Alex Ross had no idea what this business venture would bring. Maybe the typical private dick fare such as infidelity, divorce or perhaps he’d end up investigating some kind of white collar stuff. Since it was the first day the joint was open, he’d soon find out.

The morning was slow. He sat back in his old wooden office chair and closed his eyes. The sound of a city bus passing below as it belched the scent of diesel fumes made him wince but once that passed he caught a waft of the donut shop on the ground floor. Yeah they smelled oily, overcooked and sweet but they’d probably end up being a good portion of his diet. The coffee might be good anyway. Ross opened his eyes and caught a glimpse of the toasted drip pot on the table in the corner of his office. He could use a secretary to make his caffeine laden necessity but then again, he may as well just go down to Lou’s Donut Shop down below and get some. It would be cheaper than hiring someone. Of course anyone would be easier on the eyes than Lou.

Just as he rose from his chair there was a knock on the door.

The man who walked in looked like he has a buck or two to spend. He was a fortyish clotheshorse with hawk like features and Ross figured he probably wasn’t there to hire him for anything. He didn’t look like he owed anyone any money for sure and Ross figured right off he was probably up to something he wanted to hide from his society friends. Could he have some skeletons in the closet? Politician, yeah that was it.

"What can I help you with?" Ross asked as he sat back down. The sound his chair made was nothing short of annoying, like nails on a chalkboard. He cleared his throat to put some cover on the cheap ass state of the office.

The man nodded to Ross and extended his hand as he approached.

"My name is Tony Colangelo," the smooth talking man stated "When I finish with what I have to tell you, you might think I’m chasing apparitions but it’s not that way at all."

The man seemed more than a little ill at ease and it didn’t seem to fit his general appearance of his well-tailored politician looking self. Such signs on his type showed as a glaring flaw to Ross.

"I’m nothing if I’m not confidential," Ross said, hoping it would help ease tensions.

"Yes sir, I know. I’ve checked up on you. You’re the new kid on the block and word has it that you’re an honest man."

Colangelo looked around the sparsely furnished office, unable to ignore the smell of Lou’s bakery delights. "It’s why you’re here instead of working for one of those big agencies. You’re more of a Sam Spade then you are a Pinkerton."

At that point, Colangelo slid his business card across the desk.

"Lawyer, partner, downtown." Ross said as he read the card.

"Not always honest, myself." Colangelo added with a smirk. "But I’ll get to my reason for being here and I will be honest with you, Ross. Believe me?"

"It’s a stretch but I’ll bite. Go on."

"I want you to follow someone, find out about her."

Ross’s mouth twitched, he was interested now. "Who’s her?"

"I don’t really know, but I think I’m in love with her. Have you ever been in love, Ross?"

"Huh, well, I guess but never with any success, longevity."

"So you’re an asshole when it comes to women but let me ask you this," Colangelo said, wishing he had a drink to loosen up his vocal cords. "Have you ever just passed a woman on the street and noticed something about her that made your heart beat fast? It’s like a lightning strike, Ross."

The light in Tony Colangelo’s eyes was hard to miss. It was if he were talking about seeing a low-slung sports car or something like that. He was immersed in passion for some stranger and he seemed to enjoy it with the joie de vive of a young boy falling in love with the homecoming queen in high school.

Colangelo regrouped. "I don’t mean lust, Ross, I mean true love. Real love."

His voice made Ross drift for a moment; back to a time when he’d gazed at the back of Artis Littleton’s neck in tenth grade. She smelled like vanilla cake and the thin wisps of hair on her arms were nothing short of beautiful to Alex Ross.

"Ross. You with me buddy?"

"Yeah, yeah." He came back down to earth. "If we ever get to hook up with these babes then we’d probably find they had voices like parrots or body odor, something like that."

"So you want me to find a woman that you fell in love with but you don’t know her, right?"

"More or less. She’s on the bus at exactly eight forty five in the morning and I see her from the coffee shop at the corner of Wilshire and Figueroa. I don’t know where she gets off."

"Has she seen you?" Ross asked

Colangelo shook his head. "No but I have a feeling she feels me. There’s something mystical, magical going on here and aside from that … my life has been nothing but order, routine and logic. Fuck it, this time I want to do something different. I’d rather regret the things I did then regret the things I didn’t do.

