Secrets Make for Strange Friendships

“Hey Gwen,” he shouted over the clamorous ramblings of the bar rush. “Darlin, we been 86’d on onion rings since swing shift. Can you find out what table 204 wants instead?”

“Ya, I’ll find out,” she said putting the back of her hand to her forehead momentarily. “Sorry Marlin, it’s just been one of those nights.”

The place was bustling electric like a small thunderstorm since about a quarter after one. By 2 or 2:30, it was as noisy as the New York stock exchange on a bull run – for a great many folks, it was a natural Pavlovian response to crave greasy diner food as soon as the words, ‘Last Call!!!’ were hollered at whatever watering hole they found themselves closing out that night.

The bar rush was like a nightly migratory pattern similar to deep sea life rising to the surface. This diner, where I sat in quiet observation and looked over my notes from my most recent assignment, was easily the most popular for the younger crowd as it sat in a fair proximity to both the college dorms and the downtown strip (where most of the clubs and bars could be found).

I had taken some breathing room from the bar scene by this point in my life but being well caffeinated and keeping myself busy in similar energetic surrounds was very therapeutic. At my age, my lifestyle was no longer a very social one; I didn’t generally seek out conversation or company. I was, however, still more comfortable seated at the counter by the server-aisle on a busy Saturday night at an all-night diner than at a quiet library any day.

Gwen strolled past my spot on the end of the counter and up to the pass-through where Marlin was putting two orders of biscuits and gravy up in the window under the food warmers. “The lady at 204 wants seasoned fries instead of onions rings with her Ham and Cheese.”

“I need an order of seasoned fries for 204 on the fly!” Marlin blurted out to his left where the new guy was fumbling his way through his first night at the fryer station.

Making myself a nearly-nightly regular, and routinely sitting front and center on one of the bar stools at the counter, I was often well within earshot of much of the employee dialogues – without any concerted effort, I was privy to a great deal of the happenings of this quaint all night diner. I hadn’t quite caught the new guy’s name yet because thus far, I’d only heard him referred to as ‘newbie’, ‘rookie’, and ‘new guy’.

From all the gossip of the morning servers, who would take over around 6 am, you would think Marlin was the reason why Gwen left her husband and took the kids to go stay at the motel up the road. I wasn’t oblivious to their subtle flirtations from my regular seat at the counter, but they struck me as thus-far-platonic if I were to wager a guess.

“You need anything, hun?” Gwen asked me with a coffee pot in her left hand.

“A warm-up would be nice,” I said pushing my speckled coffee mug towards her. My coffee wasn’t quite cold yet but over the last half hour I had managed to drink it down to half-full or half-empty, depending on one’s disposition on such matters.

“Thank you, Gwen.”

“Sure thing.” She said sweetly. “You let me know if you get hungry and want me to ring you in some food.”

“Will do.”

On this particular night, the bar rush only lasted ‘till around 3 and the place was all-but-empty by the time the other server, Sue Ellen, started working on her side-work to get going home. Barb, the manager, was out the door by quarter after 3, as per usual. Managers, as I understood it, were typically salaried rather than hourly, and would nearly always duck out as early as they thought they could do so without incident.

By 4 o’clock I was the only customer left in the place.

Gwen let out a big sigh as she sat down on one of the other stools at the counter and drove her hands into her apron pocket, fished around for a minute, and then pulled out a pack of smokes that turned out to be empty. She crumbled it in her hand, rose up to lean over the counter and tossed it towards the trashcan, pulling a glass ashtray from underneath, while she was at it.

“Hey, hun, could I buy a smoke off of you?” she asked me.

“No ma’am.” I replied. “But you can have one, if you’d like.” I slid my pack of smokes her direction with my left hand while I finished up with what I was writing with my right.

She took one out of the pack and set the pack back down near me; reached into the pocket of her apron again, pulled out a jumbled mess of cash, and set it on the counter in front of her. She rifled through the pile for a moment and retrieved a red plastic lighter from somewhere in the center. She lit up and held that first drag for a solid moment before closing her eyes and exhaling.

“You mind if I ask you somethin’?” she said with her beautiful brown eyes still closed; to which I nodded subtly, setting my pen down and turning towards her. She opened her eyes in my direction, “What do you do for a living?”

I looked up from my coffee and directly at her; took a breath and said, “I usually dance around those kinds of questions, but I’ll be straight with you.”

“I appreciate that.” She said as a faint smile began to bloom on her face

“Secrets.” I said simply. “Everybody’s got ‘em and some are worth money if you can figure ‘em out.”

