I read once that the Eskimoes have twenty-seven words for
snow, or maybe it was seventeen. I have many more for gray. Mine is the finely
textured world of black and white, known at least in passing to those familiar
with movies and television before the age of color. It's a world where shades of
gray take on meanings inexpressible in color, much as silent flicks portrayed
emotion before the age of talkies. Like those color-blind World War II
bombardiers, I can see through camouflage, to the expressions behind the blush,
to the mean truth behind the bright tints. My limited vision cuts away the
magicians sleight of hand, the distractions of bold swatches, the noise from a
cluttered field of vision. I'm a private investigator, parsing truth from lies,
unencumbered by a whole level of useless sense, searching the grays for the black
and the white, the only true colors. You can see into my world in the final
winkling of light, just before dark, when the blue and red have been drained and
the world goes gray. Then you can see what I see, a world devoid of obscuring
nuance, the world as it really is. And when my world goes dark, it's blacker
than you could ever imagine, but when I find the truth, it lights the dark with
an unbearable whiteness, free from lies, for good or ill. So you can keep your
world of colors, and I'll keep my simple world of lies and truth, and the
strange justice it demands.
Hard truth entered my Portland office on a warm Saturday
afternoon as veined gray maple leaves fluttered against my window. She was dressed in a navy gray jacket and a light gray
skirt with a shear white blouse with the top three buttons undone. Her shiny
gray ring and bracelet matched the necklace that hung in the vee of her blouse,
each was dominated by a dark black onyx. There was an indentation on her left
ring finger, like some remembered event. She had long flowing hair, that gray
only the young can have, even when it's not real, a gray that absorbs then
pulses out the light. The
line of black roots stood out against her pale white complexion. It made her
look a little mean and dangerous, the often unintended consequences of the
truth.
She introduced herself as Jane Wye. I guided her to the
visitor's chair and poured some coffee. She was a very pretty girl, no, a woman,
they were all looking so young to me these days. She was maybe twenty-eight,
five-nine, a hundred and twenty well-distributed pounds. Her upturned nose
offset well-spaced features. Neatly plucked brows topped eyes of a nearly
transparent gray, like a cloudless sky.
Jane Wye arched those brows as she made a quick furtive look
around my office. Her comment was succinct, "You could use a decorator.
Don't think much of color, do you?"
I placed the mug in front of her. "This is your chance
to see what I see, Mrs. Wye. I'm color-blind, only rods, no cones.
She laughed, a pleasant throaty sound, then pointed at the
wall. "I see. Even the photographs. Ansel Adams." She found my eyes.
"The truth in black and white, eh?" She made it a question.
"What you see is what I see." I levered myself into
my black swivel chair. "Speaking of seeing, I saw your picture in the paper
this morning. Seems you got real problems, Mrs. Wye. How can I help?"
"Don't call me Mrs. I hate that word." She tugged
at a puffy collagen-filled upper lip with her teeth as she again scanned the
room. She stared out the window for a real world mooring.
"The police think I murdered my husband." She turned the sky
grays on me. "I didn't, and sooner or later they're going to prove that for
themselves."
I let my black and white logic lead me. "So what do you
need me for?"
Jane Wye put her palms on my table and leaned towards me.
Another two inches and I'd've been looking at her gray tipped breasts, separated
by the black onyx necklace, but she stopped short, lifted one hand and jabbed
her finger at me. "My husband was a thief. Not some small time crook, but
the real thing, big time. He was the bagman for some heavy hitters in the
cocaine trade. I figure he's put away twenty million in the last two years
alone, and I want it."
I was right, she was truth, minus even the semblance of a
mitigating gray. "You know where it is?"
I concentrated on her black painted lips, keeping my eyes
away from the knobbied gray of her nipples, now in sight, like an exclamation
point to the coming offer. The lips moved, "His girlfriend. She stole the
safe deposit key. He kept it in his wallet. When I found him, it wasn't
there." Right, no soft edges. I was feeling vulnerable,
but not in any wishy-washy way, the lady scared me. I wouldn't want to be on her hit
list. The lips moved again, I could see the pale gray where her teeth had
scraped away the lipstick, "His girlfriend killed him and stole the key. I
want it back."
I winced inside. I hate recovery cases. Most people, but
especially criminals, think possession is nine-tenths of the law, no grays
there. They fight real hard for what they've snatched through guile and risk.
Twenty million was a lot of possession, the kind of possession that could earn
me
an early obituary.
She must have read the indecision on my face, or maybe that I
kept my eyes on her face. "Twenty thousand if you get me that key. We've
got until Monday, when the banks open." Those transparent grays searched my
black eyes. "You in?" she asked.
* * * *
Lola May Carter lived in an apartment in the gentrified
Northwest. It didn't look like much on the outside, a dirty stone gray, still
all three flats probably cost a cool two grand plus a month. From her doorway I
could see she'd done a lot for the inside, not to mention her just being there.
