Just as I was about to join her, I saw something moving through the basement window. “Wait,” I said.
Chloe spun back to face me. “What?”
“There’s somebody there.”
“Don’t fuck with me, K.”
“I’m serious.”
Chloe walked back over to the gate and the two of us stared through the bars into the basement.
Through gaps in the posters, we were able to make out parts of a black-and-white harlequin-patterned tile floor, and numerous stacks of books and filing boxes. There was light, coming from a source located somewhere in the back of the room, that dimly illuminated the front section of the store.
Something moved in the far-right-hand corner of the window.
“It’s a cat, K,” Chloe said.
“It definitely wasn’t a cat,” I insisted—just as a black-and-white cat jumped up onto one of the stacks of books that lined the other side of the window and began licking its paws.
Chloe shook her head. “Let’s go.”
“I swear, it was bigger than a cat,” I said and leaned forward to get a better look into the dimly lit basement.
“Fine. I’ll hop over and knock,” Chloe said as she started climbing up the iron gate.
“That’s not a great idea,” said a disembodied voice.
“Fuck,” Chloe exclaimed, so startled by the sudden sound that she almost fell.
“What are you doing?” the voice asked.
I followed the sound to a small speaker located next to the basement door.
“I know it sounds ridiculous,” I said, “but we’re looking for somebody named Fatman.”
There was a long silence before a door opened behind the gate and a thin middle-aged man wearing a pink-and-blue faded Beverly Hills, 90210 T-shirt and gray sweatpants—not the kind that one might acceptably wear out in the world—stepped outside. He was holding a large medieval-looking crossbow, which was locked and loaded and pointed directly at my chest.
“It’s not ridiculous, it’s ironic,” he said, looking up at Chloe dangling precariously from the top of the metal gate.
“Is that a fucking crossbow?” Chloe asked.
“We come in peace,” I added as Fatman lowered his crossbow and unlocked the gate, which swung open with a slow comedic creak, Chloe still attached.
I helped Chloe down and the two of us followed Fatman inside.
* * *
—
Fatman’s office wasn’t exactly messy, but it was definitely filled to capacity. Narrow makeshift paths had been fashioned between countless rows of bookshelves, cabinets, and desks. A closer look at the shelves, however, revealed order beneath the chaos. Although each shelf had been crammed full of books and printed materials of all kinds, everything appeared to be arranged in alphabetical order.
The ceiling was low, and the fluorescent lights gave the place the vibe of an old newsroom from the seventies. Movie posters covered a couple of the walls: The Usual Suspects, Pulp Fiction, and The Rescuers Down Under, to name just a few.
Enormous tattered blood-red curtains, which looked like they’d been taken from the set of a late-night talk show from the sixties, covered the entire back wall.
Whatever the hell this guy was doing down here, it looked like he’d been doing it for a very long time.
“You’re the girl from the Magician’s office,” Fatman said as he closed and locked the door behind us.
“That sounds like a Lisbeth Salander vehicle,” Chloe said, smiling.
Fatman ignored her joke. “How did you find me?”
Either he wasn’t familiar with Stieg Larsson or he didn’t think Chloe was all that funny. I thought her line was actually pretty good.
“The sign,” I said.
He looked over at the bottom of the neon sign visible in the window and smiled. “Smart,” he said. “That’s smart.”
He led us deeper into the large office, and as he maneuvered around a couple of narrow bookshelves, I noticed he limped a little.
“Fell off a camel,” he said, as if that was the most mundane way in the world to injure your leg.
“Really?” I asked.
Fatman ignored my question and sat down in an old wooden rolling chair across from an unfortunate brownish-green couch. With the crossbow on his lap, he motioned for the two of us to sit. Then he looked at us over his thick black-framed glasses. “So, who are you people?”
“I’m K,” I said, sinking deeper into the old sofa with a long creak.
He slowly nodded and turned to Chloe.