Blind Man’s Buff
By Paul Anders
31,000 words
Blind Man’s Buff Copyright © 2009 by Information Research
Cover photo Copyright 2007 by Dorothy LaGrandeur
Smashwords Edition
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblances to persons, living or dead, places, events, or locales is purely coincidental. They are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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Prolog
The man who burst through my front door not only sounded mean, he was mean. An inch shorter than I, he was at least two inches wider in the shoulders and a good five inches broader in the chest. Maybe he’d got those shoulders working in a prison laundry, maybe he just worked out.
He wasn’t much for conversation. "Where is she?" he said and batted aside the hand I reached out to stop him. The next thing I knew he was in Marcie’s bedroom having gratuitous sex with her closet door. "Where is she, damn it?"
The children, silent, for once, that afternoon, began to cry. Before I could say anything to console them, our unwanted friend stormed back into the room and grabbed me by the collar. Bad mistake. I faked a jab to his head with my right hand at the same time that I swung up with my left seizing his elbow. Pivoting, I walked forward with him out the open front doorway. He fell down the stairway, those broad shoulders clanging against the guardrails each step of the way. I hoped his fall wouldn’t increase my insurance premiums.
Chapter 1
I was once a detective; that is, I was once paid to be a detective—by a detective agency, paid to go undercover, in a nudist colony, with Marcie. There was a murder, and a romance, and someone tipped over a privy. Things didn’t start out quite so exciting. They started out dull, very dull, just as they had been for months and months and months since I’d lost my sight.
I was standing on the walkway outside my apartments running my fingers over the leaves of the rosebushes looking for aphids. Not that I expected to find any, for I inspected the leaves regularly and sprayed them with soapy water whenever I detected signs of an infestation. But inspecting the roses gave me something to do, something sensible, outdoors in the sun.
The tapping of Marcie’s heels on the concrete was the first indication of her presence, followed by the faint floral scent of the branch she’d broken off the lilac tree to take upstairs with her.
Once, I’d have been able to see Marcie as well as hear her, see Catalina Island off in the distance, see movies, roses, daffodils, and the swell of the female breast. Three years ago, some nut stuck a bomb in the middle of a public park, wrapped it in screws and nails which went flying everywhere when the bomb exploded. Maybe you saw the explosion on T.V. They played it over and over. It didn’t do a thing for me. They still haven’t caught the bastard who set it off.
"How’s the love life?" I called out to her.
I’d hoped she’d be turning into my place for a chat, but the pit-pit turned into a clop-clop as she moved off the concrete onto the metal stairs. What the hey. I followed her.
I live alone. The apartment where I live under the stairway would be too dark and depressing for most people, even the windows in the back are narrow and hidden by bushes, which is why I moved in there myself instead of trying to rent it as I do the other units in the building.
Still, there is a good breeze if I open both the front and rear windows; in the morning the air carries the scent of my roses and of rosemary and thyme from my nearby herb garden; in the late afternoon, the smell of the sea accompanies the onshore winds the five short blocks from the beach to where I live.
I purchased the two-story set of garden apartments shortly after my discharge from the hospital, using a combination of my savings and the insurance payouts. The university also continued to pay my salary for the balance of the academic year—more than generous of them don’t you think?
One can continue to teach many things if blind—speech, music, mathematics, but anatomy, no. Too much attention to detail, too much need to give hands-on training, to show rather than tell.
So I was on mandatory retirement, a prisoner of silhouette and shadow. All because some bloody fool wanted the media’s attention.
Marcie has been my upstairs neighbor for nearly a year now. She doesn’t pay rent; her apartment is one of the perks of her position. Marcie is the last and best of a series of young women who have served as my driver, valet, personal secretary, and general factotum, and friend. The others all thought me irritable, quarrelsome, self-righteous, and egotistical. All had been right, but only Marcie had the patience to see there was something more.
