Tom’s plan to get answers from Rebecca was solid, but it did hinge on being able to find her.

“Will you give it up now?” asked Ellen, lighting a cigarette. Remley coughed and rolled down a window.

“Do you think she’s avoiding me?”

“The girl at her shop said she was away on business,” said Ellen. “So yes? No? What’s it matter? It’s a dead end. They’ll all be dead ends.”

“Maybe she eloped,” Remley said. “Probably that bastard from the auction house. Women love blue ties and matching glasses.”

“No we don’t,” said Ellen.

“Hey Remley, you remember Sal?”

Remley groaned. “I knew it would come to this. Jon—I said to myself—Jon, Tom’s going to remember Sal any minute now, and he’ll want to use his connections. Be prepared.”

“Who’s Sal?” Ellen asked.

“Guy my uncle knows,” Tom said. “Sometimes my uncle moves some pretty big pieces, and people don’t always pay on time. Sal has resources. He can find people.”

“‘Find people?’ And then what, break kneecaps?” Ellen asked.

“He’s cheap,” Tom said. “And he owes Uncle Paul a few favors. He’s not the Mafia.”

“He’s too huggy,” Remley said. “They’d never let him in. You can’t hug people all the time and be in the Mafia.”

Ellen tossed her butt out the window. “So, what—you’re going to have him find Rebecca?”

“Actually,” Tom said, “I was thinking Conrad Valiss.”

“Valiss?” Remley climbed between the front seats. “I thought we were avoiding giants with guns. Didn’t I just tell you my position on being shot?”

“Sal has information,” Tom said. “He doesn’t just find people, he finds out about them. Valiss obviously knows plenty about us. I think it’s time we learned a few things about him.”

They headed south of the Blue Swan, back to familiar terrain. Sal kept a small office on the west side of Wodeville, just past Traner Park on Pennsylvania. The three occupied themselves privately, Tom thinking, Remley whistling, and Ellen fiddling with a thin piece of wire and a small padlock.

Traner Park had gone a long way downhill since Tom was a kid. All that was left now were a pair of dilapidated picnic tables, a rusted metal grill, and a large concrete slab that used to be the site of pick-up basketball games until the hoops went missing. Tom pulled up next to the curb in front of the park. Remley looked nervous.

“Seems like a bad area, Tom.”

“It’s fine, Remley. I know this place.”

“I don’t like it,” Remley said. “I got the hooky-spooks. You attract danger the way I do and you get a sixth sense about these things.”

Ellen turned to look at him. “You attract danger the way bees attract honey.”

“Bees make honey,” Remley said. “Oh.”

Sal was not technically in the business of finding people. Generally his customers knew precisely where their loved ones were, and came to Sal to get enough cash to get them out again. During daylight hours, however, business was slow, and when they walked into his office it was empty.

A length of bells jangled and Sal came hustling out of the back, licking his fingers before blotting them clean with a napkin. He was a tall man, tall as Remley at least. He looked a bit the way a scorpion might if you could fit it into a pair of wrinkled jeans. And there was always the feeling when he hugged you, Tom thought, that you were about to get stung.

“Tommy!” Sal stopped in his tracks and grinned, tossing the napkin in the vicinity of a wastebasket. “And you brought your pals!”

He gave Tom a hug and slapped his back. Remley tried to back away but Sal caught him anyway. Remley screamed.

“Motherfucker,” Remley groaned, doubling over when Sal let him go.

“What’s wrong with him?” Sal asked.

“Broken ribs,” Tom said. “Had it coming, though.”

“Ah. So what can I do for you, guy? Somebody need to post bail?”

Tom shook his head. “We need information. I don’t know all the details, but Uncle Paul wants me to run a name by you.”

He scratched his chin. “Oh he does, does he?”

“Conrad Valiss.”

Sal darkened. Remley tried to stand up and screamed, but Sal didn’t look away from Tom. He backed up slow until he was at his desk, and he tapped a couple times on his keyboard. “Conrad Valiss.”

Tom nodded at the computer. “Yeah. Anything you can pull up.”

Sal leaned down over his keyboard, kept his eyes up. Tom started to come toward him, and just had time to process that the computer was not actually switched on before Sal swung up a sawed-off shotgun from beneath the desk.

“Funny thing,” Sal said. “I talk to Paul. He says you don’t work for him anymore.”

“Whoa, easy,” Tom said. “Hang on. This is a mistake.”

“Sure,” said Sal. “But me and you? We’re gonna fix it.”

****

Photo by Daniel Schwen [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), via Wikimedia Commons.