“By the living gods! I told you not to sleep on your back!” Luke was on top of Eoin in the bed. Eoin shook his head, the realization that he was no longer in the dream slowly dawning upon him. Sunlight was streaming into the room, he looked at his clock, it was just after six in the morning.
“What the hell just happened?” he was cold, colder than earlier in the night, colder than he had ever been.
“Well without stealing any of your l’s, I would say sleep paralysis. It only occurs when you fall asleep on your back. After the whole ordeal with poor Mr. Kramer, I figured you might be at risk.” Luke seemed to have regained his composure and was back to his normal indecipherable manner of speech.
“Aren’t you a little early?” Eoin did his best to give Luke the ‘I’m not too worried about anything’ face.
“Yes, well, regardless; you need to take an incredibly hot shower, I’m not sure if you’re covered in sweat or dew, but it is most certainly unpleasant.” Eoin glared at Luke and shuffled off to the shower.
After he had shaved and dressed, he followed his nose into the kitchen to find Luke setting the table with what looked to be an incredibly large breakfast.
“I thought the Full Irish might be in order, considering you throw your lot in with the Irish-Americans, I figured your usual breakfast consisted of Bushmill's poured over Lucky Charms.” Luke grinned at him from the stove. Eoin was so glad to be out of that awful dream, he wasn’t going to let anything annoy today.
“It’d have to be Jameson for me to eat it.” He corrected Luke with an equal grin.
“Oh God yes, so sorry to have forgotten, wouldn’t want your blood to turn orange. Now shut up and eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”
“So what took you so long in the bathroom after breakfast? Shooting off a quick one to relieve the stress of the day?” Luke grinned from the driver’s seat of his Land Rover.
“You really are a foul human being.” Eoin replied as they weaved their way through campus, Luke’s ‘short cut’. “And if you must know, I was putting in my contact; I haven’t been wearing it for the past few days and I know I’m going to catch hell from the ophthalmologist on my next appointment.
“Forgive me for my density, but I do pride myself at being quite observant, and I couldn’t help but notice that you have two eyes.” Luke slammed on his brakes as a Northface clad, peroxide blonde, student walked out in front of him. As he honked his horn, she yelled something about not being able to afford her. “Bloody children these days!” Luke muttered. Eoin smiled appreciatively before replying.
“Actually, I have amblyopia.”
“Oh, I see. That’s the sexually transmitted disease you get from making love to Greeks, yes? I knew that there were rumors about the connection between the plumbing and the vision but limiting your number of contacts? I fail to comprehend.”
“It means that my brain refuses to acknowledge one of my eyes. In my left eye, I have perfect vision, but my right eye can barely see at all. When I was younger, I had to put a patch over my left eye to strengthen my right one but now I just wear a contact in my right eye.”
“Now that makes perfect sense. I always say, ‘when one leg is injured, mangle the other one!’” Eoin laughed but quickly sobered, they were approaching his office building.
“Good thing we got an early start.” Eoin muttered lightheartedly as they circled the block for the seventh time. Luke seemed to have lost his jovial nature and was beginning to appear very nervous and stressed.
“We’re obviously not meant to be here today.” Eoin looked over at Luke.
“Why’s that?”
“If you find a perfect parking spot, you’re meant to be in that place at that time. Invert that, add the twenty minutes that we’ve been circling the block, and x equals us being fucked with our clothes on. Don’t you have some kind of employee parking ramp?”
“I usually walk or ride my bike to work, the ramp is this one on the left, but I haven’t renewed my pass in a little over a year.” Luke muttered something about godforsaken hippies and pulled into the ramp.
“Do you still have the expired pass?” Luke seemed to be cheering up a bit.
“Yeah, it’s right here but I’m telling you, it’s not going to work. Ever since Google came to town, parking’s been ridiculously tight.” Eoin handed the expired pass over to Luke. The pass reading mechanism beeped at Luke expectantly.
“Please be patient with me, you demanding hunk of metal, I have the pass right here.” He slipped the pass into the waiting slot. Almost immediately the pass was spat back into Luke’s open hand.
“I told you it wouldn’t work.” Eoin said in his most unhelpful manner. Luke ignored him completely and continued to slide the pass into the unyielding machine over and over. A car behind them began to honk. Luke calmly turned to Eoin.
“My dear boy, would you be kind enough to let the gentleman in the car behind us know that if he would be interested in fixing this machine, I would be more than happy to continue honking the horn for him?” Eoin laughed.
“Yeah, really.”
“I’m completely serious, off you go.” And with that, he leaned over and opened Eoin’s door. Eoin hesitantly got out and walked to the car behind them. He leaned over and talked with the driver as Luke continued to feed the pass into the slot. A moment later, Eoin got back into the car.
“The gentleman in the car behind us says that he has a meeting, and we two queers can go fuck ourselves if we’re too dumb to figure out the parking machine.” Luke muttered something about an insolent little shit as he undid his seatbelt and opened his door. Eoin saw him draw a knife from between the seats as he stormed out of the car. Luckily for everyone involved, the security guard from the ramp chose that moment to make his entrance.