Spring and fall, she attends the nearby community college working on a mythical four-year degree, a moving target that appears more and more elusive each year as she keeps changing her major. This summer, as part of her general search for meaning, she’s working for a detective agency. I guess she thinks she’s the one who tracked down Donna and the Reverend. Unfortunately for both me and her, her job at the agency has consisted till now solely of filing and answering the phone.
For the first few weeks after she started, I’d greet her on her return from work by asking if there were any new assignments. After awhile, I stopped asking; it was too painful for both of us.
The other evening though, as I stood on the walkway outside my apartments running my fingers over the leaves of the rosebushes looking for aphids, something was different, a bounce was in her step that hadn’t been there before. Either Mike, her steady, was coming over or wonder of wonders, she’d found a new man.
The tapping of Marci’s heels on the concrete was the first indication of her presence, followed by the faint floral scent of the branch she’d broken off the lilac tree to take upstairs with her.
Once, I’d have been able to see Marci as well as hear her, see Catalina Island off in the distance, see movies, roses, daffodils, and the swell of the female breast. A few years back, some nut stuck a bomb in the middle of a public park, wrapped it in screws and nails that went flying everywhere when the bomb exploded. Maybe you saw the explosion on T.V. They played it over and over. It didn’t do a thing for me. They still haven’t caught the bastard who set it off.
"I’ve got a job," Marci said. "I mean I’m still working for Dick, but he’s put me on a real assignment."
I tried to visualize the new job: Undercover in a modeling agency? Selling abs-builders on an infomercial?
"I give up."
"I’m working at Nordic Electronics. In their warehouse." Boring. What would she be looking for, missing paper clips?
"When do you start?"
"I started today." Hard to believe; she wasn’t wearing a dress. I took a step toward her. No perfume I recognized, more like the basic after-gym, before-shower stench of a hard workout. "I move crates and stuff. It’s fun."
Unlike me, Dick Meanstreet, her boss at the detective agency, had been more impressed by Marci’s brawn than her beauty. True, she did work out regularly with weights at a gym on Main Street as well as twice a week with me in the Aikido dojo. When Nordic Electronics came to Dick’s agency for help—the firm had been plagued by a series of thefts, all expensive one-of-a-kind custom-built items in marked contrast to the majority of Nordic’s stock—Dick had assigned Marci to work undercover, not in the front office, but out on the loading docks as a warehouseman.
"How do you like it so far?"
"Could I eat first, boss? I’m famished."
"How about dinner on the town with me?" I said. "To celebrate."
She thought the invitation over. I pretended to be impassive; she might have plans of her own. "I choose the restaurant," she said.
"And I pay."
We ate in a grungy bar just off Main Street, a hang out for body builders and others for whom life was more than just carrot juice and protein powder. It smelled of beer, corn chips, and overdone meat. She was there to be seen by other men, and I was there to have company for a meal. "Fish tacos," she said, ordering for me.
"So what’s the job like?" I asked.
"I’m not sure I know yet. I only put in half a day."
"You the only girl?"
"There’s Becca, she drives the fork lift. And the girls in the office."
"Guys?"
Marci made a gagging noise in her throat and I had to think twice about eating the forkful of rice and beans I was holding. "They treat me like I don’t exist. I mean they do plenty of staring, but ask them for help on what I’m supposed to do and they’re much too busy."
"What’s the job really about?"
She waited until the waitress had come and gone with a bottle of hot sauce before answering. "A lot of stuff is missing from the warehouse, electronic components. I’m supposed to be watching, looking around to see if anybody has light fingers. That’s the easy part. The hard part is that a lot of the stuff is turning up missing before it gets into the computer; it’s vanishing somewhere along the line between where it gets placed into the vendor’s delivery van and when it gets onto Nordic’s shelves."
I chewed a mouthful, slowly, and waited until she’d again raised the fork to her lips. "Can I help?"
