The Kincaid Detective Agency

Chapter Two

The next morning I was awakened by sharp repeated knocks at the office door. Whoever it was was determined to be let in, tattooing it for all it was worth. Building management had long suspected I'd been making my office my permanent residence and they had, from time to time, tried to catch me leaving evidence of this violation of the lease. When questioned about my unusual hours, my argument had always been that people work late and sometimes put in all-nighters. Was that so hard to understand? I glanced at my watch. Eight-thirty. Well, that's business hours, or close to it. Surely if it's them they have nothing to grouse about now, at least not about that. Not leaving anything to chance, I jumped out of my cot, folded it up and quickly stowed it into the supply closet. Fortunately being in the habit of sleeping in my clothes, all I had to do next was pull on my pants. I stole a brief glance in the mirror to see where I had to flatten down my hair. Meanwhile whoever it was on the other side of the door kept beating out every chapter of Moby Dick in Morse code.

Finally I opened the door.

Holy Cats!

Standing at my threshold was a dame like what you see in the movies. Auburn hair, hazel eyes, statuesque, hour-glass figure, tailored business suit, the works, a real class act. Think Rita Hayworth with an Ivory Soap girl complexion. But there was something about her that looked familiar. I couldn't put my finger on it just yet. She held a black valise.

"James Kincaid?" she asked.

"At your service." She was so good-looking the words sort of stuck in my throat.

She took a look inside. "Gave the maid the year off?"

Even though I damn well knew exactly what my office looked like, I automatically turned around and gave the sty a good honest scrutiny myself. No question, it was a disgrace. "I've been understaffed," I explained.

She took a couple of steps past me into the office. "So I've heard."

"And you are?"

"Rachel Billings."

"How may I help you, Miss Billings?"

"I left a few things outside the door, James. Bring them in for me, would you please?"

"Sure," I said. "Why not?" Right. Just walk in and tell me what to do. And like a sap I did what she asked. I stepped outside the door into the hall and found a large plastic tub with a black rubber hose curled up inside of it. There was also a towel and washcloth, a bag full of what appeared to be cleaning supplies, and a blue plastic tarp. Next to the tub was a medium-size cardboard box. I picked the tub and its contents up and brought it in.

"You mean this?" I asked, holding it out toward her like an idiot. Her attention, however, was fixed on my untidy desk.

"Yes," she said, and walked toward the desk. She picked up an empty bottle of Jack Daniels from the neck with her thumb and forefinger as if handling an infected bat. She dropped it in the wastebasket.

"Where would you like it?" I asked, meaning the plastic tub.

"Anywhere for right now," she replied rather absently. "Don't forget the other thing out there." Then she stepped over to one end of the desk and quite deliberately and methodically swept everything but the telephone off of it onto the floor with her outstretched arm.

"Hey!" I yelled.

"All of that can go," she said wiping off the sleeve of her jacket. She set the black valise on the desk and extracted something rectangular and metallic from it. With a click the thing opened up like a tiny suitcase and she set it down on the desk positioning it toward her. Then she settled into the desk chair.

"Just who are you?"

"Believe it or not, I'm your new secretary."

"What? From the agency?"

She let out a little chuckle. "'Agency.' That's priceless."

"All right, who did send you?"

"Your benefactoress, Rita Delmarco."

"My client, you mean. She sent you? How do you know Rita?"

"She's my cousin."

"Uh huh," I said. No response, no elaboration. She started tapping away at something on that gadget. "I can see charm school manners are a family trait," I remarked. Nothing. No response to that either. But one thing I could see was a definite family resemblance. If you took Rita, de-aged her about ten years, sent her to finishing school, gave her a dozen spa treatments, unlimited credit at Saks Fifth Avenue, and locked her away in a beauty salon for a month, this is pretty much what you'd get.

"Wifi hasn't been invented yet I suppose, has it, James?" she finally said. "Fortunately I took the trouble to get chummy with the receptionist next door and got their password."

"You mean at Doctor Peepers' office?"

"Right. 'Doctor Peepers, Oculist.' What a hoot."

"His real name is Wesniak."

"Really? Not Peepers? How surprising."

"It's a professional name. You never heard his commercials on the radio?"

"I haven't."

"Well, I won't try to sing his jingle."

"Thank you."

"It's catchy though."

"No doubt."

She continued to silently tap away, oblivious to my presence. She had what I call a cultured look, a Radcliffe or Wellesley College way about her. Those kind of dames can start a fellow off on the wrong foot and keep him there. I felt I had to make excuses for stuff I was never ashamed of before. I could see there were a couple of other peculiarities about the Humboldt Building I should let her know about while we were on the subject.

"I might as well tell you now there's a clown college that takes up the entire fourth floor."

Rachel Billings stopped what she was doing and looked at me with genuine surprise. I wasn't kidding. My office building really had a clown college. I told her about the time the students literally broke the elevator from too many clowns piled in it. This piece of news cracked her up. When she looked straight at me and laughed, and I mean really laughed, nothing sarcastic or pretentious but laughing as a kid might laugh, I felt, I don't know, a connection with her you could say. As pretty as I thought her before, she looked even prettier now.

