Free Anonymous Rex by Eric Garcia

when we land, the human passengers choose to applaud nevertheless, as if they were expecting a different conclusion to the evening’s festivities. I have never understood this; the only cause I have ever had to applaud while aboard an airplane was when the flight attendant mistakenly gave me two packs of roasted peanuts instead of my rationed single pack. In retrospect, I should have remained quiet, as my clapping alerted the stewardess to her error, and she took away my extra helping.
    Teitelbaum would have me killed and mounted on his wall if he knew my true intentions in coming to the city. I let him know that some leads were pointing back toward New York, requested a company credit card (with a five-thousand-dollar limit, no joke!), and he proceeded to grill me over the phone.
    “You gonna stick to this case?”
    “Of course,” I reassured him. “That’s why I’m going out there. For the insurance company.”
    “No screwing around with that dead partner of yours?”
    “Right,” I said. “None of that.”
    But if the case leads to McBride, then naturally, I may have to ask questions regarding McBride’s death, and if I have to ask questionsabout McBride’s death, I may stumble across information about one of the initial private investigators on the case, my “dead partner” Ernie. Of course, I don’t have to let Teitelbaum know any of it. All he has to know is that the insurance company is forking over even more money for an inflated expense account that now includes a stay in the second most extravagant city in America. Next time I’ll just have to hope someone gets killed in Vegas.
    I have chosen not to rent a car in the city, a decision that, according to my cabbie, was a wise move. There is a special art to driving through New York, he tells me through an indistinguishable accent, and I gather that the uninitiated should not attempt an excursion on their own. Although the cab driver is a human, he nevertheless has his own special scent, though it is not the fresh stroke of pine on a crisp autumn morning, to say the least.
    “Where you want go?” he asks me, and suddenly I feel like I’m dealing with Suarez again. Can no one other than myself speak the language? But he’s just a human—a foreigner, probably—and he speaks my native tongue better than I speak his (unless he’s from Holland, as my Dutch is practically fluent).
    “McBride Building,” I say, and he tears into traffic, instantly accelerating to at least ninety miles an hour before he slams on the brakes half a block later. It’s a good thing I haven’t eaten in a while. We’re in Manhattan before he speaks again.
    “You business at McBride?” he asks, glancing at me all too often in the rearview mirror. I’d rather he pay a little more attention to the actual operation of his automobile.
    “I have some business at the building,” I say. “This afternoon.”
    “He big man, McBride.”
    “Big man,” I echo lamely.
    As the cab stutters and stops along the street, flashbacks of my last visit to New York stream before my eyes, a blur of police stations and witnesses, missing evidence and rude rebuffs. And more than a few shopping market produce aisles. New York, if I remember correctly, has some particularly potent marjoram, but their supply of fenugreek is sorely lacking.
    With any hard-core investigation comes the requisite accoutrements of the office, and due to my recent financial troubles, I’mlight on the proper attire. I consider instructing my cabbie to pull over at the nearest department store, where I could promptly use the TruTel credit card to purchase the needed items, but I doubt such mass-produced items would lend the proper authenticity.
    On the corner of Fifty-first and Lexington, I stop the cab at an honest-to-goodness New York millinery and buy a tan and black porkpie hat.
    On Thirty-ninth, I buy a trench coat. I get a good deal because it is eighty-three degrees in Manhattan today.
    Just below Canal, I buy