I should have had one of those cards that said Laugh.
“You want us to look for a red car,” Trooper Darius said.
“I can identify the driver.”
“How?” he asked.
“Because he was in the car.”
“When?”
“When I was driving it,” I said. “Before he took it.”
Another long pause while the sun beat down on his Smokey the Bear hat and my bare, sweating head.
“The passenger stole the vehicle?” he asked.
“I’m not sure I’d say ‘stole,’” I answered. “But, yes, the passenger took the car.”
“You know the suspect.”
“I’m afraid I do.”
“Describe him.”
“An older gentleman…” I began.
“How old?”
“Eighty-six.”
I had never before seen a state trooper struggling not to laugh.
“An eighty-six-year-old man stole your car,” he said.
“Well again, I wouldn’t necessarily say-”
“Did he beat you up?” he asked.
“No, I-”
“Threaten you in any way?”
“No, you see-”
“Was he armed?”
“No,” I said. “I went to use the bathroom and when I came out I saw him driving away. I thought he would turn around and come back, but-”
“Didn’t the old man need to use the bathroom?” he asked. “Because usually-”
“That’s what I thought, but he said he didn’t.”
“Now we know why.”
“I guess so.”
“Name?”
“Neal Carey.”
“His name,”
“I thought you meant my name.”
“No, his name,” said Trooper Darius. “I already know your name. Your name is Neal Carey.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
We stood for a few seconds enjoying the sunshine.
“So what is it?” the trooper asked.
“What’s what?”
“What’s his name?” the trooper asked. “Take it slow, now. His name, not yours.”
“Nathan Silverstein,” I said. “Or Natty Silver.”
“Which?”
“Both.”
“How many eighty-six-year-old men stole your car?” he asked.
“Just one,” I said.
“So we’re on the lookout for a red car driven by an eighty-six-year-old man named Nathaniel Silverstein aka Natty Silver,” the trooper said.
“That about sums it up.”
“Which way was he headed?”
“He went thataway,” I said, pointing west.
“He could be a long way thataway,” said the trooper.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why don’t you think so?”
“Because he was driving about twenty miles an hour.”
Trooper Darius thought for what seemed like a long time. Then he said, “Get in the car.”
“The car’s gone.”
“My car.”
“Oh.”
We were cruising west on Interstate 15 when the trooper said, “I thought if we can catch up to the old man, and if everything checks out, then you can just get back in the driver’s seat and you won’t have to call the rental-car people or your insurance company and I won’t have to file a stolen-vehicle report.”
“I really appreciate that,” I said. “Thank you.”
We were doing eighty miles an hour so it wasn’t long before we found the car in a ditch at the side of the road.
We pulled over and I jumped out of the cruiser, my heart pounding. I was scared to death I’d find Natty slumped over the wheel, hurt or worse.
I jumped into the ditch and looked into the car.
Nathan wasn’t in it.
Chapter 9
Graham answered the phone.
I’d been hoping he wasn’t home so that I could leave a brief message after the beep. Something like, “Hi, it’s Neal. I’ll call back.”
But Graham was home, watching an exhibition game between the New Orleans Saints and the San Diego Chargers.
And they call me mentally ill.
“Hi, Dad,” I said.
“How’s Palm Springs?” he asked. After a couple of seconds he added, “You lost him again, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How do you keep misplacing an entire person?” Graham asked. “I can understand a watch, a wallet, a glove. But an entire human being?! Twice, in the space of less than twenty-four hours?! Who is this guy, Harry Houdini?”
Sort of. Because he had simply disappeared. When Trooper Darius and I got to the car, there was no sign at all of Nathan. He was just gone. Without a trace. We even looked for blood on the steering wheel and windshield, thinking that maybe he’d hit his head. There was none, thank God.
Nathan was just gone.
“What do you mean, ‘blood on the dashboard’?” Graham asked. “I thought you were supposed to fly back.”
“I thought so, too.”
I told him about the scene at the airport. I told him about the Jeep and bouncing. I told him about Japanese cars, German cars “So what kind of car did you get?” he asked.
“Red, all right?!!” I hollered.
“Just asking.”
I told him about “Who’s on First,” about Lou Costello, Arthur Minsky, pastrami, Murray Koppelman, Irene the Irish Dream, Myra and her Doves of Love…
Graham asked, “How did she train the doves to land…?”
“I don’t know!”
… about Benny the Blade, salami instead of pastrami, how I screamed at Nathan “That was hostile,” Graham said.
I stopped. “Since when did you start using words like ‘hostile’?”
“Since I talked to Karen earlier,” he said.
“You talked to Karen?”
“I called to ask her if she’s registered for her patterns,” Graham said. “And she told me you were hostile.”
“I’m starting to get hostile…”
“See?”
I swallowed hard and told him about pulling over at the gas station, about going into the men’s room, about “You left the keys in the car and he took it,” Graham said. “But you found the car again.”
I told him about Trooper Darius.
“That’s where the ‘blood on the dashboard’ thing comes in,” Graham said.
“There wasn’t any.”
“Which is good,” Graham said.
“Graham, I’m scared out of my wits. We checked at the trooper station, the Sheriff’s Office. I called the hospitals, the morgue. What if-”
“Neal,” Graham said, “somebody else probably saw him standing by the road and picked him up. Silverstein’s probably halfway home by now.”
“You think?”
“Sure,” Graham said. “Listen, leave the cops my number. Then you drive to Palm Desert. Check the rest stops as you go, in case someone dropped him off and he’s trying to call. Check in with me every two hours.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll probably get to his house and find him in his living room watching Wheel of Fortune.”
I started to feel better. Silverstein was probably sitting at home watching Wheel of Fortune. He was fine. Bored, but fine.
Thank God.
“Unless-” Graham said.
“‘Unless’?”
“Unless,” Graham said, “there’s a reason Silverstein doesn’t want to go home…”
A reason?…
Not wanting to go home?
What would make Graham think that Nathan doesn’t want to go home? Just because he disappeared yesterday, wouldn’t get on the airplane, wouldn’t get in the Jeep, wouldn’t get in a Toyota, a Mazda, a Nissan, a BMW or a Mercedes, then took the car, drove off, dumped the car and disappeared…
“You think he was stalling?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“Why wouldn’t he want to go home?” I asked.
I asked Karen this question when I called her up.
“Before you say anything about sperm or hostility or knitting or anything,” I said when she answered, “I need to talk to you.”
“I’m listening.”
I told her the entire odyssey (so far) of my experience with Nathan and finished with the question, “Why wouldn’t Nathan want to go home?”
“Let me see,” Karen said. “In Las Vegas he has booze, a girlfriend, and an audience. And chocolate cake. In Palm Desert he has
… television, I guess. The more interesting question is, why would he want to go home?”
“I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
“Neal, he’s a lonely old man who had some fun and company in Las Vegas,” she said. “Then you hurt his pride so he decided he’d show you. And he did.”