Ross noticed the discomfort rise in Colangelo again. "Are you sure about this? I mean do you have a wife, kids at home?"

"My wife died a year ago and we’ve never been blessed with children."

"I’m sorry, Tony, can I call you Tony?"

The man nodded.

"I’m sorry about your wife but maybe you’re not thinking right here. Maybe you’re … I don’t know, still grieving?"

"Okay, Alex, can I call you by your first name?" He asked, not waiting for an answer "That would be consensus but I want to know about this woman."

"Why don’t you just go up to her like any man who was interested in a woman would?"

"I want to know about her first, and then maybe, just maybe I’ll introduce myself."

Ross considered for a moment. Perhaps his chosen career would land him with one eccentric after another. Maybe every client he got would be as strange as Colangelo but maybe there was something else behind this man that Ross wasn’t sensing yet.

"Alright, Tony. I’ll take your case. I’ll go find out who Miss America is but I want you to know that this may not be what you think. She may be married with kids or have some beefy boyfriend who’ll beat the crap out of both of us if he finds out about this."

Ross’s better judgment was warning him to be cautious. "This is crazy, you know?"

"I understand, Alex but I’ll pay cash, up front."

"Now those are the magic words."

"..and I don’t want any paper trail. You understand? I want this to be covert and I want you to give me a report by tomorrow afternoon."

"That’ll cost you extra, Tony."

With that, the man drew his billfold from his inside jacket pocket and withdrew ten one hundred dollar bills. "Will this do?"

"It’ll do just fine. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Tony."

"I will call you, Alex. Do not call me."

"Okay."

As Colangelo left his office, Alex leaned back in his chair to think about this case. It was easy as apple pie without a doubt but strange none the less. Maybe Colangelo wanted to keep everything quiet because his partners would see him as some sort of weak link in their chain called a law practice.

The bottom line was, it was his job to find out her name, right? He was a professional and practical businessman, right? And he damn well needed the money.

The next morning, he followed the bus until the woman got off. Ross hastily parked his car and got out just in time to see her round a corner. He jogged until he got to the intersection then slowed down to blend in with the others out on the sidewalk this time in the morning. She was easy to identify by Colangelo’s description and at first Ross understood what had the lawyer mesmerized.

She had the posture of a woman who’d been to finishing school, kind of upright like she’d carried a volume of War and Peace on her head just to correct any childhood flaws. Her figure was nice, round where it should be and flat where it should be with a graceful hip switching walk. Her upper carriage was still almost as if she’d spent time working as a TV reporter and Ross figured he’d tell Colangelo about this since he probably never saw her seductive walk. He followed her for another half of a block before he got close enough to notice the hair at the nape of her neck and he immediately thought of Artis Littleton. His reverie ceased when the woman entered a hotel.

Ducking in behind her, Ross noticed that the tall lean blonde studied a bulletin board listing the days activities in this large hotel, then she headed for one of the in house restaurants. It was then that he noticed her face. She was attractive but not anything to die for. Her features were Nordic and chiseled and she appeared older than he’d first thought. Her hair was dark blonde and he imagined her eyes to be blue but he was not sure. There was something very sad in her expression and he wondered what it could be but then he scolded himself, thinking this was no time for amateur psychology. He was there to get the job done and that was it.

Finding a place to sit where he could see her without looking at her directly, he ordered a cup of coffee and the morning paper. He could appear to be reading but he could watch her at the same time, covertly of course.

Within a few minutes a man sat down across from her, slightly younger than her with broad shoulders and longer hair. He was wearing a golf type shirt that seemed way too tight on him but it may have been his bulging muscles that taxed the threads.

The woman ordered breakfast and after the waiter brought it to her, the man who was with her leaned over and kissed her. She seemed to be unmoved by it as she kept shoveling the food on her plate around. He left but she sat there mooning around and nursing her breakfast.

About an hour later, the restaurant was half full and Ross found himself in dire need of the men’s room. Since she was still picking at her breakfast he got up and hurried to the bathroom, spending as short a time as possible in there. Fucking coffee.

