly, I picked up the whiskey and the cigarettes and slipped them into the pocket of my coat, along with the book. I had a good idea where she might be.

As I stepped out the doorway, I spotted a figure walking along the edge of the grass, heading toward the scene in the parking lot. It was Jasmine, or Jaz as she preferred to be called. Seeing her made me vaguely uncomfortable. Jaz makes my heart do things I don’t want it to do.

Like beat faster.

Generally I’m attracted to a woman for about as long as it takes to play out our entire relationship in my head. About fifteen seconds from heady beginning to crash-and-burn end is the usual time it takes. I’ve known Jaz now since I returned to town four months ago and still my insides turn to jelly whenever she’s around. Her being my boarder complicates the matter. Her being a lesbian complicates it more, though it’s probably the key to why I’m still attracted to her. It’s safe being drawn to what you can’t have.

When I called out to her, she jumped like a rabbit hearing the screech of an owl. As she turned, I noticed how pale she was, saw the dark circles beneath her eyes.

“You okay, Jaz?” I said as she drew near.

“Okay? Uh, yeah, I guess. Late night, you know. Early call this morning.” She turned and looked back over her shoulder. “I, uh, had no idea I’d be walking into a murder scene.”

“You’ve heard, then?” I said. “Who they found?”

“Yeah. The department called, told me about the meters, needed me to come and check out the damage. They didn’t say anything about this.”

I flinched as I heard the reporter in me ask the next question. “How did you find out who was killed?”

“Who? What do you mean? On the radio, I guess. On the way over here.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Do? My job, Teller. I’m going to do my job. Check out the damage. Report back. Get a crew down here to fix things. Why don’t you get out of my face and go do yours? Go gather up the usual suspects and find out what’s going on.”

She turned and walked off. I watched her walk away, the sway of her hips, the way her hair swept across her back. Just like someone else I knew long ago; another woman, another look, another flash of temper. A shiver ran up my back. Too many ghosts in this town.

And it was scary how much Jaz reminded me of Robyn, the number one ghost of all.

VAMPS ON BIKES

Despite the quarters I had fed the meter, despite the press card that lay on the dash, despite the presence of twenty uniformed police in an area that was – to anyone with a functioning brain – a crime scene, there was a parking ticket tucked beneath the wiper when I returned to the Altima. That there was a ticket fluttering beneath the wiper of the cop car parked in front of mine did not in any way diminish my anger.

I considered ripping the ticket to tiny shreds and scattering it to the wind but the image of my car booted and towed stayed my hand. I crumpled it up instead and tossed it on the floor, knowing I’d pay the thing before the week was out no matter how much it pained me to do so. Moments later, Amy Lee wailing from the Bose speakers, I was cruising up Pine Street, past the oldest construction site in town.

I pulled the Altima over to the curb and killed Amy mid breath. No more, indeed. I sat there a moment, thumbing through my notes, trying to decide the best way to approach Skeeter. A rumble of exhaust made me look up. An SUV, its right front fender crumpled, cruised slowly up the street, nearly stopping when it pulled alongside. The windows were darkened, reflecting a distorted image of me staring back at myself. I was about to roll down my window when it sped off with a squeal of tires.

Stepping from my car, I watched the SUV turn the corner and disappear.  Tourist, I thought and dismissed it. With a doubtful sigh, I noted the parking sign indicated that feeding the meter was not necessary on Sunday. I keyed the alarm on the car and walked across the street. It took me several minutes to find a loose board in the rickety fence that surrounded the site. Squeezing past it, I managed to slide down a steep slope of hard-packed earth and stone without killing myself. No mean feat at my age.

Over the years the site had become a combination pissoir and dumping ground. Night Train, Thunderbird and Wild Irish Rose bottles littered the ground alongside empty Sterno cans. An old mattress floated in a pool of algae-coated water. Bald tires, several battered washing machines and the back end of an ancient pickup truck were scattered about. The place smelled like an overripe septic tank.

Brushing the dirt from my pants and jacket, I made my way to the old construction shack. Weather-beaten, the unpainted wood the color of moths’ wings, the windows boarded over and shards of glass glittering on the ground beneath them. I began banging on the door.

“C’mon, Skeeter,” I shouted. “I know you’re in there.”

“Teller?” came a tiny voice.

“Yeah, it’s me. Open up the door, will ya? We need to talk.” I heard her fumbling around, heard the sound of coins being scooped up and then the door swung inward. I stepped into the gloom.

“What do you want?” she said. “Got a cigarette?”

I pulled the book, whiskey, and crumpled Marlboro pack, from the pocket of my coat and handed it to her. Her eyes lit up as she grabbed them from my hand.

“You’re sweet, Teller,” she said. She cocked her head and gave me a look that tried hard for schoolgirl coy. “You wanna mess around a little?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered. “You’re, uh, a little too young for me. I just wanted to ask you about what happened out by the monorail this morning.”

“What makes you think I was there?” she said, the coyness replaced with caution.

Incredulous, I looked at her, first staring at the whiskey bottle, then the cigarette in her hand and finally at the bulges in her coat pockets. “Duh!” I said.

“Oh.” She blushed. “Yeah. I guess I was there, huh?”

“Either that or you robbed someone’s piggy bank,” I said.

“I didn’t rob nuthin’,” she said, anger replacing the caution. This was one volatile little lady.

“I didn’t say that, Skeeter,” I said, holding up my hand to fend off the tirade I saw leap into her eyes. “I don’t care about the money or how you got it. I just want to know if you saw anything.”

Anger damped down into sullen, jittery drunk again. “Saw a car in the lot and then those meters went poof,” she said.

“A car?”

“Yeah, one of those big ones that families think are so safe.”

“An SUV?”

“Whatever. Circled the lot once, stopped and then took off again like a bat out of hell. I only noticed cuz no one ever drives in there at night. The train station is closed so why would you? And cuz one light was dimmer than the other and pointed down at the ground.”

“Dimmer?”

“Yeah. The fender was all smashed up.”

I thought about the SUV that had pulled up alongside me just moments before.  Coincidence?  Never had much love for coincidences.

“After that’s when the vampire showed up,” she said, pulling me out from my thoughts.

“Pardon me?”

“A vampire, Teller. You know: Cloaks. Fangs. Sucks blood.”

“A vampire showed up?”

“Yeah,” she said, her excitement evident. “It was like something out of one of those Wes Craven movies. You’ve seen those, right? It was all misty and formless, shimmering in the dark, a Vamp on a bike.”

“A bicycle?”

“Yeah. Bet you never saw anything like that before, huh? She parked her bike and walked down to the meters, touching each one as she passed. Then I heard her shriek and she took off. Right after that, the meters went up in flames and all those coins started dropping.”

“She?”

“Yeah. It was a girl vampire.”

“How would you know that?” I said.

This time she gave me the ‘duh!’ look.

I decided not to pursue it. She was hitting the Jack pretty hard now and her eyes were beginning to droop. I made a mental note to check back with her later.

Despite the pocketful of change she had, I gave her twenty dollars for the information and bid her good-bye. She halfheartedly tried to seduce me again and I wholeheartedly let her down gently. Fifteen minutes and a long, slippery climb later, I was breathing fresh air and heading back to the park.

LIKE A BAD PENNY

The park was beginning to fill: Joggers, early morning couples out for a stroll, a few tourists getting an early start on the day. It was hard to imagine a death had happened here just hours before. My heart did a little bump and grind at the thought. It was going to be hard maintaining an emotional distance on this one.

A group of parking enforcement protesters had gathered near the Monorail Station. I noticed their numbers were growing. There were three times as many now as there had been a month ago. Several of them were handing out leaflets and I grabbed one, looking it over as I walked. Unlike the previous ones, which had been hand scrawled, these were professionally printed. Someone had worked very hard this morning.

‘Viva La Mangler!’ was emblazoned across the top in bold, red letters. Below that, in slightly smaller though no less impressive letters, was ‘No Meters for the Monorail!’ A short diatribe on why parking meters should be banned followed and, at the bottom of the page, in a much smaller font, the acronym, CARPE. No phone number, no address, no identifying marks. I almost threw it away. I could feel my focus shifting from the Mangler to the murder but a little voice was asking if they might be part and parcel?

The logical assumption would be that Harrison had caught the Mangler and the Mangler had killed him. But you know what they say about assumptions, and every reporter’s instinct I had questioned that one. I folded the flyer and stuck it in my pocket. I had tried to follow up on this group before with no success.  With the growing strength of this movement, it seemed like a good time to try again.

Back in the parking lot, the CSI van was gone, as were most of the cops and Harrison’s body. There was a crew replacing the melted meters. Life goes on. I was about to turn away when I spotted a familiar figure standing at the edge of the parking lot. From where I stood I could almost see the sharp creases in his freshly-pressed uniform. He stood like a flagpole, hands on his hips, his hat perfectly settled on his head as he surveyed the scene. I walked down the hill and ducked under the yellow tape.

“Marion,” I said.

“Like a bad penny,” he said, turning to face me. “I knew you’d turn up sooner or later.”

“It’s what I do, Marion,” I said. “Was it the Mangler?”

He looked at me with those hard blue eyes, the kind of stare that makes your heart feel like it is being squeezed.

“Harrison wasn’t killed here,” he said. “CSI boys confirmed that. No blood splatter. Not much blood at all. Whoever did it tried to make it look like a mugging. Took his wallet but left that pinkie ring of his.”

“The one his mom left him, with the emerald surrounded by diamonds? That was sloppy.”

“Yeah.” He turned back to survey the scene.

“Prelim coroner’s report confirms what the CSI boys found,” he continued after a long silence. “I’ll have the full autopsy report tomorrow. But there’s no doubt he was killed somewhere else, sometime late last night and his body dumped here. Probably before your Mangler showed up.”

“Is that on the record or off?” I said.

“If you don’t use it, someone else will.”

I thought about the story Skeeter had told me, about the car that cruised the parking lot before the meters went up like Roman candles. Shocked as I was to have the thought, I decided to tell Marion what I knew.

“That checks with what I’ve heard,” I said.

He swiveled around so fast I could feel the wind muss my hair. “You found a witness?”

“Of sorts,” I said. “Not terribly reliable. She’s a meth-head, pretty tweaked when it went down. Her name is Skeeter. She hangs in the Dazzler Donut doorway most nights. Claims she saw the whole thing. Saw a car, an SUV she claims, no make, model or color other than dark; but she did say the right front fender was crumpled and one headlight was dimmer than the other.”

I considered giving him the description of the SUV that had pulled up alongside me but I wasn’t yet sure there was a connection.

“Says it circled the lot,” I continued.  “Stopped for a couple of minutes and then sped off. Roughly an hour later she saw the Mangler arrive and a few moments after that the meters went off; she heard the coins dropping and came down to collect her share and split when the cops came.”

“Where can I find her now?”

“Hard to say. You know that old construction site over on Pine? She was there half an hour ago. She may well be gone by now.”

He pulled the radio from his Sam Browne belt, spoke a few sharp words and clipped it back. He gave me that cold stare again and I stepped back.

“Why aren’t you stonewalling me on this, Teller?” he said.

“Why are you being so forthcoming with the facts?”

He turned away again and stared out across the parking lot. “He was my friend, Teller.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. He was mine, too.”

THEY CALL ME TELLER

They call me Teller.

That’s my name and that’s my byline. I am never Charles, my first name, and never, ever, Charlie, a moniker I despise. Chuck makes me wince as though a dentist were at my teeth. Few people even know my middle name, Anderson, so I rarely have to deal with it or any variation like Andy. Years ago, there were those who called me Cat, but it’s only on those rare occasions when I run into one of the old gang that I hear that sobriquet.

There was a time when Marion and I were tight, as close as two boys could be without being joined at the hip. It was an odd pairing: Marion so serious, so forward directed, me the practical joke on my parents and the practical joker in life. Every action Marion made was focused on growing up while I embraced a Peter Pan philosophy of wanting always to remain a boy.

When Harrison moved in across the street, he folded into our twosome as if he’d been born to it, bridging the gap between us; as much a practical joker as me and as driven to grow up as Marion. We wreaked havoc with our parents, our teachers, our fellow classmates, gladly paying the price of groundings, after-school detentions and fisticuffs amongst our peers.

Marion’s father, a bomber pilot, had been shot down and captured by the communists early in the Korean conflict. Tortured for two years in a North Korea prison camp, he and several other Air Force personnel had been trotted out near the end of the conflict and filmed, confessing to the use of biological warfare, apologizing to the North Korean people, and denouncing the United States. This film ended up making the newsreel rounds of movie theaters all over America.

Few understand what torture can do to a person, to their psyche, their soul. He came home a broken man, to the ostracization and ridicule of his former friends and neighbors. Long after the town moved on to other things, other prejudices and fears, other things to ostracize and ridicule, he fought the nightmares of his imprisonment, the loneliness of rejection, crawling further and further into an endless line of bottles until one day, shortly after Marion’s tenth birthday, he hanged himself in the basement of his home.

Marion’s mother, shy and withdrawn to begin with, never recovered. She retreated deep within herself, letting go of all the things that make one human, letting them slide from her like water off greased glass. She would often be found naked in the back yard of her home, hanging up clothes that hadn’t been washed, or wandering about town, dressed in nightgown and slippers, calling for her husband or discussing world events with people no one else could see. Shortly before Marion’s fourteenth birthday, the state had her committed to the asylum at Eloise.

It was during this period that our threesome began to fall apart. The seriousness Marion had wrapped himself in became a life preserver he clung to like a drowning man. When his mother was committed and he was placed in foster care, it widened the gap between us even more.

As he had done with our disparate personalities, Harrison was able to bridge the gap of our separation, something I was never able to do. At seventeen, Marion went off to a different war while Harrison and I took a kiddie cruise on a Navy ship. We came back with our Vietnam era service patch. Marion came back with two purple hearts, the Navy Cross and the Medal of Honor.

After college, Harrison went into politics while I began working at the newspaper. Marion hopped on the fast track at the police department. Though Harrison continued to buddy with both of us, the separation between Marion and me grew into antagonism.

As a reporter, I was always coming into contact with the police and, over time, I found myself constantly yanking Marion’s chain. Maybe I was pissed at him for the abandonment I felt. Maybe hurt as well that he continued his friendship with Harrison while forsaking me. Whatever the case that antagonism grew, until it was a barrier neither of us could surmount.

A month past my thirty-second birthday, I saved Marion’s life by putting all six rounds from his .44 into a guy named Willy T, a man determined to kill us both for a past transgression which only Marion and I knew the nature of. Marion was never comfortable with that fact, nor has he ever thanked me; more fuel on the fire that separated us. Two years after that went down I left this town; nightmares, incredible migraine headaches, and the burden of a broken love affair following in my wake like bad weather.

Leaving Marion to his solitary vigil, I circled the parking lot, interviewed a couple of cops, some of the guys replacing the meters, and the few remaining homeless, which yielded nothing for my efforts. Frustrated, I walked off into the thick woods and down to the river’s edge, found a sandy clearing and sat down. I had less than a half page of notes and it was a tiny notebook. I tried to think of how I would fill the column space with what little I had. I was soon lost in watching the greenish-brown water pass. Water spiders were skimming across the surface close to the shore. The air was damp and cool and smelled of mud and fish.

Robyn and I had spent many an hour walking the trails that followed the winding river. We may well have made love in this very spot. That was back when all this was more woods than park, tangled and overgrown and littered with broken glass and old condoms. The idea of a gigantic park complete with concession stands, playing fields, monuments no one knew the meaning of, an elaborate fountain, and a monorail system connecting the whole thing from downtown out to the hot springs, hadn’t even been a dim thought in some council member’s mind.

As I stared at the water, lost in thought, a beer bottle, three-quarters submerged, floated by, the sun glinting like sharp knives off the green glass, cutting open that hole in my chest again.  I could hear Buster whispering in my ear, telling me how good one would feel, cold and deliquescing in my hand, the sharp, hoppy taste of it biting my tongue. I tore my eyes away, blew air from my lungs, cursing Buster for his persistence.  Looking up at the bright blue sky, I began to recite the Serenity Prayer.

What the hell was I doing back in this town? Was it only because HL had asked me to come back to the paper? When I had first left town, he had called periodically, partly out of friendship, partly to inquire if I wanted my old job back. I had always found some excuse to refuse his offer. I’d had a good job in Seattle. True, being newly sober in a town where everyone I knew was a drunk had its rough moments, but I was hanging in there.

Over the years, the number of calls remained the same but the reminders that my old job was still available stopped. Until six months ago, when they started up again. Had he been more insistent with these last requests? There were moments when it felt as if he were pleading with me to return.

Or maybe it was just my being sober after so many years that made me read it that way. Sober made the world look different. It was brighter, for one thing, the thoughts clearer. Ambition returned. Desire. Maybe even hope. But, in many ways, it was also a more dangerous place to be.

All the anxiety dampened by the alcohol returned. Feelings long submerged in amber began to stretch and make their presence known. Ambition, desire, hope: These are double edged swords which cut deeply if not handled well.

His last call had coincided with the death of my Uncle Burt. Offering his condolences he had also, once again, offered me my old job and at a salary any sane man would have grabbed in a heartbeat. My uncle had left me his house: A house free and clear of mortgage payments. Add to that a salary double what I was earning and the temptation was all but overwhelming. Yet still I’d hesitated.

I knew the lawyer for the estate would gladly have put the house on the market for a small percentage without me ever coming within a thousand miles of this town. I could have lived on that money for a couple of years, maybe quit my job, or taken leave of absence, finish the damn novel. Something.

In the end, I had accepted his offer. Seattle, once a town of magic for me, had grown cold and lonely once the amber dreams had cleared away. And so I returned to this place, where every move I made had me running smack into some memory I didn’t want to face. In too many ways, this was worse than being in a town full of drunks.

I stood up, shook my head, slipped the notebook into my pocket and began trudging back up the hill to my car. A little voice in my head was telling me I was long overdue for a meeting. It sounded chipper and bright that voice. Not at all condescending or pushy; as if going to a meeting was the equivalent of winning the Pulitzer.

I hated that voice. Hated it for being so cheerful and encouraging.

Hated it for being right.

SEVERAL BRICKS SHORT OF A FULL LOAD

As I crested the hill, I spotted another figure from my past. Old Morris was sitting on a bench, rolling a ball toward a scrolled, ornate wooden box. Hard to believe he was still alive. I shivered a bit, watching him wave his hand limply, his lips moving. I knew he was talking to his dog. Just as I knew the ashes of that dog, and all the ones that had preceded it, were contained in that box.

“Hey, Morris,” I said, seating myself on the far end of the bench. The air was heavy with the scent of Old Spice, liniment and mothballs. I glanced over at the box. The carving on the side showed a large, thick-haired dog, head high, ears erect, its bushy tail curled over its back. I turned back to him. “How’s Neb?” I said.

“Nebuchadnezzer, Shadrack, Meshach, Abednego, and the Figure in the Fiery Furnace, sir,” he said. He looked over at me, a toothy grin breaking his seamed face. “But Neb is as fine a handle as any on such a beautiful day as this.”

His smile widened, a hint of recognition sparkled in his pale blue eyes. “I know you, young sir,” he said. “You write for our local paper and a fine gift for words you have indeed. I’ve missed them in your long absence, though I have recently noticed their return. Have you come to ask me of the morning’s festival?”

“Festival?” I said, flattered that he both remembered me and liked my writing.

“Yes, indeed! Roman candles. Quite a few of them. And glorious they were but for the smoke and the awful stench. I’m sure that had some negative consequences for the environment. It certainly made poor Nebuchadnezzer sneeze.”

I glanced at the box and back at Morris, feeling a shiver roll up my spine. “Did you see anything else? A car in the parking lot, perhaps? Or maybe notice who set off the, uh, Roman candles?”

His eyes glittered and he gave me a sly wink. “’Twasn’t a who,” he said and smiled. “’Twas a what.”

He leaned close to me. I could smell the peppermint on his breath.

“Can’t say I remember a car. An unlikely event that time of night anyway. But a Dementor, from those Harry Potter books? That you would remember.”

He tilted his head toward the heavens, his eyes misty and unfocused, his breathing deep. “Oh, I do so enjoy those stories.” He sighed.

I waited, knowing he would come back from whichever memory his ancient mind flirted with.

“Nebuchadnezzer likes them too,” he said at last. “Though we can no longer read them ourselves. The good Sisters are gracious enough to supply us with those Books-on-Tape editions. Quite enjoyable to listen to.”

“A Dementor?” I said, turning him back to the subject.

“Well …” He shrugged. “Not really, I suppose. That is fiction, after all. But it looked like what I imagine one would look like. Gliding down the dark street, cloaked and hooded. Tall, it was, very tall. And willowy. It touched each candle in passing and they burst into glorious fire. It was a real treat.”

“Did you see where it went?” I said.

He considered my question, scanning the park. “It stopped, not quite finished with its task. It shrieked, I believe, and glided quite fast up the hill. Mounted a two-wheeled vehicle just there,” he said, pointing toward the monorail station. “Rode off in that direction.” He swept his arm toward the north end of the park.

I looked off in the direction he was pointing. I was about to ask him if he’d seen anything else when he stood up and pulled a long, well-worn purple leash from the pocket of his coat.

“It is time for us to depart, young sir,” he said, moving toward the skateboard, the leash dangling from his hand. “The sun will be hitting its zenith soon and Nebuchadnezzer is prone to heat stroke.”

He attached the leash to an eye-hook on the front end of the skateboard, retrieved the ball from beneath the wheels and began walking away, the skateboard trailing behind him, bumping over the thick grass.

“You have a good day, young sir,” he called back over his shoulder.

“And you and Neb as well,” I called back to him.

As he disappeared over the hill, I considered his take on the morning’s activities. I had to admit that the Dementor thing was an interesting observation; at least as good as a vampire, if not more original. Tall; willowy; rode off on a bicycle. Sort of matched Skeeter’s description, minus the gender, as did the abrupt departure.  The shriek. Could the Mangler have stumbled across Harrison’s body?

I checked my notes, flipping back over several pages. A tall, dark figure, wearing a cape, had been seen outside the courthouse parking structure two weeks earlier, shortly before the second set of parking meters installed there had their circuits fired. Count Dracula that time. The source had been about as reliable as Morris and Skeeter: old Shotgun Sam, the town Sterno freak. Why was it the only witnesses to the Meter Mangler’s escapades seemed to be several bricks short of a full load?

I made a note to look up Sam, have another talk with him, maybe when the social security checks came out and he stepped off the Squeeze platform and boarded the Night Train.  Squeeze – Sterno stuffed in an old sock and twisted until the clear liquid ran – was a rage-filled aperitif.  I’ve heard it said the grungier the sock the better the taste.  Not something I’d want to test for myself.

There wasn’t a ticket on the Altima when I got back to it. Wonder of wonders as I had forgotten to feed the meter. Though I try to stay objective in my journalistic work, as it was beginning to look as if the Mangler had nothing to do with Harrison’s death, I was back to secretly rooting for him. Now if I could only figure out why he was doing what he was doing. Shaking my head, I started up the car and was about to pull away when I spotted something that made me pause.

A dark-colored SUV was cresting the hill about a hundred yards away.  When the crumpled fender on the passenger side came into view, I clicked the door lock and ducked down in the seat.  The rumble of the exhaust drew closer, stopped.  The SUV idled alongside me for a moment and then moved on, the sound of the exhaust diminishing as it drew farther away.  When I could no longer hear it, I sat up, shifted position, noted the license number and watched as it rolled to the bottom of the hill and turned away, in the opposite direction to the Monorail Station.

Twice in one day.  Definitely not a coincidence.

Starting up the car, I pulled out and made my slow way home, phoning in the story, such as it was, to Felice.  When I tried to reach Marion, I was told he was unavailable.  They kicked me over to voicemail and I left him a message, giving him the license number and a better description of the SUV.  I debated withholding the fact I had seen the car earlier in the day, out by the construction site but decided against it.  It would piss him off that I’d held it back at all, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about that now.

Downtown was coming alive by the time I reached it and already the traffic was growing thick. A smaller group of protestors than I’d seen in the park had gathered on the steps of the Admin building. They were carrying signs and handing out leaflets to anyone who would take them. I noticed a lot of people reading them as they strolled down the street.

The courthouse parking garage meters had started the protest. The Department of Parking Enforcement had thrown fuel on the small flame when they installed meters around the park and at the Monorail station. When the Meter Mangler fried the new electronic meters at the garage, there had been a full-blown, spontaneous celebration the following day. The DPE immediately installed new meters, and despite the two night guards stationed at the garage, the Mangler fried those a week later.

That had been my first encounter with CARPE. I had tried to find out who started the group, who the leader was, if there was an office and where it might be located; those I talked to either didn’t know or were holding back.

Through one of Felice’s police contacts, I discovered how the Mangler had managed to skirt the guards: Pizza laced with Rohypnol. Interviewing the guards hadn’t gained me much. One couldn’t even remember eating a pizza, while all the other one gave me was a vague description of a tall, willowy guy in a long trench coat, wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, delivering the pizza and telling them it was from the department. Luckily, he also remembered the name of the pizza place.

There, I met Vera Dietz, the young lady who had taken the call that night. She remembered it because the police had interrogated her for several hours over the incident. Even if they hadn’t come, she said, she would have remembered it. The guy who called had sounded a lot like James Earl Jones, she claimed, and he wanted the pizza delivered to the security desk at the Admin building, which she had done. She couldn’t give me a good description of who paid for it but assured me the guy didn’t look at all like James Earl Jones.James Earl Jones was the voice of Darth Vader.

As the news spread about the Monorail meters, the protesters were gathering for yet another celebration. A news van pulled up as I was passing by. Making a mental note to check out CARPE again, I turned down a side street to avoid the slowing traffic. A moment later I pulled into my driveway.

TOSSING CATNIP BAGS AT KITTY GHOSTS

In the kitchen, I poured the last of the coffee from the French Press and set the mug in the microwave. While it irradiated, I rummaged through the junk drawer until I found the list of meeting times and places. Just my luck, there was one that evening at the church down the street from my house. So much for finding an excuse to put it off again. Higher Power works in mysterious ways.

The microwave dinged. I shoved the papers back in the drawer and slammed it shut, grabbed the cup of coffee, added some Stevia and milk, and headed toward the front of the house.

Halfway through the living room I noticed the call light was blinking on the answering machine. I hate phones in general, and landlines in particular, but it came with the house and I’d never shut it down. I did put an answering machine on it to fend off the telemarketers. I’m glad now I kept it. Somehow the Meter Mangler had found the number and had been leaving me cryptic little bits of information and egging me on. He was using a synthesized voice that sounded a lot like Darth Vader with a head cold. Or James Earl Jones with a head cold.

I pushed ‘rewind’. The first two messages were for a backyard pool and a life insurance policy I could take out despite my advancing years. I deleted those. The last was from the Mangler.

“I did not kill Harrison de Whitt. Find the answer to why I must exist and you’ll find the answer to who killed him. Follow the money, Teller. It’s always about the money.”

I played the tape three times and then popped the tape out and put in a fresh one. Follow the money. That was the overriding scheme of the Watergate affair. What the hell could it mean here? Follow the money? What money?

Shaking my head, I walked out onto the porch and found Jaz sitting in one of the chairs.

“Teller,” she said.

“Jaz.”

“Look, Teller, I’m sorry for the way I acted this morning. It was out of line. I was just … just stressed out and I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and then that early morning call and finding out Harrison de Whitt had been murdered. I’m just really sorry. I know he was your friend.”

“You knew him, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah, a little,” she said, looking away as she said it. Skeeter came to mind, and her insistence the vampire was a girl.

“He was a council member and a major pain in the ass for my boss,” she continued. “Always a good thing as far as I’m concerned.”

“Yeah, I knew the DPE was on his radar screen but he was keeping it close to the bone. Wouldn’t tell me what it was about, even off the record. Said he wasn’t ready for the news to break,” I said.

“Do you think the Mangler killed him?”

I debated telling her what Marion had told me and decided it couldn’t hurt. The news would come out sooner or later anyway. “Not according to the CSI guys. Harrison was killed somewhere else and his body dumped in the parking lot as much as an hour before the Mangler even showed up. At the moment, there’s no official connection between the Mangler and Harrison’s death.”

“And unofficially?” she said.

“I’m keeping an open mind about that at the moment.”

I sipped the coffee, thinking about Harrison, not yet feeling the loss I knew would come, and come with a vengeance. Staring out the window at the playground across the street, I spotted a homeless guy passed out on the sidewalk, lying up against the fence. Shabby, food-stained brown coat, black watchman’s cap over scraggly, unwashed hair, he looked an awful lot like the guy who had hit me for change back at the park.

I turned my attention to a couple of kids in the playground. Two girls in pigtails: One swinging, the other pushing. A little boy in short pants spinning himself dizzy on the go-round. A tramp passed out on some drug or another, children spinning themselves silly. What was there about human nature that makes us want to find any way possible to alter our reality?

“Did I ever tell you I lived in this house for almost a year when my Uncle Burt was in Europe?”

“No, you never mentioned that. What made you think of it?”

“The park across the street. Robyn and I used to sneak over there at night, swing on the swings, spin ourselves senseless on that go-round.”

I turned to look at her. Her face had turned dark and serious.

“Look, Teller,” she said, “and please don’t take this wrong, okay? I’ve only known you a couple of months, and I like you. I really do. Even though you are a man. But, from the stories you tell, one would think the five years you spent with her were the only five years you lived on this planet.”

Her words pulled me up short. I stared at her for a long moment trying to decipher the feelings tumbling through me. It wasn’t so much that I felt hurt, more like … exposed, jolted into some sort of confrontation with the disjointed thoughts that had been plaguing me since returning. I turned my head away and stared out through the screened windows, watching the kids play in the playground across the street.

“You know, Jaz,” I said, turning back to her, “there are moments when I feel those five years were the only ones I’ve lived on this planet. Feeling alive, anyway. All the years since feel as though I’ve just been going through the motions.”

I guess my voice cracked when I said it. I’m not good at sugar-coating my emotions.

Her expression turned to one of concern. Pulling her legs from the porch rail, she leaned forward and touched my knee lightly with the tips of her fingers. “I’m sorry, Teller. I didn’t mean—”

“Not to worry, Jaz,” I said, brushing away her apology and her hand. “You didn’t hurt my feelings.” I stood up from my chair. “Hell, you’re probably right. Look, I should go feed the felines before they do something drastic. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Teller—”

I waved her off and slipped into the house. Closing the door, I leaned against it and stared up at the ceiling. Back in the Robyn Zone again. Jesus, this was getting old. There were tears in my eyes. My heart was thumping in my chest. And oh how I wanted something hard and harsh with a real kick to bring me down to earth. I started reciting the Serenity Prayer in my head, over and over, the words blurring together. A minute passed. Two. My heart started to slow. I pushed myself from the door and made my way to the kitchen.

I made a production of washing the cats’ bowls, lingering over the stacked cans of food in the utility room, trying to guess which flavor would be just the right one to please everyone. An impossible task, of course. Cats are never pleased. But the narrowing of focus, the concentration, brought me back into myself.

What the hell had just happened? We had talked of Robyn before, but I hadn’t felt it had dominated our conversations. I tried to remember what I’d told her. There had been the time Robyn had been accused of killing a disco singer. And the time I’d been accused of killing an old nemesis. I was pretty sure I hadn’t told her the story of what went down that night with Willy T and Marion. I didn’t talk about that to anyone.

It was just that Jaz was such an easy person to talk to or maybe I just needed to talk. But our conversations hadn’t been all Robyn, had they? I’d been back in town four months and the border between reality and the Robyn Zone was wearing thinner with each passing day. It was driving me crazy, but I wrote it off as understandable considering that every time I turned around, I was running into some memory of her and me. Probably why I hadn’t yet gone out of my way to look up any of the old gang that might be still around.

When I stepped back into the kitchen, the cats were milling about. The neurologically-damaged Doubtful Guest wove right-hand circles in and out my feet as I made my way to the counter. Mooch sat in the corner, doe-eyed and ready to run at the slightest sudden move. Spook started yowling. The Beast jumped up on the counter, eyeing my shoulder, but I skirted away before he could make the leap. Booth eyed me from the doorway of my bedroom, while Feral-When-I-Wanna-Be sat patiently in the shadows of the utility room. Puss Cat scampered in from the living room, scaring Mooch who disappeared in a black flash.

I stood in the middle of the room, shaking. Fifty-something and this was all the family I had. My cats outnumbered my friends. How had that happened? Would I end up stuffing their cremated remains in a wooden box, taking over Morris’s place on a sunny bench in the park, tossing catnip bags at kitty ghosts?

Damn, that was a scary thought.

I put the food into bowls and the bowls set out in various places throughout the kitchen and utility room and then walked into my bedroom, all the questions Jaz’s words had raised following at my heels, babbling in the shadows.

DOES ZAPPA REALLY DO YOUR HAIR?

Applause was coming from beyond the church doors as I made my slow way up the sidewalk. The meeting had already started. This was my modus operandi; arrive late, hang at the back of the room or outside, leave early. My sponsor gave me no end of hell for it.

It wasn’t that I disliked the meetings, despite how boring and repetitious they can be at times. It was more that the room was full of people and I don’t do well in purely social situations. Without a notebook in my hand, the cover for my journalistic inquiries, I’m as lost amongst a crowd as a boy walking home from his first day of kindergarten.

I’d had the same aversion to social situations back in my drinking days. I rarely went to bars. Being in a bar always made me feel invisible. Sitting at a table, drinking a cold one, watching everyone else having fun; all boisterous loud voices and hand gestures, out on the dance floor twirling about or hunched over a pool table, slapping corner pockets and bank shots. They all appeared to know just what to do, what to say and when to say it. I somehow missed that lesson on social interaction.

They say that booze lubricates the social self. It never worked that way for me. It just made me lonelier.

I sat down, leaned back against the steps and lit one of the rare cigarettes I smoke these days. The speaker’s voice was as clear as though I was sitting in the front row instead of out on the steps. I let his words drift through my mind as I watched the sky turn slowly dark. The one positive thing I have to say about meetings is I always got something from them. Each story touched me in some small way or another. Maybe that’s why I kept going back. Though the meetings made me feel alone, the stories told in those rooms never did.

***

I met Robyn at a dinner dance on a sultry Sunday evening near the end of June. The woman who normally handled the social up-and-coming was sick and finding myself yet again on HL’s shit list, he assigned me to the event. I spent the afternoon, angry and a little drunk, wandering amidst the glitterati, mumbling questions and making rude observations in my notebook. Not owning a suit, I was forced to hit the local Goodwill for something appropriate to wear. The only thing that matched my measurements was a ghastly disco thing in bright, polyester white. I felt like an overdressed ice cream vendor.

Someone hired a street artist to do caricatures and in a moment of boredom I sat in his empty chair. My hair was a lot longer then and still retained much of its original brown color. The goateed artist busied himself with pastel chalk while I sulked. When finished, he scrawled the words ‘Hair by Frank Zappa’ across the bottom of the sketch and hung it on the wall with the others he’d drawn. Embarrassed, I skulked off to find another beer.

Toward the end of the evening, long after I folded up my notebook, I was standing at the back bar determined to salvage something from the day by finishing off the last of a case of cold Beck’s Dark. A voice behind me asked if Zappa really did my hair. Irritated, I turned, something sufficiently sarcastic forming on my tongue. The words froze there. The owner of the voice stood two feet away, head cocked in question, blonde ringlet curls framing her face, full lips turned up in an engaging smile.

It was her eyes, though, that captured me. Eyes so bright and shiny blue I forgotten to breathe. Mouth agape, I sputtered something inane. The band struck up a slow tune. She asked me to dance. Somewhere in the distance, a roller-coaster car began inching its way to the top of a very steep hill.

Robyn and I danced away what was left of the evening. She invited me to her apartment. I followed her in my car. At each red light or stop sign along the way, she bolted from her tiny Subaru, dashed back to my Fiat, kissed me, and then raced away before I could respond, her laughter trailing behind her, the sound of distant wind chimes on a soft breeze.

She was waiting for me in front of her apartment block when I pulled the Fiat into the parking lot. I nearly tripped getting out the car in my eagerness.

She had my shirt off before we were halfway up the stairs. We left a trail of clothes from the door to the bedroom. We tore the bed apart, scattering sheets and pillows and blankets, and finally ourselves, upon the floor. Somewhere in between the matings, Robyn fed me bits of scrambled egg, potato and ham, pushed between my lips with her fingers while sitting on my chest. By morning the roller-coaster reached the summit.

The momentary flood of panic I felt upon waking receded with the sound of falling water. The musky smell of sex was heavy in the sunlit room. I buried my head in the pillow, inhaling the scent of her perfume, feeling its effects deep inside me. I turned my head, opened my eyes, and came face to face with the ugliest ashtray I had ever seen in my life. A squinty-eyed, unshaven old coot of a cowboy with a rope in one hand and the other resting on the butt of his gun, standing hunched over a pile of crushed cigarettes.

Shuddering, I sat up and swung my legs from beneath the covers. Pushing myself from the bed, I followed the sound of the water, stepping into a bathroom so lime green and thick with steam I felt I was in an aquarium. The curtains parted and there she’d stood, all soap and glistening water. “Good morning, baby,” she said and reached out her hand.

The roller-coaster car had begun its steep descent.

***

The sound of chairs scraping against tile, loud voices, intruded on my thoughts. I could hear the crowd inside the church start to shuffle about, preparing for the holding hands thing. I unfolded myself from the stairs and tried to separate the past from the now. There was a pressure in my chest as though a bubble surrounded my heart, pumping dark memories into my veins with every beat. I looked up through the trees to the sky above. It was filled with stars. I took a deep breath, nodded toward Orion and, with the whispering sound of the Serenity Prayer at my back, started walking home.

As I crossed the street, staring absently at a Budweiser can clattering in the gutter, playing ring-around-the-rosy with a wadded McDonald’s wrapper and a dried-up condom, I felt that cross-hairs’ itch in the middle of my back that warned I was being watched. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt that itch in the last few days. Casually I looked to either side but saw nothing that aroused my suspicions. Still, it was there and I had learned over the years never, ever, to ignore that itch.

I was midway across the street when I heard the roar of an engine, rubber screaming against asphalt. Headlights flicked on and Skeeter’s words came back in a rush: One bright, one dim.

I ran.

The big SUV missed me by inches, bouncing up over the curb as I dove headlong to one side of a large elm like a runner trying to beat the throw to home. I hit the ground, rolled, and watched as taillights disappeared up the street.

ANYTHING BUT SIMPLE

“He almost liked the story you sent in,” Felice said as I walked into her office early Monday morning. How she knew it was me with her back turned, I had no idea. But she always did.

“What do you mean he almost liked it?” I said.

“He only tore it in half once.” She turned from the file cabinet to face me. “And only called it rubbish twice … without a single expletive in between.”

“And that’s a good sign?” I said.

“Close enough,” she said. “He wants to see you right away.”

“I sort of got that impression from the note he left tacked to my chair this morning.”

She smiled. The way she was looking at me made me uncomfortable.

“What?” I said.

“You two are so alike,” she said. “Do you know that, Teller?”

“Me and HL? You’ve got to be kidding, right?” I said, though I knew she wasn’t. Felice wasn’t one for idle talk.

“Why do you think he called you back here? Offered you your old job?”

“He’s done it before.”

“And you never accepted. Why this time?”

I considered telling her the feeling I had, the almost pleading nature of HL’s request, or how it had seemed that way to me at the time. Except I was unsure of how he’d made it. Or how I’d received it.

“I don’t know,” I said. “My Uncle Burt died? Left me the house? He needed a reporter, maybe?” I was grasping and knew it.

“He has many reporters. Good ones. Not as good as you but good enough for what goes on in this town.”

“Ok. So why did he call me back?”

“The question is why did you agree to come back?”

“Felice. You’re talking in circles again. I’m a simple guy. I need it laid out in a straight line.”

“You are anything but simple, Teller.”

She turned back to her filing. “Think about it. And remember that the questions are as important as the answers.”

She started to hum and I knew I wouldn’t get anything more from her.  It was Felice’s way. She revealed what she chose to reveal in ways she chose to reveal it. It was up to us poor mortals to figure out what it all meant. But her words were never meaningless.

