I've got that Doctor from upstairs and a plastic crocodile, and the memory of a thief who does not match Miss Pond's description. I've got squat.
Miss Pond saw a young man of a compact but muscular build with short dark hair. Me and the Doctor both saw a small, indefinite person with a white mask and hood. That's not just square one, you know. That confusion? That's a step even further back. That's square zero. I'd suspected, before, that square zero existed, and when things were at their worst I'd think, 'Hey, thank God I'm not there'. And here I stand. How it goes, I guess. Everybody's got a rock bottom they have to hit someday.
Just doesn't seem so fair that I hit it the night I get the job from the movie star.
The Doctor from Upstairs is still here, by the way. He's at the window, looking out, even though I've told him a couple of times now to put the blind down. She's looking at me. In off the billboard with those warm and impossibly shining eyes. And this is the forties, my friend, they don't have computer enhancement yet.
Wait. What's computer enhancement?
I must have read about it in a magazine. Something they're working on. I keep having those odd interruptions today when I'm thinking.
Anyway, he's still here. And when I'm trying to think where to go when all my leads get strangled in thorns, he says to me, "Mr Williams?"
"Just a second, Doctor, I'm just going to get the number of this cop I kn-"
"Mr Williams, I believe it may be imperative that you get over here right now and see this." It's not that he shouts, it's just that his voice climbs the pitches until I'd do about anything to make him stop, so I go to the window.
Out in the street, there's a girl. And she's running, hell for leather, clattering in pink patent heels down the middle of the street, skidding and sliding in the rainwater. Thick, curly hair is plastered down around her face and shoulders, and she's looking frantically around at the street names and at a piece of paper in her hand, trying to find her way to someplace or another.
"Doctor, I got two cases on that aren't even necessarily the same case. I'm not taking in any strays tonight." He turns to me and makes what I can only assume is a futile attempt at a slap. I don't feel a thing, but it's the principle that counts. I breathe deep so I don't sound angry when I say, "Is there a problem?"
"Look!" he says, drawing out the syllable long, clapping one hand to the back of my head and forcing it almost through the window. He puts a fingertip down next to my eye and draws a square in the condensation on the glass. I reach up and remove the centre of it.
At a junction maybe twelve feet behind the lost woman in pink, peering round the corner, there's a white mask with big black eyes.
"Goddamnit, Doctor!" I shout, grabbing my coat on my way out the door, "Why can't you just say these things?"
I run out of the building, down to the street. The doorman doesn't look up, because he never does. Run out with no hat into the rain, and there she is.
Still a block away, the pretty little woman in pink, and I can tell from here she's a sweet person and kind and impossibly beautiful, the way you feel about a best friend or a little sister or something else I can't quite put my finger on, she shouts to me, "Are you Agent Rory Williams?"
I don't know about 'agent' of any sort, but otherwise she's got it about right, and two out of three is majority. So I nod and wave her to me. I can't see the mask anymore.
For a quiet, relieved moment, I figure it must have seen me and gone away.
Moments are short. It was in the side streets. The woman in pink is running towards me. The person in the mask runs out of a side street. The woman sees them from the corner of her eye and, rather than run harder, just stops, and throws her arms up around her head like that's going to do any good.
The masked person doesn't attack. They slow down as they get to her, and just sort of reach into her pocket. The woman seems to know what they're going for though, and starts flailing at them with limp little hands. And screaming. Oh God, yeah, this one's a screamer. It's not putting the thief off any, though, so I go to help. Go fast, go hard at it. I ought to have brought the revolver, but I left the office too quick.
Christ, I don't have a revolver, do I?
Yeah. Yeah, of course I do. Jesus, in this city, these days? Yeah I have a revolver. Goddamn right I do. Man's got a right.
Anyhow, I'm there now. And as the Thief grabs something from the pocket of the woman in pink, I grab the Thief away from her, into the middle of the street, down onto the asphalt, and God, for something so small it fights like a coyote in a trap. It struggles and struggles, scratches and kicks, all elbows and knees and other sharp and vicious parts. I try to get it pinned.
While I'm doing that, behind me, there's a squeal of tyres. Somebody wasn't thinking about the road conditions. Somebody never ever thinks about the road conditions or the weather, or anything beyond mirror-signal-manoeuvre. Typical woman.
Of course I haven't looked up, so I don't know it's a woman. I don't know that.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is, the tyres screech because they're stopping.
"River," says a voice, "Get in!" I want to look up and see who that is, because the voice sounds like a voice that I know, and anyway the woman in pink is getting away. "Agent William's is compromised!"
And I want to tell that voice that just because I'm on top of the thief doesn't mean there's any kind of compromise going on, but the person beneath me reaches up to claw my face, and I finally get the other nasty little hand pushed down against the tarmac.
