The Long, Bad Good Friday Jon Wesick

THELONG, BAD GOODFRIDAY

JON WESICK

It was late April, and the owners of cluttered homes were too busy thinking of chocolate Easter bunnies to employ a professional organizer. Even the criminals seemed to take the month of, preferring a walk in the fower felds to thef, extortion, or murder. All this lef me with nothing to do. Afer reorganizing my case fles, I drove to the Container Store in Mission Valley to keep up to date with the latest advances in household storage.

For me, combining my passions of fghting clutter and fghting crime seemed natural. Like the old catalog you can’t bring yourself to throw away, the criminal takes up precious space, space better suited for the easy chair of economic prosperity or the throw pillows of art and culture. He needs to be stored where he belongs—jail, or better yet, the morgue.

I lef the storage room of Adolfo’s Mexican Bakery which housed my tiny ofce, drove down Roosevelt, and got on the I-5 at Carlsbad Village Drive. When my Volvo got up to 65 miles per hour, the steering wheel began shimmying like a topless dancer at a limbo contest, so I slowed down and pulled into the right lane. Until I caught some cases and earned enough money for Al from Al’s Auto Body and Copier Repair to fx the car’s torn rotator cuf, I’d have to put up with the blaring horns and extended middle fngers from my fellow drivers. Ah spring! It brings out the best in people.

I took the Friars Road exit and parked in front of the Container Store. A boy dressed in a silk robe and dog-eared hat of a Taoist sage stood by the automatic doors.

“Lao Tzu said, ‘A vessel is useful for what it is not.’”

Sheer poetry! For what did the Container Store sell if not emptiness? Still, the lad’s words would have seemed more profound had it not been for his blonde hair, blue eyes, and smattering of acne on his chin. I pegged him for a part-timer, no doubt more interested in Radiohead than organizing and the Eternal Tao. For him, putting everything in its place was not the spiritual experience that it was for me. However, I forgot these musings once I was inside. A 10 mg IV of Valium couldn’t have calmed me more than wandering through the sparkling aisles stocked with the latest in storage technology. Shelves, boxes, milk crates; the razor blades of daily frustration sheathed themselves. If only the whole world could be made this neat and tidy! Sadly, the plastic shortage that had stemmed the tide of credit card ofers and public hypocrisy had also raised the price of food-storage jars beyond my budget. I needed a case soon.

I lef the kitchen section, came upon a display of acrylic shoe boxes, lifed one from the stack, and turned it over in my hands. Ah, the simplicity of design. Te perfection of geometry! If I went without ramen lunches for the next two weeks, I could take it home with me. I set it down reluctantly. For now I could only dream. When I was in the ofce section, I got a call on my cell phone asking me to go to the Carlsbad Library, not the old extension on Carlsbad Village Drive but the main branch on Dove Lane by the La Costa 6 Teaters. I was to meet with the Chief Librarian herself. Why had I been worried? City hall always needed someone to clean up their messes and I was their guy.

As I chugged up the 805 toward the merge, I refected on what I knew about the Chief Librarian Maude Gallagher. A political appointee with little hands-on experience, she’d enraged the veteran librarians who’d been passed over for the leadership post. She had a reputation for getting tough jobs done with a take-no-prisoners attitude. When I arrived at the library, I approached a stooped man at the reference desk. A silver chain that looped over his neck kept his glasses from wandering away, and his gray hair was cut like an ancient Roman’s.

“Decker,” I said. “Here to see Maude Gallagher.”

He scowled at the mention of the chief librarian and ushered me into a mahogany-walled ofce located near the self-help section.

“Ah, Mr. Decker. So good of you to come.” Maude stood up from behind a cluttered, oak desk and took my hand in a frm grip. “Care for a scotch?” Without waiting for a reply, she poured two tumblers from a crystal decanter and handed one to me. “Glenlivet. Te mayor has it fown in from Edinburgh.”