Troubled by our conversation, I walked to the big oak door that separated her office from HL’s. Taking a deep breath, I opened it and stepped inside, her questions trailing like recalcitrant puppies.

DEPARTMENT OF PARKING ENFORCEMENT

HL’s office was cool and dark, smelling of cigars and beeswax and something else I couldn’t put my finger on. I sniffed the air but couldn’t bring that something into focus. HL was whispering into the phone, a barely controlled whisper, and I wondered at whom he was trying so hard not to scream.

He was hunched over, the flat black handset all but smothered in his large hands, its color in sharp contrast with his eggshell-white hair. He glanced at me once, pushed his silver, wire-rimmed glasses up his narrow nose and continued to whisper. The two halves of my story sat neatly on the corner of his desk.

His office has always fascinated me. There was something so peaceful about it, so otherworldly. The walls were oak. The floor was oak. The desk a tremendous slab of oak. The heavy chairs framed in oak. The line of Queen Anne bookcases, all oak, each filled to overflowing with books. You could lose yourself in a room like this, draw the heavy drapes, pull a book at random from the shelf, and forget there was a harsh world beyond the window panes.

I tiptoed to one of the chairs and sat down, turning it so I could stare out the window. Trying to ignore the one-sided conversation, I focused my thoughts on the endless line of parking meters fading into the distance five storys below.

One could easily believe those flat-gray pillars of aluminum and plastic, lined up along the curb like sharp teeth, were spawned from the dankest torture chamber of a demented Marquis de Sade. Sad to say, they were invented by an American, one Carl Cole Magee, and first installed in Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935.

The original prototype, cobbled together with help from the Oklahoma State University Engineering Department, was dubbed the ‘Black Maria’. It came in two types: Automatic, which required the added expense to the city of a meter winder to crank the timing mechanism; and manual, which required only the poor slob who fed it. Guess which design won out?

A clearing of the throat brought me out of my reverie. He was leaning on his desk, arms folded. I squirmed in my chair like a schoolboy in the principal’s office. He glanced at the two halves of the story and back at me.

“Um,” I said. “It’s a little sparse, I know—”

“Sparse is not the problem.” He leaned back in his chair. He looked tired but his emerald eyes were as piercing as any dagger. I felt as if the inside of my skull was being inspected.

“There was a time in this business when all true newspaper men had one thing in common, whether they were running a small town, hand-crank press or working for a major daily with millions of subscribers. Truth was their passion and whether a story had twelve words or twelve-hundred, the story had heart.

“Teller, there are many reasons why I contacted you, why I asked you to return to the paper. This story is chief among them. The situation is getting out of hand. Violence is brewing.”

Brewing indeed, I thought. The number of protesters gathering near the Admin building was growing with every passing day. Just the week before, an irate motorist started yelling at a meter maid. Another meter maid arrived on the scene and between the two of them they beat and maced the driver and then had him arrested. The following day, two construction workers, angry over a ticket they’d received while at lunch, dragged a meter maid from her cart and pushed the cart into a construction pit.

“The tension is growing,” he continued. “People are angry and their anger is being ignored by those in power. Your return gave voice to their anger and the impact is being felt, if still being ignored. However, I have the impression over the last month or so that your mind, your heart, is not altogether here amongst us.”

He held out his palm toward me to ward off my protest. “Don’t argue with me. Just listen. Your first articles nudged people from their complacency, got them talking, got them organizing. And, when this meter mangler arrived on the scene, likely a direct result of your writing, you covered it with enthusiasm and compassion. I’m sorry to say, though, your recent articles have been lackluster at best.”

He reached out, stabbed a finger on my torn article and then stared at me over the rim of his reading glasses.

“The Department of Parking Enforcement is a very powerful agency,” he continued, his voice soft. “City government loves them, turns a blind eye to them in every way.” He cocked his head, studying me for a moment.  “I haven’t revealed this to you before, but the Department of Parking Enforcement has been trying quite strenuously to thwart your investigation.”

“Thwart it? How?”

“That’s unimportant. What is important is that they seem to have information they shouldn’t have. Recently, their lawyers tried to quash one of your articles. It was apparent they knew what was contained in that article … before it went to press.”

I sat up straight in the chair, the implication of his words hitting me hard. “They what? How did they know what I’d written?”

“I’ve sought the answer to that question with fervor,” he said. “And believe me, I will find their source. In the meantime, they have tried to quash every subsequent article concerning their affairs. The pressure being applied to this issue has been intense.”

He removed his glasses and began polishing them with a handkerchief he kept in his vest pocket.

“You know as well as I, that this kind of pressure is not unusual with a story of this nature. Like the roach, government agencies shun the light. It has happened a number of times over the years I have sat at this desk.”

He held the glasses up to the light, examined the lenses, slipped them back on.

“What is unusual in this case is the complete lack of support I have amongst my own power base. My phone calls go unanswered. My emails returned with pleasantries but little else. I’m being shunned at social outings, treated as though I had shat in the punch bowl, with everyone too fearful or embarrassed to acknowledge the deed.”

He straightened in his chair, his gaze probing me.

“What I am trying to get across to you, Teller,” he said, his voice escalating in pitch and volume, “is that something very big is going on and I, for one, am not going to back down from it. I have lived too many years, been behind this desk, this paper, too long to put up with the kind of intimidation tactics used by a sniveling little upstart like Jefferson Cooper. I want my best reporter on this story, his mind and, more importantly, his heart. I want to know what is really going on.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded and not a little ashamed. He was right. The sleepless nights, the wild dreams, hours in the Robyn Zone that left me sweat-drenched and twisted in my sheets had knocked me off my game. I tried to swallow, found my mouth as dry and foul tasting as old socks. HL was leaning forward on his desk again, his face red, a look of concern in his eyes. And something else there as well, a tightness I couldn’t read.

“Are we clear on this, Teller?”

I snatched the two halves of my story from his desk. “Yes, sir,” I said. “Quite clear.”

As I started to rise, he held out his hand.

“Wait. There’s more,” he said.

I sat back down.

“First, I’m sorry for your loss. Harrison de Whitt was a good man and one of those rarest of gems today: An honest politician. His loss will be felt by this entire county. Second, though you kept the connection between his death and the Mangler vague, I assume you are aware that he was conducting his own investigation of the Department of Parking Enforcement?”

“I knew he had an interest but he wouldn’t give me the details. But an interest and an investigation are two quite different things, don’t you think?”

“I do indeed. And, as with you, he was not forthcoming with the details, though I do know he suspected something nefarious was going on there. I’ve known Harrison for a number of years. Often, if he had a perplexing problem or a difficult decision to make, he would come to me and we would talk. Off the record, of course. He called me around 8:00p.m. the night he was murdered, wanted to meet the following day. He said he had something important to talk to me about.”

I thought about what the Mangler had said, implying there was a connection between Harrison’s death and the destruction of the parking meters. Add to that the opposition HL was confronting and the SUV that had shown up twice yesterday, and a third time when it tried to run me down later in the evening – an SUV that matched the description Skeeter had given for the one cruising the monorail parking lot about the time Harrison’s body was dumped – and the connection became obvious. We were all three targeting the DPE.  Were HL and I in their crosshairs now as well?  Seemed a safe bet we were.

“You think there’s a connection,” I said.

“Do you believe there might not be?”

I considered telling him about the Mangler’s message and my encounters the previous day, but decided against it.

“And if there is a connection,” he said. “You may well be in the line of fire.”

HOCK IT TO ME

By the time I got back to my office, my stomach was churning like one of those smoothie machines. My skin felt clammy, cold. My heart was racing, the sound of it a hollow drumbeat in my ears, like a distant call to action. It took me a moment to realize I was enjoying the feeling, like a lost memory lovingly recalled. It had been a long time since I’d done anything that made me feel threatened and that was exactly what I was feeling.

Were Harrison’s investigation of the DPE and his death related? Does the Pope shit in the woods? Had to be but how and why? And was last night an attempt on my life or an effort to scare me off the story? It sure seemed like that and though it scared me, they’d have to kill me to make me back off a story.

And what the hell did the Mangler have to do with all of this?

I glanced at the clock and saw it was just past 8.00 a.m. I’d skipped breakfast so I decided a cigarette and couple of dogs were in order. I walked out my office and, as I hurried across the newsroom floor, someone called my name.

“Mr. Teller.”

I stopped, doing the Three Stooges’ ‘slowly I turn’ routine in my head, my body following the thought.  I hated being called mister.  A young kid stood behind a battered desk. Pink cheeks, eyes bright, an eager expression on his face.

“I just wanted to say your Sunday editorial was … well, an inspiration, sir,” he said.

My first response was to ask him why he was sucking up to me. I tempered that and walked back to him, noting the freshly printed piece of paper in his hand.

“We used to type those,” I said, feeling like an old fool. “Underwoods on every desk.”

“Pardon me?”

“Nothing,” I said. “So, uh …” I peered at the name tag pinned to his shirt, “Wesley, what are you working on?”

He looked down at the sheet of paper in his hand.

“Oh,” he said. “Nothing. Nothing as important as the Mangler, sir. Just some homeless guy who was mugged.”

“Just some homeless guy … mugged?” I said. “All the stories you’re sent out to cover are important, kid. Don’t ever forget that. What you see that means nothing today might mean something important tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I didn’t mean to imply—”

“Don’t worry about it, kid. Just follow the story through.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll do that, sir.”

“Oh, and one last thing, Wesley.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Stop calling me ‘sir’.”

I looked around the newsroom, noticing for the first time that all activity had stopped during this brief conversation with Wesley.

“My name is Teller,” I said to the room. “No ‘sir’, no ‘mister.’ Just Teller. Okay?”

I turned and walked out the door.

I cut across the street and was about to walk into the Coney Island place when a woman, dressed in a halter top with shorts so tight they looked painted on, handed me the single leaflet she was holding and quickly walked away.

The word CARPE was splashed across its width. I remembered my mental note to check out these folks. Now seemed as good a time as any, see if they could add anything to what I had. As I entered the restaurant, I read through the material, hoping for a phone number or address and getting nothing but information on an upcoming meeting. I was about to toss it away when I noticed the handwritten scrawl at the bottom of the page: Hock It To Me Pawn, Grospecke Highway.

I looked out the window for the woman who had handed me the flyer but she was nowhere in sight. She had been alone. She had walked right up to me. With nothing but the single flyer in her hand. Had I just been given an invitation to meet with the folks at CARPE?

I did a quick geographic calculation in my head, feeling my stomach churn over as I did. That part of Grospecke Highway was west of city center in the old, and mostly forgotten, industrial part of town. I’d been avoiding that section since my return. I’d spent seven years there in a little cinder-block apartment building off Rose Street, less than a brisk walk from that pawnshop. Five of those years with Robyn.

You’re a journalist, Teller, a voice in my head nagged. You go where the story takes you. Yeah, yeah, I nagged back, easy for you to say. But I knew I would go. Had to go. I folded up the leaflet, ordered the dogs to go and hurried to my car.

CHICS DIG GUYS WHO PAWN

The day was warming up. I had the windows down as I navigated my way along the slowest route I could think of to get to Grospecke Highway. Paul Simon slipped from the speakers and whispered that he was heading to Graceland. I felt like I was heading into memory’s minefield.

It’s strange how the geography of a city can change so abruptly. One minute you’re moving down tree-lined streets of mid- and upper-class homes; baby carriages, swing-sets, Beamers and bikes with training wheels, then within a single block and a set of railroad tracks, you’ve crossed over into The Land Time Forgot.

As I made that transition, the air thickened with the smell of rusting iron and diesel fuel. What sunshine there was seemed purged of warmth and vitality. Ancient wooden warehouses hugged the old rail line, their heavy plank sides and thick beams crumbling in on them.

Abandoned cars, rusted, dented, their windows cracked and broken, most on cinder blocks or bare brake drums, lined the rutted streets like rotted teeth. An ominous wind had kicked up, as if welcoming my return, scattering beer cans and scraps of paper in endless eddies.

Despite having been born and raised here, Robyn had no notion this part of town existed before meeting me. After, she took to it like a big game hunter finding virgin wilderness. We made love in several of the old warehouses, even spending a Halloween night in one, telling ghost stories and drinking Bloody Marys.

Many were the evenings we trod the broken sidewalks and overgrown rail line. She’d found a lover for Dinger here. Dinger was my cat at the time and I hadn’t understood then why she needed a lover. Time hasn’t enlightened me any. But that was Robyn, the way she was, the way her head worked. The affair between Dinger and the old, orange tomcat Robyn had lured back to my apartment didn’t work out. Dinger nearly tore the old boy apart. Maybe some relationships are never meant to be.

Though I had sworn I wouldn’t, I found myself cruising down Rose Street. After HL’s talk and my increasing immersion in the Robyn Zone, you’d think I’d have better sense than to add a visit to the apartment complex – if you can call six, drab grey, cinder block apartments a complex – where I’d spent so much time with Robyn. But then, I’m not sure I’ve ever been known for my good sense.

Shortly after coming back to town, I’d read that the juvenile detention center, once the view from my bedroom window, had expanded their territory, taking over the complex, turning the small apartments into housing for the night staff.

The apartments were dark. There were no cars in the pitted asphalt parking lot. I stared at the first apartment, the one closest to Rose Street. The cheap shag carpet had been a grotesque shade of green and always smelled of mold, stale beer and cigarettes. Except for one or two antiques, the furniture was mostly Salvation Army rejects. My old Harley had occupied the dining room. As I drove past, I could almost see my little red Fiat sitting out front. I could almost hear Robyn’s laugh.

I hit the gas. This was stupid. I could feel that trapdoor in my chest opening up again and felt that at any moment I might fold up and drop through it, Buster’s laugh following me to the hard glass bottom of the bottle.

I was passing the detention center when something caught my eye. I hit the brakes, reversed, stopped again. There was a sculpture along the roadway. I stared at it in amazement. How terribly sensitive, I thought, grinding my teeth. The sculpture depicted a family scene: dad and his daughter playing catch while mom and son sat nearby watching the action. What a happy, happy little scene for the kids inside. The closest most of them had ever come to a game of catch was when dad, or mom, bounced a baseball off their heads.

I hit the gas again, hard enough to make the tires squeal, trying to outrace my tumbling feelings. A moment later I pulled into the rutted parking lot behind the pawnshop and killed the engine. I sat there a moment, the blood pounding in my head, the trapdoor in my chest squealing closed on dry hinges.

The building was old cinder block, pitted in places as if someone had fired shots at the building. There was an ancient White Owl cigar mural, faded, all but colorless, covering the entire wall. From the looks of the chips in the cinder block, it appeared the owl had been the target.

Walking around to the front of the shop, I came up short when I spotted the sign hanging off the front of the building. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Chics Dig Guys Who Pawn. What the hell was that about? Bristling at the misspelling, I looked around, expecting to see typographically-challenged pawnshop groupies congregating, and trying to imagine what a typographically- challenged pawnshop groupie might look like. Except for a young guy, mid-thirties, maybe, with a shaved head and huge red earrings distorting his earlobes, sitting on the sidewalk between me and the front door, I was the sole human on the street.

I took a step back, my body doing the old goose-stepping-over-my-grave shiver as I stared at the kid, the sign forgotten. There was something familiar and unsettling about him. He was wearing black slacks and shirt, a black apron and a red-and-black checked wool vest. His backpack was open, his worldly possessions scattered around him. A wheels-up skateboard with a dirty Styrofoam cup full of something brownish, and a half-eaten sandwich sat within arm’s reach. There was a large pile of multicolored ties in his lap and he was tying them, one by one, around his neck with perfect Windsor knots.

Cautiously, I made a wide arc around him and stepped quickly through the pawnshop door.

CITIZENS AGAINST REPRESSIVE PARKING ENFORCEMENT

A chime sounded from somewhere in the back. Muffled voices, whether a radio or a conversation I couldn’t tell, fell silent. I waited for someone to part the heavy curtains near the register but no one came. I sniffed the air. There was a familiar scent and it took but a moment for the connection to click. Jaz. Or rather the scent Jaz wore. I looked back over my shoulder, expecting to see her, or worse, the kid who’d been outside. There was no one there.

I looked around. The room was square with plaster walls painted off-white. Some sort of wavy-line design circled the room a foot below where the wall met the ceiling. Guitars, saxophones, flutes, every musical instrument imaginable hung from the upper half of the walls. Below were shelves stacked with recording equip.m.ent and stereos. Along the back wall shotguns and hunting rifles stood upright in locked cases. The handguns and jewelry were displayed in glass cases set in a U-shape on the hardwood floor. One case near the register held nothing but laptop computers, PDAs, and other computer-related equip.m.ent. A small, black box near the end caught my attention.

As I stared down it, it came to me what it was; a voice synthesizer. Before I could give it another thought, the curtains at the rear of the shop parted and a broad-shouldered man with an even broader smile stepped through.

“Mr. Teller,” he said, his booming voice matching his bulk.

I cocked my head, alert. “You know who I am? And it’s Teller, by the way. No ‘mister.’”

“Teller, then,” he answered. “And I believe everyone in town knows who you are. The conquering hero returned to vanquish the parking enforcement dragons.”

He reached his hand across the counter. “Tom Philo, at your service.”

I took his hand. Despite his stocky build, he didn’t pull the macho handshake on me. I liked him for that. I hate it when men think they have to crush your knuckles to show how manly they are.

A breeze puffed out the curtain. A door slammed somewhere in the back, startling Philo. His smile faded.

“Customer?” I said.

“Uh, yeah,” he answered. “Some folks, you know, don’t like to be seen in a pawnshop. I, uh, think of them as my backdoor trade.”

He laughed but it sounded hollow and nervous to me. I looked down, noticed an empty space on the shelf between two laptops. When I looked back up at Philo, I caught him looking at the same spot. Color dotted his cheeks. Something was going on but I couldn’t fathom what.

“You know you have a kid sitting outside your door, right?” I said, throwing him a curve ball. He seemed relieved by the change of subject.

“Oh. Yeah. He’s there most every day. Comes for the coffee and sandwich, I think. Never comes in the store, just sits out there, wrapping his ties around his neck and talking to whoever it is he talks to. He’s no bother, really. The kind of clientele one gets in a pawnshop and all that. No one pays him much attention. He never gets angry or belligerent. Doesn’t drink or take drugs that I can tell. Odd, considering his parentage.”

“You know his parents?”

“Both dead,” he said, suddenly more nervous than he had been when the back door had slammed. “Both, uh, before my time here.”

“Is there something I’m missing here?”

“Um.” He took a deep breath, blew it out. Took another one. “His father,” he said. “I believe you knew his father.”

“Shit,” I said, half under my breath. That’s why the kid looked so familiar. “Willy T.”

“Yeah,” Philo said.

No wonder I had felt spooked walking by the kid. I looked back over my shoulder, expecting to see Willy T standing behind me, shovel in hand. Ghosts. Everywhere I turned there were ghosts. Damn, but I was tired of all the ghosts.

“Mother?” I said.

“Died in childbirth. She was a boozer, I’m told. Like Willy.”

“No one was quite like Willy T,” I said more to myself than him. “Trust me. Look, I didn’t come here for a trip into memory’s minefield.”

“Obviously not,” he said. “I imagine the Mangler brought you to my door.”

The smile was back. I wondered why.

“Do you know something about the Mangler?”

“I know a few things about parking meters,” he said. “Nothing about the destroyer of parking meters, though I certainly applaud … er … his actions.”

“What exactly is CARPE?” I said.

“Citizens Against Repressive Parking Enforcement,” he replied. “Made it up myself. The acronym, I mean. Well, the whole organization, I suppose. Such as it is. We have a website and everything. Quite a few hits, considering the local nature of the thing. There is growing discontent with parking enforcement around the world. I thought the name had some zing to it, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Zing. Yeah. Tell me about this,” I said, plucking the leaflet I’d been given from my pocket and holding it in the air.

“You want to know why meters should be banned?”

“I want to know why it was handed specifically to me, why there’s an address scrawled across the bottom of the page when no other flyer I’ve seen has any kind of contact information printed on it.”

I stared at him. His smile was broad. The overhead light sparkled off his earring.

“Perhaps it’s an invitation to learn more about parking meters and why they should be banned. Got a morning to kill? As for why there is no contact information, let’s just say it’s not a good idea to be seen to be opposing the DPE.”

I thought about what HL had said earlier in the morning; about how the DPE was trying to quash my stories; about how he was getting no support.  About whoever was driving that SUV.

“Yeah, I’ve got a morning to kill.”

WHY PARKING METERS SHOULD BE BANNED

As Tom Philo settled into his chair he said, “You know the history of the parking meter, I assume?”

We were sitting in the backroom now, the shop closed up. The scent I had smelled earlier was stronger back here. It made me as uneasy as the overstuffed chair I sank into. The chair was big enough to accommodate Arnold Schwarzenegger. Philo had made tea and I balanced a delicate china cup in one hand and my notebook and pencil in the other.

I’ve never understood the point of those china tea cups. They hold but a gulp and a half of liquid and who but a small child could get their finger through that tiny handle to hold the thing? Rearranging the small items on the wicker table next to me with my elbow, I set down the cup and turned back to Philo. My knees nearly in my face.

“I do,” I said. “I know they were created to alleviate traffic congestion, or that was the pitch, anyway. I’ve never seen much evidence of it.”

“The only true relief for traffic congestion is the tow-away zones on the major commute routes in and out the city. Which, I might add, are metered as well. Still, opening up those extra lanes during the rush hour does help move the traffic in and out. The meters, however, all meters in fact, may actually cause more congestion, but I’ll get to that in a moment. You’re aware, of course, that there are over five million parking meters in use in America?”

“That many?”

“Indeed. With more being installed every day. The original meters clipped the patron for five cents an hour, plus a twenty-dollar fine should they forget the time. Today they’re as much as two dollars an hour with fines as high as fifty dollars. More in certain restricted areas like parking for the handicapped and loading zones.”

“Yeah. I’m aware of that.”

“Are you also aware that the very first ticket issued was challenged in court?”

I didn’t know that. “On what grounds?” I said.

“That the streets are public space and you can’t charge the public to utilize what is theirs.”

“And the public lost?”

“In fact, they did. But not on those grounds. The defense team knew that it was basically charging a rental fee for space that belonged to the public. They also knew they would never get away with that defense. Instead, they argued that the revenue from the parking meters, and the inevitable tickets, was to pay for parking enforcement.”

I thought that one over a moment. It was very twisted logic.

“And they won with that argument?”

“Indeed.”

“Wait, let me get this straight. We feed the meter—”

“A device none of us asked for,” Philo said. “Nor were we consulted over their placement.”

“Right. We feed the meter to pay someone to patrol the meter we didn’t ask for and give us a ticket if we park beside it for too long. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“No. It doesn’t. But that’s how parking meters overcame their first legal challenge and we’ve been tossing nickels, dimes and quarters into their gaping maw ever since. That little tidbit is lost to history. And now that the legality is essentially out of the way, city councils all across the country have a number of ersatz reasons for sticking a meter alongside any spot big enough to park a car.”

“Such as?”

“Turnover. Force people to move their cars so others can park. Of course, that’s only valid in shopping areas so it doesn’t explain the prevalence of meters in every part of town.”

He picked up his tea, sipped it and set the cup back down.

“Forcing people onto public transportation is another dubious reason given for the parking meter’s existence, though that, too, is ludicrous. In most metropolitan areas, public transportation either doesn’t exist in any meaningful way or, where it does, is wholly inadequate for the needs of the communities it serves. This inadequacy leads to frustration, which leads to more people driving, which leads to less revenue, which leads to further deterioration of service … and on and on in a downward spiral.

“The problem, of course, is that if people drive, they must park. For them to park, there must be parking places. On average, a person works eight hours a day. You don’t find many eight-hour parking meters: Thirty minutes, sixty, two hours tops. It doesn’t compute and this is where the whole theory of metered parking falls apart.”

“Fall apart? “ I said. “I’m not sure I understand that.”

“It’s simple, really. As with anything, there is an obvious cost and a hidden cost. With metered parking, the hidden cost is quite high. Now, the obvious cost is the meter itself; its installation and maintenance and, of course, all the people necessary to run a department of parking enforcement, including those who check the meters and write the tickets. This cost is borne by the revenue produced by the meters and the tickets, roughly twenty percent of gross.”

“And the hidden cost?”

“Businesses carry the brunt of that,” he said. “And then there is the issue of lost space.”

“Lost space?”

“Yes. You see, the state mandates the size of a metered parking space, pretty much to accommodate the largest vehicle that might park there, plus several feet fore and aft. But not everyone has large cars, especially in this day of escalating fuel prices. What this means is, a Volkswagen is allotted as much room as a Cadillac. On a city block with ten meters, only ten cars can park. Without those meters, you could likely squeeze in thirteen, maybe fourteen cars. Because the block is metered, nearly twenty-five percent of that block is lost to parking space.”

“Okay. What about the loss to business?”

“Easy. Two-hour parking meter. Eight-hour day. Anyone parked at a meter will have to run out to their car three, possibly four times a day. More if they get a meter with less time. Figure ten to twenty minutes each trip, call it fifteen on average, and you’re looking at an hour of productivity loss per worker per day.”

I sat back in my chair, pulled out a small sharpener and considered what Philo had told me while I ground down another quarter inch of my pencil.

“You said the operational costs are borne by the revenues from the meters and the tickets issued. What kind of money are we talking about here?”

“That would depend,” he said, reaching for his tea. “Are we talking your typical, hypothetical city, as we have been so far? Or are we talking about here?”

“Here is where the Mangler is,” I said.

For the first time since I met him, Tom Philo’s countenance turned dark, the teacup hovering half way to his lips. He set it back on the table and leaned forward.

“For that,” he said, “We’ll need a little history lesson.”

NICKLES AND DIMES AND QUARTERS, OH MY!

Philo sat back in his chair.

“Before Jefferson Cooper took over as head of the DPE,” he said, “this town had roughly three hundred city blocks covered by meters.”

“How many meters would that be?”

“Well, on average, twenty meters to a block,” he said.

“So, six thousand meters in all,” I said.

“Close enough,” Philo said. “On blocks with a bus stop you might have eighteen meters. On a longer block, maybe twenty-two. All in all it works out to twenty per.”

“Okay,” I said, writing down the numbers in my notebook.

“These meters were concentrated in the downtown area, in and around the shopping areas. These meters were all of the two-hour variety and cost one dollar to park the full two hours. They operated six days a week, excluding holidays, from 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m..”

I did a quick calculation. “Five bucks a day,” I said. “Per meter.”

“Correct,” he said, “provided the meter was used all day, which most of them were. Excluding Sundays and holidays gives you about three hundred days of meter operation. Three hundred days at five dollars a day times six thousand—”

“Jesus,” I said. “That’s nine million dollars a year. I had no idea.”

“Few people do, believe me. They think just as you, nickel and dime. How much could that be? But it adds up.” He shifted in his chair, checked his tea cup and found it empty. “More tea?” he said.

“No thanks, I’m fine.”

“Keep in mind,” he said, pouring tea from a ceramic pot shaped like a frog, “we had a relatively low number of meters for the size of this town. There were also a number of city-owned lots leased out to private companies to be used as temporary parking areas for commuters. These were plots of land that might one day be built on. Rather than let the land go to waste, they were used for parking. The city collected a small fee from the lot operators; the operators were obliged to lay down asphalt and remove it should the site be sold for develop.m.ent. Everyone was happy.”

“And then Cooper came to town.”

“Humph,” Philo said, his expression turning darker. “Indeed he did. Right from the start Cooper doubled the number of city blocks covered by meters. They replaced the six thousand two-hour meters with half-hour meters that cost as much as the two-hour meters. To that they added another six thousand one-hour meters to the mix. In the last eighteen months, they’ve more than doubled that number again. Today there are something like twenty-six thousand meters covering thirteen hundred blocks. We have meters surrounding the park. There are meters out in the industrial part of town and on the residential streets nearest to the downtown area. On top of that, they began closing the temporary lots. You see ‘Under Construction’ signs going up all over the downtown area but never any construction.”

I had noticed and said so.

“Quite a phenomena, isn’t it? To drive through the downtown area, one would assume a boom town when in fact not a single new construction start has occurred in over three years.”

“So where did all the commuters go?” I said.

“Onto the streets, of course. And as those twenty-six thousand metered parking spaces began to fill up, the number of tickets the department issued doubled and doubled again.”

“Hold on,” I said, scribbling as fast as I could in my notebook. “I need to get this straight. You said there are twenty-six thousand meters operating in this town.”

“Close enough.”

“At five dollars per day, per meter?”

“More like double that. With the higher cost, lower time-limit meters, it works out to about a dollar an hour per meter on a ten hour day.”

“Okay,” I said, doing the math on paper because the numbers were now too big for my head. “Ten dollars a day, twenty-six thousand meters, three hundred days … My god, that’s—”

“Nearly eighty million dollars a year,” he finished. “Assuming, of course, a full ten-hour day of meter operation. The actual figure is probably closer to seventy million.”

“Minus the four million operational cost?”

“No. Operational cost, in a normal city with an equivalent meter load, might be four million. Parking enforcement here is far more aggressive. Though I can’t say for sure, the number no longer seems to be on their website, but I would estimate the DPE’s operational cost at roughly double that.”

“So, sixty million and change profit?”

“About that.”

“And what about the tickets?” I said. “You said they doubled?”

“And doubled again this last year. Let me give you an example of just how out of proportion this city is. Our nation’s capital has a population of just over a half million people. We sit at just under that. The entire county, of which we are the center, has just over a million-five. DC has one of the highest ticket fines in the country at forty dollars for a standard ticket.”

Philo sipped his tea, cradling the cup in his large hands. “Our fines used to be ten. They now match DC’s at forty. Last year, DC issued one point six million tickets for a total revenue gain of sixty-four million dollars.”

“Hold on,” I said. “How can a city of half a million people issue a million tickets?”

“That’s easy enough,” he said. “Keep in mind that the resident population of a city is quite small compared with the transient population on a day-to-day basis. The majority of the people who work in a city don’t actually live there. They commute from the suburbs. And you have delivery and service vehicles. And you have tourists. We may not have the attractions of a city like DC, but we do get our share of tourists. Indeed, fully fifteen percent of the city’s revenue is tourist generated.”

“The park,” I said. “The monorail.”

“That’s perhaps the biggest draw, yes. And we have some fine museums and, of course, the hot springs north of town. That area is still pretty undeveloped and the people who go there, inevitably end up here.

“So,” he continued, “DC issued one point six million tickets last year. If my projections are correct, and I believe they are, the DPE will break the million mark in tickets written, though there are some allegations that not all those tickets issued were legal. Legal or not, the DPE stands to collect forty million or more in fines alone. That would see a hundred-million-dollar-plus increase to the city coffers by the end of the fiscal year on September first. Is it any wonder the city council loves them?”

“Whoa, that’s incredible,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Wait, what did you say about allegations?”

“Well, so far, that’s all they are. They may well be growing out of the anger the people are feeling over the high cost of parking, but they are being made. More and more people are questioning the tickets they received, taking the time to make a court appearance. Not that it gets them much more than time lost at work, what with Gallagher on the bench.”

“What’s their complaint?”

“Simple. They claim they never received a ticket, only the notice in the mail that the ticket was overdue which, of course, adds a ten-dollar fine onto the forty. Once a ticket is overdue, it’s all but impossible to fight it.”

Philo continued to talk but, deep in thought, I lost track of his words. Was it possible the allegations were true? Could that be what Harrison was on to?

“Tom,” I said, interrupting him. “I’m afraid I’m suffering a bit of information overload here.”

“Understandable,” he said. “It’s taken me nearly a year of research to compile this information. I would hardly expect someone to absorb it all in a single sitting.”

“I appreciate that. Look, I’d like to discuss this further with you, at your convenience, of course.”

“Absolutely. I’m more than happy to help where I can. I would suggest, however that you, uh, call first before coming over. I tend to keep, uh, odd hours here at the shop.”

“Not a problem.”

We did the handshake thing and he let me out the back door. As I pulled out the parking lot, I noticed the kid, Willy T’s kid, was still sitting on the sidewalk, his ties laid out in a pile beside him, a dozen or more already wrapped about his neck.

All the lost and lonely children, I mused, and pointed the car toward home.

DEPARTMENT OF PARKING EXTORTION

The following morning I was on my way to the Coney Island place for breakfast, having forgotten once again to buy groceries. It was a warm, late spring day; the sun bright, the sky cloudless.

As I passed it, I looked up at the town clock, a twenty-foot high, gaudy mix of Art Deco and Dali-wannabe sculpture.  Twisted iron, copper filigree, chrome angels in agony, entombed in glass balls which dangled from the claws of grotesque fire-breathing dragons with barbed wire wrapped about their rust-colored legs.  The clock face at the peak, wedged in iron spikes, had hands resembling, well, hands, arms and all, one extended, arthritic finger stretched toward winged gargoyles where the numbers usually went.  For all its arty intricateness, it couldn’t keep time worth a damn.

The sound of laughter drew my attention from the clock.  The laughter was coming from a group of people standing outside the Coney Island place, pointing at something back my way.

And it wasn’t the clock they were laughing at.

Or me.

Turning, I followed their gaze. A parking enforcement cart had stopped in the road, the meter maid dutifully filling out a ticket. It took me a moment to realize what the people were laughing about and when I saw it I laughed too.

On the back of the cart, where it normally read “Department of Parking Enforcement”, someone had plastered a decal over the last word so it now read “Department of Parking Extortion”.

The Meter Mangler had struck again and was escalating the attacks. Thus far, since they began three months ago, they had been coming at five- or six-day intervals. Sometimes as much as two weeks would pass with no hint of the Mangler’s presence. Why the sudden increase? Could it have something to do with Harrison’s death?

At that moment, another cart sped by and I noticed that it, too, had been defaced. I walked over to a meter, curious, and, sure enough, the department’s logo had been replaced with the same decal as on the carts. I tried peeling it off but the Mangler had used a permanent glue to apply them. The cleaning crew would have fun removing them.  I started walking toward downtown, counting the number of defaced meters. At fifty, I gave up. Either the Mangler had help or had labored long into the night.

I looked back at the clock. It read 10:30 a.m. I checked my cell phone, remembering as I did that the time on it was wrong as well. I’d received no calls. There was no unusual police activity that I could see. The meter maids themselves would have been out and about by 6:00 a.m. Hadn’t they noticed the change? Certainly there were people on the street who had. Yet no one had reported it.

I looked back at the cart still sitting on N. Main. The Meter Mangler had done a very professional job of masking one word with the other. Same font. Same color. The background of the decal a perfect match to the color of the cart.

I called Felice.

“I sent two reporters down,” she said by way of greeting. They’ll be looking for you outside the Coney Island restaurant anytime now.”

“You knew about the carts then?” I said.

There was a long silence.

“Right,” I said. “I’ll go find them.” I thought of a question I wanted to ask HL. “By the way,” I said before she could hang up. “I need to see HL again.”

“He’s left the office,” she said. I noticed something odd in her voice.

“Is everything okay, Felice?”

There was another long silence. “I … believe things will work out … and Teller, when the time comes, remember to give him the things you’ve found,” she said.

“Things I’ve found? What does that mean?”

“You’ll know when the time comes. You better get along. They’ll be waiting for you.”

“Right,” I said, confused as always over Felice’s strange pronouncements. “I’ll call later.”

I hung up, a bad feeling settling over me. Something was up with HL and Felice knew what it was. Or intuited it: One and the same thing, really. With her. But I knew from long experience that Felice revealed what she thought needed revealing and only when she believed it needed to be revealed. Obviously, whatever was going on wasn’t something she thought I needed to know yet.  I pocketed the phone and headed for the restaurant.

They were waiting. One of each gender. Clean cut, eager looking, color in their cheeks, eyes darting up and down the street in anticipation. They spotted me and came bounding over like newly-weaned puppies.

I pointed out the parking enforcement cart and the decals on the meters and told them to interview anyone who would talk to them and to write down whatever they heard. I told them to eavesdrop, too. Sometimes people will say amongst themselves what they won’t say to a reporter or a cop. And I made sure they understood I wanted their thoughts and observations as well, separate from the facts, but clearly sketched out. Sometimes there is more valuable information hidden in what a reporter thinks is going on than to be found in a recitation of the obvious.

Suddenly, like dogs to a silent whistle, several of the little Cushman carts made abrupt turns in the street and started heading out of town. Several more appeared up the street and in a short time there was a whole parade of them heading off in the same direction. Obviously someone was recalling the troops to home base.

I sent the kids on their way and headed to where the action was.

A COMPLEX AND DIFFICULT ETHICAL CONUNDRUM

By the time I arrived at the central storage yard for the carts, a half dozen workers were busy pouring some kind of gloop on the decals, causing them to bubble but not much else. It didn’t look as though they were having an easy time of removing the offending decals. Someone had finally called the cops. Two detectives were inspecting several carts; no doubt looking for fingerprints or whatever else they could find that would constitute evidence. I flashed my news credentials to the gate guard and walked in.

I was walking along a row of carts, inspecting the decals, when I noticed something funny about them. I knelt down and ran my finger along the lower, right-hand edge. It was slightly rougher than the other edges of the decal. The corner had been clipped off. A printer’s mark, perhaps? I looked at eight or nine more carts, hoping the Mangler had missed one, knowing he hadn’t.

Walking over to where a group of cops were talking, I recognized one and stepped over to him.

“Hey, Jack,” I said. “Long time.”

“Hey, Teller,” he said. “How’s it hangin’?”

“About the same as always,” I said. “Finding anything?”

“Nada. This is one smart cookie, this Mangler perp. Hasn’t left us shit to work with.”

“So,” I said, “any idea how the Mangler got in here? I assume he must have done his work here. During the night.”

“We checked the perimeter. Didn’t find anything like a cut fence but hey, there’s a row of trees along the back a cripple could climb. And a gully back over yonder,” he nodded back over his shoulder, “along the side fence. He could’ve pulled up the fence and crawled under that. Basically, we got squat, Teller. Like always.”

I thanked him and headed back out the yard. I made my own circumnavigation of the lot, noting the rusting razor wire circling the top of the fence. Though there were several large trees bordering the fence in the rear, only two had branches thick enough and close enough to the ground for a grown man to cross over the razor wire. I checked the trees carefully, looking for disturbances in the bark or some other sign that someone had recently climbed them. There was nothing on the first, a broken branch on the second. The break looked fresh. It could have been broken by a climber.

I looked around. I was back in the old industrial part of town, several blocks from the pawnshop. Several more from my old apartment. I saw the old railroad tracks, all but overgrown now, and realized that the DPE was using the south end of the old rail terminal as their central yard. I started walking toward the old railway station. If I were the Mangler, this was the way I would have approached the yard.

The old railway station was a classic of design. Red brick, sloped roof, a long portico facing the tracks; the columns once ornately carved were now chipped and covered in graffiti. The place had been abandoned for years, its sad windows boarded or covered in heavy wire. Back before I left town, I had tried several times to get some historical preservation types to develop an interest in the place. I had a thing for railroads. Especially old railway stations.

Thomas Edison had worked this line in his youth. Rumor had it this was the station where he’d been thrown off the train, the incident which left him deaf in one ear. I could see from the condition of the place that no one had taken me up on the idea.

I walked around the back of the station. Someone years ago had punched a hole in the bricks there. To break in, or just misdirected youthful energy, was hard to know. There was graffiti around the wound, the white paint distressed with the years. “In here, summer of ’52, Walter Kissed Kay.” I had always found that strangely romantic.

There was an overgrown rock- and glass-strewn parking lot on the far side of the building. I wandered around it for ten minutes but it would take a far better tracker than me to determine if anyone had parked there recently. I kept walking.

Several blocks past the station, and several decades in time, I came to a somewhat newer part of the industrial section. There was an old man pushing a battered metal shopping cart down the broken sidewalk. Other than a delivery van and several workers catching a smoke out back of a small parts factory, I hadn’t seen another soul on the street.

There was nothing remotely residential about this area. There weren’t even any bars around. It was a pretty safe bet that the people who worked down here didn’t stick around once their shift ended. The old guy though – who knew? – he might live around here in one of the many empty buildings. He might even have seen something, though that seemed like a long shot at best. Still, I had nothing else going for me so it was worth the effort to find out.

As I made my way over to him, I could see him eyeing me warily, with little darting motions of his head. He started to walk faster, the wheels of his cart going all wobbly, setting up a clatter of cans and bottles and whatever else he had stashed in it.

