Ask the Right Question Read online

  But that would be immoral. Of course, if I were bothering about things moral, the proper thing for me to do would be to keep quiet, drop the case and send the man back his money anyway.

  If I cashed the check, under any circumstances, I would have felt guilty. Not that one cannot adjust to living with guilt.…

  I almost put Chivian’s prescription in the envelope as well, but thought better of it. It was a sample of the handwriting of the man. Instead I took a picture of it and dropped the original in the file with Eloise’s birth certificate. It might be a clue. And Leander wouldn’t need it to enjoy the report of my adventure in Lafayette. Probably he was already getting that.

  I paused for a thought. The mail was where it should have been when I came in, but the drawers were not. That either meant that my visitor was more careful about putting the mail back where he found it than he had been about the drawers, or that the mail came after my visitor.

  Odds on the second one. Mail usually comes about two. Crystal had decided to have the stuff picked up this morning. Before I’d seen Chivian. That was curious. And meant that Chivian had called him, probably the night before, to tell him that a Mr. Keindly was coming, but no one knew where from. And Crystal had decided that this meant that I was not to be “reasoned” with.

  There were a lot of presumptions, indeed. It was possible that it was not Crystal who had taken the Crystal file. But I had a hard time coming up with an alternative. Except maybe Eloise. But why?

  Ugh. Too much. I gathered the remaining set of my precious photos, and went sleuthily downstairs, and to my neighborhood drugstore. There I bought up all the rolls of black-and-white 35 mm film he had, along with some potato chips and a Table Talk rhubarb and apple pie. I returned to the office.

  I started my evening by taking pictures of all the pictures I was lucky still to have. When I had finished popping pics, I hid the undeveloped films under my mattress and started to work seriously on the Crystal records.

  30

  I would not have believed how much unintelligible information can be packed onto 1,241 pictures. It took me till past eleven to realize that financial records are not my strong point. I mean, I knew it all along, but it took a long time to realize that meant I should start elsewhere. As with my doctor pictures, it might well be most efficient to leave them to an expert.

  Conduct an audit, what a fetching idea. Only I didn’t know anyone who could do it. So I called Maude. Maude knows people who will do anything.

  “Berrrtie! How the hell are you? I was just this moment picking up the phone to give you a ring. You know, shoot the breeze a little.” When she is tired that is her notion of a fabulous lie. Maude virtually never talks anything but business.

  “I need a name, Maude, someone to go over a lot of financial records and tell me what they mean.”

  She thought for a moment and said, “I presume since you are calling me you want a person who can keep his mouth shut.”

  “Very shut.”

  “Very? Is there likely to be some heat on him?”

  “I don’t know how likely. But I’m beginning to think anything is possible. I have some records, you see, and I would very much prefer that nobody knew I had them.”

  “Well,” she said, “I have a man who does a lot of things for me, but he is probably pretty high for you.”

  “How high?”

  “Like fifty to get in the door.”

  “Will he do it on a contingency basis? Say, a hundred, plus more if he gets hustled? I don’t really think he will be.”

  “He’ll do it.”

  “Done.”

  “Name is Andrew Elmitt, 4552 Park Avenue. Phone is, let me see, Humbolt 6–9292. Send your phone number with the stuff. Special delivery if you want it done fast. He’ll call you a day or two after he gets it.”

  “I don’t want anybody getting blackmailed if there turns out to be anything there.”

  “Your mind is too florid, Berrrrtie. Elmitt is completely reliable, and besides I’ve got enough on him to get him into prison and tax manipulator’s heaven.”

  “Fair enough. Now all I have to worry about is you.”

  “A good point there. I’ll call the gentleman to check, and tell him to expect a package tomorrow. If I don’t call you back in ten minutes, it’s on.”

  I spent the ten minutes trying to figure out how likely Maude was to try to blackmail someone. But I guessed that it wasn’t really likely. At least 4 to 1 against.

  After another five I decided to call Miller. No more sitting around on my butt trying to figure the most delicate way to do things. I was for action now.

  Miller sounded tired and bored. Poor man, I try to bring a little spice into his life but he doesn’t always appreciate it.

  “So, you’re really stuck on going ahead are you?”

  “Yeah. You got that name right? Chivian, Henry, MD.” I spelled it for him, even the MD. That’s what I mean about the spice. It isn’t everybody who’d do that for a friend.

  “All right, all right. But what I want to know is what I get out of this.”

  “You get the first police information about any illegal doings. You get it all.”

  “Is that before or after you sell the story to the papers?”

  “What do you care, if you get that big bust that propels you into the lieutenancy you desire? By the way, I have something else that might interest you.”

  “Oh.” He didn’t sound interested.

  “Somebody came in and stole the lovely pictures you had made for me.”

  “Oh, yeah? They get both sets?” He still didn’t sound interested.

  “No. I was lucky. They were looking for one set and the negatives, and that’s what they got, plus all my other records.”

  “Well, as it happens I had a set made for myself. If you accidentally burn up the ones you have left you can borrow mine.” So that’s why he wasn’t interested. He had already been interested enough in my case to keep copies of everything. Army files; police records. Very nice. What a nice gentleman.

