Chapter five

The next morning, I was awoken at 8 o'clock by my cell phone ringing. I blindly searched for the phone on my bedside table, and after fumbling about with it finally answered.

"Yeah?" I grunted.

"Good morning, is this Mr Pearson?" The female voice asked.

"Sure is." I replied. It took me a while in the fog to recognise the voice. "What can I do for you, Miss Stubbs?" I asked with my eyes closed.

"Mrs Stubbs." She corrected. "A letter just arrived for Charlie. I had to sign for it."

"Do you often sign for his deliveries?" I asked.

"Sometimes. He keeps irregular hours. I'm always here, so he asked if I could sign for him when he's not around. You said to call if anyone turns up."

"Thanks. I'll be there as soon as I can." A new lead can wake you up better than coffee, sometimes. I got dressed into my grey suit and put on a fresh shirt and tie and headed down to my car to battle the rush hour traffic. Once I turned onto Georgia Avenue, it was a straight line most of the way. When I hit Fenton Street, I hung a right onto Bonifant Street and started looking for a place to park. I ended up parking a block away. I let myself into the building and headed up the stairs. Mrs Stubbs the accountant was sitting at her desk with the letter in front of her. She was on the phone when I knocked. She looked up and gestured for me to come in. I opened the door and sat down in front of her while she spoke. After sitting for a while, I got restless and stood up to walk around the office while Mrs Stubbs continued to talk on the phone. Metal filing cabinets lined one wall, and shelves were filled with folders and books. A water cooler sat in the corner next to a coffee machine. Steam rose from the machine, carrying the strong smell along the way. I pointed to it with a questioning gesture and Mrs Stubbs nodded, so I picked up a cup and poured some out. Mrs Stubbs finished her phone call and apologised for keeping me waiting. Unlike the last couple of times someone had apologised to me, I actually felt like she meant it.

"Good morning, Mr Pearson."

"Call me Jack." I replied.

"Linda." She picked up the letter and handed it to me. I turned it over in my hand and looked at the return address. Linda followed my eyes and read the address out loud.

"He sent it to himself?" Linda looked questioningly at me.

"It's a good way to hide something for a few days." I told her. I tore the envelope open and looked inside. It was a key. I slid it into my hand and looked at it.

"What's it for?" Linda asked me.

"If I knew." I trailed off. It didn't look like a house or car key. I put it in my pocket. "Thanks Linda." She smiled.

"If you ever need an accountant…" She let it hang, and I nodded my appreciation with a warm smile and headed out the door.

I was hungry and realised I hadn't had breakfast. I looked around me a saw a diner, so I stopped in for a coffee and a bite to eat. While they were making the food, I used a payphone. After being passed around a few times, I managed to leave a message for Captain Shaw at V Street Station, asking for a meeting. I went back to the counter to eat my scrambled eggs on toast. As I walked back to my car, I felt the presence of someone behind me. I reacted too late and felt a sharp pain in the back of my head. I stumbled forwards before being grabbed and pulled into an alley. When I finally looked up, I was confronted by two men. One was using a staff of some kind to push me up against the wall, the other stood behind. They were both big and both black. I thought of the break-ins. My assailants had matching tattoos on their foreheads. They looked tribal. The one stood further back spoke.

"Where is the Kara Kesh?" He asked me. His voice was calm and quiet. If it wasn't for his friend, anyone who passed would think we were having a pleasant conversation.

"The what?" I asked him back. The silent partner lifted his staff off me, and I allowed myself a breath before the staff came back, hitting me in the side of my face. My head turned and I spat blood onto the ground.

"We know you have been searching for it. Why?" My reluctance to talk came as much from stubbornness as ignorance. I had no idea what a "Kara Kesh" was. But I could make a guess that he was talking about the glove.

"I don't know what you're talking about." The staff was jabbed into my stomach. I coughed and doubled over, falling to my knees. The attackers were kind enough to let me pull myself up, so I was standing tall again.

"We know who you are. We know you were hired to find the Kara Kesh. Who are you working for?" I stared at him and said nothing.

"Do we have to make you talk?" He asked me.

"It's been tried?"

"Is that right? Consider this a warning. If you find it, bring it to us. If not, we will find you." With that, they walked away. Cool as the breeze. I leaned against the wall and put a cigarette in my mouth. I took a deep draw before walking back to my car. I sat in the driver's seat and smoked my cigarette.

I got to my office just after two o'clock. I rubbed my hand on the back of my head and felt where the blow came. I took two aspirin and washed them down with water from the waiting room. After that I took a seat at my desk and considered my options. There was a message on the machine. I played it while preparing some coffee. Captain Shaw said she could meet me tomorrow morning. With a coffee in hand, I sat back down and took the key out of my pocket and stared at it for a while. Ten minutes of staring and thinking got me nowhere so I picked up the phone to call my client. Eric answered after the second ring; Either he always knew where to be and when, or he was quick.

"Dr Longmore's residence." I gave him my name and asked to speak to his boss. While he was seeing to that, I took out a cigarette and drank some more coffee.

"This is Dr Longmore speaking."

"Good afternoon, Dr Longmore. This is Jack Pearson." I started to update him, saying that Charles McKenzie found something and had to make it disappear. I was close to retrieving it. I also told him I found out where Randolph Haynes was hiding out and what happened to him. Finally, I told him about my encounter and asked if the two men sounded familiar. There was a silence on the line that was longer than it would have been if he knew nothing about them. That told me something.