She took long enough in replying that I knew she was being tactful when she said, "Maybe later, when I know more about what is really going on."
We discussed other things then, a few mutual acquaintances, and one of my tenants who’d been hitting the bottle regularly since breaking up with her long-time boyfriend. We were having fun. Marci and I seldom have a chance to see each other since she started working full time.
A beer bottle placed firmly on the center of our table interrupted the once-pleasant evening. "Oh, hi, Billy," Marci said. Her voice was devoid of feeling; the lack of further introduction suggested she, too, was hoping Billy wouldn’t stay.
"Sit down?" If these words were intended as a question, Billy Buns didn’t wait for the answer. I heard him drag a chair across from the next table as he sat down on my right opposite Marci. "Rice and beans," he said, referring to my plate, not Marci’s that had once held a one-third pound cheeseburger. "Really healthy. I was on that diet for awhile, now I only eat red meat."
"Billy’s a weight lifter; he works out with me at the gym." Marci said. Again, she didn’t offer to introduce me.
Billy sat quietly for a few moments, planning his next move, or perhaps just trying to search for hidden meaning in Marci’s brief introduction. Together, we listened to the sounds of Marci chewing.
"You, uh, gonna eat all that?" His question to me broke the silence.
"Yes." I resisted the temptation to throw my arms and shoulders protectively around my plate.
Billy took a deep breath. "How ya doing Marci?"
"Okay"
If this was social life among the younger generation I wanted no part of it. Conversational flow exhausted, Billy sat for several further moments breathing heavily, while the waitress cleared away our plates. I could picture him in his tank top, tufts of hair hanging from beneath his arms, staring unceasingly at Marci’s bosom.
Marci seemed to enjoy the attention, but only seemed. I sensed another more desired presence in the area and was not surprised to hear her cry out, "Mike!"
The second behemoth approached our table.
"Mike, this is Billy."
For a moment Billy sat still, clutching his empty beer bottle, his huge frame unmoving. When the message finally got through to his pea-sized brain, he stood up to take Mike’s hand. In the manner of two sumo wrestlers they stood for several moments straining at the handshake. I broke the impasse. "We gotta get going," I said.
"Okay, Boss." She stood up and I could hear her whispering to the new arrival as she took my arm.
"See you later," Mike called to her as we walked away.
I shouldn’t have done it, but I lay in my bed that evening, listening, wondering if Mike would be coming over. He didn’t.
Chapter 2
I was waiting eagerly outside by the stairway when Marci arrived home the next day.
"How was it?" I asked, releasing all my pent-up energy through questions. "Did you find the thief? What are your coworkers like? Do you want to walk down to Main Street and get something to eat?"
She leaned wearily against the stair post. "Okay. I’d like to lie down for a while first, though. Maybe take a shower."
"Are you all right? Are you sick? Do you have a fever?"
"I’m tired. The work is exhausting."
Her vocal cords straining, she let the words out one at a time. She was exhausted, all right. I half led, half pulled her up the stairs to her apartment and opened the door using her key. She staggered as we crossed the threshold, and I put a bracing arm behind her back.
"You smell wonderful," I said.
"I smell like shit."
"Then take a shower. I’ll get us something to eat."
She sat down wearily on the couch. Was I going to have to undress her, put her in the shower? "What are you going to fix?" she asked.
She’d weakened and lowered her voice for effect, but I was not at all deceived. Her interest in food was a definite sign of continued life.
As I walked out her front door, I hollered back, "You know, one of those tin-foiled wrapped packages you made up the time you were going to be gone for a few days. Or, maybe we’ll use one of those that Gloria made." Women were always cooking me dinner, then giving me a CARE package to take home for later. With all the meals I had stashed away in the fridge, I was well prepared for a nuclear attack, unless, of course, the electricity failed.
"Which package? What’s in it?"
But I did not bother to reply as I put one foot after the other down the stairs. It would be the first package I drew out of the fridge, silly girl.
