When Elephants Forget (Trace 3) Read online

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I was just joking more or less. But he’s gone ahead and done it. And now he wants me to go in with him and get a private detective’s license and be a real gumshoe.”

  “I’m sure that this is all somehow going to lead to this kitchen and this plateful of placenta.”

  “I wanted to see if I was cut out to be a detective,” he said.

  “Keep going. I think we’re getting warmer.”

  He took another long sip of beer from the bottle. His mouth pursed slightly in displeasure.

  “Listen, there are things I know about. And I know about being a detective,” Trace said.

  “Umhmmm,” she said, and nodded.

  “It’s tough being a big detective today,” he said. “It’s not enough anymore to track people down through the dark lonely rain-swept streets. You can’t just give knuckle sandwiches to bad guys and shoot them in the belly so you can laugh, watching them die. All that stuff went out about twenty years ago.”

  “What do you do now? Kill them by food poisoning?” she asked. She pushed her plate away too.

  “Being a private detective today is different. If you’re going to be a big star, you’ve got to be a gourmet cook, for instance. You’ve got to be able to whip up things in the kitchen at a moment’s notice. All the big detectives today are gourmet cooks. You’ve got to be able to separate eggs.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Sure. You put one here and you put one there, and then the eggs are separated. That’s the one thing I do know how to do.”

  “How is that explaining this debacle?” she asked.

  He ignored her. “And I just couldn’t drink vodka anymore anyway. Anybody can do that. Even Finlandia vodka. It’s imported beer all the way. Clever litle wines with a sardonic personality and imported beer. Even this Polack piss. You’ve got to find a beer nobody else drinks; then, when you’re a famous detective, the distributor sends you a thousand million cases and you never have to buy another bottle.”

  “I get it now. You were practicing being a detective to see if you like it.”

  “That’s right. Wait.” He left the table and walked into the bedroom.

  While he was gone, Chico took a forkful of food from the plate. Trace had once said that the woman would eat a dog-food billboard if she had to. She ate six thousand calories a day and never gained an ounce. It was one of the things he truly hated about her.

  She chewed. The mess was unappetizing to look at, an ugly barbarian insult to her Oriental soul, but the ingredients were at least viable. Except for the hot dogs, which had wound up in her super-market bag one day through a checkout clerk’s mistake. She started to push the hot dogs aside on the plate and pick at the vegetables in cheese sauce.

  She took another small bite.

  Trace came back with a pair of Nike running shoes in his hand.

  “What are those for?” she said.

  “You’ve got to run if you’re going to be a detective. Detectives today run a lot.”

  “Wouldn’t pistol lessons be better?” Chico asked. “You haven’t run since I caught you in my bed with that hatcheck girl.”

  “I wasn’t running then,” he said. “I was regrouping. Anyway, you’ve got to run. And, God, you’ve got to lift weights. I’ll be pumping iron.”

  “You’ll be pumping gas if you keep on this way,” she said. Absently, she took a large forkful of the food and popped it into her mouth.

  “And another thing. If I’m going to be a big detective, I’ve got to sit around and be dull and think big thoughts about the meaning of courage. And duty.”

  “How do you arrange to think big thoughts when you have such a little brain?” she asked. “Why not think little thoughts and be a little private detective?”

  “Please, lady. You’re not the only smart one here. I tested out genius on my college boards. IQ 156.”

  “Your entire family doesn’t have an IQ of 156. Cumulative. And that’s counting your mother twice,” Chico said. She pulled the plateful of food back to her. With her mouth full, she mumbled, “Speaking of which, you got my message?”

  “Right. My mother’s coming to town. With her woman’s club. I think it’s the annual chicken-soup tournament.”

  “And?”

  “I’m leaving. I’m going to New York,” Trace said.

  “You’re leaving me here alone? You know that woman’s going to be sniffing around, trying to sell our furniture and replace it with something pretty in real wood-grained vinyl.”

  “Want to come to New York with me?” Trace asked. “Can you get off from the casino?”

  “They owe me some time,” Chico said.

  Trace didn’t bother to ask why, because he knew. Chico was a blackjack dealer at the Araby Casino, but she supplemented her income and her vacation time by occasionally “entertaining” high rollers as a favor to the casino. It was by her choice, and she and Trace did not talk about it.

  “So you want to go with me?” he asked again.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God,” Trace said.

  “Why ‘thank God?’”

  “That’s another thing about being a detective. You’ve got to have a funny-looking sidekick. Hopefully somebody who’s a homicidal maniac. I can do that. I’ve got you.”

  “You’ll pay for that, barbarian,” she said. Her plate was empty and she pulled Trace’s plate over and started eating from it.

  He got up and took another beer from the refrigerator. “Eat up,” he said. “There’s plenty more.”

  Later they sat side by side on one of their sofas, listening to the intricate mathematical music of the Dave Brubeck quartet playing on their stereo.

  Trace had abandoned the Polish beer but was sipping at a plain tonic water. Chico was drinking apple juice.

  “So Sarge said that because he was a cop for twenty-five years, it was easy for him to get his p.i. license.”

  “Private investigator?” Chico asked.

  “Right. And now he wants me to get mine. He really wants me to be a detective with him. So what do I do, Chico?”

  “What do you want to do, Trace?”

