“One more thing,” I called just as he had bent his head down far enough to fit. “Ever read any Chandler?”
“No, I haven’t,” he replied without bothering to look back. “And my reading days are over. I only want to thank Thelma and then I can get on with my life.”
They were conveniently seated around the kitchen table when I arrived, all three of them, the ones I had decided were guilty. Sam was doing what he liked best-explaining in layperson’s terms a particularly neat solution to the latest space-time continuum problem-while Anna and Daniel were doing what they did best-pretending to understand.
Into this cozy scene I strolled. I took a swig from the half bottle of Bells I’d picked up on the way.
“Bad day?” Sam asked.
I shoved the bottle into my jacket pocket. It bulged in the linen, but you can’t have everything. At least I was suitably crumpled, I thought. I shook my head.
“Great day,” I said, “I was having problems balancing the books, but Moose solved that for me.”
They looked at one another, and the first hint of a doubt insinuated itself into my mind. They were giving a good impression of confusion, I thought, but then I discarded the thought. Anna and Daniel must surely have picked up some tips from the actors they directed, and as for Sam, well, he’d learned impassivity from years of teaching aspirant Nobel winners.
I changed tack, I reached into my bag, pulled out the wad of money, and threw it at them. It landed just where I had wanted it to, plum in Sam’s lap. Both Anna and Daniel stretched across the table to get a better look.
“Nice crisp notes,” Daniel commented. “Did this Moose rob a bank?”
“Maybe Sam did,” I said. “Let’s ask him.”
Sam looked at the notes in that abstracted way he had. “Moose,” he said speculatively. “The Big Sleep?”
“Farewell, My Lovely,” Daniel said impatiently. “I thought mathematicians were literate these days.”
Sam opened his mouth to defend himself. I decided that it was time to stop playing.
“I know you think I should give up the business,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I was coming to the same conclusion myself. But sending a nine-foot Moose to my office is not what I call a subtle hint. Nor is it funny.”
This time there was no mistaking the confusion in their eyes. I knew them well, these three, and they knew me. They wouldn’t, I thought, continue the game this far. Would they?
“Except he said his name was Martin,” I told them in a voice that was no longer so certain. “Martin Malloy. Looking for Thelma,”
They glanced briefly at one another, but they didn’t speak. I saw Anna’s eyes come to rest on my jacket pocket. The concern in her eyes spoke of her innocence, spoke of all their innocence. I gulped, took the whiskey out, walked to them, and deposited it on the table. I pulled myself a chair and sat heavily on it.
“I better start again,” I said.
I told them all about it, each piece of stinted dialogue, and by the time I had finished I was sure they weren’t involved. Which left me with a problem. A big one.
“So who sent him?” I asked.
They had no answer to that, and neither did I. Like most individuals I knew people who didn’t like me, and I knew people I didn’t like, but they could hardly be called enemies. Not the kind who would go to such elaborate lengths to hoax me-never mind produce 250 crisp new ones to aid them.
“Any dissatisfied clients?” Daniel asked.
No disatisfied clients-no clients at all, come to think of it.
“So what are you going to do?” Anna’s voice broke into my reverie.
I drew myself up straight as if I had already made the decision that was only then forming in my brain.
“Investigate,” I answered. “Find Thelma. What else can I do?”
“What if the money’s stolen?”
I shrugged. “I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” I said. I picked up the bottle of Bells and dropped it lightly into the dustbin. “Let’s celebrate with a real whiskey,” I said, “now that I’m no longer filing for a divorce from the lot of you.”
I was nicely oiled by the time I arrived at Tony’s Golders Green office.
Street Times was peopled by hacks like Tony who’d wakened up one day to the realization that their ulcers were never going to get any smaller. A few of them got together and decided that if they were going to start developing bosses’ diseases, they might as well be their own bosses. They’d started a London-based magazine that-now in its middle age-no longer tried to compete for the youth market. In a way, I suppose, they were one of the few remaining relics of the sixties although they had long since grown away from nostalgia or angst and had settled, instead, for what they could do in a world grown increasingly hostile.
Their new offices were, however, not exactly friendly. Workaday would be a better description, sited between a Dorothy Perkins and a grimy solicitor, with a smell courtesy of Grodzinski, the baker, giving the only hint of atmosphere. I made a mental note to pick up a sliced rye and some cheese Danish as I located Tony in his glass cubicle. His shirt sleeves, I observed, were held up by rubber bands.
“Still preserving the image,” I commented.
Tony glanced up from his computer and shot what, for him, approximated a smile.
“Bloody kid bit the buttons off,” he said.
“And how is she?”
This time the smile was definite. “Great,” he gushed. Catching himself, he ran a hand through his mousey brown hair. “For a monster. Want a coffee?”
“If it comes with a Danish,” I said.
Tony frowned. “They make them by machine now,” he said, “in some warehouse out in Bromley. The smell’s bottled to give us the impression that the good old days are still with us.”
“m pass then,” I said. I perched myself on the edge of his desk and peered around in an attempt to read his screen. “Impressive symbols,” I said. “Street Times going postmodernist?”
Tony moved the screen away. “Accounts,” he said curtly. He didn’t need to say more; I knew all about accounts. Which brought me to my business.
“Name of Martin Malloy mean anything to you?” I asked.
Tony yawned. “I’m losing my knack,” he said. “You’re no longer even bothering with the foreplay.” He yawned again. “You used to at least pretend to be giving me something in exchange for my gems of information,” he explained, “but since we’ve been exiled to the Green, I suppose you think I come cheap.”
I shrugged. “Nothing much to offer,” I said. “Business is slow.”
“Slow to get off the ground, or slow to die?”
“The latter.”
“Well, in that case,” Tony said. He hit a cue on his keyboard and the machine began to whir. “Bloody noisy, this new technology,” he said. “Now let’s see if the data base moved with us.” He typed fast with two fingers. “Malloy,” he said out loud. “Martin, Mr.”
I waited while he squinted his eyes at the screen, and then, a few seconds later, he hit a key and the bytes of information stopped rolling. “Thought I remembered him,” Tony said. “An interesting case, Martin Malloy.”
So he actually existed, I thought-interesting indeed.
“Martin, aka ‘Mouse,’ Malloy,” Tony offered.
“Mouse?”
“A reference to his size. Never met him, but apparently he’s on the big side.”
“You could say that.”
“And Mouse as well on account of the fact that he never talked to the cops.” Tony’s eyes scanned rapidly down the screen. “Malloy’s a genius with numbers,” he said. “When his face first hit the front pages, the gutter press got excited and tried to pin an idiot-savant label on him. He wouldn’t play ball, so they dumped him.”