Out on the Cutting Edge

by Lawrence Block

Page 18

 

  "Yeah, I see what you mean. "

  "And it wouldnt have been a cold trail then. "

  "Im still not sure it would have been a police matter. "

  "Maybe, maybe not. But if hed hired somebody private back in the middle of July-"

  "Youd have had an easier time of it. No argument. " He thought for a moment. "Say she left the machine behind herself, not by accident but because she had a reason. "

  "What reason?"

  "She moved out but she doesnt want somebody to know shes gone. Her parents, say, or somebody else shes trying to duck. "

  "Shed just keep the room. Pay the rent and live elsewhere. "

  "All right, say she wants to move out and skip town but she wants to be able to get her calls. She could-"

  "She couldnt get her calls from a distance. "

  "Sure she could. Theyve got this gizmo, you just call your machine from any touch-tone phone and punch in a code and the machine plays back your messages. "

  "Not all machines have the remote-pickup feature. Hers didnt. "

  "How do you know that? Oh, right, you saw the machine, its still in the room. " He splayed his fingers. "Look, whats the point going over this again and again? You were a cop long enough, Matt. Put yourself in my position. "

  "Im just saying that-"

  "Put yourself in my fucking position, will you? Youre sitting at this desk and a guy comes in with a story about bed linen and a telephone answering machine. Theres no evidence that a crime has been committed, the missing person is a mentally competent adult, and nobodys seen her for over two months. Now what am I supposed to do?"

  I didnt say anything.

  "What would you do? In my position. "

  "What youre doing. "

  "Of course you would. "

  "Suppose it was the mayors daughter. "

  "The mayor doesnt have a daughter. The mayor never had a hard-on in his life, so how could he have a daughter?" He pushed his chair back. "Of course its a different matter if its the mayors daughter. Then we put a hundred men on it and work around the clock until something breaks. Which doesnt mean something necessarily does, not after all this time and with so little to go on. Look, whats the big fear here? Not that she went to Disney World and the Ferris wheel got stuck with her at the top of it. What are you and her parents really afraid of?"

  "That shes dead. "

  "And maybe she is. People die all the time in this city. If shes alive shell call home sooner or later, when the money runs out or her head clears up, whatever it takes. If shes dead theres nothing anybody can do for her, you or me or anybody else. "

  "I suppose youre right. "

  "Of course Im right. Your problem is you get like a dog with a bone. Call the father, tell him theres nothing to run with, he should have called you two months ago. "

  "Right, make him feel guilty. "

  "Well, you could find a better way to put it. Jesus, you already gave it more than most people would and took it as far as it would go. You even dug up some decent clues, the phone calls and everything, the answering machine. The trouble is theyre not attached to anything. You pull them and they come off in your hand. "

  "I know. "

  "So let go of it. You dont want to put in any more hours or you wind up working for chump change. "

  I started to say something but his phone rang. He talked for a few minutes. When he hung up he said, "What did we do for crime before we had cocaine?"

  "We made do. "

  "Did we? I guess we must have. "

  I walked around for a few hours. Around one-thirty it started raining lightly. Almost immediately the umbrella sellers turned up on the streetcorners. Youd have thought they had existed previously in spore form, springing miraculously to life when a drop of water touched them.

  I didnt buy an umbrella. It wasnt raining hard enough to make it worthwhile. I went into a bookstore and killed some time without buying anything, and when I left the rain still didnt amount to much more than a fine mist.

  I stopped at my hotel, checked at the desk. No messages, and the only mail was an offer of a credit card. "You have already been approved!" the copy blared. Somehow I doubted this.

  I went upstairs and called Warren Hoeldtke. I had my notebook at hand, and I gave him a quick rundown on what lines of investigation Id pursued and what little Id managed to determine. "Ive put in a lot of hours," I said, "but I dont think Im much closer to her than I was when I started. I dont feel as though Ive accomplished anything. "

  "Do you want more money?"

  "No. I wouldnt know how to go about earning it. "

  "What do you think has happened to her? I realize you dont have any hard knowledge, but dont you have some sense of what went on?"

  "Only a vague one, and I dont know how much weight to attach to it. I think she got mixed up with somebody who appeared exciting and turned out to be dangerous. "

  "Do you think-"

  He didnt want to say it, and I couldnt blame him. "She may be alive," I said. "Maybe shes out of the country. Maybe shes mixed up in something illegal. That might explain why she hasnt been able to get in touch with you. "

  "Its hard to imagine Paula involved with criminals. "

  "Maybe it just looked like an adventure to her. "

  "I suppose thats possible. " He sighed. "You dont leave much room for hope. "

  "No, but I wouldnt say you have grounds for despair yet, either. Im afraid all you can do is wait. "

  "Thats all Ive done from the beginning. Its… hard. "

  "Im sure it must be. "

  "Well," he said. "I want to thank you for your efforts, and for being straight with me. Ill be happy to send you more money if you think theres any point at all in putting in more time. "

  "No," I said. "Ill probably put in a few more days on this anyway, just on the chance that somethingll loosen up. In which case youll hear from me. "

  "I didnt want to take any more money from him," I told Willa. "The original thousand had put me under more obligation than I wanted to be. If I accepted any more of his money Id have his daughter around my neck for the rest of my life. "

  "But youre doing more work. Why shouldnt you get paid for it?"

