Snitch World (18 page)

Phillip look distressed. He looked at Klinger, then he looked at his phone. “But you just returned it to me,” he said defensively. “What do you need it for?”

“It’s evidence,” Klinger said.

“Evidence …” Phillip said uncertainly. “But … But it’s my phone.” He gestured with it. “I got to return all these calls. All my numbers are in here. My address book. E-mail. I—.”

Klinger nodded as if patiently. “I understand that, Phillip. Really, I do.” Klinger patted the breast pocket of his jacket. “If I lost my phone, I’d be fucked. My whole case load would fall apart.”

“Well?” Phillip replied. “You’re making my point for me.”

“Yes, yes,” Klinger nodded. “But—.”

Again, Phillip made as if to object, and, in doing so, he held the phone away from Klinger. Phillip’s intravenous tubes moved with his right arm, and the IV tree, being on wheels, rolled into the curtain.

Klinger caught the IV tree with one hand and held his other hand aloft, its palm toward the patient. “Wait, Phillip, don’t get excited. I’m not saying you’re not going to get your phone back. What I’m saying, however, is that your phone is evidence collected in the course of an investigation. At the very least we need—.”

“Creation of Tron,” by Wendy Carlos, woke up Phillip’s phone.

“Whoa,” Klinger said. As Phillip made to answer the call, Klinger held out a hand. “Wait.”

Phillip blinked. The ringtone repeated.

“Do you recognize the incoming number?” Klinger asked.

Phillip stared at him, blinked, then looked at the screen. The ringtone repeated a third time. “No,” he said.

“It’ll stay in memory,” Klinger said, “right?”

Phillip nodded.

“You want me to answer it?” Klinger said.

Phillip, as if entranced by the screen, ignored him. Klinger put his hand on Phillip’s shoulder. “At least put it on speaker.”

Phillip blinked, then nodded. He touched the screen once, nodded, then touched it again. “Hello?” he said, holding the phone equidistant between Klinger’s head and his own.

“Marty?” a woman’s voice said.

“Who?” Phillip said. “I mean,” he corrected himself, noticing Klinger’s visible wince, “Hello? Yes?”

“Who is this?” said the little speaker. The voice was muffled and there was a lot of noise in the background. It sounded like freeway traffic and maybe even a helicopter.

“Hello?” Phillip repeated.

The caller rang off.

“You don’t know the number—right?”

Phillip shook his head.

“And the voice?”

“No,” Phillip said.

Klinger retrieved a pen and a little spiral notebook from the breast pocket of his jacket. “What’s the number?”

Phillip read it aloud. Klinger wrote it down. “Let me ask you something.”

“Sure.”

“If somebody found this phone, or stole it, is there a way for them to figure out the number that rings it?”

Phillip smiled. “I think so.” He turned the phone edge-wise and showed it to Klinger. There, as Klinger could see, a ten-digit number was etched into the edge of the phone.

“That’s the number?” Klinger asked in amazement.

“I can recite a hundred lines of assembler instructions without making a mistake,” Phillip said shyly. “But I’ve never been able to remember my own phone number. Besides,” he added, “until very recently, if you changed phone companies or even plans within a company, you had to change phone numbers, too. I’ve had a million phones and almost as many phone numbers and plans to go with them. Oh yes,” Phillip nodded his head gravely, “I go all the way back.”

Klinger raised both eyebrows, nonplussed.

Phillip brooded a moment. “Sometimes I think the modern world just asks too much of its citizens.” He looked at Klinger. Above the seams of the ventilator mask, the unequal sizes of Phillip’s pupils clearly indicated a concussion. “Don’t you?”

“Sure, kid,” Klinger said. After a pause, he resumed copying the phone’s number into his notebook. “Unlike the clowns in the police department, I’ll bet this clown we caught noticed this number here and passed it on to his girlfriend or his mother. We missed that detail entirely. But if we could make that connection, we’d have a pretty airtight case. Tell you what, Phillip. Let me borrow your phone long enough to run it by our technical people again. Maybe they can trace that incoming call. I’ll bring it back tomorrow, about this time, I promise.” Klinger replaced pen and notebook into his jacket pocket. “You think you can be a phoneless citizen of this crazy world for another twenty-four hours?” He favored Phillip with a warm smile. “I’m sure you can use the rest. A concussion is no joke. I know.” Klinger tapped the side of his head.

