Write Me a Letter (Vic Daniel Series)

by David Pierce

  Montreal . . . it has had a decent hockey team from time to time, I admit, not too surprising for a city that has only about three days of summer and an awful lot of ice the rest of the time. And when you've got that much ice, you can't put it all into highball cocktails, you have to skate on it and bowl on it and have horses race on it and fish through it and mush over it, it made me shiver just thinking about it. But Montreal in early April, maybe it would be spring up there by now, like it was in sensible places—I started rummaging through the wastepaper basket under the desk.

  "Now what'cha doin'?" said Sara.

  "Looking up what the temperature was yesterday in Montreal," I said. I dug out yesterday 's Herald and found the weather page, on which they always listed temperatures of major cities around the world, primarily to give Californians something to gloat about. "Guess what?"

  "What?"

  "Yesterday the mercury shot all the way up to thirty-eight in Montreal," I said. "That's almost a heat wave for them. The natives probably stripped down to their last parka."

  "What a sissy," she said. "Me, I don't mind the cold, I kinda dig it."

  "Who cares about you," I said. "It's me that's going to have to break the ice in the toilet bowl before I pee."

  "Me too," she said smugly.

  "No way," I said firmly.

  "Wanna bet?" she said. "You know so much about Montreal, bet I know something you don't."

  "Bet you don't," I said. "Bet you don't know anything about anything I don't, except maybe about things nobody knows about, like oracles."

  "What do they speak there?"

  "Aside from Eskimo, what do you think they speak, Hindustani? English and a little Français is what they speak."

  "No more English," said Miss Smarty with a namby-pamby air. "They passed this law. Everything's in French, all the street signs, all the directions, all store names, and you try speaking English in all but one or two areas and you get lynched."

  "Oh, come on," I said. "Where'd you get all this rubbish from? Anyway, even if it was true, what's it got to do with you? You don't speak any more French than I do and all I know is merci, merde, garçon, La Mayonnaise, and snails."

  "George does," she said. "And he is completely in my thrall, he won't go anywhere without me." The latter part of that statement was so ludicrously unimaginable that I ignored it and concentrated on the first part.

  "And how come Willing Boy parlez-vous all of a sudden?"

  "His mother was born there," she said. "In Quebec City, actually. She went back after her divorce and still lives there. And guess where George goes to visit every time he's got a few days off?"

  "Give me a hint," I said. "Does he pack his hockey stick and puck? But I'll be damned, I didn't know Willing Boy spoke anything but Hell's Angel."

  "There's lots about George you don't know," she said. "Guess what else."

  "I give up!" I said somewhat testily. "I suppose he speaks Russian, Finnish, Erse, Basque, and Chinese sign language, too."

  "He's an actor," the twerp said, with love in her voice, as if that was something to be proud of. "Or at least he's studying to be one."

  "So's half L.A.," I said. "The other half's writing screen plays. So what?"

  "So if you consider it objectively instead of trying to be funny, don't you think it might be helpful to have someone who speaks the language along and who can also act real good? You're always making me pretend to be someone else and I'm like an amateur."

  "You're telling me," I said.

  "Oh yeah? You would have been dead that time in Mexico if you didn't have Benny translating for you and him and me playing your stooges."

  "I hate to admit it but you might actually have a valid point there for once,'' I said. I had needed Benny's impeccable Spanish. And as for Willing Boy, he was quick on the uptake and certainly didn't mind breaking the law, or bending it, anyway. In a good cause, of course. OK. I thought I just might take Willing Boy along for the ride. That would mean separating Romeo and Juliet for a few days, though. I stole a glance at her. Could I really get in the way of true love? Need you ask.

  "What are you gonna do with this guy when you find him?" she said then.

  "Don't know yet," I said. "I'm not supposed to do anything, just let the odious Fats, he's the guy who hired me, know where he's hiding."

  "Can't you find out by calling someone, like you did before? Like, call the phone company in Montreal and con them into telling you the address that belongs to that telephone number you got?"

