Chapter 1: Anna

George Caldwell sat in his desk chair, and pondered. George Caldwell, being George Caldwell, was not in an ordinary place, or an ordinary chair, or an ordinary life. He was a different man, marching to the beat of a different drum. The drum of adventure, and the drum of steel wheels over steel rails.

So the desk chair was not an ordinary one; it was covered in black Italian leather, and had originally been the passengers-side front seat of a 1982 Volvo 242c Bertone. It was mounted on a swivel base, and had hand carved arms of solid oak. It was before a large cherry wood desk that took up two-thirds of the room’s width, was against one wall, and was about 8 feet in front of a wall that took up 3/4s of the rooms width. Behind George, between him and that wall, was a hutch made of the same wood containing storage and a desk space for his computer.

10 feet wide and 20 feet long, the office had many large windows on either side of it, and was paneled in a medium maple wood. This was hardwood, and the space in front of the desk was covered by an intricate Persian wool rug in primarily red and blue, but with many other color accents. Facing the desk were three chairs, also off to the side, arranged with one in the center, and the other two at 45° angles to it. In the angled spaces between them were tables. Continuing away from the desk, against the front wall of the office was a door in the center, flanked by wooden filing cabinets. Everything but the desk chair were bolted to the floor.

George’s desk was clean of everything but what one would expect on a desk: a blotter with a calendar, an elaborate date-and-pen set, a desk lamp, and a cup of coffee. The hutch behind the desk was messier, with papers spread out on top of it except for the space occupied by the computer monitor.

The computer monitor clashed with the office and the desk; it was a flat panel display made primarily out of clear plastic in a futuristic design with a grey bezel, enormous at 22” diagonal, and at the bottom center of the front was a grey logo shaped like an apple with a bite out of it. In front of it was a full function keyboard with black keys in a similar design motif, and a beige MacTrack trackball with three buttons and an enormous trackball that clashed mightily with the futuristic equipment. Underneath the hutch was a brand new PowerMac G4 tower with a 450mhz PowerPC G4 processor, the fastest machine then on the market.

The only other piece of electronic equipment was a NexTel Motorola i1000Plus sitting next to the computer, and an intercom on the main desk.

George was contemplating time and life. It had been good, it had been fun, and it had been fulfilling, but it had settled into rote. He considered spicing it up, but ... why? He had the family he needed; his parents, his wife Jill, his partners Akilah and Josh, and their daughter Simcha, his friends Miguel, Sharon, and their kids. His force contacts, his friends at the railroad, all the possessions he ever wanted, and the fun of his business.

It was Wednesday, December 20th, 1999. Less than two weeks until the next century. It had been a over a week since he solved his last case, and he was bored. Bored, bored, bored. He picked up his coffee cup, an original from the City Of Los Angeles, and stared into the cup, as if for inspiration, before sipping some.

“Yo, listen up, we got ourselves a client,” Jill’s voice blared through the intercom, all high-pitched and cartoonishly receptionist-like.

“Look like Business?” George replied, holding down the intercom.

“Yeah, like, seriously, you gotta check her out. She’s a total knockout, I’m telling ya. I’d be worried if Acky wasn’t so damn jealous,” Jill confidently declared, her voice oozing with a vibrant mix of excitement and arrogance, capturing that unmistakable New York-Chicago accent blend.

“Well, in with her, then.”

A moment later the center door at the other end of the room, and Jill ushered in the client. Jill had been both right and wrong; the woman was a knockout, but not as much of a knockout as Jill. Jill was 19, about 5’4”, with stunning blonde curls, compact yet powerful, with a pretty face. George had never met a girl quite like her, and like this and that she didn’t fit in with the decorum, dressed as she was in cut-off jeans and a blue tank top.

The client was more reserved, but closer to George’s age of 22, so also quite young. She was a knockout, about Jill’s height, but more shapely, although by no means buxom. She looked remarkably like Lola Albright in her heyday, but with straight, slightly wild red hair. She was dressed conservatively, in a light weight linen skirtsuit. The white blouse was cut quite low and went well with the cream suit, clearly indicating the cleavage of her large chest. George could tell that this particular woman had chosen this outfit to emphasize her assets for this visit, possibly indicating that she did not know George and Jill were married.

