Читать книгу Klick, the Dick - Milam Smith - Страница 9

“You looking for someone?” I asked the guy jiggling the doorknob to my office. I stood at the second floor landing. I was in the shadows and far enough away, that I figured he couldn’t see me too good.

“Clyde Klick?” he asked loudly. Of the six offices on the floor, there was only one other occupied besides mine. I doubted if his voice had disturbed anybody.

Still, the guy didn’t look too much of a threat so I walked towards him. I couldn’t see him too well, for all that.

He wore a suit, worn-looking, like off the Salvation Army rack, or maybe the Bag Lady I’d just seen. The suit was gray. Power suit. Probably a lawyer. Alarm bells rang in my head. But it was already too late. The guy was trim, light-weight. Maybe a runner. His shoes were adidas, blue. Blended well with his suit.

I stopped in front of him and gave him my customary frown. I should patent it.

“Yeah,” I told him with a sigh. “I’m Klick.”

He didn’t say anything. Just reached inside his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper and slapped it on my chest. I took them with my eyes closed. He walked around me and left. Probably had another twenty papers to serve before the day was over. A summons runner.

I considered catching him and square-dancing on his face. But then, maybe that was the reason I was getting the paper. No way Blondie could have seen a lawyer that quick, so I tried to think of the last guy I had pounced on.

I unfolded and read the paper.

“Oh, Great!” I said to the empty hall. “Divorce papers.” I’d seen ‘em enough times to know I didn’t have to read more than the first line.

Well, three was my lucky number.

***

I slammed the phone receiver down so hard that it broke Mickey Mouse’s arm clean off. Then I slapped Mickey in the head and the phone went flipping through the air. It landed with a crash and a final ring.

Ms. McGurty banged the floor under my desk. Her book store was directly below. Over the months that I had been in business the Booke Stoare owner had developed an uncanny sense of knowing right where to bang. I had seen a baseball bat behind her counter and was sure that’s what she used to bang on her ceiling, my floor.

I had learned to try to ignore her. She really wasn’t a bad person as long as she was ignored. I don’t think she liked that, though, being ignored. She’d been an attention-getter ever since she’d been told women weren’t allowed into the infantry at the outbreak of World War I. She had been a women’s libber ever since. That was okay with me. But I had made the mistake of saying ‘Miss’ to her the day I had moved into my office. She never forgot it.

I looked over at the phone. Mickey Mouse still had a smirky grin on his face. It seemed Mickey Mouse wasn’t so mickey-mouse made. I got up and walked over to it and stomped on it. The grin was gone.

My wife. I had married her the third time just a couple of years ago. I guess she wanted another divorce decree to even out the frames on the walls at home. Three marriages, three divorces, three children, one woman. Seemed out of balance.

I had called her as soon as I stepped in my office. She had said only six words; “Your clothes are in the street.”

After sweeping up Mickey’s parts and dumping them in the John Wayne trashcan, I walked over to my small closet.

Inside the closet, besides a couple suits and shirts, were sixteen boxes piled up from the bottom of the floor to behind my hanging clothes. I picked up the top box and opened it. I pulled out another Mickey Mouse phone. I set it on the desk. Whoever had boxed the phone had made a noose of the phone wire and wrapped it around his neck. I unwrapped it and bent around behind me and plugged it in. I lifted the phone from Mickey’s yellow-gloved hand; there was a dial-tone. I tossed the box by the trashcan.

Only fifteen phones left in the closet. There had been twenty-five in the beginning, payment for one of my first cases. The phones retailed for over sixty bucks. The client’s bill had been nearly a thousand, so I figured I had done okay on the deal. With my temper, it was actually a great deal.

I sat down and leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, raised my arms behind me and tried to relax. Yeah, right, relax.

I opened my eyes. Sunlight flooded the room through the windows behind and to the left of where I sat. I had the corner office, so I sat in a triangle, with windows all around. The office was fairly small because of the design. But the owner had given me the adjacent office until he rented it—which would be never—so that allowed me to keep this room nearly empty and therefore nearly neat.

My gray metal desk, bought at a government auction, faced the door. On each side of the door the walls were bare. The closet door was on the left. The windows on my right took up a whole wall. Outside those windows I had a good view of the wall of the building across the street.

The windows to my left looked out on the convention center. I could see the workers spreading tar over its roof. My windows were closed, but the sharp odor of tar filled my room. Or was it just a memory?

I kept a small filing cabinet by the door, with a chopped-off coat rack sitting on top. There were two captain’s chairs facing my desk. My desk was bare. I kept note paper in the top drawer, phone books and directories in the left drawer. In the lone drawer on the right I kept a pistol. I kept it loaded.

I closed my eyes and sighed.

Really, when I thought about it, I hadn’t loved my wife in years. We had remarried the last time for the kids. To hell with it, it would be the last one with her.

So what if I had just bought a new house, a car and new bikes for the kids. Even a new dog bowl. A few bills and child support never killed anyone, did it?

I thought of Beth, and then tried not to think of her. What good would it do?