by David Pierce
I drove home without hitting anyone, or anyone hitting me, and without seeing any trace of the black Ford. I'd just retrieved Fats' contribution to the family exchequer from my back pocket, where I'd so wisely transferred it outside Fats' office, when the phone rang. I picked it up.
"Hi," a husky voice breathed. "It's me."
"Hi, you," I breathed back. I might even have breathed something more inane, like, "Hi, me." As Curly would put it:
That poets are fools, 'tis well known,
When Helen of Troy is on the phone.
"So you're back," she said. "I've been trying to get you."
"No, I'm not back," I said. "You're lucky to catch me at all, actually, I just dropped by the office to pick up the mail and I'm off again." There; that was better, that was telling her.
"Oh," she said.
"Yeah," I said. "Something's come up. Awfully sorry and all that. Where would you like me to send the retainer you gave me, the Fairfax Hotel, where you're not, or maybe the United Jewish Appeal?"
"Oh," she said.
"And how's Mummy, by the way?" I said. "Would you believe Kaiser has no record of her being a patient there? I'd sue them if I was you."
"Stay there," she said.
"No way," I said, firmly.
"Please," she said. "It's important."
"Forget it," I said. "I'm gone. I am history. Be right there, dear!" I called out to some imaginary female. "Sorry, I've got a lady waiting in the car."
"No, you don't," she said.
"Oh, yes, I do," I said. "And she's taller than you, and prettier, and is completely within my thrall."
"Funny," she said. "I can see your car, if yours is the one that looks like a bumper car, and I don't see anyone in it. Maybe she's hiding in the trunk."
"Where the hell are you, anyway?"
"Somebody's Taco-Burger," she said.
"Mrs. Morales' Taco-Burger," I said to a dead line. 'Don't have the combination plate, whatever you do."
I had just time to scatter a few papers around on my desk so I could appear to be deeply engrossed when in waltzed Miss Ruth Braukis. She was wearing a white linen suit, a red ruffled blouse, red high heels, and she had a red ribbon in her ebon hair. Her shoulder bag was red, also, as were the frames of the sunglasses she was negligently twirling in one hand.
"Hi," she said. "Sorry to be such a nuisance."
"Who've you got a letter from this time?" I said. "Golda Meir?"
She smiled. Her lipstick was exactly the same red as all her accessories.
"May I sit down for a minute, please, Mr. Daniel? Just for a minute?"
"What's mine is yours, Miss Braukis," I said, gesturing toward the chair opposite mine. "Especially as I don't see how I can stop you without doing something ungentlemanly like giving you the bum's rush."
She sat herself down demurely.
"Back in a sec," I said. I went to the small washroom in the back, got her six hundred dollars' worth of travelers checks from the safe, ran a comb hurriedly through my hair, then rejoined her in the office. I aligned the checks neatly and placed them on the desktop between us. "Excuse the mess," I said, indicating the paperwork, "but it's all go these days."
She didn't even glance at the money. She made a noncommittal noise, then took a long look at me, as if she was trying to make up her mind about something. I trusted her long looks as much as I did her Estonian fables. Then she said, finally:
"I did lie to you."
"That, Miss Braukis, is yesterday's news," I said. "But do continue."
"There were reasons, good reasons."
"Such as?"
She hesitated.
"Here we go again," I said.
"Mr. Daniel," she said with some asperity in her tone. "It is possible there are things it's better you don't know."
"Better for who?"
"You," she said, pointing one finger at me. "And for 'better' read 'safer'."
"Oh," I said. "I didn't know you cared."
"I can tell you this much," she said. "We've had a possible sighting."
"A UFO?" I exclaimed. "Really! How thrilling. Where? Up near Lafayette?"
"A sighting," she repeated patiently, "of one person in a long list of people we've been looking for on and off for over forty-seven years."
"You must have started young," I said. "But I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise, I knew it already, I knew right away you were after one of those old shits."
