Copyright © 2008 Caroline Taylor. All rights reserved. 

What got my attention was the sharp tang of unwashed boy. He wasn’t much to look at, standing there in the doorway to my office. For starters, his clothes were filthy. Ditto the snarled rat’s nest of light brown hair that framed a grimy face.

"What can I do for you?" I asked my uninvited visitor.

"You’re P.J. Smythe?" He took a step backward, his skeptical gaze taking in the threadbare environs.

"You were expecting Bruce Willis?" By then, I should’ve been used to people’s reaction when they saw me for the first time. I couldn’t help it if I bore an uncanny resemblance to Tinker Bell. But the hesitant reaction, coming as it did from this pint-sized urchin with eyes the color of Snickers bars, brought an angry flush to my face. So I was less than a foot and a half taller than him. Did that and my hair coloring automatically make me a ditzy blond bimbo?

"You do confidential investigations?" said the kid, taking a cautious step across the threshold. His scuffed sneakers had no laces, and his jeans were black with grime.

"That’s what the sign says," I replied. I wanted to ask him where his mother was, only he didn’t look like such a person had been anywhere near him for at least a month.

He pulled a wad of money out of his jeans pocket and held it out. "I can pay."

"For what?" I motioned him toward the chair opposite my Army surplus desk and pulled a yellow notepad out of the drawer.

"You don’t look very busy," he said as he spied the game of Solitaire on my computer monitor.

I closed it down. "Lunch break."

He looked skeptically at the clock on the wall, which read ten-thirty.

"Let me guess," I said. "You want me to find your lost dog."

"Get real, lady." He crossed an ankle over his knee and swung the other leg beneath him, idly kicking the front of my desk. "I look like I got a dog?"

"Well, perhaps I should call Child Protective Ser—"

"—No!" the kid jumped to his feet, yanked the telephone receiver from my hand, and punched the off button. "This has to be confidential," he said, "just like your sign."

I raised my hands. "If you’re in trouble, we need to get help."

"I look like I’m in trouble?"

"You could use a bath, some clean clothes, maybe even some food." Not to mention a mother and a home. My guest returned to his chair and resumed the same position, tapping his foot against my desk.

He shrugged. "I need to find Bob."

"First, tell me your name," I said, pencil in hand.

"Thomas."

"Thomas what?"

"Thumb," he said, the corners of his mouth turning downward to suppress a smile.

Okay. Not his real name. The kid was cautious. "Age?"

"Sixteen."

Right. "How about ten?" I scribbled on my notepad.

"What difference does it make?" he replied, crossing his arms.

Maybe just the ethical question of taking money from a child. I tapped my pencil and gave him the hard stare.

"Okay. Twelve."

"Who’s Bob, and why do you have to find him?"

"A friend," said Thomas. "Only the last coupla weeks some bad guys’ve been bothering him. He warned me to keep out of their way, and now he’s disappeared."

"Bob looks after you?"

"Sort of." He pulled the money out of his pocket and began to count it. "How much you want?"

One of the first lessons I’d learned when becoming a private eye was to charge more than I thought the client could afford. I’d only managed to solve one case so far, and that hadn’t actually put me on easy street. But it beat teaching. Something about the kid’s scruffy condition made me want to tell him not to worry about the money. Only I had to worry about the money. The rent was two months overdue, and my car was badly in need of a tune-up. I thought about telling the kid I didn’t do orphans. Instead, I said, "I’m not sure you can afford me."

Thomas’s face fell, and he slid forward in the chair as though about ready to get up and leave. If he left, where would he go? I was betting not to authorities of any description. If I didn’t help him, who would? "I usually charge eight hundred a day plus expenses," I explained, ready to go lower for someone much shorter than my previous client had been.

"No problem," said Thomas, laying the bills on the desk in front of him. "There’s more where this came from."

"Where’d you get all that money?"

"My piggy bank?"

