VI – Questions in the Afternoon

I woke up in a cold sweat, and the sense I was being watched. I sat up, and pulled the clammy sheets off me. The clock read 1:00 PM, so I figured I had time to run down what I knew. First, the Hatherlys were deep. I hadn't ever heard of them, but with heavy-hitters like Gardener trying to keep me off the trail, they had to be way up on the food chain. What were Virginia and "Malcolm" doing that was so huge?

Second, Ada wasn't at all what she pretended to be. How could she be? She stood out like the Eiffel Tower would here in New York. She wasn't subtle, especially with gams like that. And that package she had handed me...

The package. I had forgotten about that. I ran my hands through my hair, stood up, and walked to the table. My eyes felt like they had sunburned, and my throat felt like the Sahara looked; dusty, hot, and empty. Sitting down in the wooden chair felt good. I didn't know why, and I didn't care. After last night, I felt like Death warmed up.

I sighed, ignoring the stickiness of my mouth. I plopped my briefcase on it's side, and popped it open. I reached in, and grabbed the This Case pile. I set that down, snapped my briefcase closed, and set the case on the floor. Time to go to work. I shuffled through the pile, looking for the package. I found it wedged between my business cards, and the address Virginia had given me.

I tore it open, and dumped the contents on the table. Half of them were yellowing newspaper clippings from 1944. The other half were dossiers on the Hatherlys, and what appeared to be mission transmissions from the War. The juxtaposition of the two left me wondering what articles from six years ago, and top secret orders had to do with each other. I grabbed the dossiers, and gave them a cursory glance. Ada either knew my system or had one very similar, since the files were identical to the few I had scavenged from my office. I decided that the dossiers would require less thought than the clippings, so I started there. I grabbed Virginia's, and started reading.

It started off more or less like I expected it to. Red hair, green eyes, et cetera , et cetera. Born in Middlesex, England in 1925, she had been a nurse on the front lines during the War. She moved to America in 1946, trying to escape her memories of the maiming and death she witnessed. She took her younger brother Malcolm with her. I read all this, and yawned a bit. Nothing interesting yet.

Then something caught my eye. In an intricate flowery script near a list of dates was written: "Herr Paarig's movements coincide with the latter half." A closer inspection of the dates revealed that they were dates she had moved to different locales; Buenos Aires, Rio, Mexico City, Dallas, Kingsport, then here. She had only arrived in New York six weeks ago. On the bottom of the page was the flowery script that I could only assume was Ada's: "The Contessa Hotel. 6464 East Central Street. Gärtner Paarig , room 1900."

The Contessa. Now that address made sense. Back in '39, I had broken a Mob fixer in that room. It's sound-proofed, and the balcony privately overlooks the courtyard; you can see everything, but your balcony is obscured by room 1904's. An excellent place to do a bit of 'deep debriefing.' The problem was that only people in the business knew about it. It wasn't easily accessible, and was never sold as a standard night's stay. You had to request it.

So who was Parrig? Question number one. Obviously, he was someone in the business. Just as obvious, he was someone local or had a local contact. A rival of Gardener's?

Which opened the door for the second question: Who was Gardener?

I needed a clue, and a drink. One of them I knew where to find. So, it was to the bar for me. A little hair of the dog that bit me, and all that. I gathered the pages relating to "Malcolm", and started for the door.

Hold on a tick...

The pages I had just read were numbered twelve through twenty four. Malcolm's were numbered twenty five through forty five. What had caught my eye was that the page numbers jumped sharply. They skipped the thirties, and hit straight to forty. That meant I was missing some pages. However, as I had riffled through them at the bar, I knew that those pages had been there before I had gone to bed. Someone had taken them.