28

“A MAN sets up a meeting, wants me to spy on his wife. Oldest story in the world, but with a twist. He’s a fancy-dressing man, you know what I mean, handkerchief sticking out his suit jacket, his fingernails manicured and glossy. I hate him at sight. And here’s the thing, not a whit of nervousness or upset about him. Generally a Joe thinks some other Joe is doing his wife, he’s all flippy, but this Joe he’s an absolute cuke, an arrogant cuke, if you catch my drift. It doesn’t feel right. But like Sam says, never believe the client, believe the money. So’s I take the retainer, write the information in my little book, and sets about tailing the wife.

“She was once a pretty thing, I can tell, but she’d gotten no younger over the years and the things what happen to women as they get older, the thickening thing, happened to her just as you would expect. But, see, with her I can tell she knows it, with her you can see the vulnerability. She shops, plays tennis, lunches at the club with the other ladies, la-di-da. Don’t know why that’s the life all the birds want, it’d be enough to bore my pants right off, I was them, and I figure maybe that’s the trouble. So Thursday is lawn day, the boys in their cutoffs, whipping the mowers over the client’s three football fields, and there’s one boy wearing no shirt, who I tell you is frigging gorgeous. Dark complexion, thick curled lips, straight narrow nose, a perfect nose, with a ballplayer’s arse and a swimmer’s body, thin but with muscles chiseled and abs, oh, my, the abs.

“Now, I ain’t that way, I want you to know, don’t be getting no ideas, me in this jacket and all, but I can still appreciate the male figure and I can tell you he’s a frigging rock star. And next thing you know, he’s talking to the missus. She brings him a lemonade. Sweat’s dripping from his tits as he takes the glass. He lifts his chin to drain the drink, his Adam’s apple bobs, one of his pecs twitches. She reaches out and almost touches his shoulder but pulls back. Obvious, innit? The attraction between ’em is so thick you could lubricate your dick with it. So they all leave, all the lawn boys, but at three he comes back in a ratty old car and starts searching around like he lost something. She comes out to help him, they search around together, side by side. And when he happens to find it, the shirt he planted there that morning, he doesn’t put it on as you would expect, but tosses it over his shoulder and waits there, like waiting for an invitation in, and she gives it, how could she not? Next thing you know I got myself a roll of film, job done, fee earned.

“But something’s not right, and I don’t like it. So I gives off following the lady and start to following the lawn boy. I meet up with him in a bar on Twelfth Street, a funny bar, you know, where we with our jackets would fit right in. I buy him a beer, buy him another, he thinks I’m an old poof interested in that swimmer’s bod, and I can tell that he’s willing to be interested, too, as long as I’m paying. So I go out back with him, into the alley behind the bar. It’s dark, damp, rubber johnnies littering the asphalt, a place where if it could talk, you’d cover your ears and run out screaming. Lawn boy puts his hand on my hip and smiles his charming smile. I lift my elbow and break his nose. Sounded like someone snacking on a taco. So much for perfect. Now he’s on the ground, hands covering his face, blood leaking through his fingers. I leans down and I tell him what I want to know, and he spills. Everything. It was the husband what put him up to it, the husband what paid off this trick to do his wife while I was there whole time with my camera.

“I figure the bastard, he wants a divorce on his terms, wants the pictures either as bargaining leverage, hoping to unsettle her so she’ll agree to poverty, or to show the judge in a custody fight when he grabs for the kids. Either way a nasty piece of business. So of course I goes back to the missus and shows her the pictures, and she breaks down, begging me not to give them to her husband. I tell her how I got no choice, I was paid for them in advance, I got my ethics to consider, but then I tell her about lawn boy and about how her husband paid him off and how she ought to get herself checked, because there’s no telling what kind of vile organisms lawn boy passed on to her. She’s collapsed into a heap, sniveling, crying, moaning out, ‘What am I going to do? What am I going to do?’ Beautiful, right? So’s I go and tell her what it is she is going to do, and she spots me another retainer.

“I’m back on the road, following husband this time. Is this a great job or what? It turns out husband, he’s a lawyer, surprise, surprise, driving a Jaguar, lunching at the Palm with political heavies, and spending stray afternoons in the Bellevue with some little chippy from his law firm. It’s harder getting pictures from a hotel like that as compared to a private home, but with the right equipment, including a pinch of cash for the staff, you can get yourself anything, and it ain’t long before I can a roll of that son of a bitch with his arse hanging out and his socks on giving that chippy his prima facie best.

“Now the two parties, husband and wife, they’re back on level turf, and I’m feeling pretty good about things, but why stop there, why stop with two? It’s a triangle, innit? So I decide on following the bird from the husband’s law firm, a good-looking thing, I must say. I was just curious, mind you, not knowing what I’d find, but just trying to figure out what pitch to make and where to make it. I read her as a typical spoiled brat, never wanting for nothing, fancy college, ambition driving her into the law, setting up her yuppie lifestyle, not minding grabbing another woman’s husband if it helps her climb a peg or two. A little pressure and she’d be willing to pay anything to make it go away. It all seems so obvious, except this girl, she ain’t obvious.

“One night I follow her to a dive of a bar in South Philly, where she meets up with some shady sailor type. Next night I follow her into some church, where she stays an hour before rushing off to meet the husband. Night after she has dinner in some ragged seafood joint alongside some scumbucket from Kensington with but three teeth to his name, and after that she ends up again in the church. I go in behind her this time. She slips a buck or two into the box, buys herself a candle, then it’s off to a pew by herself. She doesn’t hit her knees, she’s no papist, I can tell, but I look around, seeing who she’s meeting, and there’s no one. Might as well have been praying, for all I know. And then I trail her until she disappears into some lesbo bar in Old City. That’s a switch, huh? But I can’t go in there without getting marked, so I wait outside in my car. An hour later she’s on the street with some bull dyke in a black leather vest, and while they’re clinching and kissing, and not like cousins neither, while they’re chewing each other’s tongues, she opens her eyes and gives me the stare from across the street. Then she’s off, alone, heading away from me. I gets out of my car and follow.

“It’s an old section of the town, narrow streets, lots of turns and twists. It’s raining lightly, there’s a mist, I see her go down one alleyway, I catch a glimpse of her turning down another. I have no idea where she’s going, but I’m curious, right? Who the hell is she, right? This ain’t no yuppie like I ever saw before. Another turn, across a bigger street and into another alley. All the time I’m seeing just bits of her, never the full thing. I catch just the flash of her heel as she turns down a narrow cobbled street. I make the turn, and next thing I know I’m on the ground, a knee in my crotch, a knife at my throat, and the bull dyke staring down at me with a look that lets me know she’d do it, she’d do it, and damn if slicing my throat wouldn’t be the most fun she could ever have with a man. And behind her, calmly leaning against a wall, smoking, stands the girl.