Ask the Right Question (29 page)

I'd been missing this left-handed reverse lay-up off a trot when I'd noticed a kid watching me. Young, maybe ten. About five feet even. It wasn't that I was an intrinsically fascinating spectacle, but at midday on a mid-May Monday I was the only available spectacle.

“OK if I shoot with you, mister?”

“Sure.”

“Hey, you want to play a game, mister? One on one? We can play for money.”

Every star needs game action to bring out his best. “I'll play,” I'd said, “but save your lunch money, kid.”

I wrapped myself in the bath mat for the trek home, having neglected, in my passion, the foresight which provides a towel.

Back in the back room I dried off and then called the service about the call I'd heard them take. “It was a wrong number, I'm afraid, Mr. Samson.” Dorrie, the girl on the service, is upset when I check in and she hasn't taken a call for me. If you can't inspire loyalty in the people you employ, I suppose pity is better than nothing.

Damn smart-aleck kid.

I made some lunch and spent the rest of the rest of the afternoon contemplating. I am trying to find some sideline, something that I can make or do in my spare time around the office to bring in a little extra money. But it has to be something which can be left for days at a time when I have a case.

At five twenty the phone rang again. It was Mrs. Jerome. “Mr. Samson, I'm glad to have caught you still at the office. Working late on a case, no doubt.”

“No doubt. What can I do for you?”

“I've found out that you are the lowest-price detective in Indianapolis. Does that reflect on the quality of the investigative service you give?”

“I'm a bargain, Mrs. Jerome. As long as you understand that I am a one-man show and as long as your job is suitable for a one-man show.”

“I'd like to have a look at you,” she said.

“OK.”

“I would like to talk to you about the problem. Actually it is my daughter's problem, but after all, she is
my
daughter, so that makes me concerned.”

“No doubt. Shall I come to you or will you come to me?”

“I, that is, we live at 1634 Wolfe Street. It's the seventh house on the left, north of Sixteenth Street”

“I'll find it. When would you like me to come?”

“Tonight, please. At eight. My daughter and I will be waiting.”

I would have offered to bring those references, but two and a half hours is pretty short notice.

2

I didn't have a lot of idea what to expect. The west is my weakest side of town, but from her ease in giving orders I had expected to find Mrs. Jerome reasonably well-to-do.

I was surprised when I pulled up in front of a small frame house which was at least as decayed as the rest of the neighborhood. There is a style: narrow, covered wooden porch running the width of the house in front of the door and the two single windows which flank it. Swing hanging on one end of the porch. Half a dozen plank steps up to the porch from ground level. It's the sort of house you find in small Indiana towns. They're not that common anymore in the big city.

Not that it couldn't have been a perfectly pleasant place. It just wasn't. The swing was down and resting askew. A mud track led around the house at the right, presumably to the garage. The expanse of long grass at the front was interrupted by muddy depressions. It was as though someone had been digging in the yard for treasure, long ago. The paint blisters on the house were visible in the streetlights.

I sat in the car for a few minutes. Not that it is really my business to try to prejudge people and circumstances. But following a little unasked-for but sympathetic publicity I'd had over the winter, I had been getting more offers of work from private parties than I had had in all my previous eight years in business. Most I'd had to turn down. The same case that got me the publicity had put me in hospital for three months, and until the last few weeks I hadn't been up to even routine work. Now that I felt better my fame had faded, but at least I'd had a chance to look at the sort of people who hire private detectives. And what I was sitting and thinking about was the contradiction between this house and that sort of people.

I got out of the car no wiser. I had to walk from grassy island to grassy island because there was no formal path to the porch.

I rapped on the glass pane in the front door. There were lights on, but heavy lacy curtains obscured images.

“Who is it?” I was asked from inside.

“Albert Samson.”

The door was opened by a short woman. Maybe five feet. And heavy. “Why are you late?” she asked. I recognized the voice from its sheer volume.