The chosen package proved to contain Beef Stroganoff, one of Gloria’s contributions to my cuisine. Beef was no longer on my diet, nor was Gloria, but as the package was defrosted it had to be eaten. Besides, despite or because of her exhausted state, Marci was able to down three-quarters of it.
Between mouthfuls of dessert—I am fully capable of making Jell-O on my own and had made some lime Jell-O earlier that day–Marci told me something about her new job.
The work was exhausting. When she wasn’t moving stacks of boxes on and off trucks, she was restacking them from where they had been placed the day before. "Becca is no help. And the men, Ron and Chester, just laugh at me. If it weren’t for Barb in the front office I’d go nuts."
I thought of giving her some tips on goldbricking; she was not really at the warehouse to shift piles of crated materials from place to place but to observe, and, hopefully, catch whoever was responsible for the thefts. But I didn’t. I just let her talk her self out while I washed up and put the dishes away as best I could—it was her apartment, after all.
She lay down on the couch, "just to get comfortable," and after awhile I heard her gently snoring. She did say one interesting thing before she drifted off, well, two interesting things:
The first was that the things disappearing from the warehouse were not random items but only the really expensive goods—computer chips, one-of-a-kind miniature power supplies, stuff like that.
The second was that Yvette, another of the girls in the front office, a sort of glorified secretary who typed letters and invoices, not the sort of brainy stuff Barb did, had a really fantastic pair of boobs.
For Marci’s next few days on the job, our routine was more or less the same as it had been the first night. You’d have thought I was Marci’s nurse instead of the other way around. On her return home—no stopping off at the gym after work for her on this job—I was the one who gave her a cup of tea, had her sweats laid out for her to wear after her shower, and fixed supper for the two of us.
After the meal, she’d lie down on my couch, pretending to still be engaged in the light conversation we’d started at the dinner table, and gradually drift off to sleep. She would snore quietly in the background, while I listened to music and continued my lessons in Braille. An hour or so after I’d fallen asleep myself—in the bedroom—I’d hear her get up and go upstairs to her own apartment.
If she uncovered any leads to the series of minor thefts that had prompted her employment, I didn’t hear about them. I did hear about her fellow workers: Becca Reelly, was 5’3," looked like a china doll, and could manipulate a fork lift and restack a pile of crates faster than any of the men. Ron Mattox, a belligerent loudmouth whose brawn was far in excess of his brain, had a great deal of trouble understanding the word "no." Chester Sanchez, smaller and a great deal smoother than Ron, was every bit as despicable. If it hadn’t been for Barb Newin, who worked in the front office, Marci said again and again, she’d have pitched the job in on the first day. Barb was sort of a den mother, the real, if unpaid boss of the organization. While Doug McCoy, Nordic’s owner, had done little more than grunt on being introduced to his new employee, Barb had shown Marci to her locker, outlined the duties of a warehouseman, and advised her where and when to put her knee if either Ron or Chester stepped out of line.
Yvette Newland, the in-house salesperson Marci had talked about on her first evening (apparently Yvette was more than just a glorified secretary) proved to have store-bought boobs beneath those deep-cut blouses. Marci had dwelled on their store-bought quality after I expressed an interest in coming down to see where she worked. Nordic Electronics was just around the corner, after all.
"No one you’d want to put the moves on, Boss."
I was cut to the quick. Seemed to me that one of us ought to do some investigating. Besides, Marci had brought up Yvette’s boobs in the first place.
On Wednesday, Marci’s fourth day on the job, my daily inquiry as to her love life met with a disdainful jeer. "No time Boss, no time at all. I’ve even turned off the telephone."
The good news was that Marci’s muscles had finally hardened to the point she’d enough energy left at the end of her day to stop at a grocery store and pick up the makings of a salad along with a barbecued chicken. "Tonight, I’ll make dinner for both of us," she promised.