Okay. I should’ve stopped right there. Only I was looking at the solution to a lot of financial headaches, and I didn’t want to turn the kid away. Taking a deep breath, I tapped my pencil on the notepad. "Tell me about the bad guys. Why were they bothering Bob?"

He slid back onto the chair with a heavy sigh. "Don’t know. Bob wouldn’t say."

"What’s Bob’s last name?"

"Don’t know," he said, running a grimy hand through his hair.

"Then what’s he look like?"

Thomas reached into his pocket and handed me one of those photos you can get taken in a penny arcade. A cleaner Tom Thumb wearing an "Indiana Jones" T-shirt and jeans was standing next to a beefy biker-type in sunglasses with a scraggly black beard that hid most of the rest of his face. He was wearing a black leather jacket and had stuck two fingers up in a vee to make horns behind Tom’s head. They were both laughing.

"I can’t tell much from this," I said. "Maybe the police—"

"No police!"

I sighed. "’Cause they’ll take you to Child Services and then arrest Bob?"

"Bob’s done nothing."

"Except disappear." I watched Thomas squirm uncomfortably in the chair while his foot kept tapping away. "But enough of this. I’m hungry, and you look like you could use a bite to eat. Want lunch?"

"I can pay," he said, pulling the wad of bills from his pocket.

Before leaving the Banner Building where I hung my shingle, I sent my client down the hall to the men’s room to clean some of the grime off his face and arms. I had my standards, after all, and I wasn’t about ready to risk being turned away from my favorite watering hole, the Bar-T Steak and Chop House.

We ended up going Dutch because I didn’t have enough to pay for two Philly cheese steaks, a side of onion rings and fries, two large cokes, and two slices of cherry pie with vanilla ice cream on top.

Normally, a lunch like that would send me back to my office where, behind closed blinds, I could tilt back my chair, put my feet up on the desk, and attempt to decipher the iconography of the water spots on the ceiling. But Thomas was raring to go, saying he wanted to canvass the neighborhood.

At the corner of Ninth and Elm, I pulled over while he jumped out and talked to a homeless woman who was soliciting money from harried-looking stock brokers and lawyers, a surprising number of whom dropped coins in her cup.

"Hannah hasn’t seen Bob," he told me as he climbed back into the car. "But she’s been working another spot closer to downtown."

"To the polo grounds then, milord?" I asked.

"No, Bob wouldn’t—"

"Bob wouldn’t play polo?" I waited for Thomas to cover the slip that a street urchin would know anything about polo, let alone where the polo grounds were, but he kept scanning the crowds of people on the sidewalks to either side of the car.

"What I meant was Bob wouldn’t have gone that far." His voice dripped with contempt. "And I do know where the polo grounds are." He leaned over and punched buttons on the radio until he found a hip-hop station.

I groaned. "Driver gets to pick the music. I’ll take anything else. Even Britney. Now, tell me why Bob wouldn’t go there."

"He can’t see." Thomas punched in an oldies station where the Beach Boys were grooving to "My Little Deuce Coupe."

Oh. "Then how does he get around?"

"People like me. We help him. He’s got friends, only—"

"Only now he’s got enemies too."

"Yeah."

"…Still no closer to finding the two men who robbed the Cornucopia Bank yesterday," said the oldies DJ. "Police think it might be the Diablo gang again. Eyewitnesses saw the robbers drive away in a late model—"

Thomas punched another button. "Trouble with radio these days, it’s all talk."

For another hour and a half, we cruised the neighborhood listening to Kenny Chesney and Shania Twain and looking for signs of Bob. By then the temperature was in the nineties, and my shirt was sticking to the car seat. The gas gauge read "empty." I didn’t have any cash after I’d paid for my lunch, and my plastic was maxed to the limit. Hating myself, I told the kid that part of my fee included expenses, and one of those expenses was gas.

"No problem," he said, peeling off some twenties.

