Rosamund’s address was in one of the old industrial neighborhoods on the near northwest that had half-sputtered into trendy. An odd mix of optimism and despair, a Starbucks and a stained-glass studio were nestled among a discount tire store, a closed-up candle shop, two burned-out bungalows and an abandoned eight-story condominium conversion.
Her building was a sooty brick and glass-block former factory on the corner, one of the thousands that had once thrummed, three shifts a day, everywhere in Chicago and its blue-collared surrounds like Rivertown until penny wages sucked all that thrum overseas.
My footsteps echoed loud and alone on new red quarry tile as I walked through the oak-paneled foyer into a glistening hall of empty offices awaiting prosperity. Rosamund Reynolds had said hers, number 210, was on the second floor. There was no listing for that space in the lobby directory.
The elevator, squeezed in during the rehab, was a wire-caged affair the size of an upright coffin. It groaned as it began raising me to the second floor.
I checked my hands. The left hand had the fewest Band-Aids, so I left that one out and put the right one in my pants pocket, thinking to saunter in like an old-time movie charmer about to dazzle tight-curled lovelies.
Room 210 was at the end of the hall. I knocked on the unmarked, frosted glass door and the frosty woman’s voice that had phoned commanded me to come in.
I stepped into a room lit surgery bright by midday sunshine firing through the eight-paned window at the back. I slipped on my Ray-Bans and offered the shape blurred in the glare a smile.
She said nothing.
I stood waiting for a moment, and then another. By now my eyes had adjusted enough to make out a room wallpapered in beige stripes and trimmed with hard, dark oak ceiling and baseboard moldings that matched the paneling in the lobby. The drapes bunched at both sides of the huge back window could have been drawn if Ms Reynolds wanted to be seen clearly.
Despite the glare, I made out that she was trimmed hard, too, in a starched sort of way. She sat in a wheelchair behind the dark oak desk. She wore thick makeup, perhaps to conceal an unhealthy skin pallor but more likely to disguise features she didn’t want seen. Her hair, if it was hers at all and not a wig, was thick, mostly steel gray, and fell down to eyes hidden by large, tinted glasses. She wore a severely cut dark suit, a white blouse so stiff that it looked bulletproof and white gloves. I supposed the gloves were meant to cover age spots or fingerprints and not wounds suffered from cutting tin ductwork.
There were no framed photos on the walls, no personal items anywhere. The desk was bare except for a single sheet of paper. A desk chair was pushed into the corner, another tip-off that the space was a daily rental. If she’d used the office regularly the wheelchair-bound woman wouldn’t have wasted space on a desk chair she didn’t need.
She told me to sit down in a voice so hoarse it sounded like an old man’s. I did, with my right hand still in my pocket.
‘What’s the matter with your right hand?’ she asked.
I pulled it out to show her the patchwork of Band-Aids. ‘It got damaged.’
‘Your Band-Aids have cartoon characters on them.’ There was nothing wrong with her eyesight.
‘I get these cheap at a discount place.’
She nodded, uninterested. ‘You spend your time restoring an odd round building?’
‘It’s temporary. My business—’
‘You forged documents for the defense team in some sordid mayor’s trial. Your business was destroyed.’
‘False charges. I was exonerated within days,’ I said.
‘That’s neither here nor there.’
‘Hard to tell what’s anywhere in this glare,’ I rhymed right back at her. The woman’s arrogance was irritating. ‘How close is “Reynolds” to your real name?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘That will depend on why you asked me here.’
‘I want you to look in on three individuals.’ She pushed the single sheet of paper across the desk. It contained three typed names and addresses. All were out west, in Tucson, Laguna Beach and someplace I’d never heard of in Oregon.
‘I’m not looking for simple Internet browsing, Mr Elstrom,’ she went on. ‘I want fast, discreet, first-hand visits. Be efficient; verify the current arrangements of each of these men.’
‘Living arrangements?’
‘Of course.’ She reached into the center drawer, pulled out an unmarked plain white business-sized envelope and slid it across. Inside was a cashier’s check, payable to me, for two thousand dollars. There was no bank name or address printed on the check.
‘This now, then another two thousand when you complete the assignment. Plus your expenses, but those you must keep reasonable.’
There was a quiver in her voice – an urgency. I wondered if this seemingly commanding woman was afraid.
A phone number was typed below the three names. ‘I’ll contact you at this number?’
‘Yes. Check on these men in the order I’ve listed. Start in Tucson and report in from there. Similarly, notify me before you leave California for Oregon.’
There was one more thing to say, always. ‘I’m not licensed to be an investigator. I work for insurance companies, photographing accident scenes, checking out phony claims. It’s research.’
I always said it, and I always said it just that way. For the most corrupt of states, Illinois had oddly strict rules for licensing private detectives. A criminal justice background or a law degree is needed. I had neither, and the press had made much of my lack of a license when I’d gotten caught up in the phony evidence scheme – that and the fact that I’d been married to the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Chicago. Recovering from all that remained arduous; I did not need a second brush with that sort of difficulty. Nor did Amanda, my ex-wife, who’d become one of Chicago’s richest and most prominent business executives.
‘We’ll play along with your little game, Mr Elstrom,’ the woman calling herself Rosamund Reynolds said. ‘We’re hiring you to do research.’
Her use of the plural was revealing. She had a partner. ‘Who gave you my name, Ms Reynolds?’
‘You’ll head west immediately, of course.’ She drummed her fingers on the desk, impatient, anxious.
‘I have other client work,’ I said.
The fingertips drummed faster. ‘How long?’ she snapped.
‘I need today and tomorrow,’ I said, as though I was committed to more than readying tinwork for the delivery of a furnace the morning after next.
She caught her breath. It was barely audible. I had no doubt the woman was frightened.
‘See that you do,’ she said.
I left, amazed that her office had remained bright amid the thick fog of lies we’d both sent up.