  "Sure I could," I said. "No big deal, I might not even have to pretend to be Tony, what do they care? I'm not after secret information. Then I wouldn't have to go shopping for fur-lined Jockety shorts, then fly to Montreal and then this and that, all I'd have to do is call Fats and tell him the address and earn myself a tidy piece of change for two phone calls and one house call by you. But."

  "But," she repeated.

  "But what if that phone number is just a cutout or simply a number he calls to get messages from? Then he won't be at that address. But there's another but," I said. "But I don't really like it, and I don't like Fats, either. Maybe Willy really did run off with Fats' dinero but there's more to it that that, Curly, Fats handed me over five Cs like it was Monopoly money, without even haggling."

  "Oh yeah?" Sara said, glaring. "You said it was a token sum."

  "Did I?" I said vaguely. "I don't recall. Anyway, shut up for a minute, will you, and let me think."

  I thought.

  After a while she meandered over to the bookcase, took down the atlas, and began leafing through it.

  I broke the silence by saying, "Don't forget to pack your woollies." She squealed with excitement, then leapt at me and kissed me on the cheek before I could defend myself.

  "How come you changed your tune?"

  "Sara," I said, "I am not so narrow-minded that I cannot openly and publicly declare that it is possible that you and Willing Boy might conceivably be of some small use to me up there. Also, if we're going to screw Fats, why not do it royally. Maybe I'll put you guys on the payroll, too, maybe. I wonder what they use for money in Canada—probably beads or walrus teeth. Are you sure Willing Boy can get off work?"

  "I'm sure," she said, blushing, trying to hide her face by peering down into the atlas that she'd opened up on the desk. "He's already asked for the rest of the week off."

  "Aha," I said, waggling my eyebrows suggestively. "Planning a little trip, were we? Not . . ." I put on a deeply shocked look. ". . . not eloping? Sara! Have you introducted him to your folks yet?"

  "Are you kidding?" she said. "They only feed him three times a week. Mom thinks he's the most gorgeous thing she's ever seen."

  "Who doesn't," I said. "But still, marriage is a big step . . ."

  "Grow up, will ya? We were thinking of driving up to Tahoe, if you really must know. There," she said, pointing at the right-hand side of the map of our friendly neighbor to the north. "Montreal. And that river it's on is the St. Lawrence."

  "Thought so," I said. "Wonder how often dog sleds leave for there. Sara, if you really want to earn your keep, get on to Rogg Travel. Ask for Ron. Tell him the usual three for two round-trips to Montreal, via New York, return open, leaving tomorrow morning. Ask him to book us the New York–Montreal and Montreal–New York portions in different names, maybe you and Willing Boy as a mister and missus, as in married, and our seats shouldn't be together. Ask him to book us hotel rooms for a couple of nights, too, somewhere central. Then call Fats. The number's in here under 'Fats.' " I got my address book out of the drawer and flipped it to her. "Tell him you're my secretary, I got a lead and I'll be out of town for a couple of days but you don't know where and you don't know when exactly I'll be back. Then you better get on to Willing Boy and tell him the news, likewise your folks. Got it?"

  "Consider it done, Prof." She went to work on the phone. I gazed at the map of Canada for a moment. As far as I could recall, I'd only ever met one Canadian, or at least one who would admi
t it, an artist who lived off Laurel Canyon Boulevard and who painted nothing but highly realistic and greatly detailed female nudes. He also smiled a lot. I often wondered if there was any connection. Canada—Jesus, it even looked cold. Half the towns in it were named Fort something, which was hardly reassuring, and the other half had names you couldn't even pronounce, like Flin Flon, Michipicoten, and Povungnituk. Look it up for yourself if you think I'm kidding.

  "Tickets will be waiting for us at the TWA desk at the airport," the twerp reported about then. "And the other ones at Air Canada, in New York. There's the flight number, eight forty-five departure tomorrow morning. Hour and twenty minutes layover at Kennedy. Arrive Montreal about ten-thirty their time that night. He'll try and get us rooms at something called the Windsor Hotel, if he can't, he'll get back to us." I didn't ask her how many rooms she had booked, what business of mine was it anyway, I wasn't their durn chaperone. I did resolve to have a long talk with her before we left about the birds and the bees, I was sure there was a lot she could teach me. "And while we're on the subject," she said, "what's the usual three for two?"

