The curtain dividing the office space from the living quarters hung heavy on a metal rod. As I pushed it aside I took a step forward and leaned back at the same time; the bottom-half of my body entered the room while my head remained in the doorway. I knew what was back there but wasn’t quite ready to confront it.

I saw the awkward figure sitting on the floor with its back to the wall. He was shirtless and had his hands bound behind him. His head, covered in a pillow case, slung down onto his shoulder in an unnatural position.

I suddenly felt nauseous and fought off a bout of the dry heaves. Then I heard rustling and realized that Badger was moving.

“Jesus!” I shouted and ran over to him. I ripped the pillowcase from his head and his hair piece came with it. Even with the labored breaths reverberating throughout the room, it still felt like I was looking at a dead man. His skin was a sickly white, his eyes bloodshot.

“There he is,” his voice scratched, lacking its normal enthusiasm. “Give me a little water, would you?”

I found a never-washed glass on the sink in the bathroom and filled it up. I held it to his lips and he greedily drank from it. Most of the water just rolled down his chest, but those few swallows put some of the life back into him.

“What happened?” I asked.

He muscled himself upright. I heard the grinding of metal on metal as the handcuffs that bound his wrists rubbed against the drain pipe they were looped around. The areas under the cuffs were raw and even bloody and spots on the pipe shiny among the rust where he had struggled mightily to break free.

“Get the key,” he instructed. “It’s in the top right drawer of the desk.”

I scrambled back to the front room and found the key among a pile of metal paperclips and discontinued thumb tacks. I thought of the humiliation he must be feeling, the equivalent of a cop having his squad car stolen. Badger had been overcome and bound with his own handcuffs.

It took me a few tries but I was finally able to release his wrists. “You’re a prince,” he whispered and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face.

“Tell me what happened,” I said as he returned to the room, recovered his hair piece, and put it back in its rightful spot.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

I detected a tinge of embarrassment.

“What do you mean it’s nothing? Who did this? Did you get a look at them?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m very worried.”

“It’s not that,” he dismissed. “It’s just something we do.”

“Wait…what? Something who does?”

“Yeah, a little role-play me and my lady friend like to do.” He might well have said something about taking out the trash. It was a non-event in his eyes. “I must have said something that upset her. I never thought she’d take this long to get back.” He turned to face me. “Guy, I let you down.”

The man responsible for unearthing the seamy side of potential candidates, the one whom I was about to rely on to help me track down Jeanette, was too busy getting himself hog-tied to radiators to complete his duties and was asking for forgiveness. And for some reason I wasn’t even angry.

“I found your gossip blogger,” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t get this to you earlier but I was preoccupied.”

He handed me a slip of paper with a name and address. Putting aside whatever misgivings I had about his personal life and overall demeanor, I decided to engage him on a long-term assignment to help me track down Jeanette. He could do things I couldn’t and he had already proven to be very handy in unearthing information.

“I have another job for you,” I told him. “A big job.”

I explained everything to him, including details I withheld from Detective Riocohr. Badger nodded solemnly but the obligatory declaration of this job being the top priority never came. Instead, he sort of stalled like there was something more to be said.

“Does that all make sense?”

“Perfect sense,” he replied. “Full commitment required.”

“I would imagine.”

“Job could go in many directions.”

“Most definitely,” I said.

“And for an indeterminate length.”

“I guess so.”

He nodded his head but not in agreement.

“And this one isn’t for the company?” he asked.

That’s when I finally understood his apprehension. The job was sizable, and I hadn’t delivered on my half of the deal.

“What kind of retainer do you usually work on?” I asked. I had seen enough of the old movies to know how this worked.

“Let’s not make this about money, guy,” Badger scolded. “I’m helping you because you’re a stand-up guy who has always done right with me. I don’t work with just anyone, you know. This can be an ugly business and I am careful with whom I associate.”

It was all an act — the man clearly needed cash. I could see the army cot and hotplate and empty cans of refried beans and the squeaky fan doing nothing against the heat. But there was the man’s pride to deal with. He needed to be begged.

“I insist. This is a big job.”

“I know what I am getting into.”

“And I can’t allow you to put forth such a big effort without an equal commitment on my end.”

“I know you’re good for it,” he waved me off but quickly added, “but if you insist, my standard fee is four hundred a day plus expenses.” I was a little taken aback by how quickly he gave in. Times must have been worse off than I first thought. I went out to my car and got my checkbook. As I wrote out a check, Badger wet his lips in apparent anticipation of an expensed meal on my dime.

“One week advance good enough?”

“Whatever you think is right is right with me,” he kept up the charade. “And don’t feel you have to—”

“Take the fucking money, Badger,” I said, growing annoyed.

“You’re a prince,” he smiled as the check disappeared, with some effort, into the narrow slit of his two-sizes-too-small jeans back pocket.

He walked me out, a little lighter on his feet and showing no effect of the twenty-eight-hundred dollars of my money weighing him down. What started out as a side job to get central air in my house was turning into a gaping hole in my already bleak bank account. But I couldn’t begrudge Badger. This was, after all, his livelihood and who was I to extort him just because I happened to save him from dehydration caused by a temperamental dominatrix.

Out on the sidewalk, he gave me a sweaty hug and declared I was, yet again, his number-one priority.

PROGRESS

The blogger’s address was in North Hollywood. Traffic was good once I got out of the congestion around Echo Park Lake and merged onto the 101. I steamed up and over the Cahuenga Pass and down into the Valley.

The San Fernando Valley was a figurative, and on days like today, a literal purgatory. Flat, hot, and endless, the monotony of the basin mirrored the lives of the nameless people living there. The temperature outside flirted with 100 degrees but never quite committed to triple digits despite its best efforts.

The apartment complex was deep in North Hollywood where the streets and buildings were laid out in perfect symmetry, inheriting the same form and function of the orange groves they replaced decades prior. I went through the glass doors that led to an open courtyard where a blue-green pool sat untouched for yet another year. The apartment was on the second floor in the back, and I took one of the four outdoor staircases.

The woman who answered the door was a frumpy maiden much younger than her image let on. She lived in a cramped studio with sagging bookcases and a worn throw rug on top of even more worn wall-to-wall carpet. She led me to a spot before a small air conditioner that was as effective against the heat as a fan blowing air over a bowl of ice cubes. I sat in a cheap fold-out chair. She relaxed on the edge of a futon and had one leg pulled up under the other so she could pick at her toenails while she spoke.