From my point of view, the dinner was strictly lagniappe; I’m just grateful when I don’t have to eat alone.
Talking through bites of chicken and forkfuls of salad—Marci would be in serious trouble if she ever went out to eat with a sighted male she were trying to impress—she told me how great her day had been and how she was finally beginning to understand the system at the warehouse.
"Stuff comes in all day long, with most of the local deliveries and Fed Ex in the morning. Stuff goes out mostly in the afternoon, we don’t have any trucks of our own. The confusion is in the afternoon with stuff coming and going. Until now, I’ve usually been too exhausted to pay attention."
She stopped, picked at a piece of chicken that was stuck between her teeth, and dislodged it with some effort. She then undid all her good work by attacking the other chicken leg with equal ferocity.
"I haven’t actually seen anybody take anything. Yet. But I know that’s when they’ve got to be taking it. Maybe setting the items aside on a shelf somewhere to be taken away later, or..." I could tell from the frequent pauses she was thinking out loud, going over the report she would be presenting to her boss, Dick Meanstreet, rather than strictly talking to me. ."..maybe, just putting it on one of the trucks. So many different trucks are coming and going between three and four, a ringer could probably slip inside without anybody realizing it."
"Except the guys that are in on it. Or the girl," I added, trying to be politically correct.
She stopped chewing, thinking about what I’d said. "Guys. Becca’s in another world. She does her job, but when it comes to thinking about what she’s doing, she couldn't care less. She’s also a nonstop hypochondriac. She’ll move the boxes, but she won’t open them. Doug, he’s the owner, has to get somebody else to do it, every time. She’s afraid something in the wiring will affect her skin. She also complains about the dust that’s all over the place and sits down every few seconds when she’s not actually working because she says she finds it hard to breathe. Becca’s not the thief. She wouldn’t take anything from the shelves for fear it would contaminate her clothing."
Marci stood up, walked over to the cupboard, and took out a can of peaches in syrup, before she realized plenty of fresh fruit sat on the counter just begging to be eaten.
"Ron and Chester are the ones, creepy bastards. They both think they’re God’s gift to women. Barb, that’s the wonderful girl in the office I told you about, said the best thing about my being there is she didn’t have to put up with them bothering her all the time."
"Fire them," I suggested.
"That’ll be the day. Understand Boss, guys in a warehouse are chosen for their brawn not their brains." She returned to the table bearing a plate full of cut-up fruit along with several chunks of a ripe Jarlsberg.
"So how come they always know which items to steal?" Marci had told me the things that were missing were high-priced specialty items like computer chips that vanished even before they’d been put on the shelves.
"They’d need somebody knowledgeable to help them," Marci agreed, thinking out loud., "Bob Rogan is always hanging around the front office, I wonder if it could be him."
"Rogan? You’ve never talked about him."
"Probably ‘cause he’s the only guy not putting the moves on me. About 5’10," shorter than Ron, taller than Chester, broad shouldered, handsome if his smile wasn’t so vacuous. He’s also not too bright, maybe even a step below Ron."
She paused, took a piece of fruit from the plate and munched on it. Then she said what I’d been thinking all along., "He wouldn’t need to have brains. He’d just need someone to tell him what to take."
"You’ll know soon then? Be sure to let me know what happens."
Marci didn’t say anything for a moment, didn’t move. I could tell she was studying my face. I don’t know what she expected to find there, a mouth like anyone else’s, lips maybe a bit on the thin side, nose average, rounded on the end, the same old scar tissue around my explosion-seared eyes.
"Boss, you need attention, don’t you?"
I started to reply and she hushed me. "I’m going to spend more time with you now this job is under control; at least, I’m going to see you get up and about more. Maybe we’ll go to the Cowboy Boogie."
I cleared my throat, preparing to say a sincerely felt thank you, but couldn’t quite bring it out. "Tomorrow evening? Let’s do it. I’m not one to fail to take advantage of another person’s guilt." God, what an ass I am. It would have been so easy to say thank you to Marci. But no, I have to kid around, pretend I don’t care.