  "It's what you do when someone else is paying," I said. "You cash in your first-class ticket, go steerage, and pocket the dif, I thought everybody knew that. In our case, we cash in two first-class tickets and buy three steerage. Even I couldn't justify hitting Fats for traveling expenses for three people, two maybe. I'm going to have enough trouble getting my dough out of him as it is."

  Shortly thereafter, Sara, having completed her calls, betook herself home or into the arms of Willing Boy. I too betook myself homeward after making a couple of calls to put off what few appointments I had scheduled for that week. The last thing I did before leaving was to tear up into shreds Sara's cab receipt for $44.50, take out of the back of the second drawer on the right a pad of receipt vouchers from Celebrity Cabs, which I had been fortunate enough to come across in the glove compartment of a Celebrity Cab one soiree when I was minding Lew and when the driver had hopped out briefly to buy some smokes. I write out a new receipt for $57.50, then added "Tip—$5.00." There—that looked better: despite crippling pangs of guilt I managed to drive all the way home without psychiatric help.

  Social Notes from the Studio City Star (published weekly, circulation two hundred supermarkets)—"V. Daniel and Evonne Louise Shirley were glimpsed by this reporter billing and cooing in Dave's Corner Bar the other eve. . . . Surely this will put paid once and for all the catty rumor that Studio City's most arresting (!) PI had a new enamorata . . . why don'cha come up and take my fingerprints sometimes, you hunk, you . . ."

  I took Evonne home early, as I had packing to do, and the following morning would have to allow myself enough time to rub crankcase grease all over my body against the cold. I kissed her good night outside her back door; her mouth tastes slightly of rum and slightly of sparerib sauce, with a pleasant aftertaste of Evonne Shirley. I didn't know whether to kiss her, eat her, or drink her. I'd told her of course where I was going and when and more or less why, and that I was taking along Willing Boy and Curly out of the goodness of my heart. She said don't forget to send your mom a card and me too and try the moose stew while I was up there. I said I wouldn't miss it for the world but that I would miss her, like I always did. It's nice to have someone specific to miss, especially someone as specific as Evonne; before I met her I tended to sort of vaguely miss some fantasy female I didn't even know. Functioning brain cells is really what I was missing back then.

  I wound up packing that night, as anything is better than having to choose between almost identical pairs of socks at 6:30 A.M. I had an old parka, God knows why, I threw in, also a pair of hiking boots, also a heavy woolen sweater I hadn't worn for decades. Ear muffs I figured I could get up there, likewise a balaclava, thermal underwear, and snow goggles. Then I rubbed a modest amount of vanishing cream Evonne had left behind onto my visage, without noticing anything doing much vanishing except the cream. Then I set the alarm and went to bed.

  The kids were already at LAX waiting for me when I arrived the following morning, sharing one of the chairs in a row against the wall facing the TWA counters. Sara's mom had given them a lift out; I'd done what I always did—drive to a certain hotel not so far away, parked for nothing in their lot, then hopped on the hotel's free minibus shuttle. On the way I remembered to make an entry in my memo pad under "Expenses"—"Prkng, 3 dys, $27.00."

  "Did you pick up the duckets?" I asked Sara after we'd exchanged our greetings.

  "Yep."

  "Lost them yet?"

  "Nope."

  Our flight was announced about then so off we trundled. Willing Boy in his second-best leathers, Sara in some sort of trouser suit, a ratty-looking fur coat of dubious origin, either left over from her highly unlamented punk period or made from what her mother ran over on the way to the airport that morning, slung over one arm. Ah, my merry band of brothers, I thought, we're off to the wars again.

