Lawrence Block - Hit Parade

“We’re doing okay,” she said.

“We are?”

“I seem to have a knack for this,” she said, “or else I’ve been lucky, which is probably just as good. Don’t you think?”

“I suppose so. I didn’t know you were in the stock market.”

“I’m not,” she said. “I’m right here in my kitchen, sipping iced tea and talking to my partner.”

“We’re partners?”

She nodded. “Remember Indianapolis?”

“Basketball,” he said.

“Basketball and stock manipulation. We made out very nicely, and it was you who came up with the idea. We did some buying and selling, and no special prosecutor turned up to charge us with insider trading.”

“And you’re still in the market?”

“We both are, Keller. I never gave you your share.”

“You didn’t?”

She rolled her eyes. “And after the dust settled on that deal,” she said, “well, I looked around and found some other things to buy. It’s real easy, you just get online and click your mouse and there you are. You never have to have a conversation with a human being who might ask you what the hell you think you’re doing. We’ve been making money.”

“That’s great, Dot.”

“You want your half? Or should I keep doing what I’ve been doing?”

“If you’re making money for us,” he said, “I’d be crazy to tell you to stop.”

“That’s assuming we’ll continue to do well. I could lose it all, too.”

“What have we got at this point?”

She named a number, and it was higher than he would have guessed, considerably higher.

“That’s what our account’s worth,” she said, “so half of that is yours. I’m inclined to keep playing, because I’d have to put the money somewhere, and it might as well be where it’s making more money. But if you have a use for it, or want to add it to your retirement fund-”

“No,” he said. “You hang on to it, and keep on doing what you’ve been doing. I didn’t even know I had it, and if I drew the money I know what would happen to it.”

“Stamps.”

“Stamps,” he agreed. “It’s a good thing you didn’t give me my share of the original stock profits, because it’d probably be gone by now. Well, not gone, but-”

“But pasted in an album.”

“Mounted.”

“I stand corrected. Look at that, will you?”

He glanced at the screen, with no idea what he was supposed to be looking at. “Fascinating,” he said.

“Isn’t it? Who would have guessed?”

The stock crawl went on during the commercials until they finally cut to some sort of mega-commercial that filled the screen. He seized the opportunity to ask her if that was why she’d asked him to come out to White Plains.

“No,” she said, “it’s something else. I got so caught up in this that I almost forgot. It’s wonderful to develop an interest late in life, you know?”

“I know.”

“You with your stamps, me with my stocks. Our stocks. Keller, when I say Detroit, what comes to mind?”

“Cars.”

“That’s right, they still make a few cars there, don’t they? What else?”

“ Detroit,” he said, and thought about it. “Well, the Tigers, of course. The Lions, the Pistons. There’s a hockey team, too, but I can’t remember the name of it.”

“Could it be the Horvaths?”

“The Horvaths?”

“As in Len Horvath.”

“Len Horvath.”

“That ring a muted bell for you, Keller?”

“Quotidian,” Keller said.

“Huh?”

“Putative.”

She held up her hands. “I give up,” she said. “Are you just throwing words at me, or did you pick up some charms from Harry Potter?”

“They were words he used,” he told her. “Len Horvath, in Detroit. ‘I read books,’ he said. He had a stamp collection when he was a kid. At least he said he did.”

“It’d be a strange thing to lie about. He liked you, Keller.”

“He liked me?”

“Not enough to ask you to the prom, but enough to call me on the phone and tell me who he was and what he wanted. And what he wants is you.”

“I thought he was going to kill me,” he remembered. “He had me picked up at the airport, and I thought he was going to have me killed, but all he did was use some big words and send me back.”

“And you haven’t been back to Detroit since.”

He started to nod, then remembered. “Just once,” he said, and thought of a shopping mall in Farmington Hills. “That fellow I met on the plane.”

“You didn’t run into Len Horvath on that trip, did you? Because he remembers you fondly. He wants you to do some work for him.”

“I can use the work.”

“Just what I was thinking, although I didn’t come right out and say as much to Horvath. I told him I’d have to make sure the time worked for you. Because this is one of those where time is of the essence. You don’t get to spend a whole season following a baseball player around the country. It all has to be done next weekend.”

“By next weekend? That’s not much time.”

“Not by next weekend. During next weekend. Today’s what, Tuesday?”

“Wednesday.”

“Really? So it is. I wonder what happened to Tuesday. Then again, I wonder what happened to the last five years.” She glanced at the screen, frowned, then triggered the remote. “I don’t want to get distracted,” she said, “and the damn thing’s distracting, sound or no sound. Today’s Wednesday, and the window of opportunity here is Friday through Sunday. Not this Friday through Sunday but next Friday through Sunday. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Well, nothing I can’t change. I had a trip planned, I even had my plane tickets bought.”

“Maybe you can get a refund.”

“Or maybe I can just change the flight to Detroit, if the airline goes there.”

She shook her head. “Forget Detroit,” she said. “After we got off the phone, your friend Horvath sent us something, and it wasn’t his boyhood stamp collection.”

“Money?”

“Uh-huh. Plus a photograph. It’s from a newspaper, but he cut it out so neatly there’s no caption.” She passed it to Keller. “Guy looks like he’s getting ready to accept an award.”

The man in the photo had a broad forehead, a strong jawline, and a full head of iron gray hair. And his facial expression-well, Keller could see what Dot meant. “He probably is,” he agreed.

“Oh? Anyway, his name is-”

“Sheridan Bingham,” Keller said. “People call him Sherry.”

Dot stared at him.

“He lives in Bloomfield Village,” he told her. “That’s a suburb of Detroit.”

“He called you himself, did he?”

“Bingham?”

“No, Horvath. He called me and worked it out, and then he called you directly. He didn’t? Then how in the hell…no, don’t tell me. It’ll come to me in a minute. He never said one word to me about Bloomfield Village, or even about Bingham being in the Detroit area. He just said where Bingham would be next weekend.”

“ San Francisco.”

“So you talked to him after all. You just said you didn’t.”

“I didn’t.”

“But-”

“It took me a minute to recognize his name, remember?”

She nodded. “And then you said those words. Quo something.”

“ Quotidian . It means ‘everyday, ordinary.’”

“Then why not just say that? Never mind. What was the other word?”

“Putative.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I looked it up, but I forget what it means.”

“So the hell with it,” she said. “Okay, I give up. How do you know about San Francisco? How’d you know the guy’s name, and where he lives?”