A Peek Behind The Veil (c)
Chapter Two
By Fiction Writer #13
(nosex, paranormal)

The problem with trying to make dreams come true is that, in what 
passes for reality, you have to compromise.  Real life is full of concerns, 
about which dreams never care.  In dreams, the only currency that 
needs to be spent is imagination.  Real life requires cold hard cash, and 
New York City is ravenous for it.

Even after selling off everything I owned, I still had to decide whether or 
not I wanted an apartment, or an office.  Having both wasn't even close 
to my means.  I chose to live in my office.

Despite that Hobson's choice, the only space I could afford was on the 
third floor of a four story walk up.  Big compromise there.  I always 
envisioned my dream office on the first floor... large window in the front, 
my name on display for all to see.  Now I was reduced to hoping 
potential clients would be so desperate for help that they'd walk up three 
flights of narrow stairs.  Over and above that, once they made it to my 
floor, I further hoped they'd choose to use my services and not 
impulsively opt for those of the psychic who had a business opposite 
mine.  Sad to say, she did have a better sign on her door.

I mean, if you were desperate (and you had to be if you had trudged up 
those steps), would you open the door to Nick Stone, PI written in bold 
black letters on frosted glass, or be drawn by the glitzy sign of Seer 
Lena: "All Your Answers Are Here" in glowing blue and green neon 
lights?  I laughed when I first saw that sign, but over the next year I 
watched, dumbfounded, as possible client after client stopped in the 
foyer between our two businesses looking perplexed, and chose her 
door over mine.

Damn it all.  Here I was, a reliable source of facts and truth, and they still 
went for mysticism and carnival tricks.  To say I was jealous of her 
booming business is an understatement.  You'd be pissed off too, if all 
you could afford to eat for months on end were Ramen Noodles.

That first year really tested my resolve.  How important was this dream 
of mine?  Was it more important than eating?  I stuck it out, and after a 
while I started getting a trickle of business, but it was still a hell of a lot 
less than Lena's clientele.  Lena.  Yeah.  It may sound strange, but I 
didn't actually meet Lena until my third year in New York, even though 
our offices were less than twenty paces apart.

She was kind of a shut-in.  So far as I could tell, she never left the office 
in which she lived.  She had friends that would bring her food and 
whatever else she asked for, in exchange for a free reading or two, so 
she had little reason to ever leave, I guess.

Come to think of it, the only time I ever saw her outside of her room was 
the day I found her dead on the floor of my office... but I'm getting ahead 
of myself.  I was talking about dreams, not nightmares... they came 
much later.

Where was I?  Oh yeah... that first year.  As I was saying, that first year 
nearly broke me.  I contemplated running back to Dover and reclaiming 
my old job just about every time I went to sleep with a growling stomach.  
It was tough, and it was disheartening, but I stuck it out.

Since I wasn't getting work on a regular basis, I had days and weeks of 
odd bits of free time to kill.  I took advantage of it when I could.  In the 
process, I got to know the city pretty well.  For one thing, I quickly found 
the bars in which the local cops drank away their pain.  I made friends at 
the coroner's offices.  I even got to know some of the city's low-lifes.  
The gangs, the dealers, the pimps and the prostitutes; you never know 
when they might come in handy.  I also made friends with some of the 
homeless individuals around town.  I call them 'my secret weapon'. 
Society turns a blind eye to them.

They are invisible.  No one sees them as a threat, so they're great 
sources of information.  If you know how to talk to them, you can find out 
about all kinds of dirty little secrets.  The homeless are witnesses to the 
things many think are hidden, because like our trash, they have been 
thrown away.

Hotel doormen are also great to have on your side.  For the right amount 
of "tip", they'll let you know whose where, and when they come or go.

Pretty much anyone in the hospitality business can be a good source of 
information.  People tend to think that they can carry on conversations 
around staff like they're not even there.  Well, guess what, they are 
there, and they are listening to every single word that anyone says.  
Remember that the next time you go to leave a ten percent tip.  Anything 
less than eighteen and your conversation is for sale to the next highest 
bidder.

