Die Laughing 2: Five More Comic Crime Novels

by Ben Rehder

  “Is he conscious?”

  “Yes. But he’s very weak. Don’t tire him.”

  “He’ll have to sign some forms.”

  She threw up her hands. “Yes, yes, it’s so important, isn’t it?” she snapped. “Just try not to kill him.”

  I took a breath. Yeah, some cases are easier than others. I nodded assent.

  She gave me a disapproving look, then led me to the bedroom. One last steely-eyed glare, and she stepped aside and let me in.

  Paul Jeffries lay flat on his back in the bed. A white sheet was drawn up over him. Thin, stringy arms lay down his sides, pinning the sheet to his chest. He was a white man, tall, ancient, horribly emaciated. A thin hawk nose pointed to the sky. His mouth was opened in a perpetual O. His eyes were opened too, and his brow was furrowed, as if fiercely concentrating on something. If so, it was probably on breathing, which apparently was a Herculean task.

  Sometimes I hate my job. Actually, often I hate my job, but sometimes more than others.

  I moved up close to the bed. “Mr. Jeffries?”

  The head didn’t turn, but the eyes flicked momentarily in my direction. The lips moved with some effort, formed the word, “Yes.”

  “I’m Mr. Hastings from the lawyer’s office. You called us about your accident. I don’t want to tire you, but can you tell me what happened to you?”

  One finger of the emaciated hand raised to point. Lips moved, and I leaned close to catch the words.

  “Broke leg.”

  “Where?”

  “City bus.”

  “You fell on a city bus. Fine. Was that getting on, getting off, or on the bus itself?”

  “On. Bus moved … before sat down.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. Bus stop. Outside.”

  “I see,” I said. “You got on a bus outside here at the bus stop. The driver moved before you could sit down. You fell and broke your leg. Did an ambulance come and take you to the hospital?”

  “Yes.”

  Better than I could have hoped. I could get the rest of the information from the hospital and the nurse. I had the guy’s name and address. Just a bit more personal data, and I’d have the guy sign the retainers—probably have to guide his hand—and I’d be done.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Ninety-five.”

  “Married or single?”

  “Widower.”

  “Any children?”

  “Dead.”

  “Grandchildren?”

  “No.”

  “Brothers, sisters, relatives?”

  “No.”

  “Who’s your next of kin.”

  “No one.”

  “How about a friend?” I had to phrase this delicately. “Someone I can contact if I can’t reach you.”

  His head shook slightly. “No.”

  “No one?”

  “Outlived them all.”

  Hell. Just when I thought I had it knocked. I felt like a prick, but it was my job, so I had to do it.

  “Mr. Jeffries,” I said. “We are going to file suit in your behalf to get you money for this accident. It takes time to sue the City. In the event the case should drag on, and if you were to die in the interim, who should the money go to?”

  His lips moved, but I didn’t catch the words. I leaned closer.

  “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  His lips moved again, and that time I made it out.

  “Who cares?”

  I blinked, and the whole thing hit me. I suddenly felt very lightheaded, very strange, the way you feel when someone says something that snaps your thought process around.

  Exactly, Mr. Jeffries. Who cares? As sympathetic as I’d been feeling for Mr. Jeffries, I realized I’d been treating the sign-up entirely from my point of view, as something that had to be done, as something to get around. But Jesus Christ.

  Here was a ninety-five year old man, with no relatives, no friends, no one in the world, a man with weeks to live at the outside, a man whose every breath meant pain.

  And this man wanted to sue the City.

  Not for the money. Not for any friend or relative. Not even for the satisfaction of winning, since he couldn’t possibly survive long enough for that. And yet he wanted to do it. And was doing it, even though it cost him strength and caused him pain.

  It all seemed connected somehow in my mind. Paul Jeffries on his deathbed wanting to sue the City. And Richard Rosenberg, for all his money, wanting to fight in court.

  And then there was me, a man of lesser goals, a man who just wanted to pay his teeth off and get out from under, but who, in order to try to do so, had been willing to take on the Marvin Nickleson case.

