Death Is a Lonely Business (Crumley Mysteries 1)

“Upset, upset, who’s upset!” I cried. “Christ, people don’t come back to phones, I got no money to get out to that damn place, wherever it is in Hollywood, and there’s no use calling back, the damn phone’s off the hook, and time’s running out, and where the hell is Henry. He’s dead, damn it!”

Not dead, Mrs. Gutierrez should have said, merely sleeping.

But she didn’t say and I thanked her for her silence and stormed down the hallway, not knowing what to do. I didn’t even have money for the stupid red trolley car to Hollywood. I …

“Henry!” I shouted down the stairwell.

“Yes?” said a voice behind me.

I whirled around. I yelled. There was nothing but darkness there.

“Henry. Is that—?”

“Me,” said Henry, and stepped out into what little light there was. “When Henry decides to hide, he truly hides. Holy Moses Armpits was here. I think he knows that we know what he knows about this mess. I just skedaddled out my apartment door when I heard him prowl the porch outside my view window, I just dropped and jumped. Left stuff, I don’t care, on the floor. You find it?”

“Yes. Your cane. And the string with knots for numbers.”

“You want to know about them knots, that number?”

“Yes.”

“I heard crying in the hall, day before Fannie’s gone forever. There she is, at my door. I open it to let all that sadness in. Not often I see her upstairs, it kills her to climb. I shouldn’t’ve done it, no, shouldn’t have done it, she says, all my fault she says, over and over. Watch this junk, Henry, take this junk, here, what a fool I am she says, and she gave me some old phonograph records and some newspapers, special, she said, and I thanked her and thought what the hell and she went down the hall crying for herself being a fool and I just put the old newspapers by and the records and didn’t think a long while till after Fannie was tributed and sung after and gone, and then this morning I ran my hand over those fool papers and thought, what is this? And I called Mrs. Gutierrez and said, ‘What?’ and in Mexican and English she looked over the paper and saw the words, you see ’em, circled in ink, the same words in five different issues of the paper and the same number, and I got to thinking, why was Fannie crying so hard, and what’s this number, so I knotted the knots and called. You call?”

“Yes, Henry,” I said. “I found the same paper in Fannie’s place now. Why didn’t you tell me you had them?”

“What for? Sounded foolish. Woman stuff. I mean, did you read it? Mrs. Gutierrez read it, bad, but read it out loud. I laughed. God, I thought, that’s trash, real trash. Only now, I think different. Who would read and believe junk like that?

”

“Fannie,” I said, at last.

“Tell me this, now. When you called that number, some dumb son-of-a-bitch come on, talk, and not come back again ever?”

“Some son-of-a-bitch.”

Henry started steering me back toward the open door of his apartment. As if I were the blind one, I let him.

“How they run a business like that?” he wondered.

We were at his door. I said, “I guess when you don’t give a damn, people throw money at you.”

“Yeah, that was always my trouble. I cared too much. So nobody ever threw nothing. Hell, I got plenty cash anyway—uh.”

He stopped, for he had heard me suck my breath.

“That,” he said, with a quiet nod and smile, “is the sound of someone wants to borrow my life’s savings.”

“Only if you come with, Henry. To help me find the guy who hurt Fannie.”

“Armpits?”

“Armpits.”

“This nose is yours. Lead on.”

“We need money for a taxicab to save time, Henry.”

“I never been in a taxi in my life, why would I take one now?”