“Gesundheit!” Sam laughed and thumped me on the back. The force of the blow nearly threw me into the open mouth of his refuse cart.
“Where was I . . . ah yes. The Current Mayor. He used to be a Supervisor himself, so he should know better. But there’s all of this anti-civility built up between him and them.”
Sam tapped a grimy finger against his chin. “The thing is, not many of our Supervisors supported the Current Mayor when he ran for office the last time around. They plumped for this other fellow. Well, after he lost the Mayor’s race, this guy ended up being the President of the Board of Supervisors.”
Sam puckered his lips together and shot out a low whistle before shaking his head sadly. “The two of them—the Current Mayor and the Supervisor He Ran Against—they haven’t been able to smooth things over since the last election. It’s a shame. There’s a lot of toxic air in the building these days.” Sam wiped his brow. “You know, you just can’t take political things personally. That’s what the First Mayor used to say.”
Sam paused to bemoan this unpleasant lesson in politics, and I decided it was time to make my escape. I’d had enough. I couldn’t take any more.
“I’ve got to find a friend of mine.” My words burst into the brief break in Sam’s speech. “He’s expecting me at his office.” With effort, I pushed the braked garbage cart away from the balcony and leapt around it.
“Oh, who’re you looking for?” Sam replied helpfully. “I’d be happy to take you to him.” He winked reassuringly. “I know every corner of City Hall.”
I looked down the hallway, contemplating a sprint to the main staircase. There was no way Sam could keep up with me while pushing that heavy cart.
Sam smiled warmly. “It’s easy for a newcomer to get lost wandering around this building.”
I was trapped by a personality far stronger than my own. With a last, desperate glance at my escape route, I said weakly, my voice nearly a whisper, “I’m looking for Montgomery Carmichael’s office.”
“Ah yes, I know the place exactly.” Sam grasped the handle of the cart and shoved it forward enthusiastically. “It’s off the beaten path a ways—a little hard to find. Come on, I’ll take you down there.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want you to go out of your way,” I stuttered as the cart zoomed toward me, its orange-shaped air freshener swinging wildly from the handle.
“No, no, it’s no problem at all,” Sam insisted. “I’m heading that direction anyway.”
The cart sped past me, moving, I noted, at a clip that would have easily kept up with my contemplated escape sprint.
“Come on then,” he called out over his shoulder, beckoning with a grimy hand.
Ruefully, I started off down the hallway, trotting to keep up with Sam and his smelly, speeding cart.
Chapter 6
COMMISSIONER CARMICHAEL
I WAS PANTING
heavily when I caught up to Sam at the far end of the hallway. He stood next to his cart, patiently waiting for me in front of a bank of elevators.
“Ready?” he asked, carefully pressing the call button with one of his grime-blackened fingers when I nodded.
“All aboard, then,” he called out cheerfully as one set of metal doors slid open.
I stepped into the elevator’s cramped closet and flattened myself against the wall while Sam wheeled inside with his cart. The doors banged shut, and I held my breath as we began a bumpy descent.
The turbulence of the ride caused the air freshener tied to the cart’s handle to sway back and forth. The previously ineffective orange scent began to concentrate in the elevator’s ever shrinking compartment, the sweet, artificial smell overpowering even the stench of the cart’s rotting rubbish.
“The paneling and flooring have all been restored to look just like the original,” Sam explained as the elevator made a hiccupping lurch. He pointed to the floor beneath his cart. “The city symbol is inlaid in brass.”
Each short, sudden drop of the elevator was accompanied by a loud grinding of gears, causing me to wonder if the elevator’s mechanical components had received the same restorative attention.
I gripped onto the side railing as the elevator paused at the first floor. The metal doors slid open to reveal an elderly man in an expensive-looking suit and highly polished shoes.
Sam smiled broadly at the man, inviting him inside. “Plenty of room,” he said encouragingly.
The man glanced at Sam’s cart, took one whiff of the strange citrus-infused odor wafting out of the elevator, and waved us on.
“That’s all right,” he said, taking a wide step back from the opening. “I think I’ll take the stairs.” He swung his arms energetically back and forth. “Good for my health.”
