"Jace Teakwood: The World's Greatest Disappearing Act" is the second in the Jace Teakwood series. It finds our intrepid hero... well, hero anyway... well, protagonist, definitely... finds our protagonist finally settling into life in the Big Apple, still solving the world one at a time. This particular episode chronicles the story of a missing woman whom no-one seems to want to find... or perhaps she doesn't want to be found... or perhaps it's both... Jace, as usual, doesn't have a clue.
Mister Jude Bankcroft took a pair of glasses out of his pocket, put them on backwards, took them off, and put them on the right way after poking himself in the eye with one earpiece. I began to suspect he was nervous.
He squinted at me through the glasses. His face was still red. “Do I know you?” he asked. His voice was quiet, but it carried.
“Not yet,” I said with a friendly grin. “I’m Jace Teakwood, private detective, and I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”
“Um.”
“Okay. Is it alright if we talk here?” I asked him, turning and surveying the people that were rushing past us, anxious to get in the door.
“We really don’t have much choice,” he said, pulling open the door as a surge of humanity swelled toward it. “I can’t leave for another two hours. If you want to wait till then.....”
“No, that’s alright,” I told him, standing well away from the door. “We’ll just talk here.”
There was a bench not too far away. I yanked on it, discovered it was bolted to the cement beneath it, and sat on it instead.
“So,” I said loudly to him, because the bench was over ten feet away and the noises were loud, “what I wanted to ask about.”
“I’ll answer your questions as best as I can,” he said loudly back, and pulled open the door to let another person or ten inside.
“I was hired by a Mister Chebetale, who’s working for a Mr. and Mrs. Cotter-Potter-Rotter and for Mr. Bleeker. We’re all investigating the disappearance of Mrs. Terri Cerri ‘Bobbie’ Bleeker. I was informed that you knew her pretty well in high school. Have you had any communication of any sort from Mrs. Bleeker recently? Or have you heard anything about her?”
There was a pause after I yelled all this in Bankcroft’s direction. The pause was caused by a large party of perhaps twenty or twenty five people passing between him and me, talking animatedly among themselves, and taking their own sweet time getting through the door. When they had passed, I heard Bankcroft’s voice uplifted in a question.
“.....you said?” he asked.
“What?” I called.
“I said, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you, could you please repeat whatever it was that you said?”
“What!” I yelled back as more people went past us.
“I said.....”
“You know what,” I said to no one in particular, “this is not only sounding like an unrehearsed old comedy routine, it’s completely futile.”
The young-looking hobo sitting next to me on the bench nodded his agreement and grinned, showing teeth that were yellowed but not yet grey.
“Ellaw!” he said. “Moi nems Reeky.”
“Uh-huh. Doesn’t that make you feel bad? You know, have a bad self-image and all?”
“Oi, nah, naut Reeky, Reeky!”
“Oh. Ricky.”
“Yeh! Thot’s de oidaya.”
“Right. And where are you from, Ricky?”
He blinked large brown eyes at me .
“Roight he-ah. Whah oilse? Woi? Woi?”
I shrugged and shook my head. “No reason in particular. I was just, uh, taking an interest in my fellow man. Its an interesting thing to do occasionally. Certainly passes the time.”
“Whot-heva,” he said, shrugged back, and stood up to go.
I stood up stiffly with him, and saw that my crutch was missing. I looked up at Ricky as he went with the crowd and became invisible. Last I saw of him he was carrying my crutch. No doubt it would soon appear on the black market for hospital supplies that is so prevalent in New York.
I limped over to Bankcroft, who was still wondering, I guessed, what I’d been trying to tell him. Actually, it wasn’t too bad walking. My leg had been encased in the cast for quite a while. I had an appointment to meet with the doctor a week from now to finally get it taken off. I decided I could bear walking crutch-less until then.
“So, Mr. Bankcroft,” I said when I was in hearing range again.
“Please call me Jude. And I can call you Jace?”
“Okay,” I said to the first, and, “Sure,” to the second.
“So, Jude. I’m investigating the disappearance of....”
“Oh, I heard that part.”
“What part didn’t you hear?”
“I don’t know,” he said, confused, “because I didn’t hear it.”
“I mean,” I said slowly, to try and figure out what exactly it was that I meant, “what part did you hear up to? Pardon my grammar.”
“Seems okay to me. Um.... you knew that I knew her in high school?”
“Oh, yes. Well, after that I asked her if you’d heard anything from her or about her recently.”
“And that’s the question you want me to answer, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Good, because I haven’t much time left to talk to you. While you were over there cavorting with your homeless friend.....”
“Cavorting?”
“Well, communing anyway.”
“He stole my crutch.”
“Oh. Sorry. I wondered where it had got to. But while you were over there, the desk clerk came over and said I could get myself fired if I didn’t straighten up and pay attention to my job and stop talking to every moron who wants to pass the time of day. His words, not mine. So, no.”
“No what?”
“No is the answer to your question.”
“Question?”
“The one about me hearing anything about Bobbie. I haven’t.”
“Oh! that question. Sorry, I got a little lost. Well, I guess I’d better go so you don’t lose your job, which I personally know you’re extremely good at.” I cast a look of animosity towards the door and rubbed my nose.
“Let me call you a taxi,” said Jude.
“That’s okay.” I stood on the curb and busied myself with trying to whistle. I couldn’t do it. I can only do it at certain times and during certain kinds of weather. I blew until my mouth hurt.
Of a sudden, a piercing whistle came from behind me. It was a true New Yorker whistle. I can’t do that even on my good days. Three taxi cabs immediately raced up to and almost over my feet in response to it. I turned and looked at Jude, who took his fingers from his mouth to grin and wave at me.
I would have given him a business card before I left but I didn’t have any with me. I got in the cab and directed the driver to take me home.
She turned in the seat to look at me. “Home,” she said. “Where in heck is that?”
All materials copyrighted to Felicity Danielle Dippery. No copying, pirating, or reproduction without express permission from the author. Violation of this will cause her father, a prominent lawyer, to come down on you so hard you'll be searching for a rock to crawl under and hide.