By the end of my first year I had lost fifteen pounds, but gained a contact 
list full of reliable sources.  Better than that, I made enough friends by 
buying cops drinks that business began to pick up.  I had been 
averaging about one case every two months or so, but my new 
reputation around New York bumped that up to one a month.  Still not 
much, but hey, at least I could sometimes afford real food.

The majority of my cases back then involved infidelity.  I hate those 
cases almost as much as unemployment.  They're all the same, and 
they never turn out for the good.  I know a number of detectives who get 
a perverted thrill peeping on unfaithful husbands and wives.  They love 
spending long hours photographing or filming their indiscretions, being 
sure to capture every lurid detail for their clients.

I'm not one of them.  I've been on the other side of that coin.  Believe 
me, there is nothing 'good' about knowing that the person you love is 
fucking someone else.

Every time I've had to tell someone the truth about their partner, it 
brought back memories of my own failed marriage.  All the old wounds 
opened up.  I felt their anger, rage, and sadness.  I knew what they were 
going through.

The shock, the disbelief, the loneliness of knowing that the life you 
thought you had was nothing but a lie.  It was, and still is, devastating.  
That sort of thing sucks all the hope from you.  It kills the dreamer inside.

Time after time I relived my own pain while consoling a client.  
Eventually the pain took its toll, and I sought refuge in a bottle.  I and 
Jack Daniels began a long relationship.  Jack was always there to ease 
my mind.  Jack wouldn't keep me up at night wondering if I would ever 
find someone to love again.  Jack was my friend, and Jack would never 
leave me for someone else.  So long as I had enough money to buy his 
black labeled bottle, he was there for me.

Before I knew it, another year had passed.  You see, Jack can be a 
sneaky bastard.  One minute he has all of the answers to your problems, 
the next he's causing more problems than you had before you met him.  
In the beginning I had rules with Jack, like not drinking during a case.  
But he changed the rules behind my back.  Soon, it was no drinking 
during office hours, then no drinking during office hours except at lunch.  
Before I knew it, there were no rules.

Cases started taking much longer, too long to make a dime.  My work 
was backing up, and then I started to lose what few clients I had.  One 
day, I woke up with a pounding headache.  Nothing different there, but 
while stumbling around in search of my old friend, I accidentally caught a 
glimpse of myself in a mirror.

Death has a face.  It's one that I've seen too many times to count.  On 
that day, Death looked me right in the eyes with my own reflection.  That 
was the first time Death ever looked back at me.

Tired, drawn, gaunt, sickly, with sunken eyes and cracked lips, he glared 
at me.  Death in my family had gone by the moniker of cancer, heart 
attack, or heroin... but on that day, Death visited me as Jack Daniels.  
My friend was trying to kill me, and like most people with an addiction, I 
was the last to know it.

I've saved many people in my life, rescuing them before Death could 
steal them away for good but, saving my own life was the toughest battle 
I have ever fought.  For the first time I had an inkling of what my sister 
had been going through with her heroin addiction.  It's not easy.  It's not 
as simple as getting rid of the implements of your own destruction.  It 
calls to you.  It wants you to come back.  You dream about it.  It tells you 
lies.  Jack started talking to me.

It was in the midst of my self-imposed recovery that I was offered the 
case that changed the way I see the world.  I often wonder about it, now.  
If I hadn't been in that state of mind, would I have still accepted it?

Lena called it a 'crossroads', one of many that I had come to in my life.  
It was a decision point that set me on the path that I am on right now.  
Whether it was right or wrong, she said, didn't matter.  All that mattered 
was that I chose.  It is in the choosing that we all have power, the power 
that emanates from exercising free will.  Fate makes the map, but we 
navigate the roads on that map by means of our own choices.

If my life were a movie, this is the part I always envisioned in black and 
white.  It fits, matching how the old Hollywood masters always shot high 
drama.

