Chapter 17: Eccentricity

For many years, I’ve been a great believer in the idea of perfect timing. If one tries to do something at the wrong juncture, it will at best be difficult and at worst a complete failure, whereas if one does it at the right moment, things will flow smoothly. I don’t claim to have originated this notion and as a PI, was seldom able to put it into practice, but I submit that it’s true.

On a warm sunny day, I’d arrived at the office, as usual about thirty minutes late – not that I had any advertised hours, but when I wasn’t running around on a case, I was a nine-to-five man. No sooner had I ensconced myself behind the desk than I had a visitor – I felt like a doctor who’d assumed his position and rung a bell for the first patient. Timing again. The trouble was that I didn’t feel like receiving anyone. I was preoccupied.

The thinking had started the previous evening, when I’d begun to ponder on reincarnation. Well, after all, despite two intervening commissions I was still more or less fresh from my little adventure involving Margaret Tremayne – she of the cat-o-nine-tails tongue – who had alluded to higher forces exacting whatever comeuppance awaits us. That had got me pondering on such matters in general. It wasn’t my first foray into the field, but this time I was fully engaged and really wanted to know. I mean, when you think of the number of things you’d like to master in the course of a lifetime, or perhaps of correcting your mistakes, then consider that you have no chance of dealing with everything outstanding, you wonder about having another go, don’t you? It might not be too bad, but for the ghastly idea of trying to grow up again.

Let me be truthful here. I am mindful of the fact that some people who’ve achieved prominence – please don’t take this as a suggestion that I have – like to talk about the deprivations of their formative years. In terms of ups and downs, my childhood was about average, and I don’t recall having had more to complain about than did most of my contemporaries. Still, I sometimes think of the words of an elderly German woman I knew many years ago, who used to say: “They are not the smallest cares that are carried in the school satchel.” Right on the mark, don’t you think? Maybe we’ll come up with a way of producing people fully-fledged, say at twenty or so, complete with programmed memories of a virtual upbringing.

My cerebration had intensified when I’d thumbed through an atlas – I’ve long been a map freak – and noted in the preamble a graph showing the demographers’ best estimate of the growth of human population over recorded history. Of course, the experts could be wrong, but they know more than I do and I’m willing to accept their conclusions. It seems that as far as they can work out, our numbers plodded along for millennia on little more than a simple replacement basis – somebody died, somebody else appeared. Then things changed. At about the time I was born, the graph-line, which had been rising quite sharply for a while, suddenly started going almost straight up. To me, that seemed astonishing. I’d come into a world of about two billion people. At the time I’m speaking of, the figure was above twice that level and still rocketing. I reckoned that if all the souls that ever had been around were seeking bodies, we must be just about reaching balance. Then what? Apocalypse? But what if the experts were wrong? You’ll see why I was a little stressed.

Happily, thanks to my success in the Tremayne affair and the other two cases I mentioned, both minor winners, I was all right for the next meal and had decided that the future could do its worst. I was about to move on to other matters, when my den was invaded. The incomer swept – well, on account of his build, he couldn’t exactly sweep, but you know what I mean – through my antechamber. Without so much as glancing at my tattered magazines, he bowed his way into the presence. I say bowed because he was the tallest man I’d ever encountered one-to-one. He was, I reckoned, around six-eight and a beanpole; one-eighty at most was my estimate. This animated pipe-cleaner, clad in a white tee shirt, open light-blue anorak, faded blue jeans and scruffy black and white trainers, undulated towards me. His various parts seemed to be disjointed, as though proceeding at different speeds, then re-assembling themselves at the target spot. As to age, I put him at mid-twenties.

“Mornin’,” he said. “You Cyril Potts?”

“Guilty,” I said.

“What? Oh, guilty. Yeah, I get it. A joke, eh?”

I began to wonder whether his mentality was as unusual as his physique, but he looked like a prospective client. I mean, with that appearance he probably wasn’t a salesman. I waved him to a chair. I don’t know whether giraffes sit down back-end first, but if they do, I was looking at it. “Can I help you?” I said.

“I sure hope so.” His voice, like his upper garb, was pale-blue “My name’s Arnie Todd. There’s a guy been followin’ me around for two or three days. I’d like to know what he wants.”