“So, what like a private eye?” she asked as she was transforming her tips with her tatted hands from a great scattered pile into one straight and orderly stack.

“I still work on some cases in that capacity, from time to time…” I said. “But primarily I take on assignments from various publications to dig past the cover story a bit and report on what I find.”

“So, you write articles for the papers?” she said as I sparked up a smoke of my own.

“I’ve written a few in my younger years,” I replied in a smoky exhale. “But nowadays, I’m generally sought out by journalists willing to pay for the information that they can’t quite get from their usual sources.”

She paused for a minute and looked up at the clock above the pass-through and then back down on her cash.

“So, if I needed to find somethin’ out... I could pay you and you could help me?”

“That all depends on the factors involved.” I said turning slightly her direction.

“I can’t get into it here, but my shift ends in about two hours whenever the first of the ‘day bitches’ get started.” She said. “You got a business card to where I could call you when I’m done here?”

I reached into the pocket of my jacket sitting on the stool on the other side of me and pulled out a single business card. “It’s a pager number,” I said. “But I tend to be pretty quick about call-backs.”

She took the card and flipped it over. “It doesn’t have your name or title or anything – just a number” she stated with an inquisitive tone as if it were a question.

“Ya, generally the less my clients know about me and how I operate, the simpler it is for everyone.”

“Okay.” She said with that subtle grin of hers budding up again. “I’ma leave the motel phone number where I’m stayin’ followed by the room number… they’ll patch you through to the phone in my room,” she said folding the stack of cash in half with the business card in the center and sliding it all back into her apron pocket. “Can I get you some more coffee, hun?” she asked hopping to her feet and heading towards the coffee machine in the server aisle.

“No. Thank you though.” I replied. “Just the check please… when you get time.”

“This one’s on me, hun.” She said as she emptied the ashtray into the trashcan. “Thanks again for the smoke.” She said with a smirk. “You’ll be hearin’ from me later.”

I went home and slept hard.

I awoke to the sharp beeping of my pager on the nightstand and sure enough, there it was: thirteen digits… area code, motel phone number, and her room number.

I called her up and we set up to meet at a park just before sundown. She said she wasn’t comfortable talking about everything over the phone.

“My husband, Jerome,” she said looking out into the dusky skies above. “He’s gotten us into something but I don’t know what it is.” she said with a tiny twinge of terror in her voice. “He came home early from his last business trip completely frazzled, wearing clothes I’d never seen him in before, went straight to the safe in the back office, and then spent about an hour in the bathroom... When I asked him if everything was alright, he flew open the door and looked me straight in the face and said, ‘I can’t get into it right now… I need you to trust me…Everything’s gonna be alright.’”

I scribbled a few notes in my little pad, as I listened.

“Thing is: I don’t trust him.” She said. “Not anymore. Ever since he quit the firm he was with, he’s been completely vague about what kinda work he’s out there doing. And I think he’s gotten us into some kind of trouble with dangerous people. I don’t know, maybe the mob or somethin’ – that’s what I need your help for. I didn’t tell him where I’m staying with the kids and I ain’t going back there ‘till I have some answers.”

She answered the many questions I had for her and gave me what felt like enough to go on.

Within the week, I had surmised that her husband was living under a false name, which I figured Gwen didn’t know. Jerome Thompson in fact had apparently passed away in Las Vegas several years back and then suddenly around mid-September of ’96 just rematerialized with a large lump sum bank deposit in downtown Chicago. I came across a mug shot of the original Jerome and later got eyes on her husband getting the mail; this certainly wasn’t the same guy.

Everything I came upon about his new life was so cut and dry that it didn’t seem like some amateur stolen identity type of thing. It all was laden with a familiar smell – Witness Protection.

But why?

Why was this man given a full set-up to start over a thousand miles away? What had he seen? Who had he turned on?

I told Gwen I was gonna need some more time but I suggested that she move her and the kids to a different location at the end of the week she had paid for.

“Are we in danger?” she asked over the phone.

“It’s just a precaution, but it feels like your best bet at the moment. Page me again when you’re settled into someplace else and by then, I should have something solid for ya.”

Over the coming days, my curiosity escalated to the point that I stopped taking on new assignments and dove into this one fairly deep.

I would come to the entrance of a deep rabbit hole when it became clear that this all had something to do with the fight between Tyson and Seldon at the MGM Grand Arena and the ensuing events of that fateful night in Vegas.

“Shit,” I thought. “What had I gotten myself into now?”