  He continued. “Anything else? I haven’t got time to fuck around with you on the phone.”

  “I know,” I said. “You’ve gotta get home to the wife.”

  For some reason he hung up on me.

  It’s like with food. There are just some people who can take spice and some who cannot.

  I had asked him to get me Army records on Chivian and when he found out where he lived before the Army, police records. Maybe Ames, Iowa?

  I gathered the financial piles from my Crystal collection and put them in a small envelope. Then I put the small envelope in a larger one and addressed it to Andrew Elmitt. I covered it with stamps, wrote “Special Delivery” on it with a blood-colored crayon from my animal-drawing set, and went out and mailed it.

  31

  But I couldn’t sleep. It had been quite a day. If I’d been in a passive mood I would have been depressed. As it was I watched the cracks in the ceiling, to see if they were going to move. I studied them for faces, and then for animals. I heard voices in the office. I heard voices in the hall. I saw Chivian laughing at me. And I saw those chicken pox scars and wondered how many kids she had.

  It occurred to me that it was very strange that Leander Crystal had bought the house Mrs. Forebush now lived in over a year before she needed it. Especially with Estes alive. Also that he had refitted it in such detail, down to locks on the doors. If he had bought it in anticipation of Mrs. Forebush needing it, why those particular fittings. Why seclusive shrubs? And why twin beds?

  Why indeed. Especially if he had been doing it to rent the house. To an alien who did not register in January of—what year?

  I got out of bed and consulted my notes. In January of 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, and 1959. I returned to bed.

  Presumably in 1954 she either registered or entered the country giving 413 East Fiftieth Street as her address. Her last address known to the Immigration Department.

  So it had to be. That after Lea
nder bought the house, he rented it to this unknown alien. With twin beds, yet.

  This I found of considerable interest. This is not how fortunes of two million dollars are built back up to ten million. So clearly the goal of operation was not profit. In the same period of time he had found money to pay to Jacques Chaulet and to Chivian. So why? A decent question. If not for money, then what for, love?

  Hmmmmm. An indecent question.

  I got out of bed again and called Miller.

  But the off chance that he was still at the station was off. I considered for a moment calling him at home, but not even I would do that. And besides he couldn’t help me at home. I wanted him to get information from the Immigration Department, or would it be Justice Department now, about this alien, unnamed. It would keep though. Until tomorrow. What’s another day?

  I had more trouble keeping until tomorrow. I was excited. I found a lot of animals in the cracks before I got to sleep.

  32

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I am from the U.S. Department of Immigration, and I’d like a few moments of your time.”

  Up close the old guy looked about sixty-five, lots of white hair and in pretty good shape. It’s the thin ones who last a long time.

  “My name is Joe Jenkins. I’m eighty-three years old, youngster, never had a drop to drink in my life. I’ve never had no trouble with any kind of police, and I’ve never worried a day in my life. Now is there anything else you want to know?”

  It was a little after nine thirty. I’d been out a half hour canvassing Mrs. Forebush’s neighbors looking for people who’d been around since 1953 or so. I was trying to get a little information about the alien tenant. It had occurred to me that somebody in the neighborhood might remember her. It seemed worth a shot.

  The way the Forebush house is placed, there are a lot of neighbors who might be able to keep track of a tenant there. It is one house in from a corner house, and the other side borders on an alley. That gave me the corner house and two or three around the corner whose backyards might overlook Forebush’s, as well as the house across the alley which gave me two families because it was a double. And maybe a few across the street.

  I had worked my way around the corner and although I had found a lot people who lived in the area that long, or longer, only one remembered anything at all. She was a lady named Fay. She had raised her children, twins, Newton and Norman, in her house and she intended to die there, or so she said. At length, She remembered vaguely that there had been a young couple in the house “before the Forebush woman got it.” She didn’t know really anything about them, she only saw the man a few times. It was possible that Newton or Norman remembered more. They were married now. She gave me their names and addresses.

  It was the best I had done.

  I had stopped at the two houses which faced Forebush’s across the street, but found only one occupied. A girl, about twenty, was unpacking crates and had just moved in. I asked about the former residents, hoping to track them down. The question didn’t turn her on. They had died in a car crash the month before.

  I was now at the double on the same side as Forebush’s but across the alley. My last chance. The old guy I’d seen on the porch the first time I’d visited Fiftieth Street.

  I asked him how long he had lived in the neighborhood.

  “Lived? Here? Since creation, sonny, since creation. I’ve been here as long as it has, since 1926. I bought it outright then, and a good thing I did because it was a lifesaver during the depression, a real lifesaver.”

  He seemed willing to chat.

  “Now, what do you want? I can tell you anything you want to know. For instance, the house you just came from. The old geezer piled them up on the highway to Kokomo last month, on the twenty-sixth it was. He was too old to drive. Too old. Even had his license taken away for six months about four years back. But he got it back. Now see what it’s got him. And his little woman. She deserved better, she did. Real nice little lady.

  “And the house you went to before that—”

  I cut him off, fascinated though I was. “It’s the one next door.” I pointed across the alley.

