He Done Her Wrong

you know that it’s time to go to the cops. Deal?”

Winning touched his chin with his right hand, shrugged, and said, “It is a deal.”

“I’ll need fifty dollars up front,” I said. He pulled out his wallet and fished for the fifty in tens and ones while I glanced at the invitation to my wife’s wedding in two days.

I took the bills from Winning, stuffed them in my wallet, and pulled a pad of paper out of my top drawer. The top sheet had my doodle of cubes attached to cubes. I ripped it off, wrote a receipt, handed the sheet to him, and he fished out and handed me a business card, white, clean, embossed in silver, in hard-to-read script.

“Call me at any time of the day or night,” he said, rising and snapping his briefcase closed. “If my secretary or I do not answer, please keep trying. The institute is a rather busy place, and I spend little actual time in my office.”

I looked down at my invitation to a wedding and then at the psychiatrist.

“You married, doc?”

“I was,” he said, looking at me as if I might be a suitable case for treatment. “My duties proved to take more time and attention than my wife could accept.”

“I know how it is,” I said. “My wife’s getting remarried in two days.”

“Would you like to give me the fifty dollars back and talk about it for a few hours,” he said with a smile.

“No, I think I’ll hold on to the cash and try to work it out myself. Is that what you guys get? Twenty-five bucks an hour?”

“You can get less expensive help,” he said, “but it’s not always as good.”

“Forget it. You have any information on Ressner I might be able to use? A photo?” I said, unable to look up from the invitation.

“Right on your desk, in that folder, but no photo,” Winning said softly.

I hadn’t noticed him putting the folder there.

“I’ll be in touch,” I said with a nod and a look toward Winning, who had walked to the door and had his hand on the knob. He was looking beyond my eyes for something deeper, but I had dropped the shades. Winning gave up, opened the door, and let in the sound of Shelly scraping away and singing, “Where nobody cares for me, sugar’s sweet, so is she.” Then he was gone, and I was alone with my invitation and last week’s Life.

I read the thin file Winning had dropped on my desk. Winning had been a sweet break. I was going for Ressner anyway, for myself, for Mae West, and for Phil. Getting paid for it would be nice.

There was no likely Ressner in the L.A. directory. Same was true of the valley towns. Nothing in the files helped much except for a reference to Ressner’s former wife. Her name was now Grayson. Which reminded me- Anne Mitzenmacher Peters would soon be Anne Howard.

I couldn’t find a Jeanette Grayson in any of the directories, but that didn’t surprise me much. The phone, if it was listed, would be in her husband’s name, and there were too damn many Graysons to start that. The file had no address or phone number for her. So, I looked up at my favorite crack in the white wall of my office, followed it to the corner, and picked up the phone.

Phil wasn’t in, but his partner, Sergeant Steve Seidman, a silent cadaver of a man, asked if he could help. I said no and told him to have Phil call back. Then I waited.

At first I searched for letters to write. There weren’t any. I doodled cubes and tried to find a position on the chair that didn’t make my back worse. Then I looked out the window at the alley and watched a pair of rummies heading toward the Farraday. I lost sight of them below. I would have forgotten them if I didn’t hear something like metal against concrete. I pried open the window and leaned out to see the two bums prying off my hubcaps.

My.38 was in the glove compartment. Even if I had it, I wouldn’t have fired even a warning shot. I don’t shoot well enough. I’d probably kill one of them, put another hole in my car, or fill an innocent passerby with dread and lead. I grabbed a bronze paperweight shaped like Alcatraz and shouted down.

“Drop those caps and run like hell,” I yelled. “Or I’ll bomb you clear to Burbank.”

“Drop them,” I shouted, “or …”

I heaved Alcatraz out the window and watched it turn over three or four times before hitting the roof of my car, bouncing and crashing through the rear window. The bums, thinking that they were being bombed by God, dropped the caps and ran. One cap spun like a top. The other rolled back toward the car and leaned against it.

That’s when the phone rang.

“You think you’ve got troubles,” I said to whoever was on the other end.

“Can the crap, Tobias,” came Phil’s weary voice. “What do you want?”

“Help,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

“With the job we talked about,” I went on.

“What do you need?” he said quietly.

“I’ve got to find a woman in the Los Angeles area named Grayson, first name Jeanette. I think she’s married to someone with money. Her ex-husband is probably the looney who went after Mae West.”

“You at your office?” he said.

“Yeah, I’m at my office. Anne’s getting married Sunday.”

He didn’t say anything, just breathed heavy.

“Sunday,” I repeated.

“What do you want me to say?” he finally sighed. “She knows what she’s doing. It’s your own fault. You’ve heard it all. Get off the phone and let me see if I can get this for you.”

He hung up. I needed someone to feel sorry for me, so I wandered into Shelly’s office where he was humming “The Carioca” and patting the mouth of the soldier with a gray towel as if he were a baby who had dribbled a mouthful of banana mush.

“Don’t bite on that for a week or two,” Shelly paused in his humming to say.

The kid nodded and looked at the door.

“That filling and stuff will hold all right,” Shelly went on as he chomped on his cigar, “but it’s not made to be abused. You’re going to have to be careful chewing on that side from now on. Your new life motto is ‘Eat Carefully and Chew on the Right.’”

The kid nodded again, got up, dug out a wallet, and counted out bills, which he handed to Shelly, who removed his cigar. Shelly always removed his cigar to count money. Satisfied, he beamed at the kid, who beat it into the dangerous halls of the Farraday Building.

“Shel,” I said softly. “Anne’s getting married Sunday.”

Shelly looked at me and blinked behind his bottle-bottom glasses.

“Too bad,” he said shaking his head. “Say, did you have any money down with Arnie on the Sugar Ray Robinson fight? Knocked out Banner in the second. I made twenty bucks.”

“Anne’s getting married,” I repeated as he stuffed the money into his wallet.

“Anne?”

“My former wife,” I explained.

“That airlines guy you were talking about? Ralph?” he said, pushing his glasses back and reaching for a dental journal.

“That’s the one,” I admitted.

Shelly sat in his own chair, magazine in his lap, and looked at me with sympathy.

“Mildred and I want to visit her brother in Cleveland,” he said. “You think Anne could get this guy to give us a break on tickets?”

“I’ll ask him, Shel. Thanks for listening.”

“What are friends for,” he said with a knowing smile and settled down with his journal.

The phone call came an hour later. I had spent the hour trying to think about something else. A client once tried to teach me meditation as payment for finding his runaway sister. I got the idea down all right, but I couldn’t put it into practice. My thoughts, my back, the damn city, and my dreams kicked me in my flat nose every time I tried. The guy had assured me that if I just kept at it I’d make a breakthrough one day. I had almost given up on that ever happening, but I gave it a try every so often. The problem was that I had chosen the bronze Alcatraz paperweight as the focus of my attention during meditation and it was resting somewhere inside my Buick.

“Forty-six Buena Suerte in Plaza Del Lago,” came Phil’s voice over the phone.