Home, sweet home.

Stella is my building. She was originally named "Stellar Apartments" back in the sixties. By the time I bought her, she was so vandalized and covered with graffiti that the only part of the sign that was still legible was the word Stella. The first that I did when I bought her was to tear down the original sign and replace it with chrome lettering. Now it still just reads Stella, but it's much more attractive than it used to be. She's got two floors; five apartments on either floor. My office takes up two of the one-bedroom apartments on the ground floor. I live in the two-bedrooms across the hall, and Percy in the unit next to mine. The second floor is vacant; has been for a few years now.
On my roof there's a boxed garden. If I get out of this mess, I was thinking of building a greenhouse so I can have my tomatoes and peppers year round. Vegetables can get expensive in the city, and hot house tomatoes have no taste anyway.
The garden itself was built by the previous owner. Stella's on the corner facing east and south, so she gets plenty of sunshine. I'm rambling.
When I got back to the office,, I found Percy sifting through online clothing stores; looking for that piece of gothic gold. Did I mention that Percy is a goth kid? Percy is the kind of Goth kid that makes emos step back and say, "Whoa; man." He only ever wears Victorian fashion; riding boots, tails, ruffles, and scarves. He always looks like he just stepped off the set of A Christmas Carol. He even has a silk top hat that he likes to bust out on occasion.
I put my spy kit on the desk in front of him, staggered over to the slightly ratty leather couch in the living room and dropped heavily into it.
I didn't mean for it to be the first thing out of my mouth, but it was. I said, "I ran into Cynthia tonight."
Percy immediately stopped clicking the mouse, swiveled to face me, and said, "The Cynthia? The girl that you've been pining over for over ten years? The one person in this world that might have a chance to get you to stop drinking?"
I raised my weary, bleary eyes to him and said, "Yeah, that's the one."
He pushed himself away from the desk in my direction and leaned in with his hands on his knees saying, "How did that go?"
"She's working as a bartender at Victoria's club."
When I didn't say anything further, Percy slapped the back of my head and said, "Is that all? Come on."
Percy may not look like it, but he's a fighter and I didn't feel like having a tussle, so I suppressed the urge to hit him back and said, "What else do you want? She's working ass a bartender in a strip club and living in Russel. We had a nice conversation and I did my fucking job."
Do you know that look that girls get when they know you're holding out on them? Percy donned that visage and said, "Are you serious? Are you really going to tell me that you didn't even get her phone number?"
I was drunk. I so did not feel like talking about much of anything, but I knew that Percy would not let me go to bed until he at least had a summary of what went on with me and Cynthia. I took out my phone, tossed it to Percy and said, "She put her number in my phone and made me promise to call her."
Percy quickly looked up Cynthia's number and wrote it down on a rolodex card saying, "Are you going to?"
Rubbing my temples, I said, "I'll think about it."
This earned me another smack to the back of the head; harder than the last one.
"Think, nothing! If you don't call this girl, I will, and I'll fill her in on every intimate detail of the last decade."
I knew Percy was serious. I also knew what would happen if he was the one to tell /Cynthia about my life to date. Visions of flying rolling pins danced through my head for a moment. I closed my eyes and said, "I'll call her on Monday."
Percy tossed my phone on the couch and said, "How was the party?"
I glanced over tat my spy kit and said, "There's a few faces on there that need to disappear. You'll know when you see them. Call Bobby and tell him that he'll have everything he needs. There was more than enough gash being hashed at that party to give an old Irish Catholic a heart attack."
Percy nodded and set about uploading the video on the computer. I never was much for the technical side of detective work. It's a good thing that I've got Percy or I'd be completely adrift.
I pulled Punch's card from my pocket and tossed it on the table saying, "We need to call this guy tomorrow. He's an accountant for the Malloys."
Percy snatched up the card and said, "Punch? Like fruit punch?"
I smiled and said, "You should be so lucky. I really have no idea. Victoria gave me his card and said that he would bring us a stack of job apps."
Percy tucked Punch's card in a sleeve on the rolodex and asked, "Did anything else interesting happen tonight?"
I told him about Tommy and Katsumi, making note that she said nothing about my eyes. It's a rare thing when someone doesn't mention them.
I told Percy that I had a meeting with Benny, and that I would be taking care of the business with Punch. The last thing I remember before nodding off on the couch was Percy saying something about detective Ruiz, dinner, and Thursday.