Lola May was knock-down beautiful, I might see only three like her in a year,
and not this close up. She had dark gray lips, black hair, light black clear
skin, surprisingly soft gray eyes, and a tall, not too thin body with
right-sized curves in all the right places. Her fingers and toenails were
painted blood black, and there was not a chip on them. The veins in the bright
whites of her eyes stood out like black rivers, the last remnants of a vicious
hangover. It was three in the afternoon and her hair, I picked up highlights of
a dark gray, was in disarray. I'd gotten her out of bed. She wrapped the
egg-gray terrycloth robe tight around her for protection, though it didn't look
like I scared her any.
She looked like a girl who could take the truth. I introduced
myself, then, still standing in the door, I took the direct route. "Jane Wye wants her money back."
Lola May was no less direct. "Yeah, well I want John Wye
back. That bitch killed him and I hope she rots in Hell for it." Just when
I was starting to like her, she spoiled it. "Who's going to pay for this apartment?
I ask you, is Jane Wye going to pay for it?" If this was camouflage, it was
too good for me.
"She might, and then some?" I made it sound like a
question.
She was suddenly all ears, and beautiful ears they were. But
she chipped away again at the lovely dark facade to the blacker schemer within.
"How much?"
I shrugged, then started spreading some of Jane Wye's future
wealth around. "If she gets the money, you'll get a reward. It'll be
enough, trust me. You got nothing to lose, Lola May. I want the key?"
A pale gray of confusion suffused the lined bright whites of
her eyes. "The key?"
I explained, "He was killed for his safe deposit key. I
need that key."
She was quick to counter. "Hey, I didn't kill him. Check
with his girlfriend." She answered the question on my face, "I was his
weekday girl. He had a weekender." A blackening look of distasteful
embarrassment crossed her face. "He paid them by the hour."
"Them?"
Lola May described a world darker than her own, darker than
my imagination, and that was pretty dark. "Yes, Mona Martin and that fag
brother of hers, Jack. John, poor John, swung both ways, but he exercised his
perversions only on weekends. Said it proved he was in control. He met Jack
first, at a party we attended. Jack was a dead ringer for John. He said they'd
pretend they were a family, a sister and two brothers. Said it was like watching
himself with Mona. It was as close as he could get to incest. It really got him
off, if you know what I mean."
Lola May told me where to find the Martins' world. I never
got past her door jamb.
* * * *
The pale complextion of Mona Martin was not as pretty as
Lola May, or for that matter Jane, but she had an exotic attractiveness
that, like many shades of gray, could not be captured by words. Bold grays
erotically highlighted her decorating, weaving a strong undertow of sex
throughout the house. But maybe that was just the smell of sex that clung like a
ghost to her body. I'd seen her brother Jack
backing out of the garage as I arrived. Lola May was right, a dead ringer.
I told her I was a detective, that I wanted
to talk to her about John Wye. I didn't mention I was private heat, and she
didn't ask for identification. The look on her face was as cold, dark and
uninviting as the recently departed winter rain. Surprise, or drugs, dilated her
black pupils. She had to know the conflicted Jane Wye would never put the police
on her scent, but then why was I there? I read fear in the whitened skin around
her eyes and lips. She led me to the pale wool gray
couch and waited for me to speak.
"Miss Martin?" She nodded. "We're following up
on the known contacts of John Wye. He was seen with you and your brother last
weekend."
She raised pretty shoulders and the dark spaghetti straps
lifted firm breasts supported by the white bra beneath the translucent patterned
silk blouse. She wasn't going to make it easy, and anyway, she wanted to know
what I knew. "So?"
But I already knew enough. I saw the outline of the steel
gray key beneath the lighter grays of her blouse. I doggy-paddled to safety,
"We just wanted to know if you or your brother saw him this weekend. We're
trying to track his last movements."
Mona obviously believed the easiest lies were the shortest.
"No."
I thanked her on the way out the door.
* * * *
I was back on Sunday night, just in time to see Jack Martin
pull into the garage, then enter by the front door. I used the cellular to call
their number. Mona picked up. I said, sorry, wrong number. When it got dark, I
went to the front door and stuck a motion detector to the bottom corner, and
another to the garage door. Back in my car I lowered the windows an inch to keep them from
fogging, then levered my seat until I was out of sight. I slept until
the alarm chirped. It was five-thirty and the sunrise was already infusing a
gray substance to the black of night. Jack reached an arm around
the door to pick up the morning paper.
I put the receiver in my pocket, then walked a hundred yards
to the Starbucks on the southeast corner. I washed my face, then ordered a mocha
and a scone. I positioned myself at an outdoor table from where I could see the
Martins' building. It was eight-fifty, and three coffees later, before they made
their grand exit. I was in my car as they pulled the old Honda out of the
garage and turned north for the twelve block drive to twenty-third.