  It seemed to me it must be all tied together somehow. It seemed to me it must all mean something, something about man’s indomitable spirit, and relentless will to survive. Something about how man must struggle and strive no matter what, and that the struggle itself is that which we call life, that which makes a man alive.

  Or maybe not. I’m saying it badly, and that wasn’t really how I felt, and put like that it sounds rather trite.

  But I had the feeling there must be something profound in all that somewhere, if only I were perceptive enough to see it, and articulate enough to say it.

  5.

  ALICE WAS ON THE computer when I got home. No surprise there. Alice was always on the computer these days. The machine in question was an NCR, hard drive, two floppies, IBM compatible. If you know what all that means you’re one-up on me. All I know is the damn thing cost about as much as my teeth.

  The computer was supposed to help me with my work. With my real work, that is, which is writing. My detective work is just what we in the arts call a job-job. Something you do to pay the bills. Writing is my career.

  I use the word “career” loosely, in the manner of those in the arts. What it means, loosely, is “that which one would preferably be doing if this were an ideal world.” Seeing as how this isn’t quite a perfect world yet, I spend most of my time with broken arms and legs.

  In all the time we’d had the computer, three months, I’d only used it once. Of course, I’d only had one job, a trade magazine article I’d gotten through a friend of a friend. That was a plum of an assignment, fifteen hundred dollars for three thousand words on the impact on society of recycling cans and bottles. Here I had to step lightly—in our neighborhood, the impact is largely having the trash bags ripped open and the garbage strewn on the street by bums looking for five cent deposit bottles. Since the article was supposed to advocate recycling, this wouldn’t do for a theme.

  At any rate, I got the assignment, and Alice insisted I do it on the word processor. After all, that’s what we got it for, wasn’t it?

  I didn’t want to do it. Frankly, it terrified me. I know I’m just an old fogy, but when I hit a typewriter key, I expect to see a letter appear on a piece of paper. I don’t want to see it appear magically on some TV screen, flickering elusively and tantalizingly inches away, and always seeming to say, “You can’t pick me up, can you?”

  But we must all bend with the times. Alice clicked on the power, entered WordPerfect, and ushered me into the space age.

  It wasn’t that bad. After all, the keyboard is just a typewriter. A typewriter with a lot of extra keys I don’t understand, but still a typewriter. And if I ignored all those distractions and just typed, I could do O.K.

  Better than O.K.

  First off, no carriage return. No need to judge when you’re getting to the edge of the page, with or without a margin bell. No margin release. Just keep typing and the words jump down to the next line.

  Far out.

  And if you screw up, as I often do, no problem. No Correcto type. No liquid paper. Just backspace and try again. And if you leave out a word, hey, just insert it. Everything else shifts over.

  After the first page I was typing like a fiend, fingers flying over the keyboard. Hey, people are going to be recycling all over the place an
d I’m going to be cashing a fifteen hundred dollar check.

  I was done in no time. Ten pages in three and a half hours. A new world’s record. I’d made a lot of typos, but who cares. I had Spell Check, the one extra function Alice had managed to teach me. I pressed “Control, F2,” and when the machine asked, I told it to check the whole document. And like lightning, the machine whizzed through my whole article, highlighting each misspelled word and offering me a list of alternatives, which a touch of a single key could insert instead. In twenty minutes I’d corrected the whole thing and was done.

  Unbelievable.

  I pressed “Exit,” and it asked me if I wanted to save the document. I pressed “Y” for “yes,” and “Enter.”

  And the whole thing disappeared.

  Poof. Gone. Vanished.

  My whole recycling article. My work. My creation.

  My fifteen hundred dollars.

  Gone.

  Unnamed.

  Untitled.

  Unsaved.

  Gone.

  And nothing would bring it back.

  And Alice had taken Tommie out shopping for the day so I could work undisturbed.

  And I had a deadline. And, of course, I had waited till the last minute to beat it.

