Mad Utopia

Part 1 (to start at the beginning)

The Client
The Butler

The Associate

The Plumb Orchard Shopping Center was not really much of a shopping center, it was nothing more than a fancy strip mall catering to the upscale neighborhoods of town. The bookstore was at the far end of the strip, beyond the oriental furnishings company and Betty’s Beauty Shop. But the bookstore came dead last in the row of shops, the least desirable location on the strip.

I stopped and looked at the front of the store and scratched my head. The sign was right, Plum Orchard Fine Used Books, but the store was not. In the window, behind an obviously hand made sign that read, We Buy, Sell, Trade for Fine Used Books, were used books alright. But I wouldn’t call them fine. There were tasteful little collections of books in the windows; science fiction, mysteries, romance novels. All paperbacks, and some in pretty tattered condition. Must be first editions, I figured with a shrug, and headed in. A little bell jingled when I opened the door, and a nerdy looking kid rushed up from where he had been working stacking shelves, to ask if he could help me.

“Mann. Max Mann, private eye,” I introduced myself.

He squinted at me through glasses as thick as pop bottles and brushed back a long shock of greasy black hair that hung down into his face. It flopped back down almost immediately.

“I’ve been hired by Mrs. Jones to find her husband, Rodger,” I told the kid. “She told me I could find his business associate here, a Mr. Reginald Lewis. Is he in?”

The kid let out a high nasal laugh that did nothing to endear him to me. “Ha, ha, ha! That’s me, mister. Reginald Lewis.” Another obnoxious laugh. “Yep, that’s me, mister. Reginald Lewis. An Associate.” He beamed and pointed to his name tag. Just under the large letters Reggie, in small caps read, ASSOCIATE. Oh jeez, I thought, that kind of associate. I was expecting a business partner, someone with some in-depth knowledge of Rodger Jones and his dealings, not the hired help from the local high school.

“I see,” I said. “So, Reginald, did you work here yesterday?”

“Oh sure, mister. I work here every day. Work, work, work. That’s all I ever do. Yep, I work, work, work.”

“I see,” The kid was very annoying. “So, you saw Mr. Jones here yesterday then?”

“Oh sure, mister. I see Mr. Jones here every day. He’s my boss, mister.” He looked around furtively, as if to be sure he was not speaking out of turn, or that if he was, he would not be overheard. “He comes in every day to tell me what to do. And I do it.”

“OK…” Please, God, let this end. “But he didn’t come in today. Did he?”

His head retracted like a turtle’s and he looked around as if expecting to get smacked. His brows furrowed, and for a second I thought the kid was going to start bawling on me right there and then. But he didn’t. He just shook his head in dismay and mumbled, “No.”

“Mind if I look around?” I did not wait for an answer and began strolling up and down the aisles, checking out the books on the shelves. He shuffled along right beside me like an expectant puppy. SciFi. Mysteries. Romance. All paperbacks. All priced between 25 cents and a dollar. Each aisle had a sign posted informing me that they took books in trade at the rate of two to one. Another sign told me, All Sales Final. I pulled out an occasional volume and checked the fly leaf. Seven rows of books. All cheap novels. No fine leather. And not a first edition to be found.

It didn’t make sense, just didn’t add up. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that you’d need to sell one hell of a lot of tatty 25 cent novels to be able to afford #17 Park Avenue. Something seriously did not add up.

“So,” I asked, putting another dog-eared novel back on its shelf, “Does Mr. Jones have another bookstore somewhere?”

The kid scurried up even closer, pressing in enough to make me uncomfortable. I tried to back away, but he kept closing the gap, again and again. “Oh no, mister. This is his store. The only store he has.” Again the obnoxious laugh. “He comes in every day at 10:00, just like clockwork, and closes up every night at 6:00. Just like clockwork. It’s his only store, mister.”

“Got it. And when do you arrive? And leave?”