Scene one opens in a tight close-up of a half-full rocks glass.  One of the 
three chunks of ice clinks against the side of the glass before settling 
once again.  Drops of condensation slide down the outside of the glass, 
dripping onto the polished wood surface below.  The camera pulls back 
slowly to reveal a large desk with me seated behind it, my feet propped 
up on one corner, taking a long draw off a cigarette as I casually survey 
my establishment.  The camera gradually widens focus to reveal a dark, 
smoky office.  The streetlights cast horizontal shadows on the walls 
through the window blinds.  The volume increases, catching the sound 
of an antique typewriter hammering away, an old radio softly playing big 
band music, and rain spattering the window.  Cut abruptly to the door 
leading outside my office as a flash of lightning illuminates the silhouette 
of a woman standing outside.

Fade, and cut to a tight shot in low light.  My office door from the outside, 
the frosted glass adorned with my name.  A slender hand with painted 
nails reaches for the brass doorknob.

Cut back to the interior of my office, a low and close shot of the opposite 
side of the door.  The handle turns, slowly the door opens, and you see 
the mystery woman from the waist down, long legs encased in black 
stockings, high heels clicking nervously on the hardwood floor.  As the 
woman hesitantly walks inside, shaking her umbrella and shedding her 
dripping raincoat, the camera slowly pans upward.  Little can be seen of 
the woman in the semi-darkness, as she looks uncertainly over her 
shoulder at the neon sign across the hallway.

Zap!  There's a long lightning flash punctuated with a loud thunderclap 
which momentarily reveals a beautiful blonde bomb shell, or maybe 
even a mysterious raven-haired vixen coming to me for help.

None of that happened.  That was the dream, the fantasy of what a life 
changing case would be like.  I guess I did see one too many film noir 
flicks than was good for me.

No, the reality of the situation was much different.  It was the middle of 
the day, a perfect mid-May spring day.  I couldn't afford a secretary, and 
even if I could have, they would have refused to work with an old manual 
typewriter.  I had a radio, but the brick buildings surrounding my office 
prevented it from receiving any kind of a signal other than squelching 
static.  I had a desk, but at that moment I was busy getting sick in my 
bathroom.  Too many hours sober for my dependent body to handle, I 
suppose.

Damned if there wasn't a woman, and she definitely needed my help, but 
she was a far cry from what anyone would call a bombshell or a vixen.

At five foot four and a hundred and sixty pounds, Melissa Gilbert 
wouldn't be entering any beauty pageants any time soon.  She was 
plain.  Her mousy brown hair was tied up in a bun.  Her's was a classic 
floral design dress and a purse stuffed full of everything but the kitchen 
sink.  She was nothing like the women in the old films, but she was 
desperate for help.  That was obvious by the way she reacted to finding 
me hunched over and puking into my toilet.

She waited patiently while I cleaned myself up, but I could see in her 
eyes that she was wondering if she had chosen the wrong door.  Surely 
the psychic had to be a better option than the unshaven shell of a man 
wiping the remains of his breakfast from his chin.

I assured her that I wasn't normally in the habit of throwing up in front of 
clients, and that I was just getting over a bad case of the flu.  It was a lie, 
but I was desperate to get back to work.  I had to keep my mind off Jack 
and all of his false promises to take away my pain.

Mrs. Gilbert started to cry even before I asked her what I could do for 
her.  Somewhere in my head, I told myself that if she wanted me to 
check on her husband, I'd refuse her business.  For anything else I'd be 
game.  I could hear Jack laughing, taunting me, and telling me I couldn't 
avoid him forever.  I tuned him out long enough to ask Mrs. Gilbert why 
she had come to me.

"It's my daughter," she sobbed, big tears rolling down her ample cheeks. 
"She's missing.  The police are calling her a runaway... but I think that 
someone has taken her."

"What makes you think the police are wrong?"

"This... this might sound crazy... but I think they are the ones who took 
her!  Or, at least they know who did, and aren't saying."

She reached into her pocketbook and fished out a crumpled piece of 
paper, which she then passed over to me.

"I found this in my daughter's trash can when I went to check on her."

"How old is your daughter?" I asked while smoothing out the wrinkled 
paper.

"Twenty.  Her twenty-first birthday is in a week.  I was going over to her 
apartment to see if she had made any plans for it yet.  I called first, but 
didn't get an answer, so I just went over.  Her place was empty, and it 
looked a mess.  I was cleaning up when I found that."