  When Alice and Tommie returned three hours later, I was back at the good old-fashioned typewriter, laboriously and feverishly attempting to recreate my masterpiece.

  Not to fear. Alice switched on the computer, did something magical, and my original text reappeared.

  But the damage had been done. To my psyche, I mean. And it would be some time before I would try that infernal machine again.

  Not that I’m apt to get a chance to. As I say, Alice is always on the computer. And not just in WordPerfect, either. Alice is a master of all phases of the computer. She gets into the Disk Operating System (DOS), and makes it do all kinds of things. And once she gets in, she won’t get out. She’s a computer junkie. She types on impervious to me or Tommie or the outside world. I refer to this fixation as “hoggin’ DOS,” which, by pronouncing the “o” in “hoggin’ “ like the “a” in “ha,” makes it a play on words for her favorite brand of ice cream. Despite such feeble puns as this, our marriage endures.

  At any rate, I can’t fault Alice’s obsession with the computer. You see, she used to be a computer programmer for IBM. She gave it up when we had Tommie. Years later, after Tommie was successfully launched in kindergarten, she had gone back to IBM and reapplied for her old job. But it was no good. Time and technology had passed her by. The computers that five short years ago had seemed so sophisticated and modern were Stone Age implements now. Alice was not offered her old job back. Instead, IBM furnished her with a list of courses, which, if successfully completed, would make her eligible to apply for a position only two notches lower on the hierarchical ladder from the one that she had previously held. Alice, in a rare display of self-control, had restrained herself from telling IBM what it could do with its courses. But the whole thing had been a bitter pill to swallow, and while I still kid Alice about her computer obsession, as is my fashion, I always step lightly. And I have no illusions about whom the machine was really for.

  “That’s wonderful,” Alice said, when I finally got her off the screen long enough to tell her about Marvin Nickleson.

  Predictably, her reaction was the opposite of what I’d predicted. I figured she’d see the job as sleazy and demeaning.

  “Wonderful?” I said. “How is it wonderful?”

  “Well, it’s more money, for one thing.”

  “That’s its only redeeming feature.”

  Alice looked at me. “Are you kidding? Hey, it’s a real job. It’s real detective work.”

  “In the lowest sense. It’s spying on someone’s wife.”

  “Yeah, but not for a divorce. So he can get her back.”

  “Yeah, well that’s just what he says.”

  “Why should he lie?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Then why assume it?”

  There are some things in life you always forget, no matter how obvious they are, how simple they are, or how many times you resolve to remember. The thing I always forget is, I should never, ever try to argue with my wife.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m going to do it. I’m just not happy about it.”

  “You worry too much. Look on the bright side.”

  “What bright side?”

  “See?” Alice said. “Your whole problem is your attitude. This case comes along and all you do is think of the negatives. Look at it this way. It’s a goof. It’s a lark.”

  “It’s sleazy.”

  “It’s only sleazy if you think sleazy. Don’t think sleazy. Think glamorous. Tell yourself you’re Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.”

  “As I recall, Roman Polanski sliced his nostril open with a knife.”

  “You’re incorrigible. You’re a perfect pessimist.”

  “Algernon. ‘The Importance of Being Earnest,’ Act One.”

  Alice frowned. “What?”

  “That’s a line from a play.”

  Alice shook it away. She was not to be tripped up that easily. “Now, the way you have to look at this,” she said, “is it’s a marvelous opportunity to broaden your field of experience. Make new contacts. Get referrals. Before you know it, you’ll be making two hundred dollars a day every day.”

  That stopped me. That was the right note. Despite myself, my mind couldn’t help leaping onto the obvious path, to the math I’d already done in my head. Two hundred a day. A thousand a week. Fifty-two thousand a year.

  Yeah, that was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, all right.

  6.

  BUT I STILL HAD to earn it.