“I’ve done nothing,” he croaked, his voice dry and brittle and cracking, as if it had been a long while since words had last passed his lips in anything other than a soft mutter. He was waving one arm back at me as if to ward me off, beginning now to run in a hunched over, limping sort of lope. With only one hand on the wheel of his cart, it swung sharply to one side and then he and it were tumbling to the hard cement. His leg clipped the cart and he turned, falling on his back with a sharp expulsion of breath. The cart banged hard, slipped over the curb and upended. Cans and bottles and stacks of newspapers flowed into the dirty street like weird booty from a slot machine.

I reached him just as he was trying to sit up, his face puffy and red with the effort of trying to get air into his lungs. I knelt beside him and he began swatting at me with his arms.

“I’ve done nothing, nothing,” he wheezed, his voice now a squeak. “Please leave me alone. I’ve done nothing.”

I put my arm around his shoulders and lifted him to a sitting position, looking around to see if anyone had noticed what was happening. A man, standing in a warehouse door, finished a drag on his cigarette, flipped it in my direction and disappeared into the gloom of the building.

“Please,” the old man said.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” I said. “Are you okay?” He didn’t sound very good and smelled worse, but his breathing slowed and a more normal color returned to his bearded face. I turned him so he was leaning against a wall and moved to his cart.

“Please,” he said as I set the thing back on its wheels and started gathering up his stash of cans and bottles. “Please. It’s all I have.” He leaned forward, both arms outstretched

I turned back to him. “I’m not going to steal it,” I said. “I’m just trying to help you get it back into your cart.” A look of doubt and surprise flashed across his pale-green eyes but he said nothing, just leaned back against the wall taking deep breaths.

I had put all the cans and most of the bottles, the ones that hadn’t broken anyway, back in the cart and was scooping up a pile of newspapers when I spotted the corner of something bright, white and shiny sticking out from the pile. I knelt down and pulled it out, a broad smile splitting my face. It was one of the decals the Mangler had used on the carts.

It looked rumpled and creased, as if balled-up and tossed aside. The old man must have smoothed it out. The slick paper backing was in place on one side, but the other side was folded awkwardly, the sticky sides pasted together. I held it up and stared at the lower, right-hand corner: Bluebird Printing, in tiny blue letters, followed by a phone number. I recognized the area code. The city was twenty miles south.

“Where did you find this?” I said, maybe a little too sharply, for the old man jumped and his face took on that frightened look again.

“Please,” he said. “I stole nothing. I—”

“Look,” I said, walking over to him. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I just want to know where you found this.”

He reached out his hand and I handed him the decal. He looked it over, as if it were a rare piece of parchment upon which the word of God was written, and then pointed off in the direction I had come.

“Back by where they keep the little carts?” I said.

The old man nodded.

“When?”

“Early. Morning. I didn’t steal it. It was in a trash can.”

“I know you didn’t. But do you remember just where you found it?”

He shrugged.

“Do you remember seeing anyone around? You know, someone who didn’t look like they belonged around here?” I persevered.

He shrugged again. I wasn’t going to get anything more from him. I reached into my pocket and like the devil, held out a twenty-dollar bill.

“I’m buying this from you,” I said. “Is that okay?”

He stared at the bill fluttering in the breeze, reached out his hand and snatched it from me. I helped him to his feet, put the rest of the newspapers in his cart, bid him good-bye, and watched as he limped off down the street, turning his head now and then to see if I was going to follow, perhaps take the money back.

After he had turned a corner and disappeared, I stared down at the decal in my hand. Ah yes, the journalist’s dilemma. Do I turn in this decal to the police, as I no doubt should, it being evidence and all? Or, do I hold on to it, follow up the lead myself?

It took me all of ten seconds to wade through this complex and difficult ethical conundrum.

I KNOW WHY THE BLUEBIRD SUFFOCATES

I called the number on the decal and a raspy voice answered. I asked the voice what hours they were open, the address and whether the owner was around. Raspy Voice emitted a harsh chuckle and informed me that he was the owner, operator, and general slave to the machines. I thanked him and hung up. I checked my watch. If I hurried, I could make it there before the place closed.

Forty minutes later I was speeding south, the decal on the seat beside me. It was a risk making a cold call but I preferred to interview people in person so I could watch their body movements, their eyes. I wasn’t sure Raspy Voice would give me answers, but I had little to lose other than time in trying.

I found the shop without much difficulty. It was located in a shabby, rundown part of the city, wedged in the gloom of an overhead freeway, the only working establishment on an otherwise boarded-up and burned-out block. I parked the Altima in front of the place, keying the lock as I walked to the door. The air was heavy with the smell of exhaust, the buzz of moving traffic.

A bell tinkled as I entered and the smell of printer’s ink replaced that of car exhaust. I felt dizzy from it as I crossed the gloomy, small room and wondered how anyone could breathe that air every day. And, how many years whatever was making that smell might be subtracting from their lives.

A gnarly-looking man wearing a red plaid shirt and blue work pants stepped out from behind a curtain. He looked to be in his seventies; with the chemicals that had to be floating around this room he could have been thirty. Balding, Grecian-formula black hair in a comb-over, he had the face of a hard drinker, or maybe it was just the chemicals, and red-rimmed, muciferous eyes the color of charcoal.

“Hep ya?” he said, the same raspy voice I had heard on the phone.

“Yeah,” I said, flipping open my wallet and showing him my news credentials.

“Reporter?” He cackled. “I did some reporting work, I did. Years ago that was. Mostly, though, just ran the presses. It gets in yer blood, printer’s ink does. Yes, sir.”

“I’m sure it does,” I said, thinking it probably melted your brain as well. I pulled out the decal and set it on the counter. He looked down at it and back up at me, a sly smile on his face.

“I had me a feelin’ I might see one of them there again,” he said, a hint of mirth in his raspy voice.

“Oh,” I said. “Why?”

“Kinda obvious, don’t ya think?” He chuckled. “A big ol’ decal like that, special sticky glue … extra money for that there glue, by the way. And jus’ that one ol’ word sitting there all big’n bold. Extortion. Don’t get many folks looking to have decals with a word like that printed on ‘em.”

“How many of these did you make?”

“What’s it worth t’ya t’know?”

It was my turn to smile. I had figured it might come to this and had run by the ATM on the way down. What had we done before there were holes in walls that traded hard cash for the swipe of plastic and a handful of digits? People with information rarely take checks for what they know. I slid a twenty across the counter. He looked down at it and back up at me, saying nothing.

I slid a second over the first.

“That cover it?”

“It’s a good start.”

He swiped the bills off the counter and stuffed them in his pocket. “Two hunert and seventeen,” he said.

“Decals?”

“That size one, yep. Don’t usually print up orders like that fer less than five hunert, but the customer insisted that was all they wanted. Paid the price for five hunert, too, they did.”

“You said you printed up two hundred this size.”

“Two hunert and seventeen, yessir.”

“Was there another part to the order?” I said.

He stared at me. Silent. Until I set another twenty down on the counter.

“Five hunert smaller decals,” he said, again swiping the bill from the counter. “Same special glue.”

“And these read?”

He laughed. “Well, son, you being a reporter’n all, an’ a fairly smart lookin’ one at that, I imagine you must already know what them decals said, so I’ll just give that’n to ya free a charge. Department of Parking Extortion, they read. You from up north? I heered they been havin’ problems up thataway.”

“Yeah, north. I don’t suppose there was any paperwork involved with this little transaction?”

He stared at me again until another twenty disappeared into the pocket of his work pants.

“Some folks is allergic to paperwork,” he said. “I like to run a cash business here. Paperwork makes the guvment’s job easier, makes ’em soft around the middle. I like ta think I’m heppin’ them keep fit.” He laughed until the laugh turned into a wet cough. He wiped his mouth with an ink-stained cloth he pulled from his back pocket and then leaned against the counter until the cough subsided. “No paperwork,” he said, wheezing a bit now.

“And I don’t suppose you could describe this customer?” I didn’t wait for the stare but laid two twenties on the counter. He didn’t even look down, just peered into my eyes. I laid another bill down and then another after that and still he didn’t look down. Finally, I pulled the last four I had in my pocket and laid them on the counter.

“That’s all I’ve got,” I said. He smiled and the bills disappeared.

“Tall fella, he was. Come in wearing a suit an’ a gray fedora, pulled low. Don’t get many suits in here. The hat, I remember, was too big for him, kept falling down over his eyes. But maybe he wanted it that way. The light’s a bit dim in here and these ol’ eyes don’t see like they once done, so I can’t say what the color of his eyes mighta been. Nor his hair. ’Twas all up under his hat.”

“How tall?” I said. “Could you guess a weight?”

“Your height, maybe a bit taller. Hard to judge the weight. The suit looked padded to me. He seemed about your build, I s’pose, but coulda been smaller.”

I rubbed my finger along my lower lip. The smell of the place was really getting to me. But the overall description matched and the guy had done the decals so it probably was the Mangler. I thanked him for his time and turned to walk out the shop, my lungs suddenly anxious for the outside air.

“One last thing,” he said.

I turned. “I haven’t got any more money,” I said. “I wasn’t lying about that.”

“Oh, I believe ya, son. But y’didn’t threaten or cajole or try to wheedle me down, so I’ll gives this one to ya free. It’s but an observation only and maybe not so good a one anyway, but here it is.”

I walked back to the counter, taking as little of the chemical air into my lungs as I could, feeling myself beginning to hyperventilate. “Thanks,” I said.

“This fella, I don’t know. There was sumthin’ peculiar about him. Like he was one o’ them gay boys, you know what I mean? The way he moved. Kinda ‘ffeminate, he was. And he had these long, slender fingers and his nails were all clipped and polished. Not much shines in this shop,” he chuckled, “so ya notice things that does.”

“Could it have been a woman? Dressed in a man’s suit?”

He pondered for a moment, pulling the cloth from his back pocket and wiping his forehead. “I suppose ‘he’ coulda been a ‘she’ but a pretty flat- chested one. He never unbuttoned that suit coat, hot as it gets in here during the day, but had his breasts been any kinda size, I think I’d a noticed.” He chuckled again. It sounded loose and wet in his throat.

I thanked him again and headed out the door, never more thankful for carbon monoxide-polluted air than I was on my way to the car.

A RIDE ON THE CAROUSEL

I had a splitting headache by the time I got back to town. There was a vise grip on my lungs and the taste in my mouth was like something Dow Chemical had produced to defoliate jungles. I’d have to take care not to breathe around my houseplants for a while, or my cats, for that matter.

As I drove slowly down Gratiot Avenue, I noticed a disturbance ahead.  Closer, I saw there were maybe a hundred people milling about on the Admin building steps, thirty or forty more on the sidewalk. A small number for a protest; impressive for a work day. I wondered what had caused this and remembered the press release from the DPE stating they were going to install a third round of meters in the Court House and Admin building parking garages.

Parking at those two garages had always been free with a validated ticket, the idea being that access to the government was a right for which one shouldn’t have to pay. In the last week, workers had begun repairing the two-hour new-fangled electronic meters the Mangler had already fried twice. If they kept to their schedule, the new meters would go into operation in less than a week. It would appear the people were not happy campers over this develop.m.ent.

Someone had strung a banner between the ornate, iron lamp poles that bordered the granite stairs. ‘CARPE’ was spelled out in bold, red letters. There were other signs and banners floating amongst the group: ‘Viva La Mangler,’ ‘Mangle the Meter,’ ‘Shut Down the DPE.’ Even a hastily drawn up one repeating what the Mangler had pasted to the meters and Cushman carts: ‘Department of Parking Extortion.’

I pulled to the side of the road, looking around for the cops as I did. I spotted two patrol cars across the street from the protestors. One cop was sitting in his car, the other leaning against his vehicle, smoking a cigarette. That was certainly a change in police procedure.

Back in the long ago, shortly before Cadillac Boyo, the Aussie Duke of Disco, was murdered and Robyn was arrested for it, she had organized a protest against the local radio station because they had begun playing disco music. Maybe thirty people showed up in all, if that. We couldn’t have been out front of the station for more than a half hour before nearly every cop in the city showed up – in full riot gear no less – and hauled us all off to jail.

I suspected Marion had something to do with this turnaround in protest handling. I had the feeling he didn’t like the DPE anymore than anyone else did. I knew he was incensed over the ticketing of police cars and this was his response, a low key approach. It certainly didn’t look as though he had any plans to bust up the crowd. Not with just two bored cops keeping an eye on things. I was pretty sure he had his men on alert, just in case things got out of hand, but as long as it remained peaceful, he was going to let it ride as a ‘fuck you’ finger to the DPE. I put the car in gear and pulled out into traffic.

Back home, I wandered around the living room, too jittery and nervous from the fumes I’d breathed in to settle down with my notebook and write out my thoughts. How the hell did that guy breathe that stuff day after day?

I considered calling the paper, see how the kids had done, then rejected the idea, heading for the bathroom instead. What I needed was a hot shower.

My clothes had picked up the smell of the print shop. I feared spontaneous combustion at any moment, so I stripped down, wrapped a towel around my waist, carried the clothes out to the front porch, and unceremoniously dumped them in the corner to air out.

In the bathroom, I turned on the shower as hot as I could stand it and stepped in. The water stung my back, burned my skin, but I stuck it out, letting the water wash the stench away. I stood there until the water ran cold, then toweled off, brushed my teeth twice, and enfolded myself in a heavy bathrobe.

The shower took care of the smell but did little for how I felt. Standing there, still feeling dizzy and not a little nauseous, the thought of having a beer crossed my mind. Then crossed it again. When it crossed the third time recognition clicked in. I knew what was going on. I was feeling uncomfortable, sick even, so of course, my inclination was to self-medicate. Cunning, baffling and powerful, that was Buster Booze. If he couldn’t get at you through your emotions, he would do an end-run when you were physically down.

Booth was lying on the counter in the kitchen, on top of my meeting schedule. I slid it out from under him. He batted at me feebly for disturbing him and then fell promptly back to sleep.

Cats. There are times when I wish I could spend eighty percent of my life sleeping.

I noted there was a meeting tonight several miles from the house. It seemed like a good idea to make that meeting.

Feeling the need for some fresh air, I headed for the porch. Much to my chagrin, fresh air was not what I got. I’d forgotten I’d left my clothes out there and the room smelled like the inside of the print shop, despite all the open windows. I grabbed the clothes, went back through the house, out the back door and hung them on the line. I’d wash them when they smelled less flammable.

Back at the porch, Jaz was standing at the bottom of the stairs, her nose wrinkled against the smell.

“Jesus, Teller,” she said. “What are you doing out here? Fumigating the porch?”

She was wearing a Felix-the-Cat T-shirt that hit her leg about mid-thigh. Backlit by the sun coming in through the window, I could see the silhouette of her body. As if my aging heart wasn’t under enough strain from my afternoon at the print shop. And me in a bathrobe to boot. I hurried past her, eyes averted, and sat down.

“Research,” I said, not mentioning the decal I’d found or my trip to the print shop and wondering why I was being evasive with her.

“Research?” she said. “Smells like you took a bath in … uh … printer’s ink.”

The change in her voice made me look her way. She wouldn’t look me in the eye, looking down instead as she sat next to me.

“You look cute in baby blue,” she said.

“Baby blue?”

“The bathrobe,” she said.

I looked down, feeling the warmth rise in my face.

“It’s, ah, not supposed to be baby blue.”

“Laundry problems?” she said, trying not to laugh but not succeeding very well.

“Yeah, well, it’s not something they teach boys in shop class, you know.” Then I laughed, remembering something.

“What?” she said.

“I just remembered something I did a long time ago,” I said. “I was trying to be helpful, y’know, so I washed all of Robyn’s clothes one day. Turned all her white silk underwear pink, and shrunk a bunch of really expensive cashmere sweaters to doll size.”

“Oh, I would have killed you for that one,” she said, laughing harder now.

“Believe me, she almost did. I made it a rule never to wash a woman’s clothes again.”

“Good rule,” she said. “You really loved her, didn’t you?”

She reached out and touched my arm. Our eyes met. There was an awkward moment of silence.

“Yeah. I did. With all my heart and soul.”

I moved my arm and looked away.

The traffic on Market Street was ebbing. My headache was a dull throb. I tried to think of something more to say but all I really wanted to do was reach over and touch her, run my fingers up her arm, across her shoulders, feel … I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, trying to force the thoughts away. I was about to make some excuse to go inside when she ran her toes up and down my bare leg, making me shiver.

She pulled her leg back suddenly and folded it up beneath her. “You got a cigarette?” she said.

I pulled a Sherman from the pack beside me and handed it to her. She didn’t ask for a light, just held the slim, brown cylinder stiffly between her fingers. The silence between us continued, both of us staring off into the empty playground across the street.

“Do you remember our first … outing?” she said. I noted the hesitation in her voice, wondering if she had purposely avoided the ‘D’ word. But had it been a date, that first time? I hadn’t thought so then. Wasn’t sure now.

“The carousel,” I said, looking over at her.

She smiled. “Yeah. Down in the park. You wanted to ride it but you thought everyone would think you were some kind of child molester or something. You were so funny. I think …” Her voice trailed off and she didn’t complete the thought.

The silence returned. She produced a pack of matches, lit the cigarette. I’d known her just over four months and hadn’t a clue she smoked. As if reading my thoughts she said, “I quit. After Gina left.” She laughed. It wasn’t a mirthful sound.

“Quit drinking, too.” She laughed again. “Most people, when their world is coming apart, get self-destructive.”

She shook her head, still staring at the empty playground. Or maybe beyond it. “I went in the opposite direction. Got healthy. I never have been able to get things in their proper order.”

“Gina,” I said. “The woman in the picture on your mantel.” I knew she’d had a lover long before I had returned to town but she had never spoken of her before.

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess … I guess Gina was kind of my Robyn. We were together almost eight years. And then it all just blew apart. It happened so fast, she was gone before I knew it was happening.”

She fell silent again, the smoke from her cigarette drifting out in a long, white curl. Stubbing out the cigarette, she stood up.

“I better go upstairs,” she said. “I’ve some … work to do.”

“Yeah. I should probably get dressed, I’ve got things to do as well,” I said, standing up from my chair.

We left the porch together. I sidestepped to let her go up the stairs to her flat. As she passed, our hands brushed. It felt like an electric shock and I know she felt it too, because she hesitated, then turned to face me. She stared at me. I think we were both holding our breath.

She turned back and started to walk up the stairs. I headed for my door.

“Teller?”

I looked up at her. She had stopped and was looking at me.

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever think about that night?”

I didn’t have to ask her what night she meant. I’d thought of it often enough, separating each moment like the frames of a film, examining each one, looking for answers I knew I wouldn’t find. Jaz had been the first person I’d encountered upon my return and the attraction I’d felt was immediate. I’d thought it would come and go as all my other attractions to the various women who had crossed my path in the past had, but it lingered. Maybe I’d been tired from the long drive across the country with a car full of cats. I know I’d been feeling disoriented being back in the land of memory. And I’d been sure I was mistaken in thinking the feeling of attraction was mutual, even before I found out she was gay.

A week later, without really thinking about it, I had asked her to ride the carousel with me. My original intention had been to ask Felice, but when I called Jilly’s to see if she’d be up for that, Albert had told me she wasn’t around. On a silly impulse, I’d asked Jaz and she’d agreed, ribbing me the whole way. After riding the carousel several times, we had walked through the park for hours.

There had been something about her, the way she’d moved, her voice, the questions she’d asked, the way she’d listened, that had made my head spin. Instead of the attraction fading, it had grown stronger.

We’d taken a narrow trail that led down to the river. It was dark and I’d stumbled on a root or something. She’d caught me and for a long moment we had stood there, too close, our bodies touching in an easy embrace, our lips millimeters apart. They may have even touched, briefly, and then we were both an arm’s length apart, breathing hard. I don’t know who broke away first and neither of us had spoken of it since.

“All the time,” I said.

“Me, too.”

She turned then and ran up the stairs. I stood there until I heard her door open and click shut.

IN THE ROBYN ZONE

I was walking across an open field deep with snow, following a single set of tracks receding into the dusky distance. Despite the snow and the long, narrow icicles hanging from the barren branches of the trees, I didn’t feel cold. I could see a figure off in the distance, at the very edge of vision. I knew who it was. I knew if I increased my pace, she would increase hers. If I lagged, she would lag. If I stopped, she would wait until I started again.

And I knew that I had been on this trail a long time. That at the beginning of my journey other trails had crossed mine. That I had considered turning off, had even taken a few steps in other directions only to turn back and resume my fruitless trek. But that had been long ago. Now there was only me, her, and the never-changing distance that separated us.

As I walked, the trees lining the path rustled and Jaz stepped through them. She watched me for a moment and then joined me on my trek. At first she was silent, putting one foot in front of the other as I was doing. We came to a turn. The path widened. I walked several steps ahead before I realized she had stopped. I turned and saw her looking at me.

“You’ll never catch her,” she said.

I looked over my shoulder. As I knew she would, Robyn had stopped as well. Waiting. I looked back at Jaz.

“I know that,” I said.

“Why do you chase her, then?” she said.

I felt confused by her question. It should be such an easy one to answer. I shivered, feeling the cold now, covering me like a cloak.

“Well,” I said, ready to give her an answer. To my surprise, nothing came. My mouth hung open, my tongue wet and ready for words, but no words came. I didn’t have an answer. I started to shake. The moisture on my lips froze.

I woke up.

The transition was seamless. I simply opened my eyes, a Don Henley song echoing in my head. Summer, yeah, that was some summer. The bedroom glowed with moonlight. The wind whistled softly through the screen above my bed, the breeze sliding across my body like satin. It was warm, with a hint of rain.

Once, there had been nights like this, Robyn curled up beside me, asleep. I would wake, roll over, watch her breathe; trace with trembling fingers the contours of her body as it glowed in the moonlight, wondering how long she would stay in my world.

Now there was only me. My heart felt as if it were being filled with air. There were tears in my eyes and I didn’t know to which emotion I should attach them. I longed for something, with the bitter knowledge that what I longed for was a ghost, a point in time to which I could never return and never relive.

And in that passage of time I had become the weaver of a tale I am too afraid to finish, knowing that to do so would leave me with an empty loom. The endless raveling and unraveling had become ritual, the never-ending tale a refuge. The strands have grown thin, their colors faded, the original design distorted in the constant reweaving. Yet I keep my foot upon the treadle, my hands upon the shuttle, blindly raising and lowering warp threads in shifting combinations, their purpose lost.

The breeze dried my tears. I could hear the rumble of distant thunder. The glow of the moon was fading. I reached out my hand. The space beside me was as empty as I felt inside.

When I woke again it was past noon and raining. The strains of a Billy Holiday tune were seeping from the radio. Reluctantly I opened my eyes. The curtain was billowing into the room, undulating in the wind. The thunder was closer. Flashes of lightning traced shadows on the wall. Billy became John Lee Hooker who in turn became Muddy Waters. Though still a rocker to the core, I prefer the anguish of blues upon waking. It always sets the mood for the day to come.

When Muddy handed it over to BB and BB slid it on down to Tab Benoit, I rolled out of bed and just about fell to my knees, my legs were so wobbly. I sat back down and that was when I realized I was soaked in sweat, over-heated and shivering at the same time. No wonder I had slept so late. Whatever foul chemicals I had sucked into my system at that print shop were doing a number on me.

With an effort, I managed to stand and make it to the kitchen. Despite the distraction of my mournful thoughts, and shivers that had me spilling coffee beans and cat food all over the counter, I managed to make it through the first thirty minutes without injuring myself or the cats. Chores done, coffee cup in hand, I grabbed a blanket and headed for the porch, shaking off the last remnants of the Robyn Zone.

The rain was coming down in long, wavering sheets. I hesitated at the stairs, hoping Jaz would appear, knowing she wouldn’t. No doubt at work by now. I continued onto the porch, wrapped the blanket around myself and sat down in my chair.

The wind was whipping the swings across the street into a frenzy of activity, as though ghost children were at riotous play. The seconds between the flashes of brilliant lightning and the accompanying boom of thunder were growing shorter. The storm was nearly overhead.

Despite the long hot shower I had taken the night before, I could still smell traces of printer’s ink seeping from my pores and the taste of it was still in my mouth. I was beginning to think this was going to be a complete down day, when my pager went off and my cell phone began bashing Beethoven.

“Teller,” I said, flipping the thing open.

“Are you all right?” said Felice.

My heart jumped. Felice would only call if something was up, not to ask about my condition. She would already know my condition.

“What’s happening?”

“You need to get down to the police station right away,” she said, her voice as calm as if she were discussing the weather. “They’ve arrested the Meter Mangler.”

The phone fell from my hand, into my lap. I could hear her voice as I fumbled to retrieve it.

“Teller? Did you hear me?”

“Yeah. Sure. No problem, Felice. I’ll head over there right now.”

I folded up the phone and slipped it into my pocket.

I stood up. Turned one way, then another, confused. The Mangler. Caught. I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want it to be true. I had grown rather fond of Darth and his little jabs at the establishment.

On wobbly legs, I ran inside, slipped on some clothes, grabbed my keys and headed out the door to my car. I hesitated, thought about locking the front door and was on the verge of doing so when my cell phone began butchering Beethoven again.

“Are you on your way?” Felice said.

“Halfway there,” I said and flipped the phone closed. I stared at the front door a moment longer then jumped in the car and headed downtown.

TORQUEMADA SLEPT HERE

The city courthouse has a ‘Torquemada slept here’ look to it. Heavy, dull gray stone, heavy oak beams, window and door frames like lips pursed in anguish. You find yourself looking for the entrance to the dungeon and think you’ve found it when you stumble across the stairs leading to the police station. It sits on the north side of the courthouse, enjoying the worst of the winter storms and little of the summer sun. The granite there is stained and moss-covered; stepping down the stairs to the massive oak doors brings a ten-degree drop in temperature.

The place was quiet when I stepped through the door. I knew Felice had a mole in the police department; she had moles everywhere, so it wasn’t likely that the TV crews had wind of this yet. I’d managed to avoid entering this part of the courthouse since my return so I was somewhat surprised at how civilized it was inside, considering the outside facade.

Ivory walls, pastel blue trim, Weston, Adams, Cunningham and Bullock photographic prints on the wall; house plants on every flat surface and everything in its place. I was sure this was Marion’s doing since becoming the head honcho. He was a neat freak to the extreme. His desk was always empty and shining, his clothes clean and pressed to perfection, and his houseplants never died. Never even yellowed.

Marion didn’t like being called Marion, despite the fact that Marion was the name given on his birth certificate. Really. I looked once, just to be sure. Normally, when someone can’t abide their first name, they resort to their middle one. In Marion’s case, it wasn’t an improvement. Francis, in his mind, was as bad as Marion. And it wasn’t like he could go by his initials, MF not being the best sobriquet for a cop. In the end, from the time he returned from Nam, he emulated his movie hero John Wayne, another Marion, and started calling himself Duke.

I have never called him that, much to his chagrin.

I made my way past the reception area and found Marion watering plants in his office. Built like a NFL lineman, his hair was the color of sun-bleached wheat and cut close to his scalp. He had a hard, square Dudley Do-Right jaw, with tight, thin lips that turned neither up in a smile nor down with displeasure, and sharp, blue eyes that could pin you in place like a mounted butterfly. As always, his khaki-colored uniform looked fresh off the hanger, with creases so sharp they hurt the eye to look at them. A Sam Browne belt was tight about his trim stomach. A sleek Sig Sauer 9mm rode on his hip at pocket level, an improvement over the bulky, Dirty Harry .44 he used to carry.

The only blemishes on this near perfection were the four, thin scars that ran from jawline to hairline. The hundreds of similar scars – shrapnel wounds – which peppered the right side of his body had earned him the Navy Cross. The quarter-size bullet-wound scar above his left nipple, with an exit wound scar the size of a baby’s fist below his left shoulder blade, led to the Medal of Honor.

“Hey, Marion,” I said, stepping into his office. “What’s up?”

His shoulders tightened imperceptibly. I could see the color rise above the tight collar of his shirt. He set down the watering can and turned, sighing as he did so. He tried for a smile but it looked more like someone had stepped hard on his toe. I had the feeling our little bout with détente was wearing him down.

“Teller,” he said, lowering himself into his chair, a straight-backed wooden thing that looked distinctly uncomfortable.

I knew he would never offer me a chair so I pulled one out and sat down. “So,” I said. “Anything new on Harrison?”

He visibly relaxed, which was exactly what I hoped would happen if I opened with something other than the Mangler.

“Nothing new,” he said. “Coroner confirmed the cause of death as blunt-force trauma. He was hit from behind, probably never saw his assailant.”

“Have you found out where he was killed?”

“His garage. He was apparently getting into his car. There was blood splatter on the seats, floor mat, dashboard and a pool of it on the floor. The coroner set the time of death at between 8:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.”

Right after his call to HL, I thought.  “Did you know he called HL at 8.00 p.m. that night?”

“Mr. Essex has informed me of that and of the brief conversation between them.”

“Strange coincidence, don’t you think?”

“It might be were it not for the bug we found in Harrison’s phone. And that, Teller, is off the record.”

“Sure.” Anything to maintain the détente. “You found a bug?”

“I just said that, didn’t I?”

“Any idea on who was bugging him?

“None. It was a short range device, a mile at most, so someone was watching him. My men are canvassing the area but a square mile is a lot of houses. It’s going to take time.”

I finished scribbling down my notes and looked up at him.

“Any sign of that SUV?”

“Nothing yet.  We’re looking for it.  The license number you gave us came back as belonging to a Chrysler Imperial.”

“Figures.  What about the Meter Mangler?” The change in tack caught him off guard.

“How … what makes you think I know anything new about the Mangler?”

“Well, I have information that you have him here in your little jail.”

He stared at me, hard, the color in his cheeks going from pink to crimson. I could almost hear the enamel of his teeth cracking, and I swear he was trying to stop my heart with the look he was giving me. I don’t know why I yanked his chain so. I didn’t dislike the guy. In fact, I rather admired him; highest score at the police academy, youngest gold shield detective on the force and now the youngest chief ever appointed, not to mention his numerous military honors. But there was just something about his demeanor that begged to be tampered with.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

“You mean you haven’t arrested the Meter Mangler?”

“I didn’t say that. Where did you get this information?”

“Confidential sources,” I said. “So. Did you or didn’t you?”

He sighed, muttered something that sounded like ‘Felice’. His breath smelled like Lysterine. He got up, walked out from behind his desk and left the office. I folded up my pad and followed.

We walked past the interrogation room and into the observation room next door. It was cool inside that room, narrow and dark. A tape recorder was turning. I looked through the one way glass into the next room; Marion’s interior design program hadn’t reached this far into the jail house. Dingy green walls, bars on the tiny window, a scarred metal table set dead center of the room. I shuddered, thinking about the time I had spent in that room a quarter century ago, when I’d been the one and only suspect in a murder investigation. That little escapade had made Marion’s day. I’m not sure what broke his heart more; that I turned out to be innocent or that it was me who uncovered the real culprit.

A young, disheveled man sat slumped in a chair at the table. Two detectives sat across from him. The man wore a soiled, white T-shirt a size too small for his massive chest. His face was covered in a bird’s-nest growth of beard and his black hair stood out at all angles. When he looked up, he had a hollow, vacant look in his eyes. Lights on: Nobody home. No way he could be the Mangler. He didn’t look ‘there’ enough to tie his own shoes.

“So, where’d you pick him up?” I said.

“South end of town,” Marion said. “He was walking down the street with a pipe cutter in one hand and two meter heads slung over his shoulder.”

“And that makes you think he’s the Mangler?” I was unable to avoid a touch of sarcasm in my voice.

“Well, what do you think it makes him, Teller?” Marion said, picking up on my tone.

“Cool Hand Luke?”

“What?”

“You know, the movie? Oh. Jeez, Marion. What am I thinking? You’re not into entertainment. Cool Hand Luke? It’s an old sixties flick. Paul Newman? The movie opens with Newman cutting off the head of a parking meter.”

“And you think—”

The door behind us opened and another detective walked in. “Sir,” he said, handing a slip of paper to Marion. “This just came by fax.”

Marion scanned the paper and I could see his jaw tighten and the color creep back into his face. He took a deep breath. “All right, Pawlaczyk,” he said through clenched teeth. “Call Eloise and tell them we have their man. Tell them to get someone up here ASAP.”

“Right.”

Pawlaczyk left and I turned to Marion. “The guy’s from Eloise?”

“It would appear that way,” he said, forcing the words out. “Been locked up the past year.”

“A nut case?”

“Mentally challenged, Teller. Have some respect. And, unless you’re ready to tell me what you’ve been holding back, get out of my jail before I find some reason to keep you here.”

“What makes you think I’ve been holding back?” I said, trying hard for innocent and seeing, from the look in Marion’s face, that I was missing the mark.

He raised his arm and pointed at the door. Having no desire to check out Marion’s interior decorating scheme for the jail cells, I moved toward the door without another word but stopped.

“By the way,” I said, “the morning Harrison’s body was found … did his identity go out over the radio?”

“Not a chance,” he said. “We kept that close to the bone. You and Felice, of course, were the only ones outside the department who knew. Why?”

“No reason. I was just curious.”

“What are you holding back from me, Teller?”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, Marion, now that we’re getting along so well.”

I hurried out the door and left the building before he could strong-arm me into saying anything more.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

The rain had stopped by the time I was back out on the street. As I walked to my car, I felt an odd mixture of comfort and confusion. Comfort because the Meter Mangler was back in the saddle. Confusion because seeing that old interrogation room was stirring up a memory pot on the brink of being over-stirred already. The old ‘why did I come back here’ refrain echoed with every footfall.

My spirits rose somewhat when I saw the local TV news van skid to the curb. Late as always. An animated mannequin ran past me, her bouncy blonde curls so stiff with hair spray they would probably shatter if you flicked your finger against them. She was followed by two camera-toting guys who looked like they’d just finished a thousand-mile motorcycle run.

I considered telling them the story had evaporated, save them some time. And, knowing the mood Marion was in, some grief. Instead, I just stepped out their way and smiled as they rushed past. They wouldn’t listen to me anyway, and it would give Marion something to chew on besides thoughts of me.

I called Felice to let her know what was going on. She connected me to the news desk and I shot off a story from the top of my head to one of the kids there. They’d type it up, insert it under my byline, and it would be in the website edition in minutes. That done, I considered my next move. The problem was I wasn’t sure what my next move should be.

Something had been nagging at me all day. I pulled the notebook from my pocket and there it was. I knew what my next move was going to be.

Twenty minutes later, minus the trip down memory’s minefield, I pulled into the rutted parking lot of Hock It To Me Pawn. Tom Philo was just stepping out the back door.

“Teller,” he said as I stepped from the car. “Back so soon.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry I didn’t call first but there was something you said that’s been nagging at me and I wanted to clear it up. Mind if I ask a few more questions?”

“Not at all. I was just going out for some decent coffee but that can wait. Come on in.”

He opened the door and walked through. I followed.

“So, what can I help you with?” he said, sitting where he had sat the last time we spoke.

With a grimace, I settled into the overstuffed chair. Flipping through several pages of notes I found the ones I had circled.

“I wanted to ask you about the maintenance costs,” I said. “With all the meters they’re installing, wouldn’t that cut heavily into their budget as well?”

“Not at all,” Philo said. “The expense for any work done on the streets, or sidewalks, is borne by the Department of Public Works. The DPE bears the expense of purchasing the meters; the DPW would bear the expense of installing them.”

I noted that and moved on to my next question.

“When we were discussing the money from the meters and tickets, you said the DPE will collect. I thought the money went into the city coffers?”

“Well, that was true at one time,” he said. “That changed several years back. A technical thing, really, a change in the city charter and one of the hottest of hot-button issues we’ve seen in this town.  You see, from a financial point of view, there are two types of city services: Those that ultimately fill the city coffers and those that drain it. Police, fire, the DPW in fact, these services tend to be revenue drains.  With EMS it could go either way.  Licensing, leases on city-held property, the DPE, these are examples of revenue earners.”

“So how is now different?” I said.  “What changed?”

“Well, at one time, all monies collected by city agencies, including the DPE, went into the general fund as they were collected. At the end of the fiscal year, when budget talk time came round, those same agencies would fight it out for a piece of the pie. A proposal emerged that each agency should maintain its own accounts, profit and loss, and, if profit were involved, the money would revert to the general fund at the end of the fiscal year.

“It was a silly proposal, really. An accounting nightmare for the revenue gainers and drainers alike, but several of the council members were quite enamored of the idea. James Gjerde, the city manager at the time, was the most strident voice against the proposal. And Jim carried a lot of weight back then.”

“But the proposal obviously passed,” I said. “What happened?”

“A tragic incident, that.” Philo’s voice was shaky with emotion. He took a deep breath and continued.

“Jim was a diabetic and a meticulous one at that, which makes his death all the more tragic. He had one of those new-fangled automatic insulin pumps. Reads your blood sugar and automatically adjusts. According to the coroner’s report, the thing malfunctioned, forcing Jim to fall back on dosing himself. He inadvertently, or so they say, gave himself a massive insulin overdose. He was home alone at the time, and with no one there to help him, he died.”

Something in his demeanor led me to believe he was holding back something .

“You don’t think his death was an accident, do you?” I said.

Philo looked away, off into the distance.

“I knew Jim well,” he said, in a whisper. “He was scrupulous and careful. Always had a good supply of insulin on hand, needles as back-up for the pump, hard candy on him at all times in case of hypoglycemia. He exercised, watched his diet and had regular check-ups. He also had a Medic Alert bracelet he never took off. Oddly, they found the candy and the bracelet in a drawer after his death.”

He pulled his gaze from wherever it had been and looked back at me.

“Dorothea, his wife, had died several months before and Jim took it pretty hard. There were whispers of suicide but Jim would never have resorted to that, despite his grief. He loved life too much.”

“Who else on the council opposed the plan?” I said.

“Well, let me see. Harrison de Whitt was opposed. As were Susan Pitlosh, Bob Koleda and Nicole Wittenmyer. With Jim, that made the pros and cons even and as long as an issue before the council was even, it couldn’t pass. His was the most strident voice against the proposal; with his death the opposition was outnumbered and the proposal passed. This will be the second full year of its operation. It should be interesting to see how it pans out come budget time.”

Something was afoot. Philo was skirting something, still holding back, maybe even a bit fearful.  I could feel it, but I sensed he wasn’t ready to reveal what he was hiding nor what he might be afraid of.

“Tom, I want to thank you. Our conversation has been very enlightening.”

“Sure, I am more than happy to help,” he said. “If you need any further information, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Oh, and if you’re interested, we meet once a month. There’s a meeting coming up this weekend, in fact, though I’ve covered most of it here. But you’re welcome to attend. There are some interesting horror stories that might lend a nice human touch to your articles on the department.”

“I’ll do that,” I said. “If I can.”

“I’ll look forward to your being there.”

We exchanged the usual gotta-go-now banter and I headed out the shop by the back door. I swung the Altima out the parking lot, the Goo Goo Dolls reminding me that everything was made to be broken.

I had a feeling this story was going to break soon. Very soon.

WHERE TELLER FEARS TO TREAD

The rain began again in earnest as I pulled into the driveway. I tucked my notebook, empty space a couple of days ago and now down to one blank page, beneath my shirt to keep it dry. My scrawl was hard enough to read. Soaking wet, it would be impossible.

As I raced from the car to the house, thoughts tumbled around in my head as if driven by the fierce wind which was whipping the lilac bushes bordering my front door into a frenzy. A hundred and twenty million dollars. Maybe more. Two deaths. Were they connected? What did it mean? And where did the Meter Mangler fit into all this?

Questions, questions, questions. I had more questions now than when I started. Always the case, though. A good story was like a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces into which half a box of another puzzle had been tossed. It was all a matter of picking through the pieces, keeping the ones you needed, discarding the rest. The hard part, and the part I enjoyed the most, was determining which was which.

Once in the house, I grabbed a fresh notebook and began poring over Philo’s information. His comment about not being able to get the figures from the DPE’s website stopped me. What had he meant by that?

Setting down the notebook, I called the pawn shop, hoping he might still be there. The voice on the answering machine wasn’t Philo’s, but it sounded familiar. I called back to listen again and recognition clicked in. It was my friend Pauline, using one of her stage voices. She did voice-overs as a kind of side business: Radio, some TV, though never on camera and, it would appear, answering machines.

