Anonymous Rex (2 page)

Third roll of film spent, and it’s almost time to close up shop. Just in time, too, as Mr. Ohmsmeyer’s nearing the end of his fun and games; I can feel it in the grunts emanating from the bedroom, growing deeper, harsher, louder. Bass echoes through the house, vibrating the window, the two intertwined dinos flexing before my eyes, and the beat intensifies as the female Ornithomimus begins to howl, lips stretching, reaching for the ceiling, legs locked tight around her lover’s tail, that sandpaper hide blushing with blood, sliding from green to purple to a deep mahogany glazed over with excess sweat, Mr. O. panting hard, tongue licking the air, steam rising from his ridged back as he turns his head to the side, teeth parting wide, and begins the last rise, preparing to fully consummate his lust—

A clang, behind me. Metallic. Scraping.

I know that sound. I know that clang. I know that familiar ring of metal on metal and I don’t like it one bit. Forgetting my earlier lack of coordination, I leap to my feet and crash through the nearest set of hedges—screw Ohmsmeyer, screw the job—branches breaking as I
push through, a crazed adventurer scything his way through the underbrush. Wheeling around, almost losing my balance as I make the turn toward the front of the house, I come to a stop midway between a lawn gnome and the most terrifying sight these eyes have ever seen:

Someone is towing my car.

“Hey!” I call. “Hey, you! Yeah, you!”

The short, squat tow truck driver looks up rapidly, his head seemingly independent of his neck, and cocks a thick eyebrow. I can smell his scent from thirty feet away—rotting veggies and ethyl alcohol, a potent mixture that almost makes my eyes water. Too small for a Triceratops, so he must be a Compy, which should make this conversation frustrating, if nothing else. “Me? Me?” he squawks, the clipped screech tearing at my ears.

“Yeah, you. That’s my car. This—this here—it’s mine.”

“This car?”

“Yes,” I say, “this car. I’m not illegally parked. You can’t tow it.”

“Illegally parked? No, you ain’t illegally parked.”

I nod furiously, hoping nonverbal cues will help. “Yes, yes, right. There’s no red curb, no signs—please, unhook my car—”

“This car here?”

“Yes, right. Yes. That car. The Lincoln. Unhook me and I’ll be going.”

“It ain’t yours.” He resumes clamping the winch onto the front axle.

Swinging around to the passenger-side window, I reach in the glove compartment—gum, maps, shaker of dried oregano—and pull out the wrinkled registration. “See? My name, right there.” I place the document directly under his eyes, and he studies it for quite some time. Most Compys have literacy problems.

“It ain’t yours,” he repeats.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to engage this dimwitted dinosaur in a philosophical debate as to the nature of ownership, so it looks like a little intimidation might be in order. “You don’t wanna do this,” I tell him, leaning into a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve got some pretty powerful friends.” A bald bluff, but what does a Procompsognathus know, anyhow?

He laughs, the little apefucker, a chicken-cluck guffaw, and shakes his head back and forth. I consider a bit of controlled assault and battery,
but I’ve had enough trouble with the law in recent months without having to add another run-in to the list.

“I know ’bout you,” says the Compy. “Least, I know all I gotta know.”

“What? You’ve been—look here—I need this car to work—”

Suddenly, the front door to the house across the street opens up, and Mr. Ohmsmeyer, who must have reguised himself in record time, strides purposefully down the front walk. An impressive display of speed, considering it takes most of us at least ten, fifteen minutes to apply even the most basic human makeup and polysuit. For what it’s worth, the D-9 clamp riding beneath the guise across the left side of his chest is unbuckled—I can see it even through his guise—but it’s nothing a mammal would ever notice. His eyes dart back and forth, nervous, paranoid, searching the darkened street for any sign of his loving spouse. Perhaps he heard my hasty exit from the bushes; perhaps I interrupted his climax.

“The hell’s going on here?” he grumbles, and I’m about to answer when the Compy tow truck driver hands me a sheet of paper. It reads
BYRON COLLECTIONS AND REPOSSESSIONS
in bold twenty-point type, and lists their phone number and some sample rates. I look up, a host of indignant responses foaming to my lips—

To find that the Compy’s already in the truck, revving it up, winching my car into place. I leap for the open cab, claws almost springing forth on their own—and the door slams in my face. The sonofabitch is sneering at me through the glass, his angular features almost daring me to leap in front of the truck, to give my life for the life of my automobile, which in Los Angeles is not unheard of. “You pay the bank,” he crows through the closed window, “you get the car.” And with a shove of the Compy’s scrawny arms, the tow truck hops into first gear, dragging my beloved Lincoln Continental Mark V behind it.

