Ask the Right Question
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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF MICHAEL Z. LEWIN
“Lewin is precisely what the mystery writer ought to be—alert to the real world, imaginative, observant and witty.” —Nick Kimberley, City Limits
“Michael Lewin has just about the best private detective who has been around in many a day.… Lewin has brains and style.” —Los Angeles Times
“Lewin is a witty and concerned writer, singing his song of social significant low-key.” —John Coleman, The Sunday Times
“As witty as Robert Parker, as ingratiating as Sue Grafton and as crafty a plotter as either.” —The Washington Post
“Ross Macdonald followers who want to switch loyalties will find Lewin devises more intricate plots and peoples them with more interesting characters.” —The Washington Post Book World
Ask the Right Question
“It is always pleasant to come across a promising talent, and Michael Z. Lewin is one. His first book, Ask the Right Question, is a smoothly written private-eye story.… Characters are finely drawn, plotting is logical, details are well worked out. You can be sure that we’ll be seeing more of Mr. Samson.” —The New York Times
Called by a Panther
“Imagine a private eye caper scripted by Tom Stoppard, with cameo appearances by the Marx Brothers. As the late Ross Macdonald once said, ‘Lewin is fast, funny, and brilliant.’” —Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal
“The entertainment level is a perfect ten.” —Mystery Scene
“Irreverent … Amusing … Ironic.” —The New York Times
“Laconic but wildly funny Lewin [writes] up a storm.” —Booklist
The Enemies Within
“A neat puzzle deftly worked out.” —Publishers Weekly
“Mr. Lewin writes with style and sensibility and wit.… He has a fine poetic sense of detail which lights up every page.” —Ross Macdonald
“Samson is a very human hero whose distaste for blood, as well as his sharp intelligence, make him easy to like.… A superior species.” —The Plain Dealer
“Watergate wasn’t much better than The Enemies Within.” —National Review
“Michael Z. Lewin writes a realistic mystery.” —The Washington Post
The Silent Salesman
“Packed with suspense, literate and funny. A swell book to sink back into the pillows with.” —The Boston Globe
“Tough and clever.” —The New Republic
“Samson has to deal with medical doctors, a secret laboratory, the FBI, the cops, heroin, radioactivity, fatherhood, and other crimes. He does so with a little bit of heroism and a great deal of common sense and wit.” —The New York Times
Out of Season
“[Readers are] going to enjoy Lewin’s way of giving even the most minor of characters vivid and unstereotyped personalities.” —Tony Hillerman for the Washington Post
The Way We Die Now
“Excellent.” —The New Republic
“Lewin is a skillful writer.… He creates a feeling of loneliness and even desolation.” —The New York Times Book Review
Missing Woman
“Lewin’s best book … the dialogue is authentic, the settings attractive, and the mystery real.” —Robin Winks, The New Republic
“A pip of a mystery.” —United Press International
“Lewin writes with style and sensitivity. His lean and sinewy prose propels the reader all too swiftly through a highly satisfying book.” —The Houston Post
“The prose is full of pleasant surprises and felicitous phrases, the characterization is choice.” —Chicago Tribune
Eye Opener
“Savor this one. It’s an emotional roller coaster—bemused chuckles follow closely on the heels of horrified gasps—but it’s not to be missed.” —Booklist
Night Cover
“In the several days during which Mr. Lewin allows us to share his long waking hours, Leroy Powder becomes exhilaratingly alive.” —The New Yorker
“Powder is an irritable, tough, honest cop, a real man. Lewin knows his routine, has a good ear for dialogue, and writes good, clear prose.” —The New York Times Book Review
Hard Line
“Unique and well told; Powder and his relationships with his son and with Fleetwood are well characterized. Good reading: Powder’s one of a kind.” —Library Journal
“Lieutenant Leroy Powder is cranky, opinionated, abrasive and demanding. He is also very good at his job, which is head of the Indianapolis Police Department’s Missing Person’s Bureau.… Like all of Lewin’s work, Hard Line is an ingenious and ingratiating story.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune
“[This] latest Powder story is another first-rate, fast-moving police procedural.… Michael Z. Lewin has done another very satisfying job.” —Publishers Weekly
“Lt. Leroy Powder of the Indianapolis P.D. revs up again in this meticulously crafted police procedural. Several interesting cases tangle up in the Missing Person’s Bureau, which Powder runs by working his jaw.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
“This is a crackling good procedural with all the plots wired into each other and giving off electric jolts and ringing bells. But it has real staying power as a character study of the hard-liner, a man who suffers fools badly and makes enemies, does not distinguish between work and play (‘The only way I know how to live … is to combine the two’), but unlike most workaholics is less interested in keeping the job going than getting the job done.” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Late Payments
“With a complexity worthy of Ross Macdonald and the same concern for family and secret relationships, Lewin (The Way We Die Now) has crafted a first-rate book combining grit, humor and tough-minded caring. One hopes for more mysteries featuring sarcastic, abrasive, all too human and ultimately endearing Leroy Powder.” —Publishers Weekly
