The Hired Man Read Free

standard part of most of my background investigations.
    After stopping briefly at my office to check for mail and phone messages, I wrote down the names and basic information from Anderson’s résumés on a single sheet of paper, folded it, put it in my shirt pocket, and headed for the City Building. Mollie was, I was glad to see, on duty, and she accepted the list without giving it more than a cursory glance.
    “When do you need it?” she asked.
    “As soon as you possibly can without going out of your way,” I said.
    She smiled. “Give me a call around three—I’ll see what I can do.”
    As they say, it’s not what you know…
    *
    I was pleasantly—to put it mildly—surprised to find, on returning to the office, that I’d had a call from a Phil Stark. I don’t think I ever knew Phil’s last name, but I was sure it was him, and I hastened to return the call.
    When the phone was answered, I didn’t recognize the voice.
    “Phil?” I asked, wondering if I’d been wrong and this was another Phil.
    “No, this is Billy. Phil should be back in about half an hour. Can I have him call you?”
    Billy, huh? He sounded pretty young—and pretty sexy, if voices count.
    “Yeah, if you would,” I said. “This is Dick Hardesty returning his call. I’ll be in the office for a couple hours.”
    “I’ll give him the message,” Billy said. “Thanks for calling. Bye.”
    Billy, huh? my mind repeated.
    Yes, ‘Billy, huh’, I answered. Why in hell couldn’t you have been born a Gemini instead of a Scorpio? There’s more to life than your fucking crotch.
    Like, for instance…?
    I reached for the phone and called downstairs to the coffee shop to order lunch—a chef’s salad, blue cheese dressing, and a large black coffee to go, then immediately took the elevator to the lobby. My order was waiting for me when I got to the cash register. Either Eudora or Evolla, the identical twin waitresses I was sure had voted for Coolidge, handed me the bill and the white paper bag. After all these years, I still couldn’t tell them apart without their name tags, which they often did not bother to put on, or as I strongly suspected, frequently switched—the only oblique concession to humor (or any other emotion) I ever saw them display. They knew who they were, if nobody else did, though.
    I didn’t want to tie up the phone while I waited for Phil’s call, so I spent the time looking through the phone book with one hand and eating with the other. I went through each applicant’s past work history then checked for and wrote down the phone numbers of the companies/ organizations for which they had worked. A couple of the applicants had moved into the city from elsewhere, so that meant a little more work and some calls to Information. One of the women applicants had included phone and extension numbers in her list, and she immediately moved to the top of the heap in my estimation, which admittedly probably wasn’t going to be much of a factor in Anderson’s final determination.
    The phone rang just as I was wiping a dab of blue cheese dressing off one of the résumés. I let it ring twice, which gave me time to move the salad safely out of the way, before answering.
    “Hardesty Investigations.”
    “Dick, hi. This is Phil.” Of course it was. “Sorry about the phone tag. I had an appointment for a haircut and just got back.”
    “No problem,” I said. “And before I forget, I want to thank you again for referring Stuart Anderson to me. I really appreciate it.”
    “Well, like I said, I never forgot our little get-togethers, and when Stuart said he needed some help, I thought of you immediately.”
    “I owe you,” I said. “And speaking of get-togethers, I’d really like to see you whenever you have the chance. I want to hear all about what’s been happening with you since you sort of disappeared.”
    “I’d like that,” and he sounded as though he meant it. He paused then said, “Tell you what. My evenings are