Death Is a Lonely Business (Crumley Mysteries 1)

All of us, on the right night. The voice from the past, making you remember a familiar touch, a warm breath in the ear, a seizure of passion like a strike of lightning. Which of us is not vulnerable, I thought, when it comes to that three-in-the-morning voice. Or when you wake after midnight to find someone crying, and it’s you, and tears on the chin and you didn’t even know that during the night you had had a bad dream.

Someone who loved you …

Where is she now? Where is he? Still alive somewhere? It can’t be. Too much time is gone. The one who loves me can’t still be in the world somewhere. And yet? Why not, as I was doing, call?

I called three times and went back to sit with Henry in the back seat of the taxi, listening to the meter tick. “Don’t worry,” he said. “That meter don’t bother me. There’s plenty of horses waiting and lots of lettuce up ahead. Go dial the number again, child.”

The child went to dial.

This time, a long way off in another country, it seemed, a self-appointed funeral director picked up the phone.

“Yes?” said a voice.

At last I gasped, “Who’s this?”

“For that matter, who’s this?” said the guarded voice.

“What took you so long to get to the phone?” I could hear cars going by on the other end.

It was a phone booth in an alley somewhere in the city. Christ, I thought, he does as I do. He’s using the nearest pay booth for his office.

“Well, if you’re not going to say anything—” said the voice on the other end.

“Wait,” I said. I almost know your voice, I thought. Let me hear more. “I saw your ad in Janus. Can you help me?”

The voice on the other end relaxed, pleased by my panic. “I can help anyone, anywhere, anytime,” he said, easily. “You one of the Lonelies?”

“What?” I cried.

“You one of the—”

Lonelies he had said. And that did it.

I was back at Crumley’s, back in time, back on the big train in the cold rain rounding a curve. The voice on the phone was that voice in the night storm half a lifetime ago, saying its say about death and lonely, lonely and death. First the memory of a voice, then the session with Crumley knocking my head, and now this real sound on the phone. There was only one missing piece. I still couldn’t put a name on the voice. Close, familiar, I almost had it, but …

“Speak up,” I practically shouted.

There was an interval of suspicion on the other end. In that moment I heard the most beautiful sounds of half a lifetime.

The wind blowing at the far end of the line. But more than that: surf rolling in, louder and louder, closer and closer, until I almost felt it roll under my feet.

“Oh, Jesus, I know where you are!” I cried.

“No way,” said the phone voice, and broke the connection.

But not soon enough. I stared wildly at the empty phone in my hand and squeezed it in my fist.

“Henry!” I yelled.

Henry leaned out of the taxicab, staring at nothing.

I fell getting in the cab.

“You still with me?”

“If I ain’t,” said Henry, “where am I? Speak to the driver.”

I spoke. We went.