Lawrence Block - Hope to Die

Manny was at a table with a couple of nurses fresh off their shifts at Roosevelt. They were drinking Margaritas and he was nursing a beer- a Dos Equis, he said, to fit the Mexican theme of the girls' drinks. Perhaps, he suggested, I might want to switch to some Mexican brand of bottled water.

One of the nurses said they had a woman on the ward who'd gone to Mexico on vacation, and drank the water. Manny asked how she was doing. "We're all sort of waiting for her to die," the girl said.

Elaine showed up and we got our own table. "I'd apologize for being late," she said, "but maybe I ought to apologize for showing up at all. You looked as though you were doing just fine."

"Yeah, right," I said. "They take one look at me and they think 'Geriatric Ward.' "

"That might not be so bad," she said. "Maybe you could get them to give you an enema. Anyway, if they've got one eye on the calendar, what are they doing with Manny? He's twenty years older than you."

"He's got the heart of a boy."

"In the body of a dirty old man," she said, and reached for the menu.

She had the avocado salad and I had a bowl of chili, and while we waited for the food I told her I'd sent the check to Michael. "All I did was write a check," I said, "and that seems like too much and not enough, both at once."

I explained how I'd made the check payable to Michael, and he'd write a single check for the full amount payable to the employer. She asked if he'd know half of it was from me. I said, "His boss? He won't care who it's from. Oh, that's not what you mean, is it?"

"Michael said he could only send five thousand, so will he say where he got the rest?"

"We didn't discuss it," I said. "He can do what he wants."

When we got home there were three messages. The one from Lia was still on there, joined by a message from Danny Boy, who suggested I might want to drop over to Mother Blue's anytime after nine.

The third message said, "Will the party who receives this message please call Ira Wentworth." There was a number to call, and nothing else.

I found Elaine and asked her if she knew anybody named Ira Wentworth. She didn't, and when she asked why I played the message for her. She said, "Guess what? We just won a free trip to inspect a time-share resort on beautiful Grand Cayman Island. Except he doesn't sound like a telemarketer. You know what he sounds like? A cop."

I played it again, and I knew what she meant. I dialed the number, and it rang a long time. I was on the point of hanging up when a woman picked it up and said, "Squad room, this is McLaren."

I asked for Ira Wentworth and she said he was out. Did I want to leave a message? I said I was Matthew Scudder, returning his call. Did I want to leave a number? "He must have it," I said. "He dialed it."

Did I know what this was in reference to? "Well, I figure he'll know," I said. "He called me."

"You were right," I told Elaine. "He's a cop, according to somebody named McLaren. Who's also a cop, or she wouldn't be answering the phone, though I can't say she sounds like one."

"I wonder what he wants."

"No idea. She didn't even say which precinct, she just said 'squad room,' and I didn't think to ask."

"You could call back."

"I could also say the hell with it," I said. "I'm going to see what Danny's got. While I'm at it I can ask him what he knows about Wentworth and McLaren."

"Wentworth amp; McLaren. It sounds like a team of architects. Or maybe a design studio."

"They're cops," I said, "first and foremost, and design's strictly a sideline. Look, if he calls, see if you can find out what it's about, will you?"

When I got to Mother Blue's, the house rhythm section was working its way tastefully through "Walking," the Miles Davis tune. I joined Danny Boy, and when the number ended the drummer and bass player left the stage and went to the bar, and the pianist played a Thelonious Monk composition. Danny and I both recognized the tune, but neither of us could come up with the title. When the number ended the pianist joined his fellow musicians at the bar, the jukebox kicked in, and Danny poured himself an inch of vodka and said that everybody had the same thing to say about Ivanko and Bierman.

"Which is that it's a good thing they're dead," he said. "The consensus seems to be that they're the sort of people who give crime a bad name. Especially Ivanko, who they all figured would do something like this sooner or later. Of course that's hindsight talking, but in this case it spoke with rare conviction."

"And Bierman?"

"Now that's what's interesting," he said, "and the reason I called. Nobody had much of anything to say about Bierman. If they were just as glad he was dead, that's because they knew him as Ivanko's partner in this particular outrage of the week. The one exception is Jason Bierman's mother."

"According to T J," I said, "she's all over the Internet."

"All over New York, too. She flew into town to clear her boy's name."

"Bierman's not from New York?"

"I don't know where he's from," he said, "or her either, originally, but she lives in Wisconsin these days. The city's one I never heard of before, and it's got ten or twelve letters and half of them are O's. Not that it matters, because she's not there anymore. She's here."

"In New York."

"At the old Hotel Peralda, known to the cognoscenti as the Paraldehyde Arms."

"Just west of Broadway in the Nineties," I said.

" Ninety-seventh Street," he said, "and what a pesthole it always was. Babies crying and bullets flying, and the only quiet rooms were the ones where the tenants were dead. Some hotel chain bought the place, if you can believe it, and they've converted it to a budget hotel for respectable travelers. I just hope they tented it first and fumigated the daylights out of it."

"And that's where she's staying?"

"If she hasn't gotten herself killed yet, or reinvented herself as a transvestite hooker, or hopped a freight back to Ocomocoloco. She swears her son was a good boy, and he couldn't possibly have done what they say he did. According to her, Jason was a fall guy for a player to be named later."

"Either I'm as crazy as she is," I said, "or the woman's right."

He poured himself some more vodka. "You were made for each other," he said. "She's been talking some to the press, from what I hear, but the only ones who want to bother with her are from the supermarket tabloids, and what they really want her to do is tell how young Jase used to pull the wings off flies and use stray cats for scientific experiments. When she insisted on making him sound like a choirboy, they lost interest. And of course the cops don't want to hear from her. They make some rookie take her statement, and then they just shine her on."

"Can't blame them."

"No. So what she's doing, even though she doesn't have a pot to piss in, and God knows the Colonial Inn expects you to bring your own- "

"That's the new name of the Paraldehyde?"

"Yes, and it's wonderfully descriptive, as long as your idea of a colony is Devil's Island. What the woman's doing, and why I couldn't wait to call you, is she's looking for a private detective to represent her interests and clear her poor boy's reputation. Made for each other, the two of you. Made for each other!"

If that had been one of Danny's nights at Poogan's, I might never have met Helen Leich Bierman Watling, the twice-widowed mother of Jason Bierman. I'd have thought of calling her at her hotel, and I might have looked at my watch and decided it was too late for a phone call. If I'd failed to find a working pay phone, intending to call when I got home, I'd have been that much more likely to decide it was too late and let it go until morning.

By then I'd have heard from Ira Wentworth (of Wentworth amp; McLaren) and a call to a dotty old lady from Wisconsin would no longer have ranked high on my list of priorities. In any event, I'd have had to call her by nine that morning, because that was when she was leaving to catch an eleven-A.M. flight to Milwaukee, the airport of choice for those living in Oconomowoc.