“I’m just wearing jeans until the office opens,” she apologized. “It feels more comfortable when I’m doin’ all this research.”
“What you workin’ on?”
“I put up a sign on the bulletin board at school offering to find missing persons or property.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, and this woman — a student — called me and said that she had this boyfriend that was missing.”
“Oh? Missing how?”
“At first it just sounded like he’d left her, but after we had tea at the student caf it turned out that he emptied her bank account without her knowin’.”
“How much?”
“Ninety-two hundred dollars.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. That was everything she had. It was money her grandparents had given her to pay for school. And this guy, he called himself Martin Durer, wasn’t anywhere that she could think of.”
“Why you say ‘called himself’?” I asked.
“I called Captain McCourt’s office and asked about him. You know, maybe he had a record or was wanted, or somethin’. It — it turned out that he’d done that kinda thing before, and if it was the same guy, he’d gone by Denton McDaniels, Mack Daniels, Dean Minton, Darryl Morley, Dax Mandel, and nine other names, all with the initials D.M. or M.D., except for one — Stanford Pride. His usual MO was to wheedle his way into a woman’s life and run off with her money a few months later.
“He took Doreen’s money like so many others’.”
“Doreen who?”
“Anton, Doreen Anton. She’s a grad student in economics. I went with her to the downtown police station and they, um, corroborated what Captain McCourt said.”
“You talked to him? Not his assistant?”
“Yeah. I told Doreen that I’d look for Durer for two weeks and charge one hundred dollars.”
“And that’s what these phone books are about?”
“Yeah. I go through six books every morning looking for one or more of his aliases. Today it’s Fontana, Ontario, Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Van Nuys, and Los Angeles County.”
“Seems like you would have looked at LA first.”
“I know,” she said shyly. “I guess I was saving the best for last. I mimeographed fifty sheets with all the names printed on them and I’m checkin’ off each one as either not there or making notes on the ones that are.”
“You do this every morning?”
“I do.”
“And what do you plan to do if you find this guy?”
“When I find him,” she corrected.
“When you find him,” I acceded, grateful for the grin her determination brought out in me.
“I’m going to go get a look to make sure it’s him, then I’ll get my client to come and see. After that I’ll have her press charges.”
Niska had been taking detective lessons from me for the past two years. She used the work she did for me and my partners to see what would work for her. She took her time, and I was proud to see how far she’d come.
“That sounds really good,” I said. And then, changing the subject: “Saul and Whisper coming in later?”
“Uh-uh. Mr. Lynx is down in San Diego looking to see if he wants to take on this smuggling case he’s been offered.”
“Smuggling what?”
“I think he said something about guns, but I’m not sure. And Tinsford is on vacation in Hawaii with Shirley Brown.”
“Just all of a sudden, he left for Hawaii? That’s not like him.”
“I think he’s planning to ask her to marry him.”
Niska had come to the office from working with Tinsford Natley, also called Whisper for his low voice.
“Well,” I said. “Keep me updated on this case of yours. I don’t want you doing anything reckless. And, um, don’t tell Whisper about it until it’s over.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”
Like most American men in the early seventies, Whisper felt that there was a deep divide between women’s work and the labors of men. I felt that way too but, at the same time, the world was definitely changing. Taking a step back from my own prejudices, I could see that if Niska could prove her ability as an investigator, then what she became was not up to me.
“Okay,” I said. “Keep up the good work. I’m gonna go back to my office.”
“Do you want me to tell you about calls or visitors?”
“Sure, why not?”
Sitting behind my overlarge desk I experienced the desire to have a simple and straightforward case like Niska did. Just thinking that there was somebody out there that I could find, a manhunt that needed doing, seemed to offer solace. It would be a joy to lose myself in a job.
I hadn’t taken on any cases in the last six months, and very few in the year and a half before that. Jobs came in, of course, but I passed them on to Saul and Whisper. But maybe it was time to shake off the stagnation and melancholy of a lost love that had been consecrated by the deaths of two men who might have been saved.
I had a copy of Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools in my bottom left drawer. I bought it secondhand, drawn to the title. A fool adrift, that was me.
I’d been reading for a few hours when I realized that, though I really enjoyed the prose, I didn’t retain very much of the story at all. I had just let the words wash over me like sometimes when I’d stand in the shower for a very long time.
There came a tapping on the doorframe. I looked up from the book that I was no longer reading to see Niska’s head peering in.
“There’s somebody here who wants to talk to you,” she said.
“To me specifically?”
She nodded. “He said that he wants to see Easy Rawlins.”
“Not Ezekiel?”
She shook her head.
“Okay then, show him in.”
Her head withdrew, leaving me to wonder if I had somehow conjured up this visitation.
A few seconds later Niska came through. She was wearing a coral-colored dress and yellow pumps. Her face was made up and her straightened hair was piled at the back of her head. The man who came in behind her was dressed in dirty overalls with tears here and there and a gray T-shirt that had once been white, and shod in shit-brown clodhopper boots.
“Mr. Santangelo Burris,” Niska said, “this is Mr. Ezekiel Rawlins.”
The detective in training then left me with my visitation.
If I didn’t exactly smell him, I imagined that I could. It was as if he’d just fallen off the back of a farm truck and tumbled upon my doorstep. He had the build and hunched posture of a wild boar — not tall but brutish. His face contained many emotions, none of these pleasant. By turns he seemed angry, suspicious, and as determined as a soldier before a battle.
The only thing about him that wasn’t piglike, threatening, or foul was a thick gold ring he wore on the pinkie of his left hand. This singular piece of jewelry was festooned with a large hunk of topaz, inlaid with a silver torch or some other kind of scepter.
“Saint Angel,” I said idly.
His expression of mere anger elevated into rage.
“What you say?” he cried, half raising his right fist.
“That’s what your name means,” I said by way of apology.
“That’s what — what they called me at school. Called me little angel and homo and stupid.” He was on the verge of shouting.
“Sorry about that, man. I was just thinking about the Italian.”
“What Italian?”
“The word, Santangelo, it’s Italian.”
The beast-man’s eyes bulged and looked around for something, anything to hate.
“I don’t know about all that,” he said. “I’m here about my auntie, Lutisha James.”
“Okay,” I said in my most placating tone. “Why don’t you have a seat, Mr. Burris?”