Deadlock

3 Reflections

“What were you looking for?” Lotty sat drinking coffee, her sharp black eyes probing me, but with affection.

I took a bite of my sandwich. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve been a detective too long-I keep expecting to find secrets in people’s desks.”

We were sitting in the Dortmunder Restaurant in the basement of the Chesterton Hotel. I had picked a half bottle of Pomerol from the wine bins that lined the walls and was drinking it with a sandwich-Emmenthaler on thin, homemade rye bread. Service is slow at Dortmunder’s-they’re used to the old ladies who live in the hotel whiling away an afternoon over a cup of coffee and a single pastry.

“My dear, I don’t want to press you if you don’t want to think about it. But you never sort papers. Even for your cousin you would give them to the attorney unless you were looking for something. So what you were looking for was very important to you, right?”

Lotty is Austrian. She learned English in London where she spent her adolescence, and a trace of a Viennese accent underlies the English inflection of her sharp, crisp words. We’ve been friends for a long time.

I finished my sandwich and drank some more wine, then held the glass, turning it to catch the light. I stared into the ruby glow and thought. Finally I put the glass down.

“Boom Boom left an urgent message with my answering service. I don’t know if he was just terribly depressed or in some trouble at Eudora Grain, but he never left that kind of message for me before.” I stared again at the wine. “Lotty, I was looking for a letter that said, ‘Dear Vic, I’ve been accused of stealing some papers. Between that and losing my ankle I’m so blue I can’t take it anymore.’ Or ‘Dear Vic-I’m in love with Paige Carrington and life is great.’ She says he was and maybe so-but she’s so-so, oh, sophisticated, maybe. Or perfect-it’s hard for me to picture him in love with her. He liked women who were more human.”

Lotty set down her coffee cup and put her square, strong fingers over mine. “Could you be jealous?”

“Oh, a little. But not so much that it would distort my judgment. Maybe it’s egocentrism, though. I hadn’t called him for two months. I keep going over it in my head-we’d often let months go by without being in touch. But I can’t help feeling I let him down.”

The hold on my fingers tightened. “Boom Boom knew he could count on you, Vic. You have too many times to remember when that was so. He called you. And he knew you’d come through, even if he had to wait a few days.”

I disengaged my left hand and picked up my wineglass. I swallowed and the tightness in my throat eased. I looked at Lotty. She gave an impish smile.

“You are a detective, Vic. If you really want to be totally sure about Boom Boom, you could try investigating what happened.”