Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [164]
“I’m Mr. Mobius,” he said.
They shook—and in a flash, David was pinned to the booth, his arm wrenched into a karate hold, his wrist bent back to breaking.
“Don’t move,” Mobius whispered. With his free hand, he patted David down, felt around his stomach and sides, behind his back and between his legs so close to his cock it made his penis tingle. With one of his feet he felt up David’s shins and calves, watching his eyes closely. Then he pulled David’s wallet from his breast pocket and flipped it open to his license, looking back and forth between picture and face as carefully as a golfer lines up a putt. “All right,” he said. “You’re clean.”
He let go of David’s hand.
“May I?” he said, indicating the table.
“Sure,” David said, shaking out his wrist.
The man placed his briefcase on the vinyl cushion, scooting down the booth with a side-to-side gait to hop up on the bag like a midget on a phone book. “Sorry to treat you so roughly,” he said, “but as you’ve learned, you can’t trust anybody these days.”
“No,” he said. “I guess you can’t.”
When the waiter reappeared, Mobius ordered linguine with clam sauce and a glass of white wine.
“Now,” he said. “Tell me your side of the story.”
Afterward, after David ordered some wine himself and told his story from the beginning to now, Mobius asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to find her.”
“When did you say she split?”
“Last September.”
“Nine months. That’s a pretty cold trail.”
“Are you saying you can’t do it?”
“I’m saying it could take time. It could cost you.”
“Money’s not an issue.”
“I understand,” Mobius said. “But do you mind if I ask you something?”
“All right.”
“Why do you want to find her?”
For a moment, David was baffled. “So I can … find out.”
“Find what out?”
“Where she is.”
Mobius looked back and forth for a moment. “I understand that. But it’s the motivation I don’t get. I mean, given what you’ve described to me. She didn’t take your money. She didn’t betray you. You’re … free.”
“What are you saying?”
“Why not just let her go?”
David was stunned. “I … I can’t just let her go.”
“Why not?”
David shook his head.
“Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the business, but I’ve had tens of customers who’d just … ”
“What?”
“Well, they’d just love to be where you are right now.” Mobius twirled the pasta on his fork using his spoon, then opened his rottweiler’s mouth and ate the whole tennis ball of spaghetti in one bite.
“I want to find her,” David said, “to find out what happens next.”
“Next?”
“Alice and I, we’re not … finished.”
Mobius squinted.
“You’ll probably think this is strange,” David said.
“I one hundred percent doubt it.”
“Let’s just say I’m writing a book.”
Mobius leaned back, pressing his tongue into his cheek and nodding slowly. “I see. Is it autobiographical?”
“Sort of.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s about a man who may or may not have killed his wife.”
Mobius smiled. “Uh-huh.”
“But I’m stuck.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t know what happens next.”
“You need an editor.”
“It’s more like a plot.”
Mobius pointed his finger at David and chuckled. “Oh, that’s good.”
“Is it?”
“You want to find her,” Mobius said, “because you want to get to the end.”
David was amazed. “Exactly.”
“So if I find her, should I … ”
David waited.
“ … finish?”
“What?”
Now it was Mobius who paused. “The book,” he said finally.
“Oh,” David said. “I see.” His mind drifting, he shook his head sadly. “Sometimes I think I don’t want to know how it ends.”
“It’s usually better that way,” Mobius said.
David looked at him. He’d never seen eyes so black, a mouth so big. This had been a mistake. This wasn’t the solution. But it was new, and new was good.
“But just out of curiosity,” he said, “how much … ?”
With his index finger, Mobius wrote a figure in the air: an eight and five zeroes. He shrugged. “Give or take.”
“I see,” David said. “And how do I … ?”
“Over time.