Phillip looked just a little lost, and then he looked just a little chagrined. “Sure, Officer.” He handed Klinger the phone. “I’ve enjoyed my semi-conscious morning on drugs and without a phone. I guess I never realized how demanding a phone can be.”

“I appreciate the trust,” Klinger said sincerely, accepting the phone. “I need one more favor.”

Phillip knitted his fingers together, folded his hands over his chest, and gazed dreamily at the ceiling. “Name it.”

“I need you to override your password on this thing, just long enough for the lab boys to check it out thoroughly. Don’t worry,” Klinger added, “they won’t be calling your girlfriends or anything like that.”

“Girlfriends?” Phillip said sourly. He took back the phone. “No problem.” He manipulated the phone with multiple touches and swipes, powered it down, counted to ten, powered it back up again, tested it to his satisfaction, powered it down again, and handed the device back to Klinger. “Now you’ve got access to anything on it.”

Klinger looked at it. “Even if the battery dies?”

“Even then. Even if it goes to sleep,” Phillip said drowsily. “No password required. Just … fire it …” Phillip’s eyes almost closed, then he opened them. “If you find any girlfriends in there, bookmark them for me.”

He closed his eyes again.

“Thanks, guy,” Klinger said. “If the lab boys get done with it by tonight, I’ll drop it off on my way home, after my shift.”

“Keep the son … of … a … a bitch …” Phillip said, not bothering to try keeping his eyes open.

Alone in the elevator, its doors closed and going down, Klinger sagged backward into a corner and closed his eyes. The car shuddered the eight stories down the shaft without making another stop, and Klinger was grateful for that. As the doors opened onto the lobby, he pulled himself together. People flooded past him, looking to go up.

As he made his way toward the street exit, Klinger thought that this must have been the longest short con he’d ever undertaken. Unless you counted his life. Either way, the strain had wrung him out, and he needed a drink.

Pondering the difference he missed the chance to exit the revolving door, and had to go around again.

In the appointed cocktail lounge, a dark-curtained joint called the Gavel two blocks west of the Federal Court Building, Antonio Carlos Jobim drifted along deep pile carpet and mahogany wainscoting and big-shouldered chandeliers and subdued chatter of a thinning crowd lingering over coffee and digestifs as its participants decided whether or not to go back to work or call it a weekend.

It’s Friday, one of them reminded his companions, as Klinger passed their table on the way to the bar, what the heck, either they’re out on bail or they have a dry place to sleep until Tuesday. Agreeable laughter. Another round? No thanks, I’m going to the gym later. And what about you? Sure: I’m going to hell any time now. Agreeable laughter …

It was ten minutes after five. He didn’t see her at a table, nor was she in the bar, at which he reluctantly took a stool. The bartender, who wore black slacks, and an open-necked white shirt, a black vest and black sleeve garters, placed a coaster in front of Klinger that advertised a single-malt Scotch at twenty-five dollars a pop. He ordered his usual, double and on the rocks.

A copy of the
Wall Street Journal
lay on the bar, and just as Klinger was thinking he was going to have to begin to read it, Phillip Wong’s phone went off in his pocket.

He might have heard that ringtone a thousand times and not known it for the obscure piece of music it was. He slapped the pocket like it contained a live snake.

It went off a second time, louder than the first, before
he retrieved it and, imitating billions of other people, he held the thing next to his face and told it hello.

“You have it,” she said.

“I have it,” he agreed.

“You’re in the Gavel?”

“I’m in the Gavel.”

“I’ll be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

Klinger frowned. “Are you in a laundromat?”

After but a moment’s hesitation, she laughed. “How did you know?”

“That noise in the background? It sounds like sneakers in a dryer.”

She lowered her voice. “A guy who just loaded a pair of sneakers into a dryer down the line from the change machine, here, didn’t want to put his blanket in there with them.” After a moment she added, “He’s sitting in a roll-around basket in front of his dryer, watching it go round and round, while he holds his blanket and sucks his thumb.”

The bartender placed a rocks glass containing a single ice cube and an inch and a half of whiskey on the coaster in front of Klinger, put a check face down beside it, and went away without a word.