"We need confirmation," she said, "of the possible sighting."
"From Uncle Theo?"
"We hope so," she said. "That's why we brought him here."
"All the way from sunny Estonia," I said.
"Well," she said, "he did stop off somewhere else on the way, for about thirty years."
"Bet I can guess where," I said. 'Bet it's got a lot of sand and a hell of a lot of navel oranges."
She smiled again briefly. I don't believe I ever did see her laugh, but you could pry a smile out of the serious Miss Braukis from time to time. It was worth the effort.
"Why me?" I said. "Why not use your boyfriend what's-his-name, Lethal Lou, who was in the car with you last time and is probably waiting around the corner right now?"
She arched her eyebrows in mild surprise.
"I have my little methods," I said smugly.
"The blond boy on the motorcycle," she said, nodding. "We thought so. First, the man you refer to is my colleague, not my boyfriend. Second, his name is Shlomo, which is short for Solomon. Thirdly, he is comparatively new out here and does not know the terrain as intimately as you do. Nor is he as experienced a babysitter, to use Mr. Lewellen's term."
"Call me what you will," I said. "Baby-sitter, watchdog, bodyguard, stooge . . ."
"Lastly," she said, "you, Mr. Daniel, are a licensed investigator and a U.S. citizen, he is an alien here on a temporary work permit, with no official status in the United States."
"Implying he's got official status somewhere else," I said. "I don't even want to know what it is."
She shrugged.
'One other little thing you neglected to mention," I said. "I can legally possess firearms and carry them in certain situations, unlike Solomon."
"Why, Mr. Daniel," she said, widening her amazing eyes innocently. "That never even occurred to me."
"Perish the thought, " I said. She uncrossed her legs and then got to her feet.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," I said. "Hold on. Where does Uncle Teddy come in?"
"He doesn't," she said, smoothing down the front of her jacket, which looked smooth enough already to my untrained eyes.
"He doesn't. But Uncle Theo is due in tomorrow afternoon from New York?"
She nodded.
"Then what do I do with him?"
"You take him to the same place as before, to a hotel in a town called Locke, which is somewhere east of Lafayette."
"Right near where Uncle Teddy used to live," I said. "That letter from him in Russian, which is in my safe out back, where did it come from if it didn't come from Uncle Teddy?"
"A friend of Shlomo's," she said.
"Why invent an Uncle Teddy in the first place?" I said. "To say nothing of poor Mummy."
She put her sunglasses on carefully. "It was decided the less you knew the better, as I said. We didn't know how you felt about us or where your sympathies might lie." She came around the desk and put a hand on my shoulder. "And there are people who might be frightened of running into one of those 'old shits,' even after all this time."
"Maybe sissy types," I said. She laid one cool palm briefly against my cheek. I looked up at her. "So I take him to the hotel, then what?"
"Then nothing, Mr. Daniel," she said, moving away. "You book in for one night. The following morning Theo will be gone."
"He will, eh? Well, well." I got up and followed her to the door. Before I opened it for her, I said, "And the rest of my modest fee plus my even more modest expenses?"
"Will be sent to you," she said. "Or
, who knows, delivered to you personally."
"You personally or Solomon personally?"
'We'll see," she said. "We will see." I opened the door for her.
"If it's not a silly question," I said, "why didn't Solomon personally approach me in the first place and put it to me man to man, so to speak?"
She turned her fabulous face up to mine, smiled and said, "He's not called Solomon for nothing." And then she was gone.
13
And so it came to pass that at 3:44 the following afternoon, there I was back at dear old LAX, waiting outside the appropriate exit and holding aloft a large cardboard sign, just one more tour guide awaiting his flock. And it is totally unfair to suggest that I was in that ludicrous position merely because of certain physical attractions Miss Ruth Venus Braukis might have had for me, there are such things as the call of the wild and the lure of the unknown; danger is my business, after all.