I took a sip. It was smooth, smooth as the skin on her face. She was a

handsome woman with salt-and-pepper hair and an athletic body that had me believing she could crush beer cans in her vagina. If this wasn’t a professional visit, I’d have cleared the papers of her oak desk and made love to her right there. But why would a rich and powerful woman like her be interested in a guy like me, a guy who when he goes looking for love comes away with a Swifer mop and a package of vacuum cleaner bags?

“Mr. Decker, I need your help.”

“Of course! I’d start with the papers on your desk. Divide them into three piles: those you have to work on, those that are optional and less than two weeks old, and the optional ones that have been around longer. Ten, every two weeks throw away the third pile.”

“No, Mr. Decker. It’s about books. In spite of Miss Ridley’s reservations about how you handled the Kite Runner afair, I’ve decided to give you another chance.”

“Cut the crap, babe! We both know I’m not here for some run-of-themill overdue book case,” I retorted. Te secret of dealing with the powerful is to show them they don’t intimidate you. I could tell my strategy was working by the way she squeezed her lips together.

“Not for one overdue book, no.” She turned her computer display so that I could see. “Look at this.”

It was a list of over a hundred overdue books featuring titles like: Entropy by Design checked out by Pat McGroin, aLaw and Order – Victimless Crime Unit DVD set checked out by Seymour Butts, and Chicken Soup for the Sociopathic Soul checked out by Mike Rotch. Other ofenders had aliases like Sarah Bellum and C.F. Icare.

“Somebody’s forging library cards.”

“Exactly! I want you to fnd out who and terminate their library privileges.” She handed me an envelope packed with one-dollar bills. “Terminate them with extreme prejudice.”

“Don’t worry, babe. Once I get my teeth into a case, I’m like a terrier with a vacuum cleaner nozzle.” I withdrew my .50-caliber Desert Eagle from my shoulder holster and jacked a round into the chamber. Te special ammo could drop a charging rhino. It had just the sort of stopping power the forces of righteousness needed to keep the elephants out of the atrium. “I’ll need the addresses and phone numbers from the bogus application forms.”

“Already done. See Brad on your way out.” When I was halfway through the door, she added, “I trust I can count on your discretion. I don’t need to tell you the panic that would occur if news of this got out.”

“Of course.” On my way out I stopped at the reference desk.

“Her highness wanted me to give you these.” Te male librarian lisped dragging his s’s out like a Spaniard from Barthelona. He handed me a stack of photocopied library card applications. “I take it you’re not too fond of her.”

“For God’s sake! She thoughtTe Life of Pi deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature. Please!” Ten he turned his attention to the teenage girl with magenta hair standing behind me as she asked, “Does ear wax melt like other wax and can you use it in soup?”

I lef Brad to his duties and stopped for meat and cookies at the F Street Café before returning to the ofce and examining the applications. From the diferent handwritings, I concluded I was dealing with a conspiracy and not a deranged, lone reader. I dialed one of the phone numbers and got a recorded message saying it was out of order. A man with a gravelly voice answered when I dialed the second.

“Committee to re-elect Duke Cunningham.”

“Yes, is Euripides Pants there?”

He hung up. More calls would get me nowhere, so I drove to some of the addresses listed on the applications. Te frst took me to a cable company. I didn’t go in. Tose guys wouldn’t know a book if it crawled out of their sphincter. Te second address was an empty lot on Hemlock. Te third was a warehouse in an industrial park of Palomar Airport Road.

I scouted its perimeter, noticed two workers putting old computers in the back of an unmarked step van at the loading dock, circled to the front, and entered the lobby. A plastic plant with leaves in need of dusting stood by the door. I began neatening the magazines on the cofee table. Without some silver mesh magazine fles, it was the best I could do. When I turned over a copy of Field and Stream, I came upon a sight that chilled my heart into a twenty-pound frozen turkey. It was how I remembered it from that fateful day – the yellow border and glossy photo of Africa on the cover. I set down the copy of National Geographic faster than I’d drop a Gila monster with halitosis,and I quickly turned to the receptionist.

