Narabedla Ltd Read Free Page B

was one of the days when she was giving up smoking and her mouth was full of chewing gum, but it expressed astonishment and concern.
    “So what about going to the police, Nolly?”
    “Would you? What do you think?”
    “I think like you think. No. You got nothing solid for them to go on and, Jesus, what’s the use of it, they can’t even find the three kids that ripped off my stereo and the silver dollars from Harrah’s Club in Vegas.”
    “D’accord,” I said. Marlene had been practicing her French to get ready for a week in Paris, and I had been helping her. Us operatic types, or former operatic types, get to learn a little of everything.
    “So where’s this Irene Madigan now?”
    “She’s not in the Martha Washington, anyway. She checked out two weeks ago. They wouldn’t give me an address.”
    “She might be in the Beaumont, Texas, phone book.” 
    “She might,” I agreed.
    “So maybe you could call her,” Marlene went on, thinking things through. “But if you did, what would you say to her?” I nodded, and Marlene nodded back, and then she stood up and bawled, “Sally! Bring us a little coffee, there’s a darling.”
    I waited for her program to run. Coffee is Marlene’s prescription for everything, especially for getting started in the mornings you can’t get started in, and even more for solving problems that don’t have any solution, like justifying a client’s thousand-dollar charitable contribution that he doesn’t have receipts for. Or this one.
    After Sally popped in with the coffee, Marlene told me two long, irrelevant stories. I listened to them patiently, knowing that, like the hum of the cooling fan when the computer is going, they were the outward sign of the processing that was going on in her head. The first story was about the schwartze who cleaned her apartment, and how the city bus driver who was her lover was suspected of fooling around with a Board of Transportation payroll clerk. The second was about the shicksa who was her daughter-in-law, who not only was Milwaukee’s biggest customer for the Pill but was thought to be considering a tubal ligation. I listened. I knew how Marlene’s mind worked, so I wasn’t surprised when she made the abrupt transition back to the subject. She was saying that it would serve the shicksa right if Marlene were to come to stay for a weekend and put aspirins in the Pill holder, and finished with, “Wait till she wants to be a grandmother herself, she’ll sing a different song. So why don’t you just go to him and ask?”
    I hung on. “Ask who what?”
    “Ask Mr. Henry Davidson-Jones if he can explain about Woody, of course. You know him already.”
    “I don’t know him. I met him once or twice, a long time ago.”
    “He wouldn’t remember you?”
    I said reluctantly, “I guess I could remind him.”
    Marlene took a sip of her cooling coffee and made a face. “Sally!” she yelled over her shoulder. “The coffee’s worse than ever, even, sweetheart!” And to me she said, “You’ve already thought of all this stuff, both ways, right? And what it is, you just don’t want to do it.”
    “Not a whole lot. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to ask a millionaire embarrassing questions.”
    “And what’s the reason you think it would be embarrassing? Have you got the idea Mr. Henry Davidson-Jones has some weird habit of murdering musicians?”
    I looked at her squarely. “Do you?”
    “Nah! Who needs to kill musicians? Dope, booze, cigarettes, women—they’re all busy killing themselves. Anyway, Nolly,” she went on, “I tell you what. I’ll write you a note you can put in your pocket, ‘Dear Mr. Henry Davidson-Jones, better not kill this man, because a friend knows exactly where he’s going, and if he doesn’t get back safe the friend goes to the cops.’ ”
    I grinned at her. “Maybe I’ll give it a try,” I said.
    “Thatta boy! Only Nolly, listen. If things start to look not so good, make sure they read the