Ross Thomas: No Questions Asked

“I received three calls this morning,” he said. “Quite early this morning. Before seven.”

“That’s pretty early,” I said.

“I tentatively agreed for you to handle it although, of course, I said that I would have to check with you first.”

“How much?” I said.

“A quarter of a million.”

“My end’s the usual ten percent?”

Myron Greene nodded.

“Who’s going to pay it?”

“The insurance company has agreed to pay it, if you can get it back.”

“Then it must be worth a lot more than a quarter of a million, whatever it is, which you’re going to tell me about in due course, although at this rate due course is probably going to be late this afternoon.”

Myron Greene sighed again. It must have been either his third or fourth sigh, but I was no longer counting. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to present it in my own way. My own way is a logical, step-by-step presentation, which, I realize, is a bit foreign to you.”

“Don’t try to be sarcastic, Myron. When you try to be sarcastic you get all red in the face. You want some more tea?”

Myron Greene started to touch his face to see whether it was red, but realized what he was doing and stroked his moustache instead. The moustache was new. At least I hadn’t seen it before and I knew he was waiting for me to say something about it and I was trying very hard not to. We played little games like that with each other.

“I would like some more tea,” he said. “The first call I got was from the insurance company.”

“Have we done any business with them before?” I said as I poured.

He shook his head and gave his moustache another brush with a thumbnail. Actually, I thought the moustache made him look rather dashing, if somebody who stands five-nine and weighs close to a hundred and ninety-five pounds can look dashing.

“It’s a Los Angeles firm,” he said. “It’s comparatively small, but growing, and they’ve established quite a sound reputation for themselves despite the fact that they occasionally do some rather odd business.”

“How odd?”

“They insure such things as movie actresses’ legs and smiles and tits and things like that. But the firm’s sound. Very sound. I suppose they do it for the publicity.”

“What have they insured that we’re interested in?”

“A book.”

“A book? Just one?”

Myron Greene nodded. “That’s right. Just one. Now the second call I received this morning, again quite early, I might add, was from Washington.”

“Ah,” I said.

“What does ‘ah’ mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose it means that the plot thickens. That’s what a call from Washington can mean, especially if it’s from the CIA or the State Department or somebody jazzy like that.”

“It was from the Library of Congress.”

“Well, that’s where they keep books. In fact, they keep some pretty valuable ones there.”

“Valuable and rare. The call was from the Chief of the Rare Book Division.”

“He’s missing a rare book, I take it.”

Myron Greene shook his head. “No, that was the principal reason he called. He wanted to make it quite clear that the book in question had only been on deposit with the Library and that the owner had insisted on withdrawing it, using his own security measures and not those of the Library or of the federal government for that matter.”

“So somebody stole it after it left the Library?”

“Apparently so. However, the man I talked to, a Mr. Laws, while insisting that neither the Library nor the government had any responsibility for the book’s theft, also wanted me to know that they would cooperate in any way that they could in securing its retrieval.”

“You mean getting it back.”

“That’s what I said.”

I shook my head. “You said securing its retrieval. Five minutes on the phone with Washington and you start talking the way they do down there.”

“It must be contagious,” he said. “Now then. The third call. It must have been long distance, too, but I’m not absolutely sure. It had that funny kind of hum that long distance has. It was from a woman or a man who was trying to sound like a woman who was trying to disguise her voice.”

“Tricky,” I said. “And also a new wrinkle. Nobody’s ever used that one on me before. What did he or she want?”

“We’ll make it she. She said that you had been recommended by the insurance company, but she didn’t know anything about you. She wanted to know somebody she could talk to about you who was in her line of work.”

“What’s her line of work?”

“She said she was a thief.”

“What did you say?”

“I said that most of the people whom you knew who were in her line of work were in jail — although through no fault of yours. Then I thought of somebody.”

“Who?”

“Bingo Bobby.”

“Good Lord,” I said. “Bingo Bobby Bishop. I haven’t thought of him in years. I also thought he was doing ten to twenty down in Oklahoma. McAlester, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Myron Greene said, “but he got out. He called me about a month ago and wanted to know if I could recommend some young, really smart lawyer who was just starting out in practice and didn’t charge too much.”

“For himself?”

“He said for a friend. I took his number and then called him back and gave him the name of a kid I know who’d just got out of law school. He thanked me and told me to tell you hello. So I gave his number to the woman.”

“The one who called you this morning. Well, if she wanted to talk to a thief, he’s a good one.”

Myron Greene sipped his tea. “He must have given you a good reference because she called me back.”

“The thief?”

“Yes.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said she thought she’d be able to work with you. I told her that I would have to talk with you first, but that I felt sure that you’d be interested. You are interested, aren’t you?”

“I’m interested.”

“Then you have to be in Washington this evening to meet with the insurance company’s representative who’s flying in from Los Angeles. He and the Chief of the Rare Book Division will brief you on the book.”

“You mean they might even mention its name.”

“I didn’t forget to mention it, if that’s what you mean. They wouldn’t tell me. All they would say is that it’s old and rare and extremely valuable.”

“How old?”

“A little more than five hundred years old, they said. Oh, yes. The thief wanted to know one more thing. She wanted to know what to call you. I said she could call you Mr. St. Ives or Philip or even Phil, if you grew really chummy. She said she didn’t mean your name, she meant what you did for a living. I told her that she could think of you as a professional intermediary.”

“You shouldn’t try to pretty it up,” I said. “Professional intermediary is what you put down on my tax returns. You should have told her what I really am, since she says she’s a thief, which almost makes her part of the family.”

“You mean go-between?”

“That’s right, Myron. Go-between.”

The Adelphi apartment hotel that they were going to tear down and evict me from, although not in that order, had been built back in the early twenties about the time that the claw-footed bathtub was beginning to disappear from the American scene.

Because a long series of owners had refused to spend what they should have on maintenance, the Adelphi had skipped middle age and instead had gone directly into advanced senility. The heating system wheezed and drooled. The elevators were spiteful, the way a mean old lady can be spiteful, and kept letting you off on the wrong floor. The walls were cracked and stained and a musty grey, although they once must have been an oyster white. The carpets were worn and patched, and you kept tripping over them. The bar and restaurant off the lobby was patronized largely by utter strangers who tried it only once by dreadful accident. And then there was Eddie, the sinister bell captain.