Pauline runs the Stonehenge Bar, a smoky little underground place that isn’t listed in the phonebook or in the trendy little places-to-visit brochure published by the city for tourists. There is no sign outside marking the place, just a dingy expanse of moss-covered stone leading down into darkness. The Stonehenge was one of those ‘back-room’ places where clandestine deals go down over expensive cigars and twenty-year-old single malt scotch.

Pauline owns the Stonehenge, though few people know that. What even fewer people know is that Pauline was once known as Paul. I’ve known it for years. He and I went to grade school together. An effeminate, androgynously beautiful young boy, with glistening dark hair and smooth, cocoa-colored skin, he was always being harassed by the other kids.

Marion, Harrison and I had come upon three of the local bullies beating up on Paul out behind the schoolyard one day. Paul was doing a fair enough job of not getting killed but he was grossly outnumbered and trapped by the buildings to his rear and on both sides. Marion had stepped into the fray first. Even back then he had delusions of Super Hero greatness. And, I suppose, Harrison and I had delusions of our own. We’d followed a step behind.

We’d made pretty quick work of the bullies and Paul had started hanging with us after that. Well, with me and Harrison, anyway. Marion was indifferent to him, as he was with anyone under the age of adulthood. Kids couldn’t get him to where he wanted to be. Adults could.

Paul was accepted into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the tender age of fifteen. Over the next ten years, he obtained a PhD in computer science and a half dozen patents that would keep him in beer and cigarette money forever. It also gave him the only thing he’d ever really wanted.

He’d returned as Pauline when he was twenty-five, bought the Stonehenge and started single-handedly running the place. Astute, aggressive young journalist that I was back then, it hadn’t taken me long to figure out who she was. Or had been. Before the change of wardrobe.

I called the pawnshop a third time, listened to the voice on the machine again. It was definitely Pauline’s. Did she really do answering machine voices? Or did Philo and Pauline know each other?

You’re paranoid, Teller, the nag in my head nagged. Paranoid? Philo and Pauline. The smell of Jaz’s perfume in the pawn shop. The voice synthesizer in the display case. The doubts about the gender of the Mangler. Harrison’s murder. Jim Gjerde’s ‘accidental death’. I knew I could get the straight scoop on Gjerde through the paper or, if I had to, through Marion.

If I wanted something unofficial and possibly more enlightening, I knew where I had to go. The thought made me shudder, though. I hadn’t been in Jilly’s once since I got back.

If there was a vortex of memory swirling about this town, Jilly’s would be at its center.

FALSE EVIDENCE APPEARING REAL

I stood inside the back door of Jilly’s, breathing hard, trying to make my heart slow down. It was dark, the dining area closed, the chairs stacked neatly on the tables. A string of neon dots ringed the old Wurlitzer. I could hear a couple of post-lunch drinkers at the bar, the sound of glass clinking on glass, the tinkle of ice cubes. The air smelled of cigarette smoke, Pine Sol, and booze. I’d been frozen in place for five minutes or more, unable to move forward or back.

A hand brushed my neck. I nearly jumped through the roof.

“It’s just fear, Teller.”

Felice stepped from behind me, her hand still brushing my neck. Where she had come from, I had no idea. I hadn’t heard the door open, nor seen the light from the outside and yet she was there.

“Remember what’s said about fear.” She was whispering, her face close to mine. Her hair smelled of lavender. “‘False Evidence Appearing Real’. Fear. You’re not here to drink. You needn’t fear that you will, because you won’t. In your heart you know you don’t want to. It’s your head that’s confused. You’re here to see Albert. So come along.”

She took my hand, led me into the bar. I kept my eyes averted from the bottles lined up along the back wall.

“They’re only glass,” she whispered. “Inanimate objects that can’t hurt you anymore. Look at them. By looking at them, you remove their power.”

I turned my head and stared at the line of domestic and foreign beers that lined the top shelf. My heart didn’t stop as I expected it would. And I didn’t vault the bar and start grabbing them one by one, pouring them down my throat. They weren’t even tempting, which surprised me. Surprised my fear, maybe. Disappointed Buster Booze. They were just bottles. Different shapes. Different sizes. Different colors. But just bottles. Not dragons. I turned back to Felice. She was gone.

There was a light burning in the far corner. I moved toward it. Albert was sitting at his usual table, his usual hand of solitaire laid out in front of him.

“How’s it going, Albert?” I said, surprised that my voice wasn’t shaky. I looked around as I pulled out a chair.

“Looking for something?” Albert said.

“Felice,” I said. “She was just with me and now she’s gone.”

His eyebrows arched. “Felice? She’s upstairs. Hasn’t been down yet this morning.”

“But …”

He held up his hand. “Scared you a little, coming in here,” he said. “First time since you got back.”

I looked down, feeling sheepish. “Yeah, well. I guess.”

“There you are,” he said, as if that explained everything. “So what do you need?”

I gave him the Reader’s Digest condensed version of what I’d learned from Philo on Tuesday, ending with Jim Gjerde.

“Tom Philo,” Albert said. “Single malt. Gjerde was a bourbon man, Wild Turkey, straight up, never more than two shots.”

“You know him? Knew him, I mean?” I said. “And Philo, too?”

“Tom? Sure. Plays poker here Sunday afternoons. Gjerde? He’d come in once in a while. Never ate here. He was a vegetarian. Not much here for an herbivore.”

“He’s dead, you know,” I said. “Gjerde, I mean.”

“Duh!” Albert said. “You’re the one who just got back to town, remember? I never left. Of course I know he’s dead. Insulin overdose. Simple enough. Some people think too simple. Or too complicated. Depends on your point of view.”

“Some people?” I was thinking of Philo’s odd behavior while talking about him. “Would ‘some people’ include the cops?”

“Nah.” Albert laughed. “Half of ‘em wouldn’t recognize a crime if it bit them more than once. One cop, though. Chambers. He didn’t like the feel of it. Sniffed around a bit longer than anyone thought was necessary. But he has a show to run, not like the old days when he was just another detective. So he dropped it. I think it still nags him from time to time.”

“Why do you think that?” I said.

“He’s been in here once or twice. Asking questions. And you know how much he loves to come in here. Ask me anything. And I’ve heard he’s been out to Gjerde’s house a few times. Tied up in an estate battle, I hear. What he hopes to find there now is anybody’s guess.”

“Feeling it,” I said.

Albert gave me a strange look.

“Marion doesn’t like to admit it,” I said in answer to that look, “but he suffers from an acute case of intuition.”

“Hmmm, well, that explains it then,” said Albert. “Intuitive hits would be about all he’d get from that scene, then or now. It was clean. Too clean.”

“What do you mean ‘too clean’?” I said.

“Gjerde had a top-of-the-line insulin pump. Those things do not malfunction as a rule, so why was he shooting himself up? His Medic Alert bracelet and his candy supply were in a drawer. I’ve heard suicide bantered about, so maybe that was the reason. I didn’t know the guy that well, so who knows?  But, from what I heard, there were no fingerprints where you would expect at least his fingerprints to be.”

“Which means someone wiped down the place.”

“You got it.”

“Philo mentioned the bracelet and the candy,” I said.

“He would know. They were tight, those two.”

“So you think he was murdered?”

“I think it’s a good possibility.”

“Can you think of any reason why someone might want him killed?” I said.

“Well,” he said. “He was a politician. And a lawyer. Right there you have two strikes.”

“Two strikes aren’t enough to take him out of the game,” I said.

“True enough.” He picked up his cards and began idly shuffling them. “There’s been some talk, whispers really. I haven’t paid much attention. I tend to choose my battles closer to home these days. But, for you, I suppose I could pay a little more attention.”

“Don’t do anything that’ll get you messed up, Albert,” I said.

He gave me an incredulous look. “Give me a break, Teller. I was swimming in dangerous waters long before you were a gleam in your daddy’s eye.”

“Right,” I said. “What was I thinking?”

He laid out a spread of cards, looking past me into some dark part of the bar.

“You know, that reminds me of another much too clean death. And, come to think of it, another one Chambers was overly interested in.”

“Oh? Who?”

“Give me a minute to pull it all in,” he said. “This was a couple of years back, three, maybe four.”

He started sliding three cards at a time off the deck and turning them over. About half way through, he stopped.

“Forest Forrester … that was his name. Didn’t know him well. He never came in here. Nice enough guy if you ran into him on the street. Older fellow, early sixties.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was one of those pre-dawn power walkers; lived out by the springs and exercised by walking up and down some of those back roads out there. He was hit by a car; hit and run, or so the story goes.”

“So what made it too clean?” I said.

“Accidents are messy, Teller,” he said. “Not this one. Just one dead body, lying in the street. There were no skid marks, no glass or paint chips or bits of chrome on the body or anywhere around it, nothing. Do you have any idea of how unusual that is? You really have to wonder what went down out there.”

“So you think he was murdered?”

“I think it’s a good possibility.”

“What did the cops think?”

“Ruled it a hit and run accident. But I don’t think Chambers bought that. As with Gjerde, he kept going out to the scene, checking it over. The interesting thing is it wasn’t just where the body was found that he was checking out.”

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t in any report that I know of, except maybe the one in Chambers’ head, but about a mile down the road, there was a spot where the ground was all torn up as if a car had swerved onto the shoulder.”

“And maybe ran over some old man in the process?”

“Maybe.”

“And moved the body to disconnect the scene from the evidence?”

“Maybe, again.”

“But why? Why move it? Why run that risk? Why not just leave it where it fell?”

“Don’t have an answer to that one. Maybe the guy used his own car, saw the opportunity and took it without thinking it through. It’s a mystery. But here’s another thing you might find interesting. Like Gjerde, like de Whitt, Forrester worked for the city.”

“Really? In what capacity?”

“He was the head of the DPE.”

“Damn, this is curiouser and curiouser.”

MY BABY SHE SENT ME A LETTER

I pulled the Altima into the driveway and killed the engine. My thoughts were a cyclone of discordant information. Curiouser and curiouser indeed.

I stepped out the car, keyed the lock and headed for the door. I was halfway there when I froze. Someone was sitting on the porch. And there was a familiar scent in the still air. This was a week for smells. First, the smell of Jaz in the pawn shop … and now? It couldn’t be. I hadn’t smelled that scent, except in my dreams, for years. L’Air du Temps. The perfume most favored by Robyn.

I shook my head, clearing it. The someone on the porch stood up. It was Lynn Ford, head of the research department at the paper and Robyn’s best friend. Or at least she used to be her best friend. From what I knew, Robyn hadn’t stayed in touch with any of the old crowd.

I’d been avoiding Lynn outside of work, though she had called several times when I first moved back to town. Those few times we had run into each other at the paper had been, for me, embarrassing and awkward. I felt there were questions hovering in the air that neither of us wanted to ask or answer; though, from all appearances, I’m not sure Lynn felt the same way.

“Lynn,” I said, stepping onto the porch. The smell of L’Air du Temps was stronger. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry, Cat,” she said, calling me by the nickname I hadn’t heard in years.

“Sorry for what?” I said, starting to feel a little nervous.

She took a deep breath. “I was going to call … oh, hell. Here.” She handed me a blue envelope. The fragrance was coming from it. My heart did a back-flip and started cartwheeling around in my chest when I spotted the handwriting. A Joe Cocker song began to play in my head.

“It came in the mail today,” she continued. “I think you should read it.”

Reluctantly, I took the envelope from her hand, tipped it and slid out the letter. The paper was pale blue, like the envelope. Of course it would match, I thought, suddenly angry for no reason I could think of, knowing at the same moment that I did know that anger, did know the reason for it. I had felt it often enough over the years, mixed in with all the other things that were tearing me apart. There was a time when I would have given half the blood in my veins, alcohol diluted as it was, for a letter such as this, addressed to me.

I unfolded it and read it quickly.

It fluttered from my hand as I read the last paragraph.

“She’s …” I looked up at Lynn, “… she’s coming to town.”

“On her birthday,” Lynn said.

I did a quick memory check. “That’s … three weeks.”

“About that,” Lynn said. “She wants … she wants to know—”

“I read it, Lynn,” I snapped, and immediately regretted it. Lynn didn’t deserve to be the target of my anger. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to jump on you.”

“I know, Cat.”

I felt her fingertips on my arm. My insides were shaking. I didn’t know which I wanted to do more: Scream or cry. Her fingers tightened.

“I know we’ve never talked about, you know, about you and her,” she said. “I wanted to. I just wasn’t sure, sure of, well, sure of anything, I guess. You two guys were, I mean, everyone loved you two. Most of us envied what you had together. And then it just blew apart. She got married, took off. Never contacted any of us. And you came completely undone. Jesus, Cat, those last couple of months before you left town, I mean, we were on death watch, you know? I mean, we didn’t think you would, like, blow your brains out or anything, but a lot of us thought you were sure going to drink yourself to death. Or end up in jail. And then you disappeared.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Those were some rough months.” Years was what crossed my mind. “But I stayed in touch. Even if just a little.”

“You did,” she said. “And Albert filled us in on the dark periods. You know we still all go to Jilly’s. You turned us on to that place. We don’t party as hard as we did, but you’ll always find someone from the old gang there. I mean, I know you can’t really join us, but …” Her voice trailed off.

“I know, Lynn, and I appreciate it. I do. And maybe one of these days I’ll be able to hang in a bar and not feel like every bottle lined up along the wall is whispering to me.”

We stood for a moment in silence then Lynn said, “She mentioned something about staying at the Lincoln Hotel. Wanted to make sure I pointed that out to you.”

I laughed, and there was even a hint of mirth to it. “Yeah,” I said. “I noticed that. Some things never change, I guess.”

When I first met Robyn, the Lincoln had been shut down, boarded up for years. It had once been a grandiose hotel, but time and neglect had transformed it into little more than a dingy housing area for the rats and the homeless.

Midway through our five years, someone bought the place and began extensive renovations. That whole area of town was in the throes of gentrification and the idea was to restore the Lincoln to its former opulence. They managed it pretty well. It opened about six months before Robyn and I broke up. Because of internal structural problems, the increased number of rooms and, I’m sure, because it looked cool and elegant, they designed external elevators for the top suites.

Robyn became rather enamored of those elevators. Of making love in them. But why the visit now? What was she up to? What did she want?

“What are you going to do, Cat?”

“I don’t know, Lynn,” I said. “I really don’t know.”

We chatted for a while and after she left, I went inside to record what I could remember of my conversation with Albert. Despite the turmoil Robyn’s letter had caused, I managed to complete a blistering piece for Sunday’s editorial page and fax it off. When the ‘sent’ confirmation appeared, I called the news desk to make sure it had gone through. I don’t trust technology and, on top of that, I wanted to make sure the copy was proofed before going to print. Several of the letters on my old Underwood were beginning to look more like Egyptian hieroglyphics than alphabet.

Once everything was settled, I sat back on the couch and stared at the powder blue envelope sitting on the coffee table. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sleep with the smell of that perfume in the house so I got up, grabbed a book off the shelf, put the letter inside it and carried the book out to the porch. I would deal with that bridge when I came to it.

Right now, I needed sleep.

I DON’T MAKE LOVE TO BOYS

A man was jogging down a dark, tree-lined street, dressed in a grey, three-piece suit. Robyn and I were driving down the same street in a red sports car that looked very much like my old Fiat. The top was down. I was sitting in the back seat. Harrison was sitting next to Robyn. Jim Gjerde was sitting on the other end of the seat from me. The Cars were playing on the radio, the words floating from the speaker and brushing my face like feathers. Fast cars, double lives; where in the end do they go?

The man turned while still running and stuck out his thumb for a ride. Robyn swerved, hit him full on, and swerved back onto the street. He flew end over end in the air and landed next to me. Smiling, he stuck out his hand. “I’m Forest Forrester,” he said. “I’m dead.” He looked over at Harrison and Jim. “Hey there, you two, I see they got you as well.”

Robyn turned around in her seat, the car continuing on by itself. The seat became the elevator outside the Lincoln Hotel. It rose and swept her away into the night. When it returned, Jaz was in it. Jaz smiled, kissed Harrison on the cheek and blew kisses at Jim and Forrest. Plucking a blue envelope from the air, she handed it to me.

“This came for Lynn but it’s for you,” she said. “I think it’s important. I think you should throw it away.”

I reached for the envelope but the wind caught it and blew it out the car. I looked at Jaz. She reached out, touched my face. “Why do I even like you?” she said. “You’re a boy. I don’t make love to boys.”

That was when I woke up.

I rolled out of bed and headed for the kitchen, a swirl of thoughts in my head, a swirl of hungry cats at my feet. Coffee, cat food and cleaning the litter boxes consumed the first thirty minutes. I tried to get a handle on the previous day while I worked. There were several questions nagging me, not to mention the turmoil Robyn’s impending visit caused. By the time I made it to the porch, I pretty much knew what I needed to do.

I made several phone calls, disturbing more than one person mid-breakfast. Harrison had been a well-respected, well-liked guy about town because, though some were annoyed at the disruption of their morning meal, all agreed to find the information I needed as soon as they got to work.

Now there was a last person I needed to talk to and it wasn’t something I could do over the phone.

When I walked into Marion’s office an hour later, he was standing with his back to me, exactly where he’d been standing the last time I’d visited, watering his plants. He stiffened and turned, looking at his watch.

“You again,” he said, setting down the watering can. “I expected you a half an hour ago.”

“I guess that means my informants are working both sides of the street,” I said, seating myself.

“Make yourself at home,” Marion said, sitting down himself.

“I will, thank you.”

This warm-and-fuzzy between us was starting to make me nervous.

“So,” I said, “now that we have the pleasantries out the way, I understand you’re not exactly happy with the verdict on Forrester’s and Gjerde’s causes of death.”

“Where did you hear that from? No, never mind. Forget I asked. I already know the answer to that one.”

He looked off in the direction of Jilly’s, then back at me, his gaze stern and penetrating.

“On the record or off?” he said.

I closed my notebook and said nothing.

He took a deep breath. The corners of his mouth twitched. From long experience I knew this was as close to a smile as Marion was capable. I had a sneaking suspicion he was actually looking forward to this.

“The track suit they found Forrester wearing wasn’t his,” he said.

“Not his?” I was surprised and more than a little interested in that revelation. “Are you sure?”

“As sure as I can be. Forrester was a bachelor, gay if you believe the rumors, lived alone out there. He was also a well-known obsessive-compulsive.”

“Like that detective guy on the TV program?”

“Not that bad, but close. I checked out his place. Everything in it matched, right down to the number of things. Apparently he couldn’t abide odd numbers. Eight plates, eight cups, eight saucers, knives, forks, spoons: All eight in number And all real: Real wood, real china, real silver.”

“Sounds like he couldn’t abide synthetics, either,” I said.

“Not if he didn’t have to. And it carried over to his clothes,” Marion said. “Sixteen suits: Four blue, four brown, four black and four gray pinstripe. All wool, all the same tailor. Thirty-two dress shirts: All cotton, all the same design. Thirty-two ties: Colors to match the suits, all raw silk. Six pairs of Bontonis: All leather and very expensive. The only thing synthetic in his closet were the five pairs of Converse running shoes, six if you count the ones he was wearing. All the same design and color.”

“What about track suits?”

“Ah, now that’s where the discrepancy creeps in,” Marion answered. “There were five hanging in the closet; medium gray, same size, same manufacturer, all cotton. The sixth one should have been on him.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“The one he was wearing was three sizes too large. It was also a darker shade of grey, a different manufacturer and, it was a cotton polyester blend.”

“You don’t think he was hit where they found the body, do you?”

Marion glanced in the direction of Jilly’s again and back at me, a sour expression on his face. “Too clean,” he said. “That area is well kept; high hedges border the front of the properties along there, with a twenty foot well-maintained shoulder of grass between the road and the hedges. I found a spot about a mile and a half away where the grass was torn up, broken glass scattered about.”

“So you think whoever hit Forrester, removed his track suit, replaced it with another and moved the body to disconnect the scene from the evidence?”

“I think that’s a good possibility. Unfortunately, I couldn’t convince anyone of that so it was ruled a hit-and-run.”

“Albert thinks it may have been an impulse thing. That whoever was stalking Forrester, if he was even being stalked, saw the opportunity and took it without thinking it through.”

“Albert thinks too much for his own good but yes, that’s pretty much the way I see it. And he was being stalked.”

Another surprise.

“He was? And you know this how?”

“I spoke with his … friend. Forrester had been receiving late night phone calls, disturbing letters and he was sure he was being followed.”

“And he didn’t report this to the police?”

“Apparently not. There’s no record of it that I’ve been able to find.”

“If he was gay, that would make sense. Gay men, in particular older gay men, don’t like drawing attention to themselves. What about Gjerde?”

Marion clenched his jaw; ground his teeth for a moment.

“Is there anything Albert doesn’t know about?”

“I doubt it.”

Marion shook his head but I noticed that twitch at the corners of his mouth again. He’d been keeping this information to himself for a long time. He seemed more than ready to share it despite his aggravation with Albert.

“Short and sweet, then. There was nothing wrong with his insulin pump.”

Yet another surprise. “So no reason for him to inject himself?”

“Right. Which is why the unofficial ruling is suicide.”

“But you don’t buy that, any more than you buy Forrester being a hit-and-run.”

“Same answer as before. Too clean. I could buy the suicide. He and his wife had been together close to thirty years. When she died, it shook him up pretty bad. I could even buy him stashing the candy and the Medic Alert bracelet in the drawer, in case he changed his mind. Suicides often do. What bothers me is the amount of barbiturates in his system and the fact that the place was wiped clean of fingerprints. And despite a thorough search, no pill bottle was found. So where did the drugs come from?”

“But you couldn’t convince anyone of that?”

“Too little evidence. It was common knowledge he was distraught, so everyone just zeroed in on what they thought to be the obvious.”

“But you’re still investigating?”

“Let’s just say that as far as I’m concerned, the two cases are still open.”

“And somehow this all ties into Harrison?”

“I believe it does. Don’t you?”

NEVER TRUST THE MACHINE

The weekend passed with no sign of the Mangler and little progress in my investigation. On Monday that changed on both counts.

I was sitting out on the porch, rereading my editorial in Sunday’s paper and enjoying the smell of the rain, the clash of thunder and lightning. If what I was implying in that editorial didn’t shake something loose, nothing would. The thing to do now was to wait and see what crawled out from under the rocks.

I was about to get up for another cup of coffee when I heard something that grabbed my attention. A rumble of thunder obscured it for a moment but as soon as the echoes died away, I heard it again. At first I thought it was gunshots. Then one of the Cushman carts the meter maids drove came into view, barreling up Market Street, black clouds of smoke billowing in its wake. The thing was backfiring wildly, the rear end all but lifting off the pavement every time it farted.

As it passed in front of the house, the wheels locked up and the thing went into a short, sideways skid. It tipped up on two wheels. I could see the driver trying to shift his weight against the direction of the lean, like a motorcyclist counterbalancing the centrifugal force of a curve. It was a futile attempt. The cart was much too heavy. It went over on its side and skidded a dozen or more feet.

I was out the door and halfway to the cart before it stopped sliding. The meter maid was trying to open the door when I reached the cart. Between the two of us, we managed to force it back on its hinges. I tried to help him out but he shoved me away, cursed and stepped out on the street under his own power. He wobbled for a moment but seemed otherwise unharmed. Before I could ask him what had happened, he gave the cart a swift kick in the underside and walked off toward downtown.

I could hear my cell phone bashing Beethoven when I got back to the porch. Soaked as I was, I considered ignoring it but when I looked at the caller ID, I saw it was Felice.

“Teller.”

“Get out of those wet clothes and head over to the Coney Island restaurant,” she said. “I’ve sent Kayla down to meet you there.”

“What’s up?” I didn’t bother to enquire how she knew I was soaked. Pointless, really. She wouldn’t answer anyway.

“It would appear your Mangler has struck again,” she said.

“He’s not my Mangler,” I said.

“You named him. That makes him yours.”

“Whatever. What’s he done this time?”

“Kayla will fill you in on the details. Get out of those clothes and get down there.” She hung up.

I changed clothes, poured myself another cup of coffee and gulped it down. Rummaging around in the closet, I found an old rain slicker balled up in the corner along with a wide-brimmed leather hat and put them on. As I was heading to my car, I glanced in the full-length mirror in the hallway. The slicker made me look like a wrinkled eggplant, but at least it would keep me dry.

Traffic had snarled up around the overturned Cushman cart. The cops hadn’t arrived yet which struck me as odd. I turned in the opposite direction of downtown, took a back alley route behind the school to bypass the jam. As I pulled out onto Ash Street, I saw another of the Cushman carts parked at an angle to the curb. The door was open but no one was around. A little farther up the street sat another cart, this one several feet from the curb.

The meter maid was standing beside it. He had the engine cover up and was peering inside the engine compartment the way men do when something mechanical goes wrong. As if staring at the problem in a manly way will bring the recalcitrant beast into line. I swung around him and continued on my way.

Turning onto Gratiot Avenue, I noticed several other carts parked at odd angles up and down the street. What the hell was going on? A double-parked delivery van pulled away, revealing an empty slot along the curb. I pulled over and parked the Altima. Heavy rain was still falling, the water sluicing off the brim of my hat an instant after I stepped out the car. Hunched over the meter, I started rummaging around in my pocket for change.

“Probably won’t need that today,” came a soft, female voice from behind me. I turned. A young woman stood peering out from beneath a large umbrella. She looked eager and young enough to be my granddaughter. If I had grandchildren.

“You must be Kayla?”

“That’s me,” she said, sticking out her hand. “Kayla Miracle at your service, Mr. Teller.”

“And are you?” I said.

“Pardon me?”

“A miracle.”

“More a misadventure but I have my miracle moments.”

I liked her immediately. Sharp, unafraid, and quick on the uptake.  She’d go far in this business.

“Just what we need,” I said.  “Oh, and it’s just Teller, if you don’t mind. The Mister part died with my father.”

“Teller it is, then.”

“So tell me why I shouldn’t feed the meter,” I said.

“They’re dying all over town,” she said.

“What’re dying?”

“Carts,” she said. “Meter maid carts. I don’t think they’ll be giving out tickets today.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And tomorrow the government will start caring about my welfare.”

I found two quarters and fed them to the meter. We turned and headed toward the restaurant. Part way there, a meter maid was walking up the street alongside the parked cars.

I looked at Kayla. “Never trust the machine,” I said. “It will roll you over without so much as a backward glance.”

“I’ll remember that,” she said, watching with just a trace of awe as the meter maid chalked tires.

DISASTER, SECONDS AWAY

I ordered dogs and coffee while Kayla filled me in. Cushman carts had been developing mechanical problems all over town, she told me. Several, like the one near my house, had crashed. As Kayla talked, I wondered what was going on. Why were the attacks on the DPE escalating? I had little doubt this was the Mangler’s work and, from the looks of what was going down out on the streets, this was meant to be permanent shut-down.

The anger level was escalating as well. I looked out the window. A group of protestors had already gathered on the steps of the Admin building. And not a single citizen moved to help any of the meter maids when their carts stalled. Nor when they crashed. In fact, I watched several people applaud. Was that the Mangler’s goal then? Get the people pissed? I didn’t think so. Motivated to do something, perhaps? But DPE was doing an excellent job of pissing off people all by itself.

So back to the original question: Why the escalation? And back to the original answer: Hell if I knew.

As Kayla wound down and I finished my lunch, two more reporters from the paper came in. They scampered over to where we were seated, eager as puppies off the leash, looking for all the world as though they should have lunch pails and school books in their hands, instead of cell phones and notepads.

I gave them all instructions and sent them on their way, feeling oddly authoritarian as I did so. I was used to being the whole team, not the head of it. In a strange way I almost liked the feeling.

I paid the check and headed out to my car. The rain was still coming down but its fury had abated somewhat. It seemed pointless to duplicate the efforts of my … team, so I decided to drive over to the cart compound, see what information I could dig up there.

I passed a tow-truck hauling a cart on the way there. Another was just pulling into the compound when I arrived. I waited for it to pass, pulled in behind it and parked off to one side, well out of harm’s way. The storm seemed to have refocused its fury overhead, the lightning and thunder almost simultaneous. I scanned the grounds until I spotted the mechanics’ shed on the far side of the compound. No way was I going to attempt driving over to it. The whole place was filling up with water; it was beginning to look like a rice paddy out there. Low slung, the Altima wouldn’t make it ten feet before being bogged down in the mud.

I killed the engine, stepped out and locked the door. I managed to make it across the yard with a minimum of slippage. The mud was up to the ankles of my boots. Ducking in the door, I shook the rain from my hat and looked around. There were several carts in the room, most with parts scattered about them. I spotted a guy standing by a bench and walked over to him.

“Problem?” I said.

He turned, looked me up and down as if I wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

I can’t say he met my expectations either. I’d never before seen a mechanic wearing a suit and tie. He had on a starched and pressed pair of overalls over the suit. There wasn’t a hint of grease on it anywhere. The name Oliver was stitched in red over the pocket.

“And you are, sir?” His voice was crisp and evenly modulated.

“Teller,” I said. “Call-Register.”

He chewed this over for a minute, deciding if he should tell me anything.

“They’ll not be happy, you being here,” he said.

“Who?” I said, though I knew the answer.

“Management, of course.”

“Does that mean you’re going to give me a ‘no comment’, tell me to get out of your hair and return to work?”

“Moi?” he said, his hand going to his heart in a fey gesture of surprise. “Not at all, sir. I have neither love nor respect for management. Will this be on the record?”

“I’d rather it was. I could avoid using your name; refer to you as a confidential source.”

“That would be preferable; though as I am the senior mechanic here, it seems reasonable to assume they will know it was I who gave you information. On the other hand, firing me at this critical juncture would be counterproductive. And costly. The counterproductive I might expect from them. Costly, however, is not something they tolerate well. What is it you wish to ask of me?”

I found myself liking this guy. “Well,” I said. “For starters, what’s happening with all the carts?”

He pulled out a pocket knife, flicked it open with his thumb and began cleaning his fingernails.

“Corn syrup would be my theory,” he said. “Of course, sugar would produce the same result. However, I would wager the culprit is corn syrup. Simpler to administer.”

“Pardon me?”

“It would appear the engines are seizing. Were it but one cart, I might think a loss of oil pressure, perhaps even a loss of the oil itself. But, as you can see there are quite a number of them disabled. And, from my understanding, there are a good deal more stalled in the streets. The odds that all of them would suffer a catastrophic failure of the internal lubrication system are, well, quite high I would imagine.”

“And you think it’s corn syrup?”

“Introduced into the fuel tank. Yes, sir.”

“And that would do this?”

“It would indeed. Corn syrup mixes quite well with gasoline. The vibration, movement of the cart, the bouncing up and down, would help to mix it further. The engine would perform as usual for a time. In this case, long enough for most of them to get out of the yard and onto the streets. Once the fuel pump began to deliver this diluted mixture to the carburetor, however, disaster would be but seconds away.”

“Disaster,” I said. “Seconds away.”

“Indeed. Once the mixture is introduced into the cylinder, put under pressure and ignited, the cylinder walls will begin to scorch. The rapid motion of the pistons, actually, to be precise, the rings surrounding the pistons, sliding over this scorched surface will cause a tremendous amount of heat to build. Metal expands with heat. As the tolerances between the wall of the cylinder, the rings surrounding the pistons and the pistons themselves, already minuscule to begin with, becomes smaller, there comes an inevitable point where there is no tolerance left at all. Motion stops rather abruptly and the fluid mechanical properties of the internal combustion engine cease to exist.”

“The engine seizes,” I said.

“Just so.”

I scribbled in my notebook, feeling like I’d dropped into an evening class on advanced auto mechanics.

“So, you’re saying that someone poured corn syrup into the gas tanks of these things?”

He smiled. “That is my current theory, yes.”

“How many carts are we talking here?”

“If this Mangler fellow is as thorough as he has shown himself to be in past encounters, I should think all of them.”

“All of them? Trashed?”

“An apt, if somewhat inaccurate, way of putting it. The word has gone out to the drivers to shut down their machines. However, these minions of management are an arrogant lot … perhaps more arrogant than management itself. It remains to be seen how many will heed the word. The more who do, the fewer the number of carts destroyed.”

“They would be salvageable, then?”

“Oh, they are all salvageable. Or most will be. The engines can be replaced. I have several spares in-house and more are readily obtainable. The engines are manufactured less than thirty miles from here, in fact. If the mixture has not yet been introduced to the carburetor, we could dismantle the system, dispose of the contaminated fuel, clean the tanks and lines, and install new filters. That would solve the problem.”

“And how long would this take?”

“If it were me alone, a month perhaps. Perhaps longer. Management won’t suffer that, however. They will bring in outside help. Tyrants rarely tolerate being thwarted. I have little doubt that the majority of these carts will be back on the street as early as Wednesday.”

“That soon?”

“That soon, indeed.”

I called Felice as soon as I got back to my car. She filled me in on what Kayla and the others had learned. It turned out that most of the drivers had heeded the order to shut down their carts. Several had crashed. Several more had seized while their drivers were out writing tickets or on their way to writing them. Overall, though, most had shut down in time to save the engines.

I fed her the information Oliver had given me. I could hear her fingers clicking over the keyboard as I talked. The word was out, she told me. Radio and TV news were on to it but thus far, no one was sure what was going on. The Mangler was being held responsible. A safe enough assumption: It was his kind of thing. And I’d bet money there would be a message on my answering machine when I got home, taking responsibility for this current act.

As I turned up Gratiot Avenue, I noticed the carts that had been there earlier were gone. Towed back to the yard, no doubt. Despite the rain, the crowd on the steps of the admin building was larger. They had signs now, carrying them in one hand while balancing an umbrella in the other. The Mangler’s supporters were a loyal and tolerant bunch.

As expected, there was a message on my answering machine when I got home. It turned out to have nothing to do with the day’s events.

I WEAR MY SUNGLASSES AT NIGHT

Tuesday saw a return to sunny skies and warm spring breezes. I was thankful for that, considering what the Mangler had planned for me later in the day. I went into the office early as I had several things I needed to do in preparation for the day’s events. Several of the younger reporters congratulated me on the editorial, a fact which pleased me more than I would have expected.

Nothing had come of it yet, which bothered me somewhat. The DPE had turned down yet another request for an interview with Cooper. No big loss there. All I would have elicited from him was another load of PR bull and where would that get me? I was making more progress without their help.

Having skipped breakfast, I decided an early lunch was in order so I straightened up my desk and headed out the door. It was a beautiful day and I was feeling good.

I cut across N. Main and headed for the Coney Island restaurant. I was nearly to the other side when I spotted the Cushman cart bearing down on me. Lunging from its path, I tripped over the curb and fell heavily to my knees. Rolling over, I watched the cart continue on its way up the street, the driver completely unconcerned. I was ready to bolt down the street and turn the little cart over on its back like a turtle, driver and all, when someone spoke to me.

“You okay there, buddy?”

I turned, my face flushed with heat. A large man, his arms crossed over his chest, was leaning against a street light several feet away. The sun glinted off mirrored shades which hid his eyes. A curious, almost feral smile twisted his lips. A line from Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions about mirrors being leaks into another universe sprang to mind.

“Fine,” I said, rising to my feet. “I’m just fine.”

“Gotta watch them little suckers,” he said, glancing up the street in the direction the meter maid had gone and then back at me. “I hear tell they’re real vicious in this town.”

I brushed my jeans, probing for tears with my fingers, not taking my eyes off his face.

“Yeah,” I said. “Vicious.”

I took a tentative step, felt my leg wobble. So much for jogging down the street after the cart. The guy pushed himself away from the pole. Instinctively I took a step back, my knee protesting the sudden shift in weight.

“Ice,” he said.

“Pardon me?”

“Need ice on that knee. Ease the swelling.”

“Right,” I said. “Ice.”

He looked away from me, up the street. I followed his gaze. The meter maid who had nearly clipped me had stopped a block away, writing out a ticket. When I looked back at the guy, his arm was raised and his hand formed the shape of a pistol.

“Pow,” he said, his hand rocking back in mimicry of recoil. He looked over at me. “Makes ya wish ya could just pop the little suckers, don’t it?”

I stood very still, saying nothing, watching him.

“You take care now,” he said, smiling. “And remember the ice.”

He turned away and started walking up the street. As he disappeared around a corner, a Buffalo Springfield song started playing in my head. There was definitely something happening here. I could feel that cross-hair itch in the middle of my back.

THUS SPAKE DARTH VADER

I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed the near miss or the strange little exchange, but what few people there were around appeared oblivious to it. I tried again to put weight on my leg. It shook a bit but held. After a couple of steps, the pain subsided and I continued on my way to the restaurant, glancing over my shoulder as I went.

I eased through the door of the Coney Island place and limped my way to my booth, back in the area where the waitresses hang out. I heard one of them call out my order before I was across the room. I sat down and pulled out my notebook.

Six three, I wrote. Two forty, maybe fifty. Not fat. I closed my eyes, seeing him again as he leaned against the pole. Forty-something. Late. A thin moustache and thinning hair the color of old pennies. I opened my eyes and stared out the window, expecting to see him staring back at me. The guy had really creeped me out. So much so, I jumped when the waitress set down my dogs and coffee.

“Jumpy, hon?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Something like that.”

“Need to watch that caffeine. Switch to tea.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks.”

I toyed with my dogs, rearranging the pieces of onion and doodling in the mustard and chili with the tines of my fork.  The appetite I’d started out with, gone. I slid the plate aside, glanced out the window again, then began flipping through my notebook, trying to set aside all that had just happened. I found the page where I’d written down the Mangler’s last message verbatim.

“There is more to come. DPE must be stopped! Be at the corner of River Avenue and Market tomorrow, 12:30 sharp. Use your powers of observation well.”

I read further into my notes. There had been traffic sounds, a horn, the sound of a diesel truck winding up through the gears. My caller had been at a phone booth, probably near the freeway from the steady drone of cars in the background. And something else: Something about the voice. It was different but I couldn’t say how. It was more a feeling than something I could back up with fact.

I reread the message. Cryptic as always. Few words. Even less real information. No mention of Harrison, but I hadn’t expected there would be. The ‘more to come’ part was obvious. This sucker, whoever he, or she, might be, wasn’t going to stop trashing parking meters anytime soon. But what was he trying to accomplish?

I leaned back, rubbed my chin and noticed I needed a shave. Could HL be right? Was the Meter Mangler a product of my original article? Was there some sort of vendetta going on, some irate auto owner given one too many tickets? Car booted? Towed? There have certainly been times when I’ve considered taking out a few meters, trashing one of those little carts the meter maids drive around in. Like now. Namely, the one which had almost run me over. I looked out the window again. One of the little blue and white Cushman carts zoomed by. I wondered if it was the same one that had nearly clipped me.

I looked back at my notes. The last part of the message drew a blank. Stopped from what? Writing tickets? Sure, they were over-zealous to a fault, but writing parking tickets is what they did. It was the whole point of their existence. I had a feeling, though, that writing tickets was not Darth’s main beef.

There was something going on and he was feeding it to me one small piece at a time. Did he have the whole picture himself or was he barely one step ahead of me? And what was going to happen at 12:30? The Mangler had never struck in daytime. Powers of observation, he said. What is it he wants me to see?

“You’re not giving me much here, Darth baby,” I said to myself.

“You know,” came a voice, “talking to one’s self is the first sign of insanity.”

I looked up. Jaz was standing next to my table looking very smart in a white blouse, short white skirt and a blazer that matched the color of her newly-tinted hair; a deep shade of blue, like Chinese forget-me-nots.

“Au contraire,” I said. “Answering yourself and believing that your answer is the only correct one is the first sign. I was neither asking nor answering, just stating.”

She sat down at the booth, laying her leather briefcase at the far end of the table. Those dark circles still ringed her eyes and her brow was furrowed. I considered asking what was wrong but decided against it. There were still too many unknowns between us and I wasn’t sure how she would react to my concern. That and I was still cranky over my near miss in the street.

“You dyed your hair again,” I said instead.

Ignoring me, she said, “Who’s Garth?”

“Darth,” I corrected, a little exasperated. “As in Darth Vader.”

She laughed. “Darth Vader? What now, Teller? You channeling the Dark Side in search of a story?”

