Ross Thomas - No Questions Asked

“What?”

“Doc tells me he don’t much wanta talk to certain parties from back east unless he knows who they are. And here’s another fact for you. Doc don’t much wanta talk to any party, irregardless of where they’re from, unless he knows what they want with him. Irregardless, he said.”

“I bet he did,” I said.

“What d’you mean, friend?”

“Nothing. Just that Doc likes to use big words like that. Irregardless.”

“You got any peanuts?” Guerriero said.

The bartender looked at him and gestured with his head. “End of the bar, kid. Your buddy here and me are having a dialogue and I don’t wanta interrupt it to go get no peanuts.”

“You want some peanuts?” Guerriero said to me. “Or can’t you chew peanuts and have a dialogue all at the same time?”

“He’s a smart-ass kid, ain’t he?” the bartender said.

Guerriero smiled at him with his hard, white grin, slid off the stool, and moved toward the rear of the place. The bartender turned his head to check how many packets of peanuts Guerriero got from the end of the bar. Then he turned back to stare at me some more. “Like I was saying,” he said, “Doc sorta wants to know who comes in looking for him.”

“St. Ives,” I said. “Philip St. Ives. Maybe I should write it down on something — maybe on a ten dollar bill.”

The bartender used an elbow to shove the twenty I had placed on the bar toward me. “This’ll do,” he said. “You got a pen?”

“I’ve got one.” I took out a ballpoint pen and wrote my name on the back of the bill in the white space just above the White House. To the right of my name I wrote Riverside motel. I moved the bill back over toward the bartender.

“What d’you want Doc to do?” the bartender said, reading what I had written on the bill.

“Drop by and see me,” I said. “I’d like to talk to him.”

“What about?”

“A book. A real old book.”

“You wanta buy it or sell it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Tell him I just might want to borrow it.”

When we got back to the Riverside motel at five I told Guerriero that although I probably wouldn’t be needing him that night, I would like a phone number where I could reach him. He wrote one down and gave it to me.

“What time tomorrow?” he said.

“About ten, I guess.”

“Are we making any progress?”

“With what?”

“With whatever it is that we’re doing.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure.”

“But we’re going to be doing more of the same tomorrow, whatever it is?”

“Probably.”

“You know what’s wrong with you?”

“What?” I said.

He grinned. “You talk too much.”

After Guerriero drove off I went into the motel office and checked with the tired-looking man to see whether I had had any calls. I hadn’t. On the way back to my room I stopped by the ice machine and scooped up a bucketful. Inside my room I got the Scotch out and mixed a drink. Armed with that I moved over to the phone and dialed Myron Greene’s home number in Darien, Connecticut. It rang three times before Deborah answered. Deborah was four and we had a nice talk, perhaps four dollars’ worth, about her new rabbit, Jimmy, and about Jimmy’s funny pink eyes.

Finally Myron Greene came on and I said, “I thought I’d let you know where to reach me.”

He told me to hold on while he got something to write it down on. When he came back I gave him the name of the motel and its phone number and the number of the room I was in.

“What if somebody else wants to reach you?” he said.

I thought about it for a moment. “I think you’d better give it to them.”

“Anybody at all?”

“That’s right. Anybody at all.”

“Are you making any progress?”

“I’m asking a lot of questions. I’m not sure whether the answers I’m getting could be called progress though.”

“How long do you think it might take?”

“I’m giving it a week. That’s all.”

“Anything I can do?”

“If you happen to run across a nicely appointed one-bedroom apartment with a view of the river for two hundred bucks a month, you might tell them I’ll take it.”

“I’ll put Joan to work on it. She’s good at such stuff.” Joan was Myron Greene’s secretary. “But I don’t think she can find anything like that for two hundred a month.”

“I was only kidding, Myron. I’ll go a lot higher.”

“You know how literal I am when it comes to money.”

“Sorry. I forgot. If anything happens out here, I’ll let you know.”

“All right,” he said and after we said good-bye, I hung up. It was still too early to eat so I sipped my drink for a while and finished reading the morning’s Los Angeles Times . At seven I turned on the television set and looked at the network news and marveled, as I always did, at how much money was spent on bringing so little news to so many.

At seven-thirty I switched off the set and walked down the courtyard toward the motel office. The tired-looking man was watching a game show in which the contestants jumped up and down and screamed and hugged the master of ceremonies every few minutes. He seemed to be interested in the show so I didn’t say anything until a commercial came on.

“If I get any calls, I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I said. “I’m just going out to eat. Can you recommend something?”

“Well, you don’t wanta try that place across the street.”

“I already did. This morning.”

“You haven’t got a car, have you?”

“No.”

“If you don’t mind a little walk, there’s a rib joint about half a mile down La Brea. You like ribs?”

“Ribs sound good.”

“Well, they got pretty good ribs down there. Straight down La Brea on your left. It’s called Hank’s Rib Joint. You can’t miss it, like people always tell me when I ask directions, but, by God, I do. Miss it, I mean.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“You don’t mind the walk, huh?”

“No. I don’t mind it.”

“People in this town don’t walk anywhere. I mean, they need a pack of cigarettes and the drugstore’s a block away, but you think they walk? Hell, no. They drive. Goddamnedest thing you ever saw.”

I thanked the tired-looking man for the directions and for sharing his thoughts with me and left. It was pleasantly cool out and there didn’t seem to be much smog and I had the broad sidewalk virtually to myself all the way to Hank’s Rib Joint, where the pork spare-ribs that I ordered turned out to be every bit as good as the tired-looking man had promised.

Back at the motel I sat in the chair that was covered in lime green plastic and smoked cigarettes and waited for something to happen. A little after nine, something did happen. The phone rang. I picked it up and the hard, chipper voice on the other end said, “What the hell you doing in L.A., St. Ives?”

“Looking for you, among other things.”

“Yeah, I got your message. What’s all this crap about a book?”

“I think we’d better talk about it, Doc.”

“Whaddya think we’re doing?”

“The phone’s not much good for something like this.”

“I’m a busy man, St. Ives.”

“You know about Jack Marsh, don’t you?” I said.

“I know he’s dead.”

“The cops know that, too. I don’t think they know about you and Jack. Not yet.”

“But you’re gonna tell ’em?”

“Not necessarily. Not if I can ask you some questions and I like your answers.”

“What if you don’t like ’em?”

“I’ve always liked your answers, Doc. They’re colorful — even vivid.”

“You sure you haven’t got something tricky going?”