Lou
I slid the tablet down the counter, back to him.
“I don’t do that kind of stuff. Track down hookers. Especially not for guys like you”, I’d answered before he even said something. “It’s a matter of principle.”
He nodded before sliding the tablet back to me. This time, there was a magnetic card with a maximum amount of credits on it.
“I don’t want you to track her down. I simply want you to look at the video and tell me what you think.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else.”
I took another sip of beer and stood up. There was a reflection in the mirror behind the counter. A quite dull businessman from the upper municipalities who got mugged by some local girl and now he wanted his belongings back no matter what. I’d usually skip cases like that. There was plenty of other, shady detectives who would gladly take the job for a dime. To return what the girl stole? Sure. But to track her down? No.
That was the decision I made after one of them – with demeanor just like my potential employer - beat the shit out of Zizi. At some point, I was forced to choose sides. So, I did. At the end of the day, it turned out that the girls were much nicer folk than their customers.
I wasn’t paying too much attention to the CCTV footage on the tablet’s display. You could see from the start that it was one of those pretty common situations. A lonely, average looking man came into a bar and ordered a drink. An attractive woman sat beside him, and, bit by bit, the conversation started. Couple of drinks. Laughter. Subtle touch on the shoulder. She’s way out of his league. He knew from the start with whom he was dealing. There was nothing out of the ordinary on the footage and I told him so.
“Besides”, I added returning the tablet, “I can’t help you find her. She’s not local.”
“I’m not looking for her. I just want the thing she stole from me. And she is local. She’s just not in the business.”
Trying not to burst into laughter, I took another sip of beer. Suddenly, it felt sour.
“Well, perhaps she should be. She sure fooled me.”
“She’s working for the Westside Pharmaceutical Concern.”
Beer spilt on my shirt, while I struggled controlling my coughing. I put the bottle back to the counter and turned to the man.
“You got mugged by a pharmaco-agent and you’re arranging a job with the detective in the same bar where it happened? Man...!”
I didn’t want to have anything with it. In the not-so-cold ongoing war between pharmaceutical concerns, whichever side you’d pick, it would be the wrong one and you could easily end up in the white waters. Fished up somewhere along the shore.
There was a mess in my pockets, several credit cards. Empty, all expect one with a few credits on it. I slammed it on the bar and turned to him:
“This conversation never happened. Don’t come after me. You hear me?”
Apparently, he was deaf. Or just plain stupid. He rushed after me while I was walking towards the exit. “Does this mean you’ll take the job, Mr. Lou?”
The wind whipped me across the face before I managed to answer. I raised the collar of my thin leather jacket, swearing myself for deciding to wear it and went on into the night without even looking back.
Start writing here…