And Baby Will Fall
“Adele Buffington stands tall in the crowd of female sleuths.” —The New York Times
“Adele Buffington is a complex, engaging woman, tough, bright and yet vulnerable.” —The Washington Post
Family Business
“I can think of no other series, anywhere, which features a family which owns and works from a private investigation firm.” —Deadly Pleasures
“How these [plot elements] are connected and what the brilliantly characterised Lunghis, from the Old Man down to the school kids, separately get up to is very much the extremely funny Lewin’s business. Totally beguiling, with the lightest of dry touches.” —The Times (London)
Underdog
“An ironic commentator on the current state of Midwestern bizarre.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A hilarious tale … A story that will keep readers in stitches.” —Publishers Weekly
“Literate and funny.” —The Boston Globe
“Bright, witty writing … Moro is a charming and poignant narrator.… Lewin is a clever stylist.” —The Plain Dealer
“Entertainment and humor, a sympathetic and touching hero, and fine supporting characters.” —South Bend Tribune
“Michael Z. Lewin’s offbeat thriller is amiable and amusing.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune
“The surprisingly noble Moro … can be counted on to see everything with an astute eye.” —San Jose Mercury News
“It’s a pleasure, with Moro figuring things out slowly enough to keep us baffled yet quickly enough to keep us hooked.” —The Charlotte Observer
“A very good book.” —New Mystery Reader
Ask the Right Question
An Albert Samson Mystery
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Michael Z. Lewin
To Maz
Newton (nee Piglet)
and
Alan Lebowitz
Author’s Note
Several people in Indianapolis responded graciously to my inquiries about the law, truth and custom of activities described fictitiously in this book. Discrepancies between the final product and reality are solely of my making and in no way reflect on the accuracy of what they told me or my appreciation of their efforts.
M.Z.L.
1
I had a big decision after lunch. Whether to read in the office or to stay in my living room and read.
It was one of those decisions that tell you about yourself, how much self-indulgence you allow. The room I live in is nicer than the office. The chair is softer, it’s a shorter walk for a glass of orange juice. On the other hand two o’clock is still business hours whether there is business or not. And should a client accidentally stumble through my door, it wouldn’t do to be dozing by the window in the back.
I made a virtuous choice. I took the pillow off my bed and carried it through to the squat rectangular light-green room I call my office. I put the pillow on the seat of my swivel chair and then I put me on the pillow. “Now I lay me down to sleep …”
And I commenced, for the eighth consecutive day, an afternoon read. Fourteen days into it, the October of 1970 was looking like the slowest month in my detecting history.
By half past four I was awake again and debating whether to move back to the living room. It was a day filled with such problems. Office hours were till five, but the afternoon movies start at four thirty.
But then the unusual happened. A client walked in.
I must have looked surprised, because she hesitated, clinging to the door. She raised an eyebrow and said, “Should I have knocked?” It was clear from the tone of her voice that she knew perfectly well that the outside door bore the words “Walk Right In.” When I first opened the office I was more buoyant than I have proved to be day in, day out. My water line has risen considerably.
“No, no,” I said. “Come in. Sit down.”
She paused over the dusty chair and then sat down gingerly. Indianapolis is one of the polluted cities; chairs get dusty very fast between clients.
She was young. Shoulder-length walnut hair. Violet-tinted glasses. A green jacket and pants, a suit-type thing.
I got my notebook out from the desk’s top drawer and I opened it.
“It smells in here,” she said.
I sighed. I prepared for rapid disenchantment. I flipped my notebook closed.
“Stop. Don’t do that. Please! I want you to find my biological father.”
In our few seconds’ acquaintance I hadn’t noticed the tension that had been gripping her, but now I felt positive relaxation passing through her body. A young body, budding with taste and moderation.
“Your what?” I asked mildly.
“My biological father!” A deep furrow split the tinted lenses. “You are the Albert Samson it says on the door, aren’t you?”
Her presumption did not excite me: that The Real Albert Samson trades uniquely in finding biological fathers. I patronized her.
“I am indeed Albert Samson, my dear. But won’t you find your biological father at home with your biological mother?” In bed? With the blinds drawn?
“No,” she said definitively. “That is precisely where I won’t find him. Will you take the job? Will you find my biological father for me?”
Physically she was squirming in her chair. Rubbing the dust in. And mentally she was race-horsing, moving ahead far faster than I wanted to. She looked, maybe, twenty. But her emotional control—lack of it—suggested a maiden of fewer summers.
Reopening my notebook, I said, “First things first. I’ll need your name and address.”
“I am Eloise Crystal. I live at 7019 North Jefferson Boulevard.”
I duly soiled a fresh page with these facts and the date. That made it official.
“And how old are you?”