“So what is this place?” I asked.

“It’s a charity. We send old PCs to Nigeria to help struggling entrepreneurs start businesses.”

“Have any luck?”

“Some.” She pointed to a photo of a man balancing a loaf of bread on his head displayed in a simple, acrylic box frame. “Tat’s Barrister Mbiko. He started an e-mail business soliciting partners to free money from abandoned bank accounts. He pulls in more than three million a year.

“Do you have an employee named,” I looked at the application in my

hand, “Hugh G. Rection?”

Tey should have hired a receptionist who was more polite to the general public. Her cold reaction told me I wouldn’t fnd any answers there. Tere was only one thing to do: return to the library. On my way, I stopped at the ofce and checked the mail. I had a letter from the library saying I owed a $70,000 fne for the overdue book Te Ruins of Machu Pikachu, a book I’d never seen before. Clearly someone was trying to scare me of. But who?

When I got to the library, a woman I hadn’t seen before was standing behind the reference desk. Breasts, shoulders, and hips - everything about her was fled in the right place. She had hair the color of Birch Elfa shelving, eyes as blue as a Polo desk chair, and a body as ergonomic as a Good Grip grout brush.

“Name’s Decker.” I handed her the photocopies of the forged library card applications. “I need a list of all the books loaned to these patrons. It’s for the Chief Librarian’s special project.”

“Of course, Mr. Decker. I’ll just be a minute.”

While she was getting the list, I refected on the state of relations between the sexes. I realized I’d cut of my own uvula with a pair of rusty scissors for a woman like her. But what was the chance she’d fall for a down-on-his-luck private eye/professional organizer with a bad credit rating and one un-descended testicle? She returned a few minutes later, set a stack of papers on the desk, and leaned forward giving me a view down her shirt.

“Here you go.”

“Tanks.” I thumbed through the documents.

“I’m Fiona, by the way.” She fanned her cleavage with a withdrawal slip. “It sure is hot in here. I could take these clothes right of.” She yawned and stretched. “Tis heat makes me sleepy. I feel like going back to my place and crawling into bed. What about you, Decker? You feel like taking a nap?”

“No, I have work to do.”

I bid Fiona goodbye and headed out. What a beauty! It was a pity she’d never go for a forty-eight-year-old guy like me,with a prolapsed colon who lived in a crummy studio apartment with his mother and whose bank account rarely got above the double digits.

I hit the used bookstores on Carlsbad Village Drive to see if the missing library books had made it into their inventory. Te Christian bookstore was a wash. But when I entered the Black Octopus, my psychic antenna received a trouble signal reading ten over seven. Maybe it was how the books were askew on the cluttered sale table or maybe it was the owner’s tiny, pig- like eyes. Either way I was on my guard as I approached the counter.

“I’m looking for Eulogy for a Dead Plant. You have it?”

“Nope.” Te owner crossed his beefy forearms over his chest. “How about Te Great Capybara Rebellion of 1911?”

“Sorry.”

“Mind if I look around?”

“It’s a free country.”

I wandered the stacks until a suspicious looking book in the cooking section caught my eye. I double-checked the printout. Indeed, Te Feminist Collective Placenta Cookbook was on the list of overdue books. As I bent to retrieve it from the bottom shelf, I heard the rack of a pump-action shotgun. Milliseconds later its blast shredded copies of Julia Child and Te Joy of Cooking just inches over my head. I rolled, drew my .50 caliber Desert Eagle, and sighted-in on the feeing bookstore owner. I got of two wild shots, but he was already out the door.

I ran afer him down Roosevelt, past a skateboarder clutching a gunshot wound to his arm and into the crowded farmers’ market. A fnger poke to the throat and two quick elbows to the face cleared the Cub Scout leader and his troop from my path. Overturning baby strollers and shoving grandmothers in wheelchairs out of the way, I pursued the bookstore owner past Yummy Fudge and the 911 Tamale Stand but couldn’t get a clear shot. He took cover behind a pyramid of Granny Smith apples, raised his shotgun, and click.