Thomas headed for the coke machine while we waited for the tank to fill. No sooner was he out of sight than up roared a big black Harley with a tall, thin cowboy in the saddle. To accent the obligatory jeans and leather jacket, he was wearing hand-tooled, pointy-toed black leather boots.

"Hi," I said, batting my baby blues, a vital feature of my ditzy blond bimbo act. "I’m looking for a guy who used to ride a Harley just like yours." I handed him the picture that Thomas had given me. "Ever seen him?"

"Yep."

Ah, well. What were the odds I’d find a loquacious cowboy? "Is he a friend of yours?"

"Nope."

"I don’t get it."

He turned and lowered his sunglasses the better to see me. "I seen him last week at a biker’s rally, lady. But I don’t know him from jack."

"Oh. Well, thanks anyway." I watched the man strap on his helmet and settle one spur-clad boot on the pedal. That’s why I didn’t notice that Thomas had crept back into the car and was crouched on the floor of the back seat.

"Are you hiding?" I asked him, as the Harley roared off down the street.

"That’s one of the bad guys." He peered over the top of the front seat. "I saw him kick Bob in the stomach. Twice."

Oof. "When did this happen?"

"Coupla days ago," Thomas climbed over the seat and belted himself in.

I was not the motherly type. I’d been an only child. I didn’t know who my father was. My mother died when I was fourteen, and I was raised by my Uncle Alex, who knew an awful lot about self-defense and lock-picking from his days repossessing cars but zilch about how to comfort a lovelorn gawky teenager who’d just seen her boyfriend kissing her best friend. That’s why it didn’t occur to me that I ought to drive Thomas home to my walk-up efficiency and wash and iron his clothes while he languished in a warm bubble bath, drinking chocolate milk and reading a comic book (not that I had either milk or comics to offer). Instead, I drove him to a mall where I suggested that he buy some shoelaces, another pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and some replacement underwear, mostly so I could stand being within three feet of him without gagging.

He didn’t seem to mind the shopping spree, and it was he who suggested that it might be smart if he got cleaned up before he put on his new things. I ended up driving him back to my walk-up where he spent about twenty minutes using up all the hot water while I made a few phone calls.

None of the homeless shelters had seen a man fitting Bob’s description recently although a Mrs. Wassenstrasse who answered the phone at the St. Jude shelter told me that they might have accommodated a blind man answering Bob’s description for about three months during the winter. "He left as soon as the daffodils came out," she said. "Little kid came and got him. Might have been his son."

Right. "Was his name Bob?" I asked.

"I don’t think anybody asked the kid," she replied, "but the blind gent called himself Robert."

I thanked Mrs. Wassenstrasse and called the county morgue. I could hear the tub draining in the bathroom, and I wanted to get my answer before Thomas emerged. "No beefy white middle-aged John Does in the last forty days," the attendant said. "Well that’s a relief," I said. Although why I should care what had happened to Thomas’s friend puzzled me. Okay. He was blind. And, if he hadn’t already met the Grim Reaper, he was probably still pretty scared.

"I got the license number, if it would help."

I turned, and my jaw dropped. The bath and new clothes had transformed Thomas into a perfectly ordinary kid with sun-streaked hair and a smudge of freckles running across the bridge of his nose. Sure, his sneakers were still scuffed, but lots of kids wear scuffed sneakers. "License number?"

"Yeah. The motorcycle at the gas station."

Well, duh. Nothing like a smarty-pants twelve-year-old to make a would-be spunky female private eye feel stupid.

After ordering in an extra large pizza with everything but olives and anchovies, I called a friend at DMV who owed me a favor. She promised to get back to me in the morning.

"Okay, Sherlock," I said, as we crouched, Indian-style, over the pizza box on the floor. "What would make a bunch of bad bikers go after Bob? I mean, he can’t see. So that means he can’t drive—ergo he couldn’t have stolen one of their ’cycles."

