(Continued from the August 2020 issue of Exotic)
Something like fourteen hours later, the two-seater was getting antsy on the ground as we unloaded my things. After it was all off, the plane revved up with a little too much enthusiasm, turned around on the tarmac and left me on the other side of the world. I stood for a few minutes, blinking as it diminished in the sky. Then, I loaded up and went to find a motel.
After getting into my room, I dialed Henley’s number and hung up before he could answer—happy to check in, Captain. I unloaded my bags, checked the bed and closet for bedbugs and assassins, then I went to get some ice. After a reclined whiskey on the rocks, I thought I’d do some sightseeing. First stop was the shelter, Hearts Of The Road.
It definitely looked like a runaway. It squatted between two newer, higher buildings—like an anti-social toddler—plaster peeling from the brick facade making strange faces at me...alternating between a hospitable, “Come on in,” to a more sinister version of the same phrase—a long-nailed, bony finger beckoning. Someone was struggling to play violin from an open window around the corner, purring out the right notes and then skipping the bow on the wrong ones, translating for the place.
I went on in.
A skinny, elderly woman sat behind glass at the front desk, busy using her 70-words-per-minute typist skills. A row of fifteen plastic chairs lined the wall—the kind of seat that’s not designed for sitting, but for playing wingman to the linoleum. Above the chairs, was a framed watercolor by someone who had given up all other mediums. There was an electronically secured door on the left side of the desk, and through the small, unbreakable window, some figures strolled around. I didn’t sit. Finally, Flutter Fingers looked up from her work and gazed at me. We both just sort of stayed like that—one waiting for the other to speak.
“This is a young person’s shelter, sir.”
I took that as a compliment.
“That’s fine. I’m Detective Crawford, I called a few days ago?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, straightening out a pen, “...about the girl. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I was wondering if you could give me any more details. How did she look? Scared? Tired?”
“Everyone who comes in here looks scared and tired. Like I told you on the phone, she came in, looked around and left. It was hailing pretty hard that night and I recall thinking how she was not dressed for it—miniskirt and skimpy blouse, I’m not even sure if she was wearing shoes. That’s all I have. Wish I could help more. You said she was in a better place?”
“Well, she’s still in the cold, but not in any danger. Thanks.”
I wandered around town for a bit, which didn’t take long. When I got to the end of one street, I turned onto another, and as I rounded the third one, a bell went off in my head.
The tavern across the road looked like it knew something—and, I needed a drink. The faded, wooden sign read “Tommy’s.” Well, Tommy, nice to meet you. Inside the door, a jukebox struggled to play Johnny Paycheck classics. One lonely patron sat hunched in non-thought at the bar and the bartender seemed surprised to see me. I didn’t know what time it was, probably early. I sat myself down next to the guy—potbelly bulging through a flannel vest, grease stains on the t-shirt, grizzly beard...that sort of thing. He glared at me with that look that all daywalking barflies have—the one that says, “There’s a dozen other seats in this place, asshole.” We didn’t talk much, until I asked how his day was going. He took a slow sideways look at me and said, “Fine.” I decided to get to the point.
“Where’s that one from, Spring Creek?” I asked, nodding to the light blue, winking skull on his left wrist.
He looked over his glass with the severity of someone who knows the mandatory sentence for homicide in this state (and, that prison is a lot of time to catch up on masturbation and hooch).
“Da fuck you talking about?” he asked.
I decided that a different approach was due. So, I said nothing, eyed down the bartender and ordered one for me and one for my friend. I looked at him with the honest severity of someone who would prefer not to see the shaggy moss hanging from the tree roots, in the depths of the river just down the way.
We drank. I pulled out the sad, beaten folder and placed my official and temporary aluminum badge on top. The folder soaked up melted ice as I slid it over to him.
“I got a lead on this girl. It’s not much and it’s probably nothing, but here I am, about to get my ass beat in the only bar in town, halfway across the world from home and a little too sober, all for the possibility that a name exists somewhere out in the ether. They say she was within drinking age. If you could just take a look, friend, I’d be much obliged.”