  The next morning I got up, showered, shaved, put on my suit and tie, dropped Tommie off at the East Side Day School, and drove out to Hollis, Queens to keep a nine o’clock appointment with Cynthia Woll, who had been a passenger in her boyfriend’s car when that young gentleman had attempted to drive it through a light pole. The boyfriend had already been arrested for DWI, and Cynthia was about to compound his troubles by suing him for her broken leg, which, it occurred to me, might put a strain on their relationship. But that wasn’t my problem. I signed her up quick like a bunny, and hotfooted it down to East New York where Mary Wilson had fallen on a subway platform and broken her hip. I signed her up like wildfire and discovered to my regret that the subway platform in question was right there on Pennsylvania Avenue, which meant I had to take the “Location of Accident” pictures as part of the sign-up. That was unlucky. If she’d fallen in Manhattan, or even somewhere else in Brooklyn, I could have just listed the subway address on the fact sheet, marked it “Pictures Required,” and the pix would have been farmed out later as a separate photo assignment. But no, there it was within the arbitrary one-mile radius of the sign-up, which Richard had decreed was the cutoff point.

  I drove down there, bought a subway token for a train I would not ride, went down in the station and found a crack in the platform just where Mary Wilson had said there would be one. That was a blessing—in a lot of subway station accidents you can’t find a damn thing. I shot a whole roll of film and attracted a crowd of school kids who must have been playing hooky, but who weren’t old enough to make me particularly nervous. I got some good shots, the kids were gratifyingly awed at the presence of a private detective, and it was only eleven-thirty when I got out of there. My assignments were all finished, and I was gonna have no trouble getting back to Manhattan by one, and I was feeling pretty good until my beeper went off as I got into my car.

  I called Rosenberg and Stone and, sure enough, Wendy/Janet had another sign-up for me.

  Now. Right away. With a client with no phone.

  I was pissed. “I told you. I have to be in Manhattan by one. Why don’t you give it to someone else?”

  “Because it’s on Mother Gaston and you’re right there.”

  I blinked. Son of a bitch. Score
one for Wendy/Janet. Whichever of them it was deserved credit for actually looking at the work schedule before parceling out the work. Mother Gaston was only blocks away.

  I couldn’t fly in the face of that logic. Not the logic of Wendy/Janet. After all, god knows when I’d ever see it again. I hopped in the car and drove over there.

  And nearly had a nervous breakdown. The client, one Jackson Sinclair, was one of those crotchety old farts who won’t be hurried. It was his accident and he was going to tell it his way. “You just listen, young man, I’m telling you.”

  He certainly was. And he certainly did. And by the time I finally snapped a picture of his broken arm, sustained, praise the lord, in a slip and fall in a Kentucky Fried Chicken in the Bronx—”Location of Accident” pictures to be taken at a later time—it was twelve-fifteen and I was going slightly bonkers.

  I took the Interboro, sped up to the Grand Central, got on the L.I.E., hit only one minor traffic jam (small miracle), went through the Midtown Tunnel, and sped up Third Avenue to 51st Street.

  Which presented me with a huge problem. You can’t park in midtown. Parking anywhere in New York City is bad, but midtown is impossible. Uptown where I live it’s, “NO PARKING, 8:00-11:00, MON, WED, FRI.” Further down it’s, “NO PARKING, 7:00-7:00, EXCEPT SUN.” Midtown it’s, “NO PARKING UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH.”

  I’d planned to allow myself enough time to leave my car uptown before starting my stakeout. No time for that now. In desperation, I resorted to one of those forbidden luxuries afforded only by the idle rich—an East Side midtown parking garage.

  As I pulled in, I wrestled with a moral dilemma. It was my fault I’d taken on the extra assignment from Rosenberg and Stone, it was my fault I was late getting to my assignment here, and it was my fault I didn’t have enough time to ditch my car elsewhere—in light of that, could I put the parking fee on my expense account? The conclusion I came to was, damn right I could. I might need my car, and I should have it handy. Not that big a moral dilemma.

  But the point is, I was rather frazzled. But I do know this. It was seven minutes to one by the dashboard clock when I pulled into the garage. Even with getting my ticket, and giving the keys to the attendant, and getting out of there and walking half a block, I know I got to Monica Dorlander’s office building by one o’clock.