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  “I’ll have to clear up a few things first, Mr. Meyer, but I should be able to leave in a few days. I’ll call you and let you know exactly when.”

  “I’m an anxious man,” Meyer said calmly, “a very anxious man.”

  “I’m sure you are, Mr. Meyer,” I said. “Uh, you realize that getting a flight on this short notice will be expensive?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll need a check.”

  “Of course,” he said, taking a checkbook out of his pocket. “How much?”

  “Well, like I said, the flight will be expensive, and then there’s a hotel, a rental car—”

  “Will twenty-five hundred be enough to start?”

  I smiled at the little man and, since he had asked, said, “Better make it three thousand. I don’t want to get stalled because I ran out of money.”

  While he was writing the check, I looked out the window. The man in the bomber jacket was walking by, and although he looked in the window again, he didn’t stop. He could have just been a guy trying to decide whether to have a drink or not. And then again, he could have had something else on his mind. . . .

  Meyer wrote the check quickly and tore it out cleanly. I took it from him and he picked up the postcard. I glanced at the check and saw that he had written it for thirty-five hundred. My kind of client.

  “I’ll need that, of course,” I said, looking pointedly at the postcard.

  “Oh, of course,” he said, handing it over. I put it and the check in the cash register.

  “Tell me something, Mr. Meyer,” I said, “just out of curiosity?”

  “Of course.”

  “You were in Florida and found this postcard?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you hire a private investigator right from there?”

  “Well . . . I was leaving for home the next day and . . . to tell you the truth . . . it never really occurred to me.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, totally dissatisfied with the answer. He seemed an intelligent enough man, why would it not have occurred to him?

  “Why not hire one now?”

  “I’d really prefer not to hire one over the phone,” he said. “I prefer to meet people before I hire them.”

  “I see. Are you going to drink that?” I asked, indicating his beer.

  Sheepishly he said, “I’m really not much of a drinker.”

  I picked up the beer and dumped it in the sink, and then said, “I still have one or two more questions, Mr. Meyer, and I’ll need a photo of your wife . . . one that shows her from the front.”

  3

  “Florida?” Geneva said. “Some people have all the luck. When are you leaving?”

  “In a few days.”

  “Need some company?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows at me. They were very nice eyebrows, and under other circumstances I might have considered taking her with me—the other circumstances being had she not been an employee of mine.

  Geneva Jones—yes, that’s her real name—was twenty-three years old. She had been in New York for three years since moving there from New Jersey. Jersey was not Buffalo Chips, Arkansas, so Geneva had no trouble making her way in the big city. She’d had plenty of other jobs before she showed up in response to the ad for this one. I had hired her on the spot, and I’m not ashamed to say that part of the reason was the way she looked. It didn’t hurt to have a good-looking barmaid in the place. However, I had also hired her because she could mix drinks as well as serve them, she had a lot on the ball and would not be thrown by anything that came her way, and her references were excellent. She had worked in some pretty nice places and in some not-so-nice places, and said she liked to move around from job to job to keep things fresh. She’d been working for me for three months and was the best thing that could have happened to any bar owner—especially one who was a rookie. As far as I was concerned, Geneva was my unofficial manager. I had even let her hire my most recent bartender, Marty. Ed, my day man, had worked for Packy, and I’d kept him on. He was not a particularly ambitious person, and did not resent the responsibility I had given Geneva.

  “Why a few days?” she asked. “Why not tomorrow, since the man’s payin’.”

  “I’ve got some things that need taking care of.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ve got to make sure that this place is covered—” I started, but she cut me off.

  “I’m here, boss,” she said. “It’s covered.”

  I had found that I liked being called “boss” by a beautiful twenty-three-year-old black woman who probably could beat me at arm wrestling. Geneva’s biceps were impressive, as was the rest of her. She stood five nine, weighed a solid one-fifty—although she said that was her noncompetitive weight—and swore she was going to be the next Carla Dunlap or Lenda Murray. She’d had to explain to me that both women were successful black female bodybuilders, and that Murray had just won her second Ms. Olympia title in a row; before Geneva started working for me, all I knew about bodybuilding was that that was where the Incredible Hulk and the Terminator had gotten their starts.

  “I’ll take care of the place like it was my own, you know that,” she said.

  I did know that. What I didn’t know was why.

  “Well, make sure Ed or Marty is here with you at all times.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” she said, shaking her head, and then fell into her flawless southern accent. “Ah sway-yah, Mr. Jacoby, the way ya’ll worry about me just warms the cockles of this little ol’ southern gal’s haht.”

  “You’re not from the South,” I reminded her, “you’re from Jersey.”

  “Ah’m from south Jersey, thank you.”

  “Seriously, Geneva—”

  “Seriously, boss,” she said, sliding behind the bar and easing me away, “go and take care of what you got to take care of and leave this place to me and Marty.”

  “It’s almost three and Marty’s not here yet,” I said. I was thinking about the guy in the bomber jacket. I hadn’t seen him in the past few hours, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t still casing the place from a discreet distance.

  “He’ll be here.”

  “I’ll wait—”

  “Go!”