“Ha ha, funny,” I said. “The Mangler, or whoever it is that’s calling me, uses a voice synthesizer. It sounds a lot like Darth Vader.”

“Oh. So he called again?”

“Last night,” I said, reaching for my plate. “You want something to eat?”

“Too early for me,” she said. “What did he have to say?”

I sliced through a dog and lifted the fork to my mouth. Chewing slowly, I considered my answer. I hadn’t held anything back from Jaz thus far. I couldn’t think of a reason why I should. She worked for the DPE after all and was as anxious as me to figure out what was going on. For different reasons, perhaps. But still …

“What if I told you I thought Darth might be a woman,” I said, cutting through another piece of dog. That brought an unexpected response. She laughed. It seemed a nervous laugh.

“A woman? Why would you think that?”

“Call it a hunch,” I said, thinking about what Skeeter had told me and the parting observation from the print shop guy. And, there was also that nagging fact that Jaz had known the body in the parking lot was Harrison’s.

“I can’t imagine a woman destroying parking meters,” she said.

“One can’t imagine a woman being a serial killer, yet look at Aileen Wuornos down in Florida. Parking meters seem pale by comparison.”

“Serial killing nasty old men is one thing,” she said. “Serial killing parking meters is entirely different.” She smiled to let me know she was joking.

“Is it?”

“I sure hope so. So what did he, or she, if you will, have to say?”

I stared at her for a long moment, deciding to relent. “Not much really, as always. Told me there was more to come, as if I didn’t already suspect that. Mentioned, again, that the DPE must be stopped but, again, neglected to mention from what.”

She paused a long moment, as if waiting for me to continue, then said, “What do you think it is? What they have to be stopped from, I mean.”

“I haven’t a clue,” I said, wondering why I hadn’t told her the last part of the message.

“Do you think you’ll get one?”

“By and by,” I said.

As she started to slide out the booth, I stopped her with a question.

“What’s that perfume you’re wearing?”

“What?”

“The perfume. What’s it called?”

She smiled, a genuine one this time, and shook her head.

“You’re a weird one, Teller. Do you know that?”

“I’ve been accused of worse things than being weird.”

“I’ll bet you have. It’s not a perfume. It’s a mixture of scented oils, lavender and strawberry. I mix it myself. Why?”

“I don’t know. No reason really. Other than I just like the smell of it.”

She shook her head again, stuck out her tongue at me and left.

DEVIL IN A BLUE MERCEDES

I watched her cross the street and disappear around the corner of the City Administration building. She wasn’t hard to follow, the bright blue hair and all. The scent of her lingered in the air around me and my heart was still tripping over itself from the tongue gesture.

Jaz and the Mangler one and the same? The Mangler had been described as tall and willowy. Jaz was tall, several inches taller than me. And, I suppose, one could view her as being willowy. The clincher, though, was her knowing it had been Harrison’s body in the parking lot. And lying about how she’d come by that information.

With a deep sigh, I finished my last dog and drained my coffee, tucking that thought away for later. I had a lot to do and didn’t want to be late for it.

I looked at the clock over the cash register to check the time. I don’t carry a watch of any kind. The time on my cell phone is off by several hours, still at the default setting it had when I bought the thing. I know it can be changed but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how. I thought the advent of electronics was supposed to make life easier. Just seems like more incomprehensible manuals to read through to me.

As I hurried out the restaurant, I slid to an abrupt stop at the curb to look both ways for Cushman carts. Didn’t see a single one nor the guy from the lamppost. I cut across the street and into the newspaper garage to pick up my car. There were a couple of things I needed before my rendezvous at Market and River and if I was quick about it, I could arrive early and be properly set up for whatever show Darth had in mind to present.

Market Street intersects River Avenue at the outer fringe of the downtown area, a quarter mile beyond the park. A bit of a walk, if you don’t want to take the downtown shuttle, but the parking’s cheap; twenty-five cents an hour on a two hour meter, and enforcement was over at 1:00p.m. so the afternoon was free.

The DPE was trying to quash that. Bring the cost up to a dollar on a one-hour meter and extend the enforcement time to 6:00 p.m. I’d written an article about it a month back. Harrison had been leading the charge against it, backed up by a small, grassroots organization, the same bunch that had been handing out leaflets at the Monorail station. The plan was on the back burner for the time being but everyone knew it was just a matter of time before the changes were introduced.

Since I had no idea what was going down, I decided that being on foot would give me more flexibility so I returned the car to the garage, hopped the shuttle, and was settled in at a bus shelter on Market well before the appointed time. I had my iPod in my lap and a pair of opera glasses I’d borrowed from a friend in my shirt pocket.

Annie Lennox was singing about the coming rain when one of the little Cushman carts pulled up. I shut off the iPod and watched as the driver climbed out. With the outfits they wore, it was hard to distinguish gender. They all look like a cross between the Gestapo and the Keystone Cops.

A surreptitious pull on the crotch and a quick scratch of the nether regions convinced me the driver was male. With the adjustments made, he began moving along the line of cars. At each one he would peer through the windshield and scribble something on the clipboard he held. It took me a moment to realize he was jotting down the vehicle identification numbers. What he wasn’t doing was writing out tickets and he wasn’t likely to get much of a chance to. I had checked the route myself before settling in. All but a few of the meters were due to expire well after the 1:00 p.m. cutoff time and I had popped quarters in those myself.

As I watched him make his way along, a half dozen people arrived, got in their cars, and drove away. Several flipped the bird at the meter maid’s back. I used the opera glasses to note their license plate numbers and wrote them down in my notebook.

It was nearly 1:30 p.m. when the meter maid went back to his cart. He stepped inside, closed the door and sat there, busying himself with something I couldn’t see. An hour passed. I was about to leave, totally confused as to why I had come in the first place, when he emerged from his cart,   looked around cautiously and walked over to a trash container. He scanned the area again, slower this time, and then dropped something into the container. Hitching up his pants, he returned to his cart and drove off.

What the hell was that about, I wondered? I sat there another fifteen minutes, waiting to see if he would return. I was about to get up to investigate when a dark blue Mercedes rolled to a stop across the street from the bus stop. It sat there for a long moment, wisps of blue smoke trailing from the exhaust. Finally, the tinted driver’s window rolled down, revealing my friend from earlier in the day.

“Resting that knee, I see,” he said.

“Yeah, something like that.” My heart began to race.

He looked up and down the street and back at me.

“What? They too cheap at that paper of yours to give you a car?”

At the paper? So, he knew who I was. “I have a car. It’s, uh, in the shop so I’m bussing it.”

“Nasty things, busses. Germs everywhere. Make ya sick. Or worse.” I think he smiled but I couldn’t tell for sure. “You should get some ice on that knee,” he said.

“Yeah. I’ll do that.”

“You take care.”

The window rolled up and a moment later the Mercedes disappeared around the corner. I noted the tag number but had a feeling it wasn’t going to be of any help. First an SUV and now a Mercedes. Was my new-found friend the driver of both?

I waited another fifteen minutes to see if he’d come back and then hustled over to the trash container and peeked inside. The stench that close was awful, the interior of the container dim. As my eyes adjusted, I could just make out a dozen or more crumpled cans and plastic water bottles; several Styrofoam food containers; all leaking; a copy of today’s paper.

And a pile of parking tickets sitting on top of it all.

I scratched my head, looked around and peered back inside. Why would this guy spend an hour strolling up River Avenue and back and then another hour writing tickets just to toss them in a trash can?

Philo had mentioned allegations of fraudulent tickets. I reached into the container, trying to avoid the worst of the muck, and retrieved the tickets. I was about to return to the bus shelter when I decided a cab ride, from several blocks away, was in order. But first, I wanted to check a hunch.

There are several abandoned warehouses along River Avenue. I hurried over to the one nearest to the trash container and crawled in through a hole that had been punched in the wall. There was a moment of panic when I heard a shuffling noise off in the shadows, but it turned out to be just another homeless person seeking shelter from the world. The thought struck me that he looked familiar, but the screeching of brakes interrupted and I hurried to the window to watch.

The blue Mercedes was idling alongside the trash container. My friend stepped out, a flashlight in hand, and peered inside. He jerked up as if he’d been bitten by something and glared over at the bus shelter where we’d had our little chat.

He scanned the area, no doubt looking for me. I was glad I had decided on the cab, and gladder still that I’d decided to hide and wait. When he slammed his fist down on the top of the container with such violence that it caved in, I was triply glad I’d moved from the street. He jumped back into the Mercedes and sped off, leaving at least ten-thousand miles’ worth of rubber, and a pall of blue smoke, in his wake.

GETTING OLD SUCKS

I waited another half hour in the warehouse, warily watching the homeless guy snoring loudly in the corner, trying to think of why he seemed familiar and wishing I’d thought to bring water with me. When I felt enough time had passed, I walked a mile down litter-strewn back alleys until I could find a cab.

Thirty years ago, my morning’s excursions would have passed with little effort or aftermath. By the time I arrived back at the Call Register, I was soaked in sweat, my knee was throbbing, my stomach was churning, my head was splitting, and every muscle in my body felt as if it’d been beaten with a rubber bat. I don’t care what the AARP says, getting old sucks.

I considered running up to my office but decided a shower and change of clothes were in order so I ducked down into the garage and retrieved my car. An hour later, I had the tickets spread out on my coffee table and was battling to keep the cats from scattering them on the floor.

I sorted through them, noting that only the portions the meter maid stuck under the wiper were there. So the parts the meter maid turned in were still with the meter maid. I went through the tickets again, counting them this time. There were a hundred in all. And I caught something I had missed the first time. The dates were all different. Some were from the week before, some today, some a few days hence. That was odd. Then I checked the license numbers I had written down against the tickets. They were there. What the hell was going on?

Lions and Tigers and tickets blowing in the wind!  That was it.  Lost tickets!  Had to be. The clipboard the meter maid had been consulting must have been a list of cars that were parked there on a day-to-day basis; the regulars, as it were. And the tickets in the trash were the tickets blowing in the wind.  Just because you don’t see the ticket on your car, doesn’t mean you weren’t issued one. If the ticket disappeared, for whatever reason, the DPE would send you a friendly reminder several weeks after the fact, with a nice little ten-dollar fine added to the total.

The people who parked here, and other places in the city like it, hovered on the fringe of illegality every day, betting that the meter maids wouldn’t be around that last twenty or thirty minutes before enforcement expired. And who the hell could remember on what days they were parked legally and when not? So, the poor rube gets a reminder in the mail and what does he do? Moans about the loss of a day’s work if he decides to fight it, grumbles about the hoops of fire they make you jump through just to get a hearing, bitches to his friends, coworkers and family, and then dashes off a check to the DPE to keep his car from being booted.

But, if what Philo had said was true, that was changing. Folks were beginning to protest about the tickets in earnest, despite the fact their protests weren’t going to achieve much with old man Gallagher, the meter maid’s friend, sitting on the bench.

I quickly did the math. One hundred tickets at fifty bucks a pop: Forty for the ticket and an extra ten for the late fee. That one meter maid, in less than two hours increased the city coffers to the tune of five thousand dollars! What would he have earned the city had he been actually writing up offenders? I had made sure all the meters were full till the cutoff time so they wouldn’t have made a dime.

I leaned back on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. If there was one meter maid scamming tickets like this, were there others? How many? Five? Ten? More? The numbers became staggering. And if that were the case, then the allegations Philo had mentioned were true. The DPE was issuing fraudulent tickets.

I needed a look at their financial information but that would require either my going down to the DPE offices, which didn’t seem like such a smart move on my part, considering the way they felt about me. Or, horror of horrors, using a computer and accessing it from their website. I wasn’t sure which idea I liked least. However, there was one other avenue open to me.

I pulled out my cell phone, called the paper and asked for the morgue. The receptionist hesitated, started to tell me I had the wrong number, and I realized my mistake. They don’t call it the morgue anymore. I corrected myself and after several rings, an altogether familiar voice answered.

“Research. This is Lynn.”

LUDDITE

It would be easy to say that as a reporter I prefer to do my own research, track down my own leads. True enough in the old days. Nowadays, several dreary hours of pounding the bricks, or shuffling through piles of musty old files in a dank basement, can be reduced to a flurry of keystrokes at a computer terminal. The modern age. Dull as it sounds, I prefer the old ways.

Luddite that I am, when I needed the kind of mundane but important information a computer could offer, I would have one of the junior reporters request the info from Research. It wasn’t that I disliked dealing with the department, or disliked anyone in it. If anything, it was the wildest department at the paper. Mostly early twenty-somethings with scruffy, unkempt hair and goodwill clothes cutting across three or four generations of fashion.

Piercing and tattoos had replaced the tie-dyed T-shirts and bell-bottom jeans of the old morgue days, when everything was kept in giant file cabinets and rotting boxes. Gaming posters had replaced the rock n’ roll stars on the walls. There was always music playing: Loud. That, at least, hadn’t changed. They had their own kitchen down there, which always looked like the aftermath of a week-long party of teenagers left home alone while their parents were vacationing on the islands. The fridge was stocked floor to ceiling with high-octane sugar drinks instead of beer.

No. It wasn’t that I dislike it. I found it comforting in a way, wishing I could be more a part of that wild enthusiasm, despite the difference in years. And I was always amazed that HL not only approved of it, but actually encouraged it. Sort of made me wonder if I would be that open-minded when, if, I hit nine decades.

“Research. This is Lynn.”

“Hey, Lynn,” I said. “It’s Teller.”

“Hey, Cat, how goes it? Sorry about the other night.”

“Not a problem. Look. I need some data.”

“Lay it on me,” she said.

I told her what I wanted.

“That must be the Meter Mangler story,” she said.

“Yeah. I need some background on the department, financial stuff mostly. I’m working an angle. They have a website, or something, but I, ah, just don’t have the time to track it down myself.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” she said brightly.

“Oh,” I added, thinking of my earlier conversation with HL, “and could you bring up any meter-related vandalism not directly linked to the Mangler, going back, I don’t know, six months before my first article, say? I want to see if there’s a progression there.”

“I’ll get someone on it ASAP and email you the results.”

I considered that for a moment. Having something emailed would require me to boot up the computer in my office and I wasn’t sure I knew how. I’d pulled the plug from the wall my first day back at work when the thing started going whacko on me in the middle of an article, spitting out Cyrillic letters instead of the English ones I was hitting on the keyboard. I had sat there, staring at it, expecting at any moment it would start singing ‘Daisy’ as the lights faded from the monitor screen. Now, I was too afraid to plug it back in. Or to call the IT department. Those guys scare me.

“Could you just print out both things and have someone drop it in my in-box?” I said.

She laughed. “Luddite. No problem, Cat. I’ll have ’em for you in a bit. Hey, did you hear that Mike is back in town? Him, Steve, Rick and Jerry are doing a gig at Booker’s Club on Friday.”

“Booker’s? Is that place still open?”

I’d had some wild times at Booker’s Club. Not to mention nearly being killed by Booker himself while I was rifling through his private office. If it hadn’t been for Robyn …

“Jeez, Cat. Are we living in the same town? Rick bought Booker’s place about six years back, just after his third album won the Grammy in the Alternative Music category. You know that. You flew in for the grand reopening. Jody came up. All three of the Barrington boys. Even Little Mary came out of hiding. It was a hell of a party.”

I knew Rick had won a Grammy. And with Lynn’s prompting, I vaguely recalled the party that had been thrown in his honor that year, though the reopening of Booker’s Club eluded me. Of course, this all took place before I stopped drinking. There are many events tucked away in the alcohol-fogged part of my brain. Most I don’t remember and no doubt more than a few I wouldn’t want to remember.

Her exclusion of Robyn most likely meant Robyn had been a no-show. Surely I would have remembered if she had shown up? I started to ask but stopped myself. “Did I have fun at the party?” I wasn’t really sure I wanted an answer.

“Darcy said you did,” Lynn said, a hint of laughter in her voice.

Darcy? Uh-oh. “Uh, Lynn, I’m not sure I want to know anymore.”

“Chickenshit.” She laughed. “Darcy thought you were great. Even if you did pass out …”

“Lynn!”

“Okay, Cat. Hey, you want to go?”

“Go?” I was losing the thread of this conversation.

“To see the guys’ gig,” she said. “It’ll be just like the old days at The New Miami. It’s Friday. Probably around ten or eleven.”

I thought about The New Miami days, the amount of booze that had flowed like spring water.

“Ah, you know, I’m not real sure that would be a good idea right now.”

“Oh, right … jeez, I’m sorry, Cat. I forgot. Damn.”

“Don’t worry about it, Lynn. One of these days, I’ll get over that hump. Maybe by the time Mike hits town again.”

“Right. I know you will. You can do anything when you set your mind to it.”

“Well, I have my doubts about that.”

“I don’t. I’ll have those printouts in your box in an hour or so.”

“Thanks, Lynn.”

“No problem, Cat.”

Flipping the phone closed, I leaned back into the sofa. My head was throbbing, my thoughts chaotic. I felt as if I was working with an Erector Set into which Lincoln Logs and Lego pieces had been thrown. Was there a connection between Harrison’s murder and the Meter Mangler’s campaign? My instinct said there was and HL certainly believed there was. And how did these tickets tie into that? Was this what Harrison was onto? What got him killed?

DPE was obviously the focal point but beyond that, everything was hazy and out of focus. I needed to bring order to chaos and to do that I needed to go over all my notes from day one.

The tickets. What to do with the tickets? Stash them here? No. I didn’t want them anywhere near me until I could figure out what they meant and how I could use them. The office? No again. Way too many people around. I looked at the Zappa wall clock. A safety deposit box would be good but it was after 6:00 p.m. The bank was closed and I wanted to rid myself of the tickets ASAP. A vault was a nice idea and that’s when the ideal place occurred to me. I gathered up the tickets, dumped them in a manila envelope and headed out the door for the office.

A PERFECT HIDING PLACE

I was passing the courthouse when the opening bars to a Janis Joplin tune slipped through the speakers. Despite my headache I cranked it up loud. The first time I saw Janis was in a smoky little dive in the wrong part of Memphis, Tennessee, shortly before she joined Big Brother and the Holding Company.

By the end of her first set, I knew she was a star destined to nova. That kind of pure, explosive energy can’t be contained indefinitely. But, Lord have mercy, you knew she’d burn everything in her path on the way down.

She gave the last little piece of her heart to Alice Cooper as I pulled into the Call Register’s parking garage, found my spot and killed the engine. At least it was free to park here, but only because HL owned the building. I found an old plastic grocery bag in the trunk, wrapped it around the manila envelope and headed to the elevator.

I usually take the stairs up, my one concession to exercise, but this time I punched the button for the elevator. Slowest thing on earth, that elevator. And the burnt oil stench of it was enough to make you gag, not to mention my dislike of tightly-enclosed places. When it finally arrived, I stepped in and while I was waiting for the door to close, I examined the maintenance sticker. It had been inspected less than a month ago and inspections were on a three-month schedule.  I wanted to see Lynn’s report before discussing the tickets with HL, and they would be safe here for the short time I planned on leaving them. I pushed open the maintenance hatch in the ceiling and slipped the tickets onto the roof of the car. Satisfied, I pushed the button for my floor.

The newsroom was quiet, the day’s deadline long past, only a few stragglers remained, a skeleton night crew. I could remember a time when this room was chaos from well before daybreak until the depth of night. The Internet was destroying print news and journalism in general, as far as I was concerned.

My sour mood over the death of journalism didn’t improve when I ran into Rafe Savage coming out my office as I approached it.

His name in no way describes him. Early thirties, kind of slow on the uptake, a florid complexion stained with freckles, and the scent of English Leather that clings to him like the dust of lost civilizations that follows Charles Schultz’s Pig Pen wherever he goes. He wanders the offices like a monk in joyous mourning, zealously sucking time from whoever crosses his path. Shaking off a tick was easier then shaking Rafe once he locked onto you.

Back in the old days, before political correctness ruined the language, Rafe would have been known as a copy boy. What his title was now, I had no idea. I’d never been much for PC, and I wasn’t even sure if there was such a thing as copy boys anymore. He was mostly a gopher now; go fer this, Rafe; go fer that, Rafe; oh and bring me some coffee and one of those donuts too. He’d make your copies at the Xerox machine, sharpen your pencils and restock the all-important Post-it note supply. Pretty much any minor task that needed to be done, Rafe would do.  Sometimes he helped the janitorial crew clean up. That was what I thought he was doing when I saw him coming out my office.

“Hey, Rafe,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, jumping about a mile off the floor. For a moment, I thought he was going to start crying. Unusual for Rafe, the always-happy guy. “Mr. Teller. You scared me.”

I didn’t bother to correct him on the mister part. I’d done it a hundred times since I’d returned and he never remembered.

“Sorry, man,” I said.

“I have to go now, Mr. Teller,” he said, inspecting his shoes. “I have to … I have to get something for the boss.”

“Sure, Rafe,” I said. “No problem.”

He shuffled off, staring at the floor as if he expected it to open wide and swallow him. I noticed he wasn’t carrying a trash can. So why had he been in my office? I remembered HL’s leak. Rafe? I laughed out loud at the thought. Rafe involved in something nefarious was beyond paranoid and into the ludicrous. He was probably just lost, or maybe he’d delivered the report from Lynn.

I stepped into my office and checked the in-box. Empty. I looked back into the newsroom but Rafe was gone. Whatever. He was harmless enough. If it rocked his boat to wander about the newsroom after working hours, who was I to deny him that small pleasure? He was on HL’s payroll, not mine.

I looked back at the in-box. It was still empty. There was nothing on my desk but an old pizza box and several dirty coffee cups I kept forgetting to take back to the kitchen.

I glanced at the computer crouched menacingly beneath my desk, as if ready to pounce on the unwary. No. Lynn wouldn’t do that to me. She said she’d print them out but, despite the lunacy of the idea, it bothered me that Rafe had been skulking about my office.  I tried calling Research, just to check, and got a recording. They had either gone for the day or were having a party. With Research, anything was possible.

I grabbed my notebooks from the shelf and spread them across my desk. Flipping through the CD rack for some tunes to think by, I considered The Car’s Candy-O, and rejected it. If anything would lead me into the Robyn Zone, the Cars would and I needed to concentrate not ruminate. I slipped Haris Alexiou’s Di Efhon from the sleeve and into the player instead. She was Greek and her voice was beauty incarnate but, as the lyrics were in Greek and I couldn’t understand most of them, the music soothed me rather than distracted me.  When the first notes of the title cut began to drift from the speakers, I started reading through my notes, making a list of my thoughts and observations in chronological order.

As the lilting sound of her voice faded from the last song, I looked up from several pages of notes. Lynn was standing in the doorway.

HINKY IS AS HINKY DOES

“Hey,” she said, smiling. “Nice music. Nice voice.”

“Yeah,” I said, clicking off the player before the CD started again. “I got turned on to her while I was in Greece. Hard to find her over here. A friend sends me her stuff when it’s released. I didn’t expect you until morning.”

Her smile slipped as she took a seat.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“I thought you might be here,” she said. “I tried calling the house. Your cell phone.”

My hand went to the pocket of my shirt. No cell phone. “I must have left it in the car,” I said. “On the charger. Why do I get that  bad moon rising feeling?”

“I don’t know, Cat,” she said. “I thought I’d get an early start on it. But, the deeper I dug, the weirder it was. I mean seriously hinky.”

“Hinky?” I said. “Is that like a computer term or something?”

“Yeah.” She laughed. “Something like that. Maybe I’d better give you the other report first. Get it out the way.” She set a stack of paper on my desk. “Twenty-one,” she said.

“Twenty-one?”

“Reports of meter vandalism not related to the Mangler in the six months before you came home.”

“That many,” I said, picking up the stack of papers. They were printouts of newspaper articles. None with my byline.

“Nothing like what’s happening now. Minor stuff, gum in the coin slots, hammer blows, a couple of meters knocked over, which could have just been an accident. They wouldn’t have even been reported had it not been for the fact that it was never just one meter.”

“Or it was a slow news day,” I added.

“Yeah, that too. The interesting thing is there are eighteen occurrences in the last four months that don’t involve the Mangler directly.”

I scanned the dates quickly. “Since my first article.”

“It would appear that way. Three the first month, four each month afterward, and seven in the last month alone.”

“And the month isn’t over yet.”

I started skimming through the articles. A driver, beaten and maced. Two construction workers. Several carts had been vandalized. One turned over. A couple with their tires slashed. A windshield or two smashed. Another incident of fisticuffs and an actual mêlée at a little league game. I knew there had been problems but not to this extent. Too wrapped up in my own investigation, I suppose. Still, I should have known about this. Especially the progression over the last month. HL had been right. I hadn’t been performing at the top of my game for a while there.

“This one,” I said, peeling off one of the sheets. “Crazy glue and nickels in the meters. Are we sure this isn’t the Mangler? That was his first act of vandalism. Ninety meters as I remember.”

She took the sheet, skimmed through it, turned it over. “This guy was caught in the act,” she said. “Claimed he’d been inspired by the Mangler. And he had an alibi for the night those ninety were hit.” She handed the sheet back to me.

“Rough out there,” I said, tucking the sheet back in the pile. “Rougher than I thought.”

“Yeah. Those meter maids are a real pain in the ass. People are becoming afraid to park but what can you do? You can’t go anywhere in this town anymore where there isn’t a parking meter.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.” I set the stack of paper aside. “Okay, tell me about this hinky thing.”

She laughed. “Do you know how a website works?

I stared at her. “Uh, you click on the little blue underline things?” I said.

“Jesus, Cat,” she said, her eyes rolling back. “Internet 101. Okay, those little blue underline things? They’re called links and a website is just a series of pages, individual files really, written in ….” She hesitated. “You don’t even want to know this, do you?”

“I don’t even understand this,” I said. “I lost you after links.”

She blew out a long breath. “Okay. The DPE has a website. Very pretty. Very government. You got your history. You got your chain of command. Pretty pictures of meter maids cruising around in their little carts. The whole nine yards. What you don’t got is anything statistical or financial. All the links to that stuff are broken.”

“Broken? What do you mean broken?”

“It means you can’t get there from here. You click on the link and it just times out.”

“Times out?”

“How do I explain this?” she said, sounding exasperated. “Okay. There are several reasons you might not access a particular page you want to see. The page isn’t there, for one. In that case, the web server will throw up a ‘Page Not Found’ error. Usually that’s a file naming problem, or the file was moved during some reorganization of the site, or you just typed in the wrong URL. Happens all the time. No biggie. Then there are ‘time-out’ problems. That usually happens during really peak times when a lot of people are trying to hit the same page at once. Generally, if you wait a bit, or keep trying, sooner or later the traffic jam eases and you get the page.”

“But not this time?”

“Nope. That’s what made me suspicious. No matter how many times I tried, I got squat. Finally I had one of the guys look at the code.”

“Code?”

“Don’t ask. What we found were the links to stats and financial info, called an ASP page.” She waved me off before I could interrupt. “Just think of it as a page of special code and leave it at that, okay?”

“Whatever,” I said.

“Anyway, when we examined that page, we found that it sent the web server into an endless loop which will eventually cause your browser to time out. In other words, the browser just gives up and tosses an error message at you.”

“And that’s a bad thing.”

“A bad thing, yeah. But you’re missing the point, Cat.”

“I’m missing this whole conversation, Lynn. What are you trying to say? The information isn’t there?”

“It’s more than just not there. And, by the way, the information isn’t there, but I’ll get to that, okay? Just stay with me here a minute.”

“I’m too confused to go anywhere else.”

“Good. Now. Look at it from the point of view of the people running the website. If a user gets a ‘Page Not Found’ error and they know they’ve typed the right address, they might complain. Send an email, or something, because obviously the fault lies with the site itself, right?”

“Sure. I can buy that.”

“But, if the user times out trying to get to a page, they’ll likely figure the problem is at their end, or that the site’s really busy at the moment and they’ll move on to something else. People tend to have a short attention span when it comes to the Internet.”

“Yeah, well, I guess so.”

“Trust me. They do. But the bottom line in that time-out scenario is that they won’t report it to anyone.”

“And no one will think anything is wrong?”

“You got it. By law the gov has to provide the information. From the looks of things, the information is there, it’s just not accessible at the moment. The key being at the moment.”

“But, in this case, if I’m following you, the information is never going to be there, right?”

“Right. But the average user would never know that.”

I considered this. “But how can that be? It’s public record. It has to be there. I mean, you can walk over there and view the stuff in their file cabinets, can’t you?”

“That’s the theory, sure. Tried that even. Sent Mark over there. He’s the straightest one of the bunch, as long as you keep him away from the sugar bowl, and his brother’s one of the Admin building night guards. The room where they keep that stuff was locked up, under construction according to the sign on the door.”

“Under construction? They didn’t set up a temporary place to view the records?”

“Not that Mark or his brother could find.”

“But, the public is authorized to have the information. Aren’t they?”

“Well, sure. They’re supposed to. By law. But what the hell does that mean anymore? Enron wasn’t supposed to rip off people, either. Law is relative, Cat.”

“Relative?” I said. “Relative to what?”

“To the amount of money involved, of course,” she said. “Wasn’t it one of your kind who said ‘follow the money’?”

“Deep Throat,” I said, not to mention my mysterious informant. “Yeah, that’s the reporter’s credo. Or was, at one time. I’m not so sure anymore.” I chewed the end of my pencil. “You said something about the files not actually being there.”

“Yeah, well, the time-out thing bothered me. The fact that the browser was calling a page that forced a time-out bothered me more. So, I had one of the guys look a little deeper.”

“Deeper?”

“Don’t ask. And we didn’t do it using the paper’s computers. We used a satellite feed laptop and bounced it off a site in Russia. Long story. The Reader’s Digest condensed version is, the data is simply not there. Not on that server, anyway. Could be internal. Would have to be, in one form or another, or they couldn’t do their job. But no way could we find that without leaving a footprint.”

“Footprint?”

“Evidence that someone was trying to peek. We could breach the firewall protecting their internal data, but if they’re on the ball, they’d know someone was trying to get at it from the outside.”

I considered this. Their knowing, whoever they were, might not be a bad thing. After all, if my editorial didn’t shake something loose, perhaps that would. “You could do this? Break their fire-whatever?”

“Breach it, yeah. Heather could do it. She’s the best hacker I’ve got.”

I chewed on my pencil some more. “Okay,” I said. “Do it. But wait two days. And only if I give you the go-ahead.”

“Not a problem,” she said, rising from her chair.

AND IN THAT MAZE THERE BE DRAGONS

I sat in my office for a long time after she left, staring out at the newsroom, trying to wrap my thoughts around what she had told me. But I couldn’t focus on it. A Counting Crows song started spinning in my head. I laughed a bitter laugh. Though it was a Tuesday, it wasn’t near 3:00 a.m. but it might as well have been the way my thoughts were turning.

An empty newsroom is a spooky place, full of whispers and shuffling noises. The countless stories played out there, defined and redefined; the drama, the angst, the joy, and sorrow; it all seeps into the woodwork over time, coats it like varnish.

The Essex family has owned and operated the Call Register since the newspaper was a single hand-crank press in the barn of Hiram Walker Essex, sometime before the southernmost states of this country decided to move off on their own. Old Hiram lost his youngest son, a budding reporter, in the disastrous war that followed that action.

A hundred and ten years later, Henry Louis, named for Henry Louis Mencken, lost his eldest son, a photojournalist, in a war a lot farther away and infinitely more senseless.

Lawrence, HL’s youngest son, had withered under the old man’s solitary gaze. There was a time when I felt sorry for Larry. He’d had a big set of loafers to swim around in and he was drowning in the tsunami of his older brother’s fame. Eventually he ran from the weight of his father’s loss and pity, ventured out on his own, and even managed a certain amount of success.

To be sure, he had succeeded with Robyn. Something I couldn’t claim for myself. But whose fault was that, anyway?

I stared across the room to where Lawrence had once had his office. The enclosure was long gone now, dismantled to make room for more desks. Back then, after he’d had it built, he’d had ceiling to floor curtains installed, blocking the light that had poured through the south-facing windows.

This building is old. High ceilings, dark wood panels, poor overhead lighting. Those windows, and the light that shone through them, were the only things that kept the newsroom from becoming dungeon-like. In a fit of pique, I had torn those curtains down one day. I was angry with Lawrence. Angry over his insecure bullying. Angry over the fact that he had Robyn. Just angry, I suppose.

I couldn’t blame Robyn for that anger. I had known the score shortly after meeting her. She and Lawrence were engaged. They stayed engaged throughout our five-year affair. One powerful family wedding another powerful family, she would explain, lying in bed beside me after a night of sweaty, unreal sex. It was just the way things were when you lived life at the top of the social food chain.

In those early, orgiastic days, I was too busy falling to give thought to what I was falling into. I had never met a woman like Robyn, one who had so quickly, and completely, dismantled my long-held shields. Ten years my junior, her twenty-one spent sheltered from a world she longed to explore, meeting me had thrown open the locked gates and like a frisky mare suddenly free, she had rushed headlong through them, carrying me in her wake.

For Robyn, our affair was never an issue. In her mind, marriage between royalty was one thing. Good sex on the other hand, was everything, and good sex wasn’t so easy to find. Having felt she’d found it in me, she couldn’t fathom why she couldn’t have both. She was a WASP princess, after all. As the only child of a rich and powerful man, she had always had whatever she wanted.

Once I found out who she was, who her father was, I tried to keep the affair a secret. But Robyn had a lot of friends her own age. Very visible friends who loved to party and who accepted me without question. Some of our exploits in this town are still whispered of to this day.

No. Keeping our affair a secret didn’t work from day one. There might as well have been billboards strung along the main thoroughfare of town proclaiming ‘Robyn Loves Cat.’

Lawrence was furious, of course. He tried his best to make my life miserable in the newsroom but he was caught in that awkward social stigma of being the cuckold, so there was only so far he was willing to go.

Her father was enraged, as well, and even more so when she threatened to break off her engagement with Lawrence and marry me, in a nude wedding no less, if he didn’t act as my lawyer when I was accused of a murder. I thought the man was going to have a stroke when he walked into the interrogation room and arranged my bail.

But in the end, both men won. Lawrence and Robyn were married shortly after she and I broke up. And, they’re still together, according to the society pages I pretend never to read. And her father had the satisfaction of knowing he hadn’t lost his daughter to a commoner.

Somewhere in those five years with her, cracks appeared, doubts forming like mold in dark places. And in the end those doubts destroyed me; destroyed what I had with Robyn. How I had let them grow to jealousy is a question I’ve asked myself, and tried to drown, since leaving this town. I’ve never found an answer to why I had pushed her away so violently, while trying so hard to cling to her.

It hadn’t been that way in the beginning. No green monster. No insecurities. Lying in bed, going over the details of her wedding plans, or discussing Lawrence’s sexual foibles and inadequacies, planning the conquest of the men she wanted to bed, or the women I wanted to, none of this caused me the least amount of angst.

So what changed? Who changed? Me? Robyn? Or had it all been there from the beginning, hiding in the shadows of ‘being in love’?

I threw the pencil into the darkness. This was getting me nowhere. The Robyn Zone was circles within circles and I knew from long experience that thinking wouldn’t lead me from the maze, only deeper into it. And in that maze there be dragons. It was time to go home, call it a day.

ATTACK CATS

I was starting to feel paranoid about the tickets, checking them twice on the slow ride down to the parking garage. I considered putting them back in my car but rejected the idea. The tickets were better off there than somewhere near me.

As I pulled out the parking garage, Joni started reminiscing about how she hadn’t seen Richard since Detroit in ’68. Cynical and drunk and no doubt boring, that had been me for more years than I cared to think about. At least I wasn’t drunk anymore. I wasn’t sure about the cynical and boring part.

It was late and downtown was all but deserted. It didn’t take long to get home. I pulled into the driveway, noticing that Jaz’s car wasn’t parked in its usual spot out front. Another late night for her. I wondered if she had another girl friend. She hadn’t mentioned one, but then she wouldn’t.

I stepped out the car, stretched and looked up at the heavens. The sky was bright with stars. I turned toward the house and stopped in my tracks. The Doubtful Guest was turning right-hand circles through the lilac bushes at the front of the house. I looked around. No way she could be out. No way Jaz would have let her out. The Guest was too brain damaged to let her run loose anywhere but in the house. Or the backyard and then only if I was out there with her. So oblivious and in her own world was she, that she’d have right-hand circled herself into roadkill.

I ran over, scooped her up and stepped as quietly as I could past the screen door and onto the porch. She started to squirm so I set her down on the chair and tip-toed to the front door of the house, putting my ear to it. I couldn’t hear anything. I peeked through the window. All the lights were off. Not a good sign. I always leave the kitchen light on for the cats.

I tried the door. It was locked. What to do? Call the cops? That would be the smart move. Let them handle it. I backed away from the door, crossed the porch, picked up Doubtful and went outside again. I patted my pockets but no cell phone. Screw the cops. I headed around the side of the house to the backyard.

He, I assumed it was my friend from earlier in the day, had forced the utility room door. It was hanging ajar, which explained how the Guest had escaped. She is fascinated by open doors and will spend hours going in and out of them. I widened the gap and slunk into the utility room, set Doubtful down and quietly closed the door behind me. As I crossed the room, a cat brushed my leg and I nearly squealed. It was Booth. He opened his mouth and squeaked at me. Hungry. I waved him away and tip-toed toward the kitchen. He followed.

Crossing the kitchen, I heard something and froze. Another cat? Sounded too heavy for that. It was pitch black in the house and I couldn’t see a thing. I ran my hand over the counter, looking for any kind of weapon I could find. Stacks of bills; cat food cans I’d forgotten to throw away; last night’s dinner dishes; nothing worthy of weapon status. A piece of silverware fell into the sink with a loud clatter and I all but swore aloud. Finally my groping found what felt like a flashlight. It would have to do. If it worked, maybe I could blind the guy.

As I rounded the corner out the kitchen and into the dining room, several things happened at once. Spook yowled. Mooch flew from the darkness and banged into my legs mid-step. I lost my balance and started to pitch forward. At the same moment the kitchen light blazed on and a crashing blow landed across my shoulders.

One of the dining room chairs broke my fall, overturning and dumping me onto the floor. I rolled, narrowly avoiding a kick to the head. The kicker smacked his ankle against the chair instead. It was a heavy chair and I heard him bellow in pain. I tried to rise but he lashed out again, this time catching me in the shoulder. It felt like he was swinging a baseball bat at me.

I managed to roll onto my hands and knees and started scooting away. He caught me with a kick in the ass that flattened me. I rolled over in time to see another kick coming but had no time to duck out the way. It caught me above the ear, lights exploding in my head like fireworks.

The room swam. Everything solid began to melt. I looked up at my assailant. Three Nixons stood towering over me. Then two. Then just one. A mask, I told myself, the asshole is wearing a Nixon mask. He turned and lifted the heavy oak chair as if it were made of Styrofoam.

“You know why I’m here,” he said with no attempt to disguise his voice. This was not a good thing. “Give me what I came for and I promise I won’t let you suffer. For long.” He laughed. Definitely not a good thing. I always knew Nixon would be the death of me one day.

“No more Mr. Nice Guy, huh, Dick?” I said.

He raised the chair high over his head, and that’s when the weirdest thing I’d ever witnessed occurred. A flash of black and white flew across the room and landed on his shoulder. A black flash raced up one leg while a streak of white swept up the other. The Doubtful Guest appeared and began weaving right-hand circles at his feet.

Feral, Spook and Booth converged at his head and began clawing viciously at his face, tearing the Nixon mask to shreds. He roared, turned, and there on his back were Puss Cat and Beast, gouging his neck, with Mooch raking his leg. The chair tumbled from his hand, catching Doubtful on the tail. Screeching, she scampered away and tried to crawl beneath my shoulder.

He pulled Spook from the side of his face and flung him across the room. Booth and Feral, joined now by Puss Cat and Beast, tore off what was left of the mask and began shredding his ear and face. Blood and cat fur flew everywhere.

Stumbling forward, he tripped over Mooch and fell to the floor, scattering cats. They jumped on his back and began ripping at his shirt as he frantically began crawling away.

The screeches and bellows began to Doppler away. I heard the utility door slam, heard a cat yowl in pain. I tried to get up, to go to them, my attack cats, but the room was going white on me, fading and I couldn’t move. The last thing I remember, before it all went dark, was Doubtful winding her way over my shoulder and lying on my chest.

