Dave Zeltserman: Fast Lane

“Don’t worry about it. You’ve been wanting this awful bad and it’s only natural to get shaken up a bit when you’ve been let down.” I hemmed and hawed a little before continuing. “I hate seeing you torn up like this. Should it really be this important for you to find your birth parents?”

“I don’t know, Johnny. But it is.”

“Your adoptive parents are nice folks, better than most people could hope for. Maybe you should be satisfied with them. It would be a shame to end up spending all this money and time only to find out something you might be better off not knowing. There’s a reason why a pretty little baby is given up for adoption.”

She shook her head, her jaws tightening with determination.

“I’ve got to find them,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to ever since I was twelve-that’s when I found out I was adopted. Frank and Julie are wonderful parents and I love them. But that doesn’t mean I don’t need to know who I really am.”

“What if it turns out your real mother was a prostitute? Or your daddy was a madman? Or a murderer?”

“Why are you saying that?”

I gave her a sympathetic smile. “Mary, some things are better left alone. Maybe this is one of them.”

“I don’t want to leave it alone.”

“How’s your job going?” I asked.

“What-it’s going okay.”

“It must be awful hard,” I said, “going to college during the day and then working nights at that convenience store. Just to pay for this.”

“It’s my decision.” She forced a weak smile. “I’m an adult, you know.”

I leaned back in my chair and decided to go at it from a different angle. “When I first started out as a private detective I had a case similar to this. This boy, he felt the same as you, that he couldn’t be happy unless he was able to meet with his birth parents. And-”

Mary cut in, giving me a cross-eyed look. “I’m really not interested in this,” she insisted.

“I appreciate that,” I stumbled on, “but it might help to hear me out. I found this boy’s momma for him. After more sweat and hard work I found his daddy had been long dead, killed in prison. It turned out that my client, well let’s just say, was the product of a rape and grew up to be the spitting image of his daddy. When he showed up at his momma’s door and she got a look at him, something in her snapped.”

Mary’s eyes drifted away from me. My story was boring her and I couldn’t help feeling a little hot under the collar. I cleared my throat and continued, wishing I had never started.

“When she looked at this boy she didn’t see him as her long lost son. Instead she saw the son of a bitch who had raped her years before. By the time anyone was able to get her off him, she had half his face scratched up and had almost cut out one of his eyes. My client didn’t end up any happier and neither did his mother.”

Mary was looking around impatiently. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me this. It’s not going to change my mind. And besides, I don’t think I have to worry about being the spitting image of a rapist.”

I leaned further back in my chair and gave her a hard look. She was so damn determined and headstrong. There was no sense trying to talk her out of it. For a second, I almost told her the truth. I wanted to, but it would have ended up causing too much pain.

I let out my breath slowly. “I only want to make sure you understand what you might be up against. If you want me to keep looking, I’ll do just that.”

“I appreciate that, Johnny.” She blushed, lowering her eyes from mine. “There’s something else, something we haven’t talked about. The night before you left. I know things got kind of weird, but before that everything happened too quickly for me. I guess I wasn’t ready for it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want it to happen. Only that we need to take it more slowly.”

Her face had turned red. I forced a smile and told her I felt awful about it, and that I hoped the two of us could forget it ever happened.

She looked startled, not expecting what I said. “That’s not at all what I’m trying to say. I don’t feel bad about it and you shouldn’t either. And I’m not saying we should stop!”

I shook my head. “We have to. It was plain wrong with you being as vulnerable as you are right now, and well, me being as old as I am.”

“Why are you acting like this? You didn’t-” And she stopped herself cold. She gave me an odd kind of look, almost as if she were seeing me for the first time, and sat there for a good minute trying to make up her mind about something. Finally she told me I was probably right. She looked down at her nails and added, “I better be going. You’ll let me know as soon as you find out anything?”

I nodded, my smile strained. “And don’t worry. I’ll find them for you.” I watched, almost hypnotically, the rhythmic motion of her hips as she walked towards the door. She hesitated slightly and then she was gone. As the door closed behind her, I couldn’t help but feel a little empty inside. As if I had screwed up and lost something I couldn’t afford to lose.

That night before I left for Oklahoma . . . .

I closed my eyes and played it back in my mind. The way Mary’s lips felt brushing against mine, the way she smelled and how dizzy and light everything became. And then the sickness rolling over me. For a moment I could feel it again, the dull nausea swirling in my head and stomach. I could feel it way down in my throat, pushing its way up. I squeezed my eyes shut and forced the images out of my head.

The hell with it. The hell with all of it.

It wasn’t as if there was anything to be ashamed of. I had stopped it way before that. Anyways, I didn’t show her anything she hadn’t seen before. I bet if I had kept going she would have taught me a few new tricks. It’s just like everything else; you try so hard in this lifetime and, well, like I said, the hell with it.

And besides, the two of us were nothing at all like Craig Singer and his daughter.

Nothing at all like that . . . .

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, turning my mind back to what I needed to focus on. I wasn’t going to be able to talk Mary out of searching for her parents. Something else was going to have to be thought up because if Mary didn’t get what she was paying me for, sooner or later she was going to lose faith in me and hire herself another detective.

He’d find Rose for her. He’d have to. It was easy enough for me to do it.

With a start, I heard Max’s voice coming from the anteroom. His voice was hushed as if he were trying to keep it low, and I realized he had to be talking to Mary. I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts I’d forgotten about him.

I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I knew what he was after. He’d be making it sound as if the two of us were closer than brothers and all the while dropping snide hints and innuendos about me. And acting every bit as dumb and innocent as he looked. “Johnny, great guy, give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. Used to be a pretty good detective before people started asking for his autograph. I guess with all that, you can’t help getting a little careless.” And he’d be worming out of Mary what she had hired me for, and then building himself up as if God had put him on earth specifically to help her. All to chisel me out of a client.

I have a rule among the detectives that work for me that I, and I alone, meet with the clients. Over the years I caught him sneaking behind my back a few times. That’s what happens with some folks when you try to treat them fair. They look to stick it to you as soon as you’re bent over and ignorant to the world. And I couldn’t have been any fairer to Max over the years, always giving him the benefit of the doubt. Putting up with a lot of crap that any other sane person wouldn’t, letting him act as if I should be working for him instead of the way it was.