She bristled slightly. “Is that usually the second question you ask your clients?” Either she was touchy about how old she was or she was a representative of the Women’s Age Liberation Movement. “I have money,” she continued. “I can pay you if that’s what you mean.”
“I’ll need to know your age,” I said.
“I’m sixteen.”
I’ll swear she looked older, but I guess such perceptions have passed me by.
“What time is it?” she asked.
I gestured to my cuckoo, behind her and next to the office door. It’s genuine Swiss, a leaf from my salad days. We read it together. 4:42.
“I have to go soon. Will you do it? Will you take the job?”
“Look, Miss Eloise Crystal of Jefferson Boulevard, how do you think these things work? Do you think you just walk in here and say, ‘Find my biological daddy,’ and then come back in a week to pick him up? From what you’ve told me just how the hell am I supposed to know whether I can find your so-called biological father or not?”
“You don’t have to swear,” she said prissily. She was upset. That was just as well. I’m not too keen on pushy people, and for pushy little girls I have a very low tolerance.
“Just what is it that you want me to try to do, and second, can you give me one good reason why I should do it?”
I was beginning to get through. She started crying.
She sobbed uncontrollably for three minutes, snuffled for two and caught her breath for about one and a half. I didn’t have much else to do besides watch her and the clock. And write in the notebook, “Client cried; may be crazy bananas.” And then feel a little bad about the whole thing. Part of it had to be my mistake. If I realized she was a kid from the start maybe I would have been more flexible. Kids don’t know much about dealing with people. For that matter, people don’t know that much about dealing with kids. So why don’t you hear her out, Albert? I told myself. She thinks you can help her with something. Maybe you can.
I almost went into the living room to get her a piece of paper towel to dry her eyes. But I didn’t, because I was afraid, a gut reaction, that if I left the office she might not be there when I got back.
As it turned out she had a handkerchief of her own. She pulled it out of a little purse I hadn’t noticed before.
When she was about dried out I said, “I’d like you to tell me about it.” It was my best offer.
She just took a breath in and blinked her eyes. Carefully she put the glasses on again. I guess she liked them on. Apparently you can’t cry without taking glasses off. They were prescription.
Trying to be gentle and fatherly (I am a father after all) I took a shot and said, “Did your parents wait until now to tell you something important?”
Add drivel and get instant fury. “They never told me anything! They say he is my father, I mean, they never said anything else. But I know he isn’t. I know it! I have proof.”
“Proof” is a word that grabs my attention. Proving things is nice. I like it. The problem is that so many things that people “prove” don’t stay proved.
“What sort of proof?”
“I have blood proof,” she said. “His type is B; my mother’s is O; and I have A. That means he can’t be my father. It’s not scientifically possible!” Her tone was plaintive. I was recording the information.
“Who can’t be your father?”
“He can’t. I mean, Leander Crystal can’t.”
“He is the man who lives with your mother?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“Fleur. Fleur Graham Crystal.”
“She’s married to Leander?”
“Yes.”
“They live with you? At”—I consulted my notes—“at 7019 Jefferson Boulevard?”
“That’s right.”
“How long have they been married?”
“For, I don’t know exactly, twenty or twenty-one yea
rs.”
“So they were married when you were born?”
“That’s right.”
“But you think Leander Crystal is not your father?”
“I know Leander Crystal is not my father. The blood types prove it.”
I looked at them again. I did flunk genetics in college once, but I know enough about elementary blood typing to have investigated my way through two paternity cases in the last seven years. For a kid to have A-type blood, there has to be some A in the parents. She had said the parents were B and O.
“Where did you get the blood types from?”
She smiled. The first smile in our acquaintance. A nice knowing smile. “I did them myself. In school. And I had Mr. Shubert—he’s my bio teacher—he checked it.”
She flushed slightly. What with the smiles and the flushing I figured the phony hard core had bit the dust. She was more relaxed, more girlie. I liked her.
“Well, actually I only typed my blood and my, well, Leander’s. I got Mummy’s when the doctor was at the house two weeks ago. She, Mummy, had a miscarriage. The doctor said he was afraid she would need a transfusion. “Shyly my client added, “They … it was twins.”
“Your parents must have been upset.”
She nodded vigorously. “Mummy especially. I would have liked twins.”
My cuckoo cheeped five times and Eloise started.
“Does that thing tell the right time?”
“More literally than most clocks,” I said. And then I said yes to answer the question I had been asked. In my business you get pretty fussy about things like that.
“I have to go.” She stood up, and I rose to face her. My pillow fell off the chair behind me but I had no regrets. “I came here from school and they’ll be worried if I’m not home soon. Are you going to do it for me? Will you find my biological father?”
“I can’t possibly tell you. The most I could say now is that I will try, and I can’t even say that until I know a lot more than you’ve told me.”
She opened her purse and pulled out a piece of money which she thrust at me.