“Game’s up!” I inched forward, my pistol aimed at his head. “Put down the shotgun and come out with your hands in the air.”

Te bookstore owner stared at the defective weapon that had betrayed him. As he bent to set it down, a shot rang out and he collapsed. Shoppers screamed and threw themselves to the ground, their artisan breads and organic tomatoes making an Abstract Expressionist collage of terror on the pavement that would have done Jackson Pollock proud. Frantically, I looked through doorways and open windows, searching for anything that would give the assassin’s location away. I heard the whine of a dirt bike’s engine and fred two rounds at the receding, leather-clad rider with a TEC9 slung over his shoulder. My shots went wide, shattering the Washington Mutual Bank’s plate glass window and setting of the car alarm of a late-model Audi in the parking lot.

In the afermath of the shooting I sat on the curb while police radios squawked from squad cars and ofcers took witnesses’ statements. In his of hours Detective Kobo Dashiki split his time between African dance and studying for the Shingon Buddhist priesthood. I sensed trouble at the frst sight of his rumpled suit jacket.

“You know, Detective, with some closet organizers your clothes

wouldn’t get so wrinkled.”

“You’ve gone too far, Decker. Your karma’s fnally caught up with you. Tis time I’m yanking your PI license.”

“I don’t think so. I got juice with city hall.” With my thumb and index fnger I inched my cell phone out of my jacket pocket, dialed the chief librarian, and handed it to Dashiki.

“Is a PI named Decker working for you?” Dashiki’s smile sagged like a stalk of celery kept outside a Curver Food Storage Container. “Yes, Ma’am. I understand.” He returned my cell phone. “I guess you’re free to go.” Ten a manic gleam came to his eyes. “But I’ll need to keep your pistol for evidence.”

I handed it over. Tere was no other way. True, I still had the “Baby” Glock I wore on my ankle—its hollow-point bullets could leave an exit wound the size of a 7 ½” x 6 ½” x 3 ½” clear storage box– but, without my .50 caliber Desert Eagle, I was vulnerable. I had to solve this case before the assassin took advantage of my weakness. Clearly, the killer had murdered the bookstore owner to keep him from talking, but there had to be something I was missing, some pattern I wasn’t seeing. On a hunch I dialed the chief librarian.

“Maude? Decker. I’ll be in your ofce in half an hour. Make sure Fiona and Brad are there.”

Tey were all assembled when I got there: Maude digging through the stack of papers on her desk that could beneft from some fle organizers, Fiona reclining in an ofce chair, her legs parted to reveal a glimpse of panties, and Brad standing by the doorway, shifing his weight from one foot to the other.

“Tank you for meeting me here.” I set my printouts on Maude’s desk. “You may have heard that the owner of the Black Octopus Bookstore was murdered just an hour ago. With his death all my leads have vanished.”

Fiona closed her legs, Brad stopped fdgeting, and Maude continued rustling papers.

“Ten I asked myself, ‘Who would beneft from embarrassing the chief librarian?’” I spun on my heels until I was looking into Brad’s eyes. “Te veteran librarians. Tat’s who!”

Te reading glasses slipped of Brad’s nose. “If you’re insinuating…”

I pulled my Glock from its ankle holster and aimed it at his Mont Blanc distinguished service pen.

“As I was saying, the veteran librarians would have the most to gain if

Maude were to lose her job. But which librarian?” I pointed to the printouts. “I cross checked the Library of Congress numbers of the missing books with their locations in the stacks. Tey all lie between this ofce and the reference desk!”

“All right. I did it…” Brad glanced at Fiona. “Jesus, Fiona! Wear a bra! Your nipples are showing!”

And indeed they were. I wanted to fondle them right there in the chief librarian’s ofce. But why would a woman like Fiona let a guy like me touch her, a guy with an overdue student loan from 1976 and a prostate the size of a canned ham? Taking advantage of the distraction, Brad ran out. I raised my pistol and aimed.