Uncle Theo's flight was on time; so was Uncle Theo. I recognized him immediately from the photo Ruth had given me of him, so I probably hadn't needed that silly sign with his name on it after all. He was a small, elderly, worried-looking man in a rumpled brown suit and brown fedora, toting one small, cheap suitcase. He saw my sign at about the same time as I spotted him and raised one hand straight up in the air like he was asking teacher if he could please leave the room.
We approached each other and shook hands. From under his hat he had curly white wisps of hair sticking out, something like Ben-Gurion.
"Zdrastvouiti, Tovarich," I said as best I could.
He looked surprised.
"Vy guevariti parouski?" he said, doffing his lid to reveal a heavily tanned and well-creased forehead.
I figured that meant "You speak Russian?" so I hastened to tell him, "Nyet, nyet." ("Forget it, babe.") I handed over "Uncle Teddy's" letter; he opened it and began reading it eagerly. When he was done, he tucked it away and said something else to me in Russian. I shook my head and gave him one of the two Russian–English phrase books I'd bought the day before from a specialty bookstore down on Western. It wasn't going to be much help knowing how to say 'Where is the Stade Dynamo, please" to each other, but it was better than nothing. I'd spent some time in bed last night (my own) after leaving Evonne's looking up potentially useful phrases, and I tried out one of them then:
"Ia vach novei ekskoursevot," I read. He looked blank, so I pointed out the phrase in my book: "I am your new guide/escort," at which he nodded several times.
He went searching through his copy and finally came up with "Where do we go next?"
"Airplane," I said. Actually, I didn't say "airplane," I pointed to a picture of one in the book, but to save time, from now on I'll report our conversations, such as they were, as if we said them to each other instead of pointing them out.
"Airplane." He nodded resignedly and picked up his case. I took it from him, dumped my sign in a nearby bin, and led him off toward the Air Cal desks. While we were in line waiting our turn, I asked him if he was hungry.
"Not hungry," he said. "Not thirsty. Yes tired."
"Me too," I said, nodding sympathetically.
"You baby, big," he said. "Me old, small." Well, maybe I was baby, big, but there was nothing in the works of Karl Marx as far as I knew that said I couldn't be tired, too. I'd had a busy time after Ruth's visit the day before. First, I'd talked at some length with my friend Benjamin. Then I'd talked at some length with Sara of the Sorrows. I had a brief word with Mom, at Hilldale, then one with Dr. Don Fishbein, the bearded bundle of compassionate energy who ran the place; the news wasn't good. I went book hunting. I checked the L.A.–San Francisco flight times with Air Cal. I begged an empty carton from Mr. Nu two doors down and, with a magic marker, made up a sign with Uncle Theo's name on it, copied from the envelope containing the letter for him. I purchased a map of central California. Then I had to rendezvous with Benny back at my apartment. He was in good shape, he told me, and keeping busy with this and that. After he left me, he was off to the office of a real estate broker he knew to get a temporary license, which cost peanuts. He wanted to sell one of the half-dozen properties he owned, all of them in the Anaheim-Fullerton area, and if he listed the property with a broker, he got to share the commission on the sale without doing any of the work.
Then it was time to meet Evonne Louise Shirley at her place to wine and dine the eve away. She thanked me for the maple syrup and promised that waffles would soon be in the offing. I thanked her for her present, which was an extremely rare necktie from the forties; it had "I Luv U" written on it, which, she claimed, you could read only when all the lights were out. I decided to test out this unlikely assertion, so after supper at Mario's, back at her place, I put the tie on, mixed up two tall, fruity 'n' frosty nightcaps, then switched off all the lights. Darned if the little minx wasn't right.
"I've heard of guys doing it with their boots on," she said at one stage, "but a tie?"
"Class will tell, snookums," I said into the back of her neck, which is where my mouth happened to be right then. Later, when we were holding hands and sipping our drinks, I told her I had to go away again for a couple of days. She said an unladylike word and wanted to know where I was off to this another-unladylike-word time, and for how long, and why.
