Shell Game – Chapter 1 – Evan Gold
On September 20th, a lingering fog blanketed Athens, Kansas. Evan Gold woke up, sat on the edge of his mattress, raked all ten fingers through his hair, and stared out the window. Gray. Thick fog blanketed everything, and Evan could no longer see the park, which normally lay opposite his apartment window. The sight matched the thoughts in Evan’s head. No detail. No beauty. No nothing.
It had been three months since he’d moved into the apartment. The partially furnished decorative motif he’d adopted provided the barest of necessities for existence with the proper amount of discomfort to convince him this was only a temporary situation. All he had to do was get his head straight about a few things, and Katherine would take him back. All he had to do was figure out a whole new way to live, and all would go back to normal.
He looked at his alarm clock. Five after seven. Evan talked himself into standing, then taking a hot shower and shave. His morning routine didn’t fix any of his metaphysical problems, but it somehow seemed to give him enough inertia to get on with the rest of his day.
At seven-thirty, Evan exited his house and walked the five blocks to the office. On the way, he rehearsed Katherine’s grievances: He worked too hard, his clients were unsafe and unsavory, work kept him out at all times of day and night, and Katherine never knew when he stepped out for the day if it would be the final goodbye. She said she couldn’t deal with the fear, with the doubts, with feeling suspicious all the time.
Evan couldn’t help most of her concerns. He was a private detective. It wasn’t like his chosen profession played by the same rules of other businesses. There was no clocking in and out. When he was honest with himself, he knew the job had problems. He’d started with a desire to help people, right wrongs, and fight for justice in an unjust world. Now he was just cynical. Husbands and wives cheated on one another; people stole from each other. Left to their own devices, people only acted out of selfishness and then hired him to get leverage on other selfish people. Evan considered hanging up his detective agency, but he felt a responsibility to his employees. He had no idea what else he could do to make money and help society.
He turned up the collar on his raincoat, jammed his fists into his pockets, and continued to walk forward in the white mist. Katherine was done with him, he told himself. It was just the obvious consequence of his chosen profession. He’d had no business getting married in the first place.
Evan pulled open the glass-paneled door and stepped into the Silver and Gold Detective Agency. He inhaled the familiar air of linoleum, cigarette ash, and White Shoulders perfume and then smiled and said, “Good morning,” to the source of the fragrance.
Sophie Landis looked up from behind her avocado green tanker desk, stopped typing, and smiled at her boss. “That remains to be seen,” she said before rubbing non-existent lipstick from her teeth with her index finger. “It’s quite the bowl of pea soup out there.”
“Yeah,” Evan said, “Maybe the problems of the world will have a hard time finding us in the haze.”
Sophie scrunched up her face and shook her head. “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” she said and handed him an envelope. “A man came by earlier.”
Evan looked at Sophie, who gave him a weak smile in return. “Welcome to Monday.”
“Let me take off my hat at least,” he said and refused to take the envelope.
Sophie stood and followed Evan into his inner office. “He was just a currier,” she said and held out the letter again.
Evan placed his hat on the rack and took the envelope from Sophie. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” He ran his finger under the flap to break the seal, pulled out the letter, and read it silently. “What’s it say?” Sophie asked as he read. “You never can tell with curriers. Their faces don’t give you anything to work with.” She looked at Evan with a nervous smile and furrowed forehead, “But it’s from the landlord, so…”
Evan exhaled, handed the letter back to Sophie, and sat down in his chair. He began to stare out the window at the rest of Athens, Kansas, as it got a start on a new week. Though the window needed soap, water, and a fair amount of elbow grease, Evan usually had a decent enough view of the good people of Athens making their way through the world, little suspecting the existence of their neighbor’s darker motives and activities. In the morning’s fog, all he could make out were ghostly apparitions gliding through the wisps of gray and white.
He mulled on the thought that this was all he ever knew of people, just misty projections. No client he’d ever worked for was honest with him, never came clean, always protecting some angle that made it much harder to find what was good and fair and right.
Evan shook his head and rubbed his eyes. What kind of life had he chosen for himself?
“Hey, cheer up,” Sophie said, refolding the letter and slipping it back into the envelope, “it says we have till the end of the month before they kick us out.”
Evan grunted. “That’s next Friday,” he said. Suddenly, Evan spun around in his chair and looked at Sophie, “What’s outstanding? Aren’t there open invoices? There are always open invoices.”
“Way ahead of you. I looked at our books this morning. Believe it or not, we do have an open invoice, but only one.” She scrunched her face again, “That Harvey mess.”
Evan continued to look passively at Sophie. “And?”
“You asked me to have a guy look into it.”
“And?”
“I got the message right after you left on Friday.”
“And?” Evan pressed.
“It would appear the Harvey’s are running dark. Our guy said they rolled up their whole life like a cheap rug and beat town. They’re like ghosts to us.”