They parked in front of the chalk gray facade of the Bank of
America branch. I turned the corner and kept my distance. They were in the bank
twenty minutes. When they came out, Mona had a large manila gray envelope in her
hand. She turned to her brother and they jumped into the air, slapping their
hands in a joyful high five. Then the surprise, she opened the trunk and tossed
in the envelope. The two of them crossed the street to the Grounds Zero coffee
shop. I had the short handled screwdriver in my hands as I rounded the corner. I
saw them enter together one of the bathrooms, maybe to celebrate as only this
brother and sister could.
I strolled up to the car like I owned it, pushed the
screwdriver into the lock, twisted, and popped the trunk. I pulled out the
envelope and shut the trunk. I made my way unnoticed through the sparse sidewalk
traffic of tourists. I got into my car and didn't stop until I got to my office.
I pulled the pages from the already slit envelope. A bank
statement from Suisse National for thirty-three million dollars. A typed sheet
with internet transfer instructions had the password highlighted in pale gray.
There was a stapled four page tally of payments by shipment date, populated with
some names that would shake up the West Coast elite.
There it was in black and white, thirty-three million, and it
could all be mine. I could just disappear and never be seen again. No more dirty
gray apartment, and an end to long days in dark alleys chasing bucks too tightly
grasped by less-than-lily-white clients. But this was dirty money, real dirty.
You ask, how dirty can it be, that it can't be that dirty. But, I live in a
world of black and white, and despite being an atheist, there are no moral
grays. I know it sounds hokey, but I'm clean, I'm white. If I take the money,
I'm dirty, I'm black, beyond even the deconstructed political grays of the
nineties. Was that worth thirty-three million?
* * * *
Jane Wye turned the mottled white pages over in her hands and
eyed me with an open respect. I had just finished telling her the story, all of
it. But even the truth has doubts. "What if the Martins go to the
cops?"
No gray there. "To do what? Say their stolen booty was
stolen? Admit they killed John Wye?"
She pulled the slip of paper from her purse, gray lettering
on a bone white background. "This is a cashier's check for the twenty
thousand." Of course, she couldn't help but think that I
shared her moral turpitude. "It's made out to cash, so you can skip the
taxes."
I took the check, then gave her a chance to edge her hard
white truth with soft gray good. "I told Lola May you'd reward her."
Jane started to shake her head. I added, "The Martins would be transferring
this money to their account right now if it wasn't for her, Ms. Wye."
Her face went ash gray, clouding with anger. "That's not
my problem. She was my husband's mistress, and I'm not giving that slut
anything. Understood?"
I folded the check and put it in my shirt pocket. I
concentrated on her angry gray eyes. "Don't let the door hit you in the ass
on the way out, Ms. Wye." I didn't look up when the latch clicked shut.
I walked the two miles to Lola May's apartment, enjoying the
beauty of another bright summer day in Portland. She opened the door with a
black smile, framing even white teeth. I didn't go in. I handed her the check.
"Ms. Wye was appreciative."
Back down at the sidewalk, I looked at my hands. They were a
clean gray. I'd given Jane Wye a chance to dodge the bullet, but she opted to
extract a last ounce of unnecessary cruelty. No, she never implied she would do
otherwise, but I had expectations. I folded a copy of John Wye's documents with
a note of my own into the envelope addressed to the cops, and dropped it into
the black mailbox on the corner. The morning sky looked like scraped clean bone
as I made my way back to the office.
* * * *
Of course it was wrong of me, white wrong, not black wrong,
not to warn her, but she should have guessed the viciousness of the Martins. I
mean, it wasn't like I'd described them in glowing terms. But her hard white
truth hid her own shadow of meanness from her, a dark gray shadow of death. I
watched it follow her out of my office.
The evening news gave the breaking story more than twenty
minutes, in two segments. Jane Wye, the politically connected wife of the slain
financier, John Wye, was dead, and two lights of the local glitterati set were
in jail.
The cops hadn't even received the envelope yet. Twenty
minutes wouldn't be enough when the story broke, that is, if the contents ever
saw the light of day. But then, I know politicians, and everything in
their world is tinted gray, the dark grass gray of a dollar bill sitting on
shifting gray sand of moral relativity. Yes, the thirty three million might
finds its way into the Federal coffers, it was too big to steal, but the liberal
elite of Rose City would stay free. And the dirty knowledge might come in handy
some day when the mayor needed just one more television ad before the polls
closed. Still, I try not to be cynical, it's too black for me. I gave them a
chance to do the right thing, to be good and truthful. If it didn't happen, my
next note would go to the local rag, and the four television news outlets. If they were going to tread in my black
and white world, they'd better learn the ground rules. I slept like a baby that
night. I had wielded a sword for justice today, and in my own small way, we'd
won a big one.
-the end-
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bill.capron@tds.net