The man in the white jacket and striped pants froze. Only the Volga in winter froze quicker.
“It is clear Dr. Glasser knows the layout,” I said. “He is familiar with what goes on here. Day to day. There is something Dr. Glasser picked up on in minutes that I spent a long week of dead ends looking for. Something you or Steve or Maria or Amos or Rufus forgot to tell me about. Something as important as the law of gravity. You figure you could point me in the direction of that particular something?”
He turned it over.
“As I have previously explained, sir,” the butler said, “Dr. Glasser comes here once a week on average. He lives a twenty-minute drive away in West Lake Park. His clinic is in North Miami. As to the suggestion that sir could have been given more information, that is sadly, at least from my point of view, sir, way out of whack.”
Mr. Lee bowed and left me standing alone in the room.
That was it. All he had to tell me about Mrs. Weinberger’s nephew. His life in three short sentences. How often he dropped by. Where he hung out his washing. Where his patients read National Geographic. But there was nothing about his trick. How he discovered so quickly who stole from his aunt. Maybe it stood out like a fresh towel in a three-dollar-a-night motel. Obvious to everyone.
But not to me.
I looked at Dr. Glasser sitting by the pool. He was still heavily in conversation with Mrs. Weinberger. It was all there. The knowing nod of the head. The concerned shrug. The thoughtful folding of the arms. The doctor’s way of making you feel that you matter. They learn it along with why blood cells turn white and what to rub on nettle rash. Bedside. Poolside. The manner was the same.
Then I did a bit of diagnosis of my own.
Maybe Mrs. Weinberger had a health problem. It would certainly explain the reason for her nephew’s weekly visit. He could hand over her medication and ask how the bridge night went all in one trip. Maybe that was it. Something that Mrs. Weinberger suffered from but didn’t show. A little crazy? That was it. Criminally insane. She hired a thief to steal so she could collect the insurance because she lost her savings in a failed business venture and needed the money to pay the bills and … Then I called a halt. Enough, Harry, I told myself. This isn’t diagnosis. Not even a wild hunch. It is the way an old worn-out and defeated dick tries his best to fight off failure.
The reason would soon be clear. One way or another. Dr. Rubin Glasser was through talking to his aunt and was striding purposefully toward me.
“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Lipkin,” he said drawing close. “We need to talk in private.”
· THIRTY-NINE ·
Harry Learns Mrs. Weinberger’s Secret
Dr. Rubin Glasser led me along a dark passage I hadn’t seen before. It was on the east wing of Coral Gables. Where the windows faced the ocean. At the end of the passage we climbed a narrow flight of stairs and then walked a short way to an oak-paneled door. It wasn’t locked. Dr. Glasser opened it and ushered me into the room. He checked that no one had followed us and closed the door behind him.
“This is just between us,” he said. “Understand?”
“Fine by me,” I said.
What little light there was came from an oriel window hidden behind a pair of partly drawn burgundy velvet drapes. The room was shut tight. It was no bigger than a cabin on a banana boat and full of junk Mrs. Weinberger had grown tired of. Some of it was stuff her mother had grown tired of.
“I could use a little more air in here,” Dr. Glasser said. “I can just about breathe. How about you?”
“The more the better,” I agreed.
The doctor trod carefully over a pile of hatboxes and pulled back the drapes. Then he pushed at the window. Nothing. He pushed harder. Still nothing.
“I guess it needs a little grease,” he said. “Must have been some time since this got opened.”
“Want a hand?” I asked.
“I can manage,” he said. “It’ll shift eventually.”
He carried on jerking the handle and I looked around.
Lined up near the door there were six padded dining chairs made in 1876. Round about. Maybe 1877. None had padding. There was a low table that you put a phone at one end and sat at the other. Except you couldn’t sit on it because a stack of beaten-up leather suitcases were already sitting there. Hanging on the wall behind the phone chair was half an oval mirror in a peeling hardwood veneer frame. Alongside it was a late nineteenth-century watercolor of Venice. At some point the painting had been exposed to too much damp. Black moldy patches obscured half the Doge’s Palace and most of the sky. I would have told people they were storm clouds and kept it on show.
But not everyone thinks like me. Not when it comes to watercolors of Venice.
“Any luck?” I asked.
“Grease would help,” he said.
Further inside there was a large silver metal trunk. The kind people take on an ocean liner and cover with travel stickers. In a corner there was a stuffed bear who looked like he would have been more at home in the Yukon jumping on hunters. He was standing upright with a snarling mouth full of yellow teeth and his right front paw missing. The paw was on the floor next to a rolled-up kilim carpet with a label on the back that read “Made in Turkey.” And there were cobwebs. Under. On. Between and over. All the room lacked was an uneaten wedding cake and an old lady in a wedding dress wearing one shoe.