When I woke, there was a pillow under my head. Jaz was sitting on the floor next to me, one hand clutching a cell phone, the other brushing my cheek. It was a pleasant sensation, until the pain in my skull registered its presence. I rolled over, Doubtful clinging to my chest, and puked.

“Teller,” she said, her hand on my shoulder now. I felt embarrassed and sick, and wanted to crawl off and hide. She shook me gently.

“Teller. The ambulance is on the way. And the police. What happened, Teller?”

I groaned. Just what I needed. Doctors and cops. My favorite people after lawyers.

“The cats,” I managed to say. “How are the cats?”

“Spook is splattered with blood and there’s a gash over his eye.  He won’t let me near him. The rest, I don’t know.  Most of them are outside prowling and screeching. What the hell happened here?”

Before I could answer her, I heard the sirens turn up the block. Then there were two guys kneeling next to me, black suitcases open around them, poking and prodding, taking my damn temperature and blood pressure. I imagined the latter was off the scale.

“Pretty low,” one said.

“Pulse fast but strong,” replied the other.

“Can you turn your head?”

It took me a beat to realize he was talking to me. I started to swivel my head, felt what was left in my stomach take flight, and turned away from him just in time to add more puke to the pile.

“Concussion,” said the guy. “Maybe a fracture. We need to transport.”

“I’ll get the stretcher,” said the other guy.

I groaned. Just what I needed: A hospital. I hated hospitals. At least I had health insurance. I lay my head back on the pillow and Jaz began to stroke my face. That alone made it almost worth being nearly killed.

“The c-cats … check on them … a vet … please,” I muttered and once again everything went dark.

CLUELESS IS A DANGEROUS PLACE TO BE

By midnight I’d been poked, prodded, poked some more, stuck in a brightly lit cylinder no bigger than a coffin, and wheeled to a bed.

“No fracture,” the man in white standing at the foot of the bed said. “Some minor brain swelling but that’s to be expected,” he continued. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

I looked at him, blinked a couple of times. “What fingers,” I said.

His eyebrows arched, and he started to write something in the chart he was holding.

“Joking,” I said. “Just joking. Two. You were holding up two.”

“Good,” he said. “Your vision and your humor seem to be intact.”

“Can I get out of here now?”

“It would be better if you spent the night.”

“Better, perhaps, but is it really necessary? I’m worried about my cats.”

He pondered this a moment, a slight smile curling his lips.

“I don’t suppose there would be any harm in it. But I want to see you back here first thing in the morning.”

“I can do that,” I said, sliding my legs out over the side of the bed.

“Your clothes are there on the chair,” he said. “Do you have a ride home?”

“I’ll make sure he gets there,” came a voice from the doorway, the second to the last voice I wanted to hear. I looked up and there was Marion, as crisp and clean at the end of this day as he’d no doubt been when it began.

“Fine,” said the doctor. “And I mean it, Mr. Teller. I want you back here first thing in the morning.”

“Right,” I said, pulling on my jeans and shucking the hospital smock. “First thing.”

Marion and I left the hospital in silence. Though he had to grab me several times when my legs went all wobbly, we made it to his car without me falling on my ass.

“You should have let them keep you,” he said as he started the car.

“Yeah, yeah, thanks for your concern.”

He gave me a sharp look.

“Sorry,” I said. “My ‘play nice’ function is a bit impaired at the moment.” I had to swallow hard to get the next sentence out. “Thanks for giving me a ride.”

“It’s not altogether altruism, Teller.”

He pulled out the hospital parking lot and turned in the opposite direction from home. Before I could ask him where we were going, his cell phone rang.

“Chambers,” he said, plugging a Bluetooth in his ear.

There was a long moment while he listened. I stared out the window, trying not to think about my near brush with death.

“That’s good news,” Marion said. He looked over at me. “I’ll get down there as soon as I can.”

“Problems?” I said when he pulled the Bluetooth from his ear.

“Police business,” he answered.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see soon enough.”

Five minutes of silence later, we pulled up at the police impound yard. Marion pulled a remote from the dash, pushed the button and the gate inched its way open. A minute later we pulled up in front of a dark grey Nissan Pathfinder. It had a crumpled passenger-side fender, one headlight pointing downward.  I noticed the license plate was missing.

“Is this the SUV that tried to flatten you the other night?”

Startled by his question, I hemmed and hawed and attempted an evasion.

“I, uh—”

“Don’t bullshit me, Teller,” he said. “I already know someone tried to run you down, a little detail you conveniently failed to mention.”

I turned to look at him, a move that made my head pound and my vision go blurry. A swear word from Marion the Pure? This was serious.

“You know?”

“I know.”

“How?”

“It’s my business to know. You want to tell me what’s going on?” he said.

I sat for a moment, staring at the SUV, trying to decide what to do, what to tell Marion, what to hold back. I’d spent so many years toying with him I found it hard to believe I was being straight up with him of late. At least a little.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s it. Is it the one that—”

“Yes. Forensic boys found blood stains in the back. It matches Harrison’s. We’re checking the DNA to be sure but I have no doubt it’s his.”

He put the car in gear, circled around the lot and out through the gate.

“Are you going to tell me what happened tonight?” he said.

I stared out the window at the darkened downtown buildings, my thoughts bouncing about like bingo balls in an air hopper.

With a deep sigh, I told him how I’d gone home, found the Doubtful Guest outside, how I’d gone in through the back door and had my ass soundly whipped.

“What did that guy want tonight, besides crushing your skull?”

I considered telling him about the tickets but rejected the notion. First, I had but a vague idea what they meant, with no corroborating evidence to back it up. Second, he would likely take them from me, regardless, and I’d be back to square one. It was obvious from the insurance bill my health care provider was going to receive that those tickets meant something to someone and, if I let them go, I’d never find out who that someone was.

“Kill me, I suppose,” I said. “Like they did Harrison. And maybe the others. Make it look like a burglary gone bad.”

He pulled into my driveway and killed the lights, leaving the motor running.

“Why” he said. “Any ideas on who ‘they’ are?”

I started to shake my head, thought better of it. “I’d like to say someone at the DPE but I have no proof so, at the moment, I haven’t a clue. To either question.”

“Clueless is a dangerous place to be, Teller.”

“Tell me about it. But I’m convinced it’s all connected; Harrison, Gjerde, Forrester, the Meter Mangler, the DPE, me. I just can’t see how it’s connected. Not yet, anyway.”

I opened the door, started to ease myself out and stopped.

“You might want to start searching for a dark blue Mercedes,” I said. “Diesel. Newer model.”

“You know who this guy is, don’t you?”

“On sight. I don’t have a name. And after tonight, with what the cats did to him, I have a feeling he’s going to lay low.”

I stepped from the car and started to close the door.

“Here,” said Marion as he tossed something small in my direction. I snatched it out the air and examined it.

“Is this what I think it is?”

“Indeed,” Marion said. “One of my men found it attached to your landline. You might want to be careful what you talk about on that phone.”

I closed the door, still clutching the tiny bug. Marion backed out the driveway and I watched as his taillights faded away. Unclenching my fist, I examined the bug again. So that was how he knew what I’d been up to, why he’d shown up earlier, and why he came calling last night. I slipped the bug into my pocket and began to make my way up the walk.

Jaz was waiting for me on the porch. I was wobbling pretty badly by the time I got there and she helped me to a seat.

“You should have stayed in the hospital, you idiot.”

“I hate hospitals.”

“What happened here, Teller?”

“How are the cats?”

“Spook needed stitches but he’s fine and a bit dozy from the pain killers. He’s on your bed, sleeping. Likewise the Beast. He has a cracked rib. Booth and Mooch are limping but the vet said there were no broken bones. Feral and Puss have several broken claws. Doubtful’s tail is bent but the vet says it isn’t broken.”

“Wow. Something, huh? Attack cats. Who’d of thought it?”

I felt tears welling up. My cats saved my life. No more generic cat food for them. Nothing but top of the line from here on out.

“Your place is a mess,” she said.

“I can imagine.”

“I was going to try and straighten it up, then I thought you might want to … I don’t know, look around or something, see if anything was missing.”

“Thanks, Jaz. I appreciate that. And for taking the cats to the vet. Let me know how much it was and I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Did you see anything?” I said. “How did you find me?”

“I got a …” she started then shifted gears. “I came home and there was all this screeching and yowling and bellowing coming from the backyard. Then this big guy comes running down the driveway, screaming and flinging off cats. Scared the hell out of me. I ran up to the house, but the door was locked so I went around back and in through the utility room. Found you out cold on the dining room floor. I called the cops.”

“Did you get a good look at the guy?”

“No. Too dark.”

“Did he see you?”

“I doubt it. He was too busy having his face scratched off to notice much of anything.”

“Good.”

“Teller. What’s going on? What did that guy want?”

“Jaz, I feel like a package delivered on Christmas day by an angry postal worker. My hair hurts I feel so beat up, but I’ll get past it. I’ve had hangovers worse than this, and right now, I just want to crawl into bed, gather up my cats and forget this day ever happened.”

“Are you sure? I could stay if you want.”

My heart jumped, which sadly made my head pound more. What a time for an offer like that, though I doubted she intended it to be the gesture I almost wished it was.

“Thanks. Really. I appreciate what you’ve done. More than you know, but I can handle it from here.”

I started to rise but fell quickly back. In the end, Jaz helped me to my feet, guided me into my bedroom, and lowered me onto the bed, careful not to disturb Spook or Beast. She unbuttoned my shirt and slid it over my shoulders and down my arms. Kneeling, she pulled off my boots and then my socks. When she stood back up, I thought for a moment she was going to go for my jeans. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that as I don’t wear underwear, but I was saved further worry when she swiveled me around and pushed me back to a prone position.

Doubtful jumped on the bed, followed by the rest of the felines.

“You gonna tell me what happened, Teller?”

“In the morning. I promise.”

She nodded once and left.

TODAY IS THE DAY

Robyn was standing inside the door of the Rose Street apartment, a swirl of Indian summer leaves dancing about her feet. I knew this dream. I’d had it enough times, though not in recent years. I knew that no matter how hard I might try to wake myself up, I couldn’t. The dream would play itself out according to its own script, little things changing from one replay to the next.

I was sitting on the floor like always, a Smith Corona portable typewriter in my lap, notes on scraps of yellow paper scattered all around me. This part of the dream had really happened once, long ago, and it was the only part of the dream that repeated itself. Robyn in the doorway, white silk blouse, pale blue bra beneath it, a short white skirt, all of which she took off that time in the waking world, but never in the dream, however much I longed for it.

In this go-round, I could hear HL outside taking loudly to someone. There was a smashing sound which I knew was the Mangler crushing meters with a sledgehammer. My gaze, though, was locked on Robyn. She reached for the top button of her blouse and then hesitated, her gaze shifting to the doorway of the bedroom. I became afraid. I knew Jaz was in there, sleeping in my bed. Robyn turned back to me, a look of sadness on her face. Lawrence walked in the door dressed in one of those Shakespearean get-ups that always denotes the cuckold. He glared at me, took Robyn roughly by the hand, and dragged her out the room. “Today’s the day, Teller,” she said over her shoulder.

I woke up.

Turning my head with great care, I tried to see the clock past the inert form of the Beast who lay on the pillow beside me. It was 6:00 a.m. Jaz must have pulled the heavy drapes closed because the room was still dark.

My head hurt. I was covered in cats. I sank back into the pillow, tried to go back to sleep but it wasn’t happening. Thoughts of the previous evening roiled about, making my headache worse. Oddly enough, my coccyx hurt worse than my head. And then there was the dream. Robyn had never spoken to me in the dream before.

The cats, knowing the difference between my sleeping movements and my waking ones, started yawning and stretching and getting into my face. They didn’t care what time it was. I was awake, ergo, it was food o’clock.

I rolled out of bed as best I could and waited for the pain to hit. To my surprise it didn’t. Just a dull ache at both ends of my spinal column. I made my way to the kitchen, limping, woozy, battle-scarred cats in tow. It was cold. The tile floor felt sticky against my bare feet and the room smelled of old cat food. I’d been neglecting my household chores again, something I am all too prone to do. The lines from an old Neil Young song drifted across my thoughts. Yeah. Like I could afford a maid. Or want one to see the mess I’d let the house become. I’d have to clean the whole place first to save myself the embarrassment. Weird how that works.

I set water to boil and dumped six scoops of Peet’s into the French Press. There were a dozen small cans of over-priced, gourmet cat food in the pantry that I’d been saving for a special occasion. As saving my life seemed like a special occasion, I pulled them out, opened them up and dumped the contents on separate plates, one for each of my saviors.

Leaning against the counter, not yet ready to venture beyond the kitchen to examine the mess I knew the dining room to be, I stared at the kettle, willing it to boil, thoughts of the previous evening giving way to thoughts of the dream. A pointless endeavor. I hadn’t understood it the first time I’d had it years ago and hadn’t understood a single version of it since. Having someone else in my bed was new, though. That someone being Jaz scared me a bit. And what did Robyn mean that today was the day?

The kettle clicked off. I poured, gave the grounds about thirty seconds of the six minutes they should steep, and poured myself a cup. I am not a patient man in the morning.

I knew that I should stop this line of thought, turn back to the task at hand. I was in the middle of a breaking story. My best friend was dead. I was being stalked. Last night I’d been attacked and nearly killed. My house was a mess and several of my cats were injured.

Yet here I was, staring out the window, wondering about the dream. Why had it returned? Contrary to what I’d said to Jaz, I rarely think of Robyn anymore, much less dream of her. Nothing I’d consciously done had put her in my thoughts these last weeks. I hadn’t been going through the photo albums, listening to silly, sad, love songs, or reading through my old journals.

It was being back in this town that was doing it, I decided. I was born here. Grew up here. Spent most of my adult life here. This whole place is full of memories, dark shadows everywhere I turn. What was hardest to understand was that my time with Robyn was such a small percentage of the whole, and yet I find her hiding in most of those shadows.

Why was that?

Why is it that I walk past the old movie theater, a place I spent every Saturday of my entire kid life, and all I can remember of it is the one time Robyn and I went there? I drive by Jilly’s lounge and think of all the times I spent there with her, never the years I spent there before her. The Coney Island place; the park; the fountain downtown; the camera shop; the Stonehenge bar. Hell, the ATM in the square, which wasn’t even an ATM when she and I were together, just some dumb plaza with bizarre black stone sculptures littering it. What was the deal here? I couldn’t be pining over a long-ago love, could I? I mean, how pathetic is that?

No. Not happening. I loved her when I was with her. Mourned her when she left. Okay, so maybe the mourning went on a bit long. Okay, too long. But I got over it. Sure I did. Cat without Robyn is just … well, Teller again. Which isn’t such a bad thing. For me, losing Robyn was like losing a part of your body that wasn’t absolutely essential to your day-to-day functions. You could go days, weeks, months, and not notice it gone. Then one day, you go to pick up a bottle with your left hand and it slips through your fingers because you have no thumb.

But I’m happy enough with my life. Aren’t I? Sure it’s a little duller. It’s supposed to get dull after five plus decades, isn’t it? And yeah, it’s lonelier. But whose fault is that? It’s not like Robyn cursed me, or that the years transformed me into a hunchback gnome too ugly to look at. I’m a little weathered, perhaps, but not all that unattractive. So why have there been no significant relationships in my life since Robyn? And why, why, why is she still haunting me! You’d think we had broken up a week ago instead of … instead of …

‘Today is the day, Teller.’

My coffee cup tilted downward, sloshing hot coffee over the counter and onto the floor. Onto my bare feet, but I didn’t notice it. I set the cup down. Unhooked my finger from the handle. Turned. Stared at the calendar on the wall. It was the end of May. Ric’s Americana Café. The day the earth opened up and swallowed me whole.

‘Today is the day, Teller.’

It was twenty years ago today that Robyn and I broke up.

NOT SO PUBLIC

“I see you’re still alive, Teller,” Jaz said.

I looked up, startled to find myself on the porch. The sun was up. Market Street was clogged with cars. I looked at the Zappa clock on the wall. It was a quarter to nine. Nearly three hours gone. Instinctively I looked around, expecting to find empty bottles surrounding my chair. Except for ashes, cat hair, and a few scattered leaves, the space around me was empty.

“Lose something?” she asked, taking the chair next to mine.

I sat back, closed my eyes, a wave of relief washing over me. I hadn’t gone to the liquor store. Where I had gone was questionable, but at least I hadn’t gone there. I ran my fingers through my hair. Damp. I had even managed to take a shower, change my clothes.

“Did the kick to the head relieve you of your voice?”

“Huh? Oh. Sorry,” I said. “A lot on my mind this morning.”

“You promised you’d tell me about it.”

“Tell you? Oh. Last night. Right.”

“Are you sure you’re all right, Teller?”

“Yeah. Fine. Hurt a little. Nothing major.”

“So, last night?”

Staring through the screen at the park across the street, not really seeing it but seeing last night instead, I gave her the story, pretty much as I had to Marion.

When I was through, I looked over at her. She was wearing a pale yellow blouse with matching skirt. It looked good with her blue hair. I remembered that in my dream she had been in my bed. Something fluttered beneath my rib cage and I turned away. Robyn, Jaz. Jaz, Robyn. This was all too emotionally complicated.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s pretty amazing about the cats. I mean, I know a dog will defend its master, but cats? I’ve never heard of that before.”

“Yeah, me neither. I couldn’t have been more surprised but I sure am thankful. Pity I didn’t get it all on tape. They could be stars of the World’s Weirdest Videos or something.”

“You think he was here to kill you?”

“I know he was. He said as much, anyway.”

“What was he after?”

I considered telling her about the tickets. Decided against it.

“I’m being followed,” I said, staring out at the cars that inched their way up Market Street. “Or was until last night.”

“And?”

I looked back at her, said nothing.

“Do you think it has something to do with the Mangler?”

“Do you mean do I think the Mangler followed me around, trashed my place and tried to kill me? No way.”

“Why not?”

I resumed studying the cars.

“I think the Mangler wants the same thing I want. He wants to know what’s going on at that place you work. I think Harrison wanted that, too. Following me around, trashing my place, it’s counterproductive. No point. Worse, it interferes. No. It wasn’t the Mangler.”

“So who set this guy on you then? DPE?” she said.

“That’s a safe enough bet. No way to prove it, though. Not yet.”

There was a long silence. I looked over at her. She was staring out the window, watching the cars as I had been. I decided to shift gears.

“I asked Research to get me some info, yesterday,” I said, shifting in my chair to face her. “Should have been routine, you know, public record and all that.”

“And?”

“Well, apparently it’s not so public.”

“What do you mean?”

I explained what I had asked Lynn for and how the links to the information I was looking for were screwed up. I debated telling her about the additional probing Lynn had done but I wasn’t sure I could explain it. I didn’t tell her about the tickets I’d found in the waste container. I needed more time to consider what they meant and, though loathe to admit it, I was beginning to wonder just what Jaz’s involvement in all this was.

“Bottom line,” I continued, “none of the financial information on the department was accessible.”

“But that can’t be,” she said. “All that information is public record. There’s a small room filled with filing cabinets and a long table where the public can come in at any time and examine the records. Not that anyone ever does.”

“And not that they can at the moment.” I explained what Lynn had told me about the public viewing room being under construction.

“Construction? There hasn’t been any construction in that building in ten years. But even so, the information has to be available on the Internet. I know because I set up the online part of it. Took us over a year to convert all the paper files to electronic ones. How can it not be available?”

“You’re asking the wrong guy, Jaz” I said. “But trust me, if Lynn says it’s not available, it’s not available.”

She turned away, her fingers nervously tapping out a silent tune on her knee. She mumbled something under her breath that sounded like “What are they up to?”

A SOFTER GIG FOR MERCENARIES

“Tell me about Forest Forrester,” I said.

“Forest?” she said, a note of surprise in her voice.

“He headed the DPE before he died.”

“I know who he is, Teller. I worked for the man for seven years.”

“So tell me about that, what it was like, how things changed after he … after Cooper took over.”

She shrugged, leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling.

“Forest was a sweet guy,” she said. “A bit too OCD for me, at times, but it didn’t bother me as much as it bothered his previous assistants.”

She laughed nervously. It sounded like china tea cups rattling in an earthquake.

“I was hired in mid-October and he’d already gone through three that year. His style of micro-management could get on your nerves real quick if you let it. Everything had to be labeled just so, with the right color label, the right heading. Oh, and did that man hate odd numbers.”

She sat forward, chuckling as the memory came.

“He would actually count the files in every drawer,” she continued.  “And if there was an odd number, he’d rearrange them until they were even, even if he had to add a blank file to make it that way. Forest was a hoot.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard he was a bit quirky.”

“Quirky doesn’t come close but he knew what he was doing and, once he saw that I wasn’t going to up and leave him in the lurch, he started increasing my responsibilities. Between us, we made that department happen. We hired good people, bought good equipment. We had an efficient system going, one with heart, I might add. None of this mercenary bullshit you see now. That was Cooper’s doing. Six months after he took over, nearly all my original crew were gone.”

She went silent for a while, shaking her head and then turned to me.

“Where the hell he gets those people is anybody’s guess,” she said. “Prison, maybe? The local insane asylum? Former mercenary types looking for a softer gig? Who the hell knows? They stalk about town in packs of twos and threes like rabid wolves seeking prey, marking their kills with white sheets of paper fluttering beneath windshield wipers. The number of tickets the department issued doubled and doubled again. There was so much money flowing into the city coffers, from the meters, from the tickets, the council members were falling all over themselves like birds at a ripe Pyracantha bush. It was sickening.”

“I spoke with Tom Philo the other day,” I said. “He filled me in on the money angle.”

“Tom?” she said, looking away again.

“Yeah. Philo. You know him?”

“Sure,” she said. “Not well or anything. Not really. But everyone, you know, knows Tom. He used to be very active in this town. Never up front. Never ran for office or anything like that. He started the Downtown Merchants’ Association, though. I think that was the first year I moved here. Anyway, he headed it for five years or more and was a key player in the renaissance the downtown area went through.”

“Renaissance? About the only renaissance I’ve seen is that they remodeled the old Jewel Theater. Turned it back to what it was when I was a kid.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It was a porno place when I moved here.”

“That’s what it was when I left,” I said. “Debby Does Dallas, Deep Throat, Behind The Green Door. Definitely not your Disney kind of place. So what’s this renaissance you’re talking about?”

“Well,” she said. “There was a time not that long ago, when a lot of people would come downtown to sit in the coffee shops or stroll through the little boutiques, book stores and card shops that existed down there.”

I considered the downtown area that I knew. There weren’t a lot of shops there. It was mostly walk-up coffee kiosks and take-out restaurants catering to the office worker crowd, places where you could get your caffeine and calories to go. There were a lot of empty buildings. A lot of ‘For Lease’ signs. No bars and boards on the windows such as there were before I left but, that I could see, it wasn’t a whole lot better now than the slum it had been. Prettier was all.

“Are we talking about the same town here?” I said. “I don’t recall there being boutiques, book stores and card shops downtown.”

“No,” she said. “There aren’t. Not anymore. Cooper and his parking meters changed all that. Do you have any idea why strip-malls are so popular, ugly as they are?”

“I don’t know? Cheap jeans? Parking, I suppose, since that’s what we’re talking about. Plenty of parking.”

“Plenty of untimed parking,” she said. “The key is untimed. You can park there as long as you need with little or no worry.”

“Right,” I said. “Philo mentioned that. He talked about turnover. In the malls, that wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Right. But in the downtown area, parking is at a premium.”

“So you need turnover,” I said.

“Right,” she agreed. “But it has to be a reasonable turnover. There has to be enough time for people to shop, drink their coffee, eat their food. The meters we put up gave everyone two hours. More if you went back and fed the meter. Cooper replaced those with half-hour ones. And, when your thirty minutes were up, you couldn’t just feed the meter again. You had to move on. Who can eat a decent lunch, browse through a room full of books, or find that perfect card for Aunt Tilly in Twin Falls, all in thirty minutes? Especially with your eyes flicking back and forth to your watch, knowing full well that ten seconds after the red violation flag surfaced, a meter maid would be there slapping a forty-buck ticket under your windshield wiper. It was ridiculous, Teller.”

“I imagine so,” I said.

“And,” she continued, “should you get there just as the meter maid is finishing the ticket, well, you might as well be confronting The Terminator for all the good your pleading will do. You don’t bargain with cyborgs, Teller. They have no conscience. And, you could end up maced and hauled off to jail if you protested too much, let anger get the better of you. The meter maids always won. It wasn’t like that when we ran the show. The meter patrols were very loose, very forgiving. If you happened to return to your car ten minutes after the meter expired you weren’t likely to find a ticket fluttering beneath your windshield wiper. And, if you and the meter maid arrived at the same moment, no ticket was issued, even if the ticket had been completely filled out. The meter maid would just tear it up, issue a friendly verbal warning and move on. Likely as not, the car owner and the meter maid would stand around talking about the weather or the local sports scores. It was a very convivial atmosphere.”

From my experience over the last four months, I couldn’t imagine a car owner and a meter maid doing anything together, other than try to pummel each other.

“And things changed,” I said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Oh, they changed all right,” she said. “Big time. Because of the decrease in parking time, the number of shoppers willing to shop downtown declined. As the shoppers disappeared, so did the shops. For a while there, it was looking like a return to the past; shops boarded up, the homeless returning to the stoops and doorways, litter everywhere. It was a real mess. Then, the city council passed an ordinance forbidding the boarding of shops. They could stand empty, for lease forever for all the council cared, but they had to look pretty or you found yourself hauled into court and slapped with a huge fine.”

“But what about the tax base?” I said. “It doesn’t make sense to drive people away from businesses.”

“Not unless there’s more money to be made elsewhere. You talked to Tom. He gave you the money angle. Think about it. The sales tax is state based. The city gets a portion of that at the beginning of the fiscal year; they’ve got to fight tooth and nail for it and more often than not, end up with less than they need. Parking meter revenue, though, that’s city based. The city gets it all.”

I thought about the hundred and twenty mil. It made sense in a perverted sort of way.

“Tom lost several businesses down there,” she said. “Did he mention that?”

“No,” I said, suddenly very interested. “He didn’t.”

“Yeah. Really hit him hard. That little coffee kiosk up the street from the Coney Island place? The café behind it was his. Featured local folk, bluegrass bands, poetry readings on the weekends. It was a great little place. Tom owns that whole row of buildings, from what used to be the Bountiful Boutique to that little bakery next to the theater. And there’s a little electronics shop, down next to what’s left of the photo shop, that’s his as well.”

She gave me a strange look as she said that. Almost as if she wanted to take her words back.

“An electronics shop?” I said.

“Uh, yeah,” she said. “Gizmos and stuff.”

“Gizmos?”

“Well, I don’t know what they are, Teller,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, wondering why she was becoming so uptight. “He lost the buildings?”

“No. He still owns them. It’s the businesses that shut down and moved away.”

“Because DPE changed the meters?”

“More or less,” she said. “People stopped coming downtown to shop. The mall was easier with no possibility of a parking ticket. All the small shops downtown started closing,” she added. “Not just Tom’s.”

“And that’s when he started that little anti-parking meter campaign of his?”

“Yeah. I think so. Somewhere around there.”

“And this was?” I said.

“Well, the electronic shop went first,” she said. “Maybe a year, year and a half ago. Not long after Cooper changed the meters, anyway.”

“And the café?”

“He kept that open a while longer,” she said. “Still a lot of workers down there but his biggest trade was Friday and Saturday nights when he featured the bands. When the DPE extended the meter hours downtown to 10:00 p.m. that was when business fell off to nothing. I think he finally closed it down, set up that little kiosk, a month or two before you came back to town.”

“And he had CARPE running by that time?”

“Yeah,” she said. “But he’s kept his part in it a tight secret. It was small at first, maybe a dozen people in all. It didn’t start growing until you started writing your articles.”

And until the Meter Mangler showed up, I thought.

“Why a secret?” I said.

She turned to me, staring deep, as if she was debating what to say.

“Let’s just say that the way things are in this town, it’s not good to be seen as opposing the DPE.”

I thought about what HL had said about his total lack of support in opposing the department and had to agree: they seemed a formidable enemy.

“And what about you?” I said. “You work for them. Where do you stand?”

“Me?” she said. “I’m the elephant in the living room. I collect a paycheck and that’s about it. They’re too afraid of a discrimination suit to fire me.  They don’t want any more heat than the Mangler and your stories have already brought down on them.  But they’ve cut me out of every loop there is. I probably play a thousand games of solitaire a day while I’m there. I think they hope I’ll get so frustrated and bored, I’ll just quit.”

“Will you?”

“Not a chance. That’s my department. What Cooper has done to it, to this town, is an obscenity. No. I won’t quit. They’ll have to drag me out of there, kicking and screaming.”

THE MIASMA OF A SICK GHOST

After Jaz left for work, I sat on the porch, struggling with my thoughts, an exercise that was the equivalent of trying to herd cats. Between my investigation and the anniversarial revelations of the morning, I was on information overload. Add to that the growing paranoia I was feeling over the tickets and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.

Though I was reluctant to burden HL with the tickets, I knew it was the right thing to do. After the attack last night, those tickets were a key piece in the puzzle.

It didn’t take long to retrieve them. There was one last thing I needed to do before I turned the tickets over to HL. I stepped out the elevator door before it had a chance to close and hurried up the stairs to the second floor.  Forty minutes later, back on the elevator, willing it to move faster, I emerged on my floor, cross-legged and anxious as I hobbled toward the john.

Another of the finer points of fifty-something is becoming quite familiar with the location and interior design of bathrooms. Road trips are no longer calculated on the basis of destination, or the attractions you might encounter along the way, but by the number of rest stops, and whether the attractions might have bathrooms. Those huge, ugly, brown Saw Palmetto capsules become a daily routine: the first thing you swallow in the morning, the last thing down the pipe at night. And don’t ever make the mistake of biting into one of those. The taste is beyond bad and will stay with you for hours regardless of what you do to rinse it out or mask it.

When I got back to my office, Rafe was standing by my desk.

“Rafe,” I said. “What’s up, man?”

“Oh, Mr. Teller.”

“Yep,” I said, feeling a little irritated and not quite knowing why. “Why are you here, Rafe?”

“My car was towed.”

I considered this non sequitur for a moment, wondering if I’d heard him correctly, or if I was losing it from all the running around I’d been doing.

“Your car?”

“I love my car, Mr. Teller. It was my dad’s.”

I’d love his car too: A ’56 T-Bird, low mileage, mint condition. The thing had to be worth a fortune. Then I remembered I’d seen the car when I parked mine in the underground garage.

“I just saw your car, Rafe,” I said. “Down in the garage.”

His eyes grew wide, like a rabbit’s staring at approaching headlights.

“I have to go now, Mr. Teller.”

“Why were you here to begin with?” I said. He started to shake and I started to feel guilty about grilling him. “Look,” I said. “Why don’t you …” I looked around, spotted the trash can, “… why don’t you, you know, take the trash can, or whatever you came here for, and go back to your office. Okay?”

His face brightened, lost that about-to-be-flattened look. “Yes, sir,” he said. “The trash can.” He picked it up and hurried out the office. I watched him walk away and then forgot about him.  I had one last thing to do.

A half hour later, I was climbing the stairs to HL’s office. As I rounded the fourth floor landing, I stopped. The scent of English Leather was as thick as the miasma of a sick ghost. Rafe. I looked around but he was nowhere to be seen. Shaking off the creepy feeling that stole up my back, I continued on my way.

MORE NEFARIOUS BY THE MOMENT

“He’s waiting for you,” Felice said as I crossed her office. I didn’t bother asking how he knew I was coming.

“Sorry,” I said, swinging open the oak door to HL’s inner sanctum. “I got kind of tied up.”

“What are you sorry about now?” HL asked as I walked into the room.

I thought about telling him of my strange encounter with Rafe, but what was there to tell? That the guy was acting weird? Weird was normal for Rafe. “It’s a long story,” I said, setting myself down in the chair in front of his desk.

“It always is,” he said. “Pity your articles aren’t.”

“I’m working on it,” I said.

He looked me up and down, a look of concern on his face.

“Are you sure you should be out traipsing around?” he said. “You look like something the bulls might have left behind at Pamplona.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m fine. I hate hospitals.”

“As do I,” he replied. “I managed to avoid one at birth and all the days since and I hope to avoid one when my final deadline arrives. So, what do you have for me?”

I glanced in the direction of Felice’s office. How …? I shook my head. When was I going to learn not to combine ‘how’ and ‘Felice’ in the same thought?

I tossed the envelope on his desk, studying him closely as he picked it up and turned it over in his large hands. He looked up at me.

“Open it,” I said. “I think you’ll find it interesting.”

He turned it over. The tickets spilled out on his desk.

“What are these?”

I explained what I’d found the day before.

“And you saw this with your own eyes?” HL said.

“Watched the whole thing, start to trashcan finish,” I said.

“And you were alerted to this by your … source?”

“Yes, sir.”

He removed a handkerchief from his pocket, removed his glasses and began rubbing at them while gazing absently up at the corner of the room. I knew what he was doing. I’d seen it enough times over the years. He was searching for the devil’s advocate position.

“What if he was just lazy, didn’t want to get in and out of the cart?”

“Then why did he walk the line of cars in the first place?” I retorted. “And why didn’t he leave any of the tickets on the cars?”

“Were the meters expired?”

“Only a couple. I fed those before he got there,” I said.

He went back to rubbing his glasses.

“What about quota? They have some sort of quota, don’t they? Have to write a certain amount of tickets each month?”

“They’re already writing nearly the number of tickets written in DC last year,” I said. “And we have half the population.” I followed that with a brief description of my talk with Philo the day before.

“A hundred and twenty million dollars?” HL said.

“Probably more,” I said. “In meters and fines. That’s Philo’s estimate, anyway,” I added. “And it adds up if his figures are right. I can’t verify that, though. Through official sources.”

“Why not?” he said. “That information should be available.”

So I told him what Lynn had found, minus the part about maybe hacking the DPE system to dig deeper. I wasn’t sure what he knew about his research department, but I wasn’t going to be the one to reveal it.

“This grows more nefarious by the moment,” he said.

“And crazy, too.” I told him my lost-ticket-notice-in-the-mail theory. “I mean, sure, it looks good politically to be shoveling that kind of money into the city coffers, but what’s the gain versus the risk? It’s not like Cooper is planning to run for office or anything? Leastwise not that I’ve heard.”

“Well, the man’s weasel enough to be mayor, that’s for certain. But I agree. And I’ve heard nothing to that effect either.”

“So what is it?” I said. “Weird Brownie points? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

He rubbed his glasses some more, peered through them finally and set them back on his nose.

“What that meter maid did is patently illegal, of course, but if this was not a solitary act, if it is system-wide with covert sanctioning by the department itself, the implications are enormous.”

“That’s why I didn’t write it up right away,” I said.

“I see your point,” he said. “What if it were only that one meter maid, operating on his own, without any kind of sanction? We bring down the heat with a story, where does it get us? What does it get us? One meter maid. And there is more to this whole affair than one, rogue meter maid.”

“There is a possibility, though,” I said, switching roles and taking the devil’s position, “that if we did write this up, it would draw out some people. Jog some memories. Put more heat on the department.”

“True, true, and more heat would be good,” he said. “But I’m not sure whether that heat would bake them more than us.”

“Us? Why would we catch flak? If nothing else, we’ll have exposed an illegal ticket operation. How could that hurt us?”

“As I told you during our last conversation,” he said. “The DPE is a powerful force in this town. I’m getting a lot of pressure to back off. To make you back off. This … I don’t know. I’m not convinced this ticket thing is big enough. Yet. We lack sufficient information. These are litigious times we live in, Teller. The era of shoving the hand in any deep pocket one can find. We publish a story like this, people will indeed come forward. But why will they be coming forward?”

“Because they were ripped off?” I suggested.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But with no proof on their part, or ours, regarding further involvement of the DPE, what will be the perception? No one likes parking tickets. The parking issue was a hornet’s nest before you returned and you’ve been batting at the nest further with your articles. My instinct tells me that if we publish this now, it could backfire on us and we are too off balance at the moment to withstand that. No. We need more information. I think it best if we sit on this for the time being.”

As reluctant as I was to sit on a story, I had to agree with his reasoning.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ve got some more questions for Philo. And the Mangler is still out there. And I still have that gut feeling Harrison’s murder is tied up in there somewhere. I’ll shake something loose.”

Rising from his chair, HL moved over to the window, peering out toward the Admin building and the park.

“The crowds grow more restless every day,” he said. “Every day. They’re already gathering when I arrive here. Small in the morning and afternoon, no more than a hundred, I’d say. Not bad for a workday, though. At the lunch hour, the crowd swells, spilling out onto the sidewalks. People actually eat their lunch there on the lawn, as if at a picnic.”

He turned and faced me, surprising me with his next words.

“Perhaps another go at Cooper might prove productive.”

“What makes you think that?” I said. “All we ever get from him is a refusal or a ‘no comment.’”

“I wasn’t thinking of an official interview request. More like something impromptu, spontaneous, show up on his doorstep kind of thing. If this meter maid acted alone, at best you’ll get the cold shoulder from Cooper. However, if there is something deeper going on, and if he is involved in it, surely he knows you have the tickets. The unfortunate incident last night proves that someone knows. One way or another, a sudden visit on your part could be telling. And, if not, what have we lost compared with what we might gain?”

I smiled. In-your-face interviews had once been my favorite method of shaking the information tree. It had been a long time since I’d indulged myself with one.

“I like it. And now seems as good a time as any.”

He turned and looked back out at the crowd gathered on the Admin steps.

“I would agree,” he said.

I rose from my chair and was almost to the door when he spoke again.

“Be careful, Teller,” he said. “I have no desire to lose you now that I’ve coaxed you back.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” I said. “I’ll watch my back.”

“See that you do,” he said.

MUTT MINUS JEFF

I stood outside the newspaper building, looking up at the clear sky. I felt good about having taken the tickets to HL and thought his perspective on them was a good thing. And I especially liked his idea for an impromptu interview with Cooper.

As I walked toward the Admin building, I scanned the street as surreptitiously as I could in search of my friend. Though I doubted he’d be making a public appearance any time soon ‒ not after what the cats did to him ‒ I didn’t want to be taken by surprise.

As it was the beginning of the lunch hour, the crowd near the Admin steps was growing. In the time it had taken me to leave HL’s office and get this far, it had nearly doubled in size.

I waded through the crowd, passed through the double doors and stepped into the dim, cool, quiet lobby. My footfalls echoed off the marble walls and it occurred to me that I hadn’t been here since my first interview with Cooper soon after I’d arrived back in town, just before my first article on the DPE hit the newsstands.

The interview had gone well enough then, but there was something about the man that made alarms go off in my head. He had a lawyer’s smile and a politician’s way with words, both of which, according to his CV, he was; but there was something different with him, something darker,  just behind the soft smile and hardy handshake.

After the first article appeared, the department assigned a PR hack to deal with the press, to deal with me specifically. After the Mangler entered the scene, they stopped giving interviews at all and started trying to quash my stories. I was more than ready to rattle some cages and Cooper’s cage was at the top of my list.

The DPE offices were on the fifth floor. I merged with a couple of business types coming back from an early lunch, sauntered past the guards and stepped on the elevator. The suits got off on four. I rode the car up to six. Slipping down the fire stairs, I emerged at the end of a long, deserted hallway.

It took me a moment to find my bearings but my innate sense of direction kicked in and I remembered how to get to Cooper’s office. I made my way to the end of the hall and peered around the corner. The floor was empty. A stern-faced woman sitting at a round desk barred my way to Cooper’s inner sanctum. Taking a deep breath, I turned the corner and walked past her.

“Sir,” she said to my back. “Mr. Teller, you can’t go in there.”

She grabbed my arm and pulled me back. I slipped from her grasp and opened the door.

The room was as I remembered it from the last time I’d been here. Cooper was standing behind his desk, his back to a broad expanse of glass that looked out over the park. There was a man, a meter maid, sitting in one of the chairs, his head lowered, looking for all the world like a puppy being scolded for peeing on the carpet. When he looked up at my entrance, I recognized him immediately. The ticket guy from the other day.