"No! A clown college?" she finally said. "Do you see the students? I mean, do they go about here dressed as clowns?"

"Sometimes they do. This one clown, Sparkles, is in costume all the time. I suspect he's part of the faculty."

More laughter.

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed. "Doctor Peepers the Oculist, a clown college, and a dime novel private eye, all housed together. This is too much! Wonderful! Wonderful!"

I thought I might as well complete the job. "There's a talent agency run by an older couple in their eighties on the third floor. They specialize in ventriloquists and magicians."

"Of course they do!" she said, clapping her hands.

"Everything else is pretty much run of the mill," I went on. "Oh, that receptionist you talked to is Doctor Peepers' daughter. She's really proud of the old man, so don't go making fun of his professional name."

"I won't, but surely she can see the fun of it."

"Possibly. If I have it straight, she was the one who thought up Doctor Peepers when she was a little girl. And -- hold on to your hat -- she has a professional name too."

"Oh no," she said, her eyes growing wider.

"Penelope Peepers," I said.

Uncontrollable laughter now. It went on for about a minute. When it subsided, I finished by saying, "She'll let you call her Penny once you get to know her."

"That's very nice," Rachel Billings said, wiping her eyes.

Penny Peepers and I were pretty good friends, in fact. Once, for about a week, the john in my office went out of commission and I had to beg the use of Doctor Peepers' bathroom before building management finally got around to fixing mine. Conversation with Penny was inevitable and I got the feeling she might not have had a lot of friends growing up. Very plain to look at with a brutal pageboy haircut that didn't suit her, always looking straight ahead into the empty air when she spoke in a monotone voice, you could tell she must have eaten many a lunch alone in her high school cafeteria. Yet there was something about her that instantly won me over. She was what I call the genuine article, one of those artless human beings possessing none of the social graces. She was prone to saying innocent, rather awkward things, things that people found either off-putting or endearing, depending on who you are. For instance, noticing my clothes one day, she asked me if I was an actor studying for a part. She wasn't trying to be wise with me, it was a sincere question. In my mind -- and I certainly never said this to her face -- I started calling her Truepenny, a nod to Hamlet, if you care to know.

At this point I started picking up on other similarities between Rita Delmarco and Rachel Billings. Their laugh was nearly identical and they shared several facial expressions. Rita had what I call a mobile mouth. A mobile mouth is the kind of mouth that sort of ranges freely from north to south and east to west and is capable of assuming more shapes than the average human's, kind of rubber-like. I considered this expressive mouth Rita's best trait. It accented everything she said. Rita could make a statement as banal as "I went to the store for a loaf of bread" come off as hilarious with a smirk most people could never attempt, let alone replicate. And the mobile mouth looked particularly good on Rachel Billings, especially with that bewitching shade of lipstick she was wearing.

"Well, James, this is a marvelous funhouse you have here. But down to business. Rita says she gave you a list."

"Yes, she did."

"Did you take the trouble to read it?"

"Yes, I did."

"May I see it?"

"Yes, you may. Let me sift through the pile you graciously deposited here on the floor."

"Take your time."

"Thank you."

I found the sheet of paper containing Rita's list of bullet points beneath a spilled ashtray. I shook away the ashes and handed it to Rachel Billings. After leaving the coffee shop the day before, I walked over to Central Park and plunked myself down on my favorite bench near the statue of Sir Walter Scott. There I reviewed the contents of what Rita so considerately spelled out for me. The bullet points represented a combination of useful information and what she thought was helpful advice. The information consisted of Gerald L. Postlethwayt's home address, his attorney's office address and phone number, and so on, facts pertinent to the investigation. The advice part included the names of several "young men's clothing stores," "popular barbershops near you," housekeeping and hygiene tips, and a morning schedule to follow. "Most mornings, rise at no later than 6:00am and, weather permitting, take a brisk forty-five minute walk." "Wash and shave thoroughly and change into freshly laundered clothes." That sort of thing. I suppose I should have been offended, but coming from Rita I wasn't.

I broke in on Rachel Billings' concentration to ask, "So should I call you Miss Billings? Or Rachel?"

"Oh," she said, abruptly glancing up at me, "do not, under any circumstances, give me a nickname. I will not abide anything like Toots or Dollface. I've heard of this unfortunate propensity of yours and will not stand for it."

"So, Rachel then?"

"Billings."

"Call you Rachel Billings?"

"Just Billings. Let me finish reading this."

"Wait, why Billings?"

"I think it will help keep our relationship professional. It provides distance, don't you think?"

"Sure."

Actually, I found the idea of calling her Billings sort of sexy, but I wouldn't tell her that.

When she had finished reading, Billings said, "Okay, so it looks like Rita is really trying to help you out here. Now, just so I can get a handle on things, I'd like to get a clearer picture of your, shall we say, condition. Rita warned me I wouldn't get anywhere, but no harm in trying. So." A pause. "Are you by any chance a big fan of detective novels, film noir, that sort of thing?"

"No more than the next guy."

