Tracy Hayes, Apprentice PI

Chapter Eight

I was leaning against the car when Jackson returned twenty minutes later – without the fugitive. He looked like a storm on two feet, so I decided not to ask any questions and just got in the car. The drive back to the agency went in silence.

My arrival gave Cheryl a fit. "Look at you," she shrieked. "What's happened?" Pippin jumped around me yapping, alarmed by Cheryl's tone. Jackson marched straight into his office and threw the door closed behind him so hard I feared the glass would break.

I took stock of my appearance as I sank down on one of the visitors' chairs – carefully, wincing when my tailbone protested. My summer pants were no longer white, but nothing was broken and I wasn't bleeding.

"We ran into a fugitive. Literally."

I told her the story and she immediately pulled out the details of the guy on her computer.

"Tito Costa, forty-nine, arrested for robbing a bank, currently fugitive for missing his court date. Fairly high bond, but that's because his loot is still missing. One ugly dude."

I went to take a look. "I wonder what's happened to him."

"I'd say he was thrown through a window face-first, and patched up without much care for where each piece belonged."

Jackson emerged from his office, still furious. "And why the hell weren't you answering your phone?"

His angry opening apropos of nothing threw me a little, but I shrugged. "The new one isn't operational yet and I haven't heard the old one ring." I dug into my bag and pulled out both phones. The cardboard box of the new phone was dented in the middle, and I winced, fearing the worst. And my old phone was definitely toast, the display sadly crushed.

I opened the box that contained the new phone and pulled it out. To my immense relief, it was intact, the Styrofoam packaging having protected it.

"This one made it."

"Next time, don't try to stand in the way of a running fugitive."

I crossed my arms over my chest, miffed. "I was trying to help."

"You could've hurt yourself!" He drew a deep breath. "Did you?"

I wasn't going to tell him about my tailbone, thank you very much. Some things weren't done, and inviting my boss to gaze at my ass was one of them, no matter how fine it looked in the tight pants.

Really fine, FYI.

"No." And since I couldn't leave well and truly alone, I continued: "You didn't get the guy, then?"

"No. But don't worry, I will. This is personal now."

When Jackson calmed down, he showed me the basics of skip tracing. He pulled out an incredible amount of information on Tito Costa, including his address and those of his family and associates.

"Let's go check these out," Jackson said. "It's more bounty hunter work than PI's, but the basics are the same."

Costa lived in East New York, the easternmost neighborhood of Brooklyn before Queens. It had a bad reputation, but it looked like a small town, because the houses were low and quite a few of them had false façades like in old Western towns.

Costa had an apartment above a phone repair shop in a two-story building on a stretch of hole-in-the-wall businesses. The entrance was towards the sidewalk, between the phone repair shop and a dry cleaner, and it had iron bars on it. The door was locked, which didn't surprise either of us.

"Let's ask here," Jackson said, heading to the drycleaners. "Everyone needs clean clothes."

An old woman was sitting on a tall stool behind the service counter. She had graying black hair in a tight bun, a round figure in a formless dress, and a permanent scowl on her wrinkled face. She had trouble understanding what Jackson wanted to know, and when she spoke her accent was heavy.