“Why?”
“Grasshoppers,” he whispered.
2
It all started that Friday, New Year’s Day, 1943. Well, at least the year started that Friday. The things that led to me being nose-to-nose with an ax-carrying lunatic through the not-very-thick glass of my car window probably began when we were both born. Maybe a hell of a lot earlier.
It was sometime in the afternoon at Mrs. Plaut’s boarding house on Heliotrope in a not-so-bad area of Los Angeles not far from downtown. Mrs. Plaut had thrown a wild party the night before to welcome in the new year. To celebrate the occasion, she had put together a dress that looked like a shroud with lunatic flowers of every shape and color sewn onto it. There was very little of her in the first place. Eighty years of life had eroded her into a tough hickory cane lost in the enormity of that dress, the construction of which she had badly miscalculated, probably based on memories of a more matronly body.
Highlights of the Plaut festivities, in order, were:
• Mr. Hill, the mailman, his unnecessarily tight tie threatening to strangle him, singing a medley of songs starting with “Cupid’s Stupid Isn’t He?” and ending with, “The Donkey Serenade.”
• Mrs. Plaut’s elderberry punch, made from elderberry
• Guy Lombardo on the radio from 11:30 P.M. till midnight, when we sang “Auld Lang Syne.”
When Carmen Lombardo sang “and never brought to mind,” I thought I saw a tear in the corner of the eye of Gunther Wherthman, my best friend, who lives in the room next door to mine, and who also happens to be three feet tall and Swiss. Gunther had brought a date to the festivities, a graduate student in music history named Gwen, whom we had met on a case in San Francisco two months before. Gwen looked on Gunther with adoration, seeing only a gentle man who spoke and wrote eight languages and knew the difference between a woman and a lady. Gwen looked a bit more like a toothpick than a woman or a lady, but Gunther saw only the adoration.
I had asked Anne, my former wife, to spend New Year’s Eve with me but she’d said she had to stay home and do her nails instead. I had a feeling she was doing more than her nails. I tried Carmen, the cashier at Levy’s, but the ample Carmen had said she’d promised her son that she’d be with him New Year’s Eve.
“You wanna come?” she had asked without enthusiasm as she rang up my Reuben and Pepsi. “We’re gonna toast marshmallows and stuff.”
“What stuff are you going to toast?” I’d asked.
“Just stuff,” she said.
That had been the second-longest conversation I had ever had with Carmen. The longest one had been about Roy Rogers.
So, I had decided to stay home and join the Plaut New Year’s Eve party. I should have gone to Carmen’s house to toast stuff.
Mrs. Plaut had concluded New Year’s Eve with the reading of a passage about her Cousin Ardis Clickman, from her massive memoirs. I was editing her memoirs. At various times Mrs. Plaut thought I was an exterminator, then a book editor. I don’t know how she’d come to either conclusion. Many have tried to penetrate Mrs. Plaut’s fantasies. All have failed. I had long since given up telling her that my name was and is Peters, Toby Peters, private investigator, not exterminator, not editor.
“Mr. Peelers,” she said on that semi-sultry Los Angeles night, “you need pay special attention since you will get my inflection which is not available to you when you are at the task of editing the Plaut saga.”
“I’ll pay special attention,” I had promised.
I looked at her bird, whose name changed at Mrs. Plaut’s whim. From the perch in his cage, Carlyle-or was his name now Emmett? — cocked his head to one side and contemplated the tale Mrs. Plaut monotoned for almost an hour.
It had to do with “The Mister” who, along with Uncle John Anthony Plaut and Aunt Claudia had, on New Year’s Night, 1871, decided to attack the local settlement of Pawnees-always good fun when one grew weary of watching the fire crackle and re-reading
It seems that “The Mister,” who would later marry Mrs. Plaut when he was ancient and she was a child, was particularly fond of the Pawnees. Since I valued my sanity more than my curiosity, I didn’t bother to question this. I doubt if Mr. Hill even heard it. His eyes indicated that, inspired by elderberry punch, he was off to undreamed of ports of call. No, it was Gwen, who took things and people at their word, who asked the question,
“Why did they want to attack the Pawnees?”
“One may like a class of human species and still feel the necessity of causing their demise for reasons to do with survival and such like,” Mrs. Plaut explained, patiently.
“Well,” I said when I thought she had finished her tale. “This was some party, but I’ve got to get up early.”
“I’ve never known a man to refuse a final cup of Grandmother’s elderberry punch,” she said, evening up the pages of the hand-written manuscript. Over the years, the thing had grown to massive proportions.
“I must,” I said sadly.
Mrs. Plaut placed her manuscript back in the linen-covered box from whence it had come and handed it to me.
“I think it’s time I took Gwen home,” said Gunther, jumping down from the sofa with practiced dignity and offering his hand to his date. He was the only one dressed for the occasion, complete with three-piece suit and tie with a matching handkerchief in the jacket pocket.
Mr. Hill, if his face was a reasonable window to his soul, was over the sea in Erin, dreaming of Leprechauns.
And that was it.
I wished everyone a happy New Year and went to the pay phone on the second-floor landing. I dropped in a nickel and called Anne. She answered on the first ring.
“Hello,” she said in the voice that never failed to stir memories.
“Annie, Annie was the miller’s daughter,” I recited. “Far she wandered from the singing waters. Up hill, down hill Annie went a maying …”
“Toby, I was in bed.”
“Happy New Year,” I said. “You want me to come over?”
“No,” she said.
“I’m sober,” I said.
“I can tell. You never were much of a drinker, even on New Year’s Eve.”
“I’ve had a depressing night,” I said.
“So you’d like to come over and depress me?”
“That was not my plan.”
“You didn’t have a plan, Toby,” she said quietly. “You never have a plan.”
And then I heard it-something, someone.
“You’re not alone,” I said.
She said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You couldn’t know,” Anne said gently.
“No, I’m sorry you’re not alone.”
“I hope you have a good new year, Toby,” she said.
“Yeah.” I hung up, imagining Anne who, at forty-one, was dark, full, and might be considering her third husband. I had been the first. Ralph, the second husband, was another story.
There was only one other person to call. I did it. A girl answered.
“Who’s this?” I asked.