As he came out he could see that the woman was talking to a man at an adjacent table. She held up her purse and shrugged for some reason and the man at the table smiled at her. He was one of those salesmen who came to places like this on motivational conventions. Ross could tell by the way he was dressed and he had one of those huge badges that said ‘My Name is Chuck’.

Shortly after that the man snatched the check from her table and paid for it along with his own. She followed him out into the lobby and to Ross’s surprise, the muscle bound ape was there, seated and hiding behind a newspaper.

Ross watched as the woman linked her arm with the man who paid her check and walked with him toward the elevators. Mister Bam-Bam muscles watched them too; he checked his watch then ducked back behind his paper.

Figuring there was not other exit for the woman; Ross decided to keep his eye on Bam-Bam. The ape lost interest in the newspaper rather quickly and he seemed anxious for some reason. Another fifteen minutes passed before Bam-Bam got up and headed for the elevators. Ross figured he’d better follow him if he had any chance of figuring this quagmire out.

Six or seven people got on the elevator behind the muscle guy and Ross just managed to squeeze himself in. He looked at the floor but kept his ears open. The elevator made several stops before they got to the twelfth floor and Bam-Bam nudged his way through to get off. There was sign that said ‘Welcome JD Sales Staff’ propped up between the two elevators and Ross took note of that as he casually followed the man down the hall. He was well ahead of him and had turned a corner but Ross caught up just in time to see him pause before pushing his way inside of a room marked 1214. There was some yelling and the sound of furniture crashing. Not wanting to get involved that deeply, Ross took the elevator back down to the lobby and notified house security.

He hung around long enough to find out what had gone down. Shortly after hotel security went upstairs, the trio came downstairs with two hotel staff then the police arrived.

It only took a few minutes of talking to one of the cops for Ross to find out what had gone down and he felt kind of bad about it all. Having to report it to Colangelo was not going to be easy. The man’s dreams would be shattered.

He met with the lawyer the next day at Lou’s donut shop downstairs from his office.

"Her name’s Carol Turner," he said as he dipped a stale donut in his coffee. "She’s a scammer, she and the man she was shacked up with. Tom Atkins."

Colangelo stirred his coffee, staring into it morosely. "She didn’t seem like that type to me."

"Looks can be deceiving, Tony. Security found her naked in the room, with the poor guy who was there for the convention and Atkins. Atkins was trying to extort money from him, telling him that he’d never tell his wife and kids about this liaison if he’d pay him and Carol to keep it quiet. He roughed the guy up a bit too. Cops arrested him for assault and extortion. They arrested your dream girl, Carol for extortion and prostitution."

Colangelo sighed. "I thought she was on her way home from work every morning. I guess she was in a way."

"Well, she was actually coming home from work," Ross added, hoping this would lighten the blow a little. "She worked as a nurse’s aid at Rampart, and then a few times a month, she and her friend would go wherever they planned to work the con. They were living it up nice on her salary and the extortion money."

Ross shrugged and bit off a piece of the donut. He talked with his mouth full as he said, "You figure you can get her off?"

"I’m not that kind of lawyer. I don’t do criminal."

"Maybe she’ll walk. I don’t think the convention fella will testify you know with the wife and kids at home."

Colangelo stood up from his chair and picked up his hat. He pulled his coat off of a hook and folded it over his arm.

"Thank’s, Ross, you got the job done."

"It didn’t take very long, Tony. I probably owe you a partial refund."

"Don’t worry about it. No receipts, remember?"

Ross wasn’t dumb. He could buy a new coffee pot with some of that money. Save him from the swill at Lou’s. He’d never say that out loud though.

"Hey, Tony. You going to finish that donut?" he called, noticing the partially eaten peanut stick on his plate.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Tony responded, and then he walked out.

About six months later, Ross had found out from another lawyer that Tony Colangelo got up the nerve to talk to Carol Turner. He paid her fees, got her off from any jail time. The lawyer said Colangelo left the firm. He and Carol moved back east to Florida and bought a little hotel in the Keys. It took a little work but Ross was a detective. He found Tony Colangelo and gave him a call …got himself an invitation to spend a few days on the beautiful beaches of the Sunshine state. He didn’t figure Carol would recognize him of course so he accepted. Maybe it would give him a chance to make amends with his girl that he’d been neglecting. He could take her sailing.

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