“No good reason,” I said. I watched her trying to penetrate me with a pair of dark bright eyes. It could have been the moment for a smile, but instead she made a suffering sound and waved me in. It was as if I had added yet another to the roll of petty annoyances she'd been born to endure.

There was no entrance hall. A step put me in the living room.

“Rosetta! He's here,” she called.

The living room had three closed doors. The one farthest away opened, and Rosetta entered determinedly. She was taller than her mother, but thin. Languid, like, and she wore a lavender print dress. She stooped as she walked, but not from physical need. When she came to a stop behind her mother—just out of my handshaking range—she straightened up sharply.

“This is Rosetta Tomanek, my daughter. Mr. Samson.
Mrs.
Rosetta Tomanek.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Tomanek?”

“Fine.”

“Call her Rosetta,” said her mother loudly. The neighbors would all be calling her Rosetta. “Come on. Sit down, both of you. No point in wasting any more of Mr. Samson's valuable time.”

It seemed only a matter of valuable time before I would begin talking back to Mrs. Jerome, but for the moment I obeyed as abjectly as Rosetta. I sat down in a red armchair whose volume belied the shakiness I felt under my weight. Rosetta and her mother shared the matching couch. Rosetta was forced to sit at the end closer to me.

“Now,” said the redoubtable Mrs. Jerome, “tell the man what you want.”

Rosetta looked at her mother, glanced at me, and then tried to begin telling her tale to the laminated end table between us.

“I,” she said, and cleared her throat.

“Look at the man. After all, you're hiring him.”

“All
right,
Mother!” Daughter pushed mother's urging hand away.

“I … I am married. My husband who is Ralph, Ralph Tomanek, he's in trouble. I want you to find out, well, some way to help him.” She stopped and looked at her mother as if to say, “There, I did it!” I applauded, mentally. I awaited the encore, the turn in which I finally began to get a notion of what was going on, apart from a filial struggle for survival. Mrs. Jerome was leaning back on her side of the couch. Silent. Rosetta had spurned her aid; now Rosetta would pay for it. So I decided to help Rosetta as well as I could. The poor kid was nervous, I gathered.

“What sort of trouble is he in?”

“The police have him,” she said. Her voice was high and spookily musical because it was faint and clear. “They say he killed somebody, I mean, he
did
kill somebody, but they say he did it on purpose. I mean, that it was his fault.”

“What are they charging him with?”

“Manslaughter. They say he didn't control himself.” Which was progress. It was his fault, but he didn't do it on purpose.

“And what does Ralph say?”

It almost stumped her, but finally she said, “He says the other man got him real worried.” Ah, well, I could find out the police story easily enough.

“When did all this happen, Rosetta?”

“About a month ago.”

“On Friday the twenty-eighth of April,” said Mrs. Jerome. She could not maintain control in the face of such flagrant disregard for the truth.

“Which makes it three weeks and three days ago,” I said, it being May 22. I began to realize that to get a decent conversation out of Rosetta, I'd have to get her mother out of the way. Maybe find her a lover. “Then you want me to investigate Ralph's side of the story because you think the police aren't going to do it thoroughly enough?”

“That's right,” said Rosetta. “They aren't doing anything.”

“Does Ralph have a lawyer?”

“Yes. The court appointed one.”

“Was that because Ralph couldn't afford to choose a lawyer himself?”

Mrs. Jerome's attention was regained. “My son-in-law couldn't afford to take a bus home from jail.”

“Oh, Mother!” said Rosetta. She dropped her head to her lap and looked like she was going to cry. Only she didn't.

Mrs. Jerome continued. She had let the guest stars carry on long enough; it was time to remind us whose show it really was. “But you needn't worry about your money, Mr. Samson. Rosetta works, and after paying me for rent and food, she's saved up lots of money. Oh, a fortune.” It didn't take a detective to recognize sarcasm.

Rosetta's head came back up like it was hollow in the sea. “Ralph had a job. A real good job.”

“And after four weeks look where it got him.” Mrs. Jerome let the shiv sink in, and then after a histrionic pause she twisted it. “In jail, that's where!” Not subtle, Mrs. Jerome.

