Meat Raffle Sunday pt1

My offices lumber above Main Street like a balcony box. Off the beaten path of the raving suburbanites, tourist and students that clog the newer, flashier parts of the city, it is a crown jewel of justice in Madison's first settlement. In infancy, the street she was the center of the earliest neighborhood, large speckled houses of the richest and most influential lined her silken unmentionables. But now her authority has waned, some of the old speckled houses still standing but for a large brick building, dilapidated, housing small studio apartments and my agencys eight offices. I am on the third floor and my windows face to the east, turning thier back on the Capitol building and County Courthouse. The floor is split down the middle by a long hallway, dark and lit with small ineffective lights that give it the appearance of a zebra-stripped snake. Eight of the nine doors on its left side are mine and the nine on the right seldom open, hiding studio apartments and seedy characters like a game of Guess Who. I do not hear the tenants often, the rooms seem to be partcially unoccupied, but I have seen a few as a man in the forest will come across a surprised rabbit and wonder how he got so close momentarily, before both man and rabbit scatter. A few doors down there's-ah Chinaman on my side behind door # 5. I see him leave early in the morning and return late at night with shopping bags covering both his hands like examiner's gloves, peering around corners with glassy, tender eyes. He pulls the doorknob of his front door closed with those grocery bag hands as I approach and all the time he seems as on the edge of firelight, lingering on the border of darkness just out of sight. When I say Hello he freezes as a deer and looks up at me trembling, as if expecting a vehemence of blows. My offices surround his dwelling and I believe he knows more about my dealings than I would like. A Panamanian lives across the hallway from my main office, #1, seven feet tall with thick lean muscles. He is quick to anger. At the end of the hallway, farthest from my doors and opposite, a thin, elderly man in tight pants that cause him to wear his balls as a fanny pack on an nineteen-eighties tourist, lurks behind his entry, only expelling himself to tap politely on my door to tell me my music is too loud or that I drink too much whiskey. He says often that it is good we can solve our differences like men, so that it is not necessary to get the landlord involved. For several months I figured him for a deaf mute, for he ignores all of my hallway Hellos and Good evenings and tips of the hat.

Office #1's door has been replaced with one showing a frosted window framed in wood and in an unadorned font my name and my business stare down the zebra hallway. I operate the only private investigators office in all of the city of Madison.

I like to think, and I suppose it is possible, that no one hears me in my offices, but I hear much that goes on in the building; the Mexican couple below me that fight and fuck with the cruelty of wild boars, the alleyway-like discussions of the hallways, keys as they jingle to the lock, phone conversations leaking through thin walls, doors swung shut with a soft whistle, strikes that land with the strength of an avalanche, whispers and secrets. Once I passed a policewoman in the stairwell taking a statement from the Mexican female downstairs, who hid a black eye and busted lip in the shadows of the zebra lights. The officer stopped me to tell me I looked like Ron Howard.

She said "are you bald underneath that felt brimmed hat?"

I told her I was a detective. I said my name is Hardley, Jack Hardley.

Inside my offices all evidence of its duel use as my primary living quarters are hidden, the bed folds into the wall in office #4, clothes are kept in desk drawers and a shaving kit is home in a file cabinet. The rooms were originally separate studio apartments and rented to me at a much lower rate on the promise that I would use them for my agency only. There are two cats, Althea and Tank, who roam the offices through small tunnels I had specially built, but I must exit and enter through each door in its turn. I told the landlord they are seizure cats and they belong to my secretary. He allows them on the premises on the premise they are taken home by the secretary each night and that I pay an extra ten dollars a month for the both of them. The landlord's name is Casey Reh, he fixes cars on the side and is a good man.

My office desk has been in the Hardley family for generations and numerous people of an inquisitive nature have spent thier lives behind it; a newsman, a headhunter, a commissioner of thistles. In the bottom left drawer is a bottle of Irish whiskey. In the top right drawer are a six-shooter and a passport with two stamps. The top middle drawer houses hundreds of stolen pens and pencils, telling the tale of my travels and a half used pad of sticky notes for them to bleed into. The top left drawer holds my camera and some spare rolls of film. The lower right is locked. Most often my hand veers to the bottom left and then, to the top right. I keep my desk in office #1, behind the frosted door that proclaims my name and my business.

I am in office #1 staring into my first cup of coffee when a knock comes and comes and comes again at my smoky door, an official and barmy sound to it. I waste no time on thought and open it, expecting to be confronted with a badge or mark or seal and two fist of burly knuckles, but standing underneath the glowing exit sign in the zebra hallway aback from my door is a woman the likes I've never seen. She is tall, thin, alien-like, dark complected, Turkish is appearance, with one of those hats the dames in Monet's paintings wear and clutching a hanker chief with her long claw-like fingers. Most of her body is covered by some sort of cloak and her boots have these unnecessary heels that helped her tower over a 6 foot 2 me.

She raises her eyebrows and says with unfittingly large, pouty lips "Hardley..., Jack Hardley?"

I usher her down to office #3, which I use as a waiting room and show her to the couch. I say please excuse the informalness but my secretary is home sick, she has the seizures. She sits opposite me facing the windows, but their light seems to die in the air before reaching her, her features hard to make out. The cats hide from her underneath the couch, never a good sign.

She says "My father is missing. Can you find him?"

I tell her that she must wait until the top of the hour to discuss the case with Mr. Hardley for billing purposes and ask her to peruse one of the magazines in the racks on the wall; I say with an akward smile, I will let you know when Mr. Hardley is ready to see you. I turn to leave, wanting to professional-up office #1 a bit, but stop at the door when she speaks. She again says "My father is missing. Can you find him?"