But all that slipped by when movement across the room drew my attention. I stared at a figure disappearing through a door at the far end of the office. He was gone in an instant, the door clicking shut behind him, but the copper-colored hair, the receding hair line, and most of all, the gauze bandage that covered the side of his face, froze me in place. All the things I had planned to say, lost.

The receptionist or secretary or whatever she was, tugged at my shirt, trying to drag me from the room. I glared at Cooper. He smiled. I smiled back and made the same gun gesture my friend had made to me the day the Cushman cart almost ran me over. The smile on Cooper’s face faltered and fell away.

A grip considerably stronger than the secretary’s clamped itself on my upper arm, spun me around and dragged me out the room. I shook it off and stepped away.

“Sir …”

“I’m going,” I said. I turned and had to look down to see their faces. Two flat black hats, two adolescent attempts at a moustache, the pair reminded me of the old Bud Fisher cartoon. Mutt and Mutt, I thought, they send up Mutt and Mutt.

“Wrong room is all; no problem.”

On shaky legs, I walked down the hall, down the stairs, the two Mutts following close behind.

“What’d you guys do with Jeff?” I asked over my shoulder. They gave me a blank stare and I shook my head in dismay over the total lack of fundamental education of the youth of today.

I stepped out the front door, a satisfied smile on my face. It was all beginning to come together. I just had to make sure I wasn’t blown apart before I could see the final picture.

THE MANGLER REVEALED – MAYBE

Back outside again, the beautiful spring morning had turned ugly with thunder clouds moving in from the north. The crowd was dispersing faster than it had gathered, people packing up their lunches, folding their signs and hurrying off to whatever shelter they could find. Two teenagers were scurrying about, plastic garbage bags in tow, picking up trash.

As I made my way back to the newspaper office, I pulled out my cell phone and hit the speed-dial. It rang several times and then kicked over to voicemail. Felice wasn’t in which meant HL was gone as well. I folded up the phone, dropped it in my pocket and headed for the garage and my car.

Distant thunder greeted me as I pulled into my driveway. Jaz was midway down the walk way, pushing her bike, the wind whipping the tails of the long trench coat she wore.

“Heading back to work?” I said, stepping from the car.

“Heading to work, period,” she said. “I didn’t bother going in this morning. Wasn’t going to go in at all but what you said about the website and the viewing room bothered me so I thought I would check it out.”

“You’ll get wet,” I said, looking up at the threatening clouds.

“It’s a short ride. The rain won’t be here for another hour. If it gets bad enough, I can always take a cab home.”

“Well, be careful.”

“I always am, Teller.”

She mounted the bike, pulling up the hood of the coat as she pedaled away. All at once, Skeeter’s voice was whispering in my head: ‘After that is when the vampire came, like something out of one of those Wes Craven movies, all misty and formless, shimmering in the dark, a vampire on a bicycle.’

Dementors, vampires in general, Count Dracula in particular, what did they all have in common? Capes. As I watched Jaz disappear around a corner, I considered how much a trench coat with the hood pulled up could look like someone wearing a cape, especially in the dark, tweaked out on meth or riding the Night Train.

Could my suspicions about Jaz be right after all? Was she indeed the Mangler? It made a twisted kind of sense, considering the way the DPE was treating her, and it fit with some of the odd pieces of information I’d gathered so far; the print shop owner thought that his mysterious customer could have been a woman, the guard at the courthouse garage describing the pizza deliverer as being tall and willowy. Jaz fit the bill on all counts.

And what about the other things? The scent in Philo’s back room, the empty spot in his display case next to the voice synthesizer. Had that spot once been occupied by a similar gadget? Were Jaz and Philo in cahoots?

But the most damning piece of evidence was the fact that she had known it was Harrison’s body in the parking lot. I pulled out my cell phone, oblivious to the rising wind, the rain that splattered all around me.  I needed to be sure.

“This is Teller,” I said, when the line on the other end was answered. “With the Call-Register. I need to talk to Marion Chambers right away. It’s urgent.”

A moment later, he answered.

“This better be good, Teller.”

“I just need to check something,” I said without preamble.  “You said the morning Harrison’s body was found, his identity didn’t go out over the radio.  Are you sure of that?  No leaks, no curbside whispers amongst the troops?”

“Not a chance,” he replied. “My men don’t do curbside whispers. I told you before, you and Felice were the only ones outside the department who knew. Why?”

“No reason. Just checking”

“Teller!”

I broke the connection before he had a chance to grill me further.

That clinched it. She had lied to me. The only way she could have known the identity of the body in the parking lot would be if she had been the one to stumble across it. Either she’d been out for a midnight stroll or Jaz was the Meter Mangler.

Nearly soaked now, I hurried into the house, certain of what my activities would be over the next few evenings. Though I was certain now, the journalist in me wanted to confirm it with my own eyes. The courthouse meters would go into operation soon, by Monday at the latest. If Jaz was the Mangler and if she was going take them out yet again, she would have to do it soon. I planned to be there when it happened.

As it turned out, I never got the chance.

AN EMPTY NEWSROOM IS A SAD PLACE

I spent the rest of the afternoon going through the copies of my notes I keep at the house and the information Lynn had obtained for me. A dozen phone calls to the research department had my fax machine rattling like an out of tune Tin Lizzie. Pulling a calendar from the wall, I plotted out all the days the Mangler had struck, trying to remember if I had seen Jaz during any of those times.

By the time I made it back to the newspaper, the mad rush to deadline was over and the worker bees had long ago left the building. The newsroom was deserted as I made my way to my office. Movement at the far end of the room made me halt. Someone was standing by the window. It took me a moment to recognize who it was.

“Sir,” I said. “Is everything all right?”

Startled, HL turned from the window.

“Teller. Yes, yes, everything is fine, I suppose. As fine as it can be.”

He began walking in my direction, looking about the room as if seeing it for the first time.

“An empty newsroom is a sad place,” he said.

“I’ve thought the same thing myself, sir,” I said.

He stopped beside a battered desk, ran his hand over the top of a monitor.

“Back when my father ran this business, this room was never quiet. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The two editions we put out, when folded for delivery, were as fat as a Yule log, even on Monday. Now …”

He swept his hand out as if sweeping away the past.

“How is the investigation going, my boy?” he asked.

“I’m making some progress,” I said, trying to decide what I should tell him and what I should hold back. “Nothing definite yet, just a lot of loose ends which need gathering and tying.”

“Always the way with a story like this. You’ll tie them in the end. I have confidence in you. I always have.”

As he began walking across the newsroom, I fell in step beside him.

“About those tickets, sir” I said. “I’ve been thinking that maybe we should turn them over to the cops and run with the story. It’s getting dicey out there, what with what’s happening with the courthouse meters.”

“All the more reason not to run the story now, my boy. It’s a powder keg out there. That story could be the match, though I do agree we may need to bring the police in on it, soon. Anything further on your mysterious friend?”

“Not much,” I said, trying to decide what to tell him about what I’d seen in Cooper’s office. “The cops found the car he was driving the last time I saw him. Which may not have been the last time I saw him.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I think I may have seen him in Jefferson Cooper’s office,” I said.

“Cooper’s office? You made your impromptu visit then?”

“I did.”

“And you saw this man in his office?”

“Slipping out the office, actually; which is why I’m not a hundred percent certain it was him. When I barged in on Cooper, another man was stepping out another door across the room. It was only a brief glance but I’m fairly sure it was him. Whoever it was had a bandage over the side of his face, which would be consistent with what the cats did to my assailant.”

We walked in silence for a moment; HL mulling over the information; me wondering why I hadn’t yet told Marion about my encounter.

“Can you describe this man?” he said, stopping near the end of the newsroom.

“Six three, two forty, maybe fifty, but not fat, a body builder’s body or someone used to physical labor, broad shoulders, muscular. I’d say he was in his forties, late forties. A thin moustache and thinning, dull copper-colored hair.”

“I’ll ask around, see if any of my contacts in the administration know of such a man.”

“About those tickets, sir.”

“You’re worried about them being in my possession.”

“After what happened the other night, that would be a yeah.”

“Have no fear, my boy, they are well protected.”

A sudden movement off to our left made both of us jump. Rafe stepped timorously, shaking, from the shadows.

“Rafe, what are you doing here so late?”

“I … I … s-sorry s-sir, I …” He turned then and ran off toward the stairs.

“That was odd,” HL said.

“He’s an odd kid,” I said.

“But a good one and a good worker … if a little strange at times. I promised his father before he died that I would ensure his son a job. Well, I must be getting back to work, as I’m sure you must as well.”

“Yes, sir. I do have some things I need to sort out.”

“Very well, then. Perhaps we should meet tomorrow, go over what you have; decide what the next steps should be.”

“I agree. I’ll type up my notes tonight, check in with you tomorrow morning.”

“Fine, I’ll see you then.”

I watched him walk away into the gloom of the foyer, heard the ding of the elevator. A shiver ran up my back, reminding me of what my father always used to say: A goose walked over your grave.

The thought unsettled me for reasons I couldn’t explain.

NO MORE THE ALWAYS HAPPY RAFE

Once settled in my office, I toyed with my pencil, spinning it on the desk, doodling on the corners of the sheet of paper where I was trying to collect my thoughts. It wasn’t working. They fluttered about like fireflies at mating time with no coherent pattern to their flight.

I was about ready to give it up, resigning myself to the idea of getting up extra early and going at them again in the morning when the phone on my desk rang. It startled me. No one ever called me on that phone. I picked it up midway through the second ring.

“Hel …”

“Teller!” It was a gasp and then the clatter of a handset being dropped to the floor. I bolted from the chair and ran from my office, knocking over a trash can and colliding with a desk as I ran across the newsroom toward the elevators. It was Felice’s terrified voice on the phone.

I skidded halfway across the foyer and fell on my ass. From my supine position, I glanced at the floor indicator over the elevator doors. It was moving downward, nearly to the basement garage. It would take forever for it to get back up here to the third floor. I clambered up and ran for the stairs.

The building was old and the lighting in the stairwell was dim. As I rounded the landing between the fourth and fifth floor, I came to a halt.  There, on the floor was Rafe’s body, his head twisted at an angle that suggested he wouldn’t be moving anytime soon. Not under his own power, anyway.

I stepped over him and flew up the last set of stairs. Bursting through the stairwell door, I slid on the marble floor, using the far wall as a bouncing-off point to steady myself and turn toward HL’s office. Chaos greeted me there. Office supplies were scattered everywhere. Felice was on the floor, leaning against the credenza, her hair in disarray, her face bloodied. I knelt down beside her.

“The police are on their way,” she whispered. “I called them.”

“Albert?”

“No need. He knows.”

I didn’t bother to ask how.

“What happened here?” I said, even though I had a sick feeling that I already knew the answer.

“Check on HL,” she said. “Go, now. I’ll be all right.”

I left her side and stepped into HL’s office. It looked like a tornado had swept through it.

“HL,” I called out, dispensing with protocol. I heard a groan and hurried to the other side of the desk. He was wedged up inside the foot well. His clothes were torn, his face and hair red with blood. I reached in and eased him out, on his back, resting his head in my lap.

A moment later, I heard loud voices in the other room and a moment after that I was surrounded by paramedics. They took over and once I was out from under HL, I moved back into Felice’s office.

Cops began swarming all over, trailing in and out like ants at a picnic. Albert had arrived and was helping Felice to her feet and lowering her into a chair. A paramedic began ministering to her wounds. I started to move over to them when two paramedics, the same two who had been at my house the other night, came out HL’s office, pushing a chrome gurney. HL lay on it, covered in a white sheet toe to neck. An oxygen mask covered his face.

It all began to click into place then. Rafe, dead, sprawled out on the landing. I had no doubt the tickets were gone. Rafe had been the mole. I was sure of it now. They must have had something on him; probably that damn car of his. He overheard us earlier; heard me describe my friend; heard HL say he would check around.

Heard me talk about the tickets.

He must have run out, and called whoever it was, and this was the result. Then, once he’d served their purpose – and because he could identify them – they disposed of him like yesterday’s garbage. Poor Rafe. I should have seen it that day in my office, the way he stared at the envelope in my hand, he must have suspected what it contained, that weird quip about his car being towed.  He was scared, jumpy, the always-happy Rafe. He’d as much as told me then if I’d just listened, understood what he was saying. But I didn’t. And I had all but given him a map to where I was taking those tickets.

I stepped back as the gurney passed, looked over to where Felice and Albert sat. An EMS tech brought a wheelchair over and he and Albert helped Felice into it. I could tell she was protesting, but it was a feeble gesture. As they wheeled her out, following the gurney, the sounds in the room began to fade as though they too were moving away from me, leaving the room as those few I cared for in this world were leaving it. I turned and wandered back into HL’s office. The crime scene techs were doing their thing. I hadn’t even seen them arrive.

Both chairs in front of the desk were overturned. Two of his priceless Queen Anne bookcases were toppled to the floor, glass doors smashed, books scattered. The desk itself, that mammoth hunk of near solid oak, was turned part way around. The old man must have put up a hell of a fight.

I walked over to the windows, turned and watched them work, trying hard to ride the wave of guilt I felt. I should never have given the old man those tickets. Better I was the one on the gurney, not him.

Deep in my thoughts, I didn’t notice when the CSI crew left.

I’M NOT YOUR FUCKING MESSENGER BOY

The room was dark, the moonlight through the windows and the light from Felice’s office casting eerie shadows across the floor. I tried to remember who had turned the lights off, or if they had been off when I first arrived. Surely the CSI guys would have turned them on.

Pushing myself from my solitary position against the wall, I began to wander about the room, picking up books. HL’s tastes crossed all ages and all genre boundaries. The classics like Kurt Vonnegut, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Shakespeare mingled amidst the shards of glass, with the modern works of authors like Jon Clinch, A. S. King, Sara Gruen and Cat Connor. I picked them up, one by one, dusted them off, and began stacking them up in neat piles along the wall.

I must have grown tired, or bored, or maybe I had just run out of books to stack, for I found myself seated on the floor, thumbing through a copy of Melanie Benjamin’s Alice I Have Been, when I heard a noise in Felice’s office. Turning to investigate, I saw a figure back-lit in the doorway.

The book fell from my hands. My first panicked thought was that my friend had returned, but I quickly dismissed it. What would be the point? He had what he wanted. Why come back and risk capture?

“This is what you get when you hold things back, Teller.”

Marion. I rose to my feet, my heart thumping in my chest, guilt and anger-fueled adrenalin flowing into my system with every beat.

“You think I wanted this?” I said, louder than I’d intended but not loud enough to appease my anger. “You think I’m not beating myself up sufficiently, so you have to come in here with your self-righteous bullshit words of wisdom?”

He stepped into the room. I moved two steps closer to him. We stood, facing each other, fists balled. Once brothers-in-arms, we’d morphed into bitter antagonists, finding ourselves united in an uneasy détente over the death of a mutual friend. And now, here we were, staring each other down, ready to tear each other apart.

I blinked first.

“Fuck this,” I said, letting go of the anger in the uncurling of my hands. I turned my back on him and walked to the windows.

“You know about the tickets,” I said, staring down at the deserted street below.

“I know about them,” he said.  “Now.”

“Felice.”

He nodded; a constrained nod that looked more like a spasmodic jerk than an affirmation.

“I had no idea what they meant,” I said. “Leastwise not until my friend tried to hand me a coin for a boat ride across the river Styx.”

“You should have turned them over to me as soon as you found them.”

“Believe it or not, I considered that. HL was opposed to the idea, and you know what, after listening to his reasons, I agreed with him.”

I turned to face him. “Tell me, Marion, what would you have done if I had told you? You would have gone out and busted the meter maid and all you would have accomplished was to pin one cockroach to the kitchen counter, while the rest of the cockroaches scattered before you could bring up the lights, which was exactly the reason why HL wanted to sit on the story.”

“What about the guy you saw in Cooper’s office?”

“How did you know about that?  Never mind.  I know. I’m not even sure who I saw in Cooper’s office and, not that it matters now, but both HL and I were in agreement that you should be brought in on that. He just never had a chance … a chance to make it happen.”

He stared at me for a long time, his jaw tight, fighting between restraint and violence. He turned and began to walk from the room.

Anger leapt again, bringing me down. I pushed away from the window and ran after him.

“The least you can do, you prick, is tell me how HL and Felice are doing.”

“I’m not your fucking messenger boy, Teller.”

“Right,” I said, biting off the word. “How foolish of me to think you give a fuck.”

He whirled on me so fast I skidded on the slippery wooden floor, ducking as I did so; sure he was going to hit me.

“You listen to me, Teller,” he said, towering over me, his jaw clenched tight. “I care every bit as much for that old man as you do, you arrogant asshole. Who do you think guided my way through foster care after my old man hanged himself? After they hauled my mother away in a long-armed jacket? Who do you think paid my college tuition and supplemented my veteran’s benefits so I could eat a decent meal and not have to wear Goodwill hand-me-downs? And who do you think recommended me for this position, then threw the entire force of his paper behind my appointment?”

I took a step back and actually mumbled an apology, hardly believing the words had passed my lips. He glared at me then walked away. I stood there, listening to his footfalls as they echoed down the hall.

Arrogant?

Arrogant!

“Arrogant?” I yelled out to him when I heard the ding of the elevator. “You’re the one who walked away from our friendship. Arrogant? Hell! You never even thanked me for saving your miserable life.”

I heard the elevator doors slide shut, the buzz of the car’s pneumatic descent mixing with the buzz of anger and despair in my head. I stared back into HL’s office, no longer able to deal with the chaos it had become, the battle ground I had helped create.

Backing out Felice’s office, I made one last stop and left the building.

LIKE A FROG IN HEAT

As I pulled out the parking garage, I called the hospital for Felice’s room number. Though they wouldn’t give me information on her or HL’s condition, they did let it slip that he was in the intensive care unit. They connected me to Felice’s room but all I got was a busy signal. I flipped the phone closed.  One way or another, I had to see her.

Visiting hours were over for the day but when had rules like that ever stopped me? Crossing the lobby, I ducked into the fire stairs and ran up the four flights to Felice’s floor. The floor was nearly deserted, one weary looking nurse behind a counter, hunched over a file or maybe a book to pass the time. She didn’t look up as I passed. Maybe she didn’t hear me. Maybe she didn’t care. I found Felice’s room and stepped inside.

She was sitting on the bed, staring out the window, her back to me. She was fully dressed in street clothes. A bandage was wrapped about her head. I had been expecting worse, so seeing her sitting there, so obviously ready to leave the hospital, caused such an immense wave of relief to wash over me I felt momentarily dizzy.

Leaning against the door jam, I tried to remember how long I’d known her and Albert. Thirty years? Forty? I’d met them while still a teenager, the year I worked as a summer intern for HL.

“Albert’s gone to get a wheelchair, Teller.”

Startled, I jumped. It took me a second to remember where I was.

“I told them I didn’t want one,” Felice said, still staring out the window. “But they insist. Silly rule.”

“How do you always know it’s me?”

“Your boots squeak,” she said.

“Squeak?”

“Like a frog in heat.”

I looked down, rocked my foot back and forth.  I couldn’t hear a thing.

“I don’t think frogs do the heat thing,” I said. “That’s mammals.”

She turned, giving me a look that questioned what I might, or might not, know about frogs.

I felt a flash of anger followed immediately by guilt. Jack and Jill emotions tumbling over each other down an endless hill.

“You knew, didn’t you Felice?” I said. “Long before I walked in your office with those tickets. You knew something was going to happen.”

“Does it matter, Teller?” she said. “What I knew? What I guessed? What I saw? Does it matter at all now?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It does matter, Felice. It matters to me. I took those tickets to him. I’m responsible for him being here. For you being here. If I’d kept those tickets, that guy would have come after me, not you and HL.”

“You’re not responsible, Teller,” she said. “You knew those tickets were important. And you knew that HL should know about them. You did what you did because it was what you knew you should do.”

“But you knew, Felice. You knew if I took them to HL, they would go after them there. You should have told me.”

“And if I had, what would you have done? Kept them to yourself? Possibly been killed?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“No maybe. Had I told you what I saw, what I felt, you would have second-guessed yourself, held on to the tickets.”

“Okay, you’re probably right. But it would have been safer for you and HL that way.”

“But life is risk, don’t you see that? If we thought we knew the likely outcome of every move we made, we would second-guess ourselves into immobility. No psychic, no matter how good, knows with complete certainty the outcome of any given move. To move through life you have to be the turtle, to thrust your head from the safety of your shell and move forward, regardless of how dangerous that might be. Without risk, there is no life. Knowing what the future holds, even if the knowing is not one hundred percent certain, reduces risk, yes, but it also reduces life to its barest essence.”

She swiveled around on the bed, facing me, her hands folded in her lap.

“I sense things, Teller, sense the nuance of patterns unfolding around me. Sometimes that sense is very clear, sometimes not. It is never certain. Long ago, I tried to intervene when patterns of disaster began to unfold. But it’s been my experience that when I do interfere, change something, the outcome is almost always worse than what I originally saw. I’ve learned to keep my visions to myself.”

“So what you’re saying is … life is cut in stone and that you can see the scratches on the surface.”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all. Life is fluid, fate and freewill combined in an ever-changing mix. We are all fated to die. And maybe the road from birth to death is proscribed to one degree or another. But that road is also fraught with many forks and branches and our decisions, at the moment of coming upon those forks and branches, determines which road we take. As humans, we want to avoid pain, unhappiness, bad outcomes, even death. If we knew that a certain branch of the road would lead to disaster, we would avoid it. Yet much good can come from disaster and choosing that road may lead to a better outcome than if we’d known in advance and avoided it. There is just no way of knowing. And believe me, it’s better not to. You can’t imagine how difficult it is to keep such knowing to yourself. Especially when it concerns a loved one.”

“Speaking of which,” Albert said, as he entered the room, seated in Felice’s wheelchair.

I stepped aside as he wheeled himself to the center of the room and did a sharp donut.

“I’ve got to get me one of these things,” he said. He looked over at Felice and then at me. His smile faded. “Oops,” he said. “Serious conversation, huh? Should I leave? Tool about the halls for a bit? Irritate the nurses?”

Before he had a chance to answer, Marion stepped into the room. Spotting me, his countenance took on the expression of a bishop realizing he’d stepped into the midst of a Heidi Fleiss birthday bash.

“Sorry to bother you,” he said, nodding to everyone but me. “Recognize this man?” He handed Felice an eight by ten photograph.

She looked it over for a long moment.

“Yes,” she said. “I recognize him.”

“Is he the man who assaulted you and Mr. Essex?”

“That I can’t say. He was wearing a mask.”

“Nixon?” I said.

She turned to me. “Reagan.”

“What is it about sleazy dead Republicans that makes them want to return and haunt?” I said. “Can I see that?”

“I’m a Republican,” Marion said.

“Why does that not surprise me?” I said, taking the photograph from Felice. It was poor quality, grainy and soft focused but I recognized my friend despite the flaws.

“Where did you get this?” I said.

“Security camera in the garage,” Marion answered.

I looked at the photo again, resisting the urge to crumple it up and stomp it beneath the heel of my boot.

“This is the guy,” I said. “The one who tried to flatten me the other night. The one I think I saw in Cooper’s office. Who is he?”

“His name is Keller. He’s second in command at the Department of Public Works. Some say he actually runs the place. We’ve got an APB out on him. I tried to get a warrant to search his office, and the DPE offices, but Gallagher is stonewalling me.”

“Gallagher? I suspect he’s in their back pocket.”

“As do I, but without further evidence, I have no call to go over his head.”

“Would the tickets help?” I asked.

“The tickets are gone.”

“The originals, yes,” I said, pulling a manila envelope from beneath my jacket. “But not the copies I made of them.”

RIOT IN THE STREETS

Hospitals are designed for the sick and dying, not the weary.

After Marion left with the tickets and Albert wheeled a protesting Felice out the room, I wandered up to the ICU. They wouldn’t let me in so I leaned against the glass, staring in at the sheet-draped figure where he lay thirty feet away, watching the spark of life flutter across the tiny monitor above his bed.

I was exhausted, emotionally and physically. Gravity wanted me on the floor to keep it company. I stared at the hard, wooden bench along one wall and decided I could remain vertical long enough to make it home.

I couldn’t have been asleep more than an hour or two when the phone started ringing. My first thought was HL. When I realized it was the landline ringing, I relaxed a bit. Felice would call me on the cell if there was any news. The answering machine caught the call and the ringing stopped. I eased my head back onto the pillow and drifted off. A loud banging on the front door woke me up again.

I stumbled out of bed, aching in parts of my body I didn’t know I had. The banging at the door was more insistent. Sleep fogged, I couldn’t find my bathrobe so I ran naked to the front door and peeked through the window. It was Jaz. I opened the door a crack and she pushed her way in.

“Jaz!” I said, trying to tuck myself behind the door.

She looked me up and down, making me uncomfortable as hell.

“Sorry about that. But you’ve got to see this, Teller. Get your clothes on and hurry up.”

I made her go back on the porch and hurried back to my room, flipped on the light and threw on some clothes.

“You’ve got a nice butt for a guy your age.”

I spun around so fast I got tangled up in my pant legs and fell back on the bed.

“Jaz! Could you give me some space here?”

“Sure,” she said. “But hurry up.”

I finished pulling on my jeans as she turned away.

“You’re the Mangler, aren’t you?”

“Do you want space or explanations?” she said.

“Both would be nice.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Why?”

“That’ll have to wait. You need to see this, Teller. You really do.”

A moment later we were cutting across Market Street. The strong breeze was cool, smelling of a mixture of lilac and honeysuckle. And more rain to come. The birds were only now beginning to stir. Rustles in the overhead branches and cautious cheeps in the growing mist.

We turned on Gratiot, heading downtown. The pre-dawn sky was rolling with thick clouds. The street was deserted. I could hear a garbage truck somewhere off in the distance. We were almost running by the time she led me down Walnut Street. When she stopped abruptly, I had to dance a quick side-step to keep from ploughing into her.

“What do you see, Teller?”

I looked around. Parked cars, closed shops, a street light that was flickering, no people.

“An empty street?” I said.

“An empty street packed corner to corner with cars,” she said.

“Okay. I can see that. Why do I care at four in the morning?”

“Look at the damn sign, Teller.”

I looked up at the sign. “No parking, 5.00 a.m. through 9.00 a.m.” I read. “Tow-Away Zone.”

I looked back at Jaz.

“So? What else is new? This has always been a tow-away zone after …” My head snapped round so fast the bones in my neck popped. I couldn’t have been more surprised at what I was seeing if the whole sign had suddenly unfolded into one of those Transformer bots.

“… after 6.00 a.m.” I finished.

Standing on tip-toes, I peered closer at the sign.  I could just make out the white patch used to cover the 6 with a 5.

“Jesus,” I said.

“You got that right,” Jaz said. “Walnut Street is ten blocks long. Do you have any idea how many cars will be ticketed today? How many towed?”

Twenty to a side, Tom had said, so forty to a block times ten.

“Hundreds,” I said.

“And even more than that if the other commuter routes have had their time changed as well. And there’s no reason to think they haven’t.”

She hurried off and I followed.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“Over to Pine Street. I want to check.”

We cut down Arbor and onto Pine. The signs there had been changed as well.

“This must have been in the wind for a while, before it all hit the fan,” Jaz said. “It would take quite some coordination to pull this off in a single night. I bet they hit every commute route in town.”

“And with no notice,” I said. “Handy having half the city council in your back pocket. How did you find out about it?”

“I was out for a walk. I had a lot on my mind after … after all that’s happened in the last few days. I needed to think and walking helps me think.”

“I need to get to the paper,” I said. “Get something written up, warn people about this.”

“That will take too long. There’s less than an hour. How are we going to warn these people?”

I considered this. Lights were on in the apartment building across the street and in some of the houses I could see. People would be up, getting ready for work. Watching TV. Listening to the radio.

“I have a friend at the radio station. I’ll give him a call. Then we start knocking on doors.”

I flipped open my phone and got through to my DJ friend. I gave it to him straight out. He caught on fast, said he’d put it on the air right away. And pass it along to some other DJs he knew. As soon as he clicked off I called Felice at home.

“Teller. What’s up?”

I gave her the same story I’d given the DJ.

“I have contacts at the TV stations,” she said. “I’ll call them right away and get over to the paper. This is going to cause quite a stir.”

“Stir?” I said. “This could well cause a riot. People are pissed. This whole parking situation has become a leaking powder keg and these fools are playing with matches.”

“Then you’ll have to watch yourself out there.”

“I always do.”

“That could be debated, you know. But no time for that now.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Call me when you get to the office. If the town hasn’t blown sky high by then, we can talk about it.”

I clicked off. Jaz had been busy while I was on the phone. There were people on the street now in various stages of dress, some still in their nightwear. A few were getting in their cars and driving away, most were just milling about, their voices filling the air with a buzz like bees about to swarm. A large group came from a side road and started spreading out. Loud voices, some curious, most angry; you could feel the tension mounting in the air like volatile fumes waiting for a spark.

The spark came in the guise of a blue and white Cushman cart that came trundling up Walnut. When a second cart turned up the street, the fumes ignited.

Someone threw a bottle. A coffee cup was launched. The first hit the street several feet from one of the carts. The other crashed into the windshield. Before the driver could emerge from behind the wheel, a crowd was on the cart, rocking it from side to side until they tipped it over. The driver of the second cart tried to make a run for it. A woman, hair in rollers beneath a flowered shower cap, rammed his cart with her pickup.

Three more carts and a tow-truck appeared and were immediately set upon by the crowd. The tow-truck veered off, jumped the curb, flattened a tow-away sign and came to rest in the doorway of one of the shops. Several car alarms and the alarm in the shop went off at once, adding to the tension. By the time I looked back, the three carts were on their sides, the meter maids running down the street, an angry mob on their heels.

I looked for Jaz but couldn’t see her amongst the crowd. I was about to wade in and look for her, when there was a loud explosion. I headed for the sound, cut through a small park and came out on Gratiot, just down from the Coney Island place. A Cushman cart was burning fiercely in the middle of the street. A news truck squealed to a halt. People were gathering on the front steps of the admin building. I heard glass shatter. Angry shouts. I turned and headed back toward Walnut Street.

I heard sirens as I passed through the park. The cavalry was on its way. Though, from the size of the crowds and the amount of anger present, I had a feeling the cops would have their hands full subduing the uprising. I continued my search for Jaz but gave it up when my cell phone rang. Felice.

“Teller.”

“I’m at the office,” Felice said. “We’re running a special edition. I’ve got everyone out on the streets. Give me what you have.”

“You okay? How’s HL?”

“The story, Teller.”

There was an edge to her voice I didn’t like, but I knew calling her on it wouldn’t get me anywhere. I started walking through the riot, talking to people who would give me a minute and a thought. As Jaz had suspected, the time change hadn’t been limited to Walnut or Pine Street. It had been made on every commute street in town and there were disturbances on every one of those streets. I came across several burning carts and more than one abandoned tow-truck.

The humidity was high and the breeze strong. Dark smoke roiled knee high down the street, blowing up to the tops of the lampposts where a cross breeze blew it back down in an unending swirl of angry grey.

Ticket books had been snatched from the overturned carts, torn to shreds and scattered to the wind. It looked like the aftermath of some bizarre New Year’s Eve party. People were moving up and down the street, through the smoke, holding rags to their faces, looking like wraiths in a B-grade horror flick. I removed my shirt, slipped off my T-shirt and wrapped it around my face like a bandana and put my shirt back on.

As I moved about, filling in Felice with what I was seeing, she filled me in on what the other reporters were phoning in. Several tow-trucks had been overturned. One was burning. Talk about anger, I thought. Not an easy thing to turn over a tow-truck.

I could hear sirens and occasionally see a bluish glow pulsing through the smoke, either stationary or moving across my line of limited vision. As more cops hit the street, the number of people present seemed to diminish. When I made my way back to Gratiot Avenue, I discovered where all the people had gone.

The size of the crowd outside the admin building had more than quadrupled from what it had been the last time I’d been here, and people were streaming in from all directions, adding to its bulk. A line of cops in full riot gear barred the door. Another line blocked the entrance to the parking lot. There were at least a half dozen carts burning on Gratiot now. Only one that I could see had anyone trying to fight the blaze.

I walked and talked, giving it all to Felice until the sun was up and my cell phone started beeping, telling me the battery was giving up the ghost.

“Cell’s dying,” I said.

“I’ve got enough for now.”

“Good. I’m going to head home, shower and find some clean clothes.”

“Check in when you’re back on the street.”

“Will do.”

I folded up the phone and headed home. I smelled of smoke and sweat. Sleep was out of the question but a hot shower would be nice. I noticed several people putting posters on telephone poles. A couple of them waved as I passed. Someone pointed. Someone else called out my name, but I was too tired to stop and give them a look. I just wanted to go home, take that shower and get back on the street.

Find out what was going on at the admin building.

ANONYMITY NO MORE

By the time I made it back downtown, clean clothes, smelling fresh, the crowd had grown to enormous size. It spilled out across the lawn to either side of the admin entrance and across Gratiot Avenue, filling the street. The cops were trying to contain them as more people arrived alone and in small groups. I tried to do a size estimate, but that sort of thing has never been my strong suit so I gave it up. Half the town, maybe. Maybe more.

The cops looked nervous. The crowd looked angry. It was, at best, an uneasy standoff. Off in the distance I could see small curls of smoke. Sirens continued to scream, meaning some part of the earlier riot was continuing elsewhere.

The special edition of the paper had hit the stands with my article taking up the entire space above the fold, pictures and the observations of the other reporters filling out the page. The radio was still broadcasting the news. In a moment of magnanimous charity they had credited me and the Call-Register for breaking the story. People were coming up to me, shaking my hand, thanking me, patting me on the back. I had no idea what was going on or why so many people recognized me. Unlike a lot of columnists, I’ve never used a photograph alongside my columns. I prefer the aura of anonymity. When I stopped long enough to examine one of the posters plastered to nearly every flat surface, I understood why that anonymity had morphed into notoriety.

Somebody had been busy at the old Xerox machine. There was a black and white picture of me which had to have been taken earlier this morning, before I had wrapped my T-shirt around my face. My hair was disheveled, my face streaked with soot. I had the cell to my ear and there was a Cushman cart burning in the background. ‘Viva La Mangler! Viva Teller!’ was printed below the picture in vivid red lettering. Below that was a copy of the article I’d written for the special edition.

As I walked down Gratiot, many of the shopkeepers standing in their doorways, watching the action, waved at me. One came out and handed me a cup of coffee. I thanked him and turned and there stood a young woman with a bag full of fresh pastries.

“Here,” she said, handing me the bag. She smiled and ran off.

I stood there, watching her until she disappeared into the donut shop. The smell coming from the bag reminded me of how hungry I was.

I considered returning home, locking myself in my room. I wasn’t used to this kind of recognition and it was making me feel uneasy. It also reinforced my belief that the DPE hadn’t just been screwing the car owner. It was damaging small business as well.

I scanned the police presence but didn’t see anyone who looked important enough to try wading through the crowd to reach them. What big shots were left would be off somewhere planning strategy and it was the big shots I wanted to talk to. I could head over to the police department but I doubted anyone would be there. From the looks of things, every cop on the payroll was out on the streets. The best thing to do at this point was to go back to the paper, find out what I could from Felice.

Thoughts of HL colored my mood as I turned toward the newspaper office. I took a sip of the coffee. A little too much sugar but I could tolerate it. Though I knew I shouldn’t eat the donuts, risk the sugar rush they would bring, I dug into the bag anyway.

I managed to get through one of them by the time I passed through the front door of the paper. It was a cheese Danish, very sweet, and I could already feel the skin tightening around my eyes. I have such a weird reaction to sugar, especially pastry. Too many of these things and I’d be crawling around on the ceiling screaming.

I handed the bag to the first person I passed and headed for the stairs.

THE TWO FOOT DROP

“Feeling better?” Felice asked when I walked into her office.

“A little,” I said, still shaken by all the attention on the street. Her office had been straightened up, I noticed. I had no intention of checking out HL’s office. I didn’t think I could bear that at the moment. I pulled one of the chairs from along the wall and sat across from her at her desk.

“But I think my cover’s blown. Everyone down there seems to know me. They’re waving at me, saying hi, giving me stuff.”

She laughed.

“Teller, when are you going to learn?” she said. “You’ve never had a cover. You like to think you hide, walk the streets unnoticed, but the hair, the way you dress, the way you conduct yourself, you stand out like a neon sign.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Something else to add to my list of things to be paranoid about. Maybe I should cut the hair and buy a suit.”

“It wouldn’t help,” she said. “It isn’t about the length of your hair or what you wear. You could look and dress as everyone else and still you would stand out.”

“You think? The homeless are hidden. Few see them and they all but litter the streets. I always figured on the same reaction; seen yet unseen.”

“People don’t see the homeless because they are afraid. Afraid of them, afraid they may become them. The homeless are a harsh reminder of the tenuous hold we all have on stability. You, on the other hand, they see. Perhaps even envy to one degree or another.”

“Envy? Me? What do I have that’s worth being envious about?”

“A great deal, actually. All people have enemies, enemies they can’t fight and that can be very frustrating. Frightening. You fight those enemies for them: go over the walls of opposition they have no idea how to climb. You move outside their narrow, predefined worlds and often get results they could never hope to achieve. You fight the battles they cannot. People can’t help but notice you. It’s your fear of letting them close that keeps them away, not their inability to see you.”

“How’s HL?” I was feeling even more uncomfortable than I had out on the street. I needed to turn the topic of conversation away from me. Felice smiled, cocked her head. I could tell she wasn’t going to let it go that easy. Something was up.

“Are you aware the other reporters admire you? Respect you? All they’ve talked about of late is how well you manage things. The directions. The encouragement. Could someone hidden have done that? Do you remember talking to Wesley? He told me how much he wanted to be a reporter like you someday.”

“Felice!” I said, squirming in my seat. “This conversation is really making me uncomfortable, okay? Can we drop it? I should get back to what’s going on outside.”

“No,” she said, the smile gone now. “We can’t drop it. And what is going on outside is well in hand, well covered. This is more important at the moment.”

She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes.

“I had a teacher, many years ago now, who believed that knowledge of Self resided in two places; the head and the heart. That knowledge, though valuable, was diminished if it remained only in the head. It had to descend to the heart to truly gain strength.”

“The two-foot drop,” I said.

“You’ve heard of this?” She leaned forward.

“There was a counselor in that spin-dry I went to in Washington. He was always talking about the two-foot drop. You could know in your head that you were a drunk but until you knew it in your heart, you would remain a drunk.”

“A wise man. And the same is true of all self-knowledge. Knowing it up here,” she said, pointing to her head, “is not the same as knowing it here, in your heart, where the true knowledge of Self resides. This is something you must come to, this two-foot drop. And soon.”

Something clicked then. I wasn’t sure yet what it was, but it had something to do with HL.

“Yes,” she said, before I could ask the question. She held up her hand, holding off further inquiry.

“Do you remember our earlier conversation, when I asked you why you had returned?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you found your answer?”

I started to give her the same old refrain, that I didn’t know, but I wasn’t so sure now it was true. I turned my head and looked out the window, surprised to see it was raining.

“I got tired of being alone,” I said, my voice cracking more than I felt comfortable with. I could feel tears welling up behind my eyelids, threatening to breach the edge and roll down my cheeks like the rain that rolled down the window.

“And?”

“And tired of chasing ghosts.”

“Robyn’s ghost.”

“Chasing hers. Running from others. My parents. My past. And running from the few friends I have. You. Albert. HL. Even Marion, for Christ’s sake. All those things. But, yeah, tired of chasing Robyn’s ghost. I want it to end. I want to let her go but I don’t know how. When HL asked me back that last time, my first reaction was to say thanks, but no thanks. But I found myself saying yes and the more I thought about it, the more the idea … excited me. Woke up something inside. Something I hadn’t felt in a long time. As beautiful as Washington is, I never felt like I belonged there.”

“It’s been hard on you being back.”

I brushed the tears from my eyes and looked back at her. “Next to losing Robyn and quitting drinking, the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”

“There may be harder things yet to endure.”

I closed my eyes. “HL,” I whispered. “He’s not going to make it out of the ICU, is he?”

“No, Teller. I’m afraid he won’t. But there is more you need to know.”

I opened my eyes. She leaned forward, a deep sigh escaping her lips. Clasping her hands about her head, she began to massage her forehead with the tips of her fingers, wincing when she came too close to the spot where Keller had struck her.