"She said something about an incident, some kind of encounter, at Morningside Park on the Upper West Side a couple of years ago. Care to enlighten me about that?"

"Not especially."

"Do you remember what happened there?"

"Possibly."

"So what happened?"

"It was, shall we say, a casual stroll interrupted."

"Interrupted how?"

"By an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. From there things got a bit messy."

"Care to provide some details?"

"What did I just do?"

Billings shrugged.

"From what I see, and from what I've heard, you know exactly what's going on around you, and you are, underneath this -- this facade, a creature of modernity." No response from me on that. She gestured out toward the window. "That part of you, the part that grew up in the same era as myself and those kids walking with their teacher there in the park and the bus driver driving the bus down the street and the guy on the sidewalk selling hotdogs, is facilitating this bizarre anachronistic fantasy world you're living in. You're functional somehow, but how I don't know."

I remained silent.

"Okay, let's try this." She looked straight at me like a real zinger was coming my way. "Quick, what year is this?"

"We are in the year of our present day, Billings." Now I was starting to get annoyed. This wasn't secretary-type talk at all, this was therapist talk, and I have had my fill of that type of talk.

"Put a number on it."

"One."

"One?"

"One, I've got a job to do. Two, we're wasting time. Three, what the hell is the big plastic tub for?"

Billings sighed. "All right Mister Totally Unlicensed and Delusional Private Detective, I'll tell you. This tub and this hose is for when you don't have access to a shower -- which, if you'll pardon my saying, must happen often. A brief French bath at the sink every other day doesn't cut it, my friend. I know you have a membership at Equinox gyms, but your membership won't last forever and anyways their gym locations are not necessarily handy for your everyday showering needs. And, brother, if there's one thing you need right now, it's a good scrubbing down."

"Let's try not to be too subtle, Billings. I might not catch what you're getting at."

"So," Billings said, coming from around the desk and picking up the hose, "this is a hose used for washing machines and dishwashers. It's meant to be plugged into ordinary faucets like the one you have in your bathroom. It's got it's own doohickey here that you have to screw into your sink faucet so the hose connects in right. You'll have to take off the faucet's doohickey and put in the hose's doohickey. All this making sense so far?"

"Of course. It's the old doohickey switcheroo."

"Exactly. Then you hook the hose up to the faucet, lay the plastic tarp down on the floor, place the tub on top of the tarp, strip off your clothes, stand in the tub, and spray yourself down like a circus elephant."

"It sounds so easy."

"You'll probably get water all over the place the first few tries, but I'm sure you'll manage."

"Count on me."

"Rita says she gave you a starter set of clothing that prevents you from looking like grandpa back at his high school dance."

"Yeah, a question about that. How did Rita know what size clothing to get me?"

"That is a good question, James. I don't know and I really don't care."

Not much I could say to that quick retort.

"Look, Billings, why are you doing this?" I asked after an awkward pause. "I mean, how much is Rita paying you? God knows I can't afford it. Are you here to babysit me? You're no secretary, any moron can see that. Fifty bucks says you come from money, you've got a first class education from some snooty Ivy League school, and you're more used to giving orders than taking them, so all in all this has to be a big come-down for the likes of you."

Billings took a good long hard look at me. She suddenly grew very serious.

"I don't come from money," she said. "I went to a state school, and, not to put too fine a point on it, I am strictly Rita's poor relation."

"Ha! With those clothes and the proper upper class manners?"

"Yes, with these clothes and the proper upper class manners."

"Where are you from then?"

"South Boston."

"Why no accent?"

"Because not everyone from Southie has one, you simpleton. You're from money. You have a Columbia education -- or half of one. Why don't I hear the Hamptons instead of -- what would you call your style of speech anyway? Reform school?"

"Cultivated reform school, thank you, with notes of cynicism and a certain Byronic world-weariness."

"I see. It's still a work in progress though, isn't it, James?"

"I'm satisfied."

Billings stared me up and down, no doubt taking in every aspect of my pitifully disheveled state. Never had I been so aware of my four-day-old beard, my rank body odor, my dirty wrinkled clothes. Billings only response was, "Hm," before she stepped around the desk and reseated herself.

"You still haven't brought in the printer," she said after a stretch. "That's in the cardboard box outside in the hall."

"Printer," I repeated.

"It's a magical machine that makes images appear on paper. It's amazing, you'll love it. Just bring it in."

"Right," I said. And I brought it in.

"Plug it in for me, will you?" she asked when I plunked the heavy object down on the desk.

"Of course," I said. I took the gadget out of the box and found that the electrical cord just barely reached the outlet.

"I have a few things to do getting you set up for this case. In the meantime, James, tub, hose, shave, etcetera. Take your time, be thorough. I've already set up a haircut appointment for you at noon." I stared at her. "You have to fit in with this fitness club and pass yourself off as a respectable citizen, James, understand? They don't allow hobos in those places, and Gerry doesn't consort with the great unwashed. So get going." I stared at Billings some more. This exasperated her. "Please!" she said, slamming both palms down on the desk.

I meekly did as she asked. And, as predicted, I managed to get water all over the bathroom.