"Not tomorrow."
"You’ve got a date." The words just slipped out, my voice more accusing than it had any right to be.
"No. Tomorrow, I’m going out drinking with the boys from the warehouse.
Chapter 3
Marci checked in with me the next afternoon, anyway. I hadn’t spent the day waiting for her call, despite what she may have thought, but had gone down to the beach early and passed the better part of the morning on the waves and, afterwards, sipping coffee on Main Street.
After lunch at home, I walked back to Main Street to go to the library. I hadn’t finished the book-on-tape I’d borrowed, and really didn’t want to hear the book-on-tape I took in its place. The walk was just something to do. The phone rang shortly after I got back to my apartment. I guess after a year, Marci knew my habits almost as well as I did myself.
I began by apologizing for the quarrel we’d had the evening before. We’d argued about the advisability of her going anywhere with her coworkers. The less they know about you, I insisted, the less likely they’ll be able to trace you after this assignment is over. I was sure some people were going to be pretty unhappy once Marci and I cracked the case.
She told me not to worry about it. Not anymore. She’d actually seen one of them, Ron Mattox, the bully, setting a package aside in an out-of-the-way corner where they kept their office supplies. He didn’t know she’d seen him and they still would have to go over all his manifests that day to see what was missing. "But that’s not really what I called you about." She sounded more excited than she’d been earlier if that were possible. "I know why the guys asked me out tonight. They’re going to ask me to join them."
My silence must have registered my own lack of enthusiasm.
"See, while we’re out drinking, I’ll be listening, getting the details."
"You don’t socialize with people you’re going to arrest."
"Boss, I’m old enough to make up my own mind." And she hung up; we were back to father and daughter again.
No one asked me to, but I took a walk by the Nordic warehouse that evening. Besides, I don’t get enough exercise and a walk before bedtime helps me sleep.
By rights, a seeing-eyed dog named Rex should have accompanied me, but I’ve never liked the idea. I’m not against dogs—a dog would make good company, but I’ve had too many die on me. I don’t want to have another relationship end in pain.
Amazingly, given the late hour—it was a little after eight p.m., the loading dock was alive with activity.
"Is that you Al?" I was asked before the questioner saw clearly that I wasn’t Al.
"I’m looking for Charlie," I said. Marci had told me that Charlie Houston was the name of the part-time watchman who stayed over in the evenings just long enough to check the locks and set the alarms before going home.
"I’m taking his place tonight," a coarse unidentified voice said.
"You got coffee?" I asked.
"This fucking asshole thinks we’re a coffee shop," a high-pitched man’s voice sounded from off on my right. I turned in that direction prepared for trouble, but, thankfully, the boss man on the loading dock preferred minimum distractions. "No coffee tonight, old timer," he said, "I’ll tell Charlie you were looking for him."
Old timer? For an instant, I almost lost it. My God, I’m not even... never mind. "You guys are working late," I said, keeping up the pretense of being a garrulous old fart just out for an evening stroll.
"Inventory," said the boss man.
Both well satisfied with our not-quite-lies, I walked off into the darkness, while Al and the others went back to whatever they were doing, stripping the warehouse clean, I supposed.
I was back on my block, ready to turn into my apartment when I heard the voices, two men and a girl. The two men, half-drunk, were joking, competing for the girl’s favor. Marci, the girl, sounded as if she couldn’t have cared less. The men had to be her two new buddies from the warehouse. I listened, hoping I might learn something about how not to court a girl if nothing else.
The two men alternated mutual put downs with insincere flattery. "She wants a man," Chester insisted, "not a stuffed sausage." "You got fantastic buns, big girl," said Ron, "Once the squirt is gone, I’ll let you feel my abs."
"Good night boys."
"Hey, we were going to have a good-night drink at your place."
