No Questions Asked

14

Downstairs in the lobby I found a pay phone and called the number that I had copied from Jack Marsh’s address book. It rang twice and then somebody, a man, answered and said, “Yeah?”

“Doc Amber, please,” I said, trying to be brisk and businesslike.

“He ain’t here.”

“When do you think he might be in?”

“How the hell should I know? I ain’t his secretary. Who’s this?”

“Just a friend.”

“Well, lemme tell you something, just a friend, he ain’t here and I don’t know when he’s gonna be here, if he is.”

“Maybe I could drop by and see him.”

“Maybe you could.”

“What’s the best time?”

“Like I said, how the hell should I know?”

“Maybe I could come by and wait for him.”

“I don’t give a shit what you do.”

“I’m not sure that I’ve got that address down right.”

There was a silence. Then the man said, “You say you’re just a friend of Doc’s, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“But you ain’t got this address?”

“I’m not sure that I’ve got it right.”

“Fuck off, Jack,” the man said and hung up.

I went back out to the van and climbed in. Guerriero started the engine. “Where to?” he said.

I handed him the envelope on which I’d written the number that I’d just called. “We’ve got a problem,” I said. “That number. I’d like to get an address to go with it.”

Guerriero tucked the envelope into a pocket. “No problem,” he said. “Not if you’re willing to spend twenty bucks.”

“I’m willing.”

It was a thirty-minute ride. We took the Santa Monica freeway into Los Angeles and got off at La Brea. We went north on La Brea and then turned east down Melrose until we came to a row of small shops on the right-hand side of the street. The shops sold a variety of things including health foods and antiques and paintings. The one we stopped in front of was called the Fat Attic and most of the stuff in its window seemed to be old clothes and odds and ends from the thirties and the forties and even the twenties.

In the center of the row of shops was a passageway that led back toward the rear. With Guerriero leading we went down the passageway until we came to a door. Guerriero knocked and the door was opened after a moment by a girl with long red hair and a freckled face. She couldn’t have been much more than nineteen.

“Is he in?” Guerriero said.

The girl nodded. “He’s always in. Who’s he?” she said, looking at me.

“A customer,” Guerriero said.

The girl looked at me some more and then stepped back, opening the door. Guerriero and I went into a room that held a couch, a couple of chairs, a round table with a Formica top, and a big old Philco radio, the floor console kind whose dial was tipped back at an angle. I remembered vaguely that when they were advertising those tipped-back dials in the forties the selling pitch had been, “No Stoop, No Squat, No Squint.” The radio was on and playing some kind of background music that was as memorable as wallpaper.

The girl went to a door and opened it. “It’s Guerriero,” she called.

A young man came through the doorway, lightly brushing its sides with his fingertips. He wasn’t quite as young as the girl, perhaps a year or two older, and his skin was white and pasty as though he never got out into the sun. He turned his head in our direction, but he didn’t really look at us. He couldn’t. He was blind.

“How are you?” he said.

“Not bad,” Guerriero said. “What about you?”

The blind man shrugged. “What do you need?”

“An address to fit a number,” Guerriero said.

The man nodded. “What’s the number?”

Guerriero read it off from the envelope that I’d written it on. The blind man nodded again. “Twenty bucks,” he said.

I took out my wallet and removed a twenty-dollar bill. It didn’t make much noise, hardly any, in fact, but the blind man heard it. “Give it to her,” he said.

I handed the bill to the girl and the blind man must have heard that, too, because he said, “Sorry, but I don’t give receipts.”

“That’s all right,” I said. It was the first time that I had said anything.

The blind man cocked his head to one side. “About thirty-five,” he said. “Maybe forty. Maybe six feet tall, but maybe a little less. You lived back east, but originally you came from the Midwest, Cleveland?”

“That’s close,” I said. “Columbus.”

He nodded and smiled a little, but not very much. “The ‘a’ in your ‘all’ was pure Ohio, but you sort of spit your ‘t’s’ the way they do back in New York and Jersey.”

“I’ll have to watch it,” I said.

He shrugged. “It’s just a hobby. I’ll be back in a minute.” He turned and went through the open door, closing it behind him.

The redheaded girl made a vague gesture. “Sit down someplace, if you want to. He won’t be long. All he has to do is call the phone company.”

“I didn’t know they were so cooperative,” I said.

She looked at me. “Are you kidding?”

Guerriero sat down at the Formica table. “He’s a master phone freak,” he said. “He’s been doing it since he was six. He knows all the phone company jargon so when he calls in on a special number he’s got they think it’s just some other employee asking for legitimate information. Most of the time he just sells unlisted phone numbers. Movie stars. You want to talk to your favorite movie star?”

“Not especially,” I said.

“He’ll sell you the number for ten bucks.”

“We got a new thing going,” the girl said.

“What?” Guerriero said.

“He’s figured out a way to tap into any phone number. You know when you call in and ask the operator to verify if a number’s really busy or just off the hook?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, when she checks it he’s figured out a way to stay plugged into it. Then he hooks up a tape recorder and when anybody talks on the number the tape recorder goes to work. He can do that on any number so if you wanta hear what kinda phone calls your favorite movie star makes in a twenty-four hour period, we’ll sell it to you for a hundred bucks.”

Guerriero shook his head. “That’s going to get you in trouble. That really will.”

The girl moved her shoulders in an elaborate shrug. “We need the bread.”

The blind kid opened the door and came back into the room a few moments later. He turned his head to one side and then to the other as if trying to sense whether any of us had moved. He turned so that he was facing Guerriero, or almost. He was just a shade off.

“It’s a bar over on Pico,” he said. “The Happy Pelican. I wrote the address down on this.” He took two steps and held out a slip of paper to Guerriero and the movement wasn’t more than an inch or two off from the way that a person with sight would have done it.

