Meter Maids Eat Their Young (18 page)

“You're not giving me much here, Darth baby,” I said to myself.

“You know,” came a voice, “talking to one's self is the first sign of insanity.”

I looked up. Jaz was standing next to my table looking very smart in a white blouse, short white skirt and a blazer that matched the color of her newly-tinted hair; a deep shade of blue, like Chinese forget-me-nots.

“
Au contraire
,” I said. “Answering yourself and believing that your answer is the only correct one is the first sign. I was neither asking nor answering, just stating.”

She sat down at the booth, laying her leather briefcase at the far end of the table. Those dark circles still ringed her eyes and her brow was furrowed. I considered asking what was wrong but decided against it. There were still too many unknowns between us and I wasn't sure how she would react to my concern. That and I was still cranky over my near miss in the street.

“You dyed your hair again,” I said instead.

Ignoring me, she said, “Who's Garth?”

“Darth,” I corrected, a little exasperated. “As in Darth Vader.”

She laughed. “Darth Vader? What now, Teller? You channeling the Dark Side in search of a story?”

“Ha ha, funny,” I said. “The Mangler, or whoever it is that's calling me, uses a voice synthesizer. It sounds a lot like Darth Vader.”

“Oh. So he called again?”

“Last night,” I said, reaching for my plate. “You want something to eat?”

“Too early for me,” she said. “What did he have to say?”

I sliced through a dog and lifted the fork to my mouth. Chewing slowly, I considered my answer. I hadn't held anything back from Jaz thus far. I couldn't think of a reason why I should. She worked for the DPE after all and was as anxious as me to figure out what was going on. For different reasons, perhaps. But still …

“What if I told you I thought Darth might be a woman,” I said, cutting through another piece of dog. That brought an unexpected response. She laughed. It seemed a nervous laugh.

“A woman? Why would you think that?”

“Call it a hunch,” I said, thinking about what Skeeter had told me and the parting observation from the print shop guy. And, there was also that nagging fact that Jaz had known the body in the parking lot was Harrison's.

“I can't imagine a woman destroying parking meters,” she said.

“One can't imagine a woman being a serial killer, yet look at Aileen Wuornos down in Florida. Parking meters seem pale by comparison.”

“Serial killing nasty old men is one thing,” she said. “Serial killing parking meters is entirely different.” She smiled to let me know she was joking.

“Is it?”

“I sure hope so. So what did he, or she, if you will, have to say?”

I stared at her for a long moment, deciding to relent. “Not much really, as always. Told me there was more to come, as if I didn't already suspect that. Mentioned, again, that the DPE must be stopped but, again, neglected to mention from what.”

She paused a long moment, as if waiting for me to continue, then said, “What do you think it is? What they have to be stopped from, I mean.”

“I haven't a clue,” I said, wondering why I hadn't told her the last part of the message.

“Do you think you'll get one?”

“By and by,” I said.

As she started to slide out the booth, I stopped her with a question.

“What's that perfume you're wearing?”

“What?”

“The perfume. What's it called?”

She smiled, a genuine one this time, and shook her head.

“You're a weird one, Teller. Do you know that?”

“I've been accused of worse things than being weird.”

“I'll bet you have. It's not a perfume. It's a mixture of scented oils, lavender and strawberry. I mix it myself. Why?”

“I don't know. No reason really. Other than I just like the smell of it.”

She shook her head again, stuck out her tongue at me and left.

I watched her cross the street and disappear around the corner of the City Administration building. She wasn't hard to follow, the bright blue hair and all. The scent of her lingered in the air around me and my heart was still tripping over itself from the tongue gesture.

Jaz and the Mangler one and the same? The Mangler had been described as tall and willowy. Jaz was tall, several inches taller than me. And, I suppose, one could view her as being willowy. The clincher, though, was her knowing it had been Harrison's body in the parking lot. And lying about how she'd come by that information.

With a deep sigh, I finished my last dog and drained my coffee, tucking that thought away for later. I had a lot to do and didn't want to be late for it.

I looked at the clock over the cash register to check the time. I don't carry a watch of any kind. The time on my cell phone is off by several hours, still at the default setting it had when I bought the thing. I know it can be changed but I'll be damned if I can figure out how. I thought the advent of electronics was supposed to make life easier. Just seems like more incomprehensible manuals to read through to me.

As I hurried out the restaurant, I slid to an abrupt stop at the curb to look both ways for Cushman carts. Didn't see a single one nor the guy from the lamppost. I cut across the street and into the newspaper garage to pick up my car. There were a couple of things I needed before my rendezvous at Market and River and if I was quick about it, I could arrive early and be properly set up for whatever show Darth had in mind to present.

Market Street intersects River Avenue at the outer fringe of the downtown area, a quarter mile beyond the park. A bit of a walk, if you don't want to take the downtown shuttle, but the parking's cheap; twenty-five cents an hour on a two hour meter, and enforcement was over at 1:00p.m. so the afternoon was free.