"My husband wouldn’t like that."
"You don’t have a husband." A breath of sanity lurked somewhere in that drunken skull.
"I do now they gave him time off for good behavior."
Chester, who’d been standing half on, half off the stairway, put both feet on the sidewalk. Ron took one step downwards and then another when Marci started back down after him. "Shh," she said. "I didn’t think he’d be awake. But I see the light on. You said you had a bottle in your car?"
"Yeah, but I left it back at the alley."
"Go get it. We’ll drink out here."
"Chester going to stay with you?" Ron’s voice was that of a forlorn puppy.
"Yeah, I stay with the chiquita. She need protection."
"She ain’t going to get it from a man your size." A short pause followed, while the big man tried to put his finger on just what it was that was bothering him. The liquor he’d imbibed throughout the evening wasn’t helping. The idea penetrated finally. "How come you don’t go get the bottle from your car?" The bigger man clapped the smaller on the shoulder.
"Wouldn’t be fair."
"Wouldn’t be fair, shit!" Ron clapped Chester on the shoulder a second time, and Chester responded with a stiff right to the chest. The slaps escalated in intensity as they moved off down the street; with luck they’d knock each other unconscious before they could get to the bowling alley.
I could hear Marci’s feet moving on the steps above me.
Before she could go far, I tapped the banister with my cane. "Not so fast, young lady."
"Paul, what are you doing here?"
"More to the point, what do you mean by bringing those bozos to where we live? Don’t interrupt. You may think this case will be over when you put them in jail, but it won’t. They’ll be out on bail or they’ll serve three months of a two-year sentence, and then come looking for you. Yours isn’t just an ordinary 8 to 5 job. You’ve got to take precautions."
Marci laughed; her heels clattered on the steps as she ran down the metal stairway and took my arm. "Paul, this isn’t our place."
I swiveled my head looking about me for the familiar pattern of light and shadow. No, it wasn’t our place. The night-blooming jasmine to my left should have given it away, but I’d been too preoccupied, too upset from my encounter at the warehouse. I took Marci’s hand and folded her arm under mine. "Let’s go home."
Chapter 4
The next morning, I woke possessed by so many questions that I almost stopped Marci on her way to work. At the last moment, I veered away from the steps where I’d hoped to intercept her and pretended to inspect my tomato plants for hornworms. Marci’s so disoriented and disgruntled when she first gets up that asking her for information that early in the day would’ve been an exercise in futility.
This morning was no exception. I’m not sure she even saw me as she strode away bleary-eyed down the sidewalk, like a rider asleep in the saddle of a horse that knows the way.
Still, questions remained to nag at me for the balance of the day. Who were those men on the loading dock the previous night? Was this how the stuff was being removed from the Nordic warehouse, stolen late in the evening after the watchman had left? Somehow I doubted it. And what had Marci learned drinking with her male coworkers at the bowling alley, other than new maneuvers for evading horny males? Had the men really asked her to join their gang, in which case she was probably wrapping up the thefts right now, or would be after she’d had her morning coffee.
Ordinarily, I’d have spent the entire day fussing, and might even have phoned her at work, or gone by Nordic Electronics, just to see what was up. But it wasn’t an ordinary day. A plumber who had started the repairs in apartment 8 the week before, then disappeared mysteriously halfway through the job, reappeared abruptly with his partner and demanded immediate admittance from a startled, then indignant tenant. My bank, which already had issued a set of standard denials about a series of errors in their favor, phoned to admit they just might have been wrong. "Might" was the operative word and they asked if I could come in to discuss it. Though my branch was only a few blocks away, naturally they wanted me to come in to the regional office. I declined vociferously, and their further phone calls, along with demands for payment from the plumber, the arrival of the pest people, and a whispered request from the elderly occupant of number 3 who had brought home another unwanted and neglected animal, (no, she could not keep it in her apartment), filled my day.