  “I reckoned it was,” he said sagely. “At least you’ve been in and out of it a few times the last couple of weeks. What is it? Mrs. Forebush figuring to sell it? Nice little house, you could do worse.”

  “No, I’m just trying to find out about the people who lived there before Mrs. Forebush.”

  “Ah, that’s right. Some government official or something you said. What’s the matter? They do something? Are they wanted?”

  “No, I just need to know about them.”

  “Well, let’s see.” He scratched his chin. He really did. “For a long time there it belonged to Railroad Mackeson. Would it be him that you were wanting to know about?”

  “I don’t know. Was he the occupant of the house just before Mrs. Forebush?”

  “Well, the only one that was worth a damn. But he’s dead now. That ain’t gonna help you.”

  “Who came into the house after him?” The serial approach.

  “Well, lemme see. House stood empty for a while while the kids wrangled over who got it. Then they decided to sell it and split the money instead. That would be 1952 or 1953. Just about the time Ike was getting himself elected. For the first time, that was. Good time to sell a house. So they sold it, pretty quick too. I remember that the new owner, whoever it was, had some changes done. Bit of a shame too, not that old Mackeson ever did much with the garden, but the yard looks a whole lot bigger with flowers than it did with big bushes. I guess that’s why it stood empty for so long.”

  “It stood empty?”

  “Yes, sir. Several months. The way I figure the owner bought it to rent out. Had it fixed up like. I saw a lot of furniture go in. And then I figure he couldn’t rent it for quite a while. Maybe a bad time for renting houses furnished. I don’t know. But there it stood.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, except for a young couple lived there for a few months, it’s been Mrs. Forebush.”

  “I think it’s the young couple that I want to know about.”

  He peered at me. He wore no glasses. “Why? Why them? Is it because the lady was a foreigner?”

  “That’s it, old-timer.”

  “Where’d you say you was from?”

  “Department of Immigration.”

  “Why’d you come here then?”

  “We can’t find her. That house is the last address we have for her.”

  “Well, by God! She ain’t lived there for more’n fifteen years. Why you just getting around to her now?”

  “You know how it is. We get a lot of paperwork and things pile up.”

  “Whewee! Son, let me tell you a little something. That’s no way to run a business. I run a couple of mighty successful businesses in my time, and this one of yours ain’t gonna last that way.”

  “What do you know about the young couple?”

  “Not much. They wasn’t here very long. Spent a lot of time in the house, I can tell you that. Both of them. They’d go shopping together. Didn’t seem to get along all that well. You can tell about couples. I guess’d they were just married before they came here, and I could see after a while why there was some troubles. She started putting a belly on her, and I don’t mean from overeating. Now my wife, God rest her soul, she could have told you how old it was to within a couple of weeks. But I don’t remember.”

  “Did they have the child before they left?”

  “Nope. I just figure they got fed up of the place or maybe each other. They just left one day, with some suitcases. Didn’t come back.”

  “Can you tell me what they looked like?”

  “Well, they’ll have changed a lot by now, of course. But at the time.” He thought. “The girl, apart from her belly, a little slip of a thing. Brown hair, pretty young. Maybe twenty, twenty-five. He was a lot older. Well, maybe not a lot older, but he looked it. Like forty or so. He had brown hai
r too, well as I could remember. What there was of it.”

  “He was bald?”

  “Pert near. Reckon he’s looking pretty shiny by now.”

  “Do you remember when they left?”

  “Not really. But Mrs. Forebush’ll tell you. She didn’t move in but a couple of weeks after. Real nice little lady, that Mrs. Forebush. Real friendly. And real cute little package for her age. You reckon she’d be interested in an older man? Older, but young at heart? You ask her that for me, will you, youngster?”

  “Mr. Jenkins, I would, but I somehow figure that in the fifteen years you’ve been here you might have had a chance to ask her yourself.”

  “Sonny, I might have done but that wouldn’t be quite right, would it? I mean with one wife already. My Mrs., God rest her soul, she only died four months ago. I reckoned to have a little chat with Mrs. Forebush, but I can’t hardly do that before decent mourning is over, now, can I? I just thought, you know, if you’re friendly with her that you could sound her out for me. That wouldn’t be immoral, now, would it? And then I’d have a little more to go on, a little more to look forward to in the next eight months.”

  “Tell you what I’ll do. If I can fit it into the conversation I’ll ask her how she feels about remarriage. And if she’d consider it, I’ll give you thumbs up as I leave, how’s that?”

  “That’ll do real well, sonny. Anymore it seems like no one will do a favor for an old man. I really appreciate it. I purely do. Mighty fetching little piece she is. For her age.”

  I left him drooling mentally, and with each step toward Mrs. Forebush’s door I felt more and more like a Golden Years Pandarus.

  Mrs. Forebush was in, and surprised to see me so early. Earlier than she usually took visitors, but I imposed. After all we had a relationship. I only stayed a few minutes and told her what I was working on. She couldn’t add much, just that she had moved in September 14, 1954, and that when she had moved in the previous tenants had left a lot of stuff. Not a lot of stuff to live with, but a lot of stuff to have left. Beds, one each in two of the rooms, some furniture, food, pots and pans, dishes, silverware, sheets and bedding.