List of Fears

Chapter 3: Jim Gets a Job

"So you want to pay me to find a gorilla?" Jim asked the dry, faceless voice coming out of his phone. Since becoming a private detective, Jim had been hired on some truly strange jobs, but nothing like this.

"Well, not me, Mr. Elkerlich, my boss would like to hire you."

"I have to tell you," Jim replied, almost chuckling, "I don't have a lot of experience looking for lost animals." Let alone gorillas, he thought to himself.

"Well, Mr. Elkerlich, if you're worried that you can't find the gorilla, why don't you just imagine that my boss wants to pay you to find the guy who stole the gorilla. Would that make taking the money we're offering any easier? If you find the guy who stole the gorilla, I'm sure the gorilla won't be hard to locate."

"I'm not saying I don't want the job," Jim said. If it paid, he wanted to the job. "I'm just trying to manage your, excuse me, your boss' expectations." He paused for a second. "And please, call me Jim."

Jim had received the strange, cryptic message that led to this conversation while tailing a hotshot corporate lawyer. The hotshot lawyer's wife had hired Jim in an attempt to get incriminating pictures of the lawyer in a compromising position with his secretary. The lawyer was in his mid-thirties. His wife was cheating on him and wanted hard evidence that the lawyer was just as culpable as she was before filing for a divorce. So far the guy had come up clean, the poor bastard. The only evidence that the wife had on her husband was the fact that his secretary was gorgeous. From that, she just assumed. The thing was, this was Los Angeles, everyone was gorgeous. Jim couldn't even get a picture of the guy slapping his secretary's a*s, let alone with his pants down.

Jim had felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and pulled it out to see who was calling. Jim usually would have waited until he was off the job to even look at his phone but there was nothing in the world more boring than following someone who was clean. Sin is life's ultimate spectator sport. Jim didn't recognize the number so he let it go to voicemail. Jim never answered the phone if it was a client or a prospective client. He wanted clients to think that he was busy on their cases. He wanted prospective client's to think he was busy on other people's cases. Still, he was intrigued by the call because the caller ID was blocked. That likely meant that the caller was being stalked, was hiding from someone or was somebody. In Los Angeles, "somebody" meant somebody famous or, better yet from Jim's perspective, somebody with money. Jim checked the message as soon as his cell phone vibrated again, signaling to him that there was a message to be checked. The caller didn't say much, only that his employer wanted to potentially hire Jim for a job and that he'd appreciate it if Jim called him back.

Jim waited until he got back to his office to return the call. He'd followed the lawyer for most of the day. He left only after the lawyer had gone into one of his client's offices for a closing. Jim figured that there was no way he was going to be able to sneak out of a meeting like that just to fool around with his secretary, so he gave himself the afternoon off. Jim drove back to his office, a single, shabby room in a larger office that he shared with an immigration attorney and a bankruptcy attorney. The office didn't really have much of a very positive aura. People didn't knock on the door when things were going well.

Jim walked into his office, threw the newspaper that he'd been flipping through that morning on his desk and turned on his computer. There wasn't much to Jim's office. He had a few articles framed and hanging on the wall that were written about his exploits during his days on the LAPD. He had a bookshelf where he'd stacked a bunch of professional private detective books that he'd never read. The only items Jim ever really used during his work were his camera and his computer. For now, the internet was a private detective's best friend but Jim knew that wouldn't last forever. He lamented the day when a quick Google search would make him obsolete. Want to find out if your husband is cheating on you? Just break into his Adult Friend Finder account. Want to find your runaway son? Just check his f******k page. Jim simply hoped that his body would become obsolete before he did. If Jim was given one wish, it would be that he be dead and buried before he became completely useless.

Once his computer was up and running, Jim picked up the phone on his desk and dialed the number that the kid-Jim assumed it was a kid, the voice had the smarminess of young, handsome, out of work actor-had left.

When the person on the other end picked up, he said "so and so's office" but the kid said it so fast that Jim couldn't make out the name.