I stare down the street for quite some time after the tow truck’s taillights have disappeared into the night.

Ohmsmeyer breaks my reverie. He’s staring at my legs, at the mud splattered across my pants. A slow wave of anger carves a wake across his forehead. I grin, attempting to head off any ill will. “I don’t suppose I could use your phone?”

“You were in my bushes—”

“Actually, I—”

“You were at the window—”

“There’s a technical point here I’d like to make—”

“What the hell’s that camera for?”

“No, you’re—you’re missing the point—”

I don’t get any farther before I’m doubled over from a swift hit to my belly. It’s a featherweight slap, nothing more, but the combination of the sucker punch and five sprigs of basil has got me woozy and ready to lose the second half of my lunch. Backing away, I hold my hands above my head in half-surrender. It helps the nausea dissipate. Hell, I could fight back—even fully guised I could take this accountant, and without the straps and girdles and buckles on, I could whip the tar outta two and a half Iguanodons—but the night’s events have lost their charm, and I’d like to call an end to the festivities.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he asks, standing over me, ready to deliver another glancing blow. “I can smell you from here. Raptor, right? I’ve got a good mind to report you to the Council.”

“You wouldn’t be the first,” I say, straightening up again, able to look the fellow in the eye. What the hell—photos’ll be developed tomorrow, I might as well give the poor sap a head start on legal matters.

I put out my hand, and to my surprise, the Iguanodon takes it, shakes it. “My name is Vincent Rubio,” I say, “and I’m a private investigator working for your wife. And if I were you, Mr. Ohmsmeyer, I’d start looking for a good divorce lawyer.”

Silence, as the dinosaur realizes he’s been caught, and caught by the best. I shrug, issue a tight smile. But as his brow furrows, I notice that this is not the proper facial expression to register fear, anger, betrayal, or any of the other emotions I expected. This guy’s just … confused.

“Ohmsmeyer?” he says, comprehension slow to dawn. “Oh, you want Ohmsmeyer? He lives next door.”

It is a lovely night out. I choose to walk home. Perhaps I will be mugged.

The window still says
WATSON AND RUBIO, PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS
, even though Ernie’s been dead for nine months. I don’t care. I’m not
changing it. Some jerk from the building came by to scrape off the Watson a few weeks after Ernie bid the world farewell, but I ran him off with a broom and a broken rum bottle. Good thing alcohol doesn’t affect me, or I’d have been even more upset—it was expensive rum.

The office has that musty-carpet, old-lady, forgot-to-put-the-laundry-in-the-dryer odor that I’m used to smelling every time I return from a marathon stakeout session, which is surprising, considering they repossessed the carpeting two months ago. Still, no matter how well I disinfect before I leave for a trip, those damn bacteria find a way to congregate, divide, and contaminate every square inch of this place, and someday I’m gonna get those little suckers. It hasn’t reached the stage of personal vendetta yet, as it’s difficult to bear a grudge against one-celled organisms, but I’m trying hard to take it to that next level.

What’s more, I forgot to take out the trash before I left, and the place is as cold as a Mesozoic glacier. Seems I left the air on the entire goddamned time, and what that’s gonna do to my electric bills I don’t even want to think about. I’m just lucky they didn’t cut the power altogether; the last time that happened my refrigerator cut out, and the basil turned sour, though I was already on such a high when I started chewing that I didn’t realize it until too late. I still get the willies when I think about the nasty trip that brought on.

Speaking of bills, looks like I’ve become the lucky winner of at least two dozen, each of which is promptly added to the burgeoning heap on the office floor. There’s the odd mailer, the coupon for four-room carpet steam cleaning, but that pile’s mostly filled with irate missives printed on bright pink slips of paper, wordy legal documents threatening my financial well-being. I’m well past the range of Please Remit Promptly and in-house collection notices. We’re talking attorneys and anger here, and it takes a great deal of concentration to pay them no mind. The only good thing about crappy credit is I’ve stopped receiving countless offers for preapproved Platinum Cards. Or Gold Cards. Or any cards whatsoever.