"And he couldn’t have seen them doing nothin’ bad either," said Thomas.

"Was Bob a biker once?" I asked. "He looks like one in that picture."

"He was until he ended up blind," said Thomas through a mouthful of pizza. "Told me he got some degenarator…whatever…eye disease a long time ago. So he can’t ride anymore. He can’t even walk nowhere without me or somebody helping him."

I handed Thomas the last piece. "How come he still hangs with bikers?"

"Dunno. Maybe ’cause he knew them from before?" Thomas, picked green peppers and onions off the bottom of the empty pizza box. "I didn’t like them."

"Yeah. They can be awfully scary."

"Naw," he said. "It’s not that. A lotta those guys look bad but they’re just like Bob, you know, good-hearted and… you know. I just didn’t like the ones who were bothering Bob. They’d call him names. Like No-Eyes or Rayless. And the cowboy was the worst. He’d pretend to be ogling some babe passing on the street, only it would be some old lady with gray hair, and he’d tell Bob how foxy the babe was, commenting on her, you know, her boobs and stuff, and Bob would get all excited and call out to her, "Blow me a kiss, Baby," and everybody’d crack up laughing while the poor old lady would be scared shitless…" he paused to catch his breath. "Anyway. I didn’t like ’em."

I didn’t like having to cope with a cranky twelve-year-old the next morning either. Thomas could not be persuaded to open his eyes and get off my sofa. "Okay," I said after the third fruitless attempt, "I’m leaving in five minutes. With or without you. If you stay here, there’s only the daytime soaps ’cause I don’t have cable. I don’t have any food either."

That seemed to do the trick, even though the only thing Thomas could manage were grunts and sniffles as we crept through rush hour toward a Dunkin’ Donuts. Geez. Was I like that at his age? It might explain why Uncle Alex had been so crusty.

Two jelly-filled and one chocolate iced later, Thomas was sitting in the chair opposite, his foot beating a now familiar tattoo against the desk while I checked my e-mail for the message from my DMV friend that would give me the Harley-riding cowboy’s name and address.

I didn’t want Thomas fooling around on my computer, hacking into things only twelve-year-olds can manage or planting worms in my software, nor did I want to put him in possible harm’s way. "If you do some of the work, I won’t have to charge as much," I said as I pocketed the address and logged off. I picked up the phone book and plopped it down on the desk in front of him. "Look up all the Harley clubs in the area and check to see if they know somebody named Lee West," I said. "I’ll be back in a jiff. Personal errand."

I locked the door behind me not so much to keep Thomas safe as to make sure he didn’t decide that I was getting nowhere and disappear on me. By now, I had at least twenty-four hours invested in the case, even though so far my client had been paying the expenses, but I needed every cent of that eight hundred he’d promised me.

I headed off to the Marblegate Court apartment complex where Lee West (such a convenient handle for a cowpoke) parked his Harley and his boots when he wasn’t kicking blind men in their beer bellies. The Harley was gone, but I tapped politely on the door to Number 30 anyway. After waiting a couple of seconds, I knocked loudly enough to cause the door to Number 31 across the hall to open. "He ain’t there," said a woman’s smoky voice through the crack made by the night chain.

"Sorry," I said, moving off down the hall as the door behind me slammed shut. I counted to a hundred and fifty and slipped silently back down the hall to Number 30 where I put Uncle Alex’s lock-picking training to work and was inside in no time.

A man with a pillow case over his head was tied to the chair in the dining nook. I took a tentative step forward. "Are you Bob?"

The pillow case bobbed furiously.

I rummaged through the kitchen drawers in search of a knife or scissors. Yanking the case off his head, I removed the tape from his mouth and began to saw at the ropes. With his bushy beard, the guy did look somewhat like the man in the arcade photo.

"Who’re you?" he rumbled from somewhere down in his barrel chest.

"Thomas hired me to find you," I said. "Now where’s Lee West?"