“Ether? You mean like the alcohol?”
“Sure,” I said, as I took a long pull, sucking the moisture from my mustache that was on the fence between itchy and asking for it.
He flipped the folder open and took a glance. He looked at me. He closed the folder and suddenly took an interest in the ball game muted on the television. We sat like that for a while. I ordered a bourbon, neat. Finally, I pulled out a twenty and dropped it on top of the folder. He took it and slid the folder back over the melting glaciers of the bar.
“Don’t know her name. She come in here a few nights a week, shoots pool balls and flutters jailbait eyelashes at everyone. Heard she was staying over at the Starlight Hotel for a spell. That’s all I know. Detective.”
I finished my drink and thanked him.
*
The manager of the Starlight Hotel eyed me like a dozing cat and yawned with the same indifference, when I told him what I was looking for. His mood changed slightly when I flashed the aluminum shield and the swivel chair he sat in cried to be rescued as he stretched and stood up.
“Okay, okay...let me find the key.”
The stairwell was like any other you’d expect to find in a week-by-week hotel in a town with one bar and two churches. Dust drifted like glitter in the weak light and someone was listening to metal music on gravelly speakers some way down—early ’90s and Scandinavian. We finally found the door and he had some words with the lock, until it opened.
“I’ll be downstairs. Lock the door when you leave.” He lumbered back down to torture that swivel chair into talking.
The room was small, but clean.
It smelled of Clive Christian perfume—she couldn’t possibly have afforded and there was a cheap, white linen sheet over the one window, that probably didn’t lock. The stove was unused—the bed was. Rumpled sheets covered it, the way that teenage girls pretend to make their beds on the way out the window.
This folder was getting emotional. I took a closer look.
Not much. Fridge empty. A sweat-stained B-cup bra in the closet, which I evidence bagged. Not even a fucking speck of dust on the floor.
As I considered the lack of dust, I saw paper peeking out from beneath the bed. I recognized the small, blue print and thin, receipt-like build of a lottery ticket. I figured there were winning numbers on it. I picked it up and checked the date. Lined up. I turned it over. Scribbled on the back was the address of the Starlight and this room number. I went to find somewhere that cashed lottery tickets, leaving the lock open on my way out.
The ticket was good for 200 whole dollars. I pocketed 200 whole dollars. I bought a carton of smokes, a couple of responsible beers and some scratch-offs, because it’s not every day you get winning numbers. Then, I asked questions.
The cashier didn’t know the girl, of course. In fact, he didn’t know nothing and kindly asked me to never return. I kindly obliged.
She had been to that store. She had been to that store, probably every night for the past six months. It was within stumbling distance of the Starlight and the only place for ramen and last-minute deodorant, but my old reliable—my gut, so to speak—knew the ticket I found wasn’t her ticket. So, whose 200 bucks did I just cash?
*
He didn’t need a key to open the place. He walked in and noted the light blue color of the room—the only furnishing, a large armoire against the far wall, standing stoic and sentinel. He stood looking at it. He stepped across the room and pulled the doors open.
He stood and stared for a moment at the contents—at the wimpled, red fins drifting in the murky water in a nondescript bowl on the middle shelf—the fish occasionally making a turn and passing around the glass, exploring its small world, as if there were to be something new born to it.
He wondered about fish that spend their lives in dark places. Blind and phantom things. Huge, unseeing eyes. Sharp-toothed jaws.
He squinted out the window at nothing. Somewhere in space, a monumental diamond spun spectrally on its axis, silent in the vastness and sparkling past uncountable suns—the silent corpse of a long-dead star fired away in its own furnace.
He turned back to the armoire. Neighboring the fish on the middle shelf was the tool. Sleet, matte black, it felt cool and heavy in his hand, as he tested it. He turned it in the blue light and it reflected nothing back at him. He turned and left the place.
Unseen and closeted, the fish opened its mouth and inhaled water—again and again.