Then there was a loud clank. It was the noise a rusted window makes when it opens.
“How’s that?” he asked.
A cool breeze wandered in.
“Fine.”
Dr. Glasser dusted the top of a tea chest with the word “books” scribbled in capitals on the side and sat down.
“From the discussion I have just had with my aunt,” he said, “she employed you to investigate her stolen property?”
He looked at me. I said nothing. I perched on a chair. It was rattan. The sort Van Gogh had in the bedroom of his yellow house. It was the only seat in the room you could sit on.
“ ‘Stolen.’ That was the precise word she used?” the doctor said.
“That’s about the size of it,” I said. “And I guess she used the word ‘stolen’ because her stuff was there one minute and gone the next. ‘Stolen’ is the word most people would use.”
Dr. Glasser crossed his legs and leaned forward.
“Mr. Lipkin,” he said. “What I am about to tell you is strictly confidential. It is not to go beyond these walls. Have I your word on that?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m used to discussing confidences. It’s part of my job too.”
Dr. Glasser left a short pause. Like he was running through what he was going to tell me. Then he stood up and moved to the console housing a Victrola phonograph which was to the left of the door. Which is probably why I hadn’t noticed it. Dr. Glasser looked at the phonograph and then turned to me. Soft. Slow. There was some pain under his eyes.
“My aunt is suffering a degenerative brain condition,” he said. “The most common symptoms are a transient loss of memory coupled with general confusion.”
I went through the list. Dementia. Alzheimer’s. A minor stroke.
“And you figure your aunt’s state of mind might have something to do with people stealing her valuables?” I asked.
Dr. Glasser patted the lid of the phonograph.
“When I was a kid,” he said, “I watched my aunt play this machine. She’d sing along with the records. All the big names. Judy Garland. Rosemary Clooney.”
“Doris Day?” I said.
He nodded and thought some more. Then he said, “Along with forgetting who is the president of the United States and which day of the week it is, someone suffering from a degenerative brain disease frequently complains that they can’t find a familiar object in the place they normally leave it.”
The phonograph had a cupboard for storing records. He bent down and pulled at the doors. They were locked. He stood upright again and opened the lid to the turntable.
The doctor carried on talking while poking around.
“The examples are all too familiar. ‘My watch is not on the night table. I always put it there before I go to bed. I do so regularly. Now it is gone.’ The most common conclusion is that the watch has been stolen. Why else would it not be there?”
Very slowly a hazy picture was forming in my mind. An old lady with a fan. Putting the fan someplace. Going back to where she thought it might be. Gone. Stolen.
“You see, Mr. Lipkin,” Dr. Glasser continued, “the machinery that we normally use no longer functions. Reason. Memory. The sense of time. They are all linked. And although they are still in place, like an automobile engine that has no spark, they are quite useless.”
Dr. Glasser picked up a small cabinet key beside the turntable and then turned to face me.
“Do you understand yet, Mr. Lipkin, why the word ‘stolen’ is not appropriate?”
I shrugged.
“I am an old private eye,” I said. “I live in a world where thieves only steal from someone else.”
The doctor smiled sadly.
“That is true,” he said. “But the world we are discussing has another dimension. The thief who steals my valuables knows exactly where to find them. People suffering from neurological impairment put things they believe others have stolen just about anywhere. They stuff them in the back of a closet. Or the back of a drawer.”
It was medical knowledge. Outside what I knew. But I got the drift. Dr. Glasser gave me some more.
“Very rarely, a person with this kind of illness puts their so-called stolen belongings in a place that has a strong association with the past. If you can imagine someone who perhaps played a lot of golf, for example. They might easily put them in a golf bag. Do you follow me, Mr. Lipkin?”
The hazy picture suddenly pulled into sharp focus. I looked at the phonograph. At the locked doors.
“And so someone who liked to sing a lot when they were young,” I said. “Who liked to sing along with records, someone like Mrs. Weinberger. When they hide something they took from themselves and imagined was stolen, then they hide it—”
Dr. Glasser cut me short. He handed me the key to the phonograph.
“Unlock the doors, Mr. Lipkin.”
Everything was there. The pillbox. The love letters. The jade. Stacked in a neat pile. The necklace was on top. Sunlight from the window caught the cut stone. The tiny green beveled edges flickered. Reflecting the light. Like winking stars.
· FORTY ·
Harry Goes Home and Types Out His Report
When I’d gotten back to Warmheart it was raining. More drizzle than rain. But there was some sun that broke through. Weak. Small and distant in a pale gray sky trimmed with blue.
