Ross Thomas: No Questions Asked

“Whose idea was it?” I said.

“You mean the whole schmear?”

“Yes.”

“It was Spivey’s. He needed money. I mean, he really needed it bad. He had gone into a couple of deals, land deals, and they’d gone sour. Well, he knew Jack Marsh was always up to his ears in debt so he approached him — laid it all out for him, according to the Neighbors woman. Marsh jumped at it. He paid the little guy, what’s his name?”

“Doc Amber.”

“Yeah, Amber. He paid him a few bucks to go and make a spiel to Maude Goodwater about how he had a buyer for the book. She fell for it and then when Marsh got to Washington he just picked up the book from the Library and then disappeared. The Neighbors woman was in Washington with him when she made all those calls.”

“What’d she use?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“To distort her voice.”

“Oh. A couple of nickels, she said. She just put a couple of nickels in her mouth and then talked as deep as she could. Then in Washington it was Max Spivey who drove off with the money and the book after Fastnaught shot Marsh.”

“His hair was wet,” I said.

“Whose?”

“Spivey’s. When I finally got back to the hotel, his hair was wet. Or damp.”

“He could have taken a shower.”

“Or been out in the snow.”

“Or that,” he said. “What else? I mean, you say you knew it was Spivey even before you went out to make the buy-back last night.”

“I thought it was him,” I said. “I was pretty sure it was him. It was something he said.”

“When?”

“When we were in his boss’s office. The woman had called me and told me that I had until five o’clock to decide whether the insurance company would spend another hundred grand to buy the book back. When his boss asked how much time they had, Spivey said until five o’clock. I hadn’t told him that.”

“Gee, it was a real clue, wasn’t it?” Patrika said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. Sure.

“Why didn’t you do something about it?”

“Such as? You mean you think I should’ve called the cops and said, hey, this guy Spivey already knows that we have until just five o’clock to make up our minds. I didn’t tell him that, so why don’t you come down and get him and toss him in the jug? Something like that maybe?”

“It wasn’t much, was it?”

“Hardly anything.”

Patrika took the last bite of his hamburger, looked at his messy fingers, and sighed. “In my rear pocket,” he said. “There’s a handkerchief.”

I reached into his rear pocket and took out a fresh white handkerchief. He wiped his fingers on it. “I oughta keep some Kleenex in the car,” he said. “My wife gets mad as hell when I get chili all over my handkerchiefs.” He looked at me. “How come you didn’t get any on your fingers?”

“I’m naturally neat,” I said.

“Fastnaught,” Patrika said. “You know, he was a pretty good cop.”

“I know.”

“But he was drinking. A lot of cops drink too much. It’s sort of the cop’s disease.”

“And doctors and lawyers and writers and painters and traveling salesmen.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I guess we all try to be a little special, don’t we? I mean, we all think if we didn’t have such rough jobs we wouldn’t drink so much. But still, Fastnaught must have been getting pretty close to get himself killed.”

“He was working the insurance angle,” I said. “He found out that Jack Marsh was in hock to some people in Vegas and that he’d taken out a policy with Spivey’s company that made the collector the beneficiary. That smelled and that’s probably all that Fastnaught needed.”

“To get himself killed, you mean.”

“That’s right. To get himself killed.”

Guerriero pulled up in front of the house on Malibu Road and cut the engine. “Will you be long?”

“Not long,” I said. “How much time do we have?”

“It’s about forty-five minutes to the airport.”

“We’ve got a little more than an hour then.”

I got out of the van and went through the wooden gate and across the patio and down the three steps. I rang the bell and Maude Goodwater opened the door. She smiled and I smiled back. I followed her into the living room.

“Would you like a drink?” she said.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, it’s over, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s over. I’m sorry about the book.”

“I wasn’t talking about that. I mean it’s over between us.”

“It didn’t really get started, did it?”

She smiled again, this time a sad, almost wistful sort of a smile. “It might have worked out.”

“You would’ve had to put up with more than you bargained for.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

She turned and looked at the ocean. It was a pale blue dotted with frosty-looking whitecaps. “Funny,” she said. “It seems I might be able to stay here after all. I got a call a while ago.”

“From whom?”

“From a man who’d heard about the book — about it’s having a bullet hole through it. He wants to buy it. He offered me six hundred thousand. I didn’t think he was for real so I had my lawyer call him. He’s what we talked about — rich and eccentric.”

“He collects books with bullet holes through them?”

“He collects things that are connected with violence. Expensive things.”

“Well, I’m very happy for you.”

“You sure you won’t change your mind and play on the beach with me?”

“I’m tempted.”

“But not enough.”

“Not enough to cause you more trouble than you’ve already had.”

“You wouldn’t be any trouble.”

“You’d be surprised,” I said.

Guerriero switched the van over into a faster lane on the Santa Monica freeway. He looked at me and then looked back at the road. “You mind if I ask you kind of a personal question?”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“How much will you make off of this thing out here?”

“About seventy-five thousand, less expenses. The expenses will run about six, I guess, counting your five thousand.”

“And how long did it take?”

“About a week in all. Maybe a little more.”

“Let me ask you another real dumb question.”

“All right.”

“When I go back to school, is there anything I might study that would help me become a go-between?”

“Like me?”

“Yeah. Like you.”

I thought about it for a while. “Ethics,” I said finally. “You might study ethics.”