AND THEN THE SUNDAY STAR was without its where-we-found-the-bomb story. “Is it over at last?” the Star asked. Maybe the media-led “vigilance” was beginning to have an effect.
Or maybe there had just been a glitch in Scum Front dynamite deliveries.
Tune in next week.
Instead I read an extended progress report about a different kind of terrorism. The kind that has lots of money and knows all the right people and gets pats on the back in the editorial columns.
The report was on the progress of the urban mall over Washington Street, with its “skyways” to protect urban shoppers from urban traffic and urban weather while they used their urban credit cards and traded urban gossip.
There were problems. Frontline stores were hesitating. Though holes had been blasted, work was stalled. Oh dear. What a pity.
Washington Street. The old U.S. 40. Washington, D.C., to Indy and points west. Now to be the basement for a giant-sized Hamster World?
Or was I just sour because my career as a success hadn't turned me into an urban spendthrift yet?
After lunch I applied myself to invoices, in preference to Lesson Twelve in Teach Yourself Bookkeeping. I drank orange juice. I mused on whether my new dynamic life was going to be punctuated by humiliations every Saturday night.
Five-fifteen. My doorbell rang. It was my soulmate.
“Poet,” I said at the door, “did I mention that I charge double rates on Sundays?”
I made way for him to come in. He went straight for the Client's Chair and dropped onto it. He made a winded sound. “Sorry about interrupting your devotions, old man, but opportunity has knocked and needs to be answered.”
I moved to my Go-for-It Detective desk. “Well, I've decided that I will do what I can to help you, within reason.”
“That is a great relief to me.” He stared intently. “Thank you,” he said.
“So what's happened?”
“Tomorrow must be the deadly day. Tomorrow I do the deed.”
“What's special about tomorrow?”
“Both Charlotte's children have been home from college all weekend and they each brought friends.”
“I don't understand.”
“Suddenly Charlotte is distraught and upset. She may say she loves a high-activity, high-intensity life, but she seems to have lost control. And I can't fault her. There is no one on earth who could keep control of seven self-indulgent, narcissistic, hyperactive American college students on a manic party weekend. It is time to strike!”
“Oh.”
“Well, tomorrow morning it shall be. I'll console her over breakfast. I'll remind her what responsible people they will become, despite being boors at present. I will amuse her with quotes from Shaw and Wilde and Dorothy Parker. `She speaks eighteen languages and can't say “No” in any of them.' Do you know that one?”
He paused, but it wasn't a real question. He said, “And then the telephone will ring and it will be for me. `Who can it be?' I shall ask when Loring brings the extension to the breakfast nook. I shall look worried for a moment. But I shall say, wittily, `Probably the Nobel Prize Committee, saying I'm to get Literature.' She will laugh, my Charlotte, and I will say, tentatively, `Hello?’ ”
I watched him mime the phone call, rehearse his facial expression.
“And, lo and behold, the caller will be Vanessa's mother! She will tell me that Vanessa—”
“Who is Vanessa?”
“My dear departed wife. So rudely and untimely murdered. Struck down in the prime cut of her maturity by a gang of yobbos on the prowl.”
“A gang of what?”
“Ruffians.”
“Ah. Ruffians. Poet, just how are you going to arrange to be called transatlantically?”
“Oh, that's all in hand, dear boy. I have a sister. She's a bit of a thespian. I dictated the text to her last night. She's going to ring in the morning, our time. I've told her when Charlotte and I will be at breakfast.”
“You live at Charlotte's?”
“No no. I have an apartment as part of my residency. But I will twist my ankle tonight and ask to stay over. Charlotte will agree, but be slightly suspicious. But I shall make not a single suggestion or comment with innuendo, the perfect gentleman. We shall be perfect pals.”
“Well, I guess you've got it all worked out. So does that mean you don't need me after all?”
But that was not what he meant.
He went through the story he had worked out for Vanessa's fate. It was strong on scene-setting and emotion and the injustice of random violence. It also had a moral: anything good in life must be grasped because life is all too short.
My “job,” when he finished, was to comment.
“As if you had been hired to investigate events,” he said, tossing his hair. “What would you do? Where would the holes be?”
“The problem. Poet, is that if anybody questions the facts at all, the result will be to find that the entire thing is a hole.”
“What do you mean?”
“Suppose somebody asked me to check. The first thing I would do is telephone the police where the murder was supposed to have happened. And I would ask for the officer in charge of the Vanessa Quayle murder. And they would say `Take a hike' or whatever police say over there when someone asks about a murder they've never heard of. And that, Poet, would be that.”
“Surely they wouldn't talk to you on the telephone.”
“They would tell me that they had never heard of a murder victim named Vanessa Quayle.”
He cogitated. He said, “I won't specify where it took place.”
I shook my head. “If anybody suspects it's a phony, all it would need is the I.Q. of a jogger to crack it in a day.”
He sniffed a couple of times. But then he said, “You're the expert. What do you recommend?”
“Am I allowed `Forget it?’ ”
“No,” he said. He slipped his right hand under his shirt and flapped it. It represented his fluttering heart.
“Your only chance is if nobody asks, `Is this story true?’ ”
“Mmmm.”
“So flood your audience with details. Have your sister get a printer to prepare a newspaper clipping. Arrange to get phone calls of condolence. Letters from lawyers about your wife's estate. Everything like that you can think of.”
“I see.”
“Are you going to the funeral?”
“Absolutely not. The funeral's already taken place. Vanessa's mother will tell me that tomorrow and I will be upset because I would have flown back. Charlotte will console me.”
“O.K., then arrange to get a telegram about funeral expenses. A fax from your wife's executor asking if Aunt Edna can have the crocheted bedspread she loved so much.”
“I see,” he said.
“Ask advice from people here. Shall I help her relatives? Keep the game on your territory. It's your only chance.”
He nodded vigorously. “That's great, Albert. You've given me some good things to think about.”
“All part of the service,” I said. I thought about adding a new entry to my “awesome” list. If I could find a way to describe it.
My client rose. “I'm going to go home and make some plans.”
And little as I had wanted him to disturb my Sunday, I had trouble settling again once he went. I still didn't like the idea of what he was doing. But I didn't much care for the idea of doing more bookkeeping either. Especially while the sun was still shining.