inscrutable little tip of the hand, as if he could not alter bygones.
'What do you think Krzysinski's going to say when Jake tells him about this?' I asked.
Martin closed his eyes to weigh the inquiry, as if it had not occurred to him yet, and when he looked back a little wrinkle of something close to humor, an embracing irony, briefly crossed his worn face. He stood to regard me, as another of his funny clocks began to chatter like a chipmunk somewhere in the room.
‘I think you'd better find Bert,' he told me.
VI
A. Good News
Most of the time as I am recording this, talking it through, I do not see the faces of Carl and Wash and Martin. I can't really imagine them with the pages in their hands. So there must be someone else I mean to talk to, sitting here in my rummage-sale bedroom late at night. In the stillness the voice seems to be the spirit, the way a candle is best represented by a flame. Maybe the Dictaphone's a medium, then, a way to enhance communication with the dear departed. Maybe this is really an extended message to sweet Elaine, with whom I used to speak three times a day. Today I've felt her absence starkly, the willing ear to whom I've muttered stray remarks, even as I sat in my office, shiftless and sour, feeling perplexed by the hunt for Bert.
I stared again at the statement from the Kam Roberts bank card. My feet were on my desk, a large period piece with the formidable tiered look of a steamship, its rosy surface lost in a patchwork of discarded telephone messages, throwaway memos, and various briefs and transcripts that I was yet to file. When I came in at G amp; G with Jake Eiger's backing and made partner during those initial years when Jake drowned me in work, I had the option to redecorate this room but never got around to it, too drunk to care I guess. I've lived all this time with what is in reality second-hand stuff, the big walnut desk, the glasspaned bookcases, two leather gooseneck chairs with brass studs, a nice, if worn, Oriental rug, a personal computer, and my own clutter. The only object I care much about is on the wall, a terrific Beckmann print — the usual dissipated people in a cafe. By daylight I have a fine view of the river and the west edge of Center City, girded by the Interstate, US 843.
I thought sullenly about how I was going to make Martin happy and find Bert. I still wanted to talk to the flight attendant in the apartment above his, but I didn't have her name — she hadn't left it on the mailbox — and the notion of putting myself in the vicinity of that stiff again gave me the willies. I phoned long-distance information for Scottsdale and after two calls found Bert's sister, Mrs Cheryl Moeller, whom I'd met when the ma was buried. She didn't know where her brother was and had not heard from him in months, which was par for the course. She couldn't remember any pal of Bert's named Archie either. She didn't sound as if she liked her brother any better than she ever had and ended up reassuring me that Bert was going to turn up, as usual.
Fellas, Elaine — whoever I'm talking to — I have to tell you, your investigator was stumped. I went over the statement one more time. Why was Bert booking hotel rooms on game nights when he had an empty apartment a mile away? Purely on a flyer, I called U Inn. I got the hotel operator and did what we used to refer to in Financial as a pretext call. I said I was trying to get information on a guy I'd had a business meeting with at U Inn on December 18. I'd lost my entire file in a taxi and was hoping maybe they had a forwarding address or phone for him.
'What's this gentleman's name?' the hotel operator asked.
'Kam Roberts.' I was looking for any clue to Bert's present whereabouts. I heard a few computer keys click, then spent most of eternity on hold, but finally got a fellow named Trilby who said he was the Associate Manager. He asked first thing for my name and number, which I gave him.
'I'll check our records, Mr Malloy, and ask Mr Roberts to call you.'
Wrong idea. Bert didn't figure to stick around for an encounter with any of his partners.
'I'm on vacation after today. I really need to reach him. Any chance of that?'
'Just a moment.' It was a good deal longer than that, but Trilby sounded quite pleased with himself when he returned. 'Mr Malloy, you must have ESP. He's a guest in the hotel.'
My heart stopped.
'Kam Roberts is? You're sure?'
He laughed. 'Well, I wouldn't say that anybody here knows him, but there's a gentleman by that name checked in to Room 622. Should I have him call you? Or can we tell him when you'll be coming by?'
I thought. 'Can I talk to him?'
He returned after I'd heard an extended symphonic version of 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head'.
'There's no answer there, Mr Malloy. Why don't you stop by at the end of the day and we'll get him a message you'll be here.'
'Sure,' I said. 'Or I'll call.'
'Call or come by,' said Trilby. He was writing a note.
After I put down the phone, I sat a long time looking at the river. There was one building across the way, still wearing Yuletide festoonery, lights and a skirt of holly across the roof. It didn't make much sense. Bert had reason to be laying low — his partners, the police, and maybe even whoever had stuffed that bug-eyed businessman in his refrigerator were all after him. But why hide in Kindle, where sooner or later he'd run into somebody he knew? Whatever, I had to get down there fast, before Bert got this lame-brained message in which I'd used my actual factual name, the sight of which undoubtedly would lead him to scoot once more.
I took the elevator down and crossed the street to the health club where I play racquetball with Brushy. I jumped into my sweats and shoved my wallet in a pocket, then started jogging. It was 28 degrees so I hauled my broad Irish backside down the avenues with some dispatch, but I ran out of wind after about four blocks and went back and forth, running till my smoked-up lungs felt like I'd breathed in bleach, then stopping and letting sweat freeze up on my nose.
I cruised out of Center City into the neighborhoods where the two-family houses roosted like hens behind the frozen lawns and the leafless trees, stark and black, loomed above the parkways. Lured by my mood, I jogged a few blocks out of my way into the edges of the ghetto, so I could pass St Bridget's School. It is a stucco building split by long cracks the shape of lightning. There, for more than thirty-one years, Elaine was the school librarian — 'feeding the starving,' as she put it. This was a person of iron convictions. With our ma, I turned myself into a sort of human tetherball, always close enough to be pounded back in another direction when she'd go off her nut and rage about one thing or another, but Elaine was smarter and held her distance. She developed, through this exercise, I suppose, a strongly contrary temperament. When everyone was sitting, Elaine was standing; she wandered around the kitchen when the family dined. She preferred her solitary self to any company, and that never seemed to change.
She ended up one of those Catholic spinsters, a spiritual type who never quite joined the secular world, at 5:00 a.m. Mass every morning, always palling around with the nuns and identifying people, and even store locations, throughout the tri-cities by their parish. She had her worldly moments, some gentlemen friends with whom she sinned, and she was a terrific card too, one of these clever old Irish gals with a bracing wit. All Ma's sharpness was still resident in her, but where Bess took to the cudgel of spiteful words and judgments, Elaine's humor was aimed principally at herself. These little muttered cracks as you left your seat, turned your back, and always an arrow to the heart. Her only failing she came by naturally — she drank a bit. The night she left our house, goofy from plum brandies, and turned up the off ramp and headed onto US 843 was the final drunken evening of my life.
In AA, where I've lapsed just like I have in the Church, impressed by the faith but unwilling to engage in the required daily rituals — in AA they told me to submit myself to a power outside myself. Don't count on beating the demon on your own. The help I ask for, Elaine, is yours. And sometimes as I do it, as I ran down the bleak streets toward the U Inn or sit here in the night whispering into the Dictaphone, I puzzle on what strikes me as a piece of nasty truth.
I miss you ten times more than Nora.
