Two more lost Remus volumes have been found. This is the story of that recovery!
It was unmistakable. The tick of the metal heel followed by the clack of the small triangular leather sole on aged linoleum, the steady beat of stilettoed destiny fast approaching my office door. Glenda had gone for the day, because it was late, and because I had to stop paying her overtime after the last job had turned sour and got me a bullet in the shoulder instead of a paycheck in the bank. In front of the tinted glass, decorated with a rather cliché fedora decal, destiny paused for a moment then turned the knob, slowly, and walked in. Heels. Legs. Lips. To die for. And I almost did.
The job seemed easy enough. Run of the mill. A husband gone missing. Likely a man with too much dough and not enough sense to see how far out of his league (or mine) she was. Jealousy? I could feel it nibble at my thoughts while she was telling me how much she missed him and how good he had been to her, the first in a long time or the last in a long line, I forget which. I should come to the villa and start in his study, she said, then try the office downtown. As I said, run of the mill. What I didn't reckon, then, was that mills have gears and stones to grind little things to powder and dust.
The study didn't yield anything, except the key to the office. The office was a mess. Someone had searched it and done a pretty thorough job of it. Drawers were on the floor, upturned, the safe was open (not forced), paintings ripped out of frames and slashed from the back. The scene of a kidnapping? Or maybe the day he'd gone missing she'd ripped the place apart looking for a will. From the way the room was turned inside out, they must have been looking for papers, if not a will then maybe documents.
"Did you know about the office?"
"What about it?" Drags on cigarette.
"What were they looking for? Any ideas?"
"I pay you for those." Cigarette glows again. Cloud of smoke softens the lines of her face. Sexy. Dangerous.
"Hm. What did your husband do?"
"Does."
"What?"
"There's no body yet. He manages a hedge fund that invests all around the world. Energy, food, weapons… you name it. Investors are wealthy individuals, multinational organizations, sometimes the government."
"Which government?"
"Yes."
"Hm. So he travels frequently?"
"Yes. Leaves me alone a lot. Is that what you're asking?" She tilts her head at an angle when she says that last part, and I honestly don't know if she's being girly-cute or sizing me up for some kind of duel.
"Can I take this picture? It'll help, knowing what he looks like."
"That's not him. Here, take this one."
He did not look how I expected him to look. Where I wanted him to be short, balding, and near-sighted, he appeared tall, athletic, and lushly maned. Even in the black-and-white photograph his eyes screamed pale blue, and sharp, like Stan Laurel's on old-stock film. Something was not right, and I should have seen it, but all I thought about was the clues that would help me make my client happy and pay my bills, and Glenda, before she lost patience and found another job.
She said not to look at that other picture with the short, balding, and near-sighted man standing in front of some industrial building or depot. But I noticed the balding man and the tall one were wearing the same slacks, the same shirt, and the same vest with the same logo near where the heart is. They could have been twins in a funny movie. The logo was a stylized letter “R” with three arrows chasing each other around it. In the photo, the building behind the man was somewhat blurred to make the figure pop (wide aperture or long lens, or both), but you could still make out the business address stenciled in dark letters against the cream-tinted wall: 1625 Locust Drive!
“What did you see,” she said, as I put the magnifying glass back in my pocket.
“Nothing… something… maybe.”
1625 Locust Drive was as dry and desolate as the street it’s named after. The building, crowned with a series of tall, shiny air exhausts arranged in a semi-circle, was a paper recycling facility. Their motto, stenciled far enough to the right of the address to not be visible in the picture, was a rather tacky “We Resurrect Paper for your Sustainable Communication Needs.” Yuck.
It was Sunday so there were few workers around, mostly maintenance, wandering about the yard. I found a hardhat hanging from a nail and put it on to blend in, pushed the gigantic sliding door a little further ajar and walked inside the facility. From a desk to the left of the entrance I grabbed a clipboard to perfect my disguise and started walking towards some very large machinery that looked like giant blenders. Pulpers. All were still, except for one that was churning along, with a six-foot-wide conveyor belt feeding it stacks of magazines. Tall athletic man was sitting at the controls while short balding man was loading the magazines onto the belt from a pile that looked like it had been unceremoniously dropped from a dump truck. Hundreds of copies, maybe a few thousand, all with the same, no, two different covers.
That’s when they noticed me. Tall athletic man stood up from his swivel chair and started towards me, then stopped. Short balding man turned away from the conveyor belt, a stack of magazines still in his hands, and opened his mouth as if to say something and then also froze. He looked rather like a wax statue to the god of stupidity. For a moment, I marveled at the effect my entrance had had on the two Sunday laborers, and wondered how a clipboard could have the same effect as a six-shooter. But, of course, I knew better, and, as my head turned on its tingling neck, I saw her standing behind me. The woman. My client. Same shoes. Same legs. Same lips. New gun.
“Clara,” someone said as I turned my head again to face the men.
“Not one step,” she said, calmly. “I knew you’d taken them. I knew you’d get rid of them. They belong to me. They belong to me and to the others with their names in them.”
“What did you do? Who’s he?” Said the short man, now looking at me.
“He helped me find you. I followed him from the office. He helped me find you after I tore through your office but could not figure out where you’d taken them.”
“It’s just pulp, Clara, taking up space in storage. You printed too many of them and nobody reads anymore,” said tall athletic man.
“No!” She said with a cold fury that chilled our bones. “One day someone will turn the power off and all their devices and idiot boxes will be useless, and then they’ll pick them up again. Books. Magazines. Remus! I won’t let you.” So she shot them both, expertly, through the heart. I turned fully, to face her, but another shot rang out and I was on the floor, in pain. She said I’d helped and that she’d send the money, but she couldn’t risk getting caught, not now that she’d recovered volumes III and IV. She said now she could make more, then she took two copies, one for each issue, stepped over me with those killer shoes, and drove away. I tried to sit up but the pain was too much.
Not the shoulder again!
Remus Volume III - Spring 09
Contributors: Tracy Fessler, Sofia Marmorstein, Elizabeth Lothian, Claire Tinguely, Mary Beth Doyle, David Eagle, Elizabeth Ray, Ian Zurzolo, Aleksandra Petrova, Irene Greaves, Magdi Fernandez, Anna Mangiardi, Kristen Mosca, Rosi Mosca-Herrera, Jennifer Lynn Sharps.
Remus Volume IV - Spring 10
Contributors: Alejandra Fabris, Ian Zurzolo, Whitney Bishop, Michelle Spaulding, Aleksandra Petrova, Claire Tinguely, Shakira Mongul, Andrew Everett, Alessandra Potenza, Anna Mangiardi, Sofia Marmorstein, Jessicah Filipas, Astric Chitou, Morgan Anderson, Shahnaz Al-Dulaimy.
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