I looked down at the crumpled page laid out before me.  It was 
handwritten in blue ink on a page torn from a three-hole punched 
notebook.  It said:

Mommy, please, if you find this, help me!  I don't know how they 
found me, but they have.

Whatever you do, don't give this to the police.  I think they are in on 
it!  Jenny is already dead, and now they are coming for me.  Please, 
I don't want to die.

I don't have anyone else to turn to and I can't call you, they are 
listening.  I'm going to try and get to that place, you know the one, 
and hide out.  If I'm not there, it means they found me.  I don't know 
who they are or why they're after me.  Please Mom, just come and 
get me.  I want to go home, but every time I try they are waiting for 
me.  I'll be at that place, our special place, okay?

I love you and miss you,

Erin

"This note says not to go to the police, but you still did?" I asked, while 
ignoring Jack.

"I only went to them after I didn't find Erin waiting for me in the park.  
That was our special place.  We used to have picnics in the shade of a 
large rock there.  When she wasn't at our spot waiting for me, I 
panicked.  I was scared and thought maybe they would be able to help 
me."

"But they didn't?"

"At first they seemed real interested and went through Erin's apartment 
looking for evidence, but then it was like they just gave up.

"They told me that she was just another runaway, and that it happens all 
of the time.  They said that she had probably gotten mixed up with the 
wrong crowd and was now living on the streets.  I showed them the note, 
but they just ignored it.  They said it sounded like a prank or something 
she had been writing, like a story, and that's why I found it in the trash.

"It's been two weeks, Mr. Stone.  Please, if she's in trouble I have to help 
her."

"Hmm..." I tapped my fingers on my desk, "that doesn't sound like any of 
the cops I know.  Normally they'd be all over something like this.  A 
young girl, missing, possibly abducted.  It doesn't make any sense.  
Even if they thought it was a hoax, they'd still try to find your daughter 
just to cover their own asses."

I re-read the note once again.  It had been written by someone in a 
hurry, penmanship taking a backseat, so that her hand could get the 
thoughts on paper as quickly as possible.

"This is your daughter's handwriting?"

"Yes."

"She talks about someone named Jenny being dead?"

"Jenny is... was... her best friend; her only friend, really.  It was Jenny's 
idea for them to move to New York, they wanted to become artists, 
photographers."

"So they were roommates?"

"Yes.  But Jenny had a boyfriend, so she's been spending most of her 
time with him.  Erin used to call me sometimes because she got scared 
at night, being alone."

"Have you attempted to contact Jenny since finding this?"

"No.  Her beeper number just gives a busy signal, and her boyfriend 
either isn't home, or isn't answering his phone."

"Have you ever met him, Jenny's boyfriend?"

"No, but Erin knew him pretty well.  She told me that he plays in a band, 
and that's how Jenny met him.  His name is Michael Benner, but 
everyone calls him MB."

"Do you know where he lives, or what the name of his band is?"

"Uhh... you know... I don't know his exact address, but I think he lives 
somewhere in the Village, on Bleeker, I think.  As for the name of his 
band, it's something like Temple of Disease, or Distrust, something weird 
like that.  They play that metal music.  Erin really liked them a lot.  But it 
just sounds like a bunch of noise to me."

"Your daughter's apartment... is it in the Village as well?"

"No, she couldn't find one for rent there, at least not in her price range.  
She was living in a studio in Soho."

"Is there any way that you could..."

"Take you there?" she finished for me. "That's not possible.  After the 
police left the building burnt down.  There's nothing left to see, just a pile 
of bricks.  The fire department is calling it suspicious."

I laughed grimly, "I'd certainly say so."

We sat in silence for a moment while I tried to get my head wrapped 
around all of the information she had given me.  It wasn't much, but it 
was enough to pique my interest.  There was something going on.  If she 
was telling me the truth, then the boys in blue were either slacking off, or 
hiding something.