Another long minute later, we bumped to a stop on City Hall’s basement level. The elevator doors opened to reveal a bland, windowless corridor with walls painted in a flat off-white paint. Dim artificial lighting hung from a prefab office-tile ceiling. The hallway’s blank walls stretched out the length of the building, unadorned by even the smallest picture or painting.
Sam’s effusive mood was undiminished by the drab change in decor. He pushed his cart toward the left leg of the corridor. “It’s down this hall and around the corner,” he assured me cheerfully.
I hesitated to follow him. The floor above us had been humming with activity, but here in the building’s lowest level, not another soul seemed to be stirring. I was beginning to fear that the awful smell emanating from Sam’s cart was due not to the refuse he had collected but from the decomposing body of the last hapless tourist he had lured down to the basement.
After several silent minutes anxiously passing door after tightly shut door, we approached one up ahead on the right that was slightly ajar. Light from inside the room stretched into the dim hallway.
The door was unlabeled, I noted when we reached it. Monty’s appointment was so recent, his nameplate had yet to be affixed.
“This is it,” Sam whispered into my ear, his hushed voice echoing in the vacant emptiness of the hallway.
I pushed the door open a bit further and poked my head into the office.
The room was sparsely furnished with a worn wooden desk fronted by a single guest chair that looked as if its legs might collapse if anyone were foolish enough to trust it with his weight.
Behind the desk, a man slumped back in a second, slightly more stable-looking seat. His closed eyelids fluttered with a deep, restful snore. I’d found my neighbor, Montgomery Carmichael, and I immediately saw the reason for Dilla’s cautionary remarks.
Monty’s long, pointed feet were propped up on the splintered edge of the desk, his toes rocking back and forth in time with his slumbered breathing. He wore a double-breasted black wool suit and a narrow pale blue tie. But it wasn’t Monty’s wardrobe that had caught my attention—it was his hair.
Monty’s tightly curled locks had been combed out and straightened into the elevated wave of a pompadour that rose several inches up from his forehead. Every uncoiled strand was securely cinched into position with a shellacking tortoiseshell coat of hair gel; it was layered on so thick the surface appeared almost wet. The hairstyle’s constrained formation was an amazing tribute to the molding capacity of modern styling products.
I started to speak to wake him, but Sam raised a hand to stop me. He put a finger to his lips and made a shushing sound as he clambered noisily around to the backside of Monty’s desk.
Monty’s eyelashes made a brief, off-snore flutter as Sam leaned over him, but his lids did not open. Slowly, gingerly, Sam brought his dingy left forefinger near the slick surface of Monty’s eye-catching coif of hair.
Sam glanced conspiratorially back at me, grinned sheepishly, and then poked his finger into the cresting wave of Monty’s shiny pompadour.
The entire mass of hair moved as if it were one being, a single slimy creature that had taken up residence on Monty’s cranium. Sam licked his upper lip, concentrated on the target, and poked again, this time a little more vigorously. The second poke set off a Jell-O-like vibration that shook throughout the gelatinous mound of hair.
Monty’s nose twitched, but otherwise, he did not stir. His snoring continued unabated.
Sam struggled to contain the giggles gurgling up inside him. He motioned for me to give his game a try, gesturing insistently at Monty’s still slumbering head.
With a repulsed cringe, I crept around to the back of the desk and eased my right hand toward the coated surface of Monty’s hair.
Sam bobbed his head up and down, enthusiastically urging me on.
I kept the rest of my body as far away as possible from the sacrificial hand as it hovered over Monty’s head. Gritting my teeth, I let one fingertip drop into a half-hearted poke—quickly jerking it back as the off-putting texture snailed beneath my fingers.
Sam exchanged places with me and moved in for a second demonstration. But this time, just as his grimy hand neared the towering stack of hair, Monty’s eyes flew open.
“Wha-haa . . . ha . . . ha!” Monty’s tenor-pitched voice squealed as he awoke to the sight of Sam’s looming fingers.
“Sam! Sam, Sam!” Monty wagged an admonishing finger as his long legs clattered off the edge of the desk. “What have I told you about the hair?”