“Are you okay, Felice?” I realized for the first time how tired she looked, the pain she must be in.

“As well as I can be,” she said. “There are moments when all I long for is silence, but the silence never comes.” She whispered this last and I wasn’t sure the words were meant for me.

She looked up. Her eyes were dark ringed, her eyelids moist.

“After Hector died, HL went into a long decline. Of course, I was the only one aware of it. He never let it show outside this office. He was a strong man, then as now, but I knew. Just as I knew that Lawrence was a disappointment to him. They had never been close and despite his efforts to draw Lawrence closer, the gap between them just grew wider. In the end, it was to you he turned.”

“Me?”

“Yes. He admired you, admired your skills as a reporter, your perseverance in uncovering the truth and the faith you had in believing that the truth would, in the end, mean something. His admiration, I believe – I know – turned to love.

“You became, not the son who died or the one who ran from him, but a third son, different from either of them but one he could be equally as proud of. Make no mistake, distance or no, he was proud of Lawrence even as he disagreed with Lawrence’s decisions but he didn’t feel toward Lawrence what he felt toward you. Did you know he had copies of everything you wrote sent to him?”

“No,” I said, surprised. “I had no idea.”

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly.

“Several years ago, before you agreed to return, HL changed his will. I know because I typed it up and witnessed its signing. Hector was dead. Lawrence had no interest in the paper other than what the sale of it would bring him. The paper was HL’s whole life and the idea of it falling into the hands of an uncaring, all-for-profit media conglomerate appalled him. He needed someone with the same feeling for it as his; the same love and respect. You, Teller. He needed you.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to tell me here, Felice?”

“HL owns the paper outright. The land, the building, the presses. Upon his death, it, and his private fortune, will all belong to you.”

NEW USES FOR A KEYBOARD

I don’t remember leaving Felice’s office. One minute I was sitting there, stunned at the news she’d delivered and the next I was standing on the front steps of the newspaper office trying to reconnect with time and space.

As the world began to refocus itself, I saw that the morning mist had become a drizzle. The cracking thunder was closer now, the turbulent clouds rolling in overhead. This drizzle would soon turn into a driving rain.

Chaos continued its reign over the streets. People running to and fro. A pall of dark smoke hung head high, the smell of burnt rubber and plastic thick enough to make my stomach turn. Three burly men were doing their best to yank a parking meter free of the sidewalk. Two cops passed them by without a glance, leading a meter maid in cuffs between them.

I scanned the moving crowd, searching for Jaz, figuring that bright blue hair of hers would stand out despite the limited visibility. Most of the crowd was still on the Admin steps, a good view of which I couldn’t get from where I stood. Cutting through the people in the street, I made my way to the weird clock tower and climbed it, nicking my hand twice on its sharp edges.

It took a moment but I spotted her. She was being accosted by a man in a hoody. When she managed to knock back the hood, I nearly impaled myself in an effort to get off the clock and over to her as quickly as I could. The man she was arguing with was Keller.

I struggled through the surging crowd, losing precious minutes. By the time I reached the admin steps, they were gone. I searched the crowd and caught a blur of blue as it disappeared around the corner of the building. Fighting my way back down the stairs, I chased after them.

Compared with the front lawn of the Admin building, the parking lot along the side was an island of gravel-coated calm. I ran along the side of the building, being as quiet as possible. As I turned the corner at the rear of the building, I found myself just in time to see the rear door shut with an ominous thunk.

I raced over to it, hoping against hope and having that hope dashed when I found the door locked. Searching my pockets, I retrieved my cell phone and flipped it open. It bleeped once and died. Damn battery. One of these days I really need to crawl into the twenty-first century with all this technological crap and learn to RTFM and plug in my cell phone.

I hurried back around to the front of the building, wended my way through the crowd and up the steps, ducking behind three cops who were trying to subdue an angry civilian.

Inside the Admin building, the lobby was empty, the lights dim. It appeared the riot outside had forced an evacuation. I was crossing the lobby when someone called out to me. I turned. It was one of the Mutts who had escorted me from the building the last time I was here.

“You can’t be here, sir,” he said, striding in my direction. “The Administration building is closed due to …” He looked off toward the front doors just as one of the cops, who’d been struggling with the civilian when I came in, was knocked back against the glass with a loud crack.

“… the, uh, disturbance,” he finished.

I considered telling him what was going on but from my last encounter with him, I knew he was a klutz and a noisy one at that; I needed stealth not an announcement I was coming.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t have time for this. I need to get upstairs right now.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t let you do that.”

“Okay, I’ll make you a deal,” I said, digging in my pocket. I pulled out two twenty-dollar bills and held them up in his face. “I’m either going to knock you on your ass or you can walk away forty bucks richer. Your choice.”

I let the bills fall to the floor and reached in my pocket for my notebook.

“And,” I said, “if you call this number and relay this message, there’ll be another forty in it for you.”

I hurriedly wrote Felice’s number down along with a quick plea for help.

It took Mutt all of an eye blink to make a decision. At what he was being paid, it didn’t surprise me. He stooped, picked up the money and grabbed the note from my hand.

“Found Keller. He has Jaz. Cooper’s office. Send help.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m glad you can read.”

I turned and ran toward the stairs. When I looked back, he was still standing there, examining the note.

“Now,” I screamed and the poor kid nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Yes sir, yes sir, right away,” and in an instant he was gone.

I was winded by the time I reached the fifth floor. My body wanted to adopt a prone position, take five, or even ten, but I refused to let it. Cautiously opening the door, I peered down the long hallway. The corridor was dark but I could see a light coming from Cooper’s office, illuminating the secretary’s desk.

I eased out into the hall and, hugging the wall, I made my way toward the light, hoping that Felice’s whole my-boots-squeak-frog-in-heat thing was just some weird metaphor.

As I drew nearer, I could hear them talking.

“… just do it, bitch.”

“It’s password protected,” she said.

“Try ‘god’. Cooper always was an egotistical little prick.”

I crossed the hall and slid up to the open door. Jaz was sitting in Cooper’s chair. I could just see her head above the monitor. Keller was at the side of the desk, gun in hand, facing in my direction. Any attempt to storm the office from this angle would make me dead. I had to find another way in and that’s when I remembered there was another door to Cooper’s office. I began to inch my way back down the hallway.

“Not working,” she said. “Access denied. I’ll bet it’s case sensitive. Do you know if it’s upper or lower or some combination?”

“I don’t even know what that case stuff is. Besides, what difference does it make? It’s three fucking letters. Try them all.”

“There may be a lockout on it,” Jaz replied. I could tell she was stalling, giving him shit, hoping help would come.

I slipped around the corner, tiptoed to the adjoining office and slipped inside. The room was bare. I looked around for a weapon of some kind but the only thing in the room was a dismantled desk top computer. I hurried over and picked up the only weapon-like thing I could find. It was one of those ergonomic keyboards, solid plastic in an adjustable metal frame. I hefted it. It had a nice, weighty feel to it. Not quite the baseball bat I wished it was, but it would have to do.

I snuck over to the door, put my hand on the knob, prayed it didn’t squeak any more than my boots, and twisted it with care. The door opened without a sound.

“Okay, I’m opening a file,” came Jaz’s voice. “I’ll try all the combinations on it until it opens. Then I’ll know what the password is.”

“Smart,” said Keller. “I like smart ladies. You and I could do some righteous business together.”

“Yeah. I’ll bet,” she said.

I stepped into the room. As I lifted the keyboard over my head, it must have brushed something because Keller turned, his gun arm swinging out ahead of his body. The gun went off at the same moment the keyboard connected with the side of his head, alphabet keys and wood splinters filling the air.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I screamed, racing across the room as Keller crumpled to the floor.

Jaz scrambled out from behind the desk, hesitated half a second, grabbed the briefcase and flew out the door right behind me, passing me in an instant. Oh the glory of youth.

GOTTA GO, GOTTA GO!

Out in the hall, she skidded to a halt and I nearly ploughed into her.

“Gotta go, gotta go,” I said.

“We need another way out,” she said, turning down a side corridor. “There’s a fire exit down here.”

“Right,” I said, chasing after her.

She hit the fire exit door at a dead run, slamming it back against the wall. A set of dusty, dimly-lit stairs greeted us. It didn’t look as if anyone had trodden these steps in years.

“No one uses these,” Jaz said as we scrambled downward. “It leads to the outside and the door is alarmed.”

We were rounding the third floor landing when the bellow of an angry beast began reverberating off the stairwell walls.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“Sounds … like you pissed him off … big-time,” Jaz said.

“You think?”

I stumbled at the bottom of the stairs and broke my fall by slamming into the exit door. It flew back, taking me with it as I clung to the push-bar, trying to regain my balance. An alarm began to clamor somewhere inside the building. Jaz grabbed my arm and pulled me into the parking lot. The rain was falling now, in torrents, and we were soaked before we made it to the gate.

“Where to?” I said.

“Into the park,” she said. “If we can get down to the trees …”

A shot rang out as we ran through the gate, ricocheting off a metal post inches from my head. Jaz went down the hill like a ski diva while I followed, the bumbling clown act to her graceful descent. As we crossed into the woods, two more shots rang out. At the same moment a tree exploded inches from my face. I stumbled and fell. Jaz turned to come back for me.

“Go,” I shouted. “I’m okay. Just get out of here. Get to the cops.”

She hesitated a moment. Another shot rang out. She turned and ran.

I scrambled to my feet, looking back over my shoulder. Keller was midway down the hill, slipping, sliding and cursing. I could hear sirens in the distance. I hoped Mutt had been greedy enough to want that other forty and that those sirens were coming for us.

Deciding that waiting around to see if my hopes were realized wasn’t going to be good for my health, I turned and slipped into the woods, in the opposite direction from the one Jaz had taken.

THE BITCH IS BACK

It was dark as hell in amongst the trees. I was soaked to the bone, cold, angry, and scared out of my mind.

There had been no more shooting. The sirens had stopped. Ditto the alarm. I could only guess what was happening up at the admin building. From time to time I heard noises in the woods somewhere behind me. I knew it had to be Keller. Raccoons don’t cuss as a rule.

I weaved my way in and around the trees, crouching low, trying to figure out what the hell direction I was moving in. I couldn’t make out the forest because the damn trees kept getting in the way.

When I finally stepped into a clearing, I realized at once I had been moving opposite to the direction I had intended. From where I stood, I could see the bike trail leading off, crossing the old service road and disappearing beyond it. That service road would lead me back downtown but I would have to cross the old wooden bridge first, which would put me right out in the open.

I looked back over my shoulder. I hadn’t heard anything from behind me in several long moments. Was Keller still back there, or had I lost him? Had he turned off, gone after Jaz instead? I had to get to the cops. Taking a deep breath, I sprinted across the clearing, crossed the bike trail and clambered up a small hill to the service road. In moments I was at the edge of the bridge.

What illumination there was on the bridge was dim and made even dimmer by the rain. Shadows from the trees wove worrisome patterns across the wooden planks. Between the sound of the rain and the rush of water below, I couldn’t hear a damn thing. Wishing like hell I was anywhere but here, I stepped out onto the bridge and started to make my way across.

The blow that caught me on the side of the head seemed to come from nowhere. I hit the planks hard, slid a few feet and rolled over. I could make out the dark shadow of Keller, standing a few feet away. He didn’t have the gun in his hand, which was about the only positive thing I could say at the moment.

“Where’s the bitch?” he said.

I was about to say something witty and sharp when Jaz said it for me.

“The bitch is right here, you Neanderthal throwback.”

He turned. I stared. Jaz was standing at the other end of the bridge, the briefcase still in her hand.

“This what you looking for, caveman?”

She walked toward us.

“Jaz—”

“Shut up, Teller,” she said. Her tone was harsh and as cold as midnight in the dead of winter.  It didn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy.

She stopped in the middle of the bridge.  Keller moved toward her, into the light. She held up her free hand, lifted the briefcase with her other and held it out over the rushing water. “No way, caveman,” she said. “You stay right where you are or this goes into the water.”

“You threatening me, little lady?” he said, the hint of a smile on his face.

“No threat,” she said. “Negotiation. There’s two mil in here. A hundred and thirty mil in the computer. I figure this two is worth that one-thirty. What do you think?”

Keller looked surprised. The smile broadened then leaked away.

“The cops are all over this by now,” he said.

“The cops are all over the building,” Jaz said. “But they don’t know jack about what’s going on. And knowing them and how they work, it’ll take ’em awhile to figure it out. In the meantime, we’re the only ones who know about this. There’s still time to make the transfer. I have the password. That, and your account number, is all I need.”

“Interesting point,” said Keller, the smile returning. “What about your boyfriend here? I doubt he’d go along with this.”

“First, he’s not my boyfriend,” she said. “Second, what’s one more dead body to you?”

At that, Keller’s smile returned. He looked at me and back at Jaz. “Sounds like a good deal to me,” he said.

I swallowed hard, what little thought of salvation I had left slipping away faster than my body heat.

Jaz lowered the briefcase and walked toward him. He was reaching beneath his jacket for his gun when Jaz swung the briefcase into the side of his head.

Salvation regained!

I leapt from the ground and rushed him, hoping to hit him while he was off balance. The blow wasn’t hard enough, though. He hit me with a roundhouse right so hard, I knew in that moment what Liston felt like when Ali knocked him to the mat.

I hit the planks and rolled, coming up on my knees. My brain felt as if a depth charge had gone off somewhere deep. I heard a scream, a scuffle. I tried to shake off the pain, shake off the darkness that was closing my eyes. I looked up, an effort that cause jagged currents to course down my spine. Maybe I screamed. I can’t be sure now.

My vision cleared. I spotted Keller, then Jaz, sprawled on the ground a short distance beyond him. She was crawling backward, her hands and the heels of her feet fighting desperately for purchase on the wooden planks of the bridge. Keller raised his arm. I saw the gun in his hand, trained on Jaz.

A fury rose within me, quenching the pain. It propelled me from the ground like a runner from the block. I closed the distance between us in four quick leaps and pounced on his back, my arm swinging beneath his, driving his arm upward. I heard the shot, heard the bullet zing off the iron railing of the old bridge.

My weight and momentum overbalanced him, drove him forward. I felt his body hit the low railing, heard it in the expulsion of his breath. We began to tip forward, over the rail. I tried to break free of him but our combined center of gravity was too great. I was going to follow him down to our deaths on the rocky slope below.

Without warning, there was a great wrenching at the collar of my coat. My head snapped back. I separated from Keller like a champagne cork exploding from the bottle. He toppled over and fell, screaming into the darkness. My butt hit the wooden planks with a bone-jarring crash and an instant later the back of my head hit it with an explosion of intense white light.

Jaz dropped to her knees at my side, her breathing ragged, her head hung low, a nasty gash dripping blood from her eyebrow. She looked at me, smiled. I took the smile with me into darkness.

WHEN PIGS FLY

I drifted in and out of something that wasn’t quite sleep and, from the distant pain I was feeling, wasn’t quite death either. From time to time there would be others in the room when I woke. Doctors, nurses, friends; some of the downtown shopkeepers, total strangers. Marion. He grilled me for over an hour while I contemplated the way his lips moved as he shouted. I had no idea what was in the bag that hung near the head of my bed, but the amusement I had from watching Marion’s face told me it wasn’t glucose alone.

The nurses eventually ejected him from the room. I could hear his protests as they led him down the hall to the elevator and knew I would have to deal with him and his questions at some point. But I had questions of my own, if I could stay awake long enough to ask them.

At one point I woke up and Felice was sitting next to the bed, reading. I looked over at the window. It was dark.

“How long?” I asked, my voice sounding harsh and pinched to my ears.

“Two days.”

“HL?”

She was silent for a moment and I knew he was gone.

“I’m sorry, Teller.”

I could feel the tears fill my eyes. I blinked them away.

“Jaz?” I said.

“Gone,” she said. “She got the police, brought them to you. In all the rush to get you off the bridge and to the hospital, she disappeared.”

I flashed on the bridge, Jaz bargaining with Keller only to get close enough to smack him with the briefcase. Gutsy. I smiled.

“They didn’t find it,” Felice said.

“Find what?” I said, though I knew she had plucked it from my mind.

“It,” Felice said. “Nor do they have any knowledge of it that I can tell.”

I didn’t have to ask who they were. Who knows, maybe all those blows to the head I’d taken were making me psychic?

Right. And the next thing you know, I’d be hitting the lotto on a regular basis.

“Any idea where she went?” I said.

“Maybe.” She reached into her purse. “But I think I’ll let you find that one out for yourself.”

She handed me an envelope. “Don’t let Marion see that,” she said.

“What about Keller?”

“Dead. He hit the rocks and fell into the water. His body washed up about two miles downriver.”

She closed her book, slipped it into her purse and stood up.

“It’s time I got going,” she said. “Someone has to run your paper while you convalesce.”

As she left the room, I considered what she’d said. My paper. I looked up at the IV bag. It was nearly full. At that moment, I was very glad it was.

With an effort, I tore open the envelope. There was a short note inside. I smiled as I read it, tucked it back in the envelope. No, this was definitely not something for Marion’s eyes. Tucking the envelope beneath my pillow, I closed my eyes and drifted off.

When I opened them again, the room was flooded with light. A faint susurration caught my attention and I lifted my head cautiously and turned in the direction of the sound.

I couldn’t have been more surprised to see Santa Claus sitting in the chair beside my bed. There was Marion, stretched out, legs crossed, hands clasped about his stomach, mouth slightly agape, sleeping.

Laying my head back down on the pillow, I stared up at the ceiling, counting the little squares, trying to come to grips with all that had happened.

“It’s about time you woke up,” Marion said.

“If you’re here to bitch and moan and pull out my fingernails with a pair of pliers to get more information, you can forget it.”

I looked over at him, holding up the call button. “That nurse who tossed you out the last time is on duty,” I said.

His expression changed and for a moment I thought he was having a gas attack or, worse yet, a heart attack. It took several seconds for me to realize he was smiling, really smiling.

“You can put down the weapon,” he said. “I’m not here to badger or cajole.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Well, since you’ve been scooped by every news hack for a thousand miles, I thought I would fill you in before you heard it from your competition. Most of them got it wrong anyway, though the BBC ran a pretty accurate account.”

“The BBC? You’re kidding me?”

“Nope. Sent over a whole crew … TV, radio, the whole bit.”

“Damn,” I said. “And I slept through it.”

There was a long silence. I think he was waiting for me to ask. I struggled with that, but in the end, my curiosity got the better of me.

“Okay,” I said. “Lay it on me.”

It was a long con, he explained, conceived by Keller several years before. He was the one who killed Forrester and then brought in Cooper to replace him.

“Between the two of them, they bought off half the council, the Mayor and the judge and, when Jim Gjerda stood in opposition to the change in the accounting procedure, a key element in his plan, Keller killed him and Cooper convinced the Mayor to appoint someone who would favor the change.”

“Did the council, the Mayor, know the actual plan? About the hundred and thirty million Keller was trying to make Jaz transfer.”

“They claim not. I have my doubts but they could be telling the truth. They may have just been happy with the extra income.”

“Why did he snatch Jaz? That move seemed pretty risky.”

“The plan had been to ride it out, transfer the money just before the end of the fiscal year. When the riot broke out, Cooper panicked. He skipped town, taking all the information needed for the transfer with him. Keller was desperate, figuring when Cooper landed, he’d make the transfer, leaving Keller holding the bag. He knew nothing about computers so he snatched Jaz in hopes of making her do it.”

“So Cooper is on the lam.”

“Not anymore. State police picked him up yesterday morning. Seems he felt part of his severance package should include a city-owned vehicle. What he didn’t know is all city vehicles are LoJacked. Once we determined he’d stolen the car, we tracked him on the GPS and fed the info to the state cops. They had him an hour later. He’s sitting in my jail cell, singing like a bird.”

I winced at the cliché but thought it better to let it slide.

“What about Harrison?” I said. “Where did he fit into all this?”

Marion looked away, emotion clouding his face. Taking a deep breath, he continued.

“You and Mr. Essex were both right. Harrison had latched on to something, something important. Not the plan itself but, with all the light the newspaper was shedding on council activities, not to mention the Meter Mangler’s constant irritation, his evidence would have brought greater scrutiny to bear, something they couldn’t tolerate at that point.”

“The tickets,” I said.

“Bingo. Most of the meter maids were just working stiffs, under a lot of pressure to keep the tickets rolling. It’s a tough economy, jobs are scarce; they did what they were ordered to do.”

“Just like the Nazis,” I said.

“I suppose you could see it that way. However, there were upwards of ten meter maids whose job it was to pad the coffers in any way possible. That included writing false tickets which never appeared on anyone’s vehicle.”

“And only showed up later,” I said, “in the mail … with an extra fee tacked on.”

“You’ve got it. Harrison got wind of that and died for the knowledge.”

“Which explains why Keller came after me when he found out I had the tickets. And HL later. Have you arrested them? And what about Rafe?”

“We nabbed three. The rest have scattered to the wind. We’ll get them eventually. As for Rafe, Keller had him by the short hairs, used him and then disposed of him when his usefulness stopped.”

“It was his car, wasn’t it?”

“It appears that way. The records show it had been booted and towed. We found the keys in his pocket, the car in the garage. What we didn’t find was any record of him ever paying a fine to get it back.”

“So what happens now?”

“It’s already happening,” he said. “Tom Philo’s in temporary charge of the DPE.”

“Philo?”

“All things considered, he seemed the logical choice.”

I laughed. “I bet he’s enjoying the hell out of that.”

“I can’t say how much enjoyment he’s getting out of it but the citizens are certainly happy. He’s had all the parking lots reopened and they’ve begun dismantling the meters Cooper and Keller had installed. Downtown buildings that have been vacant for years are being flooded with lease offers. And all because of you … and the Mangler, of course. There’s even been a suggestion made that Walnut Street be renamed in your honor. A suggestion, I might add, being seriously considered by the new council.”

“No, no way. I couldn’t show my face in this town if I had to walk down Teller Boulevard.”

“Avenue, actually, and you may well have to get used to it as there is no real opposition to the idea.”

“Great. Just what I need. What about the, uh, the Mangler? Anyone figure out who that was?”

That old ‘you’re so full of bullshit’ look crossed Marion’s face and disappeared just as quickly.

“Nope. That’s the one mystery remaining.”

“Pity,” I said. “If they know who … who he was, maybe they could name the damn street in his honor.”

“I think arresting him would be the more appropriate move.”

We sat in silence for a moment, contemplating this.

“Well, Teller, it’s been nice chatting with you but I have work to do.”

He stood up and made to leave.

“Oh” he said, stopping midway to the door. “I don’t suppose you know the whereabouts of one Jasmine Hoyle?”

“I thought you weren’t here to badger or cajole?”

“I’m not. Just curious, is all. She would have been the logical one to head the DPE.”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Right. So you are aware she’s disappeared.”

“I … well, that is, I may have heard something along that line, yeah. Maybe Felice mentioned it.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s it. If you do … come across … any information regarding her, I’m sure you’ll let me know right away. We have a few … questions for her.”

“Right, Chief. I’ll certainly do that.”

He turned away and resumed walking toward the door. I swear I heard him mutter ‘When pigs fly’ but I could have been mistaken.

At the door, he hesitated again, though he didn’t turn to face me.

“Uh, one last thing, Teller.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh, thanks, you know, for … that day.”

He disappeared into the hallway and I lay my head back down on the pillow, stunned and exhausted. Had he just, finally, after all these years, thanked me for saving his life?

What the hell was the world coming to?

ONWARD INTO THE FOG

Back when I was in grade school, there were these Nuclear Preparedness drills we were made to wade through. Like fire drills except instead of going outside, you ducked under your desk and tucked your head between your knees. The point of these drills was to protect yourself from imminent nuclear destruction.

Right.

I had seen the nuclear testing newsreel footage and knew in my young heart that this was about as useful as holding out your hand to stop a bullet. I came to think of these duck-and-cover moves as bend-over-and-kiss-your-ass-good-bye drills.

My mother left when I was very young. I have but the vaguest of memories of her: thick, wavy, auburn hair, the smell of cigarette smoke and coffee. My father was an honorable man but a frightened one, barely able to deal with his own troubled feelings much less those of a motherless child. I grew up in a gray world without the physical trappings of love; surviving by my own wit, building crude defenses from the materials available to a pre-teen boy, creating an emotional Frankenstein monster. A monster which lived on long past the time all other such monsters were laid to rest.

I didn’t do that bad a job at surviving the kidhood game. At least I didn’t turn into a delusional psychopath with a direct line to some ghastly deity telling me to blow up this or kill that. But I wasn’t altogether healthy either, especially when it came to relationships and especially relationships with women.

Freud would say I was searching for my mother, but what the hell did he know? I think I was looking for that form of unconditional love a mother gives a child. Is it rational to believe that kind of love exists outside the mother-child bond? Before I met Robyn, I would have told you no.

Up until my path crossed hers, I had never let anyone past my carefully constructed defenses. I’d greet them at the door, let some into the foyer and a very select few into the parlor. But that was as far they got. No one wandered the rooms my frightened self occupied. It wasn’t that I was afraid to commit to someone. It was losing them I feared.

Classic Psych 101. The double bind. Approach/avoidance. Fear of loss. Fear of rejection. Fear. My Frankensteinesque defenses kept me on a bee-to-flower path of lonely promiscuity and emptiness, ever seeking something I would always keep myself from finding.

Robyn got past those defenses.

Loved me unconditionally.

For myself.

For a while.

It would be dishonest to say that the five years we spent together were all glorious. That it was a roller-coaster ride is certain, but even the finest roller-coaster has its slow points, its not-so-exciting twists and turns. Indeed, the last three years found us as much apart as together, our together more rocky than romantic. But those first two with her, they set the hook deep.

When she left, it was like my own private Bimini. The pain of loss exceeding the joy of love. I went deeper into duck-and-cover mode than I had ever been.

And stayed there much too long.

Standing on the corner, looking across at the Lincoln Hotel, a weariness came over me, my muscles and bones tired from their long, stationary position. I had loved Robyn with all my heart, but the Robyn that waited in the Lincoln was not the Robyn Cat had loved.

Maybe the two of them are back there somewhere, arguing, loving, locked in a push-pull dance of uncertainty, but I couldn’t step back in time, return to those days as I had longed to do.

And, for the first time, I realized, I didn’t want to.

As I turned away, I felt as if I were unfolding, stretching, reaching. I caught my reflection in a store window and was surprised to see a smile on my face. I hurried home, knowing what I was going to do when I got there.

Lynn was sitting on the porch when I arrived. She shot from the chair as if launched from a cannon, meeting me at the door.  There was a worried look on her face.

“Lynn,” I said as I stepped past her and onto the porch.

“Cat, hey,” she said. “You, ah, been to the hotel yet?”

“No,” I said. I didn’t feel the need to tell her of my decision not to go.

“Good,” she said. “That’s, uh, good.”

“What’s wrong, Lynn?” I asked.

“Um, oh shit, Cat. I’m sorry.”

The next bit came all out in a rush of words.

“I know how you feel about Robyn and she can be so weird sometimes, and so anyway, I know some people at the hotel and I sort of had them keeping an eye on things and … and … shit!” She stomped her foot on the floor hard enough to raise dust. “She’s not coming, Cat. She bailed out at the last minute.”

I stared at her for a long moment. And then I started to laugh. Lynn’s jaw dropped. I think that of all the reactions she might have been expecting over this news, laughter was the last of them. I threw my arms around her, as much to hold myself up as to hug her. After a moment, I stepped back far enough to give her a kiss on the forehead.

“Maybe this means we’re both growing up at last,” I said. “At least I hope so.”

And I left her there, staring at me, as I walked into the house.

***

I stood across the street from the newspaper, staring at the building, lost in thought.

I had spent nearly a week in hospital and another, lounging around at home, only leaving long enough to not quite meet up with a ghost who decided not to show up herself. I smiled. Strange how that works.

I watched the cars go up and down the street, watched people move in and out the front door of the newspaper. My newspaper. The thought made me shudder. No way was I ready to take over the reins of that thing. Hell, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready. The whole idea of it was so overwhelming that only the constant repetition of the Serenity Prayer kept a full-blown anxiety attack from pinning me to the floor. I had to keep the idea that HL had faith in me to the forefront. He was not a man who was often mistaken.

The celebration that broke out when I returned to the paper, subdued as it was because of HL’s passing, had certainly bolstered my confidence.  It seemed the staff also thought I could run it. In the end, I realized it was only my doubts, my own dark thoughts I had to battle.

I was out of the Robyn Zone and this time I had a feeling it would be for good. It felt strange to feel that empty hole in my chest closing, knowing I was filling it in with myself and not something outside of me. And stranger still was knowing what I planned to do next. I knew the paper would be in good hands with Felice until I returned. With a last look at HL’s office window, my office window now, I turned and headed home, flipping open my phone and calling a cab as I walked.

The college kid who would be house-sitting was waiting for me on the front porch. She was the daughter of a friend of Albert and Felice and she said she loved cats. That was enough of a recommendation for me. I handed her the keys, tossed my single piece of luggage in the cab when it arrived, and sat back for the ride to the airport.

Eight hours later, having checked into my hotel room, showered and changed clothes, I stepped from another cab and stood before the gated entrance of a private beach on St. Thomas Island. I gave my name to the khaki-garbed guard who dutifully checked it against a list of names on a clip board. He looked me up and down once, as if looking for weapons or contraband and then opened the gate. Smiling, I stepped past him and out onto the beach.

The sand was a brilliant white, glittering like glass, the ocean beyond a deep aquamarine that made my mouth water for something succulent and sweet. A gentle breeze carried the scent of coconut oil mingled with something pleasant I couldn’t identify, coming from the tiny pink flowers engulfing the high stone wall surrounding the beach and stretching ten or fifteen feet into the ocean itself.

The beach was surprisingly empty of people. It was small, maybe half a mile in length with several cabanas scattered about, only one of which was open and serving drinks. I walked over, searched the drinks menu for something nonalcoholic and settled on a glass of pineapple juice.

Jaz had written in her note that she would be here every day. On the beach. No guarantees that it would go anywhere, could go anywhere. It was up to me if I wanted to risk it.

And a risk it was. Despite persistent male belief, a lesbian is as likely to be turned straight by male ardor as she is likely to stroll naked across the face of the moon.  People are born gay, not made gay.  It’s not something they choose to be or not be.  It just is.

I slipped on a pair of sunglasses and scanned the area.  A lone figure strolled along the far side of a small cove, following the water’s edge, forget-me-not blue hair dancing in the warm, soft breeze blowing in from the ocean. What the hell, I thought, moving in her direction.  If she was up for giving it a try, who was I not to meet her halfway?

Felice had said that risk was what life was all about, that the wise and plodding turtle got nowhere if it wasn’t willing to stick out its neck. I’d been hiding in my musty shell much too long. It was time to stick out my head, feel the sun on my face, walk the walk, and see where life would lead me.

We hope you enjoyed Meter Maids Eat Their Young by EJ Knapp. Please turn the page for a preview of another great book from this author: Stealing The Marbles.

STEALING THE MARBLES

EJ KNAPP

CHAPTER ONE

His eyes narrowed. His dark skin flushed darker. From under his breath came a Greek word having something to do with immorality, someone’s mother and a donkey.

“Pasty-faced, uptight bastards,” he said aloud. “Sheep! Passive sheep, he called us. The great Athenian general Pericles commissioned the architects Iktinus and Kallicrates and the sculptor Phidias to construct the Parthenon four hundred and forty-seven years before the birth of Christ. Where were the British at this time? I’ll tell you. They were scurrying about in loincloths and animal skins, worshiping trees and howling like rabid dogs at the moon, that is where they were!”

I sipped my beer in silence as Gerasimos went off on the rant, as I knew he would. There had been a debate on the mainland, at the Zappeion in Athens earlier in the week, over whether the Marbles should be returned to Greece or remain in the British Museum. From what I’d heard, the debate hadn’t gone well, ending in a riot that saw hundreds arrested, including Gerasimos himself, which delayed his return to Kefalonia.

Diplomatic salvos were now being fired across the European continent between England and Greece. All the newspapers were carrying the story, most staying neutral, others falling on one side of the controversy or another. Because the discussion had been televised, news clips of the melée were featured on every newscast for three days running.

“That bad, huh?” I said.

“Worse,” he said, finishing the dregs of his beer and removing another from the bucket. “The Committee for the Return of the Marbles is in complete disarray. Those in England who seemed in favor of discussing the issue will no longer talk to us. And the damn reporters … I live in fear of any stranger who approaches me.”

He uncapped the bottle, lifted it to his mouth and drained half.

“So what happens now?” I asked.

“Now? Nothing happens now. A hundred and fifty years we’ve sought the return of our antiquities and this fiasco has set us back to square one. Not that I’ve ever believed the Brits would return what rightfully belongs to Greece in the first place.”

I savored my beer, letting the comment hang in the air. We were sitting at an outside table of the small taverna where we often ate, the air redolent with the scent of grilled lamb and oregano. The faint strains of a Haris Alexiu tune drifted from the kitchen.

“Can’t you just, you know, go over and take them back?” I asked.

The look on his face was one you would give a child who insisted that space aliens lived beneath its bed. “Take them back?” he asked.

“Yeah. You know, go up there and just tell them to give them back or else.”

“You Americans” he said, shaking his head. “Force is the only thing you know. He who has the biggest gun wins, is that it? Well, it doesn’t work that way. In case you hadn’t noticed, Greece and Britain are on the same team. Even if we had the military strength to challenge Britain, we would not. Issues of this nature are handled diplomatically, not militarily.”

“Well, your diplomacy doesn’t seem to be getting you anywhere,” I said. I tore a chunk of bread from the basket and dipped it into a bowl of tzatziki. The yogurt was tart, the garlic strong. Gerasimos uncapped another beer. “Maybe you could just hire somebody to steal them or something,” I continued.

“Steal them!” he shouted, nearly dropping the just opened bottle in his lap. Several people at other tables glanced over at us. “Steal them,” he said again, leaning toward me, his voice lowered. “Are you taking drugs? Do you have any idea what the Parthenon Marbles comprise?”

I sighed. I’d heard an accounting of the Marbles so often over the last year I knew the inventory by heart. “The British Museum has fifteen metopes, fifty-six panels from the frieze, and seventeen pedimental statues,” I recited. “They have one of the columns from the Erechtheion and one of the ladies from the Porch of the Maidens.”

“The Caryatid,” he whispered, staring past my shoulder into some distant place where the Maidens were once again united. His eyes refocused and he said, “And you think someone could just walk in there and haul all that away? You’ve been reading too much science fiction. Even if they could get past the security, how would they do it? Beam it aboard the Enterprise?”

“Okay, okay, I admit it would be almost impossible …”

“Not almost, my friend. Totally!”

“Okay. But what if, just for the sake of argument, mind you … what if they, you know … just sort of showed up one day?”

“Showed up?” He took a sip of beer and set the bottle on the table.

“Yeah,” I continued. “Like, someone goes to open up the Acropolis one morning and there are a couple of trucks out there and inside, are the Marbles. What do you think would happen? Would you just give them back?”

“The idea is preposterous,” he said, waving his hand in the air as though brushing away a mosquito.

“Okay. Preposterous. But go with me here. I’m just curious. What would the government do? Would there be a fight? Or would the Greeks just capitulate and return them to the British?”

“Over my dead body,” he roared and once again disturbed the patrons at the other tables.

“So you would fight to keep them?” I asked.

He leaned back in his chair and began to rub his lower lip with his finger.

“They, the Marbles, show up at the Acropolis,” he mused.

“Or somewhere in Athens,” I said. “Back in Greece, anyway.”

He thought a moment longer; the tip of his finger moved to the dimple in his chin. “I suppose,” he said at last, “there would be those who would want, or feel threatened enough, to give them back. The diplomatic pressure would be intense.”

“Would there be those who would fight to keep them here?” I asked.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yes. Yes there would be. I, for one. If the Marbles were to find their way home again … yes … I would fight to keep them here. To hell with the British, the Marbles belong to Greece!”

This was the moment. What would be the point of stealing the Marbles if it was a sure bet they’d be returned in the end? Gerasimos was the key to that question. I had learned early on in our friendship that he had a real hard-on for them. His great-great-grandfather had been conscripted by the Turks who had ‘given’ the Parthenon Marbles to Lord Elgin at the turn of the nineteenth century. Gerasimos had been weaned on the stories of the sacred shrine’s desecration, passed down from one generation to the next. He had a passion for the Marbles that rivaled Melina Mercouri’s and though not the Minister himself – as she had been – he did hold an elevated position in the Ministry of Culture. If the Marbles were to suddenly appear outside the Acropolis, the Ministry of Culture would surely be one of the government agencies involved in what to do with them. I was hoping Gerasimos had enough power and influence, that he would be able to persuade the powers that be to keep them in Greece.

I leaned forward, hesitant to voice the all-important question. “Do you have that kind of power, Gerasimos? To keep them here?”

“I don’t know,” Gerasimos said after a long silence. “There are many who think as I do: that the Marbles belong here. I believe I carry enough influence in the government to pull together a coalition: one at least as strong as any coalition in a position to send them back. It would be a fight, to be sure. The British would not be happy … and they are a powerful neighbor to provoke.”

“So, you would fight to keep them,” I said.

“Yes. I would do everything in my power to keep the Marbles in Greece. But,” he said, reaching for his Spaten, “this is all quite hypothetical. A fascinating mind game, perhaps; surely a gratifying thought. But, nevertheless, impossible.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re probably right. Still, it sure would be entertaining to watch.”

“You are bored my friend,” he said with a wry smile. He tipped his beer back and took a long drink. “I think you need a woman to share your bed.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

EJ Knapp was born during a thunderstorm in Detroit, Michigan, several years before the Motor City discovered fins. Raised in a working-class, blue-collar neighborhood, he morphed into the stereotypical hoodlum a teenager growing up on the west side of Detroit was expected to be. Dropping out of high school at sixteen, he hit the road in his 1960 Chevy and has, in one way or another, been rolling down that road ever since.

He has published numerous short stories in various on-line magazines, most of which are no longer in existence. He insists this is not his fault. He is the author of Stealing The Marbles and Meter Maids Eat Their Young. He is also the author of the short story collection Thief and Other Love Stories and a non-fiction work, Secrets of the Great Golden Gate Bridge.

He and his numerous critters are back on the west side Detroit, a mere 8 blocks from where he grew up. He spends his time writing and fixing up an old house he bought for a ridiculously small amount of cash.

Table of Contents

News Never Sleeps

Meter Maids Eat Their Young

Vamps On Bikes

Like A Bad Penny

They Call Me Teller

Several Bricks Short Of A Full Load

Tossing Catnip Bags At Kitty Ghosts

Does Zappa Really Do Your Hair?

Anything But Simple

Department Of Parking Enforcement

Hock It To Me

Chics Dig Guys Who Pawn

Citizens Against Repressive Parking Enforcement

Why Parking Meters Should Be Banned

Nickles And Dimes And Quarters, Oh My!

Department Of Parking Extortion

A Complex And Difficult Ethical Conundrum

I Know Why The Bluebird Suffocates

A Ride On The Carousel

In The Robyn Zone

Torquemada Slept Here

Follow The Money

Where Teller Fears To Tread

False Evidence Appearing Real

My Baby She Sent Me A Letter

I Don’t Make Love To Boys

Never Trust The Machine

Disaster, Seconds Away

I Wear My Sunglasses At Night

Thus Spake Darth Vader

Devil In A Blue Mercedes

Getting Old Sucks

Luddite

A Perfect Hiding Place

Hinky Is As Hinky Does

And In That Maze There Be Dragons

Attack Cats

Clueless Is A Dangerous Place To Be

Today Is The Day

Not So Public

A Softer Gig For Mercenaries

The Miasma Of A Sick Ghost

More Nefarious By The Moment

Mutt Minus Jeff

The Mangler Revealed – Maybe

An Empty Newsroom Is A Sad Place

No More The Always Happy Rafe

I’m Not Your Fucking Messenger Boy

Like A Frog In Heat

Riot In The Streets

Anonymity No More

The Two Foot Drop

New Uses For A Keyboard

Gotta Go, Gotta Go!

The Bitch Is Back

When Pigs Fly

Onward Into The Fog

Preview: Stealing The Marbles

About The Author