A Plunder by Pilgrims
Jack Nolte
IT WAS A KID, sixteen or seventeen by the looks of him, painfully thin and soaked to the bone. His short-cropped brown hair, made nearly black by the rain, was plastered against his forehead. His Stanford sweatshirt and acid wash jeans clung to his bony frame. The skin on his neck was cratered like a moonscape, the survival scars of a nasty bout with acne.
The pounding rain made tiny white explosions on the gravel driveway, and crackled on the overgrown ferns surrounding his house. "Well?" Gage said. "Candy bars for the track team? A subscription to Good Housekeeping so the band can go to Disneyland?"
"No, sir," the kid said.
"You look familiar."
"I'm your neighbor, sir. Marty Kleppington. I live — um, just on the other side of that hedge."
That explained it. The kid had just been a runt when Gage moved in five years earlier, hardly recognizable in the young man before him, but he remembered a few terse exchanges when the kid's basketball bounced through the arbor vitae. "Well, congratulations," Gage said. "Now if you'll excuse me—"
"I'd like to hire you, sir."
It was such a wholly unexpected thing to say that Gage actually froze — door cracked open, frigid air snaking past him into the house. "I think you're confused," Gage said.
He didn't open the door. He couldn't see the kid's face, but there was a long pause.
"I know what you do, sir," the kid said. "I know—I know you were once a great detective. Garrison Gage. That's you."
Gage bowed his head. "Go home, son. The person you're looking for doesn't live here anymore."
"It's my girlfriend," the kid said, sounding desperate. "Tammy. Tammy Levin. She's missing. Been almost two days. I—I need your help."
"Go to the police."
"I have. They—"
"Goodbye, son."
He closed the door. Gage was walking away, but the kid had saved the best for last. Even muffled by the door, Gage clearly heard him.
"I can pay you, sir," he said. "I have five thousand dollars saved for college, and I can pay you every penny."
* * * * *
He gave Marty a towel, his own mug of coffee, and seated him at the kitchen table. The kid's wet hair dribbled on Gage's crossword. The blooming watermarks smeared the black ink with the blue, ruining the morning's efforts. Above them, the pounding rain sounded like somebody dropping buckets of marbles on the roof.
"How did you know about me?" Gage asked.
Instead of looking at Gage, Marty stared straight ahead. His eyes were the same color as his coffee — a deep brown, nearly black. "A couple years back, I was hiding in the hedge. Heard you talking to that FBI agent."
Gage's shoulders sagged. He'd known that helping Alex from time to time with some of his more difficult problems had been a bad idea. "I really am retired," he said.
Marty looked down into his coffee. Tendrils of steam inched past his face like long nimble fingers. Gage sighed.
"Tell you what," he said, "why don't you tell me what happened. Maybe I'll have suggestions. That's all I do with my friend, by the way. Just listen and give suggestions."
The kid dug into his front pocket. "Should I pay now or—"
"Talk."
Marty nodded. He took a long, slow breath, then said, "I'm not sure how much I can tell you. I talked to her on Friday at school. We—we were going to go out on Saturday night to the movies. Then a little before six on Friday night, Tammy's Mom called and wanted to know if Tammy was with me. Her mom said she'd run to the store to pick up some stuff for dinner and she hadn't come home. We've scoured the entire town, all of us. We haven't found her car or anything."
"It hasn't been very long — not even a day."
Marty looked at him, and his eyes were much older than his years. "If you knew Tammy, you wouldn't think so. She's very responsible. She puts everything in her day timer — dates with me,
Similar Books