  I was about to argue with her when two men walked in. I knew them both and would have taken time to talk to them, even if it didn’t mean that Marty would probably be there by the time I was ready to leave.

  “Saved by the boys in blue,” Geneva said.

  Even though Detectives Steve Stilwell and Bruce Taylor worked plainclothes—and usually undercover—Geneva knew they were cops. She claims to have “smelled” it on them the first time they came in while she was working.

  “Mutt and Jeff,” she said, and she was right. Stilwell was a slender, gentle-looking man in his early forties, standing maybe five nine. Taylor, on the other hand, was anything but gentle looking. He had dark hair, a mustache, brooding eyes, and topped out at at least six and a half feet. Since being teamed several years ago, they had heard all the jokes from Mutt and Jeff to Lenny and George from Of Mice and Men. They suffered the jokes in silence, because they made a good team.

  I had only met Stilwell several months ago while working on a case, and through him I met Taylor when both men started to frequent Packy’s. When you saw them together and observed them for a while, they seemed as perfect a partnership as you could find.

  “Give me two Rolling Rocks,” I said to Geneva.

  She got them from the refrigerator, and I watched the muscles in her forearm jump as she easily popped the caps off and handed them to me. I carried them over to the booth the two men had settled into.

  “You fellas are in early,” I said, placing the beers in front of them, “or is it late?”

  “Late lunch, early dinner,” Stilwell said wearily, “what’s the difference?” He picked up his beer and took an uninterested swig. Normally very mild-mannered and easygoing, something was obviously eating at him. His wire-framed glasses reminded me of t
hose Jerry Meyer had been wearing.

  “Don’t mind him,” Taylor said. “We’re just workin’ a tough one.”

  “Can you talk about it?”

  “Not really,” Taylor said.

  “Okay,” I said, not pushing it any further.

  “Jesus,” Stilwell said, “remind me not to try to sit in a booth with this guy. He’s all goddamned legs.”

  He had the same complaint every time they shared a booth.

  “Sandwiches?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Taylor said, “the usual.”

  I started away, then stopped and asked, “You guys notice a guy outside the bar, medium height, wearing a cracked brown leather bomber jacket?”

  They looked at each other, then Stilwell looked at me and said, “No, why?”

  “No reason.”

  “Somebody casin’ the place?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “We’ll keep an eye open while we’re here,” Taylor said. “Did you tell Geneva?”

  “No,” I said, “I didn’t want to scare her.”

  “Scare her?” Taylor asked. “I’m scared of her.”

  “I see your point,” I said. “I’ll tell her.”

  I went to the bar and told Geneva, “Two ham and cheese on rye.”

  “One with heavy mustard,” she said. “Comin’ up.”

  As she started to turn to go to the kitchen, Marty walked in the front door

  “Sorry I’m late, boss,” he said to me. Marty was a good-looking guy in his late twenties. I often wondered why he wasn’t working in some trendy uptown bar where he could go home with a different woman every night. Then again, in this day and age maybe that just wasn’t a good idea. AIDS had probably put a cramp in the style of a lot of bartenders and taken away from the appeal of the job.

  “No problem,” I said as he slid behind the bar with Geneva.

  “I’m getting sandwiches,” she told him. Then she looked at me and said, “Go!”

  “I’m going, I’m going.”

  4

  I moved around behind the bar to the cash register, opened it, and removed the check, the photo, and the postcard. The photo showed me what Sandra Meyer looked like from the front. It was a head-and-shoulders shot, and she was wearing a yellow sweater. Her blond hair hung down to her shoulders, and she was smiling. She was extremely pretty, even if her nose was a little too big. Her wide smile and blue eyes made up for that. The photo looked posed and professional. I turned it over, and sure enough, on the back was the name of the place where it had been taken, kingsbrook studio. Seeing her from the front, I was even more surprised that a Jerry Meyer could land a Sandy Meyer—or Sandy London. That was her maiden name, London. Sandy London—or rather, Sandra. Meyer had never called her “Sandy.” He wouldn’t.

  I’d have to deposit the check the next day, but I preferred to leave it home than in the bar. I put it in my wallet and was about to put the postcard in my pocket when I decided two things. One, I didn’t have the heart to fold the postcard, and two, I wanted to get Geneva’s reaction.

  I went into the kitchen where she was working up the sandwiches and showed her the card.

  “What do you think?”

  “I prefer beefcake to cheesecake,” she said.

  “No, I mean what do you think of the shape of the girl?”

  She put down the knife she was holding and faced me.

  “What are you asking me, and why?”

  “Okay,” I said, “my client wants me to find this girl. He says it’s his wife.”

  She frowned, peered at the card again, and asked, “How can he tell it’s his wife?”

  I sighed when I realized that I wasn’t going to get away without telling the whole story, so I fed it to her and she ate it up. She liked the idea that she worked for a private detective.

  “Okay?” I finished. “Understand?”

  “I understand what your job is,” she said. “What I don’t understand is what you’re asking me.”

  “I need a line on where to look for her,” I said. “Does she look like a bodybuilder to you?”