“Hey what the hell’s going on here?” He demanded, failing to notice the knife before it disappeared in one of Luke’s signature sleights.
“It’s about time you got here!” Luke chastised the guard before he was through with his punctuation. “As I was attempting to relay to your cohort here,” he motioned to the machine, “My client works in this building and has a very important meeting to attend. Are you this machine’s superior? Because let me tell you, I have more than a few complaints to launch against its attempt at customer service. Beep beep beep, that’s all I could get out of…” Luke was interrupted by the guard clearing his throat.
“Sir, this ramp is for employees only, I’m going to have to ask you to remove your car immediately.”
“Are you daft? Have you not been listening? Mr. Emmerson here is one of the top employees in this advertisement firm! Please show him your identification, Mr. Emmerson.” Eoin got out of the car, embarrassed and feeling slightly sorry for the guard who was, after all, only trying to do his job.
“Well it looks like you do work in the building, I’m sorry about that sir, but your parking pass is expired and I can’t allow you into the ramp.” The guard sighed, not looking forward to where this was heading.
“Do you know how long it’s been expired?” Eoin wondered where Luke was going with this.
“Well no, you would have to check at the parking department on the third floor to find that out.”
“And since this expired yesterday, can we give you or your beeping assistant over there the payment to renew this pass?”
“Actually, you would have to do that at the parking department as well.” The guard was frowning, he was clever enough to know what the next question would be.
“So how exactly are we supposed to get to the third floor if we have nowhere to park?” It was obvious that Luke was starting to enjoy himself.
“Sir, I really am not the person to be talking to about this, maybe you should have taken care of this before the pass expired.” Eoin had to give the guard some credit, he was holding his own against Luke.
“Perhaps Mr. Emmerson was distracted by his boss being murdered.” The guard was unprepared for that one. He had seen the police cars that morning but had just written them off as some white collar scandal that he wouldn’t care to understand even if he could.
“I didn’t hear anything about a murder.”
“I have the investigating officer’s number right here,” Luke took out his phone, “Perhaps we can call him and he’ll clear things right up for you. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind taking time out of his murder investigation to explain to you why Mr. Emmerson has to be at his meeting at ten o’clock. I have heard that they’re schedules’ aren’t really as busy as the television would have you believe.”
“You know what, I’m just going to let you through, here’s a note to give to the parking department when you get a chance to take care of that pass.” The guard briefly scribbled an illegible note on his pad of paper and handed it to Eoin. “You gentlemen take care now, I’m sorry to hear about your boss, Mr. Emmerson. Luke stretched out his hand to the guard.
“Mr. Yates, you have been extremely helpful, thank you kindly.” The gate lifted and the drove through.
“That poor guard is going to be in a bit of trouble when his superiors find out about this.” Eoin shook his head. “Did you have to be so harsh with him?”
“Oh I think Mr. Yates has less to worry about than you might imagine.” Eoin watched the guard walk out of view. The guard was watching them as well. He muttered something about goddamn rich folk and shoved his hands in his pockets preparing to walk back to the guard station. When he pulled his hands out, there were three, crisp, hundred dollar bills in each hand. He gave a whoop of joy and then noticed that his inner pockets on his jacket felt heavier than usual. In one pocket were three Cuban cigars, in the other was a pint of Remy Martin cognac.
On their way to the elevator, Luke paused, looked down a row of cars, and began to walk away from Eoin.
“What are you doing? We don’t have much time to get inside.” Eoin followed after him for lack of anything better to do.
“We’ve plenty of time, this won’t take a second.” Luke replied as his knife appeared back in his hand. He found the Lexxus that had been behind them in the line earlier. With several quick motions, he slashed all four tires and carved symbols which appeared to be complete gibberish to Eoin. “Dodgy fuckin' cunt.” Luke said with a grin and started back towards the elevator.
“Well shit!” Eoin was taken aback by the sudden act of vandalism. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.” Luke laughed a maniacal laugh and put his arm around Eoin.
“Eventually you will see the humor, Mr. Emmerson.”
A large man in a poorly tailored suit was standing in the lobby staring at the elevators, tapping his foot with little sense of rhythm. “And you must be officer Jeffreys, odd word rhythm, isn’t it? Have you any idea as to the etymology of it?” Luke extended his hand to the bemused looking man.
“This is a crime scene, no civilians are allowed on this floor; I’m going to have to ask you gentlemen to leave.” The officer ignored Luke’s outstretched hand and crossed his arms. Luke opened his mouth and grinned at the same time. But before he had a chance to burden the life of the officer, Eoin spoke up.
"I'm Eoin Emmerson, sir, you left a message on my answering machine indicating that you wanted to speak to me this morning." He gave the man the self-deprecating grin that was expected of him.
"Ah, alright, thank you for getting here on time, I know it's a zoo out there today." The officer's friendly tone clashed with his body language in an incredibly palpable manner. "I'm sorry but your friend will have to wait out here in the lobby while we talk." Eoin was almost grateful, Luke was starting to grow on him but Eoin wasn't yet sure that he wanted him involved in such tragic business. He turned to Luke and started to ask if he minded waiting but Luke wasn't behind him any more.
