ESP.LITERATURE

A DoubleNickel Detective Story

Portland Case #27

INTRODUCTION

My face in the mirror was nondescript. Unremarkable. Plain. I didn’t mind. Plain brown wrappers disappear in a crowd. Good thing for gumshoes. Plain, that was me. Damn near invisible. Short cropped black hair, brown eyes, forehead flat, nose a tad wide, small mouth. Face in profile looked like a cardboard box. Blockhead. Appropriate. Lately getting a little jowly. With love handles and damn little love. Facts of life.

All of the above hung on a medium frame. Still wear size 10 shoes. Still 70 inches top to bottom. 5’ 10” and 190 pounds. Give or take. Lately, seemed to be too much muscle turning to fat. Fine, so I’ve gone to seed. With a plain brown suit who needs muscle tone. Screw it. Got a tie with an ugly knot, too. Wear it a little loose at the collar, askew. Some fatigue there, in that face. Anxiety. A modicum of alertness. Modicum. And wit. You say ‘askew,’ I say, ‘gesundheit.’

Hardy har har.

“Shucks,” I said to the face in the mirror. “’I am the boy who does enjoy invisibility.’” Warbling. I sighed. 

Schmuck.

Damn good at crossword puzzles, though. Damn good..

Jerk.

I pulled back an eyelid. Epicanthic was the word. Had to look it up. Twice. My father was Japanese, but my mother was Irish. The eyeball looking at me was brownish. Most of the time. Got a lens on a fingertip. Poked it in my eye. Did the other one. My face in the mirror was still nondescript; but older. Swell.

My mama used to love me, but she … Palo Alto. Doublenickel.

I frowned at the face in the mirror.

When I was a small boy growing up in Palo Alto, I wore glasses on that face. Small round lenses with silver metal frames. Those lenses were about the thickness of a nickel; and they looked like nickels. Double nickels. Some buddy of mine tagged me with that name, and it stuck with me until I left My Home Town and went off to College. Doublenickel. When things were really rolling, they just called me Nick. I got kind of partial to Nick.

Nick.

ONE

Put aside your pride, set down your arrogance, remember your grave. —Ali ibn Abi Talib (559 – 661 CE)

I was walking along the embankment, the river high and muddy, on my way back to the boat. City lights don’t allow for much dark, but it was quiet enough. Heard the river lapping at the seawall. Some trucks rattling over the bridge. At two thirty in the morning, a man can rightly expect to be alone with his thoughts. I wasn’t.

The grassy knoll, littered with the encampments of the homeless, was somnolent. I liked that word. Somnalent. Rolled off the tongue. No moon. City lights casting shadows up by the copse of trees. I slowed a step or two. Someone had called my name. A woman, I thought.

This time of night?

But a figure moved from the shadows and started down across the grass. Not a woman. The boy called my name again, said, “Wait.”

Sounded a bit desperate.

“Wait.”

He looked scared. He sounded scared. Deduced the kid must be scared. He was wearing a T-shirt that hung off him like his sister’s shabby blouse. If he had a sister.

Ketchup stains (yeah, I know, you want blood. Think the ‘ketchup’ is going to get tested and turn out to be the blood of the dead judge. Keep guessing) down the front of this raggedy garment and his patchy, threadbare jeans gave me second thoughts, made me wish I had my little automatic sitting in the pocket of my jacket. But he was a little squirt, ten or twelve. Thought I might be able to handle him.

“They took my mother,” he said. Stood there, shoulders slumped, head down.

“Took your mother?”

“They took her.”

Thought we ought to start over.

“What’s your name, kid?” I said.

He just looked at me. Finally, deciding, said, “Buddy.”

“Well, Buddy, why don’t you start at the beginning. Who grabbed your Mom? You know?”

“Shiites.”

I thought he had said ‘shits.’ Thought again, looked hard at the boy and saw Arabic. Saw Middle Eastern. Dark hair, dark eyes. Head square above the point of the chin. Nose prominent. And the word clicked. “Shiites?” I said.

“They took her.”

“When. Near here?”

“We live over the bakery.”

“Up on Second?”

“Two men just came and pointed at the van and she had to go.” He might have shrugged. “I didn’t know what to do.”

‘Took’ was beginning to look like ‘went with.’ No matter. “But they didn’t get you?”

“I was hiding. Waiting for her. Behind the dumpster.”

“And these men? They waiting for her, too?”

I think he shrugged. Said nothing, shook his head, tears welling in his eyes. The kid had been loose, middle of the night, while mom was … where? Doing what? Maybe it was ‘took.’ Would she go voluntarily leaving the boy behind?

 I would take him with me to the boat. Make a few calls. Find some family. Least I could do.

He tailed along, glum, silent, until we got to the marina gate. Stopped dead in his tracks. Put his hands up, palm out and waved them.

“No,’ he said. “No.”

Turned and bolted.

I stood too discombobulated to utter the string of oaths that lumbered through what I possessed for a brain. Good word discombobulated. Looked it up. Well, no, I asked Lucy.

What I was good at. Punching buttons on a computer. Doing a little AI. Saving lost kids? Not so much.

Hairball. What I said, finally. “Hairball.” Turned and walked, glum and silent, to the boat.

TO BE CONTINUED