I swerved to the other side of the street and spent a few seconds coming to a full stop. I might be immortal, but I still had to contend with physics. Well, sort of. Cars are manufactured with brakes. Bi-peds? Not so much.
From behind an old-school station wagon, I watched the van come to a complete stop along the side of the building. The baker emerged from the van, and as he did so, a car door opened from another vehicle parked near the warehouse.
His pretty young assistant stepped out and met him with a warm hug. Bingo!
Together they slipped inside the dark building through a side door. My mind raced. What was this place? What the hell was going on? I didn’t know the answers to either question, but one thing I did know: Men were fucking pigs.
Chapter Seven
I stepped up to the building and scanned it.
So what kind of building was this? Why were they here after hours? Was this some kind of underground sex club? Were unspeakable sexual acts being performed just behind these doors? I pictured a sea of naked bodies, all undulating rhythmically to hypnotic music, drugs everywhere, naked limbs everywhere, penises and breasts and sex toys galore.
But I knew this wasn’t right. This was just my imagination running wild. Far different than a psychic hit.
Still, I listened for music, for the thumping of bass, for anything, but heard nothing other than a faint, echoing hammering sound which could have come from anywhere.
No. Wait. Laughter. Yes, I just heard laughter coming from within the building.
The bastard. He had no business laughing with another woman, not with a dying wife waiting for him at home.
The bastard.
I stepped back and scanned the facade. Nothing to indicate what the building was. I had a thought and removed my iPhone. I Google-mapped the area and a moment later the same city street popped up on my screen. This time in bright daylight.
Ah, there we go. According to Google Maps, the area was known as Al’s Auto. I pocketed the phone and did some frowning.
Al’s Auto? What the hell?
I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew one thing: a married man had met his cute assistant in an apparent abandoned building late at night, leaving his sick wife to die alone.
Yeah, men are fucking pigs.
Of course, I was a little biased these days.
Keeping to the shadows of a pathetic tree rising up from a trash-strewn sidewalk planter, I closed my eyes and utilized some of my newfound skills, clearing my mind and doing my best to remove some of the burning hate that I was feeling for the cheating bastard. With eyes closed, I expanded my awareness. I imagined this as a glowing arc, widening around me like ripples in a pond. The glowing arc was my feelers, my tentacles, my supernatural eyes and ears and hands and feet. It kept widening. I sensed a nearby mailbox. There was a rat watching me from a drain grate. Correction, three rats, all with glowing eyes, attracted to me for reasons I couldn’t quite understand. There was also an orange tabby that had made its way from the alley to sit under the baker’s van. The tabby was watching the rats, its tail swooshing spasmodically. I could almost—almost—hear the growling of its stomach. Maybe I sensed its hunger. Anyway, the arc continued out, widening, now reaching its curious supernatural feelers deep into the Al’s Auto. I saw a simple front office. Two simple front offices, actually. Computers. Desks. Filing cabinets. Pictures of sports cars on the walls. The building wasn’t abandoned. It was perfectly functioning. I sensed a hallway that led into the back of the shop. I pushed through a doorway into a brightly lit room. Lots of images here. Murky images. Clear images. Cars lined up. Cars on lifts. Another bigger image under what appeared to be a tarp. But I was reaching the end of my range. The images were getting murkier, fuzzier, more scattered. I was certain there was a man lying on the ground. Correction: two men lying on the ground. Or perhaps kneeling; it was hard to tell. Were they dead? Again, impossible to tell. And now I saw something else. Or someone else. A woman was squatting over one of them. The images were distorted at best. What they were doing exactly was impossible to tell. What I inferred they were doing was another story.
My consciousness snapped back to the street, stunned.
I opened my eyes and, briefly confused, got my bearings. A scratching sound came from my right. I turned and saw the bright eyes of one of the rats. Watching me. He had inched a little closer.
I ignored the rat and did the only thing I could think of. My client wanted evidence. I would give her evidence. I didn’t have time to mess around with this case. I had other, more important cases. Bigger cases.
One and done, I thought. It was time to end this case.
I pulled out my iPhone once again, but this time I called Mrs. Shine.
Chapter Eight
We were in the alleyway.
Gertrude Shine was a heavy-set woman with swollen ankles, so swollen that the hem of her stretch pants were stretched to the limit. Her hair was indeed red and permed, and she was the spitting image of the woman I had seen in my thoughts.
Anyway, I felt horrible for bringing her out here, especially in her current condition, but people don’t pay me to tell them good news. They already know, in their hearts, that bad news is coming. I’m simply a facilitator of bad news, which is a shitty way of looking at my job. Or an aspect of my job, but there you have it. Had I more time, I would have waited around and tried to photograph the adoring couple as they left the building, ideally hand-in-hand, and no doubt with a long kiss goodbye. People generally don’t hump in public, and, by law, I can’t photograph through windows. Major invasion of privacy. So, catching a couple on a date, kissing in public, and generally acting lovie-dovie is the best any private eye can hope for. And it’s generally enough for most people.
Well, screw all that.
The woman was dying. Her husband was a snake, and I had bigger fish to fry.