• Killer Tim
    • Part 2: Three's a Problem
    • Part 3: Ninth Avenue
    • Part 4: Peru Avenue
    • Part 5: Toast
    • Part 6: Mrs. Pellegrini
    • Part 7: Charlie
    • Part 8: 2D
    • Part 9: Smith
    • Part 10: Cece
    • Part 11: Quarter Moon
    • Part 12: Interview
    • Part 13: Mieke
    • Part 14: 2D Ex
    • Part 15: Logs
    • Part 16: Steiner
    • Part 17: Number Five
    • Part 18: Cold
    • Part 19: Intern
    • Part 20: Coffee
    • Part 21: Sloth
    • Part 22: Tennessee Street
    • Part 23: Error-correcting Code
    • Part 24: Villa Lobos
    • Part 25: Entrance
    • Part 26: Cloak
    • Part 27: Meeting
    • Part 28: Fog
    • Part 29: Boodle
    • Part 30: Drafted
    • Part 31: Domino
    • Part 32: Quartet
    • Part 33: Skippy
    • Part 34: Blisflix
    • Part 35: Billikin
    • Part 36: Chronicle
    • Part 37: Sutro Heights
    • Part 38: Conference
  • Third Sons
    • November 1959
    • December 1889
    • December 1930
    • April 1890
    • December 1959
    • August 1964
    • June 1890
    • January 1967
    • March 1931
    • January 1967, continued
    • September 1898
    • November 1898
    • Winter/Spring 1943
    • January 1974
    • April 1899
    • January 1974, continued
    • October 1899
    • March 1944
    • November 1899
    • January/February 1974
    • June 1900
    • April 1886
    • June 1900, continued
    • October 1945
    • March 1974
    • May 1901
  • Else
    • O'Jitterys Catch a Movie
    • Winnie the Publican
    • Interview with the Alien
    • Gibberal doggerish
    • Dialog
    • Story
  • Mandolinoleum
  • About
  • Contact
Dennis Richard O'Reilly
Killer Tim, part 8: 2D

...Bar toe low mayo. Bairn ergo, Beer to Lucy.... 

Bump--. A vibration, barely palpable, interrupts Tim's word flow. A sound follows. A voice, thinks Deuce, just perceptible. Tim doesn't need to look at the clock to know it's quarter past 9 p.m. 2D's boyfriend, he thinks.

2D is Karen Mieke, her last name pronounced with two syllables: "Like Mikey," she said when Tim first met her nearly two years before. Tim has seen the boyfriend three times in three weeks, each time arm-in-arm with 2D, entering or leaving the building. Tim grabs his coat.

As Tim expected, 2D's boyfriend walks past Tim's apartment door, down the stairs, and out the front door. Tim pictures his route to the bar.

Of course he's going to a bar, thinks Tim. One near his apartment downtown. Tim knows none of this for a fact. Yet it's so, in some sense. The 1 California, thinks Tim as he puts on his jacket. Next bus heading east comes in three minutes. 2D's boyfriend will get off at Polk St.

Tim grabs his hat and exits the apartment. I can walk to Polk in 10 minutes, he thinks. Down the front steps, and on flows the syllabary.

Anna Dounday, drove a blue Chevrolet, bide awee, by duh bay, bored a burlin', forty churlin: Monte, Merlin, Gretchen, Berwyn, Bentley, Turpin, Chursty, Bergen, a grin and a grain and aground about midnight it crawed in my japing mawdylane, off sight, ere long of teeth. 

Dursty, urya? Perch ur bircher durn uppern da broondleburst let first ye curst ye worsty. Retcha rodham dolor, baudleroidachromalography....


------------------------------------

As he walks east on Bush, Tim calculates 2D boyfriend's bar time: drink one, 30 seconds; drink two, 12 minutes; drink three, 30 minutes.

Ten minutes after he leaves his apartment, Tim stands at a bus stop on Polk. Three bars are within sight. 2D boyfriend's in one of them. Tim has a half-hour to wait for 2D boyfriend to finish his third drink. No bus is due before then. A patrol car passes. Tim ignores it.

Twenty-seven minutes later, 2D boyfriend walks out of the bar furthest from the bus stop where Tim is standing. He heads straight for Tim. Tim shrinks into himself in the shadow of the open bus shelter. 2D boyfriend walks by him, passing within two feet, and barely notices him.

Twenty seconds after 2D boyfriend passes him, Tim turns around and follows him south down Polk. He turns east on O'Farrell. Tim slows down. He's walking fast for a guy with three drinks in him, thinks Tim. Cautiously rounding the corner, he sees on the ground a cashless wallet.