"I imagine there may be other interested parties looking for the glove, Mr Pearson." He told me. "Deal with them as you see fit but bring me that glove." I hung up and leaned back in my chair, blowing smoke at the ceiling. When it could climb no higher, it started to spread out and dissipate. I opened a window to help it on its way. I heard the outer door open but didn't move. I just stared down at the people on the street.

"Hi Jack, keeping busy?" Eddie stood in the doorway to my office, leaning against the frame.

"Just trying to pass the time" I took out the bottle from the deep drawer and two glasses. "What's going on?" I asked.

"I got wind of a report of a B . Some apartment not far from here. I thought you might like to come along for the ride."

"Why would I want to do that?" He drank down his whiskey

"It's your apartment." We headed downstairs and both got in his car. A few minutes later, we were at my apartment building. We went inside and looked around. The place had been turned over. Drawers were emptied on the floor, chairs broken into pieces.

"Anything missing?" Eddie asked as we stepped over broken glass.

"Nothing as far as I can see." I replied. I looked at my record collection in the corner. They weren't broken, just scattered around.

"This got anything to do with Charlotte Grey?" He asked me.

"No. This is something else." I replied.

"What do you think they were looking for?" I took the photo of the glove out of my pocket and showed it to him.

"Probably this." Eddie Russell was always very good and not giving anything away, but for a brief second, his eyes betrayed him. He knew something. I knew him well enough to know I wouldn't get it out of him. If he wanted to tell me, he would.

"You don't need to stick around, Jack. We get any prints, I'll let you know." He turned to watch the crime scene investigators doing their work. "Should be out of here by end of the day and you can put the place back together again. If it takes longer, here's a spare key to my place. You're welcome to stay a night or two." I thanked him and walked back to my office and got in my car. I had Charlie's home address and hoped I might find something to tell me what that key was for.

I took Blaire Road as far as 3rd and parked on the corner. Charlie lived in a bungalow on Rittenhouse Street with a relatively small garden. The fence was low and the post by his path had been knocked over at some point, but not recently. The garden was not overgrown yet, but hadn't been looked after much, either. Paint on the walls flaked like dry skin. I circled the property and looked around the back. It looked much the same as the front. I examined the lock on the back door and took out my lockpick. Inside, McKenzie was living a spartan existence. He didn't keep trinkets or flowers in vases, no paintings on the wall. There were no photos of a family at Christmas, he never married and lived alone which made me think of my own existence. I came close to marrying once. But eventually she decided that a cop was a step down from her high-flying finance something or other and went back to him. My parents, while still alive, had moved to Florida when they had both retired, and made it clear from the start that they didn't approve of my career choices. What little Charlie did have was all in order. Nothing knocked over, nothing out of place. Whoever searched his office hadn't found his home. I searched all through the quiet, empty space but found nothing of use.

I was about to give up when I saw the mail piled up by the front door. He hadn't been home in quite some time. I flicked through leaflets for takeaways offering two-for-one deals, junk mail asking if he's happy with his energy supplier, advertisements for retirement living that he would've been thrilled to see. Eventually I came across a bill for a storage unit in Downtown. I tore open the envelope and found the number of the unit and account reference number. I pocketed the letter and made my way out through the back, the way I had come in. I headed north on 3rd Street, back onto Blair Road and navigated the busy streets to Downtown.

U Store was on Takoma Avenue, opposite Upper Portal Park. I hoped Charlie hadn't been here in a while, or the staff turnaround meant that no one would recognise him and would therefore let me in with no bother. It was a big, concrete square, painted white. The blue sign in big, bold letters on top of the roof. I walked through the main entrance There was no staff on site, which was a stroke of luck. The floor was dusty with tracked mud running through. Cobwebs decorated the corners like every day was Halloween. On either side of the halls were shutter doors. The place was a maze. I wandered for what could have been an hour until I found the numbered unit I was looking for. The key was for a padlock. On the other side of the shutter was a relatively small space. A few boxes lay on the floor; They were mostly filled with paperwork and photos. In one of the boxes was a smaller box. Roughly the size of a shoe box. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. I untied the string and opened the box.

I had found it. The ancient glove discovered in an archaeological dig in Egypt. The sleave of the glove was spiralled, it had no fingers but covered the fingertips, and in the centre was a brilliant jewel that seemed to glow. Dr Longmore had promised me ten thousand dollars for it. Even if I did believe he would pay, I wasn't about to hand it over to him. I'm not in the business of stealing on commission. I also wasn't happy about handing it over to the tattoo brothers. There was something about them I didn't trust. Although, that could have been because of the beating. I needed to find out more about them before I moved the Kara kesh, as they called it. In the box with the glove was a photo. I picked it up for a closer look but didn't know what to make of it. The photo was of my client, Dr Longmore, and his butler, Eric. The wall behind them looked strange, Egyptian hieroglyphs on a golden wall. I already knew that Longmore's interest in Ancient Egypt bordered on the obsessive, so this didn't tell me much. I was drawn to his eyes. They glowed yellow. I understood what caused red glowing eyes in photos, but I had never seen something like this before. Whatever this meant, Charlie thought it significant enough to lock both these items up and hide the key. I pocketed the photo and started to put everything else back as I had found it. Suddenly, I felt a blow to the back my head and everything went black.