The DPE was trying to quash that. Bring the cost up to a dollar on a one-hour meter and extend the enforcement time to 6:00 p.m. I'd written an article about it a month back. Harrison had been leading the charge against it, backed up by a small, grassroots organization, the same bunch that had been handing out leaflets at the Monorail station. The plan was on the back burner for the time being but everyone knew it was just a matter of time before the changes were introduced.

Since I had no idea what was going down, I decided that being on foot would give me more flexibility so I returned the car to the garage, hopped the shuttle, and was settled in at a bus shelter on Market well before the appointed time. I had my iPod in my lap and a pair of opera glasses I'd borrowed from a friend in my shirt pocket.

Annie Lennox was singing about the coming rain when one of the little Cushman carts pulled up. I shut off the iPod and watched as the driver climbed out. With the outfits they wore, it was hard to distinguish gender. They all look like a cross between the Gestapo and the Keystone Cops.

A surreptitious pull on the crotch and a quick scratch of the nether regions convinced me the driver was male. With the adjustments made, he began moving along the line of cars. At each one he would peer through the windshield and scribble something on the clipboard he held. It took me a moment to realize he was jotting down the vehicle identification numbers. What he wasn't doing was writing out tickets and he wasn't likely to get much of a chance to. I had checked the route myself before settling in. All but a few of the meters were due to expire well after the 1:00 p.m. cutoff time and I had popped quarters in those myself.

As I watched him make his way along, a half dozen people arrived, got in their cars, and drove away. Several flipped the bird at the meter maid's back. I used the opera glasses to note their license plate numbers and wrote them down in my notebook.

It was nearly 1:30 p.m. when the meter maid went back to his cart. He stepped inside, closed the door and sat there, busying himself with something I couldn't see. An hour passed. I was about to leave, totally confused as to why I had come in the first place, when he emerged from his cart,   looked around cautiously and walked over to a trash container. He scanned the area again, slower this time, and then dropped something into the container. Hitching up his pants, he returned to his cart and drove off.

What the hell was that about, I wondered? I sat there another fifteen minutes, waiting to see if he would return. I was about to get up to investigate when a dark blue Mercedes rolled to a stop across the street from the bus stop. It sat there for a long moment, wisps of blue smoke trailing from the exhaust. Finally, the tinted driver's window rolled down, revealing my friend from earlier in the day.

“Resting that knee, I see,” he said.

“Yeah, something like that.” My heart began to race.

He looked up and down the street and back at me.

“What? They too cheap at that paper of yours to give you a car?”

At the paper? So, he knew who I was. “I have a car. It's, uh, in the shop so I'm bussing it.”

“Nasty things, busses. Germs everywhere. Make ya sick. Or worse.” I think he smiled but I couldn't tell for sure. “You should get some ice on that knee,” he said.

“Yeah. I'll do that.”

“You take care.”

The window rolled up and a moment later the Mercedes disappeared around the corner. I noted the tag number but had a feeling it wasn't going to be of any help. First an SUV and now a Mercedes. Was my new-found friend the driver of both?

I waited another fifteen minutes to see if he'd come back and then hustled over to the trash container and peeked inside. The stench that close was awful, the interior of the container dim. As my eyes adjusted, I could just make out a dozen or more crumpled cans and plastic water bottles; several Styrofoam food containers; all leaking; a copy of today's paper.

And a pile of parking tickets sitting on top of it all.

I scratched my head, looked around and peered back inside. Why would this guy spend an hour strolling up River Avenue and back and then another hour writing tickets just to toss them in a trash can?

Philo had mentioned allegations of fraudulent tickets. I reached into the container, trying to avoid the worst of the muck, and retrieved the tickets. I was about to return to the bus shelter when I decided a cab ride, from several blocks away, was in order. But first, I wanted to check a hunch.

There are several abandoned warehouses along River Avenue. I hurried over to the one nearest to the trash container and crawled in through a hole that had been punched in the wall. There was a moment of panic when I heard a shuffling noise off in the shadows, but it turned out to be just another homeless person seeking shelter from the world. The thought struck me that he looked familiar, but the screeching of brakes interrupted and I hurried to the window to watch.

The blue Mercedes was idling alongside the trash container. My friend stepped out, a flashlight in hand, and peered inside. He jerked up as if he'd been bitten by something and glared over at the bus shelter where we'd had our little chat.

He scanned the area, no doubt looking for me. I was glad I had decided on the cab, and gladder still that I'd decided to hide and wait. When he slammed his fist down on the top of the container with such violence that it caved in, I was triply glad I'd moved from the street. He jumped back into the Mercedes and sped off, leaving at least ten-thousand miles' worth of rubber, and a pall of blue smoke, in his wake.

I waited another half hour in the warehouse, warily watching the homeless guy snoring loudly in the corner, trying to think of why he seemed familiar and wishing I'd thought to bring water with me. When I felt enough time had passed, I walked a mile down litter-strewn back alleys until I could find a cab.

Thirty years ago, my morning's excursions would have passed with little effort or aftermath. By the time I arrived back at the Call Register, I was soaked in sweat, my knee was throbbing, my stomach was churning, my head was splitting, and every muscle in my body felt as if it'd been beaten with a rubber bat. I don't care what the AARP says, getting old sucks.