Mistress

Chapter 53

I duck behind a tree, as if I have something to hide, as if it’s a crime to stand across the street and watch the police search your house.

I open my cell phone and dial Ashley Brook’s number.

“Two quick questions,” I say to her when she answers. “What’s your favorite Seinfeld episode, and what does it mean when you say someone looks like the cat who ate the canary?”

“I have a question for you, too,” she answers.

“Mine first.”

“Okay, well-if you look like the cat who ate the canary, it means you look guilty.”

“Isn’t that being caught with your hand in the cookie jar?”

“Oh. But the cat isn’t supposed to eat the canary, so it feels guilty. Right?”

On the sidewalk just outside my house, Detective Larkin is conferring with two men in sport coats and blue jeans and two uniformed officers.

“I thought it meant you look smug,” I say. “Self-satisfied. The cat’s happy because it just had a nice meal. It finally caught the canary.”

“Hmm. Well, okay, my favorite Seinfeld episode? It’s a tie.”

“You can’t have ties.”

“I have a tie, Ben. Deal with it. The first is the one with the contest over who was ‘master’ of their domain; the second is the one where Elaine thought her boyfriend was black and he thought she was Hispanic, but they were both afraid to talk about it; and the third is the one about being gay, where they kept saying ‘not that there’s anything wrong with that.’”

Fair enough. All of those would make my top ten. She left out the one where Kramer takes the furniture from The Merv Griffin Show and starts his own talk show in his apartment. Or the one about “shrinkage,” where George emphasized the point by wearing a T-shirt three sizes too small.

Detective Larkin pulls out her cell phone and makes a call. The other four cops head inside my house.

“Now, what’s your question?” I ask.

“When was the last time you got any sleep?”

“A week ago.”

“You need sleep, Ben. You’re acting goofy. I mean, is this why you called me? To ask about Seinfeld and some stupid idiom?”

“Is that an idiom or an expression?” I ask.

“Is there a difference?”

“Why are you answering a question with a question?”

“Why are you?”

One of the uniforms comes out of my house carrying my desktop computer. A second one emerges with a banker’s box, contents unknown.

“There was another reason I called,” I say. “Text me the number for Fast Eddie.”

“Eddie Volker?”

“The very one.”

“Why do you want to talk to Fast Eddie?”

One of the plainclothes detectives pops his head out and calls to Larkin. She hangs up her phone and rushes up the stairs and disappears into my house.

It looks like they found something good. Good for them, I mean. Not so good for me.

“Because I think it’s time I finally got a lawyer,” I say.