Falls The Shadow

39

Beth knocked hard on the brass front door of Marrakech. It was locked, as was to be expected that early in the afternoon for a restaurant that served only dinner. If anyone could hear us, we were being studiously ignored, but still she knocked.

“Maybe we should go around back,” I suggested.

“I’m not done banging,” she said.

“You’re going to break your hand. Listen, Beth, we don’t know where it will lead. Don’t get your hopes up.”

“He lied to us.”

“It’s little Jerry Sonenshein, the teacher’s pet rat,” I said. “How could we have expected anything different? One time one of the AV guys was showing a driver’s-ed film, you know, the one with all the bloody accidents to try to scare you straight? Suddenly, right in the middle, while the Signal 30 soundtrack droned on, someone cut in a porn video that-”

“I don’t want to hear old high-school stories, Victor. I want to know what he’s hiding.”

“So do I, but banging on a door like some demented tax collector is not going to help us. What’s gotten into you?”

She let out a nervous breath. “This could be what he needs.”

“I know,” I said slowly, looking at her carefully. “That’s why we’re here.”

She heard something in my voice, because she stopped the banging, backed away from the door. “All right,” she said, turning from me so I couldn’t see her face. “Finish your story.”

“Okay, this is great. So the porn video went on for like five minutes, five revelatory minutes, before the teacher glanced at the screen and figured out what was happening. The AV guy got expelled, but word was, it was little Jerry did the cutting. He denied it, swore up and down, but there was some AV feud going on, a tussle for AV president, which is like a battle for king of the dung hill, and the porn video was enough to knock out his competition and for him to end up on top. He’s always been that kind of guy.”

“A liar?”

“Yes, and seriously creepy.”

She sighed, looked down the street. “Let’s go around back.”

“Good idea,” I said.

There was a truck in the alley offloading produce, shriveled tomatoes, wilted romaine, moldy onions, and spoiled leeks, the kind of produce you get when your vendors don’t trust that you can pay and are certain you can’t afford to go to someone else. I hated to even imagine the state of the meat they were getting.

“Where are you two going?” said one of the men lugging the wooden crates into the restaurant.

“We’re here to see the boss,” I said as we slipped past him through the door.

“He’s busy,” he called after us.

“He’s not that busy,” I said.

We entered a short hallway that led to the kitchen. The kitchen was empty, gleaming, the oven doors, the pots hanging from their racks, the service shelves. A man in blue pants and an apron was slowly mopping the floor by the ovens. He lifted his head.

“Is the boss downstairs?” I said.

The man slowly nodded.

“Which way?”

He indicated a door behind him, at the other end of the kitchen.

“Thanks.”

“I don’t think, meester,” he said slowly, “you want to go down there right now.”

“He’s expecting us,” I said.

“Not right now he not especting you.”

“So we’ll surprise him.”

The man looked at us for a moment, turned slowly to look at the door behind, shrugged. As Beth and I passed by, he went back to his slow mopping.

The door led to a ragged wooden stairwell that tumbled into the basement. A single bulb hanging from a wire showed the metal door of a large freezer and an open storage room filled with sacks of couscous and spices, bins of onions and potatoes and garlic. On the other side was a door with a plaque that read OFFICE.

“That’s it,” I said. “You want to knock?”

“No,” she said. “Why spoil the surprise?”

“Good plan.”

I listened at the door. He was in there, all right. I heard him say something and heard some sort of noise that I couldn’t make out. Like the rhythmic knocking of a radiator. Except it was too warm outside for a radiator.

Slowly, quietly, I opened the door, and we stepped through.

Geoffrey Sunshine stood in front of his desk, facing away from the door, his pants pooled around his ankles so that his pimply butt was staring straight at us. He was playing hide the salami with a woman draped facedown across his glass-topped wooden desk, each thrust causing a banging on the table. The woman’s skirt was pulled over her head, her panties were around her knees, her butt was plump and pale. The sight of him pounding away from behind her was like watching some bizarre exhibition at a carnival freak show. Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and watch the amazing rabid ferret as it mounts and violates an oversize honeydew melon. Gad. It was more nauseating than the King Farouk cigar.

“For the sake of all that’s decent in the world,” I said, “and for the sake of my stomach, stop.”

At the sound of my voice, Geoffrey Sunshine spun out and faced us. Double gad.

“Dear Lord,” said Beth. “Pull up your pants.”

“Get out of here,” he snarled while, thankfully, complying with Beth’s demand.

“I don’t think so, Jerry,” I said.

The woman on the desk raised herself on her elbows and turned her face toward us. Rosy-cheeked, wide-eyed, lipstick-smeared, satisfyingly bored. “Can I get up now, Mr. Sunshine?”

“Call the police, Bridget, we have intruders.”

Bridget didn’t look first to the phone, she looked to the desk, to a spot on the glass that had been cleared of paper. Sunshine followed her gaze, widened his eyes, and then reached over and pushed a file to cover the empty desk space.

Not much of mystery there, hey.

“Go ahead, Bridget,” I said. “First, why don’t you pull up your panties?”

Bridget, unembarrassed, slid off the desk, pulled up her lingerie, smoothed down her skirt, stood. She was a big, good-looking woman, with a waitress’s dress and a milkmaid’s face. Even in her flats, she towered over the restaurateur.

“Now you can call the police,” I said. “And be sure to tell them to bring their narcotics test kit so they can take samples from the desktop.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” lied Sunshine.

“Just like you didn’t know that Velma Wykowski married Samuel Takahashi, the guy who bailed your restaurant out of bankruptcy just a few months ago.”

“Should I call the police, Mr. Sunshine?” said Bridget, looking down at him for some direction.

Sunshine glanced at the desk and then at us, thought about it a moment, and shook his head.

Just then the bodyguard appeared in the doorway, his fists balled for action, a napkin still tucked into his neck. His lunch had evidently been interrupted by the news of our appearance, and he was none too happy about it. He charged into the office and grabbed me by my neck. It seemed to fit rather too comfortably in his fist. Then he lifted.

I grappled at his wrist and said something devastatingly witty, but only a cricket’s chirp came out of my constricted throat. I struggled to breathe and failed.

“Nice of you to show up, Sean,” said Sunshine.

I gestured at my throat.

“I’ll toss this riffraff out back, boss,” said Sean.

I gestured ever more wildly.

“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think? Mr. Carl is seeming to have some trouble breathing. Is that right, Victor?”

I waved my arms like a madman.

“Let Mr. Carl down,” said Sunshine, “and then you and Bridget can leave us.”

“It won’t be no problem taking care of them, boss.”

“No, I suppose not, but still. We’ll discuss where you were later, but now do as I say.”

Sean dropped me to my knees. I coughed my throat clear, sucked down great, noisy gulps of air.

“What about what we talked about, Mr. Sunshine?” said Bridget, a hopeful expression on her pretty face.

“Let’s schedule another meeting,” he said.

Her hope dissolved into annoyance. “Another meeting? It isn’t my fault we were interrupted. For heaven’s sake, Mr. Sunshine, I was just asking for a change of shift.”