Terrance Olivier. But people call me Terry Oliver. My parents used to call me Terryble. Someone once called me Mango Sullivan, but that was on a lark. Probably.
Few jobs come through my bureau. Private eyes of the classical temperament (dark, skittish, invariably wearing overcoats) like me are as anachronistic as the telegram. Incidentally, that’s how I got my latest case.
It was a balmy Wednesday (the kind that gets you sweet Thursdays, the kind John Steinbeck liked) and I had just run down to the Italian market on Regent Street for a tub of mozzarella pearls and giardiniera. I go through those like most men go through drink. Normally I’d have sent Schlep to fetch them, but he was busy reading medieval travelogues for me and I was in the mood to get out of Humanities for a while.
It’s a hard business running a detective bureau from a teaching assistant’s office, but someone has to do it. And I’d be out like a damn spot if I let anyone from the Law School do it. And, short of aping “Bored to Death,” I was the man to do it.
I stepped into my fifth floor office to see Schlep eating a hot dog; the scrunched, white wrapper told me he hadn’t made it with the agency microwave.
“What the hell are you doing?” I snarled.
“Eating.”
“Who told you to? Who gave you permission to?”
“I-I finished your travelogues for the day,” Schlep said.
I was about to bop him on the head when I saw the cards lying on the table. “What are those?”
“They came for you when they were out.”
“Why the hell didn’t you open with that?”
“You didn’t let me!”
I took the cards from him. On the corner of each was a stain. The stain was mustard.
“Did you read these?”
“No’m,” Schlep said.
I read the first card. It took me a minute to realize it was a telegram, since I had never seen one before in my life. The company was based out of Finland, though the text was in English mostly.
The address read “To Terry Oliver, Room 5162 Humanities.”
HIRING PRIVATE EYE STOP
TERRY STOP FIND TENNY BROTHERS STOP
MONEY FOLLOWS STOP
I read the second telegram:
WAIT I FORGOT STOP IT’S NOT PRONOUNCED TENNY
IT’S LIKE TEN-E STOP IT’S THE TENNY LIKE TENNYSON STOP
DOES THIS MAKE SENSE AT ALL STOP
I read the third one:
PASKA STOP FORGOT TO SEND MONEY STOP
WILL SEND STOP IN NEXT INFERNAL TELEGRAM STOP
PLEASE STOP BE STOP PATIENT STOP
Finally I read the fourth one:
HERE IS TWENTY DOLLARS STOP PLEASE STOP
FIND THE TENNY BROS STOP IT WILL BE STOP STOP STOP STOP
WILL BE WORTH YOUR WHILE STOP
There was no return address, no name attached. That could have meant a lot of things. But at the time, I thought it meant no problems for me.
I looked at Schlep, who was licking the mustard off his fingers.
“Where’s the money?”
He looked at me with dull eyes.
“You owed me for grading all those Calvino essays.”
Normally, I’d have called him an impudent wretch, but those telegrams had put me in a good mood. I had a case. I’d begin tomorrow, I told myself, and mentally cleared my schedule. I’d give Schlep the day off too, since he’d be handling all my class work—grading essays, writing my dissertation, handling students—for the foreseeable future.
I was going to celebrate. I brought up the tub of mozzarella pearls, bobbing lusciously, cracked off the top and peeled off the plastic. Schlep stood and before I could stop him, he reached in and took a pearl between two fingers.
“If there’s any trace of mustard in this,” I snarled, “I’ll forget to remit your next check.”
He only smiled, and went back to his seat.
I took a mozzarella pearl and popped it in my mouth. It tasted like sunshine, and I rubbed the film between my fingertips.
Check out Almanac in two weeks for the next Terry Oliver story.
