I clear my throat. “Yeah, that’s me.” I clear it again. “I mean, I’m calling to ask for the name of the inspector who’s holding the building prisoner.”
A pause.“Why?”
I mumble a curse about everyone asking stupid questions even though I just did the same to Jeff. “Just give me the damn name!”
“Boris Lebovski. Why do you need it?”
“Thank you! Bye!” I quickly hang up the phone not to give him a chance to say something stupid and liquefying like‘Come home, wife, I’ll make you come again’or worse.
“What’s the name?” Jeff reminds me that I’m not alone here with my hot fantasies.
“Boris Lebovski.”
“Hmm,” he hums, scratching his scruffy chin. “I think he visits the hookers on Fifteenth.”
“What?” I jump to my feet, utterly too excited.
He keeps scratching his chin, not hearing me. “Definitely Fifteenth. I’ll ask around. Maybe he goes over there too.” Jeff points at a brick building around the corner. “They have a sex club in the basement. We’ve seen some weird shit crawling out of there at sunrise.”
Assuming he’s not talking about vampires, my heart starts beating like crazy, threatening to rip my ribcage open and jump out to perform a happy dance. “Are you sure?”
“Yes-yes.” He starts nodding. “Give me some time. I’ll get you some pictures, and you can blackmail the shit out of him.” Then his face turns sour. “Oh, wait. I can’t do it just yet. I need some time to collect money for a camera. I’ll go to the park tomorrow morning. It’s Saturday, so there should be tourists I can play for.”
“Jeff,” I whisper, grabbing his hand. My voice is breaking. “You really would do that for me?”
“What?” He slaps his open palms on his knees in frustration. “Take pictures of an asshole who took down the whole building and therefore some of our food from us?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, confused.
“The restaurant inside and the coffee shop? They were leaving bags full of leftover food next to their back door in big plastic bags. They were feeding a lot of people on the streets,” he explains.
“Really?” I ask, excited. I was one of those who left a bunch of food next to our door when I was closing up the shop, and in the morning the bags were gone. I didn’t know who took them, but it’s good to know they were doing something good for the people.
“Yep, they did. So we really want that building open againtoo. Give me some time. I’ll get money and figure something out.”
“Wait.” I dig into my purse to get the cash I took from the ATM before. “I forgot. I came to pay my debts with dues.”
I press five hundred dollars in twenties into his hands. He looks down at our joined hands and then back at me. “I think it’s too much.”
“It’s the dues. From Ezra,” I add with a warm smile. I’ll have to make it up to Jeff for standing up for my husband when no one else was doing that.
“It’s still too much,” he says, his voice breaking.
Ignoring his words because it’s uncomfortable for the both of us, I continue. “I’ll get you a polaroid tomorrow and bring it here. It’s hard to fake those pictures, so he won’t have anything to say about it. All you have to do is get a bit closer to the target. And maybe a phone too.”
He forcefully shakes his head. “No. This is more than enough to buy a twenty-buck machine. And I already have a phone,” he adds, sounding a bit offended. “I’ll be fine.”
Agreeing easily because I’m planning to bring more money, I shake our still joined hands. “Thank you, Jeff. Oh, wait.” I dig into my pocket and produce a piece of paper with my new number, which I scribbled before we came here. “Take it. Call me when you find something.”
“Will do.” He accepts it with a nod. “Thank you, kid.”
“For what?”
“For noticing me. Sometimes I forget how painful it is to be invisible,” he replies quietly. He picks up his bags and limps away. Before he disappears behind the corner, he turns to me. “I’ll find you when I have the photos. Let’s hope he’s a horndog so it happens rather faster,” he adds with a chuckle and disappears out of view.
“A friend of yours?” George asks as I slide into the back seat of the car.
“He is,” I reply with a nod. “I also think he’s a friend of my husband too.”