"You better hurry. He only went out for smokes."

After cutting the rope tying Bob to the chair, I grabbed his elbow and guided him to the door, which opened as if on command. And there stood the cowboy.

Lifting his boot, West delivered a vicious kick to Bob’s stomach. Stumbling backward, he landed hard on his back. I could hear him struggling to regain his breath as West grabbed me by the front of my shirt, picked me off the floor, and threw me down onto the sofa.

Pulling a knife from his waistband, he shoved it under my chin. "Make one move, bitch, and you’re toast." His breath smelled so rotten, I coughed. The chill gleam in his eyes sent my heart racing.

"Hurry up, Bob," he said to the man writhing and gasping on the floor. "You’re gonna talk now, bud, or your friend gets her pretty face all cut up."

"I… don’t… know…" Bob gasped as he pushed himself up on his elbows. "Told you that already."

"Yeah right. Well maybe you need to hear the lady begging for her life to make you remember. That fucker Diablo owes me my share, dammit. So where is he?"

"Leave her out of it," said Bob. "Let her go. I don’t even know who she is."

West laughed. "She’s maybe the Avon lady, Bob? Just here by accident?" I gritted my teeth as the point of the blade pierced the flesh beneath my chin.

"Oh, look. She’s not blue-blooded at all," West said. "But I forgot, didn’t I? You like trailer trash."

"Tell him, Bob," I pleaded.

"Drop the knife, dickwad," came a squeaky voice from over West’s shoulder.

The cowboy’s hand froze as he turned toward the speaker. It was Thomas, and he was holding the .38 special that I kept in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet. The gun wobbled in his hands, which had me thanking the PI gods that he wouldn’t be firing it since the ammo was safely stashed in my bedside drawer.

"Good work, little buddy," said Bob.

"Let her go," Thomas told West, "or I’ll shoot."

"You pull that trigger, Eddie, and you’re gonna hit the lady," said West, but he remained frozen, the knife at my face momentarily forgotten.

"Put the knife down, cowboy," said Bob. "Somebody might get hurt."

"Ain’t gonna be me," said West, and he lunged toward the weapon.

But I was quicker. I stuck my legs out, and the cowboy tripped over them, jamming the pointed toe of one of his fancy boots into the carpet. The knife flew through the air as he stumbled forward, his head hitting the corner of the dining table as he fell.

Thomas (or had I heard Eddie?) shoved the gun in West’s ear. "Use some of that rope to tie his hands," he told me.

"I think I’m out of here," I said, backing away, my hands in the air. And that’s when I felt the sharp point of West’s knife at the base of my skull.

"I got her, Eddie," said Bob. "You do West, first."

"You’re not going to kill him, are you?" I said, my voice rising into the stratosphere.

"Naw," said my former client. "Just tie him up like he did Bob. And then I’m gonna do you a favor and call the police to report some trouble here."

Once West was immobilized, Bob shoved me down into the same chair he’d been sitting in when I’d walked through the door. After slapping a couple of pieces of duct tape over my mouth, he threw the pillow case over my head and wrapped the rope around my torso, pinning my arms to the chair. Then he tied my ankles to the chair legs.

"You’ll be okay," said Eddie, "once the police get here."

"Mmmmmmph!" I said, squirming frantically.

If I got out of this without being held as an accessory to bank robbery, I was never going to take another kid for a client. I was never going to save a stranger, no matter how cute and vulnerable-looking he might be. And if my legs hadn’t been tied to the chair, I would’ve been kicking myself real hard for believing that Bob was blind. Why put a pillow case over the head of a sightless person?

"Thanks for being so nice," said Eddie, patting my shoulder. "Your fee’s in the top drawer of your desk."

As they left the apartment, I heard Bob say, "I didn’t think you’d look for me, Eddie. I mean why? You coulda kept the whole thing for yourself."

"You’re the one with the driver’s license," said my former client.