“Stop!” Maude said. “You can’t fre a gun in here. It’s a library. You have to be quiet.” I pulled the throwing star from my pocket and fung it at the receding law breaker. A scream came from near the health and wellness section.

“Sorry, Mrs. Lundesborg!”

It seemed I’d have to apprehend Brad the hard way, unarmed. I drew the bolo knife from my sleeve and ran afer him. Nothing motivates a man like fear. Brad ran faster than an Olympic sprinter on steroids. I caught up with him briefy by the magazine display and cut a nick out of his shoulder with my bolo knife, but he toppled the magazine rack in my path tripping me up with two-month old copies of Newsweek and Sports Illustrated. Lungs burning and bunions aching, I chased him through history, current events, and fction until I cornered him in the reference section. He held me of by throwing volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. When he ran out of ammunition with V through Z, his eyes darted back and forth for something to save him. He fxed on the Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary, hoisted it over his head, and turned to face me.

“Don’t do anything rash, Brad.” I lowered my knife to appear less threatening. “Put the book down and we’ll talk.”

He put it down, all right, right on my head. I went out like the power in the 2003 Northeast blackout. When I came to, I was sprawled on the carpet and Brad was garroting me with microflm of the San Diego Union Tribune from 1995 to 1998. I scrambled for my bolo knife, but it lay just a fraction of an inch out of reach. If only I could extend my arm… Te room began to spin as the lack of oxygen made me woozy. Suddenly, I imagined myself in Donna’s Santa Fe mansion seven years earlier.

“So where should we go for our honeymoon?” She raised her body on her elbow so that the sheet fell away. Her breast peeked out of the gap like a Jon Wesick 89

one-eyed sea cucumber looking out of its cave, a very lovely sea cucumber indeed. “I know, the Maldives. Tere was an article some time last year.”

Before I could object, she sprang from the bed and pranced into the study.

“No!” I ran afer her but arrived too late. Like a yellow Niagara Falls of death, thousands of National Geographics tumbled from the overstufed bookshelf onto her vulnerable body and crushed her into the parquet foor. With the only woman I ever loved gone, I had nothing to live for. I took the Maldives issues from her twitching hand and prepared to bludgeon myself to death.

Ten I thought of all the innocents victimized by clutter. I could not let what happened to me happen to them. From now on I would dedicate my life to fghting disorder.

Hah! I grabbed the knife, severed the microflm, and buried the blade in Brad’s windpipe. He made a gurgling sound like a garbage disposal chewing on a stainless steel teaspoon. Ten he collapsed. I returned, bruised and winded but otherwise in fne spirits, to the chief librarian’s ofce with news of my success.

“Well, if you don’t need me anymore,” Fiona moved toward the door, “I’ll get back to shelving the returns.”

“Not so fast, Fiona.” I intercepted her before she could get away. “When I said all of the missing books came from near the reference desk, I lef one out, Te Feminist Collective Placenta Cookbook, the same Feminist Collective Placenta Cookbook that contains a recipe for Mediterranean Placenta Salad by a Ms. Fiona Blackwell. Brad’s little scheme to embarrass Maude wasn’t enough for you, so you sold the missing books to the Black Octopus Bookstore. And when you thought he’d talk, you killed him.”

“Please, Decker.” Fiona got down on her knees. “I had to do it. I needed the money to pay my health insurance premiums. You’ve got to let me go.”

“No way, Fiona. You’re going down.”

“Okay.” Her tongue traced an arc on her carmine-red lips. “Sounds like fun. You want me to do it here or in the AV room?”

I could have helped her if only she’d ofered me a sign of contrition. But why would a woman like her ofer sexual favors to guy like me, a guy who sufers from both erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation?

“I gotta hand it to you, Decker,” Detective Dashiki said, returning my Desert Eagle. “You sure work a crazy investigation. Let’s head down to the Terminal Bar for some brewskies.”