1
If there was a significance, I wasnt getting it. I turned the sketch 180. It still looked like an eyeball with wings.
“You had it right the first time.”
I looked over at the guy I was sharing the booth with and grunted. “Whats it supposed to be?”
I got a shrug that said he hadnt spent a lot of time thinking about it. “A flyin eyeball.”
I was thinking this was not the person whose name was on the check lying between us on the Formica. The one for five grand. If he was, and thats what he thought I was asking, he would have grabbed his check and been on his way.
“Yeah, I got that part. Whats it mean?”
“Its just a tattoo, so far as I know.”
I put the drawing down and looked at the guy. He was boring me.
We were in a round corner booth at a chili joint called Angels on the south end of Orange Blossom Trail, and the guy was sitting closer than I would have preferred. The waitress drifted by; he ordered food, I didnt.
A couple of county cops showed and started in with the waitresses, the ladies laughing, acting bawdy for the heat. One of the cops was talking to a girl, maybe our waitress, I wasnt sure, the other one checking out the room. When his gaze slid past, I gave him a decent upstanding-citizen smile, as decent and upstanding as I can do sitting in a grease trap at two oclock in the afternoon with a fat guy wearing a plaid hat and a shiny suit.
With all the guy was giving to go on, I felt his best bet was a psychic with a bloodhound. We were wasting each others time, and I wasnt hungry, so I tried to put the conversation out of its misery. “Where do you find a hat like that?”
He looked up like he could see the narrow brim snapped over his eyes and grinned. “St. Paul,” telling me he was proud of it by the way he laid it out.
“St. Paul?” He nodded me on. “Whatd you say your name was? John?”
I knew that wasnt what he had said his name was, but no surname had been offered. I was trying to prompt him. I didnt expect it would work, and it didnt.
“Don.”
I pushed the check back in his direction, threw the drawing on top of it, said, “Tell you what, Don. You go on back up to St. Paul and tell the man who writes the checks that hell have to do better than this.”
Dons eyebrows did a jig. So did his Adams apple. “This is not sufficient to meet your needs, Mr. Sloan?” putting four syllables to sufficient, pointing at the check.
I shook my head. “The fives fine. But tell your guy that I dont have the resources or the inclination to find some nameless girl who might be in the Orlando area. Somewhere. We dont know what she looks like, but shes maybe pregnant and shes got a flying eyeball tattoo.” I gave him a sincere grin, said, “She might stand out back home in St. Paul, Don, but down here shes just another white girl with ink on her ass. Tell him the moneys nice, but I need a little more to go on. And Im sure your mans got his reasons for sending you to check me out instead of coming himself, but Im gonna need to hear a little more of the story, too. And Id prefer to hear it from him. He wants to arrange something, you let me know.”
Don was grinning, looking smarter than I thought he could. “This man will want to know something.”
“Whats that, Don?”
“He will want to know if you are good enough to justify these demands.”
“And whatll you say?”
“I will say you have decent stats.”
“And whatll he say?”
“He will say if you are so good, how come you did two years in a federal penitentiary and still do not have a valid investigators license.”
He caught me cold. Im sure it showed.
Don was kind. “What will I say, Mr. Sloan?”
I caught up with real time, said, “Tell him Ive got a letter from the Feds saying it was all just a big misunderstanding.”
Don nodded, he liked that. “I will tell him this.”
Dons chicken-something came, and I left him with it. I was thinking Id wasted the afternoon on something Id never hear from again.
Three days later the mailman dropped the same check at my place. No note. No nothing. Just an envelope with the check for five big fish.