  "I got paid already, and what did I give him in return?"

  "You did the work. "

  "Did I? In high school physics they taught us how to measure work. The formula was force times distance. Take an object that weighs twenty pounds, move it six feet, and youve done a hundred and twenty foot-pounds worth of work. "

  "Foot-pounds?"

  "That was the unit of measurement. But if you stood and pushed against a wall all day and didnt budge it, you hadnt performed any work. Because youd moved the wall a distance of zero, so it didnt matter how much the wall weighed, the product was zero. Warren Hoeldtke paid me a thousand dollars and all I did was push a wall. "

  "You moved it a little. "

  "Not enough to matter. "

  "Oh, I dont know," she said. "When Edison was working on the light bulb, somebody said he must be discouraged because he wasnt making any progress. Edison said hed made great progress, because now he knew twenty thousand materials that you couldnt use for a filament. "

  "Edison had a better attitude than I have. "

  "And a good thing, too, or wed all be in the dark. "

  We were in the dark, and seemed none the worse for it. We were in her bedroom, stretched out on her bed, a Reba McIntyre tape playing in the kitchen. Through the bedroom window you could hear the sounds of a quarrel in the building behind hers, loud voices arguing a point in Spanish.

  I hadnt intended to drop in on her. Id gone out walking after my call to Hoeldtke. I was passing a florist and had the impulse to send her flowers, and after hed written up the order I found out he couldnt deliver until the following day. So Id delivered them myself.

  She put the flowers in water and we sat in the kitchen with them on the table between us. She made coffee. It was inst
ant, but it was a fresh jar of a premium brand and no killjoy had taken the caffeine out of it.

  And then, without needing to discuss the matter, wed moved to the bedroom. Reba McIntyre had been singing when we entered the bedroom and she was still hard at it, but we had heard some of the songs more than once. The tape reversed automatically, and would play over and over if you let it.

  After a while she said, "Are you hungry? I could cook something. "

  "If you feel like it. "

  "Shall I tell you a secret? I never feel like it. Im not a great cook, and youve seen the kitchen. "

  "We could go out. "

  "Its pouring. Dont you hear it in the airshaft?"

  "It was raining very lightly earlier. What my Irish aunt used to call a soft day. "

  "Well, it turned hard, from the sound of it. Suppose I order Chinese? They dont care what the weathers like, they hop on their kamikaze bicycles and ride through hailstorms if they have to. Neither rain nor snow nor heat nor gloom of night shall keep you from your moo goo gai pan. Except I dont want moo goo gai pan. I want- would you like to know what I want?"

  "Sure. "

  "I want sesame noodles and pork fried rice and chicken with cashews and shrimp with four flavors. How does that sound?"

  "Like enough food for an army. "

  "I bet we eat all of it. Oh. "

  "Whats the matter?"

  "Are you going to have time? Its twenty to eight, and by the time they deliver and we eat itll be time for your meeting. "

  "I dont have to go tonight. "

  "Are you sure?"

  "Positive. I have a question, though. Whats shrimp with four flavors?"

  "Youve never had shrimp with four flavors?"

  "No. "

  "Oh, my dear," she said. "Are you ever in for a treat. "

  We ate at the tin-topped table in the kitchen. I tried to move the flowers to give us more room but she wouldnt let me. "I want them where I can see them," she said. "Theres plenty of room. "

  She had gone shopping that morning, and besides coffee shed stocked up on fruit juice and soft drinks. I had a Coke. She got out a bottle of Becks for herself, but before she opened it she made sure it wouldnt bother me.

  "Of course not," I said.

  "Because nothing goes with Chinese food like beer. Matt, is it all right to say that?"

  "What, that beer goes well with Chinese food? Well, it may be a controversial statement, and I suppose there are some wine growers somewhere whod give you an argument, but so what?"

  "I wasnt sure. "

  "Open your beer," I said. "And sit down and eat. "

  Everything was delicious, and the shrimp dish was the treat shed promised. Theyd included disposable chopsticks with our order and she used a pair. I had never learned to handle them and stuck with a fork. I told her she was good with the chopsticks.

  "Its easy," she said. "It just takes practice. Here. Try. "

  I made an effort, but my fingers were clumsy. The sticks kept crossing and I couldnt get any food to my mouth. "This would be good for someone on a diet," I said. "Youd think somewhere along the way they could have invented the fork. They invented everything else, pasta, ice cream, gunpowder. "