The Right Madness

by James Crumley

  Unlike my prospects, the view was worth toasting, which I did. Since I assumed dissolutions of marriage would arrange themselves without my professional assistance, my prospects were several and unseemly. I could take up repossession full time, taking back the used cars and cheap appliances so sweetly promised by the installment loan, pursuing bad debtors as if I were a hound from some financially responsible hell. I could do that; but I knew I wouldn’t. No more than I could live on the forty-seven bucks and odd change left each month from my office leases, no more than I could cut my timber, or no more than I could convince the trustees of my father’s estate to turn loose any of his fortune before my fifty-third birthday. At least I could have another drink out of the office bottle, another drink and another glance around my office to search for hidden assets.

  The large old-fashioned safe in the corner, left from my grandfather’s days as a banker, was empty, except for two thousand dollars of untaxed mad money. The three file cabinets were full of the records of failed marriages, not even worth anything to those unhappy folks recorded there. The portrait of my great grandfather had been painted by a famous Western artist and drunk, and might be worth something, but it seemed unkind to consider selling my great-grandfather. Surely, I should sell my timber first. Or the old desk and Oriental rug, which looked shabby enough to pass for antiques, scarred with cigarette burns and gritty with the detritus of grief and outrage that had scraped off all the husbands and wives who had trembled through my office. Age and sorrow, those were my only assets, my largest liabilities.

  But like most men who drink too much, I had spent most of my life considering my dismal future, and it had stopped amusing me. So I had another drink and walked over to the north windows to look down on the happy, employed folk of Meriwether. Once, we Milodragovitches had been big stuff in this town, but now the only way I could look down on anybody was to climb up to my office, stare down from the windows. Lunch hour was done; people were hurrying about their business, driving back to office and store in air-conditioned cars, even though the air seemed more like spring than summer. I had never owned an air-conditioned car, so I could feel vaguely smug. Until August anyway.

  Directly beneath me, a gray-haired woman, dressed in modern elegance, stepped out of the side entrance of the bank that leased the ground floor, and as she was fussing with her open purse a longhaired kid jerked the purse out of her hands and fled clumsily across the street, pumping his legs and swinging his elbows wildly, like a heavy bird longing for flight. He dodged the eastbound traffic on Main, gathering speed, but he ran into the side of a car as it slowed to make a right-hand turn north on Dottle; bouncing back, he turned, grinning dreamily like a man who has just had a final fix, then stepped into the westbound lane. The car that hit him never touched brake shoe to drum but drove right through him like a good solid punch. The kid rolled up the hood, throwing the old woman’s purse straight up in the air. As the contents of the purse scattered in the air, the kid fell off the hood into the center of the intersection. Another old woman, who obviously hadn’t seen any of this, turned her giant sedan illegally left on to Dottle and ran over the kid with the two right tires. He rolled, stuck beneath the rear bumper, and she dragged him half a block up the street before she could stop.

  I had never realized that purse snatching was such a dangerous crime and I wondered what the kid needed badly enough to take up petty theft. Meriwether didn’t have much street crime, perhaps because we still suffered from some frontier idea of justice: shoot first, apologize to the survivors. Whatever the kid had intended, he was obviously dead, crumpled under the rear of the car like a roadkill carcass at the end of a broad blood spoor. The old woman whose purse had been stolen was wandering around the intersection gathering up the debris from her purse, carefully checking each item. The man who had hit the kid was walking around his car, examining it for damage. Up the street, the other old woman was being helped from her car like an invalid.

  It was a lovely summer day, smogless and fresh, and below me the flies struggled against their violent amber. But when the first siren split the air, they slipped free, went quickly about their business. Except for the kid, squashed into place, and one woman standing across the street from my building. She held her own small pink purse to her open mouth as if it were a secret message she’d devour before she’d divulge. From where I stood, she looked good. Nice legs, a trim body. Red hair that seemed aflame above the pink dress. The sort of woman who stayed out of bars and away from the likes of me.

  When the light changed, she stepped off the curb, stumbling slightly, breaking the spell. I went back to my desk, had another sip of whiskey, and opened a carton of blueberry yogurt. I watch my weight; I wouldn’t want to look like a drunk.

  As I ate I concentrated on the small decisions, letting the problem of my future take care of itself. I knew that if I had another drink I would probably get drunk instead of driving out to the university to play handball with my friend Dick Diamond, but I had another hit at the bottle just to prove that I could handle it. Have the drink, fight the drunk, play handball anyway. That was the plan. But somebody rapped timidly at my office door. Private investigators always have somebody rapping timidly at their doors, so I didn’t leap out of my chair and spring into action. Back in the days when I still had a business, I would have hidden the bottle and the half-finished yogurt, slipped into my boots, and answered the door as if I knew what I was doing. But not this day. I left things as they were, didn’t even answer until the light tapping resumed.

  ‘Go away,’ I said. But not loudly enough.