It was me now near tears. “Much as I hate to interrupt, I do have a few more questions.” They came to order immediately. It occurred to me that they were unused to having a man around the house. “First, if I am to be employed, may I have it clear who it is that is employing me? Is it both of you, or is it just you, Mrs. Tomanek?”

“Well, I'm not involved,” said Mrs. Jerome.

“I want to hire you,” said Mrs. Tomanek. “I can't think of anything else to do.”

“If you would be so kind as to give me a dollar, you may consider me formally hired.”

She hesitated on the couch, as if surprised that progress now depended on action on her part. She came through like a trooper. She jumped up and scurried back to the room from which she had originally come. I occupied myself with studiously writing a receipt and avoiding an exchange of glances with Mother Jerome. Never has a receipt been more exactingly crafted. Rosetta accepted her copy like a ticket to freedom and handed me four quarters.

“Now,” I said, “what is the lawyer's name?”

“Sidney Lubart.”

I rose. “All right. I'll check with the police and with Ralph's lawyer. By tomorrow or the next day I should know whether it's likely that I can be of any use to you. I'll get in touch with you then.”

Rosetta accompanied me to the door. “I.… All I have saved up is about, well, two hundred and thirty-seven dollars. But I'm working regular.”

“Please don't worry about money now,” I said kindly. “You must realize that I will be working on other jobs at the same time. I'll only charge you for the time that I work for you. It shouldn't cost much before we know whether I'm going to be able to help or not.”

“Thank you,” she said. For the first time I began to think it possible that this creature was really somebody's wife and not just a voodoo pincushion for the stout little mother lady who still sat on the couch. I would have said good-bye to Mrs. Jerome, but she had her back turned to me.

Instead of driving straight home, I took a sentimental side trip around Victory Field. It was the only amenity in the neighborhood that I could see. Victory Field is where the Indianapolis Indians play baseball, and have played baseball for as long as I can remember. I drove all the way around it. They've changed the name, call it Bush Stadium, but it's still Victory Field to me. I spent a lot of hours there as a kid. Mrs. Jerome and her daughter had probably never been inside. But that's the way it is. I've never been to the Indianapolis 500.

On the way home I realized how cunning I'd been with that bit about my other clients. This way, if somebody called, I'd have already arranged free time to take his case too.

Or time to go and play some more basketball. To play basketball alone. It was not being rubbed into the asphalt by a runty ten-year-old that had burned me. At least that's not all. It was his lack of sympathy when I explained that it was my first time playing this year. That I had been in the hospital for three months over the winter. That my legs were not strong. That I still couldn't lift my right arm all the way up. That I was thirty-eight but felt ninety-one and that my back hurt.

The score stood at 48 to 6 in a 50 game by twos, and the kid had looked up at me and said, “Shit, man, if you sick, you should be in bed.”

Am I to be despised because I hate ten-year-olds who play the game better than I did when I was eighteen?

Or am I to despise a kid because on recollection I hate myself for not having the maturity to lose like a man?

Yes! A thousand times yes! And damn him. If I'd met any real little mother the whole day, it was that kid.

3

I negotiated the fine weather's continuation into Tuesday. As a concession I woke up a few minutes after nine. Early for me the last few months. The internal weather was not so good, though. My legs ached. My body had not cleared the bronchial constrictions I get when I run more than I'm fit for. You can't win them all.

The back was weak, but the mind was strong. I rolled over. Then I rolled over again and fell on the floor. I sleep in a double bed. I sleep on the inside, close to the wall so no one would have to climb over me to find herself a comfortable place. I am ever the optimist.

Lying on the floor, trussed in blankets, seemed like a nice thing to do. Didn't get in the way of thinking about my prospects for the day. The possibilities were numerous and equally lacking in appeal. Not that they disappealed, but as ignorant as I was of who, what, where, and why about my employer and her husband, I could hardly choose efficiently between visiting the police, the lawyer, and the detainee. Or going and having another chat with Rosetta Tomanek herself.