“Have you considered asking the police?”

“Sure, but what with murders an’ rapes an’ all, they got enough to do, right? I can spare a few bucks, so I want you to look things over.”

This was good news. A simple job, it seemed. Yet, I had one of those feelings that came over me at times. Maybe it had to do with my man’s appearance. “Fair enough, Arnie” – I just knew he wouldn’t appreciate the Mr, Mr thing. “Now, I don’t want to be offensive, but are you up to anything that might attract this man’s attention?”

That brought a slow grin. “Nothin’ I know of,” he said. “I guess I’m just an ordinary guy. I make mattresses for a livin’. I stay with my folks, over the garage, an’ nothin’ much happens to me.”

“I see,” I said. “What about your free time? Anything odd there?”

He shook his head. “Don’t think so. I guess a guy like me” – he swept his body with a hand that but for the thin bones could have held a hundredweight of coal – “don’t go over too good with the dames. Side from that, there’s nothin’ I can think of. I wander around town a little an’ go to the pictures twice a week. Mostly, I just live quiet.”

I’d never come across a more ingenuous-seeming man. This looked like a gift of maybe a day or two of work. Yet, some of my most complex cases had started in apparently mundane ways. “Why don’t you just confront this fellow?” I said.

“Can’t rightly say,” he answered. “I guess I’m just shy. Don’t want to make a fuss. But I know I’m right. I’ve stopped a few times an’ looked back. Every time I do that, he stops, too. He pretends to be lookin’ in shop windows, ckeckin’ his watch or tyin’ shoelaces.”

“And you’re quite sure it’s always the same man?”

“Yes, I am. He’s a good bit older than me, short – five-fiveish – fat an’ goin’ bald. I can tell that ‘cause he doesn’t wear a hat. He always wears jeans like mine but newer, a padded red jacket and black sneakers. Oh, an’ he smokes cigars.”

Whatever other qualities Arnie Todd had, he sounded like a first-class witness. In my line of work, I’d encountered some beauties, including a middle-aged woman who’d claimed to have been followed by a ‘strange’ man, about six feet tall, brown-haired and smart-looking. I’d collared the fellow, who was five-eight, had hair as black as a raven’s wing and was dressed like a hobo. Yet she’d identified him without hesitation – which had surprised me more than anyone else, as he was her husband.

“Okay, Arnie,” I said. “Now, today’s Thursday. What are your immediate plans?”

“Nothin’ special.” he said. “I’m takin’ a piece of my vacation this week, so I’ll just be strollin’ around.”

“All right,” I said. “Give me your address and phone number and I’ll get onto it tomorrow morning.” He told me what I needed to know and we agreed that he would follow his intended course, then he paid me for two days in advance and left.

I was on duty at nine the following morning. The Todd place was a modest two-storey house in the uptown sprawl. Arnie emerged shortly after ten. As we’d arranged, he ignored his car. He gangled along the drive and headed towards the central shopping area. I followed, reminding myself that this was not the first case of its kind I’d handled. I thought in particular of the Gordon Prentiss matter I’ve already recorded – there’s a good deal of repetition in a PI’s life.

When Arnie began his amble around the stores, I parked and started my stealthy shadowing routine. For well over an hour I earned easy money, then our man turned up. My client’s description was accurate. The pudgy little fellow was dressed in a quilted scarlet jacket, blue jeans and black shoes. As far as I could tell, he seemed to be fortyish. The hair he had left was plastered across a soccer-ball head and yes, he was smoking a cigar. He followed Arnie and I followed him.

The procession went on for over three hours, punctuated when Arnie called in at a restaurant, where he stayed for twenty minutes, while Redjacket hovered across the street, munching something he took from a paper bag he’d been carrying. Finally, Arnie walked back towards home. Our man trailed him for a while, legging it to keep up. Then, apparently satisfied, he turned off down a side street. I’d been following in the car and put on a spurt, wanting to see where the little fellow went. I took the same turn-off as he had. He wasn’t in sight. All I saw was the black rear end of what must have been a long car, turning into another byway. I zoomed after it, swung into the same street – and found a stretch of emptiness. I cruised along hopefully, but the big vehicle had vanished in the suburban maze.