  The lady in the pink dress opened the door and peeked around it like a kid who hopes the dentist is still out to lunch. But as she stepped into the office I could see that she wasn’t a kid. A well-preserved thirty-five perhaps, maintained not by working at it but by saving it. And she’d saved it fairly well. A slim, firm body beneath the pink knit dress. Thick, dark red hair tucked away from a sweetly freckled face. Slightly myopic eyes that had that dreamy contact-lens blur about them. A mouth, daubed half-heartedly with a color that nearly matched the freckles, that seemed mobile and generous in spite of the prim way she pursed her lips.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly, as if she had failed to meet my standards, still standing at the door. I decided that the lipstick, which would have looked bad on any other woman, gave her just the right touch, as if she were still young enough to be foolish about a lipstick, choosing a color because she liked it, not because it went well with her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated, as if it were the password.

  ‘So am I. The dentist’s office is four doors down. We have the same name because we’re cousins. I’m famous, but he’s rich.’

  ‘Oh, but I’m not – I wasn’t looking for the dentist,’ she said, flustered, then held the pink purse, which looked as if it had come in a set with the summer flats she wore, back to her mouth.

  ‘Surely you aren’t looking for me,’ I said. ‘Don’t you read the papers? They don’t have divorce in this state anymore. Just dissolutions of marriage. You can do it yourself. Thirty-four-fifty. I charge a hundred a day, plus expenses. A three-day minimum.’

  ‘I’m from out of town,’ she said, as if that explained everything. ‘And I’m not married.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you’re not married. Marriages can be messy. And expensive. I should know.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘Do you mind if I sit down? I’ve just seen a terrible accident. In the street. Some poor young man was hit by a car. Then run over. It was awful. I’m quite shaken.’

  ‘Certainly,’ I answered, standing up, wishing I had put my boots on. ‘Please sit down.’

  She shut the door quietly, then walked over to the chair I was holding for her. She stepped on my foot, then nearly knocked the chair over as she sat in it.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, retreating behind the desk to saf
ety, slipping into my boots and sitting down. ‘Well, what can I do for you?’

  ‘I’ve interrupted your lunch, haven’t I?’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Please go ahead. I’ll wait.’

  Rather than argue with her, I had a spoonful of yogurt, then took out my note pad, asking her again what I could do for her.

  ‘Well, an old friend of mine recommended you. Said you might be able to help me.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked, not telling her that she didn’t look like the sort of woman who needed my sort of help.

  ‘I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Why should I mind?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered, as literal as a child.

  ‘We’re not getting anywhere, you know?’

  ‘I guess not,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s try the easy questions first, okay?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been under quite a strain. And when I saw that young man – killed, I nearly went to pieces. I’m sorry. If you would just bear with me for a moment.’

  ‘Certainly. Take your time. Would you like a drink?’

  She shook her head quickly, as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. Feathers of red hair, tidily pinned back, began to drift across her face. She brushed them back, sighed, then changed her mind.

  ‘Yes, I think I will. Perhaps it might help. And it is after lunch, isn’t it? Do you think I could have a whiskey sour?’ she asked shyly, then leaned back in her chair, fluffed her skirt, and stared at me expectantly, as if I were her favorite bartender. She looked at me silently, smiling so sweetly that I knew I must seek whiskey sours wherever they might be.

  I had had some strange requests in my office. Husbands who wanted me to do obscene things to myself when they found out that their wives were exactly the sluts they supposed them to be. Or when they found out how expensive my services were. And wives had made their share of indecent requests too. Usually concerning my fee. They tried to take it out in trade, and sometimes became angry when they discovered I’d take it out but wouldn’t trade it for anything. Some of the ideas that hurt and angry wives had in my office were damned strange. But I’d never been asked to whip up a whiskey sour.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘one whiskey sour coming up.’ She smiled and crossed her legs, managing to kick my desk and expose a trim thigh at the same time.

  I dialed Mahoney’s, which is forty quick steps south of my office, and told Leo to whip up two whiskey sours in go cups and to send Simon up with them. Leo grumbled a bit, grousing about fancy drinks and my running tab, but he said he’d try to remember how to make a whiskey sour. Mahoney’s is a wino bar, and anybody who asks for anything fancier than soda with their whiskey was either a sissy or a stranger.

  ‘The drinks are on their way,’ I said after Leo hung up on me.

  ‘Is that legal?’ she asked, concerned.

  ‘Sure. This is the great American West. Where men came to get away from laws. Almost everything in this state is legal. And a lot of things that are illegal are done in spite of the law. You can order ten whiskey sours in go cups, then get into your car and fly up and down the highways at whatever speed you can call reasonable and proper. You can murder your spouse and the lover in a fit, preferably of passion, and the maximum sentence is five years, and even that is usually suspended. And it’s all legal. If you prefer gambling or drugs, which are still illegal, you can find any sort of game or machine you’d like within three blocks of my office, or buy all the drugs you want, except heroin, right on the street. So don’t worry about two little drinks coming up the street.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I won’t worry. Please go ahead with your lunch.’

