5

Early the next morning I found Roz—my tenant, housecleaner, and sometime assistant—sniffing around my desk as though she could smell the cash I’d rejected the night before. Roz started out simply as my tenant, then requested reduced rent in exchange for house-cleaning, a task I despise. I accepted, immediately and gratefully. Had I tested her cleaning skills, she’d be paying more for her room. Had she left in a snit, I’d have been deprived of her karate training, post-punk art, and intuitive computer expertise. Not to mention her wide range of ever-changing fashion images.

Dressed in shiny black bike shorts and a tie-dye halter salvaged from a sixties headshop, she was updated for the nineties with cone-shaped inserts à la Madonna-does-Dietrich and hand-scrawled graffiti. “Boobs are Back,” she’d lettered across her left breast. A tattoo of sexually entwined eagles decorated her awesome cleavage. She was barefoot so I could appreciate her toenails, each a different shade of green: chartreuse to forest and beyond.

“Paying client?” she inquired, totally unabashed at being caught in apparent espionage. Maybe she’d crack a locked drawer or two while I watched. Roz has no shame.

“What makes you think so?”

“I heard you chatting last night. You coulda been talking to yourself, I guess. In two voices. Maybe you’ve got multiple personality disorder.”

Roz watches daytime TV talk shows. I try not to hold it against her, but I figure it contributes to her general delinquency.

“Privacy is nice,” I said.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she replied, a bit huffily for somebody practically ransacking my desk. “I was setting camera angles.”

“What?”

“Never mind. The guy want to hire you?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Retainer?”

“Not yet.”

“Carlotta, ya gotta get the bucks up front,” she said.

“Man’s good for it,” I replied.

“Something I could help out on?”

“Hard up for cash?” It’s wise to know in advance when your tenant can’t make the rent. Roz has never had financial problems before; far as I know she’s a trust-fund baby whose fabulously rich parents will ante up any amount provided she doesn’t appear at their fancy digs with magenta-and-blue striped hair, tattoos, and multiple nose rings.

“It’s not like I’m flat broke,” she muttered. “I have a hanging,”

“A hanging?”

“A gallery show. At Yola’s in the South End. Woman’s crazy about my stuff. Says I’m gonna be the next Boston artist to score.”

“Score as in money?”

“Like I must be doing something wrong,” she said sadly. “I told the lady, yeah, like she can sell this batch of shit, but I’m never doing anything remotely resembling it again. I’d take it all back, but, like, I need bucks because of the film.”

“The film,” I echoed.

“I’m branching out,” Roz said.

“Into cinema?”

“Sort of.”

“You have actors?”

“Me.”

“Ah,” I said, repenting my foolish query. Who more could she need?

“I priced rentals. Cameras are like totally out-of-this-world expensive. Editing equipment, bummer.”

“The show, the ‘hanging,’ won’t bring enough?”

“It’s consignment. She may not sell a single item.”

“Ya gotta get the cash up front, Roz,” I echoed cheerfully. I did not ask what the all-purpose word “item” entailed. I don’t discuss Roz’s appearance. I don’t discuss the content, shape, or form of her artwork. I’m scared if I ever got started I’d never stop. I’m still suffering from her art trouvé period. Loosely translated: found art, and she found most of her stuff in my kitchen. I didn’t think I’d attend this particular opening. It would be disconcerting to find my cheese grater hanging on the wall with a price tag on it. And I can’t figure out where the hell else that cheese grater could have gone. I’m an investigator. I find things; I don’t lose them.

“So you want work?” I asked Roz.

“Anything.”

“Run a check on an Adam Mayhew. Here’s the address and phone. Brother-in-law of the posh Dover Camerons. Check the whole family. One’s running for governor so it’s not exactly low profile.”

She rubbed her thumb and forefingers in an international moolah gesture that allowed me full view of her fingernails, the reds and oranges clashing wildly with the toenail greens. “You get in good with those Camerons you can start a whole new game here. Rent an office. Pay your operatives a living wage.”

I handed over the precious manila envelope containing the possible Thea manuscript. I’d dusted the whole business for prints. The shiny paper and smooth cardboard cover defeated me. Not even a smudge to offer a more experienced technician. The rough manila envelope boasted plenty of prints. Alas, when I compared them to prints on the leatherbound folder Mayhew had reluctantly given me, they matched in so many particulars that I knew I’d detected my client’s presence. I’d expected as much. In fact, I’d only done the fingerprint bit as an exercise. Used it as an excuse to keep the original documents. Where, precisely, was I supposed to come up with a genuine twenty-four-year-old Thea Janis print?

Maybe nobody’d cleaned her room since she’d left.

“While you’re out,” I said to Roz, “Xerox this. Two copies. Don’t lose it, okay?”

“Handle the Camerons right,” Roz advised, “and you can buy your own Xerox machine. The super-duper color model. Print your own money.”

“CopyCop’s barely half a mile from here.”

“Line’s half a mile long, too.”

“Then don’t let me waste your precious time.”

“Lend me a Widener ID card.”

Widener is Harvard’s main library.

“They allow you in the hallowed doors dressed like that?” I asked, tongue in cheek.

“You kidding? Half the Harvard kids look tons weirder than I do. I pick up style pointers.”

“I find that hard to believe,” I said, gazing at her attire.

“Believe it.” She sighed. “Money. Root of all evil, hah! You can get some good shit with it, I’m telling you.”

“Money is not the root of all evil,” I informed her automatically. “The desire or lust for money is—”

“Same thing, right?”

“Not exactly.”

“Picky, picky,” she said.

“Wear shoes,” I suggested. “The pavement’s hot.”

“Right,” she said.

“Roz.” I was suddenly reluctant to let the notebook out of my sight. “I’ll do the copying.”

“I didn’t mean to bitch and moan. I really need a few bills. I’ll do it, Carlotta.”

“Check the Camerons. Emphasis on the uncle, Adam Mayhew.” I fished another phony university ID card out of my collection. “Then head over to B.U., make like a grad student, and Xerox a few pages of genuine manuscript, if you can, handwritten by Thea Janis. Got it? Thea Janis.”

Roz thrust both cards into her cleavage. “Truly, I don’t mind CopyCop. Line or no line.”

“Nothing personal,” I said, taking possession of the envelope.

Some things you need to do yourself. Roz is basically reliable. But “basically” didn’t seem strong enough for Thea Janis’s first message to the land of the living in twenty-four years.