Adding to Jacob's alarm, during the elevator ride down to the underground parking garage beneath the monolith that was Wolfrum and Hart's L.A. office, Jacob's hitchhiker casually suggested that he might want to see if his personal retirement records were missing, to whit, Jacob's personal ledger.
Never one to throw away an old bucket until he knew whether the new one held water, Jacob kept the worn little leather bound book, a gift from his bubbe on his tenth birthday back in Berlin, and the Parker safety pen which had been a bar mitzvah gift in 1910 in one of his suit pockets within easy reach despite the recent onslaught of computers. Every page was a mirror: reported transactions on the left, actual transactions, the little fudges, the discreet funneling of cash into offshore accounts and investments for his benefit for the last nine decades, on the right. Plus a lot of personal expenses, most of them quite small, but still, a man must keep on top of things or everything will all go to pieces if he doesn't
So as the numbers above the door counted down with agonizing slowness, Jacob's hand slid into his right jacket pocket, only to find the little book, his retirement plan at the expense of the company he'd faithfully served since 1938, missing.
Perhaps he had somehow absent-mindedly left it at home (things had been stressful lately, what with quarterly reports due...) when changing from his Tuesday suit to his Wednesday suit… no, wait, he had worn the same suit since Monday, waiting for a dry cleaning sale… still, it had been… How on Earth had he not noticed this?
Nearly hyperventilating, Jacob pulled his elderly BMW over in the side of the L.A. freeway on his way home to pack his bags and flee the country, all but tearing the lovingly tended leather seats out of his car searching for it as the mid-afternoon rush tore past.
What if someone had found the ledger... somewhere… and found the business cards he kept tucked in side the cover… oh God, and mailed it back to… and someone in the mail room had intercepted… His bald spot beaded with sweat, Jacob got down on his knees in the roadside gravel, using the flashlight he kept in the glove compartment, checking again under the driver's seat, but all he found this time was a gum wrapper, Beeman's Original Pepsin, from the bulk lot he'd bought at cost in 1985.
Careful to obey all traffic laws because traffic tickets were avoidable expenses, Jacob drove home, thinking that maybe it was somewhere in his immaculate efficiency apartment in the basement of the complex he'd bought with cash for a song in 1952 at a county tax auction.
With its well-kept second-hand furniture, Jacob's living space endured similar treatment to that of Jacob's car: couch cushions were yanked up and tossed aside, entire kitchen drawers emptied on the spotless but worn linoleum, and faded throw rugs were thrown.
His orderly twin bed was also torn apart, pillow, 1930s pajamas, and 1950s sheets left on the still good 1970s carpet.
His bureau stood drawerless and desecrated, socks and underwear he'd bought wholesale and in retail quantities in 1962, scattered hither, thither and yon.
All closets had been emptied.
All pockets had been examined.
The bathroom, with it's worn but still usable 1940s towels, bulk generic aspirin, gallon bottle of generic mouthwash, and 1970s foot-shaped bathmat (avocado green thrown out by the tenant in 3B) looked like a tornado had gone through it.
Disheveled and tie-less, Jacob sat breathing into a recycled paper bag on his 1940s coffee table at five in the morning, mentally re-inventorying where he'd been the last few days while surrounded by scattered used books, mostly on accounting.
There had been no restaurant stops. Though he could have put them on his company expense account, Jacob's frugality found him eating dry ham sandwiches (The dybbuk heartily approved of Jacob eating ham and other pork products. Anyway, condiments merely added to the overall cost per sandwich so they had to go.) in parking lots in between business calls, sandwiches he'd made from ham he'd bought on clearance from the nearby Costco, along with generic diet colas, bulk generic potato chips, generic white bread, and packed in a steel lunch box he'd purchased at a garage sale in 1975 for 75¢.
Jacob mentally went through any other possibilities, which were limited. Why go to the movies when you have a perfectly good second-hand television to watch after a day's work? Why drink at a bar when you could drink for considerably less in front of that television after acquiring your liquid refreshment wholesale through one of your clients who owed you a favor? Why date when you could peruse the same 1950s Playboy magazine, originally purchased for 50¢, over and over again – oy, that shayna maidel Bettie Page, still an oytser after all these years!
Speaking of clients, maybe he'd…
No, no— Jacob, the macher, the maker of deals, preferred interacting with his clients on the phone once the contract was signed. Anything beyond that was a waste of time. Time he could put to better use cutting new deals while feathering his nest at the expense of his masters…
You know, boychik, the dybbuk mentioned offhandedly, there was only one account this week which required personal contact. You know, the one in Sunnydale?
Oy gevalt! Jacob thought, running his hands over his damp face, that one. The one that wasn't working out the way he'd planned… how could Henry betray him like this? He'd got the man and his silly toys out of more than one unprofitable scrape over the years since he had approached the man on behalf of Wolfrum and Hart in 1987 after one of his walking candy-colored monstrosities had gone out of control, committing what would have been considered first-degree murder had it been alive.
The dybbuk made the suggestion that now would be a good time to make a discreet little visit to Mr. Henry to straighten things out.