Monty’s chiding expression immediately changed when he saw me standing on the opposite side of the room where I’d retreated during Sam’s second poking session.
“Well, hello,” Monty said, his voice affecting a slick politician’s unctuousness. “I was wondering when you would stop by to see me.”
He winked as if I were an admiring fan and ran his hand over the top of his head, unnecessarily smoothing his immovable hair. “What do you think of my new office here in City Hall?”
I smiled, biting my lip. “Um, yes, it’s quite impressive,” I said placatingly. “Look, I’m here because of Dilla actually—”
Before I could ask about the package, Monty leapt up off of his chair and cut in. “How’s your uncle?” he asked cheekily.
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Still dea—”
“Let me give you the grand tour,” Monty offered, not waiting for my response. He sidled past Sam and leapt around the desk. “This,” he announced grandly, encircling my shoulders with his left arm, spreading his right one wide, “is my office.”
“Mm-hmm,” I acknowledged, as Monty swung me around to get a full 360-degree viewing of the room.
“This,” Monty proclaimed with a sweep of his right hand, “is my desk.”
“I see,” I said blandly, still braced in position by Monty’s left arm.
Monty was clearly not the first user of this piece of furniture. The finish on the surface had long since worn off. Something purple, possibly ink, had spilled across the top, creating a stain in the shape of a sprawling, many-legged blob.
Monty tapped a cracked plastic tray on the corner of the desk. “My in-box,” he said importantly.
I attempted an appreciative stare at Monty’s desk and empty in-box. After Monty determined that we had paid sufficient homage to his office furniture, he swung me toward the wall nearest the desk. A single picture hung from the short stretch of dingy, scuffed plaster.
It was an 8”x12” color photo of the Current Mayor, signed with a thick black marker in the bottom right-hand corner. The Mayor smiled handsomely in the frame as he posed leaning up against his own highly polished mahogany bureau. Several flags filled in the background behind him.
“And
this
,” Monty said with majestic pride as he released my shoulders so that he could flourish both hands around the corners of the picture’s frame, “is my boss. The man who made it all possible.” He drumrolled his hands against the wall. “The Mayor.”
Monty struck a pose beside the picture, leaning up against the edge of his desk to assume the same stance as the man frozen inside the frame. I clasped my hands to my cheeks, unsure of how to respond.
Monty had emulated the Mayor’s style in every possible aspect. He wore the same cut of double-breasted suit and the same slim blue tie around his neck. Even his black, narrow, pointed-toe dress shoes were the same brand as the man’s in the picture. He had captured every last detail—right down to the Mayor’s swept-back hairstyle—although, I thought, perhaps he had gone a bit overboard on the hair gel.
This, I gathered, is what Dilla had meant by Monty’s recent “odd” behavior.
“The window,” Sam said insistently, breaking the spell on Monty’s picture posing. “Tell her about the window.”
Monty waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, there’s nothing special to say about the window,” he replied briskly, stepping in front of Sam to block him from my view. “It’s just an ordinary window. We’ve got them all over City Hall.”
“But, it’s—” Sam protested over Monty’s shoulder.
“Why don’t I give you a quick tour upstairs,” Monty said to me, his voice drowning out the rest of Sam’s sentence.
“Thanks, but I’ve got to get back to the Green Vase,” I tried to demur. “I’m just here to pick up Dilla’s package.”
“Got it right here,” Monty replied, patting the breast pocket of his suit as he strode quickly toward the door of the office. “I’ll give it to you upstairs.”
I sighed resignedly and turned to follow Monty, taking one last glance back at Sam before I left.
Sam stood next to the desk, his face muddled with confusion. What, I wondered, had he been trying to say about the window? He registered the questioning look on my face and pointed up at the rectangular pane of glass that ran along the top of the back wall of the office.
The structure was reinforced with iron rebars that were welded to the outside of the frame; the pane of glass had been cracked open to let in some fresh air. Since we were standing in the building’s basement, the window opened just over the surface of the grass outside. The feet of people walking by on the nearby sidewalk were barely visible from our vantage point inside the office.