Excerpt from "Swann's Last Song" by Charles Salzberg

I have no illusions left, or at least none that I'm aware of. I had them, like everyone else, but I lost them a long time ago. I don't worry much about abstracts anymore. I try not to ponder too much on the order of the universe, or worry about the nature of man. Philosophy is for college students, bartenders and cab drivers, and I am none of these.

What I am is a skip tracer. A dozen years ago, when I first stumbled into the business, I used to tell people I was in security or maybe, when I was particularly impressed with myself and feeling the least bit romantic, a private investigator. But I got tired of all the questions and the queer looks and inevitable misapprehensions and so, just about the time I lost all my illusions which, unsurprisingly coincided with the death of my wife, I started calling myself what I'd actually turned into—a run-of-the-mill skip tracer, which is nothing more than a glorified collection man. Skip tracer. It made me sound like I worked in a factory, or at some menial, assembly-line job, which is how I felt most of the time. I put in my eight to twelve hours a day, most of it spent casing a car, looking for the best time to pounce, and then either heading home, or making a beeline for the nearest bar, whichever happened to be closer.

That was my life: No delusions, no pride, no romantic notions of what the future might bring, and absolutely no sense of the great adventure of life. But all that was due to change.

I was sitting in my office up on 156th street and Broadway, right smack in the middle of the poor and huddled masses, which is usually whose business paid the bills.

My feet were propped up on my desk and I was bending a paperclip into all kinds of weird, semi-erotic positions. Frankly, I was far more interested in the flexibility of that particular paperclip than in what my prospective client seated in front of me was saying. She was a middle-aged, burnt-out black woman wearing an ill-fitting curly, auburn wig. Smelling of a mixture of Ajax foaming cleanser and ammonia, wearing an old cloth coat, her stockings rolled up at the knees, she was clutching a black purse and an Associated Food shopping bag filled with essential snack items like Doritos and Slim Jims, a sawed off black umbrella, and a rumpled copy of the Daily News. In short she was, like most of my clients, a woman very familiar with the social service system of this fine city. She was trying to wheedle me into working for her, but her story was a tired one and frankly, I was having a little trouble staying awake. Her husband, number three, I think, had just skipped, taking with him the family fortune, consisting of $186, a gold ring—or so she said—and a diamond brooch, which was more likely zirconium. She wanted me to find him. Like I'm some kind of magician. Fact is, I hated those kinds of skip trace numbers. They were a royal pain in the ass. I even preferred repoing cars, which was how I spent most of my time. Cars you either find parked out on the street, or stashed away in some garage. People can be anywhere. They move around. First they're here and then, soon as you shine a light on them, they're gone. And once they disappear they usually don't resurface until they're found lying face down in the gutter with a snootful of T-bird in their bellies. Or maybe after they've pulled some two-bit, dumb-ass heist and wind up taking a city paid trip out to Riker's Island. Did I have to make a living this way? You bet. Which is why I came up with a rule that unfortunately the majority of us, me included, usually choose to ignore: What's lost is best forgotten.

The pitch was over and now we were getting to the kicker: she wanted to pay me off in food stamps. Can you believe it? Now what the hell was I going to do with a couple hundred bucks worth of orange stamps? Which is exactly why I had that specially printed sign plastered up there on my wall: "Food Stamps Unacceptable As Payment." I got the sign printed up because up here they'll try anything, and this certainly wasn't the first time someone had tried to buy my services with a handful of government stamps. Nor would it be the last. I could just see myself waltzing into the neighborhood bodega and trying to pay for a cup of coffee and a buttered roll with a fistful of those orange stamps. A fine specimen like me. "Hey, cracker," they'd say, "what'sa matter, ain't you got no job? Ha! Ha! Ha!" I would be forced to say something stupid like, “Fuck you, man,” and then I’d have to find another place to forage for breakfast.

But then, signs mean nothing to people. They walk when it says, "Don't Walk," and they smoke when it says, "Don't Smoke," so naturally they're going to try to pay me off with food stamps when it says, "Food Stamps Unacceptable As Payment." But I suppose I shouldn't complain. It's that very human trait, the urge to break the rules, the need to get over on someone, that keeps me in business.

Still, Minnie or Millie, or whatever the hell her name was, was one tough customer. She didn't want to take no for an answer. And so we were well into Round 2 when there was this gentle, almost imperceptible knock at the door. At first I thought maybe it was just the rattle of the pipes, but there it came again.

"Come in," I shouted, over the din of a jackhammer pounding relentlessly outside my window. The door opened slowly and in walked a woman who looked like she just stepped out of the pages of Vogue or some other snazzy fashion glossy. She was wearing a gray, fitted suit that stopped just above her knees and black stockings. Figuring she was lost, looking for who knew what, I said, "Something I can do for you?”