I took a shower. Drank some lemon tea and changed my clothes. Then I sat at my desk. I put a blank sheet of paper in the Remington and typed out the last page of my report. It didn’t take long.
Suffering from the early to mid stages of a degenerative brain disorder that causes amnesia and mild paranoia, my client was entirely responsible for the thefts she claimed were the actions of others. All those questioned in relation to the items believed to have been stolen are entirely innocent.
I pulled the paper out of the machine and put it in a folder and put the folder in the filing cabinet. The Weinberger case was closed.
I took the hundred dollar bill I’d been given to solve the case from my billfold and put it in an envelope. I wrote “Amos Moses” on the front care of Mrs. Weinberger’s address. Then I sealed the envelope and stuck on a stamp. A hundred bucks might put a few bricks in a wall. If it arrived.
Then I went back to my desk and sat looking at the keys on the typewriter. I sat wondering what happened to the letter V? And why the B next to it always gets stuck coming back? Little things. Things to take my mind off the big things. Like the case I didn’t solve. I kept telling myself that thirty years ago I would have seen it from the start. Medical knowledge or no medical knowledge. Thirty? Twenty maybe. Maybe ten. Five. Last year.
I was fooling myself.
Outside the drizzle had moved on to drizzle over someplace further north. Over at Disneyland kids eating ice cream and talking to Goofy would be getting wet. But my yellow plastic seat in the yard would be nice and dry and the sun of late afternoon pleasantly warm. I went and sat there. And I thought some more about Harry Lipkin.
You are too old for the job, I told myself. A lot too old. Eighty-seven going on eighty-eight. The next time someone calls and says they need a private investigator you tell them find someone else. Someone who can spot auto dementia theft and not make a fool of himself chasing all over town looking for someone else.
And I listened to me talking. I listened carefully. I was making a lot of sense. For the first time in a long time. So I talked some more.
Harry Lipkin. Former private eye. Meet the new Harry Lipkin. A man with time on his hands. You can join the golf club, Harry. Spend an afternoon with other men your age missing a putt from two inches. You can go to bed early. Get up early. Watch daytime TV. All day. Every day. You can buy a baseball hat and gym shoes from the company that got a five-year-old Asian kid to sew them together. And you walk around town all day and show everyone the brand. You can shop ten times a week for special offers and get two for one and pay six cents instead of eight and collect food coupons from supermarkets. And Harry. You can finally fix the tiles from the roof you got piled up on the lawn. Mrs. Feldman would be happy to see the tiles fixed and the new Harry Lipkin would be happy to see Mrs. Feldman happy.
I was at peace. But not a lasting peace. It was a peace broken by a distant bell. The bell of the phone in my office. Seven rings. I let it ring. I could just hear my voice in the distance.
“You have reached Harry Lipkin, private investigator. Leave your name and number and I will call you back as soon as I can.”
The caller hung up. No message. As soon as I finished fixing the tiles I’d put on a new message. “You have reached Harry Lipkin. Fun guy. Free anytime.”
I sat in the yard until it was dark. I sat thinking back over the years. The early days in a cold automobile staked out on a wet street all night and nothing but a neon sign for company. I thought about cases that got so tough I needed a gun. And I thought about the cases that were so simple I’d solve them before the client got out of the office. I sat thinking a long time. I ended up thinking about the two old Jews living next door. A husband and wife making the best of the worst years of their lives.
I suddenly felt a chill. Not just outside but inside as well. I went back into the office for my jacket. It would keep part of me warm. I had just put it on when the phone rang again.
Let it ring, New Harry Lipkin told Old Harry Lipkin.
But there is no accounting for curiosity. Or habit.
On ring five I picked up the receiver.
The voice began at once. Before I could say a word. It was a woman’s voice. Late thirties. Early forties. Sober. White. No accent. Maybe just a hint of somewhere out of town. Out of state. Boston possibly.
“Mr. Lipkin. Oh, Mr. Lipkin,” the voice said. “Thank God you are there. I called earlier. I didn’t leave a message. I know I should have. But I am not thinking straight. I am desperate. It’s my husband. Last night he called from the office and said he would be home late. I waited and I waited. Midnight. One o’clock. All night. Mr. Lipkin, he still hasn’t come home. I have this awful feeling—”
“One second,” I cut in. “I got to get something to write with.”
I picked up a pencil and opened a fresh page in my notebook.
“Okay, lady,” I said. “Let me start by taking down a few details.” The tiles could wait.
About the Author
Barry Fantoni was the chief contributor and writer for Private Eye magazine and a diary cartoonist for the Times.
Harry Lipkin, Private Eye Page 13
