Another Night on the Job

(fiction challenge story; week2. copyright 2007. all rights reserved.)

“When you enter a dark room, your eyes adapt the slowest.” Ryan could hear the words playing through his head in the cadence and tone of his old boss, Frank Wolfe. That was the thing about Frank; he was predictable to a fault. He drilled the same things into Ryan’s head so often, and so regularly, that Ryan could finish the phrases for him.

Ryan pulled open the double doors ahead of him, pausing to hold them for a family of five walking tightly on his heels. Ryan could hear the two youngest children excitedly giggling about being able to see the circus. Ryan wondered to himself why it had to be the circus. Why not a nice baseball game or ballet? While the family filed into the open door, Ryan scanned the throng of people slowly moving from the huge parking area. His eyes began to move, quickly, from face to face.

“Always be paranoid, you never know when it’ll pay off.” The words inside Ryan’s head caused him to let out a soft laugh at his own expense. Frank’s advice always made it seem like being a P.I. was a life or death gambit. As if being a P.I. was nothing but grand adventures to save glamorous damsels, and exciting scenes straight from action movies. For a few months, early on, Ryan often humored Frank. He did not humor him because he believed the crap that Frank was spouting. He did it because working with Frank had a sort of charm and fun to it.

Ryan peeled his view away from the hundreds of faces heading toward him from the parking lot and headed through the door after the family. His eyes, slow to adapt to the dark interior, scanned the posters lining the walls. Each poster depicted a different act from the circus, printed in the old school three tone color style. Ryan moved up toward one of the ticket counters. He had a brief wait while the woman in the pink and green shirt sold tickets to a bunch of high school aged kids. They were loud and borderline obnoxious. One of the girls looked back in Ryan’s direction. Ryan let his head shift up enough to match his gaze, as he made eye contact. The girl smiled and waved. As Ryan smiled back, he wondered why he had to break 25 before high school girls started flirting with him.

With tickets in hand, the rowdy kids filed further into the building toward the closest ticket turnstile. Once Ryan had purchased his own ticket, he intentionally moved toward a different turnstile. There was no reason to bump into a bunch of rowdy high school kids, especially one with a habit of flirting with older men. As soon as Ryan had passed through the turnstile, a security officer stopped him.

“I need to search your bag, sir.” The officer, a little on the small side by Ryan’s estimation, was holding out both hands. Casually Ryan handed over his bag. As the officer began rummaging through Ryan’s bag, Ryan became consciously aware of the smell of cheap peanuts, hay, and sweaty animals. Those odors were more than enough to remind Ryan why he hated the circus. If it not for the fact that tonight’s photos were the cherry on his investigation, he would have written tonight off and waited for something else. As it is, Ryan was anxious to move on to something different. Ryan’s thoughts were brought back to the small security officer when the little man pulled out Ryan’s Nikon D70.

“I’m afraid we don’t allow recording devices, sir.” Ryan had anticipated this snag, in part thanks to his secretary, and in part thanks to Frank’s tried and true advice.

“Always be ready for a snag, Kid. It’d be a shame to let poor planning foil your climactic victory!.” Ryan almost mouthed the words as he drew out a yellow I.D. card from his pocket. He held it out clearly for the security officer.

“It’s okay, I’m with the Press.” The words were relaxed and easy. Lying was always the one thing that Ryan had done with a kind of flair that made Frank blush. “I apologize for not presenting it sooner, it honestly slipped my mind.” The security officer looked from the I.D. card to Ryan’s face, and then back again. Ryan already knew that he had this security guy beat, and was ready to be moving on. “Listen,” Ryan said gingerly taking back his camera bag, “If there is any problem, I’ll be in Section C, Seat 18. Thanks for everything.” With the final words of thanks, Ryan gave the officer a firm double pat on the shoulder. It was always the little condescending gestures like the double pat on the shoulder that made Ryan really love his job.

Ryan made sure to use a very casual pace as he moved further into the building. He stopped at the first concession booth, to get a program and a pretzel. He had only intended to get the program as a foil, just in case, but the pretzel smelled so good that Ryan could not resist. By the time Ryan had arrived at his seat, there was nothing left of the pretzel. Ryan settled into his seat and began to get his camera out. While he was affixing the telephoto zoom lens onto the end of the camera, a long row of children began to move toward Ryan down the aisle he was sitting in. The child at the head of the procession, a small boy who looked to be about seven, stopped at the seat next to Ryan’s, and sat down in it. Ryan quickly counted heads, and tallied fourteen children. He looked over at the only adult with them, a middle-aged woman, who was slowly distributing napkins and small bags of peanuts. Ryan silently hoped, for the woman’s sake, that she was not the mother of all of these kids.

