Reel Two

Being almost Sunday morning he did not have to go to the shop. In fact, the way business was these days he only went there a few days in the month to collect any cash takings for banking anyway. This gave him more time for any ‘recovery’ work that came up and most of the shop trade was now done on-line.

So he made himself a cup of coffee, drank it happily and then went upstairs to the top floor where his bedroom awaited him. He took off the towelling robe and contemplated his choice of sleepwear, not an easy task as he had everything from scratchy pyjamas, through to onesies and a complete range of cotton or satin nighties of every shade and length. Finally he just put on a short, satin pyjama set and got into his bed, falling asleep almost instantly.

He slept until noon and, refreshed, got out of his bed and made his late morning ablutions. After another refreshing shower he dressed in a tee-shirt and track pants and slid his feet into a pair of old moccasins, going down to the kitchen again to get some lunch and to contemplate the activity of the previous night. As he ate he tried to remember any client that had not been satisfied with his services and he could not think of a single one. He had no enemies in his ‘normal’ life and there were none in his business circles.

His business had been left to him on the death of his parents, back when he was still a teenager with a lot more hair than he now had. They were the ones that gave him his name and his interest in old movies. Janet and Walter Greenstreet had loved the old films of the thirties and had amassed a sizable collection of them from sales of old cinemas as they moved into the modern age. Of course, with the surname of Greenstreet they just had to christen their only child Sydney Hughes, after the big man himself.

On taking over his parents’ collection he had spent a part of his inheritance getting the films restored and copied; also adding a few that had been originally missed. He opened up in a small store and sold the copies on Super Eight reels and then, as the technology altered, on video tape and then on DVD. He had conserved and reproduced all of the old posters as well and these seemed to sell better than the actual movies. These days he had every film in his archive saved on a bank of servers in his office and could either stream a film directly to the customer or else load it onto a thumb-drive to send it by post. The shop was still there and only stocked the old formats for the real buffs. A young student was his current store manager and Sydney only went in to replenish any stock that was close to running out or move things around on the display. The original collection was now in an air-controlled strongroom in the basement, next to the armoury.

He had been interested in acting since he was very young and had put on shows for his parents, playing the characters they loved. From there it was a short leap to dressing as those characters when he felt the need for a little fun. Of course, he could never be identical, no; it was more that he looked similar and took on the persona of each character. As Joel Cairo, for instance, he was so sleazy and wimpy there was not a person on earth who would recognise the Sydney Greenstreet they may know in ordinary life. The movement to female characters came about when he started the ‘recovery’ side-line.

He had put an advertisement in the city paper that read “Lost something? Need it back but don’t know how? Reply via this newspaper” and there was a newspaper box number. He would always be in disguise when he checked the box. The very first case was a ’lost’ will. The client was certain that the will read out after her mother had died was not correct and that her brother, an unemployed lay-about, had forged it. The only way to get near the brother was through sex and Samantha Spade had been created as a mixture of Mary Astor and Jean Harlow, as well as a fair proportion of Marlene Dietrich. Once he had been Sam a few times he was hooked as blondes did have more fun. The brother had been stupid enough to keep the original and it had several clauses he had not bothered with. Reading them led to the discovery of a wealth of books kept in storage that he had discounted as beneath him but had ended up with his sister gaining several hundred thousand and the brother getting five years.

The course of that case had two unexpected effects, other than the earning of a good commission. He found that he was hooked on the excitement of being in the real world and seriously playing a different person. He also found that he made a very good woman, so good, in fact, that men lusted after him and wanted that one thing he was not equipped to give. He did like all of the things that led towards that final act, though, as it was nice to be wanted, or even loved. As the years progressed he recovered lost items on a regular basis and amassed a sizable account, spending a large chunk of it when the house behind his apartment came up for sale and a fair bit more turning it into his headquarters.