“Oh, I get here at 3:00 every day, mister. Just like clockwork. Three o’clock, and then I work, work, work. Mr. Jones yells at me if I’m late, mister. He yells something terrible. And if I don’t work, work, work.” He looked around again with great trepidation. It was obvious this kid lived in fear of crossing Mr. Jones. “And I get off at 6:00, mister. Every day. Just like clockwork.”

“I see,” I said. “You leave with Mr. Jones? I mean at the same time? He locks up behind you?”

“Oh no, mister. That’s not how it is at all!” He laughed at my ignorance in the matter, that same obnoxious laugh. “He lets me out the front door and locks it. Then he goes out the back.” I followed his eye to a door at the rear of the store, where the stockroom would be.

“Back there?”

“Yep, yep, yep.”

I started towards the back door and the kid was all over me, trying to block the way. “Oh, you can’t go back there, mister. Nope, nope, nope. Mr. Jones doesn’t let anyone go back there. Ever.” His head retracted like a turtle’s again. “I went back there once and Mr. Jones yelled at me real bad, mister. You can’t go back there, mister.”

I grabbed him by the shoulders and physically moved him aside. “It’s OK, Reginald. Mrs. Jones hired me to find her husband. I think I can go back there.”

He licked his lips nervously and shrank away from me, obviously unconvinced. The kid lived in terror of the wrath of Mr. Jones.

I opened the door and found a cluttered storeroom that occupied most of the back of the shop, with a clear aisle way running all the way back to the steel door which was the rear exit. A wall ran down the left side, just off the doorway I stood in, and it had a cheap hollow core wooden door in it, evidently leading to an office. I walked into the storeroom and glanced around. The kid stood out in the retail area, wringing his hands, watching me through the open doorway. When I reached for the office doorknob he nearly tied himself in knots of contorted agony. “Oh please, mister! Don’t go in there!” He was sweating bullets.

From his reaction, I knew what I was going to find in the office. Mr. Jones. Dead. The police would crack the kid in no time. He had no nerve. I almost felt sorry for him. I turned the knob and the kid let out a gasp, almost a sob, and nearly folded over double in agony. Yet he remained at the doorway to the storeroom, too distraught to flee.

But I did not find Mr. Jones in the office. I found no one in the office. Alive or dead. I could hear the kid out in the showroom making little whimpering sounds. I poked my head out into storeroom and said, “There’s no one in here, kid.”

“I know that, mister. You think I didn’t know that, mister? I knew that, mister.” He had almost regained his composure.

“So you’ve been back here?”

The head retracted again. “Oh no, mister. I don’t go back there! Mr. Jones gets real mad if anyone goes back there. I told you that, mister. But you wouldn’t listen. Oh no, you wouldn’t listen. Now Mr. Jones is going to be real mad.”

“So how did you know he wasn’t back here?” I asked.

“Because he didn’t come out and tell me what to do today when I got here. And he didn’t come out to yell at me for doing it wrong; except I couldn’t do it wrong, since he didn’t come out and tell me what to do. He always tells me what to do when I get here, mister, and then yells at me for doing it wrong. And since he didn’t come out here to tell me what to do, or come out later to yell at me for doing it wrong, I knew he wasn’t back there, mister.” I began to feel like I was trapped in a Franz Kafka novel.

“I see,” I said. And the scary thing was, I did. “OK, kid. Relax. Mr. Jones is not going to yell at you for letting me come back here. I work for his wife. If he yells at anyone, he’ll yell at me. Or her.” He continued to look petrified with fear. “So when you got here today, was the front door unlocked?”

“Sure mister. It was unlocked. How else would I have gotten in, mister?”

“So the store was open, but no one was here? Any customers?”

“No mister. We don’t usually have any customers.”

A cheap used bookstore with no customers. And #17 Park Avenue. The correlation just was not there. Very strange indeed.

I saw a coat hanging on the coat rack in the corner. It was a simple sport coat, but of good make, the type of coat a shop owner might wear to work. Mr. Jones’ coat, evidently, so he left in a hurry. I went over to it and rummaged through the pockets. I turned up a checkbook, bearing his name and address, a gold pen and pencil set, engraved with his name, a monogrammed notebook, and a set of keys. The keys to a Lexus were among them.

