So, there I was the next day, back at my office. One assignment left: locate the Red Sparrow. Nobody was beating at my door with new work for me to do. That was fine. It was a time for a tabulation, a tabulation of myself. All in all, I had pretty much done what I had set out to do in life. I had made some good moves. I wasn’t sleeping on the streets at night. Of course, there were a lot of good people sleeping in the streets. They weren’t fools, they just didn’t fit into the needed machinery of the moment. And those needs kept altering. It was a grim set-up and if you found yourself sleeping in your own bed at night, that alone was a precious victory over the forces. I’d been lucky but some of the moves I’d made had not been entirely without thought. But all in all it was a fairly horrible world and I felt sad, often, for most of the people in it.
Well, to hell with it. I pulled out the vodka and had a hit.
Often the best parts of life were when you weren’t doing anything at all, just mulling it over, chewing on it. I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can’t be quite senseless because you are aware that it’s senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. You know what I mean? And optimistic pessimism.
The Red Sparrow. It was like the search for the Holy Grail. Maybe the water was too deep for me. And too hot.
I had another hit of vodka.
There was a rap on the door. I took my feet off the desk.
“Come on in.”
The door opened and there stood this guy, slight of build, dressed in raggedy-ass clothing. There was a smell to him. Something like kerosene. I wasn’t sure. He had small slitted eyes. He moved toward me sidewise. Then he stopped, right at the edge of my desk, leaned forward. He had a slight head twitch.
“Belane,” he said.
“Perhaps,” I answered.
“I got it all here for you,” he said.
“Good,” I said, “now take it the hell out of here.”
“Easy, Belane, I got the word.”
“Yeah? What’s the word?”
“Red Sparrow.”
“Tell me more.”
“We know you’re looking for it.”
“‘We,’ huh? Who’s ‘we’?”
“Can’t say.”
I got up, walked around the desk, grabbed him by his pitiful shirt front.
“Suppose I make you say? Suppose I kick it out of you?”
“Can’t. I don’t know.”
Somehow, I believed him. I let go. He almost fell to the floor. I walked around, sat behind my desk again.
“My name’s Amos,” he said, “Amos Redsdale. I can put you on the road to the Sparrow. You want it?”
“What is it?”
“An address. She knows about the Sparrow.”
“How much?”
“75 dollars.”
“Screw you, Amos.”
“O.k., you don’t want it? I gotta go. I gotta make the first post. I got a tip on the daily double.”
“50 bucks.”
“60,” said Amos.
“All right, let me have the address.”
I dug out 3 twenties and he handed me a slip of paper. I opened it and read it. It said: “Deja Fountain, apt. 9, 3234 Rudson Drive. W.L.A.”
“Look, Amos, you could write any kind of shit here you want. How do I know this is any good?”
“You just go there, Belane. It’s good stuff.”
“For the sake of your ass, Amos, it had better be.”
“I gotta make first post,” he said. Then he turned, walked to the door and was gone.
And I was sitting there out 60 bucks and holding a piece of paper.