The Thomas Blume Series

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Anthony Taylor was broken.

Ninety minutes later, I sat in the cramped office space that doubled as my apartment, looking across the cluttered desk at the man I had just destroyed. He was quiet, sitting in my guest chair and looking up at the ceiling as if he were waiting for it mercifully to collapse on top of him. I followed his gaze, but for a different reason. Water stains marked the ceiling, and in a few places, fissures ran like stray hairs along the plasterwork. The office was a dump—as reflected in the cheap rent—but it contained all the equipment I needed for the little work I could find.

When Anthony started to cry, I wasn’t surprised. I knew he would. Although a well-to-do stockbroker with a sharp suit and more money in his savings account than I would ever see in my entire life, he was still a man. A man to pity.

The other divorce cases I’d worked had ended the same way. Anger first, followed by grief as powerful as a family bereavement. Sadness next. It was as though the two emotions towed one another, the anger speeding forward to the surface with the sadness lurking in its wake.

Anthony had skipped the rage. He had known it was coming, but when he saw the pictures of his wife bent over naked in front of another man, a twist of pleasure on her face and a smile on her gasping mouth, the sorrow and heartache had come right away, like rising waves from his soul.

Close to hysterics, the poor man cried his heart out. I should have interjected somehow. It would have been the kind thing to do. But I was hardly one to offer advice on emotional stability. Hell, I had no idea where to even start. So, I watched and waited for him to pull his s**t together. After all, this was just another off-the-books favor. There was no room or reason for me to get overly sympathetic.

It took a while, but Anthony finally came around. He wiped his eyes and pushed the photographs back over to me.

“Sorry,” he said. “That was embarrassing.”

“I’ve seen worse,” I replied. It was a lie. Anthony Taylor had fallen to pieces right in front of me, and I wouldn’t forget the image anytime soon.

“So, who’s the guy?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Could you find out? If I paid you more money, could you find out?”

I rubbed my chin. Three days growth of beard had begun to itch, but I didn’t scratch. I used the designer stubble as a prop. Camouflage. The question on the tip of my tongue was How much more? But I swallowed it and shook my head. “No. I mean, I probably could, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Name your price,” Anthony said, sitting forward and trying his best to look all businesslike, but the puffy red eyes and glistening snot under his nose betrayed the attempt.

“I can’t help,” I said. “Sorry.”

Anthony stood quickly and looked as though he wanted to take a swing at me. For the briefest of moments, I wanted him to. I probably deserved it; punishment for my sins. Besides, I was looking for an excuse to knock someone’s lights out. I’d just been feeling that way for a few weeks.

“Why won’t you help me?” he snapped.

“What good will it do you if I find out who he is?” I fired back. “What are you going to do? Rough him up? Use it as ammo against your wife? Trust me. I’ve been doing this for too long. It won’t do you any good. You might feel better for a few days, but eventually, you’ll regret it.”

He still fumed, but his posture relaxed. After a few seconds, he collapsed back into the chair in defeat and rubbed at his temples. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what I would do. I just wanted … I don’t know …”

“Look,” I said. “Sleep on it. Think about what you’d actually do if you knew who the guy is. It’s for the best.”

He gave a nod and climbed back to his feet, looking dazed, like a sleep-walker. He stumbled to the door and gave me a half-hearted wave. Perhaps I should have said something … anything, to lift his spirits. But the pictures he had paid me to take, the information he had paid me to collect … it had leveled him.

Besides, what was I going to say: “It’s been a pleasure ruining your life?”

Never again, I decided. I’m done with these jobs.

All I could come up with though, was, “I’m sorry.”

Anthony paused, offered a thin, humorless smile and walked out through the door.

When it closed behind him, I eyed the envelope he handed me when he entered my office. I looked through, thumbing the seven hundred pounds. I felt dirty … but not dirty enough to give it back.

The thirst was still there, a nebulous smoke at the fringes, calling to me as it so often did when life became complicated.

Within seconds, the cash was out, folded, and placed in my front pants pocket. I locked the apartment, glad to be heading out for the day because the gloomy place was suddenly depressing the hell out of me.

The rain had turned from speckled patches to a steady downpour. Heading down the winding London streets on auto-pilot, I made for my sanctuary, to deal with my disquiet the best way I knew how, the only way I knew how.

As it turned out, the thought of Anthony Taylor’s despair wouldn’t leave me alone despite my best intentions. It hovered over me while I downed a Scotch at the Black Swan pub on the corner of the street near my apartment. The idea of what he might be feeling fueled my need to refill the glass. Well, it was partly that and partly the fact that I was missing my wife and son. Anthony’s whole situation was making my loss so much worse.

After a few drinks, I paid my tab and wound my way along twisting roads and cobbled alleyways back to my apartment, a shabby two-room deal situated above a Middle-Eastern restaurant in Central Hackney. The apartment always smelled like bread and some sort of spice—coriander maybe, or clove. The office lay at the front of the apartment, separated from the rest of the place by a slim room divider that was little more than a stiff curtain standing in the center of the living room.

I sat in my tattered recliner, sipping on a tumbler of whiskey that I had no taste for, but it seemed fitting, nonetheless. The glass was a comforting sensation in my hand.

Sarah and Tommy filled my thoughts. How they had been taken from me and how that event had set the course for the rest of my life. Everything changed in a New York minute. I was a different man now, living a different life in a different world. And men like Anthony Taylor affected me more than they used to.

The stockbroker and his cheating spouse weighed heavy on my mind that night. I almost reconsidered his follow-up offer of finding the man sleeping with his wife, but nothing good lay down that path, for either of us.

No, I’m done with that.

I decided to let it go and focus on my real reason for being in this country. And, as I fell asleep in the recliner, lured into a restless doze by the rain rattling against my windows, one thought remained in my head.

I was in London to find a killer.