Asphalt, even. Goddamnit. There's something too strange going on in my mind tonight. Too much, maybe. Things I've been through tonight would drive anybody crazy. Yeah. That's what it is.
The car behind me screams away again before I can even get a look at it. All I've got is the masked thief. And it's the strangest thing; when the car pulls away, the person beneath me stops struggling.
They lies still, and I realize that they is a she, and climb off. Of course I keep hold of its wrists. I don't have to pull it up, though; it feels I'm getting up and just does the same.
Like it wants to be caught.
"Come on," I tell her. "You're coming with me, sweetheart."
She just nods, and goes about it. I try not to believe I'm going crazy. Just take it. Just figure it's a good thing and take it. I take her back inside, take her up to the office.
Stranger thing still; the doorman, the one who's always reading the paper, the one that looks up at me and turns the page when I pass, he doesn't do any different when I'm dragging a dame along by the arms.
Not going crazy. Don't think about it. Just take her upstairs.
"You!" cries the Upstairs Madman, pointing a vicious finger so straight it trembles at her. "Thief! Return what you stole from me at once!"
The thief tips her head over onto her side. Then pats herself down to show she has no pockets.
"I'll do the searching, thanks," I tell her. Once I know she's wearing something under that loose tunic, I pull it off. She folds her bare arms suddenly over each other, like air hurts her skin, and pushes her face down into her elbows. I run my hands over her trousers and lift the cuffs, checking down the sides of her tight-laced boots. Eventually, I stand back.
"So," I say, kind of sheepish, "I guess you don't have anything, huh?"
I give her back the tunic. She pulls that one first and pulls up her hood. Then she opens out her right hand. There's a little statuette there, no bigger than a chess piece. For all I know, it could be. That must have been what she took from the pink ladies pocket.
I pick it up and say, "No bowtie, Doctor, I'm sorry." When I look at him, it occurs to me that the little figure in my hand is kind of a likeness. Day I've had, a coincidence like that doesn't even surprise me.
The Doctor charges up to the girl in the mask. Does it fast and fierce. I don't see him like this, you know. I've heard about it, but I don't see him like this. Damn sure I see it now, but normally, any other day, I don't see him look so angry he forces her back into my visitor chair. Stands there in front of her, his face down in her face, his hands on the arm of the chair so she coils back, still hugging herself. "What have you done with it, you horrible little thing?"
A real loud shout, and real close to her face. I know he means it. I know, because he told me, that what she stole has sentimental value, even if I don't understand it. So I get it, but she gets it too; she's scared already. Maybe so much so she can't tell him a goddamn thing.
I move him out of the way and lean down to her.
"You take some stuff from this guy?" I say, nodding at him. She shakes her head, slow and sure. I don't know why, but I believe her. Maybe the lightning eyes behind the mask. That's the only way I can describe them; like lightning. "I'm going to take your mask off, sweetheart, okay?"
Both of her hands clap up to her face to hold it there. Not okay, apparently. Then one hand secures it and the other hand flings out to point at the Doctor, then to wave him towards the door, twice, desperately.
"She wants you to wait outside."
"Well, honestly, there's the rights of prisoners and then there's just plain ridiculous, when she's the one in the wrong and therefore, I shall not-"
"Wait outside, Doctor," I say. I give him a look too that makes it a definite order, too. He looks prissy and indignant and like he's going to give me an argument, but when I stand up straight, I retreats. Goes quick too, out beyond the door. And I can see his shadow on the frosted glass, still trying to see in, so I tell the girl, "Don't worry, he can't see a thing."
I go for the mask. She flinches at first. She's curled up in that chair with her legs tucked up, hiding her chin behind her knees. But then she unfolds, tips up her head. Enough for me to get hold anyway, and lift it off comfortably.
Mussed dark hair falls in curls down either side of a wide, pale face, with a few pale freckles along the cheekbones. Without the mask blocking them off, the eyes are impossibly big, and the mouth is small, rosebud. The thief has a face now.
Beyond the door, the Doctor is still peering, trying to see inside. I lean down and say to the girl, "How do you know him? Why couldn't I take your mask off when he was here?"
She looks around her, swinging her head in big circles, then goes to my desk. Picks up a pen and writes on the blotter.
"Him am being Now-owner, but not Owner. Have am being Bad-Owner. Him am to be seen her face, her is like fingersnap to be falling down dead. Good Other Owner am to have been before-teaching that."
After a while, I figure out what those words are trying to say. They still don't mean anything.
No, that's not true.
They mean she's heart-scared of the Doctor.
Like I said that time before, I don't know what kind of Doctor that guy is.
I am still holding her mask in my hands, and it's the strangest thing; it's like waking up from a dream. It's like I know something new, and I don't quite have words for it. Don't even know what it is. Except that it's in my hands, and in my visitor chair, and outside the door, trying to see inside.