“Where’s he park, kid?” I asked poking my head out into the stockroom again. The kid was still standing in the doorway to the showroom. He would not come into the stockroom for all the tea in China.

“He parks out back, mister. He always parks out back.”

I flipped the keys into my palm and headed for the back door. It lead to an alley, where there were dumpsters and clutter, and a scattering of cars near the back doors of other shops. And there, behind the rear exit of Plum Orchard Fine Used Books sat a silver Lexus. Plates BX7-143.

The Notebook

Well there was nothing to do but to check the trunk for a body. Maybe the kid wasn’t off the hook after all. I walked to the rear of the car, and with some trepidation, pressed the fob’s button. There was the solid thunk of the release, and I opened it, using my handkerchief to lift the lid. To my relief the trunk was empty, except for the usual detritus of an automobile trunk. I closed the trunk with my handkerchief so as not to leave my prints, and peered into the passenger compartment through the smoked glass windows, again careful not to touch any surfaces, to see if all was right inside. It was. There were a few CDs on the passenger seat, and a fuzzy troll doll hung from the rear view mirror. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. I did not open it to look around any closer, since it might become part of a crime scene investigation all too soon. I headed back inside.

To the kid’s dismay I did not come back into the showroom, but turned back into the office. I still needed some answers, or at least some questions, if I was going to make any headway into this little puzzler. I poked around carefully, trying to leave things exactly as I had found them. There was a shredder at the side of the desk, the expensive cross cut type that banks used so that material could not be reassembled, and it was filled with what appeared to be shipping records based on the color and texture of the paper it held. Thin tissue type paper in pinks and greens a la UPS and FedEx invoices. There was a waste basket full of Styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap. Most of the bubbles had been popped. So Mr. Jones was a nervous fidget. There was a file cabinet, crammed full of all sorts of records, so many that I made a mental note to come back tomorrow and start sifting through them. Nothing I wanted to tackle this late tonight.

Against one wall was a workbench with several power tools mounted on it; saws, grinders, other odd equipment I did not immediately recognize. But none of it looked like something one would find in a used bookstore. And a jeweler’s lamp was mounted next to each piece of equipment, the kind with the round light that encased a huge magnifying glass. The workbench was impeccably clean. There were three cardboard boxes next to the bench, one of which had been opened. They were all labeled, BOOKS, and their shipping invoices were missing. I peeked inside the open box and saw that it indeed contained books. Lots of cheap dog-eared novels. It probably cost more to ship them than they were worth. I turned my attention to the desk.

The desk was pretty clean too, and also fitted with a jewelers lamp. There were some pictures of his wife, a blotter without blots, the telephone, an open box cutter, and a desk calendar. The calendar was still on yesterday’s date. Evidently he had not even sat down this morning to turn the page. I flipped back and forth a few days to see if he had any appointments marked on it. Last Thursday he met with Willie at 10:30, yesterday he met with Joey at 11:00, and next Monday he was set to meet Big Al at 10:00. Interesting names, I mused.
The desk was locked, but a key on the key ring opened it. Ah, now things were getting interesting.

In the desk I found a full set of jewelers tools; hammers, saws, picks, eyepieces, tweezers, the whole works. The power tools on the workbench began to make sense to me. Then, in a little box stuffed way in the back of the top drawer I found six uncut rocks the size of my pinkie’s nail. No wonder Mr. Jones didn’t want anyone to come back here. He was a stone cutter. And 10 to 1 the IRS had no hint of it.
I went to the boxes and riffled through the books of the one that was open. Before long I found what I was looking for, an old Edgar Rice Burroughs novel that had been hollowed out. The box in the back of the desk drawer would have fit it quite nicely. Very interesting. Sure wished those shipping invoices had not been shredded.

