V Is for Vengeance

know what stayed my hand. Only that I hesitated. This is how I experience the Aha! moment on the occasions when they occur. In the back of my mind, I carried the imprint of Dodie’s whispering because she believed her place was bugged. I’d apparently juxtaposed that worry with the recollection of the fellow waxing his car in the driveway that runs between my bungalow and the one next door. It seemed curious at the time but not alarming. What lingered was the image of the hose. As far as I knew, no one had moved in, so who was the guy? More important, how had he managed to wash and wax his car with the water turned off?
    I got up and peered out the window. He was long gone and I didn’t see any unfamiliar cars parked on the block. I took the penlight from my shoulder bag and instead of using the front door, I let myself out the back and moved between the two bungalows. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. While there was still ample daylight, the space was in shadow. I scanned the roofline for wires. I shone a light into the crawl space under the building. I reached the faucet where the hose had been neatly recoiled. Above the spigot was the window that looked into one end of my kitchenette. I looked down. In the wall, there was an aluminum mount with something affixed to it by means of a wing-nut. I hunkered and let the light play over the device. The pickup unit was a vibration-sensing contact mike of the sort I’d seen at the local electronics store. A hole had been drilled through the siding and the mike installed between the studs. The amplifier, transmitter, and recorder were concealed in a wall-mounted box that looked like something a utility company would insist on your using and then charge extra for. This type of surveillance equipment was limited, but it was cheap and easy to acquire. I didn’t think Len was concerned about the legalities. Whatever intelligence he gathered wouldn’t be used in a court of law. It was intended for his ears only.
    I returned to the office and crawled along the baseboard on my hands and knees. The technician (doubtless a cop in Len’s personal posse) had miscalculated the depth of the wall, and I could see a tiny point in the drywall where the probe had come close to breaking through. My first impulse was to go back and rip out the wires, or at the very least, find a way to short the connection. I considered my options and decided it was better to leave it where it was so that Len would imagine he had access to my private conversations.
    I gave myself the rest of the day off. I couldn’t work in circumstances where everything I said might be monitored. This meant phone conversations would be impossible and any walk-in clients—few and far between as they were—would have to be removed to a separate location to discuss their business. This would not make a good impression. With the water off, I couldn’t flush the toilet or wash my hands. Aside from that, I still felt like crap, and since I wasn’t being paid for the pain and suffering, I decided to bag it. Once home, I searched my apartment for bugs and when fully convinced the place was clean, I went to Rosie’s, where I drank bad wine and ate a Hungarian dish I couldn’t pronounce. This was getting on my nerves and I wondered if I’d have to find another place to hang out. Nah, probably not.
    By morning, I felt restored. I took Len’s threat seriously enough that I decided to avoid the topic of Audrey Vance from that point forward. I should probably have been ashamed of my cowardice, but I was not. I resolved to mind my own business as Cheney Phillips had cautioned me. This determination lasted the whole of the drive to the office. I wasn’t sure what to do about the bug in my wall, but I knew I’d figure it out. I parked in a generous spot and patted myself on the back for my good fortune. I was on my way up the front steps when a car came around the corner and pulled into the spot behind mine. Diana Alvarez got out. At the sight of her, I jumped as though I’d touched a live electrical wire. I thought about fleeing, but she’d wedged her nifty white Corvette into the space behind my Mustang, parking so close to my rear fender that I couldn’t have pulled away from the curb without inching forward and back, shifting from drive to reverse fifteen times, which would have been humiliating for someone bent on escape. I was also inhibited by the fact that she had a young woman with her. Perhaps, not