Guerriero took the paper and put it in his pocket. “She told us about your new deal,” he said. “The taped phone calls.”

The blind young man smiled, but again it was a very small smile. “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he said. “If there’s anything on them would embarrass anybody, I wipe it. Most of the time it’s just dumb talk between them and their agents.”

“It’s going to get you in trouble,” Guerriero said. “Somebody’s going to talk and they’ll fuck you over good.”

“I could always weave baskets, couldn’t I?” the blind kid said.

“Well, it’s your ass,” Guerriero said as he rose from the table and turned toward the door.

The blind kid turned with him. “See you around,” he said.

The Happy Pelican looked like a bar that sold a lot of draft beer and not too much Scotch. It was housed in a narrow building that had a bricked-up front and a heavy slab wooden door. For decoration somebody had come up with a large cartoon figure of a pelican fashioned out of blue neon. The pelican’s smile winked on and off. For some reason they had also stuck a monocle in his left eye. I didn’t think the pelican looked very happy. In fact, I thought he looked a little morose and embarrassed about the whole idea.

Guerriero parked the van around the corner on a side street.

“You want a beer?” I said.

“Do you really want to buy me a beer or do you just want company in there in case the guy you’re looking for doesn’t want to be found and things get maybe a bit impolite?”

“He’s only five feet tall,” I said. “He couldn’t hurt a sick fly.”

“Maybe he’s got friends.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Well, what the hell,” Guerriero said. “I was thirsty anyhow.”

It was already twilight in the Happy Pelican. They probably liked it that way even in the morning when the early drinkers arrived. Guerriero and I slid onto a couple of stools at the end of the bar and looked around.

Opposite the bar was a row of booths that ran back to a couple of doors labeled His and Hers. Centered between the doors was a jukebox that was mercifully silent. Along the bar were scattered six or seven serious drinkers, most of whom seemed to be reading the labels on the bottles. Those who weren’t reading the labels were gazing out into space with that look that people get when they’re recalling past disasters. One of them was moving his lips. Only two of them looked up at us when we came in. The rest didn’t bother.

The bartender was at the far end of the bar using a small Tensor lamp to read something in a folded newspaper. It looked like a box score. When he was through reading it he put the newspaper down and moved toward us. He was about forty or forty-five and he wasn’t very tall, but he was awfully wide, with heavy arms and shoulders and wrists that were as thick as beer bottles. When he reached us he rested for a while, leaning against the bar on his folded arms and looking us over with his ice-colored eyes. After he was through doing that he said, “What’ll it be, gents?”

“A couple of beers,” I said. “Schlitz.”

“A couple of Schlitz,” he said and when he spoke this time I was almost sure that it was the same voice that hadn’t been overly friendly when I had called earlier to ask about Doc Amber.

The bartender went away to get the beer and when he came back I pushed a twenty-dollar bill across the bar. “I’d still like to get in touch with Doc Amber,” I said.

The bartender looked at me carefully and then poured some beer into Guerriero’s glass. After that he poured some into mine and we watched the foam mount together. Then he sat my bottle down with a hard bang and I jumped a little. Not much, though.

“You’re the party that called earlier,” he said.

“Yeah, I had the right address after all.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What time do you think Doc might be in?”

The bartender folded his big arms and again used them to lean on. I could smell his breath. He had been drinking bourbon and chasing it with Clorets. He stared at me some more. After he tired of that he unfolded his arms and ran a thick finger down my tie and gave the end of it a little flick.

“Nice tie,” he said. “Must have cost you a few bucks.”

“A few.”

“Nice jacket, too. Real wool tweed, ain’t it? None of that synthetic crap.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Real wool tweed.”

“I can’t see your pants but you probably got a press in them and probably a shine on your shoes. I mean I notice things like that. You know what it spells to me?”

“What?”

“Back east.”

“So?”

“So I was talking to Doc Amber earlier today and you know what he told me?”

“What?”

“Doc tells me he don’t much wanta talk to certain parties from back east unless he knows who they are. And here’s another fact for you. Doc don’t much wanta talk to any party, irregardless of where they’re from, unless he knows what they want with him. Irregardless, he said.”

“I bet he did,” I said.

“What d’you mean, friend?”

“Nothing. Just that Doc likes to use big words like that. Irregardless.”

“You got any peanuts?” Guerriero said.

The bartender looked at him and gestured with his head. “End of the bar, kid. Your buddy here and me are having a dialogue and I don’t wanta interrupt it to go get no peanuts.”

“You want some peanuts?” Guerriero said to me. “Or can’t you chew peanuts and have a dialogue all at the same time?”

“He’s a smart-ass kid, ain’t he?” the bartender said.

Guerriero smiled at him with his hard, white grin, slid off the stool, and moved toward the rear of the place. The bartender turned his head to check how many packets of peanuts Guerriero got from the end of the bar. Then he turned back to stare at me some more. “Like I was saying,” he said, “Doc sorta wants to know who comes in looking for him.”

“St. Ives,” I said. “Philip St. Ives. Maybe I should write it down on something — maybe on a ten dollar bill.”

The bartender used an elbow to shove the twenty I had placed on the bar toward me. “This’ll do,” he said. “You got a pen?”

“I’ve got one.” I took out a ballpoint pen and wrote my name on the back of the bill in the white space just above the White House. To the right of my name I wrote Riverside motel. I moved the bill back over toward the bartender.

“What d’you want Doc to do?” the bartender said, reading what I had written on the bill.

“Drop by and see me,” I said. “I’d like to talk to him.”

“What about?”

“A book. A real old book.”

“You wanta buy it or sell it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Tell him I just might want to borrow it.”