She must have sought him out specifically. There were quite a number of private investigators in Los Angeles, and he was not the cheapest, nor the best well known. However, his office was located adjacent to his home, on a private storage track belonging to Amtrak in the Los Angeles Yards. It was part of a three car set, consisting of his home, Silver Penthouse, this car, Silver Blanket, and Akilah and Josh’s home, Silver Bridle. That is why everything was kept bolted; the set was kept up to standards required for haulage behind Amtrak trains, and this function was sometimes used.

Getting to it required passage through the gatehouse into Amtrak’s yard, and you had to know he was there to find him. He was in the Yellow Pages, of course, but he didn’t exactly have a sign at the entrance to the yards saying “On-Track Investigations, private detectives.”

“Good morning,” George sad, “You neglected to tell Jill your name, or else she neglected to tell me.”

“Neglect?” The woman looked puzzled, “Oh you mean I didn’t tell her it, naw, I didn’t want to tell you that yet.”

“Do you want to tell me it now?”

“I dunno,” she replied, “We’ll see. I know a lot of you don’t do divorces.”

“Only in bad detective fiction,” George laughed, “If I didn’t do divorces I wouldn’t have any work practically.”

“I want a divorce.”

“I can’t give you a divorce, lady.”

“Why?” The woman looked dumbfounded, and George regretted his sense of humor a little.

“Because we aren’t married,” George grinned at her, “But I can help get you evidence to make your divorce go better, if that evidence is to be found.”

“Oh,” she replied, and then paused to collect herself, “Yeah, well, there’s evidence, man, lotsa evidence, believe me.”

Her conversation and diction contradicted substantially her well ordered and professional appearance, George noted. He had a suspicion that she had married above her station, and, with trouble, put on the facade of more money and class than she had.

“If it is there to be found, we will find it,” George told her, “But I assume there is a story here because California is a community property state and a no-fault divorce state, so I assume there is some reason you want to get all this evidence when you don’t need it or would ordinarily benefit from it. Normally people hire me to get evidence of this sort of thing in order to confirm their suspicions; you seem to already be convinced.”

George had some suspicions about what those would be, but he wanted it explained to him.

“I heard you dicks are hard guys,” the woman dodged the question, “You don’t seem like no hard guy to me.”

George stood up from his desk, rising to his full 6’4” height, letting his well tailored light grey linen suit jacket and pants fall into place, nicely falling around his light blue, open-collared blue shirt. He rested his fists on the desk and leaned forward, emphasizing his robust shoulders, tapered waist, and bulging neck, while also showing off a gold Vacheron Constantin Overseas chronograph on a bracelet on his left wrist.

This went well with a thick gold bracelet on his right wrist, a large ring on his right middle finger in gold saying ‘GCC’, a right pinky ring with a large ruby and four set small diamonds on it, and a heavy gold wedding band on his left ring finger. If the woman did not think George was successful in his business, it was from lack of observation.

“I can hold my own,” he voice boomed, “But if you don’t want to hire me, you can leave.”

“Don’t you loom over me,” she whined, “I want to test you, is all. Can I trust you? I mean really trust you?”

“I apologize,” George sat down again, leaning back in his Volvo, relaxing, “My business is discretion, madam. If you can’t trust me, you are going to have an awful hard time trusting anyone else.”

“Yeah,” she nodded as she stood up, “Ok, but you fuck me I’m going to make you regret it. Here’s the test, my husbands name is Lawrence Mendalbaum. If you can tell me who he is by this time tomorrow, I’ll hire you, okay?”

“By tomorrow? Sit back down, Mrs. Mendalbaum,” George chuckled, and then spun around and picked up the Nextel, pushed a few buttons, and spoke into it, “Acky, Josh, one of you there?”

“Yes, I am here, George,” Akilah’s formal voice came back flatly and crackly over the speaker, “I imagine you need some help, yes?”