A blinking light. The office answering machine, once upon a time a useful, even cherished appliance, now taunting me from across the room. I have eight—no, nine—no, ten!—messages and each flash of red tells me I am screwed—blink—screwed—blink—screwed. I suppose
I could yank the plug out of the wall, pull off a nice bit of digital euthanasia, but as Ernie always told me, turning away from your demons doesn’t make them go away—it only makes it easier for them to bite you in the back.

Unsnapping the buttons hidden beneath the base of my wrist, I take off my guise gloves and allow my claws to snap into place. My long underclaw has begun to turn downward at a distressing angle, and I suppose I should see a manicurist about this, but their fees have become unreasonable recently, and they refuse to barter with me for free investigative work. I reach out and tentatively press Play.

Beep: “Mr. Rubio, this is Simon Dunstan at First National Mortgage. I’ve sent you a copy of the foreclosure documents from our legal department—” Erase. A trickle of pain lances out across my temple. Instinctively, I walk to the small kitchen set off in the front corner of the office. The refrigerator seems to open by itself, a nice clump of basil waiting for me on the top shelf. I chew.

Beep: “Hey, Vinnie. Charlie.” Charlie? I don’t know a Charlie. “Remember me?” Actually, no. “We met at the Fossil Fuels Club in Santa Monica, last New Year’s.” Some vague memory of lights and music and the purest pine needles at which my taste buds have ever had the pleasure to erupt floats through my head. This Charlie—another Velociraptor, maybe? And his job … he was a—a— “I work for the
Sentinel
, ’member?” Oh, right. The reporter. As I recall, he left with my date.

“Anyway,” he continues, taking up valuable digital space in my answering machine’s memory cache, “I thought maybe since we were old buddies and all, you could give me a little scoop on your ouster from the Council. I mean, now that the rectification came out—old time’s sake, right buddy?” Bad enough to be a moron, but worse yet to be a dangerous moron. Mentioning the Council or any dinosaur-related topics in a setting where a human could accidentally hear is a strict no-no. I punch Erase and massage my temples. This migraine is taking its own sweet time showing up on my welcome mat, but it’s those slow-setting ones that really pack a wallop once they start pounding on the front door.

Beep: Click. A hang-up. I love those—the best kind of message is none at all. They are perfectly, undeniably unreturnable.

Beep: “Hello. Please call American Express at—” Okay, a recording, that’s not so bad. They don’t really come after you until long after they’ve exhausted the one-on-one option. Erase.

Beep: “My name is Julie, I’m calling from American Express, looking for a Mr. Vincent Rubio. Please call me as soon as possible—” Damn. Erase.

It goes on like that for three or four more messages, terse, succinct speeches swarming with undercurrents of intimidation. I’m about to throw myself down on the springless sofa in the corner and wrap a ratty pillow around my head like a giant pair of earmuffs when a familiar voice cuts through the litany of vitriol.

Beep: “Vincent, it’s Sally. From TruTel.” Sally! One of the very few humans I’ve ever come to grudgingly like, and though she’s hampered by her pitiful genetic structure, she’s pretty hip to the whole scene. It’s not that she knows about us—none of them have the faintest idea of our existence—but she’s still one of the less offensive Neanderthals with whom I’ve had to interact. “Been a long time, huh? I’ve got a message … a request, I guess, from Mr. Teitelbaum, and he’d—he’d like to see you in the office. Tomorrow.” Her register drops, decibels low, clearly whispering into the phone. “I think it’s a job, Vincent. I think he’s got a case for you.”

There’s something to think about there, something inherently good about that last bit of news, but too much of my mind is currently taken up with fighting the pain that’s decided to take an extended vacation on my synapses. I save the rest of the messages for a time when I’ll have either less of an impending headache or a higher blood basil content and stumble toward the sofa. The pain has just begun to radiate out from within the center of my head, taking big, bouncy steps toward my frontal lobes. There’s a swinging party going down in my brain, six rock bands and three dance floors, and I’m the only one who hasn’t been invited. Standing room only, kids, and stop pounding on the walls. It is time to lie down. It is time to go to sleep.

I dream of a time when I used to be on the Council, of a time when Raymond McBride was just the name of just another dead industrialist, of a time when Ernie hadn’t yet been squashed by a runaway
taxicab, of a time before I was hooked on the basil and before I was blacklisted from every PI job in town. I dream of a time of productivity, of meaning, of having a reason to get up and greet each morning. I dream of the Vincent Rubio of old.