“I think I know that guy,” Klinger said. He turned up a corner of the check as if it were a hole card, just enough to read the amount. Eighteen dollars plus tax—a dollar seventy-six—might as well add up to twenty, even if he were to stiff the bartender his tip. He smoothed and re smoothed the face-down check with the side of his hand as if he were considering a bluff. The check’s a double, the drink’s a single, the guy’s stiffing me, and I’m going to stiff him. Now there’s a social contract.

“So now you’re doing laundry?”

She laughed easily. “I could have been doing your laundry.”

Klinger could hardly believe what he was hearing. He shook his head. “Look—,” he began.

“What it is,” she interrupted, “is, these places always have change machines, and I always need change for parking. So,” her shrug came right down the line, “I ducked in for a short transaction.”

Just show up with my grand, Klinger said to himself. Just show up and trade my grand for this telephone and let’s go our separate ways. And—”Forget my laundry,” he said aloud.

“Plus,” she added meaningfully, “This place is dry and it’s right next to an ATM.”

Klinger didn’t raise his voice. “So we’re meeting any time now,” he said tightly. “Right?” He siphoned a little whiskey. “I can’t afford to be lingering in this luxe clipjoint.”

“I’m on the way.” She hung up.

Klinger looked at the screen on the phone. disconnect? it asked him. warning, the screen added, device unlocked. Klinger narrowed his eyes. It seemed to him he remembered something about these things. He touched the disconnect query and held his finger there. The phone disconnected, lingered as if thinking about it, then a new message appeared: shut down? Klinger fingered yes. The phone shut down.

Thank fucking god, he sighed raggedly. He pocketed the phone and devoted his attention to his drink.

By the time Marci arrived, twenty minutes later, Klinger had finished his first double and ordered a second—so he was down forty bucks already. But hey, he admonished the amber cylinder of his cocktail, glistening as if impatiently before him, you gotta spend money to make money.

This thought, however, did not delude him into playing the high roller. When the bartender, no doubt suspicious of Klinger’s overall solvency, asked him to square up,
Klinger peeled off a couple of twenties, told him to keep the change, and let his eyes say it all: Keep the forty-eight cents, you fucking cunt, and take it to the Kentucky Derby.

That’s the hieratic attitude, he assured himself: blame the help.

She placed the shopping bag full of warm clothing on the floor between stools, draped her raincoat atop her purse/briefcase and the furled brolly atop it all, and assumed the stool to Klinger’s left.

Noting the uptick in customer quality, the bartender dealt her a coaster right away, as if from a deck of them he kept in a universe parallel to the one in which he kept the deck from which he dealt to the likes of Klinger. “Cappuccino,” she told him. “I’m still on the clock,” she added modestly.

The perky insouciance of this stipulation rubbed Klinger entirely the wrong way. She was on the clock? His hands on the rail in front of him, the one removed from the drink just to give it something to do until the time came to refresh the palate, clenched. You’re on the clock? he said to the eight inches of bar rail between the hands.
I’m always on the clock.

“Everything go smoothly?” she asked.

Klinger wagged a finger.

She frowned.

“The bottle,” he said quietly.

Her mouth formed the syllable
Oh
without uttering it. She plucked the brown paper sack from her purse and handed it over. Klinger had it uncapped, his drink topped off, the jug recapped, and the bag in the side pocket of his jacket before the bartender had properly tamped the grounds in the basket strainer.

“How’s Phillip?”

“Pretty racked up, by the look of him,” Klinger said weakly.

“He’s going to live—right?”

“Do you care?”

Marci took great umbrage at this remark. “Care?” she admonished him. “Of course I care. I’ve known Phillip since … Since … We’ve been … We were …”

Klinger cut it short. “He’s going to be fine.” He put the phone on the bar.

She looked at it.

“Go ahead,” Klinger said, taking up his drink with both hands. “Make a call.”

She touched the phone. The screen flickered to life.

“Careful,” Klinger said. “It’s got a hell of a ringtone.”

Marci laughed nervously, then nodded. “It’s from Phillip’s favorite movie. I forget the name of it.”

“Is there some way to make it go away?”

The bartender appeared with a foaming cappuccino, set it on the bar in front of Marci, landed a little bowl of sugar cubes, both brown and white, interleaved with various packets of artificial sweetener, pink, white, and blue, and went away.