Tim doesn't have to look inside the wallet to know its cash has been removed. He turns around and walks west on O'Farrell toward Van Ness. Something troubles Tim about 2D boyfriend. As he crosses Van Ness, he thinks, not because he's a thief. Thieves are plain lazy, not evil.

Not necessarily evil, Tim adds. He wouldn't normally care about a tenant's personal life. But 2D, she's.... What? Special? No, in danger. Tim senses 2D's peril more than he knows it. That troubles Tim too. He feels the urge to act with an incomplete information set. That's odd.

Tim pauses when he reaches Post and Gough. It's too late to surveil tonight, but it's too early to go home. He looks north up Gough Street.

Tim recalls a name on Detective Blisflix's list: Jonah Cary Siebert, a thief with an evil streak a mile wide. Kidnapper, torturer, arsonist. Jonah Siebert's last known address was an apartment on Lombard and Octavia. Tim could be there in 10 minutes, well before the bars close.

Tim walks on the east side of Gough, where drivers are less likely to spot him. Karen Mieke of apartment 2D and her boyfriend are forgotten.

Forgotten temporarily -- at least until the word stream dries up. As he walks up the hill between Sacramento and Clay, Tim opens the tap.

Nancy Nepenthe drove to San Clemente to hear what the men said the day they welt away alorn and flued like a pile of stewed tomatoes on rye. Minisakes allude to replonition of dissoltry sort a time or two by sea by so by la tea docents you went away you say to fail allay so fur. Lee Hurley wound out early skepped and swirly sorely you can't be Serrions sorn by the snide of the toad on a wait for the Belgian panic....

Part 9: Smith

Part 1: Tim
Part 2: Three's a Problem
Part 3: Ninth Avenue
Part 4: Peru Avenue
Part 5: Toast
Part 6: Mrs. Pellegrini
Part 7: Charlie
Part 8: 2D
Part 9: Smith
Part 10: Cece
Part 11: Quarter Moon
Part 12: Interview
Part 13: Mieke
Part 14: 2D Ex
Part 15: Logs
Part 16: Steiner
Part 17: Number Five
Part 18: Cold
Part 19: Intern
Part 20: Coffee
Part 21: Sloth
Part 22: Tennessee Street
Part 23: Error-correcting Code
Part 24: Villa Lobos
Part 25: Entrance
Part 26: Cloak
Part 27: Meeting
Part 28: Fog

Part 29: Bootle
​Part 30: Drafted
​Part 31: Domino
Part 32: Quartet
Part 33: Skippy
Part 34: Blisflix
Part 35: Billikin
Part 36: Chronicle
Part 37: Sutro Heights
Part 38: Conference

​Copyright 2020 by Dennis Richard O'Reilly -- all rights reserved
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  • Killer Tim
    • Part 2: Three's a Problem
    • Part 3: Ninth Avenue
    • Part 4: Peru Avenue
    • Part 5: Toast
    • Part 6: Mrs. Pellegrini
    • Part 7: Charlie
    • Part 8: 2D
    • Part 9: Smith
    • Part 10: Cece
    • Part 11: Quarter Moon
    • Part 12: Interview
    • Part 13: Mieke
    • Part 14: 2D Ex
    • Part 15: Logs
    • Part 16: Steiner
    • Part 17: Number Five
    • Part 18: Cold
    • Part 19: Intern
    • Part 20: Coffee
    • Part 21: Sloth
    • Part 22: Tennessee Street
    • Part 23: Error-correcting Code
    • Part 24: Villa Lobos
    • Part 25: Entrance
    • Part 26: Cloak
    • Part 27: Meeting
    • Part 28: Fog
    • Part 29: Boodle
    • Part 30: Drafted
    • Part 31: Domino
    • Part 32: Quartet
    • Part 33: Skippy
    • Part 34: Blisflix
    • Part 35: Billikin
    • Part 36: Chronicle
    • Part 37: Sutro Heights
    • Part 38: Conference
  • Third Sons
    • November 1959
    • December 1889
    • December 1930
    • April 1890
    • December 1959
    • August 1964
    • June 1890
    • January 1967
    • March 1931
    • January 1967, continued
    • September 1898
    • November 1898
    • Winter/Spring 1943
    • January 1974
    • April 1899
    • January 1974, continued
    • October 1899
    • March 1944
    • November 1899
    • January/February 1974
    • June 1900
    • April 1886
    • June 1900, continued
    • October 1945
    • March 1974
    • May 1901
  • Else
    • O'Jitterys Catch a Movie
    • Winnie the Publican
    • Interview with the Alien
    • Gibberal doggerish
    • Dialog
    • Story
  • Mandolinoleum
  • About
  • Contact