On the other side of Ryan, a group of four men was settling into their seats. Ryan could hear one of the men telling some story about his various childhood run-ins with clowns, and how seriously scarred he was because of it.

Ryan let himself sink a little further down into the hard plastic seat, and brought the camera viewfinder up to his eye. He slowly focused his camera across the auditorium. He did it slowly and purposefully, moving from person to person. Two weeks of garbage raids had landed Ryan a Ticketmaster receipt for tonight’s circus. He knew the area where his man was supposed to be sitting, and he knew that he would have two guests with him. Truthfully Ryan had learned more about his target than he cared to know, but that was the nature of the job.

“Hey Mister,” a small boy to Ryan’s left poked him in the shoulder. “What are you taking pictures for?”

Ryan’s first instinct was to ignore the distraction. He continued, slowly, to pan his camera. His telephoto view was sharply disturbed as the boy shook Ryan by the arm.

“Hey, Mister! Did you hear me?” Ryan let out a slow sigh. Jobs like this always came with some kind of hitch.

“What was that Kid?” Ryan kept his voice very soft and even, hoping to induce a little calm in the boy. If the voice trick had any effect, Ryan did not notice.

“I was wondering why you’re taking pictures?” Clearly this kid was not going to be easily dissuaded. Ryan pulled the camera down from his eye and faced the boy.

“Well, for starters I wasn’t taking pictures. I was just looking through the eyepiece. The reason I was doing that is because I am looking for a specific man.” Ryan often found that his job was much easy to accomplish if he just spelled out exactly what he was doing right up front. It left people a little dumb founded.

“Well, um, okay,” the boy responded hesitantly. Clearly he was not one for being left dumb founded. “Cause I was thinking maybe you should take some picture of those elephants down there. They’re super cool!” Ryan sighed again. “This is my third circus,” the boy held up three fingers as he said it, “and I keep telling Kim that the elephants are the coolest, but she’s dumb. And I was thinking you would know how cool they were, especially if you took some pictures of them?” The boy exploded into motion gesturing wildly with his two hands at one end of the auditorium. Sure enough, he was pointing at a ring of five elephants. It looked as though they were giving kids and parents elephant rides before the show started.

“See them? See how cool they are?” The boy bounced as he pointed.

“Yeah Kid, that’s great.” Ryan lifted his camera to his face and hastily snapped off a few shots in the general direction of the elephants. “You sure are right, Kid, these elephants are super cool.” The boy was grinning like an idiot, and he turned to the girl next to him. Ryan could hear the boy telling her to pass down to Kim the fact that the elephants were cool. Ryan snapped a few more shots, and then tried to get back to business.

“Hey, hey Mister!” the boy was tugging on Ryan’s arm before the camera’s eyepiece reached his eye. “Mister, can I see the shots? PLEASE!?!” Ryan rotated back and gave the kid a hard look. The small boy was obviously not going to shy away from Ryan’s gaze, so Ryan gave up and decided to try a new tact.

“Listen Kid, you want to play a game?” The boy was very slow to answer, and even then, his response was very hesitant.

“What kind of game?”

“It’s a lot like I SPY, only I need you to spy a specific person for me, okay?” Again, the child was slow to answer, although this time his response had a little more enthusiasm behind it.

“Okay. Am I looking for that friend of yours?”

“He is not my friend. He is just a man I know. And yes, that is the man we are looking for.” Ryan pointed across the auditorium to section F. “He ought to be sitting in that section over there, and he should have two other people with him.” The boy began to scrutinize the area that Ryan pointed out.

“Who’s gonna be with him?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure. If my previous surveillance is any indication, he will probably be with two young boys.”

“Young like my age?”

“No Kid, more like my age.”

“But you aren’t young. You’re grown up!”

“Right, I’m grown up, but I’m still young. I’m only. . .” Ryan stopped short. The look on the Kid’s face it clear to Ryan that the discussion was pointless. “Fine, whatever you need to hear. They’ll be like my age.”

