Hangdawg, Tuesday Afternoon

by Brian Sellnow

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

Somewhere else turned out to be an expensive restaurant. I'd already reserved a table, and we were half an hour early but they weren't too crowded. I knew the head waiter's name, because I had the Cowboy look it up. Details make the difference.

“So, Drake, what do you do for a living?”

“Odd jobs,” I told her with a half-smile. She liked that, too, a Mystery Man who had money. “You?”

She kind of frowned, then started telling me all about the rich family she worked for, so demanding and uppity. She worked her butt off, never got a “thank you.” They had so much money and paid her almost nothing for cleaning up after them. It was almost too easy. She loved to talk, and all I had to do was listen and sympathize.

She didn't like any of the Fischer family, much. Mr. Business Suit was too good to talk to her at all, his wife was a shrew who couldn't pick up her own clothes but screamed if she saw a speck of dust. The daughter, oh God, what a conceited, spoiled brat, worse than either of the parents. And that brought us to the dog.

It turned out that the dog was worse than I had imagined. It hated everyone, even the idiot daughter who doted on it, and everyone except her hated it back. It bit anyone who came near enough, growled and snarled at people too far away to bite, crapped on the expensive carpet.

Everyone would have been glad it was gone, but the Princess had been crying and yelling for two days straight and showed no signs of letting up. Apparently these people couldn't be happy unless they were making someone else miserable. Daddy had offered to get a new dog, but his darling offspring wouldn't hear of it. Celeste hadn't heard about the reward and, of course, I didn't mention it.

After dinner, I dropped her off at her apartment. She looked disappointed, but I told her I had to wake up early. She gave me a telephone number, not her own because she wasn't allowed to carry her phone in the house. The number she gave me was supposed to be secret, and you had to enter an additional code after you called it, even just to talk. I told her I'd call her the next day.

Dmitri was all excited about the phone number, because the extra numbers meant that it went through their security systems. He gave me some code he'd written for just such a situation. I called Celeste the next day, as promised, and we chatted for a few minutes until she had to get back to work. I sent her the link, and she didn't ask what it was. A half-hour later, Dmitri popped up on my screen again.

“Dammit, Dmitri, you're supposed to ask before you just show up. What if I had a naked girl in here?”

“Sorry.” He looked around, just to see if there was one, then grinned. “I'm in their home system. What are we looking for?”

Security videos are a double-edged sword. You can see everything that happens on your home turf, if they're positioned correctly. But so can anyone else who has access to them. Easiest thing to check, so that's where I started. Their video coverage was extensive, even recording their bedrooms when they weren't in them. Maybe they didn't trust the hired help.

I checked the doors first, starting with the last time anyone saw the dog, and it didn't take long to find what I wanted. A service truck at the back door, some guy dressed like a plumber holding a bag that wiggled and carrying it out. And at the edge of the picture, with a grim look on his face, was Mr. Business Suit, making sure that the problem was being handled properly before handing the guy some cash.

* * *

Finding the plumber was the next step. I didn't bother the Cowboy with that one. Searching for a face is a low-level task, especially since I had his profession. I had one of my employees do it, and she didn't ask why. Spreading the tasks around is a habit I developed. That way, no one person gets the whole picture. We tracked him to a business in the city, Curley's Ace Appliance Sales and Repair, and I went to deliver a business proposition.

Curley's place was small, in kind of a crappy neighborhood. Front office with some stuff on display, warehouse and work area in the back. I went in the front, found Mr. Curley at the counter. He was bald, which I found amusing.

“How can I help you today? Looking for a new appliance for your home?”

“Actually, Mr. Curley,” I said, “I'm here to help you.”

He raised an eyebrow at that.

“I do security work, helping small businesses and individuals keep their property and information secure. There is some information about your company that might leak out and cause you some trouble. I'm here to help you prevent that.”

He got suspicious, of course, assuming it was some sort of con job. So I pulled out a still from the video.

“One of your technicians was at the Fischer residence a couple of days ago.”

Mr. Curley frowned. “You working for Mr. Fischer? We fixed his dishwasher. He hasn't complained.”

“And he isn't going to. But while your guy was there, he did an extra job. Probably didn't tell you about it. I'm giving you that information for free. It's going to cause a problem, unless you let me help you.”