The newspaper advertisement had given way to a website hidden behind a cascade of cut-out sites, each more untraceable and ending at a site that only he had access to. With it came the reputation and with that came the more interesting and dangerous recoveries. He had even worked for the government at times, mainly finding ‘lost’ plans or paperwork. He had taken up training with various guns with the pretence of just liking the sport and had also undertaken many courses in various unarmed combat regimes ‘for the exercise’. He never took on revenge cases and never met the client unless he was in another character and acting as a cut-out. In truth, he, alone, was the business.

After clearing up his lunch dishes he went back down to the secret basement to look at what he had got out of the safe. Before handling anything on the table he put a face mask and a pair of latex gloves on. He had not touched any of it with his bare hands last night and did not intend to now. The money was straightforward, five bundles of fifties with each bundle adding up to a thousand. Except the one he had used to pay the taxi driver. The numbers were all consecutive and it would be an easy thing for anyone to tell their bank that they had been robbed and to look out for the numbers within the range. It was not foolproof but, then again, it wasn’t meant to be anything other than proof that he had been in the ‘victims’ apartment.

He took another hundred from the bundle and carefully put it into an envelope taken from a pack he had purchased from a department store. This he put into a plastic bag for the moment. The rest of the money he put into another plastic bag and sealed it before putting it in a paper sack. He then turned his attention to the yellow envelope. It had the seal and it was not his usual practise to look at what he had recovered. This one, however, needed more scrutiny.

Using tweezers to handle it he put it on a strong lightbox which only showed that it contained one or two pieces of folded paper. There was a tiny part of the flap which was not glued down, as usual with all envelopes. He had a tiny camera usually used in micro-surgery which he carefully pushed into the gap. Holding the envelope vertical and pushing slightly to make it bellow a bit he fed the camera into it while looking at the TV screen. The tiny light was good enough to read anything on the papers but he was not surprised to see that they were blank. He did, however, make sure that he examined every part of the paper with the camera and was rewarded with a mark on one corner that looked out of place. The mark looked like a smear of shit or chocolate.

He captured the image from a couple of directions and then put a long cotton bud in the gap and took a sample of the smear, placing the bud into a sterile evidence bag. He took his camera out and put the envelope into another plastic bag after also photographing the seal. Searching through his various data bases he discovered that the seal was one that had last been used over seventy years ago by the Godfather of the Galimbarro Family. It had been a very dangerous crime syndicate that all of the law enforcement fraternity had thought became extinct with the death of the Godfather around the time his favourite films were being shown.

The fee for recovery was, as usual, transferred to an account before he took on the job, only to be transferred a few more times before ending up in a Swiss numbered account. His instructions had been for him to leave the envelope in the left- luggage at the main railway station this evening. He had been given the locker number and the access code. His bonus was waiting for him there, he had been told. This was one fact that triggered the feeling of danger as he usually designated the drop-off at a place of his own choosing.

They would expect a female after viewing the camera video so he would have to dress again, but not as Samantha this time. He had been playing with a new female character and a couple of hours later his version of Carmen Miranda left the basement apartment in the next street and sauntered a block or two as if out for a stroll, before hailing a taxi that dropped her near an underground station. Ten minutes later she rose from the platform under the main station and wandered into the concourse where the left-luggage lockers were.

She looked as if she was checking the timetables but was actually checking the surroundings for an ambush. She reckoned that she had seen at least two guys who looked a little out of place. Out of their sight she found her patsy, a lad who looked as if he was looking for pockets to pick or bags to snatch. He was surprised when she told him that he could earn a couple of hundred with a couple of minutes work. She took the envelope out of her bag with her gloved hand, pointed out the locker number and code and said that all he had to do was to put the envelope in the locker and close it again. There was, she said, money in the locker which was his to keep. She gave him two envelopes, the yellow one and one with the notes clearly visible.

She watched from a distance as the lad went to the lockers and opened one and only left as shouting and gunfire erupted, going quietly down to the underground platform to take a couple of random trains before heading for a bar where she knew she would find someone in need of a little companionship, pulling the small coloured foam pieces that looked like fruit off the hat on the way and dumping them in trash cans as she passed.

Marianne G © 2021