“Okay.” The kid seemed very satisfied with that answer, and resumed looking. Ryan moved the camera back up to his eye, and resumed scanning the crowd on the other side of the auditorium. Ryan managed to check two rows of the section before the kid interrupted with his poking.

“I don’t see ‘em. Maybe they aren’t here.”

“Did you look in every seat?” Ryan asked patiently.

“No! But I’m sure that I would have seen him! Especially if he’s with two guys your age!” the Kid slid down in his chair and crossed his arms.

“Simmer down Teapot,” Ryan said calmly, bringing the camera back up to his eye. If you don’t want to play the game, that’s fine, but I need to find them.” Before the boy could even answer, Ryan had resumed looking through the camera’s lens.

“Well, I don’t want to lose!” the boy responded and resumed looking. The boy searched in silence for the better part of two minutes, when he began to ask more questions. “You know, if you had their phone number, you could just call them. And then we could see them on the phone! I would just call them.”

“Good idea Kid,” Ryan responded casually, “But I don’t think he carries a cell phone. At least, I never found record of it.”

“Why are you looking for them? Are you going to take their picture once you find them?”

“Yes, I am going to take their picture.”

“Why? Did they do something wrong? Are you the police!?”

“No, I’m not the police.”

“But they DID do something wrong, huh? It’s like a kidnapping, isn’t it?! You need to find them so you can rescue the two guys from the kidnapper!”

“Something like that, Kid. Have you found them yet?” Ryan could hear the boy shift into excited overload when Ryan admitted that it could be a kidnapping. Instantly he regretted lying about the situation. Filling the Kid’s head with some fantasy was not going to make the job any easier. He was just getting ready to tell the Kid the truth when the Kid almost shouted at Ryan.

“Mister! I think I see them!!” The boy was practically yelling, and Ryan placed a hand on his shoulder to calm him and quiet him.

“Where?” Ryan asked. The boy pointed to a group of seats toward the top of the section. Ryan brought the camera to his face and adjusted the focus. Sure enough, there was the old man sitting with two young men that looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. Ryan had known what he was going to see, but this was the first time he could visually confirm it. He began to snap photos as fast as the camera would allow. Ryan zoomed in and re-framed to show one of the old man’s arms around the young man’s shoulder. He reframed and caught a number of shots of the old man leaning over and whispering something into one of their ears, then the old man began whispering something to the other. Ryan snapped another dozen shots before lowering the camera. He began to remove the lens and pack the camera away.

“Was that them, Mister?” The kid was looking expectantly at Ryan.

“Yep. Good work Kid. That was them.” With the camera packed Ryan stood, and fished into his pocket. He pulled out a five-dollar bill and gave it to the kid. “You win the game.”

“Wait,” the kid exclaimed, “Where are you going? Are you going to be able to save them?” Ryan hesitated, not sure what to say. He considered continuing with the kidnapping fantasy, but did not see any point to it. Instead he just smiled and began to move toward the center walkway.

“Wait, wait!” the boy was growing more panicked. “Are you gonna be back before the circus starts? Cause last time the elephants came out first and they’re the coolest. You have to be back by then, okay?” Ryan paused to look at the boy. Something about the look on his face struck a chord in Ryan. He wanted to answer with a patented Frank response. He wanted to tell the Kid that he would have them saved and be back before the first elephant entered the center ring. But he was not Frank. Instead he just gave the Kid a wink and kept moving.

Later that evening, at his faux oak desk, as Ryan was finishing up his report on the Old Man’s activities and spending habits, he could almost hear Frank talking about truth getting in the way of adventure. Again, Ryan wished that he had just told the boy some fantastic tale about the exciting rescue he had staged. Part of Ryan even wished he had stayed for the actual circus. Sitting with that kid might have been fun. That brought back memories of early cases with Frank. Frank was always fun. No case was ever dull, and everything was always an adventure. Ryan finished paper clipping his reports, and various collected evidence, together, and stared at the collected five weeks of internet intel, garbage collecting, covert pursuit, and photos. Ryan realized he preferred getting paid for gathering monotonous truth, rather than have fun with fantasy and adventure. He closed the manila folder, and set it in his COMPLETE box to be called on first thing in the morning. With that he got up, turned off the lights, and locked his office door for the night.