  As I finished the remains of the yogurt, she tried very hard to sit still and look unworried. Her hands were clasped tightly around the small purse and crammed into her lap, but her fingers kept plucking at the ragged cuticles of her thumbs. At close range she seemed more girlish, nervous and giggly, like a teenaged girl on her first date. And scatterbrained and clumsy. The sort of woman who would need help to find her clothes afterward, who would always be losing things – gloves and glasses, hairpins and ribbons – then would prance around the room, smiling coyly as she looked in all the wrong places. I thought I might like that. It had been a long time since I had been with a woman who could seem innocent and vulnerable. Not that I mind strong, self-reliant women, but most of the women I knew were so tough they could chip flint hide-scrapers with their hearts. I decided that I liked this woman. Perhaps more than I should on such short notice. Whatever her problem, I intended to console her until she discovered that there wasn’t much I could do to help her. Two drinks in the office as we discussed her problem, an early dinner at the Riverfront, martinis as we waited, brandies afterward as we watched the river flow into the setting sun, then home to my little log house by Hell-Roaring Creek to smoke a little dope and watch the long mountain dusk become night, to listen to the creek rumble in its rocky bed.

  What the hell, I wasn’t above taking advantage of a woman, running out the tired trappings of romance, even drugging them to have my way. We could make up the morality afterward in that sad time when passion has degenerated into a quick cigarette, a slow drink, silence.

  ‘So what can I do for you?’ I asked one more time, hand poised over my pad.

  ‘I’m . . .’

  ‘Wait a second,’ I interrupted, reaching into the bottom desk drawer for the cassette recorder, which I’d bought from Muffin when I’d had to sell the fancy Ampex reel to reel. Muffin had assured me that the cassette recorder wasn’t hot, but I didn’t believe him for a moment.

  ‘Do you mind?’ I asked as I switched on the recorder. ‘My secretary went to lunch and hasn’t come back yet. I like to have a record of these things. I assure you that everything that passes between us will be strictly confidential.’

  She hesitated, then nodded. I didn’t tell her that my secretary had gone to lunch four years ago, and that the reason she hadn’t come back was because she had run away with a dope dealer from Portland. It had been a successful match. They were living in Mazátlan now; she sunbathed, he financed dope deals.

  ‘Where shall I begin?’ she asked, a nervous tremor in her voice.

  ‘How about name and address? That sort of stuff.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, somehow surprised, as if she had expected to hire me without telling me her name. ‘All right. My name is Helen Duffy, and I live with my parents,’ she said, her voice unnaturally high and loud for the benefit of the recorder.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘just speak normally. You don’t have to shout or anything.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Those things make me nervous.’

  ‘They make a lot of people nervous, but don’t let it bother you. Just tell me where you live. More specifically than “with my parents,” okay?’

  ‘All right,’ she whispered, then steeled herself to begin again. ‘My name is Helen Duffy –’

  ‘A little louder than that, please.’

  ‘– and I live with my parents at Rural Route Number 4, Box 52B, Storm Lake, Iowa, Zip Code 50588, and I am an assistant professor of English at Buena Vista College in Storm Lake.’

  ‘Isn’t that where they had the massacre?’

  ‘What? Oh, no, that was Spirit Lake. MacKinlay Kantor wrote a rather good novel about it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I read it a long time ago.’ She looked so surprised that I added, ‘I went to college too. Not very successfully but for a long time.’ I didn’t add that I went until my GI Bill ran out, along with the patience of the trustees of my father’s estate.

  ‘Where did you go?’ she asked politely, her voice normal now, which was what I had been after.

  ‘Here at Mountain States, Mexico City College, USC, a couple of junior colleges in California.’

  ‘What did you major in?’

  ‘Booze, broads, and various water sports,’ I said, hoping to turn her back to the business at ha
nd.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Who do you want me to find? Whom?’

  ‘How did you know I wanted you to look for somebody?’

  ‘Easy. You’re not married, so you don’t want a divorce. You don’t look like the sort of woman who wants me to repossess a used car or a color television or hassle some guy for a gambling debt, so I assume you want me to find somebody. Let me guess,’ I said, showing off. ‘Your sister came out West –’

  ‘Brother.’

  ‘Younger?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay, your younger brother came out West to work this summer and –’

  ‘Two years ago. To work on his master’s in history. Raymond always loved Western history,’ she said, as if that too explained everything.

  ‘– and dropped out of school into radical politics or into the drug scene –’

  ‘To finish his research for his thesis on criminal justice on the Western frontier,’ she corrected me.

  ‘– and the family hasn’t heard from him in several months, and you’ve come West on your summer vacation to find out what’s wrong.’

  ‘Three weeks. We – I had a letter three weeks ago.’

  ‘Three weeks isn’t very long,’ I said, glad to be right about something.