Curley was getting angry now, looking back and forth between me and the picture. Finally he stepped to the door, opened it and yelled, “Raul!”

Raul came to the door a moment later. I showed him the picture. With him in it.

“What do you know about this?” Curley demanded, and the guilty look on Raul's face was enough to convince him. Raul started to stammer out an explanation, but I cut him off. The employee counseling session could happen on their time, not mine.

“Mr. Curley, I'm not interested in pointing fingers at anyone. All I need to know is what happened to the contents of that bag. After that, I take care of it. No problems for you or your business. Deal?”

Raul hedged a little, but with his boss getting angrier, he finally coughed up what I wanted to know. Maybe Mr. Fischer should have been more specific about what “get rid of the dog” actually meant.

“Thank you,” I told them both. “And now I'll be on my way.”

“Who the hell are you, anyway?” Mr. Curley asked. Too late.

“No names, Mr. Curley. Not yours, not Raul's, not mine. As far as I'm concerned, I never came here, never met you before. Like I said, I'll take care of your problem, keep your information secure. That's what I do.”

* * *

The address Raul gave me wasn't really an address. The location turned out to be an even crappier neighborhood, aging apartments on the edge of an industrial area, with shacks and lean-tos and worse built anywhere that offered space. Electricity came from cords and cables spliced into any source of power, until someone came and cleaned up the theft, then it all got plugged in again. Plumbing was just as iffy, and garbage collection looked like a source of income instead of a problem. The rats probably got eaten as fast as they reproduced.

It took a while to find the guy I was searching for. The residents of this area might have been outcasts, living on the fringes, but they had their own rules, knew each other and were suspicious of anyone else. I got a lot of dirty looks as I picked my way through the trash and makeshift shelters made of trash.

When I finally saw my target, he was helping a few other people scavenge. He did that by lifting a car at the bottom of the pile, holding it up while the others scrambled underneath it to drag out anything that might be of value. Heavy cyborg, probably built for corporate security, and not much use for anything else. He smiled blankly as his comrades collected their treasures. Nobody was going to cause trouble for these people when he was around, least of all me.

I found an inconspicuous place to watch. He held the car up for at least a half-hour, not showing any signs of getting tired. When they finished, he let it go, and everyone applauded and laughed as it crashed back to the ground. Someone brought him some food, and he accepted it with effusive thanks before trudging away. I followed him, from a distance.

His shack wasn't any more impressive than the others, although slightly larger. He walked to the opening — no door — and called out to someone before entering. A moment later, he emerged with the dog in one arm. He sat heavily in the dirt, opened the bag of food, and shared it with the dog. It ate greedily, at least half of what was in the bag and, even after it had eaten enough, he still kept offering it his lunch before eating it himself. He chewed slowly, still with that smile on his face, and the dog snarled and bit him as he petted it. He didn't seem to notice.

Taking Celeste on a date with ulterior motives didn't bother me, neither did ratting out Raul to his boss. They'd made their decisions and could deal with the consequences. But this was a moral dilemma. I didn't even know the big guy's name, but he'd found happiness in the squalor and, somehow, I didn't want to take that away.

I didn't really care about the dog or the rest of the Fischer family; they were never going to be happy anyway. I got some pictures of the dog, close-in so you couldn't tell where it was taken. Couldn't see much of cyborg-dude except for one arm. Then I left.

* * *

Ameer's expression told me he wasn't really satisfied with just the picture, but that's all he was going to get.

“How am I supposed to claim the reward if we don't get the dog back?”

“They don't want it back.” I explained what had happened, although I left out a lot of details. Ameer dealt in information, so I don't give it to him for free.

“Here's how it works,” I told him. “You tell Mr. Fischer we found the dog and show him the photo. We take the reward, and the dog stays lost. And you get your twenty percent, instead of just ten.”

I was being generous, but it hadn't been that tough of a job. A dinner date, an interview with a plumber, and an hour or two of walking through a dump to witness a blissful interlude. Easy money.

Ameer frowned, probably thinking of how much he could extort from Mr. Fischer. That wasn't my problem. I'd go back to my office, do some paperwork, and wait for the next thing. Tuesdays can be boring, sometimes.