The Marlowe Room

The door closed behind me. Softly. Expensive places have doors that close softly. Cheap places announce every arrival with a squeak, slam, or bell. At The Marlowe Room, apparently, even the doors knew how to keep secrets.

I stood in the entrance. Dark wood. White tablecloths. Low lights. A piano somewhere in the corner. The sort of place where everybody looked expensive and nobody seemed particularly happy about it.

A waiter approached. “Mr. Nine Lives?” I’d been inside eleven seconds. Already they knew my name. I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or concerned. I settled on both.

“This way.” He led me toward the back. That’s when I saw Gear. The big cat stood beside a curved booth beneath a brass wall lamp. He’d traded yesterday’s leather jacket for a dark suit. It didn’t make him look friendlier. It made him look like someone had taught a brick wall how to tie a necktie.

Gear nodded. “Detective.”

“Gear.”

“Mr. Marlowe is waiting.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“It shouldn’t be.”

At least we understood each other.

Dominic Marlowe

A chimp sat alone in the booth. Brown suit. Open collar. Gold chain. Cigar between two fingers. He didn’t stand. “Nick Nine Lives.”

“Dominic Marlowe.”

“Dom.” He gestured toward the opposite side of the booth. I sat.

A waiter appeared immediately. “Drink?”

“Coffee.”

Dom stared at me. “Coffee?”

“I like to stay alert around people who send Gear to threaten me.”

Behind me, Gear remained perfectly still. Dom laughed. Not the polite laugh businessmen use when someone important makes a bad joke. A real laugh. “I didn’t send Gear to threaten you.”

I glanced toward Gear. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“I sent Gear to warn you.”

“There’s a difference?”

“A threat tells you what I’m going to do.”

Dom took a slow pull from the cigar. “A warning tells you what somebody else might.”

That changed things. Not much. But enough.

Warehouse 17

I put the black matchbook on the table. Dom looked at it. “Souvenir?”

“Found it at Pier 17.”

“I know.”

That bothered me. “How?”

“Because we’re having this conversation.”

Fair enough. I pulled out the newspaper clipping. Thirty years old.

HARBOR WAREHOUSE DESTROYED BY FIRE.

Dom didn’t look at it. Just like Gear hadn’t. “You know what this says.”

“Everybody in Midnight Harbor knows what it says.”

“Only one shipment was never recovered.”

“That’s what the newspaper reported.”

“What was it?”

Dom smiled. “If I knew that, detective, you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

Finally. Something I believed. “Your family owned warehouses.”

“Several.”

“Did they own 17?”

“No.”

“Did you use it?”

Dom’s smile disappeared. There it was. A question he didn’t like. Gear shifted behind me. Not much. Maybe half an inch. Still noticed.

Dom tapped ash into the tray. “You’ve been asking the wrong question, detective.”

“Everybody keeps telling me that.”

“Perhaps you should listen.”

He reached inside his jacket. Gear’s hand moved. Mine did too. Dom noticed. Smiled. Then pulled out a photograph. He slid it across the table. Black and white. Old. Edges curled. A warehouse stood near the harbor. Smoke poured from the roof. Three figures stood in the foreground. Too far away to identify. Across the back someone had written a single number. 17

I turned it over. “Where’d you get this?”

“My father.”

“Was he there?”

Dom didn’t answer. I studied the photograph again. Something was wrong. I couldn’t place it. “What’s the right question?”

Dom leaned across the table. Close enough that I could smell the cigar. “The fire happened thirty years ago.”

“I know.”

“Warehouse 17 disappeared before that.”

I stared at him. “What does that mean?”

“It means…” Dom leaned back. “…the city removed Warehouse 17 from its records three years before it burned.”

Now he had my attention. “Why?”

“That’s the question you should have been asking.”

The Photograph

I looked again. Warehouse. Smoke. Three figures. The number 17. Then I saw it. On the far edge of the photograph was another building. A warehouse. Its number was visible. 16.

I knew the harbor. I knew exactly where Warehouse 16 stood. And Warehouse 17 in the photograph wasn’t where the empty lot was today. It wasn’t even close.

I looked at Dom. “The warehouse moved?”

“No.”

“Then—”

“The number did.”

I stared at the photograph. The city hadn’t simply erased Warehouse 17. Someone had changed the map. “Why are you showing me this?”

Dom’s expression changed. For the first time since I’d arrived, the charm disappeared. “My father spent the last twenty years of his life trying to answer that question.”

“And?”

“He never did.”

“Maybe that’s why you want me to stop.”

Dom shook his head. “No, Nick.”

He stubbed out the cigar. “That’s why I wanted you here.”

Gear motioned. The meeting was over. I stood. Dom spoke once more. “And detective?”

I turned. “If you find out what was inside that warehouse…”

He paused. “…don’t tell anyone until you know why they wanted it forgotten.”

I slipped the photograph inside my coat. Outside, the fog had swallowed most of Midnight Harbor. For the first time since the blue envelope appeared on my desk, I understood something. I wasn’t investigating a warehouse fire. I was investigating why someone had rewritten a city. And that was a much bigger problem.

CASE STATUS: OPEN

To be continued…