"This is Private Detective Jim Elkerlich, I believe that you left a message for me earlier today," Jim said in his most official sounding voice.

"Yes, Mr. Elkerlich, thank you for getting back to me so quickly. We may have a job for you if you are interested." Again, if it paid, Jim was usually interested.

"Well, I have a lot on my plate right now," Jim lied, "but if you could give me some details, or if you would like to meet to discuss the job, I can determine if I've got the capacity."

"Have you read the paper today, Mr. Elkerlich?" the kid asked.

"Some of it," Jim replied, losing just a bit of his voice's bluster. He didn't handle a lot of cases that ended up in the paper.

"Well, the case that we need your help on was on the front page of just about every paper this morning." Jim grabbed the newspaper on his desk and flipped it over so that he could see the front page. The lead article was about some sort of stalemate in the state legislature. There was another article about the rising unemployment rate and another about the President's latest trip to some country we had recently bombed. Jim couldn't fathom how any of this could possibly lead to a job for him. "LA Times?" the kid finally asked, sensing that Jim was looking at the paper as they spoke.

"Yeah," Jim replied.

"Look at the lower right-hand corner." Jim's eyes moved down. Pressed into the corner of the page, where the paper normally put the strange and interesting stories that had no real impact anybody's life, was a fuzzy surveillance picture of two men walking through some sort of gate with what appeared to be a very large monkey. Jim looked at the headline: "Gorilla Stolen from San Diego Zoo."

"Okay," Jim said. It was more of a question than a response.

"My boss's granddaughter loved that gorilla," the voice said.

"Okay," Jim said again. Again it was a question. Jim was trying to piece it all together in his head.

"My boss is concerned that the police aren't going to give this case the attention that he would like it to have. It is, after all, a gorilla. He wants to make sure that someone out there is really looking for this gorilla."

Their conversation continued. Jim took out a pad and paper and started taking notes as they spoke. Jim asked the kid who his boss was. This would be a non-traditional case and non-traditional cases allowed for non-tradition fees. In order to determine the level of non-traditional fees, Jim needed to know how much his client could pay. Jim immediately Googled his prospective client's name. It turned out that the guy was a big wig producer in Hollywood. According to one web-site he had produced three of the top ten grossing movies of the last decade. His movies were, as far as Jim could tell, big blow 'em up blockbusters with questionable redeeming value. Unless, of course, you viewed entertainment as its own form of redemption. Either way, the guy had a lot more money than Jim's usual clients.

Jim asked the kid how his boss had gotten his name.

"You found his nephew," the kid replied. Jim didn't respond, hoping the kid would elaborate without being pushed. He did. "About two years ago, you were hired to find his nephew after he ran away from home. You found him in a couple of weeks. My boss respects a job done well and done discreetly."

"What was the kid's name?" Jim asked, trying to remember the details. He had done a number of runaway jobs in the past three years. The kid on the phone told Jim the runaway's name and Jim remembered. The kid came from an upper-middle class family. He went to a private high school. His parents were convinced that he'd been kidnapped. Jim questioned the kids' friends. Jim found out that the kid despised his parents (what kid didn't?) and had gotten into drugs as a form of rebellion. Jim found the kid tricking himself out under a highway underpass in Santa Monica.

"I remember him. How's he doing?" Jim asked.

"He's doing great. He's a production assistant on" the kid on the phone named some television show that Jim had heard of but never seen. His uncle must have gotten him the job. "Anyway, my boss' younger brother had hired you at the time to find his son but it was my boss that actually paid you. So are you interested in this job?"

A f*****g stolen gorilla. At least this time, he wouldn't have to worry about finding the object of his search strung out on meth, having unprotected s*x beneath the highway with mostly married men for $20 a pop-not that people in this town wouldn't pay $20 to have s*x with a gorilla. What the hell? Jim thought. "Let's talk fees and expenses," he replied.