The sign for the Flamingo Hotel had been broken for so long that no one could remember its real name. To Peligan City it was just ‘The Mingo’, a two-bit dive for end-of-the-roaders. The luminous tubing outline of a bowing flamingo see-sawed over a dark stairwell. A red ‘Vacancies’ sign buzzed on and off in the front window.
An oily-looking man in a raincoat staggered out of the front door with a doll-faced woman on his arm, and left it swinging. Lil ran across the street and slipped in before it clicked shut; Nedly wasn’t so lucky. The door closed through him with a sucking noise. He stood in the hallway shivering and looking queasy.
Lil ducked behind a deflated settee in the old reception lobby just in time to see Mandrel standing on the first-floor landing in front of a wall of pigeon holes. The brown-paper bag containing his takeaway noodles was tucked under his arm. She watched him check through the stack of mail, extract a few envelopes and flyers and then return the rest. Then he pushed the button at the bottom of the stairwell that turned on the lights and wearily began climbing the steps.
Lil listened to his footsteps growing fainter, then the lights went off and a few seconds later a second set came on further up the stairs.
‘OK,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s go.’
She scanned the pigeon holes until she found the one labelled ‘Mandrel. 7.3 Hawaiian Island Suite’. Lil noted he had a flyer for the Black Pug Eatery – she checked inside for a copy of the Klaxon, but it was empty.
‘Seven-three,’ said Nedly. ‘Is that the seventh floor?’
They looked over at the lift where an ‘Out of Order’ sign was hung across the metal grille, fencing off what appeared to be an empty shaft, and then upwards at the multitude of staircases that zigzagged between landings, and sighed.
Every light seemed to be timed to go off shortly before the next button could be pressed so in between floors Lil found herself alternately recoiling from the grubby palm-tree-print wallpaper that was smeared with something she hoped was soy sauce and then plunged into darkness and clinging blindly to it as she felt her way along to the next landing.
Finally, at the seventh floor, they reached room three of the Hawaiian Island Suite where a cardboard sign tacked to the door read: ‘Absolom Mandrel Private Investigations’.
‘OK,’ whispered Lil. ‘We’ve got him cornered; we just have to get in the door long enough to tell our side of the story.’
Nedly looked doubtful.
Lil took a deep breath and knocked.
‘Who is it?’ a gruff voice asked.
‘It’s me; we met earlier, at your office.’
‘It’s not my office any more. Who’s with you?’
Lil looked at Nedly, unsure of what to say. Nedly shrugged back at her.
‘No one,’ she ventured.
Abe opened the door a crack and peered out. ‘Then who were you talking to just now?’
‘Myself, I suppose.’
‘Yeah?’ The detective growled. His eye slid from side to side checking out the corridor.
‘Look,’ said Lil. ‘I think we got off to a bad start but I do have information pertaining to one of your cases. Can I come in?’
‘Nope.’ Mandrel said, and pushed the door, but Lil had her foot wedged in the gap.
‘Please?’
‘Whatever you’ve got to say, you can say it from there.’ He folded his arms in a way that indicated there wasn’t going to be a discussion.
Lil sighed but agreed. ‘OK. Have it your way.’ She moved her foot away from the doorpost. ‘Look, I can see you’re a busy man …’
‘That’s right.’ He closed the door in her face.
Lil stood there for a moment, fuming, and then flumped down against the wall opposite and folded her arms. ‘We’ll give him a minute.’
Nedly sat down beside her. Lil shivered. ‘Maybe while we’re waiting you could … you know.’ She nodded at the door. ‘You might find some info in there about your case.’
Nedly looked at it reluctantly.
‘Go on. Please. We need something we can work with.’
He grimaced but stood up anyway, wriggled his shoulders and cocked his head a few times in preparation and then gingerly he put first his fingertips, and then his whole arm, through the thin wood of the door. He slid one foot in, and then the other arm and the remaining leg until just his head was left, lingering in the hallway.
Lil sighed. ‘Just get it over with.’
Nedly gave her an annoyed look in return and then took a deep breath, closed his eyes and vanished.
A few minutes later he reappeared.
Nedly shrugged. ‘There’s nothing about my case; not that I could see, anyway. There are a lot of files and things but I can’t open them – the only stuff I got a proper look at is a chart on the wall.
‘It’s a street map of Peligan City. There are pins stuck in it and newspaper clippings. He’s got pictures on there too – mug shots. Some have got crosses of tape stuck over them. There are bits of string that link some of the mug shots with the newspaper articles and in the middle of it all there’s a picture of this creepy-looking man.’
Lil scribbled down some notes in her book. ‘Maybe it’s connected to your case in some way.’
Nedly looked doubtful. ‘Maybe.’
There was a slight movement behind the fish-eye spyhole. Mandrel’s voice growled out. ‘That hallway is no place for a kid. Beat it, will you?’ He knocked on the inside of his own door. ‘Hey, I’m talking to you.’
