This chapter contributed by tt-zorro and sponsored, in part, by readers like you.
The alarm sounded for the tenth time before his hand found the switch to shut it off. He blindly fumbled around the nightstand for his watch. It was an old habit, never trusting a clock he didn't set himself. He trusted his watch; he followed it because he knew it was right, and he knew it was right because he followed it.
Right then, it was telling him that he had slept far too late. He could not afford to sleep the day away; he had plans, places to go.
He had people to meet; well, he had a person to meet. Okay, truthfully, he had a person to find, stake out, follow, with, perhaps, some surreptitious stalking thrown in.
He had spent the entire previous day searching for this person, with no results. Seacouver was not a small city, and searching for a person who likely did not want to be found among several hundred thousand people was no mean task. There was no way to know what name he would use, and he had only seen photos (very old photos) himself; so recognizing him on sight was not remotely guaranteed.
Yes, he certainly had a hard job ahead of him and probably another long day.
Absently rubbing his eyes, he slid his legs out of the bed and mentally gathered himself. He allowed himself a moment to take a sidelong glance at his tin of cherry tobacco and to wonder what the penalty would be for tampering with a hotel smoke detector before going into the bathroom. Deciding against it – he did not want to use his currently-assumed name in the future just to discover himself fined for vandalism – he walked to the bathroom to start his day. He shaved, showered, and emptied his bladder with the oblivious pace of the sleepily absent-minded.
Reemerging from the bathroom and remembering the business of the day, he walked over to the phone and dialed the front desk.
"Yes," he started after the clerk finished his generic greeting, "this is..." He paused for a moment, trying to remember the name he'd used to check in; people tended to trust a person who would give out his name. "Mark... Mark Williams, in room 204. I'm looking for... an old friend who lives in the city, and I was wondering, do you know of a good way to try to find him?"
He missed the days when you could just hand a clerk a C-note and tell them right out you needed to find someone who knows everything going on in such-and-such a city. Every city had one, and a person like that is always useful for finding someone, for any reason.
"Well, Sir, have you tried the phone book?" Wonderful, just wonderful, he wouldn't get any useful information out of this clerk.
"He wouldn't be in the book, thanks," he said, and hung up halfway through the too-enthusiastic apology.
He threw on his clothes, cursing his luck and the long day of searching ahead of him. He grabbed his bag and pulled it off the bed. It caught on his pants leg and he turned, knocking over the lamp on the nightstand. Time slowed as he watched the lamp teeter and finally lose the fight against imbalance and fall. Dropping the bag, he reached for the lamp, practically diving. He saved the lamp, but knocked over the nightstand in the process. The drawer lay as he had left it, half open, its contents spilled out onto the floor. There on the floor lay two books, a burnt-orange Bible – "From your friends, the Gideons" – and a bright yellow phone book.
He decided that it would cost him nothing to pick it up, so he did and found that it was inexplicably opened to the M section.
"Macduff, MacGriff..." He paused, barely able to believe his eyes. The day before flashed through his mind – being drenched by endless torrents of rain, receiving countless blank stares in reply to his inquiries, nearly being run over by not one but two taxis – an entire day of misery when the answer was right in between MacLeod, David and MacLeod, Frank.
"I'll be damned," he said, "MacLeod, Duncan… right here in the book. I can't believe it."