"Guy I know called Solomon," I said vaguely. "Wants me to deliver something for him near San Francisco, shouldn't take more than a day or two. Montreal," I said, changing the subject as quickly as possible. "You haven't asked me one word about Montreal."
"How was Montreal?" she said sleepily.
"Very French," I said. "Had a great time. Saw a hockey game, made some money, wrote this poem that's probably Pulitzer Prize material. Sara didn't enjoy it much, though, Willing Boy is giving her a hard time, poor old twerp."
"Well, what d'you expect from men, anyway," she said. "Especially here-today – gone-tomorrow types like you."
"Yes, dear," I said.
When I finally did manage to escape back to the safety of my own bed, I had The Little Russian Phrase Book, by one N. Pogarieloff, to leaf through, and it was after two by then, so there were good reasons why I was tired the next day, Uncle Theo—baby, big, tired, and still jet-lagged, don't forget, and about to become even more so.
Air Cal was delighted to sell me two tickets to San Francisco. I bought one-way tickets as Uncle Theo wasn't supposed to be coming back with me. We had a half-hour to wait until boarding, which I spent slouched in a chair thinking of nothing much in particular, and Uncle Theo spent feeding quarters into one of those one- person TVs you find in a lot of airports these days; maybe if I was from Estonia and couldn't understand English, I might be able to take afternoon TV, too. When our flight was finally announced, he didn't react; I made gestures to him indicating it was time to go.
He dozed through most of the flight north to San Francisco; I would have too if I could have found some position to squirm into where my head made contact with the headrest. I wonder why airlines don't have a demountable version of those gadgets you attach to the top of car seats to avoid whiplash? I wonder why they don't have a lot of things. One of the stewardesses had words with a tobacco addict behind us who tried to sneak a quick hit; the smoking ban was OK by me. I'd puffed away as a smart-ass kid, like all smart-ass kids, but after spending three weeks cold turkey in a private hospital in Fresno having some holes plugged one time, I luckily never got the yen again.
You know those notice boards they have in airport terminals that say "Messages for passengers," and that never have a message for you? I checked the one we passed in the corridor after disembarking at San Francisco and lo and behold, tucked into the Ds was one for V. Daniel, from Curly. It contained no good news. It contained bad news, which, although not unexpected, still wasn't the same as good news.
"Could be. Love, S." is what it said. I crumpled it up and put it away in a pocket. Uncle Theo looked at me inquiringly.
I looked up the word for mother in the vocabulary at the back of my phrase book an
d pointed it out to him. He looked slightly baffled, so I added, "Telephone. Telephone mother."
"Da," he said, nodding.
Curly had been at LAX from three o'clock onwards that afternoon, watching my meeting with Uncle Theo. She had not been pleased when I'd informed her she'd have to take the airport bus out, but I didn't want to drive her out in case anyone was watching and I sure wasn't about to cover taxis for her there and back because you are talking eighty bucks easy, amigos. I couldn't use Willing Boy as a backup as (1) he was either in Montreal with Miss McGurk or Quebec City with Mama and (2) he'd already been spotted. Benny was otherwise occupied, so that left Sara, girl sleuth. What she was looking for, of course, was anyone who showed untoward interest in me or Uncle Theo, such as, to name but one, Solomon, whom I'd described to her as best I could. And it seemed she'd spotted someone , all right—"could be." I'd spotted her without getting out my magnifying glass, she was decked out in her old Born Again Mother Hubbard outfit and was handing out petunias or whatever they were. She even handed me one, the twerp, and tried to sell me a fish-shaped Christian symbol on a cheap chain.
Goodie goodie, I thought. That's all I needed, Lethal Lou circling around just out of sight. Bring back the moose, I thought. Where were those halcyon days of yore when all I had to worry about was Fats, the Mob, the fuzz, snow blindness, and too much Cinderella cake?