Lil leapt up and looked back through the fish-eye at him. ‘Can I come in?’
‘No!’
‘Then I’m not moving.’
Mandrel crashed around angrily in his apartment for a few minutes then he checked the spyhole again. She was still sitting there.
‘Damn it.’ He opened the door a crack. ‘OK, kid, you’ve got ten minutes to spill it, and then you go, deal?
‘Deal,’ said Lil. ‘It’s like this; I’m on the trail of a story …’
Mandrel interrupted her suddenly. ‘What did you say your name was?
‘It’s Lil.’ She watched his reaction carefully for a flicker of recognition but there was nothing. ‘Can I continue?’ The detective nodded tetchily. ‘… about this boy who was murdered …’
‘A murder investigation?’ Mandrel nodded with mock sincerity.
‘Yes … and now I think that your Ned Stubbs case and the investigation I’m working on are actually one and the same, so …’ She paused, hoping to say the next bit as casually as possible – ‘it makes sense that we partner up to solve it.’
‘I work alone.’ The detective folded his arms over his chest.
Lil tried to hide her pique with an offhand snort.
Nedly said, ‘Ask him … about me.’
Lil shot him a look that said I’m on it. To Mandrel she said, ‘Can I see your case file?’
‘No.’
‘Can you at least tell me what’s in it?’
The detective shrugged. ‘It’s most likely that Stubbs ran away.’
‘What if I can prove that he didn’t?’
‘OK,’ Mandrel said slowly. Lil noticed a spark of interest appearing in his otherwise wary eyes. ‘Prove it.’
Lil faltered. She tried out a line she’d heard in a film: ‘I have to protect my source.’
The detective sighed and the spark went out. ‘Look, if this is your idea of a tip-off I’ve got a shock for you, kiddo.’
Lil looked up at the grizzled old detective and pulled out what she hoped would be her big gun. ‘Detective Mandrel, my hero, A. J. McNair, had this quote he used to say and they put it inside the front cover of this book about him, McNair and the Free Press, which happens to be my favourite book, and it says “All it takes for injustice to prevail …”’
‘“… is for good people to look the other way,”’ Abe finished wearily. ‘But no one ever said I was a good person.’
Lil stared him right in the eye and set her jaw, angry disappointment all over her face. ‘Yeah, they did. Once they called you that. You were the long arm of the law … the Scourge of the Underworld. I thought you’d want to solve the case. The caretaker at the orphanage hired you to find out what happened to Ned Stubbs. I bet you still took his money, didn’t you?’
Abe Mandrel flinched. His eyes went down to the ground. ‘I was hired to look into his disappearance. I looked into it. End of story.’
‘When I read all that stuff about you in the paper I thought you were really somebody. But you’re just like everyone else!’ Lil couldn’t stop herself from shouting. ‘You don’t care about anybody except yourself!’
Mandrel coughed. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’
‘Yeah? I’ll get over it!’ Lil snapped and stamped off down the hall.
The detective slammed the door after her and two sunset beach prints that hung on the wall dropped to the floor. He stood on the spot for a few minutes, glaring at the fish-eye. ‘Humph,’ he said to himself. ‘Kids today, think they know it all.’
He rehung the prints and then walked over to the window in the kitchenette and wiped an arm across the grimy pane, smearing the dirt in with the condensation. He saw the girl crossing the street below. She looked even smaller from a distance; head down, shoulders hunched, yellow coat standing out against the grey rain. She reminded Mandrel of someone. Someone he’d known long ago.
He shook his head at her. ‘It’s a tough lesson but better that she learns it early.’
He noticed his own reflection looking back at him in the glass; it had been a while since he last looked in a mirror. He saw the red-rimmed eyes, stubble starting to go grey, hair thinning and the dawning of a double chin. The reflection had a reproachful look in its eye.
In the kitchenette dirty plates and glasses were piled up in the sink, and the bin was overflowing with noodle cartons and polystyrene trays. Mandrel pulled off his fake hand and selected the spork attachment. He opened the carton of Singapore noodles he had picked up from the Kam Moon and started eating them. Then he stopped, unable to swallow another mouthful.
He heard a creak in the hallway outside and turned to see a slip of paper sneaking under the door. It was a menu for the Black Pug Eatery – there was a message printed along the margin in block capitals. It read:
‘MY NAME IS LIL POTKIN. YOU KNEW MY MOTHER. THE NITE JAR CAFE. 7 P.M. SHARP. BRING CASE FILE.’
The note was folded round a photograph. It was the old gang before it all went sour. He saw himself as he was then, square-jawed, bright-eyed and grinning, and there beside him was Lil’s mother, Naomi. The detective swallowed hard. I knew that kid had looked familiar. Somewhere deep inside his chest his heart lurched painfully. He gave himself a thump there and coughed.
Carefully he tucked the photograph into the frame of one of the Hawaiian sunsets and stood there looking at it until the light began to fade.