Keith Thomson - Once a spy

But a crapshoot was far superior to Charlie’s other idea-doing nothing. He resolved to reel off the names of every United States president in office since Drummond’s birth, the major events in history during that time, and anything else Drummond might associate with government work.

Charlie took a deep breath, spun back at Drummond, and exclaimed, “Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

Drummond was fast asleep.

Frustration joined the exhaustion and angst already blackening Charlie’s mind. He wanted to fly at Drummond and shake his memory back into operation.

Rest at least had a track record, he reminded himself.

Drummond was curled into the fetal position. Charlie would have bet that the old man slept on his back in the classic coffin pose, arms crossed at right angles over his chest. Careful not to jostle him, he slid the comforter out from beneath him. Close proximity to his father had always given Charlie something of a full-body itch. But no longer, for some reason, or at least not now. Gently, Charlie covered him. He twisted the knob on the nightstand lamp in slow motion so the snap wouldn’t wake him, then he tiptoed to his own bed. The springs whined as he lowered himself onto it, but not so loud that Drummond could have heard.

Drummond sat bolt upright, eyes bulging with terror.

“What is it?” Charlie asked, catching the panic himself.

“Beauregard!” Drummond cried.

“You mean the dog?” After Charlie left home, Drummond took in two retired dog track greyhounds, John-Paul Jones, who lived two or three years, and Beauregard, who lasted about a year longer.

“We forgot to get someone to look after him while we’re away!”

“No, no, it’s fine. Beauregard is-” Charlie stopped short of saying, “dead,” seeking to soften it. He was clumsy with euphemisms. “Beauregard’s with Mom.”

Drummond’s face twisted in mystification. “Now how would Beauregard have gotten all the way down to Monroeville?”

It sounded awfully Alzheimer’s-y, but Charlie had a feeling it was a major clue. The envelope with the first of his mother’s Social Security checks had borne a forwarding label; originally the check had been mailed to Monroeville, Virginia.

He got up and paced some more, trying to make sense of it.

He’d been a month shy of four when she died. He remembered a woman with the grace of a princess, the grit of a tomboy, and a whimsy all her own. She liked rain. No matter how cold the water was at Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach, she let out a whoop and plunged in. The two of them never went on mere errands, they went out in search of adventure. And found it-at the time, Charlie believed riding in the shopping carts at FoodLand compared to the Paris-Dakar Rally.

He couldn’t recall her funeral-just Drummond sitting him at the kitchen table and soberly relaying the details of the accident. Charlie’s theory was either time had eroded the recollection or he’d blocked it out.

Tonight he developed a new theory: She never had a funeral.

“She’s still alive, isn’t she?” he asked Drummond.

“Who?”

“Mom.”

“How could that be?”

“If she didn’t in fact die.”

“She was hit by a bus in San Francisco in eighty-three, killed instantly,” Drummond said. His delivery was pat, much the same as when he detailed his duties at Perriman Appliances.

In a dark bedroom only slightly larger than its full-sized bed, Mickey and Sylvia Ramirez slept.

The telephone changed that.

Mickey looked first to the clock. 5:56.

Usually he slept until the alarm buzzed at 7:05. Then he needed three cups of coffee to dissipate the haze of semiconsciousness. Adrenaline made coffee superfluous now. Good tips often came early, before word could spread and odds could plummet.

“Fucking horseaholics,” Sylvia groaned.

Mickey was well aware that people had trouble believing he had a wife at all, let alone a beauty like Sylvia. Olive skinned, with leonine features and a chute of lustrous black hair, she reminded everyone of the queens and princesses on the canvases of El Greco or Velazquez. A few minutes with her, though, and everyone realized Mickey was no luckier in love than at the track.

The phone was just inches from his pillow, atop the stacked milk crates he used as a nightstand. Sylvia always insisted on answering, her aim being to prevent other horseaholics from putting ideas into his head. By the numbers, he admitted, she was justified. So far. But it was only a matter of time, he believed, until the big score that would bring the apartment of her dreams-“the one with separate bedrooms,” she liked to say.

As was their custom, he rolled out of the way and she swung wildly at the phone. Once she got a handle on the cordless handset, she answered with an indignant, “Hello?”

The entirety of her face bunched furiously toward her nose, telling Mickey who was on the line. In Sylvia’s mind, Charlie was to gambling what the Devil was to sin.

“Like the rest of the fucking world at this hour, he’s asleep now,” she said. “But just one thing before you go, Charlie Horse: Fucking thanks a lot for Great Aunt Edith. That money was supposed to be my sofa.”

Mickey could hear Charlie’s pleas as she plunged the handset toward the cradle. He grabbed it in time to save the connection.

“Man, how many fucking times I gotta tell you not to call here?” he said. This was for Sylvia’s benefit, which Charlie would understand. He wouldn’t have risked stirring Hurricane Sylvia, especially so early, unless something big was up.

Taking the handset, Mickey shot off the bed and out of the room. Sylvia was content to roll back to sleep, thank goodness.

The linoleum in the narrow hallway froze his bare soles. He entered the compact living room, which also served as his office, and pulled the door shut delicately, so the click wouldn’t wake four-month-old Alfonso-the living room also served as the nursery.

“The less you know, the better,” Charlie was saying, “but I need you to help me get hold of my mother or Grudzev’s going to be the least of my problems.” It did not sound like the man was calling with any sort of tip. It did sound like he’d been at the bottle.

“Your mother?” Mickey whispered for the sake of the baby, four feet away. “Wouldn’t you be wanting a lady with a crystal ball to get hold of her?”

“Listen for five seconds, please?” Charlie said, as sober as Mickey had ever heard him. “The first of her Social Security checks was forwarded to me from general delivery, Monroeville, Virginia. And last night, my father said something that led me to believe she’s actually still there.”

“So, you’re thinking, what? Your mom, who’s rich enough that she doesn’t give a shit about seventeen hundred bucks a month, can solve your problems?”

“For our purposes, that sums it up.”

“I’m guessing you tried calling four one one?”

“Every permutation of Isadora VanDeuersen Clark I could think of. The closest I got was an Isaiah Clark in Arlington, which isn’t in any way close. I know if anyone can find her, it’s you.”

“Directory assistance operators are amateurs,” said Mickey, the once and future PI. He lowered himself into his swivel chair at the computer table that, lately, doubled as a diaper-changing table. He toggled a switch and set his hard drive purring.

“Fasten your seat belt,” he said to Charlie. “I know a back way into the online databases the directory assistance operators use. Unpublished numbers they can’t access, I can, with just a click of the option key.”

His browser opened. A mouse click and three keystrokes and he was in the national master directory. A few more keystrokes and he relayed, “Nothing listed or unlisted for her. But, relax, we haven’t even gotten started.”