"His friend and many other things I may be, but in this instance I am Mr. Emmerson's attorney, Luke Lee Smythe." Eoin looked back to see Luke presenting a card to Officer Jeffreys.
"Mr. Emmerson doesn't need a Lawyer, he's not a suspect, we just want to ask him about Mr. Kramer. We're talking to everyone in the office." The large man's glare gave a clear indication as to his opinion of Lawyers.
"Quite reasonable," Luke replied in a way that conveyed how unreasonable he found the request. "But I am a family friend who just happened to be with Mr. Emmerson when he heard the terrible news. I came as a friend but if you force my hand, I would be happy to be a Lawyer instead; I'm sure you're aware as to the legality of my presence." He finished his attack with a ridiculously friendly and reassuring smile.
"Um, sure, that'll be just fine, please follow me, Mr. Emmerson, Mr. Smythe." The man's face was turning a very bright shade of red.
The room was cold, colder than Eoin's apartment had been that morning. Eoin knew the room well, he had been there many times, chatting with Mr. Kramer about anything that he could. A large window looked over the downtown area. Famous ad posters hung along the walls. The desk was fairly clutter free, a few papers and a picture of Mr. Kramer's late wife sat on the corner near a glowing computer screen. A plain office chair was behind the desk. It was the chair which caught Eoin's breath in his throat. The chair was covered in what appeared to be frost and a dark stain which could only be blood. Eoin felt sick.
"He was found in the chair, frozen and covered in blood. Cause of death is yet to be determined but foul play is suspected." He looked smugly at Luke as if his recitation of the ME's report radiated with intellect. "I guess you're wondering why we brought you in today, Mr. Emmerson."
"Not really," Eoin replied, "I worked directly under Mr. Kramer and knew him better than most everyone but Dawn, it's only natural that you ask me a few routine questions." The officer looked dejected at Eoin's reasonable response.
"Precisely." He replied, the multisyllabic word sounding awkward on his tongue. "So, we might as well start; first off, where were you at nine thirteen last night?"
"He was with me, at the Monkey Bar," Luke interjected, "I assume that a close friend's testimony is less than adequate but I do possess the name and telephone number of the lovely barmaid who served us...along with security tapes from the exterior and interior of the bar." Luke smiled congenially at the police officer.
"I'll have to check these." Jeffreys muttered as Luke produced a piece of paper and a small disc from within his coat and passed them to him. He looked for somewhere to put the evidence and eventually set it down on a nearby coffee table. "Now, can you think of any enemies that Mr. Kramer had?" Eoin thought hard for a moment.
"I honestly can't think of anyone who would want to do him any harm. He was a fairly plain man in terms of personality. Not close to anyone, nowhere near friendly but decent and never rude. Even the competition treated him with respect." Eoin reflected on how sad it would be to lead such an unremarkable life. Mr. Kramer may have created some wonderful ad campaigns but he really accomplished nothing.
"Well, I think I have enough information from you for today. I'm pretty sure I don't need to tell you stay where we can reach you; no leaving the country or the state." The officer got up to show them the way out but Eoin surprised even himself by replying,
"I can't promise that I won't leave the state, or even the country for that matter; I'm going on a trip." Jeffreys glared at him.
"Where were you planning to go?"
"North." Eoin replied, not fully comprehending where that answer had come from. Luke gave him a grin full of a feeling that could have been pleased surprise.
"Mr. Emmerson, you are part of a murder investigation! I'm going to have to insist that you stay in town until the investigation is over!" Jeffreys was red in the face and seemed to be spluttering a bit.
"Mr., excuse me, officer, Jeffreys; this investigation is obviously not going to be solved any time soon and my client has important family matters to deal with. I'm sure my mobile telephone number combined with our sincere promises to stay in touch will suffice?" Luke's audacity had obviously recovered from his momentary surprise.
"No, Mr. um Smythe, that will not suffice;" the last word was filled with accusation of pretension, "I'm afraid that I don't know you well enough to trust your sincere promise." More accusation with sincere. Luke smiled and without missing a beat, his phone was in his hand, dialed and proffered to the sweaty officer. "What the hell is...hello?... Who is this?... What?.. No, no, I'm really sorry sir, I didn't know who it was... Yes, this is Mr. Smythe's cellphone, how do you know...no, you're right..I'm sorry...Sure, yes sir...I understand...but...yeah, um yes, that's what I was gonna ask. He's got a friend that's part of a murder investigation...no, not really a suspect...no, no record. He wants to leave the state...yes, family emergency or something...yes, with Mr. Smythe... Really, but sir...no, I understand, thank you." Jeffreys had a queer look on his face as he handed the phone back to Luke. "Thank you Mr. Emmerson, Mr. Smythe, I hope you have a good trip." His voice lacked any emotion.
"Allow me to offer you my telephone number." Luke said kindly, seeming to take sympathy on the officer.
"That's alright, I guess the chief already has it, you two gentlemen have a good day."
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