Ross Thomas - No Questions Asked

But there was some recent correspondence that Marsh had had with a manufacturer who was being robbed silly by some of his employees. Marsh had cleared that up nicely and the manufacturer had been so grateful that he had given Marsh a bonus.

There was more correspondence with another client concerning Marsh’s fees. The client thought they were a little high and Marsh had had to explain how they could have been higher, if it hadn’t been for Marsh’s years of experience, diligence, and general acumen, which had enabled him to solve the client’s problem (where his wife went on Thursday afternoons) long before Marsh’s competition could have come up with the same answer. I felt that Jack Marsh wrote a nice letter.

The only thing that I found tucked away out of sight were some bills with either Past Due or Final Notice stamped on them. They were from men’s clothing stores, a sporting goods shop, and a mechanic who specialized in Porsches.

In the center drawer of the desk was a red address book. I went through it. Some of the names and addresses and phone numbers had been entered in what I recognized as the secretary’s pretty round hand. I skipped those and concentrated on the ones that apparently had been entered by Marsh. They were written in a blocky kind of penmanship that seemed more concerned with legibility than style. I went through the book twice before I caught it. In the D’s at the bottom of the page written lightly in pencil was “Doc” and a phone number.

I took the envelope that I had used earlier and wrote the number down. I had just finished when I heard the door to the outer office open and close. I put the red address book back in the top drawer and stood up. Someone coughed once in the outer office. I thought it sounded like a woman’s cough, but I wasn’t sure because there isn’t that much difference between the way that men and women cough.

After the cough it was very quiet again and I thought I could hear my own breathing. I listened hard and heard the sound of a paper match being struck. It popped a little, the way they sometimes do.

She came through the door then, smoking a cigarette. She jumped when she saw me and opened her mouth and I wasn’t sure whether she was going to scream so I said, “Maude Goodwater gave me a key.” I fished the key out of my pocket and held it up so that she could see it.

“This isn’t her office,” the woman said. “She had no right to do that.”

“You must be Virginia Neighbors,” I said. “I was going to call you.”

She remembered the cigarette that she was holding and brought it up to her lips and inhaled some smoke. She blew it out in a long, thin plume, staring at me.

“Okay,” she said. “You know me, but I don’t know you.”

I looked at her for a moment before saying anything. She had a goggley look about her because of the enormous round purple sunglasses that she was wearing. They seemed to be more darkly tinted at their tops than at their bottoms. I couldn’t see her eyes because of them. I could see her hair though. It was blond and parted in the center and it fell down her back. How far, I couldn’t tell. She had a full red mouth that lipstick had made even redder and it might have looked kissable to some, but it looked only pouty to me, although that might have been the way that she always looked when she was angry or surprised or even both. Beneath her mouth and to the left was a small brown mole, almost a beauty mark. Her nose, I remember, was pink and shiny.

“My name’s St. Ives.”

“That still doesn’t tell me anything.”

“I was there when Jack Marsh got shot,” I said and waited to see what that did for her.

Her lower lip trembled, until she caught it between her teeth. I went over to where she was standing, reached up and gently took the dark glasses off. She had round blue eyes whose whites were so red that they looked almost inflamed. I handed her the glasses.

“Go ahead,” I said. “You should cry some more if it helps.”

She was wearing a pale tan pants suit with a dark brown sweater and I noticed that she had nice breasts. I still notice things like that. I probably always will. The jacket of the pants suit had pockets and she reached into one of them and brought out a pink wad of Kleenex and blew her nose into it.

“I’m not going to cry,” she said, putting the dark glasses back on and stuffing the Kleenex back into her pocket. She had managed to hold on to the cigarette through all of this and she took another drag from it inhaling the smoke deeply.

“Are you a cop?” she said, blowing the smoke out

“No.”

“But you were there when he got shot?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must be that guy from New York, the go-between. I heard about you, but I didn’t remember your name.”

“Who told you about me?”

“The cops. The L.A. cops. They were here yesterday and last week, right after — well, right after it happened. They went through everything. But not until I made sure they had a warrant. Then they asked me a lot of dumb questions.”

“Such as?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“No reason. I’m just trying to find out what really happened.”

“He got shot. Killed. That’s what happened.”

“I know. I was there.”

“Did he—” She stopped to bite her lip again. “Did it hurt him much? I mean did he suffer?”

“No. It was over in a second.”

“Did he — well, did he say anything?”

I decided to give her something to keep. It wouldn’t do any harm and perhaps on those long nights to come she could take it out and fondle it and perhaps play “might have been” with it.

“He muttered something — just one word. It sounded something like ‘Virgie,’ but I wasn’t sure what it meant so I never told anyone about it.”

Her chin trembled and then her nose turned even pinker and her mouth opened and she started to bawl in earnest. She took off the dark glasses so she could dab at her eyes again with the Kleenex. I went over and patted her on the shoulder and said something meaningless like, “Come on now,” and, “There, there.”

It was over after a minute or so and she put the dark glasses back on. “He called me that most of the time. Virgie, I mean.”

That hadn’t been hard to guess. I felt that I was getting to know Jack Marsh better and so far I hadn’t found much to like. I smiled at her. “You and he must have been very close.”

She nodded. “I worked for him for five years.”

“I meant close personally.”

“I knew him better than anybody,” she said. “Even better than her.”

“Miss Goodwater?”

“Miss Rich Bitch. I told him he was making a mistake when he moved in with her.” She nodded her head the way people do when they’ve been right and everyone else has been wrong. “I told him. And just look what happened.”

I wondered how old she was. With her glasses off and her eyes red and her nose all shiny she looked about ten but she talked like forty. Or maybe fifty. I guessed her to be thirty. Maybe thirty-two.

“But you kept on working for him even after he started living with Maude Goodwater.”

“Sure I did. Why shouldn’t I?”

I shrugged. I tried to make it an elaborate one.

Her lip curled up and for a moment I thought she was going to cry again, but I was wrong. It was a sneer. “We didn’t stop fucking just because he moved in with her.” That was her best pitch, the high, hard one, and she waited to see how I handled it.

I decided to watch it go by. “There’s just a chance,” I said, “that somebody set Jack up.”

“What do you mean set him up?” she said. “A cop shot him. A Washington cop with a funny name.”

“Fastnaught.”

“Yeah. That’s it. Fastnaught.”