Chapter 1
It was dark. Real dark. So dark that the street lights had to work overtime to light the streets. The street lights and I had a lot in common: tall, skinny, only useful for our top parts, and I too was working overtime to shed some light on the streets. But on this dark night I had to admit to myself that Jimmy “Peg Tooth” Boland was as disappeared as the dinosaurs, and me with only a few fossils and a toothbrush to unearth the truth. The case had led me to a dead end street; a cul de sac marked with a large “no exit” sign. It was cold too; the case and the night.
One week and one day before I was sitting in my second floor office above the bike shop on Whyte, googling a guy named John Bayard. An insurance company had hired me to prove that his disability claim was fraudulent. That’s the kind of work you get if you’re a PI in Edmonton. Nothing terribly glamorous. Insurance companies, collection agencies, suspicious spouses, and concerned parents. But it was my bread and butter so I didn’t mind it. Google was giving me nothing on the guy. I kept getting hits for some Frenchman who wrote a book about not reading books. I found this pretty funny, but not too helpful.
I’ve often considered moving to a larger space. One with two rooms. A room for my office and a room for a reception area and a receptionist. But my student loan payments and the support payments to my ex made the expenses of a new place and an employee impossible. I had also been meaning to install a buzzer and intercom system, but had never quite gotten around to it. The problem I had was with street people wandering in off the street. Drunks, druggies, and panhandlers would often stumble into my office looking for a toilet or a place to rob. Whoopleheads, I call them, like on “Deadwood”. Edmonton’s a lot like “Deadwood” except not quite as interesting. Whoopleheads were a nuisance that wasted my time and left the place smelling awful for hours afterward. I had just about given up on Google when one such nuisance opened my office door and strolled in.
She wore a dirty, blue and pink nylon windbreaker, a dirty white t-shirt, dirty gray sweatpants, and a pair of muddy work boots. She could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty years old. It was hard to tell. Her face was leathery and saggy and covered in sores or pimples. Her teeth would have made a corpse puke. Her hair would have made a rat reconsider its nesting options. She looked around the office through bloodshot eyes and pulled a skeptical face.
I made shooing motions with my hands. “There’s no bathroom and no money on the premises,” I said tiredly. “Take a hike.”
“Is this the PI office?” she said.
“You’re looking for the EI office. It’s not here,” I said, gesturing again towards the door.
“No. I’m lookin’ for the private investigator. Sam Raymond Investigations. Where is it?”
“This is it.”
She made that skeptical face again. “This is it? Are you Raymond?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t look like a PI.”
“You don’t look like a client. What were you expecting? Tom Selleck?”
“I don’t know. Anyways, I need to hire you. My old man is missing. I want you to find him.”
“I do charge a substantial daily fee, you know.”
She pulled a freezer bag full of coins and a dirty wad of bills out of her fanny pack.
“I’ll pay you fifty bucks and as many blowjobs as you want,” she said nonchalantly. “I’d offer you screws too but my plumbin’s all fucked up.”
I did the hand waving thing again and tried to get the images out of my head. “I only accept cash or credit cards. And it’s more than fifty bucks a day,” I said, trying not to gag.
She sat down in the chair on the other side of my desk before I could stop her. “Well, what the fuck? You don’t accept fair trade? Jesus Christ. How about you call it charity work? Then you can claim it on your taxes or something.”
“That would have to be a certified charitable organization. I don’t think you qualify.”
She stuffed her money back in her pack angrily. “You’re an asshole,” she announced, and got up and slammed out of the office.
I sighed heavily and then regreted it because of the resulting inhalation. She left a wicked hum behind her which I will not attempt to describe because I don’t want to recall it that clearly. I lit a cigarette, hoping that it would cover the stench (I’m not suposed to smoke in my office but I do anyway. Let them fine me). The cigarette didn’t help so I pulled a can of air freshener out of my desk drawer and sprayed the room liberally. Then I found the Yellow Pages and looked for someone to install a buzzer system.
The intercom system cost me an arm and a leg and a few fingers and toes, but the guy showed up that afternoon, which is really good service for this city. He was a nice guy. We chatted while he worked. He was from Ghana but he spoke beautiful English. He told me he was a doctor back home. It doesn’t even surprise me anymore. I don’t even know how many university educated waiters, plumbers, and taxi drivers I’ve run into. And they’re not always foreigners. He worked quickly and efficiently and he seemed to do a good job. He showed me how to work it, and then wished me a good day and left. I was pretty pleased with the new set up so I celebrated with a cigarette. I surfed the web for a bit and then decided to call it a day. John Bayard could wait until tomorrow.
I was just about out the door when the buzzer lost its cherry.