I went back out into the stockroom and began to poke around. There were lots of boxes just like the ones in the office, but with shipping labels intact. I cut one open with my pen knife and the kid about died. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” he gasped, pointing to me in horror. He was so beside himself he almost forgot the prohibition and started to cross the threshold from showroom to stockroom before leaping back. “Don’t do that, mister! Don’t do that, mister!” He began gnawing on his knuckles. I sifted through the contents and found just a bunch of worthless books. They had been shipped from Fred’s Discount Books in Kansas City, MO. I had a feeling any of the other boxes that still had shipping labels would contain more of the same, just worthless used books.

“Come on, mister, I gotta go!” The kid pleaded from the doorway. He was tying himself up into contortions again so I assumed he had to pee. I had noticed a bathroom off the showroom earlier and shrugged.

“So go.”

“What?”

“Well, don’t let me stop you. If you need to pee, go pee.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “I mean I have to go, mister. It’s 6:00. It’s time to close up.”

“Oh. Well…” I looked around the stockroom and decided that there probably wasn’t much to discover here that could not wait till tomorrow. I decided to give the kid a break and knock off for the day. “Sure, kid. I understand. Let me lock the back door.”

When I rejoined him in the storefront it struck me that I ought to check the bathroom. The kid could have killed old man Jones and hidden him in there, I supposed. It was empty and after a minute, so was I.

“So, Reginald, do you know anyone named Willie, or Joey, or Big Al?” I asked when I came back out.

He shook his head then his eyes lit up. “I know Willie McCrenna the Third,” he declared. “He’s my best friend at school, Willie is. He’s the President of the Latin Club! He knows The Gallic and Civil Wars by heart.”

“That’s nice. You know any customers by those names? Men that came in here asking for Mr. Jones.”

“Ha, ha, ha, that’s funny mister. Customers asking for Mr. Jones. That’s funny mister.” We were slowly working our way towards the front of the store and the kid was now much more relaxed. His long nightmare, by the name of Max Mann, would soon be gone and his life would return to normal.

“Customers are funny, eh?”

“We don’t get any customers, mister. Nope, nope, nope.”

“None?”

“Well…” He was thinking. Hard. “There have been three, since I started working here.”

“And when was that?”

“Oh, last year, after Christmas. Last year, after Christmas.”

“Do you remember them?”

“Oh sure, mister. I remember them. Jeez, there were only three of them. Be hard to forget since there were only three of them. Wouldn’t it, mister?” I had to admit it would be. “The first one was Willie. He came by the day after I got my job here, to see how I was doing. He bought 36 books! Let’s see, he bought Atlantis by Norman M. Ventro, The Hero’s of Dregby by Kim Lyndsey Chisholm, the…”

“That’s OK kid, I don’t need to know what books he bought.” Whew, that was close. “How about the other two?”

“Well there was a lady that came in around Easter and looked around a little. She did not buy anything. I see her go into Betty’s now and then. I think she just came in to see what we had.”

“So you could point her out to me sometime?”

“Sure mister. She gets her hair done every other Thursday at 4:00. Just…”

“Like clockwork,” I finished for him. “OK. Will she be back this Thursday, or next?”

“Next.”

“And the third customer?”

“I don’t know who he is, mister,” he admitted sadly. “He bought a book though. The Diamond Tiger, by Elizabeth Lowell.”

I stopped dead and looked at him. The kid ducked, like he expected to get hit for doing something wrong.

“Honest, mister. That’s what he bought. The Diamond Tiger, by Elizabeth Lowell. 25 cents, plus tax.”

“I see,” I said. He eyed the door anxiously. We were so close that he could almost taste the end of his ordeal. But I was not quite done.
“One more thing, Reginald.” He deflated, resigned to answering more questions. “Have you ever seen a package arrive, marked books, but with something funny about it… like an odd packing slip?” He reeled away from me like I had hit him.

