CHAPTER 30
When Brian and Gregory left the police station, the rock guitarist asked the gathered mass patiently waiting outside to disperse for the sake of peace; he will make a statement when he feels better, and he won’t be taking questions at this time. The detective, also promising to answer questions in the future as soon as he learned more about Amy Winehouse, escorted the musician back to his rear room in the hospital, spoke to him for a few minutes, then stepped out for lunch.
Casually walking up Mill Hill Road towards Patty’s Egg Nest around noon, he saw Tony and Eddie coming towards him.
“Hey, partner,” he greeted his young assistant. “Eddie,” he said, acknowledging the 50’s era singer/guitarist.
“Sorry I couldn’t get with you earlier,” Tony apologized. “Something important came up.”
“Yeah,” the PI nodded, sneaking a glance at Eddie. “I figured as much.”
“We’re off to petition the court for a transfer,” the Latino-Korean informed him.
“Where to?” Gregory wondered.
“Painters and Artists,” Eddie answered.
“Do you have enough credits?” the PI asked.
“We spent the whole morning cleaning up Cumby’s, repairing the traps, greens and divots as best as we could at the golf course, and punching out the dents in Laura Branigan’s cart,” Tony replied.
“Is that who it belongs to?” Gregory asked.
“Yeah,” Eddie replied. “She’s a 10-handicapper who broke 100 at Torrey!” he added, enthusiastically.
“Really!” the PI rebutted in a way that obviously showed he had no clue what the Cumby’s clerk was talking about.
“How’s the investigation going?” the young PI inquired of his mentor.
“It’s going,” Gregory retorted. “Pretty tiring without you, though.”
“Maybe I should go by myself,” Eddie suggested.
“No,” his detective friend negated. “I guess I just wasn’t up for this investigative stuff.”
“I’m not asking you to stay, Tony,” the elder PI said. “You’re young. You two have fun. I got this.”
“Are you sure?” the novice D asked.
Gregory put his left hand on Tony’s right shoulder and his right hand on Eddie’s left shoulder. “Let me know how Painters and Artists goes from time to time.”
“Sure,” Tony said.
“Did you two eat already?” the seasoned detective asked. “I was just headed to Patty’s.”
“Yeah, we did,” Eddie answered.
“Then I’ll see you two around,” the PI said as he took off.
“You think he’s mad at you?” Eddie C asked his buddy.
“He’ll be all right,” Tony hoped. “Let’s go.”
The pair of 21-year olds entered the police station a few minutes after their impromptu meeting with Angelicus. Drasovya, the sergeant Gregory joked was Nosferatu’s doppelgänger, was sitting behind the desk filling out some papers. Two angels, one in red and the other in black, were sitting in the nearby office conversing – observable because the door was half-open.
“Excuse me,” Eddie began as the boys approached Drasovya. “We’d like to petition.”
“Where to this time?” the sergeant asked jadedly, already familiar with the musician’s frequent excursions.
“Painters and Artists,” the Gretsch slinger answered.
“It’s one or the other,” Drasovya informed him.
Eddie looked puzzled. “Really?” he asked the sergeant. “They’re not together anymore?”
The anorexic officer shook his head. “There was constant friction because the 2D artists, the painters, were seen as being consistently inebriated or showed little respect for the importance of high art. They said the 3D artists, the sculptors, forgot the true meaning of art with their emphasis on commercialism and pathetic realizations. Anyway, it became so contentious that they split. Best thing anyway because having too many people was taxing for their meager water supply.”
“But it was working out so nice,” Eddie reckoned.
“It was,” the sergeant agreed, “but now illustrators, cartographers, animators and architects remained in Painters; sculptors, marble and wood carvers, glass blowers, and potters returned to Artists’. At least both worlds are side by side, joined together by a foot bridge.”
“So, we’ll go to Painters, then,” Eddie said. “Lemmy Kilmister gave me the address of someone there.”
The sergeant turned and retrieved two blank sheets of bond paper and placed one of each in front of the couple. Eddie, already familiar with the drill, planted his right palm on his sheet; Tony, observing the ritual, placed his palm on his sheet. A quick flash of blue light shot up from the paper around the outline of their hands. Eddie then removed his hand and Tony followed suit.
“What was that?” the elementary PI asked his friend.
“Watch,” Eddie counseled him, eyeing the palmed sheets.
The sergeant held up each paper for the duo to see. As before, it was completely white, devoid of any markings or hint that it had just emitted blue light. Then, Tony watched in amazement as lines of legalese in black ink slowly appeared on each sheet.
“Wow,” he whispered, his eyebrows raised. “That’s hot.”
“Your petition has been approved,” Drasovya said, handing the passes to the boys who watched as each sheet went back to being sclera white. “Show him where the transfer station is,” he said, turning to Eddie.
“No problem,” the Cumby’s clerk nodded. “Let’s amscray,” he said to his companion.
Taking the staircase to the basement, they walked straight down the middle of the poorly-lit aisle, passing closed doors along the way. Finally, halfway now the hall, Eddie stopped in front of a double door that looked like it was hand-crafted by an award-winning wood cutter.
“This is it,” he said.
Opening both doors, the duo stepped in. Tony tried to absorb all that was before him – a spacious hotel lobby complete with decorative, well-placed mats over the wooden floor, crystal chandeliers, marbled water fountains, and huge virtual TV screens on almost every wall, silently broadcasting scenes of waterfalls, forests, clouded skies and other natural phenomena. Some people were milling about in different corners of the suite, while others were relaxing on soft, comfortable chairs. The boys approached the long, curved desk sitting roughly 20’ away.
“Good afternoon,” the coolly attired, elderly, gray-haired woman in a blue & green block-print embroidered tunic at the front desk greeted them. “Waiting for an arrival?”
“No,” Eddie said then handed her his blank petition. “Traveling.”
“Oh,” she nodded, accepting his pass. Tony handed her his sheet as well.
As legalese reappeared on each form, the woman’s eyes lit up as she commenced reading them. “Painters!” she extolled. “I haven’t been there in years.”
“Are you an angel?” Tony asked her.
“Yes,” she answered. “I’ve been assigned here, let’s see, for about 4,650 years. Give or take a few years. I’ve lost count.”
“Wow,” the astonished young PI blurted.
Just then, in the wall just behind the left side of the desk – from the boys’ perspective, that is – a wooden door, which wasn’t noticeable before, appeared and slid upwards into the casing, revealing a room flooded with multi-colored lights as well as floating, randomly-directed, multi-colored polyhedrons of light ranging in size from children’s playing marbles to softballs.
“Have a nice trip,” she waved to them.
“Thanks,” Eddie said then moseyed towards the room. Tony, slightly nervous, hesitated momentarily then proceeded towards the lights, reaching his hand out to touch the floating, multi-sided orbs which simply passed right through his limbs undetectably.
“It’ll be okay,” the blond guitarist promised. “I do this all the time.”
“Next stop,” Tony guessed, “Painters Heaven?”
“Next stop,” Eddie said a
s they crossed the threshold, “Painters Heaven.”
FWIP!
One second after the boys got absorbed into the lights, the door slid back down and disappeared into the wall, leaving no sign that a portal had just been breached.