Deadbeat - the first 4 chapters

Deadbeat

     It took him a week, but he eventually found a janitor who worked nights in the Department of Motor Vehicles. The man let him in one night, and he broke into the records section and spent half the night going through filing cabinets until he found the man’s name and address. The next night he paid the man a visit. He was a farmer who lived alone on a small farm just outside the city, so it was an easy matter for Oscar to break a window in the kitchen of the run down frame house, enter and catch the man unawares in his bed. At first, he tried to put up a fight, but Oscar had thirty pounds and a lot of anger on him. He beat the man until he wasn’t moving, and left him lying still and bleeding on his bedroom floor.

     Knowing it would just be a matter of time until the police identified him, and thinking he’d killed the man, Oscar went back to his apartment, packed what he could carry in his old army duffel bag, and hit the road. He hitchhiked and walked until he crossed the Red River and entered the back country of East Texas, an area of small towns, farms and oil derricks, crisscrossed by two lane blacktop roads and red clay dirt roads, with more dogs and wildlife than people, where people would nod and say hello, but wouldn’t engage a stranger in conversation if he didn’t want to talk.

     That was all I knew about Uncle Buddy aka Oscar Perlmutter. But, for reasons I could never explain, in April sometimes memories of him would pop into my mind. Maybe it was the heat reminding me of East Texas. Warm weather had come early to Washington, DC, and the air conditioner in my office was straining to cool the lukewarm air. My shirt had dark half-moon stains at the armpits from sweat. It wasn’t exactly uncomfortable to me – I’d suffered much hotter Aprils as a kid growing up - but I knew that Heather Bunche, my assistant and partner, was sitting at her desk flapping a paper fan for all it was worth. The woman hates to sweat.

     I suppose you’re wondering who the heck I am, right? My name is Al Pennyback – actually Alfred Einstein Pennyback, thanks to a mother who was a great fan of the German scientist, and who lived in a culture where giving your kids wacky names was all too common, and where everyone was usually called by their first and middle names. By the time I was in junior high, though, no one called me Alfred Einstein. I’d become pretty good with my fists, and was big for my age, so from eighth grade, I was just Al. Now and then I’d run into some idiot who’d insist on calling me Albert, but a glare from my dark brown eyes was usually enough to set them straight. If that didn’t work, I’d ball up my fists, their knuckles swollen from years of studying and practicing karate and taekwondo, and flex my chest muscles, and they’d get the hint. Actually, I prefer strangers just calling me Mr. Pennyback. I’ve never been all that comfortable jumping into using first names too early after meeting someone.

     I’m a private investigator. Have been for more than a decade, ever since I retired from the army after my wife, Sarah, and my son, Ethan, were killed, along with the members of Ethan’s elementary school soccer team, by a truck driver who ran a stop sign and T-boned the van Sarah was driving, bringing them back from an evening soccer match in Arlington.

     That put me in a funk for a while, but my friend Quincy Chang, a former army JAG lawyer, now a partner in a DC law firm, talked me into getting my PI license and set me up with a ten thousand buck a month retainer from his firm. The work for the firm is easy – chasing clients who fail to pay their fees, or locating lost heirs to obscure fortunes – leaving me time to take the occasional over the transom case.

     Many of these cases are brought in by Heather. She collects people with problems the way a black dress collects lint. We charge a variable rate depending on the client’s ability to pay – and from time to time even take a case pro bono. The main criteria for me to accept the case, besides the person really needing help, is that it has to involve a puzzle. The harder the puzzle the better I like it. I can never resist a puzzle. Like some people who can’t ignore a ringing phone, I can’t ignore an unsolved puzzle. These cases didn’t bring in much money, usually just enough to cover the office’s utilities, but with the retainer and my army retirement pay, we get by.