The Man With Two Shadows
by
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The light always catches the gold lettering on the frosted glass of my office door… or at least it would, if I had either a frosted door or gold lettering. The door was ridiculously plain, with the number 147 on it. To the side, a very plain sign holder had no doubt seen any number of 12x4” mass-produced signs slipped into it at various times over the years. Right now, it read simply JEREMIAH PYM, Private Investigations, white letters in a black background, very plain, very inconspicuous. Which is as good a way as any of describing my career.
Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe is famed for having observed that “you don’t make a lot of money in this profession, if you’re honest.” He wasn’t kidding, then or now. Back in the days of “fifty a day plus expenses,” it wouldn’t have been worthwhile to most private dicks; getting beaten up every thirty or forty pages, getting lost in the intricacies of plots and sub-plots, having to fight both the bad guys and city hall, being your own man no matter what… yeah, those might have been the days after all. In the old days, you “requested information” by beating it out of some schmuck who was trying to hose you down for a few bucks. These days, you write a letter, put a stamp on it, sometimes enclose a fee for the service, and wait with your cooling coffee in the office that you may or may not be able to afford to keep going for another few months.
I shrugged, closed the office door. I had no cause to complain. Simple skip-traces, the occasional bit of domestic mystery, sometimes a little security or surveillance work, it can make for a reasonably good living for someone who doesn’t like to “work” in the ordinary sense of the word. A chunk of what I do, anyone can do, if they know how to ask for the information; that whole Freedom of Information Act thing was a case of “can open, worms everywhere.” What most people don’t know is that real information – the stuff that you really want to find out – was never in the can in the first place. And that’s where guys like me come in. (And gals too, just in case anyone’s worried about the gender gap.)
Back at my desk, I gathered up the photos and other papers that Mrs. Lindenbaum had left behind. I’d have to ask if she wanted me to keep them, give them to her, or destroy them. They weren’t particularly damning, but privacy is privacy (void where arbitrary federal or state agencies deem it inconvenient). Into the file folder they went, thence to the basket on the table near the window, and thence out of my memory until it came time to prepare the invoice. I figured I’d done enough for one morning.
The telephone informed me, with its irritating little electronic trill, that I was mistaken.
“Pym Investigations.”
“Good morning, Mr. Pym.” Male voice, clear BRP pronunciation, slightly accented, possibly Slavic, middle-aged. Very little smile in that voice. “My name is Nikolai Sobieslaw.” Jotting notes, I tried a phonetic spelling of so-be-slahv, before he obligingly spelled it out for me.
I kept the phonetic spelling so that I could remember how to pronounce it. “You come to me highly recommended.”
“I’m honored, sir.” I was going to use flattered, and something told me to be more formal. I shifted mental gears from Archie Goodwin to something more like Philo Vance. “How may I help you?”
“I am the owner of a large warehouse building off of Water Street, if you know the area.”
“Generally, sir.”
“I’m more an estate agent than an entrepreneur; my interest is in acquiring properties and setting them to let.” A rather British linguistic phrasing, I noted. “I am concerned that my tenant may be engaging in activities that are… less than legal.”
“I believe I understand. You’d like to discuss surveillance activity?”
“Yes – in person, however, if I may. I don’t feel comfortable with telephones these days.”
“Completely understandable in these perilous times.” Okay, that was probably a little much. “Would you like to come to my office?”
“Are you available this afternoon?”
I thought for a moment; not always good to look too eager. “I’m otherwise engaged this afternoon, Mr. Sobieslaw; may I suggest tomorrow morning at ten o’clock? If the matter is truly urgent, I could have operatives available to begin that evening.”
The would-be client hesitated, a span of time barely measurable to most watches, much less most people. I’m supposed to be sensitive to such things; makes me a reasonably good gumshoe. “That should be fine,” he said with care. “After all, I could be mistaken about this entire affair. It seems foolish to assign it urgency.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll see you in the morning.” I made sure that he had my address correct, good directions to the office, information regarding parking, and then he rang off, as the British would say. That impression still stuck with me, although I couldn’t quite fathom why. His was the sort of voice that makes you feel that you should clean the office before his visit, in case he whipped out a white glove to test for dust under the edges of your desk.
Good thing I had the afternoon to get the place tidied up.
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Book Details
About the Book
Have you ever felt uncomfortable in your own skin?
Maybe there’s a reason…
Jeremiah Pym is a private detective – not the flashy gun-toting gumshoe of old, but a quiet, respectable shamus of modern day who earns a modest living on domestic intrigues and background checks. After being hired for what should be a routine surveillance job, Jeremiah witnesses a kidnapping, barely escaping with his life. The next day, however, not a trace remains of any kidnapping… or anything else that he saw.
Trying to put the puzzle pieces together leads the detective on a convoluted chase that brings into question everything that he’s ever known about himself. With the help of his Native American mentor, Edgard Moon Bear, Jeremiah discovers that the key to the mystery may be found in another world – a world where therianthropes (human/animal hybrids) are the sentient beings, and where hundreds of years of slow change has allowed some of these beings to wield magical powers.
As Jeremiah learns the secrets of his own past, he comes to learn who and what he is… and why his existence is central to the continued survival of two worlds.
About the Author
Tristan Black Wolf is an author, actor, improvist, pathfinder, pundit, and polymath. When he’s not occupied looking up fancy words to describe himself, he writes and publishes novels, stories, blogs, the odd screenplay or twenty, and various observations about the world at large. The year 2011 C.E. seems to have become his “Year of the Furry” – nearly everything he wrote involved therianthropes or anthromorphs. He scored a hat trick of short story acceptances: “Impossible Things,” in Children of the Moon (Misanthrope Press); “The Dare,” in Allasso (Pink Fox Publications); and “Lunatics,” in NAF #27 (North American Fur). He is a proud member of North American Fur and of the Furry Writers’ Guild. As this book goes to press, he is participating in the 2011 National Novel Writing Month competition (www.nanowrimo.org); to find out if he’s won, or to read his other observations about writing, publishing, and the wonderful world of words, visit him at his blog, tristanblackwolf.blog.com.