Everything but the Squeal

“Me?” I was perspiring. “I'm swell.”

“You still think you'll need help?”

“If I do, I’ll call.”

“Do that.” He yelled at somebody and then hung up.

I had the jitters. Trying to calm my doubts, I poured another cup of Roxanne's coffee and promptly poured it down the sink. What I didn't need was the jitters.

That day, Friday, was the fourth day of Aimee's ransom period, the day she was supposed to come home safe and sound. I'd resigned myself to a day of inactivity, maybe two days: Mrs. Sorrell might give it an extra twenty-four hours before calling for help. For want of anything else todo,I turned on the computer and began to enter notes on the case. Sometimes the act of typing out my thoughts clarified them. Sometimes I just wound up with a bunch of useless high-tech typing.

An hour later, I'd resigned myself to the latter. I felt like I was writing somebody else's novel, like a literary medium doing automatic typing for some second-rate mystery writer in the sky. I had no idea how it was going to turn out.

With a resigned sigh I turned on the printer and churned out what I'd written so far. After several minutes of irritating zipping sounds, five pages lay in the tray. Reading over them, I realized that I'd left somebody out.

Back to the keyboard. I'd never learn to handle it the way Morris did. For him it was a musical instrument, full of mysterious chords and unexpected progressions, modulations, and tone clusters. For me it was an expensive alternative to the ball-point pen. For approximately the thousandth time I wondered why I'd bought the damn thing.

Then, partway through a word, I stopped and stared at the screen. I was writing about Birdie, and the word I was writing was secretary. The first six letters were a word in themselves, and the word was secret.

A secretary, in the original meaning of the word, was one who kept someone else's secrets. Birdie, with his terrible hairdo, his Philippine shirt, and his brutal forearms, materialized front and center in my mind's eye and grinned at me. Birdie knew the secrets of the data base. Birdie kept the day-to-day secrets of Mrs. Brussels' appointment book. What other secrets did Birdie keep?

Without thinking about what I was doing, I got up and poured another cup of coffee. It tasted like battery acid; the pot had been on the warmer for hours. I spit it out and rinsed the pot. I even washed my cup, something I usually don't do until all six cups have been used up. I would really, I thought, like to take a look inside Birdie's house.

But, as usual, there was a problem or, rather, two problems. The first problem was that it might endanger Aimee. Playing by the rules, I should have waited until the next day, and that was the second problem. The next day was Saturday, and on Saturday Birdie would probably be home. There's a very good reason why most domestic burglaries, particularly in this age of two-family paychecks, happen on weekdays. Victims observe the work ethic. Burglars don't. There are almost no burglaries during the daylight hours on weekends.

As usual, when faced with something I wanted to do and a good reason not to do it, I rationalized. It's one of the patterns of my life. On a different level, it was the mental trait that had allowed me to talk myself into being unfaithful to Eleanor: she'd never find out about it, I told myself, and it couldn't really hurt her as long as I was clear about whom I actually loved. And, of course, she always found out about it and it always hurt her. Eventually it hurt her to the point where she decided it would be less painful to live without me. And now she was in China investigating extended families and I was floundering around L.A. looking for lost children.

My rationalization about Birdie's house was simple. Don't touch anything, and no one will know. Leave no traces. Just look around and come home. It'll be a head start, I said to myself in my most convincing interior- monologue tone, something I'll have to do anyway when Mrs. Sorrell calls to say that Aimee hasn't been returned. If I didn't do it on Friday, I'd have to wait until Monday. Three lost days, days that might either kill Aimee or save her life. At the time, it seemed like a powerful argument.

Powerful or not, I had the self-control to wait until afternoon. For all I knew, Birdie went home for lunch. I didn't want to walk in on him while he was forking his quiche or gnawing on his cigars or whatever it was that had stunted his growth.

In the meantime, I didn't know where he lived. I didn't even know his last name. I went back to the pad on which I'd written everything I'd learned about the numbers on his auto-redial buttons.

“Doggies Do,” said the same peevish voice. He had to do that five days a week. It was a miracle that he wasn't in a straitjacket.

“I want to make an appointment for a perm,” I said flutingly. I made airy little hand gestures to get into the mode. “And a nail clip too. You should see what she's doing to the shantung on my couch.”

“Your name?”

“Dorfenbecker,” I said, gambling that there wasn't another one.

“Hmmmm,” he said. Pages flapped. “Have you been in before, Mr. Dorfenbecker?”

“No. It's my very first time.”

“How did you learn about us? Yellow Pages? One of our ads in the Times or the HeraldExaminer or DogDigest?”

“Oh, no, no, no. A very sweet man on my block recommended you. He said you were just marvelous. Birdie something; I'm afraid I don't remember his last name.”

“That would be Mr. Skinker.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Skinker.”

“Such a cute nickname, Birdie. When would you like to come in?”

“Tuesday?” By Tuesday it would be over one way or the other.

“Fine. And what kind of a dog is it, Mr. Dorfenbecker?”

I tried to think of a breed. “A Shetland,” I said.

There was a pause. I could hear a pencil tapping on a desk. “A Shetland is a pony,” he said. “We don't do horses.”

“Well, of course you don't,” I said. “And Shetlands don't claw couches, at least not unless you keep them in the house. I didn't say Shetland. I said sheltie.”

“Silly me,” he said. “Tuesday at two?”

“Peachy.”

“Your phone number?”

I gave him Roxanne's. Roxanne was never home and she didn't have an answering machine. And if he did get her and she said she'd never heard of Mr. Dorfenbecker, he'd just think he'd transposed a digit.

“See you Tuesday at two,” he said. “Ciao.”

“Ciao yourself,” I said, hanging up and going back to my pad.

“Holistic Pet Clinic,” said the next voice on the third ring. “A holistically healthy pet is a happy pet.” The voice belonged to a female.

“This is Mr. Simon, Animal Regulation,” I said.

“Mr. Simon,” she said, all business. “What can we do for you?”

“I've got an application for license renewal in front of me,” I said, “and the man who filled it out neglected to give us his address. You're listed as the veterinarian who gave his dog her booster shots.”

“Yes?” she said.

“Well, I can't send him his license tags without an address,” I said. Dogs whooped in the background.

“How thoughtful of you,” she said. To someone else she said, “Your dog is really terrorizing that kitty. Could you keep him closer to you, please?”

Another job I was glad I didn't have. “His name is Skinker. The dog is a Yorkshire terrier, it says here.”

“Just a moment.” She dropped the phone to the counter, and I listened to various quadrupeds making their trademark noises as I regretted pouring the battery acid down the sink. A little battery acid was just what I needed.

“Bertram Skinker,” she said, “1310 Janet Drive, West Hollywood 90068.”

“Thank you,” I said, writing it down.

“Don't mention it. Ah, ah,” she said, “not on the floor.”

At two o'clock I was driving Alice up and down Janet Drive. Janet was a quiet, curving street just barely on