  “Ohhh,” she said, nodding that she finally understood what I was getting at. She wiped off her hands and took the postcard from me. She studied it for a few moments, then said, “No.”

  “What about her?” I asked, showing her the photo.

  “This the same girl?”

  “It’s supposed to be.”

  “I can’t tell a thing from this photo, boss, but from the other one I’d say no.”

  “No?”

  “Well . . . she’s in good shape, but not for a bodybuilder. I think what you might be looking for is a Ms. Fitness or something like that.”

  “Ms. Fitness?” I asked. “Is that something like Ms. Olympia?”

  “Don’t you ever watch ESPN?” she asked.

  “I don’t have cable.”

  “Bummer. Anyway, Ms. Olympia is the top of the line as far as bodybuilding goes. Ms. Fitness is something different. Like the title says, it has to do with fitness, not with muscles. This chick looks fit enough to compete for Ms. Fitness, but not Ms. Olympia.” She tilted her head to the right and looked at the picture again. “She’s got good glutes, though. She could be a bodybuilder, but not a serious one—not yet.” She handed the card back and asked, “Does that help?”

  “Sure,” I said, “it helps.”

  She looked crushed and said, “It doesn’t help.”

  “Sure it does,” I said. “I mean, I know where I can start to look now.”

  “Gyms,” she said.

  “Right.”

  “Serious gyms,” she said.

  “There’s a difference?” I asked.

  “You used to box, didn’t you?” she asked, as if talking to a child—or an idiot.

  “I wouldn’t look for her in that kind of gym, would I?”

  “No,” she said. “You want a Gold’s Gym, or something like that.”

  “Like Jack LaLanne, or Bally’s? Like that?”

  “Uhhh . . . maybe,” she said. “If she’s only into fitness, maybe, but if she’s into bodybuilding you want a lifter’s or builder’s gym.”

  “Okay,” I said, backing off, because the conversation really wasn’t helping at all. “Thanks, Geneva. I’ll be back later. You better get those two hungry cops their sandwiches. They’re in a bad mood as it is.”

  “I’ll take care of their bad mood.”

  “Oh yeah, and keep your eye out for a guy in a brown leather bomber jacket.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s looked in the window once or twice, but hasn’t come in.”

  “You think he’s checking us out?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “and then again, maybe I’m imagining things.”

  “Maybe he’s some old enemy of yours,” she said, excitedly. “Maybe he’s some guy you put away years ago, and he just got out and he’s coming back for revenge. Maybe he’s—”

  “I haven’t put that many guys away, Geneva,” I said. “And now who’s imagining things? Just keep your eyes open, okay?”

  “Sure, boss. If he comes in here and tries to rob us, I’ll twist him into a pretzel and hand him over to the cops.”

  “Remember what I’ve told you over and over again,” I said. “There’s nothing in this place worth dying over.”

  “Okay,” she said, “if he flashes a gun, everything is his. All right?”

  “A gun or a knife.”

  “Boss,” she said, frowning, “I got my pride—”

  I left the kitchen and the bar, almost sorry I had shown the postcard to Geneva. If I didn’t know the girl, I didn’t know what the girl was into, and if I didn’t know what she was into, I didn’t know where to look. I was back to square one. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to start hanging out at gyms, I’d just get her address from the postcard company or the photographer . . . once I got the photographer’s name from the postcard company . . . that is, if I got the name of the postcard company from the place my client
had bought the postcard. . . .

  5

  Contrary to what I had told Jerry Meyer and Geneva, I didn’t have all that many loose ends to tie up. I could count my good friends on the fingers of one hand and still have enough fingers left over to hold my nose, so there weren’t that many people to notify that I was going out of town. I did have a referral on a case from Heck Delgado, but it wasn’t something I had been looking forward to anyway. If the trip to Florida hadn’t come along, I would have taken the case, but since I was going to Florida, I referred the case in turn to someone I knew could handle it and could use the money. I called Nick Delvecchio in Brooklyn, and he was both available and willing to do the job. He agreed that it sounded boring—a series of background checks for a company who thought they had been infiltrated by a competitor—but it was a grounder, and he could use the money.

  That done, I only had to arrange for my mail to be picked up. I had no girlfriend to notify, no pets to provide care for, and no family to contact. It was sort of depressing, but I really was ready to leave the next day—if I could get a ticket.

  I called the airlines and found out that I could travel on almost any of the airlines that serviced Florida . . . if I was willing to pay over eight hundred dollars. Was I willing? Hell, it wasn’t my money.

  Just for the hell of it, I did check to see how I could travel cheaper. I either had to wait a week, when I could fly for the measly sum of $434, or I could fly standby, which meant I’d have to sit and wait at the airport for a cancellation to open up a seat—and there was no guarantee that would happen.

  Having justified in my own mind paying the eight hundred, I called the airline and secured a ticket on a noon flight the next day out of LaGuardia. I told the woman on the phone I would be paying cash at the airport. She told me I could either pick the ticket up from a travel agent or put it on my credit card. I did have a credit card—a Visa I had gotten for business purposes—but at the moment it wouldn’t have accommodated eight hundred dollars. Besides, I’d have to use the card to get a rental car and hotel room.