Hope to Die

FIFTEEN

I started to tell her she'd have trouble finding anybody to take her case," I told Elaine, "but I stopped myself when I realized it wasn't true. Ray likes to say that there's no case so bad you can't find some lawyer who'll take it, and God knows that's true of private detectives. If you'll write out a check, someone will be happy to accept it."

"And did she write out a check?"

"I told her cash would be better. She gave me a thousand dollars, and I said I'd let her know when that ran out, but that it probably wouldn't unless I got results or incurred heavy expenses. When it's over I'll tell her if I think I have more money coming, and she can pay it or not, depending on how she feels about it. And I gave her an assignment. I told her to go through the articles the police returned to her and see if anything's missing."

"Not because you think some cop took a bracelet home to his wife."

"They generally don't, not in a major murder case. No, I thought the killer might have kept a souvenir. Sometimes they do. What else? I told her not to expect written reports or expense accounts, and suggested that she'd be better off not expecting anything. I wasn't working for her, I said, just doing her a favor, just as she'd be doing me a favor by giving me a gift of a thousand dollars."

"Same as in the old days."

"Pretty much. It was okay for a while there, having a license, being respectable, keeping books and making out bills. But I think I like it better this way."

"Well, it suits you. But that's a pretty small advance, isn't it?"

"I don't know, it strikes me as a pretty handsome gift. Hundred-dollar bills, ten of them."

"Not very much money, though. A thousand dollars."

"There was a time when you could buy a decent car with it, and there'll probably come a time when that's the price of a decent cup of coffee. But right now you're right, it's not very much."

"The work you've already done," she said. "How much would that be worth?"

"Not a red cent," I said. "I didn't have a client."

"If you had."

"I don't know. I put in some hours here and there."

"More than a thousand dollars' worth."

"Maybe."

"It's not as though we need the money," she said.

"No."

"Though we can always find a use for it."

"We always do."

"Matt? You're not going to fall in love with this one, are you?"

"I'm already in love." She didn't say anything, not out loud, anyway, and I said, "No, I'm not going to fall in love with her. She's decent and bright and pretty, and she's forty years younger than I am, and she couldn't be less interested. And, to tell you the truth, neither could I."

"That's interesting," she said. "But let me ask you another question, and you can take all the time you need answering it." She tilted her head, licked her lip, lowered her voice. "Is there anything you could be interested in? Anything you can think of?"

I thought of something.

Later she rolled over and propped herself up on an elbow.

"Thirty-nine," she said.

"On a scale of one to what?"

"Silly man. That wasn't a rating, it was a correction. You're thirty-nine years older than she is, not forty."

"Well, I have tell you," I said. "I feel younger already."