Thirty bucks for a box of .45s. I had nineteen dollars, an overdue electric bill, and a client who had promised to call Tuesday. It was Thursday.
The nineteen dollars was actually eighteen seventy-five. I’d forgotten about the coffee.
The coffee wasn’t worth a quarter, but neither was I before I’d had it.
I sat behind my desk and considered the economics of the situation. The office cost me nine hundred a month. The telephone cost sixty-two. The electricity cost whatever number they printed in red at the bottom of the notice. The chair squeaked for free.
Outside my window, rain was doing its best impression of rain in an old detective movie. It wasn’t very convincing. This was California. Rain here always seemed temporary, like it had another appointment.
My name is Jack Mallory. Private investigator. Licensed, bonded, insured, and at the moment completely unnecessary.
There had been a time when people needed private detectives. Husbands disappeared. Wives disappeared. Money disappeared. Sometimes everybody disappeared except the money.
Now people had the internet.
For twelve dollars a month they could find their old girlfriend, their new boyfriend, their neighbor’s mortgage, their dentist’s divorce, and a photograph of the restaurant where their husband had told them he wasn’t having dinner.
Progress.
I opened the bottom drawer.
The .45 was there. So was the box of ammunition. Eleven rounds. I counted them again. Still eleven. I’d been hoping for twelve.
I closed the drawer.
The telephone rang.
I looked at it.
It rang again.
There are moments in life when everything depends on how you answer the telephone.
“Jack Mallory Investigations.”
A woman said, “Mr. Mallory?”
She had the kind of voice that made you sit up without knowing you’d been slouching.
“That’s what it says on the door.”
“Are you alone?”
I looked around.
There was the desk, the squeaky chair, two filing cabinets containing almost nothing worth filing, and a dead plant I’d inherited from the previous tenant.
“Except for the plant.”
“What?”
“Yes. I’m alone.”
There was a pause.
“I need you to find someone.”
That was encouraging. Finding someone was one of the few things mentioned specifically on my license.
“Who?”
“My husband.”
Less encouraging.
“Police?”
“No.”
“Have you called them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Another pause.
This one was different.
“Because they think he’s dead.”
I put down the coffee.
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he called me this morning.”
That improved the coffee considerably.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I answered. He didn’t speak. But I knew it was him.”
“How?”
“You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Lady, at nineteen dollars I’m not turning anybody away for crazy.”
She laughed.
It wasn’t much of a laugh. More like something that had escaped.
Then she said, “He whistled.”
“Whistled what?”
“Our song.”
I waited.
She didn’t volunteer it.
“What song?”
“‘Blue Moon.'”
Of course it was.
Nobody ever got mysteriously telephoned by a dead husband whistling “The Hokey Pokey.”
“Where are you?”
“I don’t want to say on the telephone.”
“Then how do you propose we meet?”
“There’s a diner on Route Forty-nine. The Silver Dollar.”
I knew it. Everybody knew it. Chrome stools, bad pie, good hamburgers, coffee strong enough to remove paint.
“When?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Mr. Mallory?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“I don’t have anyone to tell.”
She hung up.
I sat for a moment listening to the dial tone.
Then the lights went out.
Not dramatically. No flash. No explosion. Just click.
Dark.
I looked toward the window. The rain was still there, gray against gray.
On the desk, the telephone was dead.
I took the red notice out of my pocket and held it up to the window.
Apparently the electric company had meant Thursday.
I put on my coat.
At the door I stopped, went back to the desk and opened the bottom drawer.
Eleven rounds.
I took the .45, checked it, and slipped it into the shoulder holster.
Then I looked at the ammunition.
There are optimists who carry eleven rounds because they believe eleven will be enough.
There are pessimists who buy another box.
I had eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents.
I left the eleven where they were.
Downstairs, my car started on the third try.
That was one try better than yesterday.
I headed for Route Forty-nine with the wipers smearing the rain back and forth across the windshield.
Somewhere ahead of me was a woman whose dead husband had called her and whistled “Blue Moon.”
I didn’t believe in dead men making telephone calls.
But I believed in thirty bucks.
And if Mrs. Dead Husband had thirty of them, we were going to get along just fine.
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Hooray, here’s the Bardo bus now! Egg Chen is driving!
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See You At The Top!!!
gorby