I rush her out of office #3 and into office #1, taking a seat behind my desk. When she takes a seat opposite me (looking confused) I introduce myself, I'm Detective Hardley, Detective Jack Hardley, Private Investigator Jack Hardley, master of disguise, eh... are you comfortable miss...?

She nods approvingly. "MacMurrough... I've seen your picture in the paper."

Ignoring this I say Miss Macmurrough, where did you last see him? She looks unsure and bows her head in thought. Her eyes are small, but too big for her head and the glitter green mascara she has encrusted them in make them appear venus flytraps that would attack any asailant moving in for a draw off her luscious lips. As she looks at me suddenly, I see the bridge of her nose is very wide and has probably been broken before, perhaps multiple times. She tells me that the last she knew he was in Chicago working as a janitor... Chicago, now that would be a real carrot to crack. Was he in Chicago when you last saw him?

She says "I don't know... I don't know where he was... I've been around him before but I'm not sure that I have seen him before."

What... what does that mean... I say but she doesn't answer and looks once more down at her boots.

I said why do you want me to find him, do you miss him... want a reconciliation, to fix an empty childhood?

"Hardly..." she says under a thick sigh.

Yes?, I say and she looks up surprisingly, then returns her gaze to her big boots saying "no, I don't want to meet him, I just want you to find him." I'm getting nowhere gradually, the worst speed in which to find yourself drifting towards nowhere and decide for a different line of questioning.

I say what do you think happened to him? She shrugs her shoulders and again avoids the question. Listen lady your gonna have to give me more to go on than Chicago, no description and no name, I say forcefully.

Ignoring this she says into the silence "do you mind if I smoke?"

I say please Ms. MacMurrogh, wait until after the questioning, smoking is only allowed in office #3 and walk over to the window looking down onto a East Main street that is strangely deserted and ghost-like. I am unsure of how to proceed; it is obvious to me that she doesn't want to offer up anymore information. Ignoring my answer she takes out a slim pack of cigarettes, thin and slender like the fingers of her hands and lights one. She looks as if she is about to break down as she takes a shamelessly deep but somehow dainty pull off the cigarette, but just can't get over the precipice of the hardened wall built tall and evident all about her. Her hankerchief is still clutched in her other hand and thus far useless. She looks up at me and down again as a poker player planning the next move and decides to play her first card, which is the pretty card. She smiles and says "call me Aoife, I haven't seen my father since birth. He was there in the Cicero motel room when my Mother had me in the bathtub. I'm still not sure what day it was, sometime in mid-to-late March. Their plans for me I'm unsure of, the dumpster probably. I was raised by my Grandparents. Then..." with an air of dramatic she looks away and finishes "he vanished and neither I nor anyone else close to me has seen him since. I can't give you an accurate description; I was only just born..."

I said you never knew him growing up in...?

She stood slightly trembling and walking away from the light of the windows where I stand, says defensively "Missouri... I couldn't speak dammit, couldn't walk." Taking off her Monet hat she shook back her greasy thin hair, "I need you to find him, but I don't want to meet him." She wouldn't take her eyes off of the floor no turn to look at me.

She has the ass of a fifty-five year old New York cabbie, practical and as ugly as the face of a monkey wrench, wide, flattened and calloused, like two old throw pillows in a dirty, west Madison coffee shop.

I said son-of-a-bitch Aoife, you're not bein straight with me, if you want me to find your father, talk you! and advance on her.

"There is no more" she says sadly, in a voice that chills me, stopping my advance. "My mother was never around either, but I know where she is... and I do not want to see her. A few older half-sisters on my Mother's side, my Grandparents who raised me, that is it. I never met my Father's parents, if the devil bastard has any. There is no one who knows anything, except my Mother herself. I'm not willing to ask her, I have come to you..." She walks over to my desk and angerly spreads her things out onto my desk, her driver's licence, an Illinois state identification card, a faded Poloroid of a squat man in cut off jean shorts and a mustache with that same broad broken nose (it really could have been anyone from the 70's, add a pair of wild sunburns and thick glasses and you could-eh told me it was my own father.)

I said what is this guy, your father's... name? Is this him?

"I don't know his name, nobody speaks of him, my Mother would know, she is in Missouri still, I think, my grandparents have never dared utter her name either, just your Mother this and your Mother..." This almost blew my guts out the top of my head and my gaze is suddenly fire, burning away all my professional courtesy.

I say how in the hell em-I suppose teh find a man with no name who could be anywhere from a thirty-year old photograph and a Cicero motel bath tub origin story?

She starts up hurriedly and walks about the office. With my sudden turn to anger she raises her voice with a venomous hatered I am surprised to see leap out of her and horridly puffs away on her cigarette in between pairs of words saying "I was... just getting... to it... Mr. Hardley... my father sent me a message nine days ago. He is... trying to find me." She is trembling all over. I walk up to her, scared and intrigued by her sudden anger and pull her towards me, kissing her abruptly and forcefully. She taste like peppermint and cigarettes. Pulling away from me she slaps me with all her perceived might softly across the face.

Call me Jack... I say suprised by my own attraction. I guess that means I find your father before he finds you.

"People would like you better if you grew a beard." She says out of the blue sky and turns to leave. Saying as she closes the door, "I will return in seven days and expect results, Mr. Hardley."

She reminds me of someone I knew long ago, but I cannot make the connection in my mind. I stare for sometime at the closed door, thinking of this and stroking my freshly shaven face. I said nothing more that day than stated here, staring into my now ice cold cup of coffee alone with millions of questions and few answers. If she said anything more, it is lost to me and does not matter. I have always been in the 'if a tree fell in the forest it makes no sound' camp.

I pour the coffee down the drain and pour a heady, tall glass of Irish whiskey and think... of all the private investigators offices, in all of Madison... why mine?