“We gotta go, mister, we gotta go!” He rushed the final three feet to the door and pushed it open, breathing hard. “We gotta go, mister. It’s past 6:00, and we gotta lock up. Come on, I have to get home. My mom’s going to be worried soon.”

“Whoa! Hold on now, Reginald. I didn’t mean to scare you, or anything.” It was obvious from his reaction that he had indeed seen a package arrive with something out of the ordinary about it. So I stepped outside with him and let the door ease closed behind us. I held the key to the lock, but did not insert it. “So, about that package?”

He squirmed and writhed and obfuscated for a good ten minutes before I finally got it out of him. About a month ago a US Postal truck had dropped off a package on the front counter at around 3:00, just after he had arrived for work. He had picked it up and carried it back to the doorway to the store room and called out for Mr. Jones that a package had arrived. When Mr. Jones found him holding it he let into him like he had never done before and threatened to fire him if he ever handled another delivery. If something arrived, he was to tell him right away, not lift it, not shake it, not even touch it or even look at it, but was to go get Mr. Jones right away and find something else to do at the other end of the store, or he would be fired. Had he noticed where it was from? Oh sure, mister. It was from Ghana, in Africa. Of course he had noticed that, mister. After all he was an avid stamp collector. It figured.

Satisfied that I had gotten all I was going to get out of him, I locked the door and pocketed the keys. I let the kid go home, drenched in sweat, and promised that the store would be open for him to work in by the time he got there at 3:00 the next day.

I went back to my car and got out the little notebook I had found in Mr. Jones’ coat. It was just starting to get dark so I turned on the dome light and flipped through it quickly. It was written in a tiny but scrawling hand that made it damned near impossible to decipher, at least in this lighting. Jeez, I almost needed a jeweler’s lamp… Ah… He wrote these notes in miniature, under his jeweler’s lamps. Exactly so they would be damned near impossible to read. I looked back to the bookstore and considered it, but the cop car that pulled into the lot just then decided it against me. “Tomorrow,” I said to myself, and stuck the book away into my breast pocket.

I swung by Mable’s Diner and swilled down some coffee as thick as tar, woofed down a burger big enough to choke a bear, and some fries you could of sunk an oil well in. I left Angie a good tip. I always do. because she looks good and talks nice to me when I drop by. Then I headed home.

Home was a third floor flat in a row of three story apartments built in the manner of turn of the century inner city brownstones. The neighborhood I lived in wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t the worst either by any means, and one I could easily afford given my irregular income. My building had a tiny front yard, and a small shared garden out back, between the house and the alley. I parked in the alley, careful not to bump Mr. Ferguson’s car with my door when I got out so his damned car alarm would not go off. Then I headed for the rear stairs. The back light was out again, so I had to be careful on the darkened steps.

As I passed the Ferguson’s alcove a dark shape lunged out and grabbed me by the neck and my right arm. His hand clamped over my mouth and I struggled to twist out of his grasp, but his grip was like iron. Then another form appeared in front of me and punched me in the gut. Hard.

“Quit struggling, or I’ll hit you again,” the guy in front hissed. I stopped struggling right away. My motto has always been, “If it hurts, don’t do it.” I stood still, in the vice like grip of the guy in back, but with my full attention on the guy in front. He was carrying a pipe, which was definitely not a good sign.

“It’s come to our attention that you are poking your nose where it don’t belong,” the guy with the pipe informed me. “So Micky The Hammer tells me to tell you to butt out. So’s I’m telling you.” He swung the pipe down into my kneecap. Hard. Only the mitt over my mouth kept me from screaming like a banshee, my eyes watered and my eyesight went white. As I sank to the ground I felt the guy yank open my coat and fumble through my pockets. He stood up, satisfied and kicked me in the ribs. “Have a nice day.” With that his partner shoved me aside, in a heap, and the two scurried down the alley and got into a waiting car. Only after they were gone did I realize what they had taken—the little notebook.
~

Next week – Chapter’s 5 & 6: The Cop, and The Reporter

(c) 2010, by J. M. Strother – All rights reserved.