Them and everyone else, Evan thought as he chewed the inside of his bottom lip.
Sophie smiled an apology.
“I know how to pick the good ones, huh?” Evan stood and smoothed his jacket. “We got any coffee?”
“Just made a pot,” Sophie said, hooking her thumb in the direction of the percolator. She followed him over and hung unnecessarily nearby.
“I get the feeling you’re not done with the good news,” he said as he poured the dark liquid into a paper cup.
“You know what they say about when it rains,” Sophie said.
“What is it they say?”
Sophie paused and held up a second envelope. “We also got a message from the bank.”
Evan poured powdered creamer and four sugar packets into his coffee before turning around and looking his secretary in the eye. “Why don’t you just tell me what it says.” He took a sip and winced as it burned his lip.
Sophie looked offended. “I don’t open your mail.”
“Two things I know to be true,” Evan said after blowing the steam off his cup, “you’re bad at hiding evidence.”
“What?” Sophie said.
Evan cocked his head to one side, “The letter from the landlord had a weak seal as if it had been steamed open and re-sealed.” Evan took a sip and walked past Sophie.
“I’m just concerned about you, Evan. Ever since… well, ever since you moved to that sad little apartment,” she hesitated. “A person can only take so much bad news.”
“Is that what it is? You’re protecting me?”
“What’s the other thing?”
“The other thing is, I pay you to open my mail,” Evan said. “The only time you act like you don’t is when there’s bad news. So out with it. Let’s just see how much bad news I can take.”
“Evan, I’m worried about you.”
“Out with it.”
“It says,” she said, caressing the envelope’s perimeter, “ it says they’re calling in your loan.”
“When?”
“At the end of the month. On Friday.”
Evan raised his coffee in a salute and said, “Welcome to Monday.”
Sophie followed him back to his office. “Listen, Evan,” she began, “I know this isn’t what you want to talk about, but… well, my brother-in-law got in a bad way a few years back. He got back from Korea and tried to make a go of it in pre-fab houses? Anyway, one thing after another, he filed for bankruptcy….”
“Not this again.”
She pressed on, “Sure, there’s been some hardships on getting a car, and he pays more in rent than normal, but, but, but, he still has a job, and I think in another year, or so, it’ll all be off his record. After that, he can live a normal life. He said it saved his bacon.”
“I’m a vegetarian,” Evan said.
“Evan,” Sophie said.
“Don’t,” he said.
“What?”
“With the tone.”
“What tone?”
“I’m fine. We’ll be fine. This is just one of those… whatever these things are called.”
“Would you at least look into it? It might keep you from going down an even deeper hole.” Sophie said.
“I don’t want to file bankruptcy.”
Sophie let out a laugh, “No one wants to file bankruptcy. But, it might let you live to fight another day. You know, like the Brits over there at Dunkirk.”
Evan recomposed himself. “Sorry. That’s nice about your brother-in-law, but I don’t want to file. I’ve never given up a fight yet, and I’m not going to start now. We have, what did I say, we have a week, right? Gabe can rustle up something. He’s always getting his nose where it doesn’t belong. All we need are one or two quick payouts, and we can survive another month.”
“Sure,” Sophie nodded, “that’s the spirit. And my brother-in-law gave me the number for his lawyer if you need it.”
“I’m not going to need it,” Evan said, anger creeping into his tone. He took a long swallow of his coffee and enjoyed the burn as it ran down his throat and expanded throughout his chest.
“I said if.” Then a light bulb of an idea flashed across Sophie’s eyes, “Ooo, we could put an ad in the Gazette. A small one. I know how you are about spending money. But there’s always somebody doing somebody wrong in Athens. Sure, word of mouth is good, but maybe somebody has a problem and doesn’t know someone. They see the ad and… you know.”
“How much does an ad in the Gazette cost?” Evan asked. Before Sophie could speak, he answered, “More than we have, is how much it costs. We’re sitting here talking about throwing in the towel one minute…”
“I didn’t say throw…” Sophie tried to interject.
“… and now we’re talking about gambling the money we don’t have on advertisements when you know that word-of-mouth has been our best source of paying clients. Our excellent work advertises for us. People say to friends, ‘You need a private eye? See Silver and Gold.’ A man’s word is more trustworthy than ink on newsprint. Things have always turned around. We’ve been in much worse scrapes than this before. Things will turn around.”
“Well, if not,” Sophie said, “I’ve got that lawyer’s number.”
Evan glared at her.
Sophie braced herself with a breath and smiled at her boss. “Will there be anything else, Evan?”
“No,” he said, and Sophie began to make her way out of his office and back to her desk. “Actually,” Evan said, stopping her, “you could check the county records to see if I happen to have a rich relative that’s looking to kick off soon.”
They shared a humorless smirk, “Sure. I’ll get right on that.”