It wouldn't have been the first time cops had tried to keep something 
hidden.  There's an unspoken code of silence within most police 
departments.  You take care of your brothers, because one day you may 
need them to take care of you.  If one of their own had something to do 
with this girl's disappearance, who knows to what lengths they would go 
to keep it quiet.

"So... do you think you can help me?" Mrs. Gilbert asked, fear of 
rejection clearly etched into her motherly features.

She was desperate for answers, and I was desperate to get back on my 
feet.  For her to have chosen my name out of a hundred or so private 
detectives in New York had to mean something.  It had to be divine 
intervention that brought her to my door at that crucial moment.  I could 
see my own salvation in her case.  If I could find her kid, then maybe, 
just maybe, I could find myself.

Jack just laughed extra hard.  If he'd been human and had a tongue, he 
would have swallowed it.  Croaking and gasping for air just the same, 
he'd have said, 'You'll fail without me.  You can't do it on your own, you 
need my help.'

Then, with a voice that could have curdled milk from the Big Apple to 
Honolulu, he taunted, 'Only I can keep the dark thoughts away.'

Shut up, Jack.

"Yes, I'll take your case."

Her face lit up like a fourth of July fireworks display.  I could tell it was 
the first time she had smiled since the beginning of her ordeal, the first 
time that she had felt any hope.

"Thank you!" She stood up and scurried around my desk faster than her 
body shape would have led me to believe possible.  Her arms wrapped 
around me in an embrace that took the air from my lungs.  All the time 
she just kept repeating, "Thank you!  Thank you.  Oh, thank you so 
much!"

For a moment, as she held me close, her sobs of joy echoing in my 
body, I remembered what my own mother's hugs felt like.  It had been so 
long ago.  Yet somehow, as she held me, I was five years old again.  
She was not just a client or some desperate woman, she was my own 
mother.  So I returned her hug.  I told her everything was going to be 
okay.  I would find her daughter, and I would make everything better 
again.

You shouldn't make promises you might not be able to keep... but 
somehow, I knew.  I just knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would 
find her daughter for her.  I had to.

I don't know how much time passed during that shared moment, but like 
all good things in this world, it came to an end.  She apologized as she 
disengaged herself from me, too wrapped up in wiping away her tears to 
notice me wiping away my own.

As she made her way back to the front of my desk, I picked up her 
daughter's note. 

"Can I hold on to this?"

She nodded as she gathered the purse she'd dropped in her haste to 
thank me.

I folded the note neatly and placed it in the breast pocket of my now tear 
stained shirt.  I pulled out one of my business cards and passed it to her.  
In return she gave me a number where I could reach her if I had any 
other questions, or better yet, news of Erin.

As she got up to leave, I just had to ask, I had to know.

"Mrs. Gilbert, before you go, can I just ask you one more thing?"

She had started to open the door when she turned back to face me.

"Why me?  Out of all the PIs out there, some with much better 
reputations than my own, why did you choose me?"

She smiled with an almost embarrassed kind of grin.  Then, Melissa 
said, "She told me to come to you.  She said you were highly 
recommended."

"Who?" I was dying to know who still thought so highly of me.  I'd only 
been in the city for three years, and hadn't really done much more than 
drink myself to the edge of a grave.

Wordlessly, she pulled my office door open all of the way, revealing the 
small foyer and the stairwell.  To my utter disbelief she stretched out one 
arm and pointed to the blue and green neon sign across the hall.

"Lena said you were a man of your word, that if you said that you could 
find my daughter, you would.  She also said that you were the only 
person who could.  I feel guilty for saying so, but when I first saw you... I 
was a little dubious.  But after speaking with you, I know you are the 
right man for the job.  Thank you, Mr. Stone."

She left my door open as she made her way down the three flights of 
stairs.  I fell back in my seat with a sigh, the chair squeaking under my 
sudden weight.  Across the hall flashed that shit eating sign.  God damn 
it!  She had chosen to see the psychic over me after all.  What the hell is 
wrong with this world?

Once again, with impeccable timing, as always, and with the mouse now 
gone from his throat, Jack piped up, 'Whattaya say?  Sounds like you 
could really use a drink!'

Fuck you, Jack.



Continued in Chapter Three....


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Veil2