I rolled my eyes, relieved. Then, with great difficulty, I lifted my bruised body out of the hardwood interrogation chair. There was nothing for the police to hold me on. But maybe I should have asked for their protection.
—
A few minutes later, on a borrowed cell phone, I called my mother’s house. Aunt Ruby told me there’d been no change in Mom’s condition. But she’d been secretly ordering more pay-per-view movies—sneaking off again, as it were, to the movies.
“I haven’t seen anything in the mail from you,” Ruby said, brusquely. “But maybe our mailbox is broken.”
Guiltily, I felt in my pocket for the hundreds Howie had chucked at me. I’d have to send the cash in the mail. I hadn’t received any more money since Abner’s first check.
Speaking of Abner, should I tell him what was going on? I had to let him know where I was headed, after all. But when I called his apartment, his boyfriend answered.
“Abner’s in the hospital,” Taylor Weinrod told me.
I felt a jolt of panic. Had Stanley Lager struck again? And if so, why?
“It’s gout,” he explained. “I’ve been wheeling him around the apartment in a swivel chair.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I thought only fifteenth-century kings got that.”
“Abner always appreciated the past, you know that,” Taylor said, indulgently.
I felt even more impatient than ever with Abner’s excesses. I left the new address where I could be reached. Then I hung up.
I made one more call. I hoped Dena would pick up Howie’s guesthouse phone.
She did.
“I’ve been so worried,” she told me. “Howie came back and told me what happened at the club. Well, he said as much as he could between gropes. He was a little, shall we say, worked up. I didn’t mean to hit him that hard. But it’s no way to ask a girl to marry you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Meeting me apparently gave him new clarity about his own life.”
“More than you know. He told me he was coming out of retirement. Then, after I turned down his proposal, he told Luna she’d been paying too much attention to herself and not enough to Elliot. Then he canned me.”
“Jeez. That’s rough.”
“It’s okay. Maybe it was time to move on,” she said. “You and I will split up. Then reconnoiter.”
I explained that the white-faced driver in the Hamptons had followed me to the tennis club and then to the city. I said that, while beating me, he’d asked, “Where is it?” More than that I didn’t know.
“Where are you going to go?” I asked.
“I guess to Maine. I have to close up my father’s old place. Maybe there’ll be more information.” She paused, then spoke with real feeling. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out with Howie, Roy.”
“Well,” I said, “let’s put it this way. I’m not where I was before.”
She took this in.
“Where can I reach you?” she asked. “In New York?”
“No,” I replied. “As a matter of fact, in L.A.”
After I finished explaining, I handed the cell phone back to its owner. We were standing outside the police station, next to her limo.
Marthe Ludwig, Thor’s wife, said she’d wait while I packed my stuff.
MARTHE HAD ACTUALLY CALLED HOWIE’S HOUSE, LOOKING FOR ME. WHILE she was friendly on our ride to the airport, her manner was also businesslike.
“That Clown film,” she said. “I checked it up with Howie.”
“Did you?” She was decked out in a shiny pantsuit and her big hoop earrings swayed as the limo swerved. Her inexact English was so charming it made me want to cry. I managed to restrain myself.
“It gave me an idea.”
“Lots of people would like to own it,” I said.
“I don’t know about the owning. I am thinking more of Thor.”
I followed the thin gold necklaces that cascaded in concentric circles from her neck. They reached the opening of a silk blouse that was virtually unbuttoned. She was as lean as a boy and several inches taller than me, even, it seemed, sitting down. It was all, as the kids say, good.
“Is it about the taxes?” I asked, recalling her husband’s problems.
She gave a shrug that meant yes. “Thor needs something now besides the tennis. That’s kaput.”
“You could have fooled me. I played him.”
“Yes. I’m so sorry about that.” She seemed sincere, and it appeared that I’d been even more humiliated than I’d thought. “Those shorts, especially.”