  We spent the next five-and-a-half hours doing what grown-ups do in the sophisticated flying machines of today—sit all hunched up in kiddie chairs, drink a lot, and wish we'd stopped at Fred's Deli for a bag lunch. Talk about the Ku Klux Klan's or the Freemasons' oath of allegiance—the one the airline caterers take to adamantly refuse to ever serve once one thing edible must be a killer. However, I will say that in the two most important respects the plane did what it was supposed to—it took off and then it landed again, and in the dark, too. Can you believe a big boy like me used to be terrified of flying? Now I'm just scared stiff.

  Now, I was sitting a few (empty) rows behind the kids and we were all busily pretending we didn't know each another, just in case. But I did very much want a few words with Willing Boy. So when the nitwit unglued herself from him long enough to take herself to the john, I fell into casual conversation with him by some simple ruse. It turned out he could parlez-vous Français after all, which was lucky for him. Not that I had been in any way suspicious, mind you. Also, it turned out not only did he have a mother, but an elder sister married and living in Raleigh, North Carolina; he even producted pictures of them. Both were the exact physical opposite of him, being short, dark, dumpish, bespectacled, and unbeautiful. Some guys have all the luck. You know what he told me his sister wanted on her tombstone? "Scratch and sniff." I said I wanted "That's all, folks" on time. Sara, typically, came up with "All are creative, few are artists" for hers, then looked at me challengingly.

  "Très poetical," I said. "Who said it?"

  "Dunno," she said. "I heard it somewhere."

  "Probably at a Sex Pistols' concert," I said. Willing Boy grinned.

  After we landed, we passed an hour and twenty minutes doing what grown-ups who are waiting in airports for connectors flights do—listen to babies crying and smile with false sympathy at irate travelers whose outgoing flights are six hours late so far.

  Part of that time I spent at an Air Canada check-in counter, where a man with a ferocious cold stopped sneezing long enough to print out our tickets.

  Part of that time I spent at an Air-Canada counter, where an man with a ferocious cold stopped sneezing long enough to print our tickets. Mine was in the name of Holmes; most amusing, Sara. Hers and Willing Boy's were in the names of Mr. and Mrs. E. B. Browning; again, highly funny. I asked Willing Boy if we should change some money, he said, no sweat, we could do it tomorrow, most cabbies and hotels and the like in Montreal were delighted to accept U.S. currency as they murdered you with the exchange rate. I said what else was new.

  The flight northward, ever northward, to the land of the midnight sun, was exactly the same as the L.A.–New York one, but shorter, of course, and half in French. Georgie Pie didn't have to translate because the broadcaster did it himself immediately after the French version. Gee. . . there I was on my way to yet another foreign country—along with Mexico and Houston, that would make it three in four years. Who was the madcap gadabout all of a sudden? I wondered if my upcoming adventures with the world's most beautiful woman would i
nvolve travel to foreign climes. Estonia in April—a catchy phrase, no doubt, but one that does perhaps lack the Gallic charm of the original. Likewise April in Hitler's bunker or April by the Dead Sea.

  Merde, Montreal was looking better, every minute.

  9

  La ville de Montréal has an old international airport, Dorval, and a new international airport, Mirabel. As Dorval was conveniently close to Montreal and fairly easy to get to, say a half-hour's drive, the fed's, over the local government's dead bodies, decided to build the new one out in the middle of the prairies in southern Alberta, thus delighting such worthy citizens as cab drivers, bus operators, Admunson of the Pole, and Avis employees, but infuriating everyone else.

  Or so I was told by my seatmate, a grizzled, mustachioed, red-faced Canuck, on the Air Canada flight north. His name was Chuck something and he hired out to smaller construction companies those huge cement mixers that creep along highways blocking the whole road in front of you making cement as they go. Then he wanted to know, if I was interested in making a fortune.

  "If," I said, "you are suggesting a small game of chance to wile away the time, and you just happen to have a deck of pasteboards with you, can I save us both a lot o time and energy that could be better spent drinking this good beer of yours and just hand over all the money I got in the world right now?"

  Chuck roared.

  "Tabernac!" he said, I think. "Nothing like that, eh? See, with cement, once in a while a whole load seizes up on you, like it goes hard as a rock, no one knows why, and you can imagine what a bitch it is afterward dealing with it, eh?"