  “I don’t want to do anything. I want to sit here with you and listen to music. I don’t want to have to cook or run or lift big weights or think big thoughts. I want to sit here, empty-headed, with you, and listen to music and try to get you filled with passion for me so I can cop your nookie later. I quit drinking for you. I haven’t had a drink of vodka since…”

  “Yesterday,” she supplied.

  “Well, that was a mistake,” he said. “It was forced on me. I hardly ever have a drink anymore. That’s just to please you. I can’t please you and Pop too. It’s just too much obligation.”

  “Then don’t be a detective,” she said. “It’s a license, but that’s all. You already are kind of a detective for the insurance company. Do you need anything more than that?”

  “No. That’s the point. I take a case every so often. I save them a lot of money and they pay me a lot of money. I don’t have to work any more than that. I like leisure. I don’t like it as much as I used to since you made me stop drinking, but I still like leisure better than work.”

  “Then do that,” she said. “Be leisurely. Work when you feel like it or when you need the money. Tell Sarge no.”

  “I don’t want to hurt his feelings,” Trace said. “He didn’t say, but maybe the only way he could con my mother into letting him out of the house was telling her that I was going to get involved in this agency with him.”

  “Find out.”

  “I will when I go to New York.”

  “When we go,” she said.

  “Yes,” Trace agreed. “That’s what I’ll do.” He lighted a cigarette and took a long drag. “You know, everybody’s always talking about the responsibilities of being a parent. But children have responsibilities to their parents too. Maybe even bigger ones. Parents end their responsibility when you get to be eighteen or twenty-one
or something, but after that, all the responsibility is on the kids. And it can last for years. It’s the nature of the parent-child responsibility.”

  “What insipid shit,” she said. “Why are you talking that crap?”

  “You think it’s crap?”

  “Most definitely.”

  “See? I was trying to be a deep thinker. It doesn’t work.”

  She took his hand and put it on her breast. He could feel her nipple, hard and puckered, through the thin eggshell-colored silk of her blouse.

  “Think about this for a while,” she said.

  “Will it make me deep?” he asked.

  “Very deep.”

  “I hope so,” he said.

  “If it doesn’t, I will,” Chico said.

  3

  In their dark bedroom, Trace smoked a cigarette and let lazy plumes of smoke drift upward toward the ceiling. He thought that cigarettes had no taste in the dark. You had to see the smoke to taste the flavor. Maybe someone, he thought, should invent a cigarette for people who liked to smoke in bed in the dark. He thought about this for a while and decided that, for safety reasons, it would probably not have much market potential. He thought about coupling the sale of those new cigarettes with a fire extinguisher for when the bed, inevitably, caught on fire.

  He finally rejected the idea. That was all right, he thought. He had a lot of good ideas.

  Chico said softly from alongside him, “I’ve got a deal for you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You still drink too much,” she said.

  “I’ve virtually stopped.”

  “You’ve virtually stopped drinking when I’m looking. So instead of drinking a fifth of vodka a day, you’re drinking a gallon of wine and I don’t know how much vodka.”

  “Don’t forget the Polish beer. It may be my new favorite drink,” he said.

  “You drink too much and you smoke too much,” she said. “You should exercise. You’re forty years old and you look all right, but your heart and lungs have to be ready to give out.”

  “Does this conversation ever assume a cheerful direction?” Trace asked. “Or do we start taking bets on how many days I’ve got left?”

  “You don’t have to lift weights,” she said. “But a little running wouldn’t hurt. A little calisthenics. Anything to get your heart pumping and your blood flowing.”

  “That’s why I have sex,” he said. “If it doesn’t get the blood flowing, what good is it?”

  She ignored him. “I think you should try to get your life going in a new direction,” she said.

  “As soon as you propose one that I don’t find totally repulsive, I’ll be glad to,” Trace said.

  “You should talk to your children. They’re growing up, Trace, and you haven’t spoken to them in two years.”

  “Don’t tamper with success,” he said. “I haven’t talked to What’s-his-name and the girl for two years and they’re still thriving. Leave well-enough alone.”

  “Here’s my proposal,” Chico said.

  “Go for it.”

  “We go to New York. You really slow down on the drinking. You cut down to one pack of cigarettes a day. You exercise some every day.”

  “You mean, besides sex?”

  “Yes. And no casual extracurricular sex.”

  “This is really getting nasty,” Trace said.

  “Do you think you could do those things?”

  “Of course. If I wanted to.”

  “You do it, and I’ll give you five hundred dollars,” she said. “A five-hundred-dollar bet.”

  “If I lose, I give you five hundred dollars?”

  “No. If you fail, before we leave New York, you call your children and talk to them.”

  “I’d rather give you five hundred dollars,” he said.

  “Is it a deal?” she asked.

  “Who’ll be the judge of whether I win or lose?”

  “I will. But you’ll be on your honor.”

  “I’ll take the bet,” he said instantly.

  “No cheating,” she said.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” he said.

  “Too late.”

  “I don’t have to join Sarge in the detective agency?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I don’t have to think big thoughts?”

  “Only if you want to,” she said.

  “Can I cook?” he asked.

  “As infrequently as possible,” she said.

  “You’ve got a deal,” he said. “Shake.” A moment later: “I meant my hand.”

  4

  Trace did not like the flight to New York. He decided he had better get into training for his bet with Chico, so instead of ordering vodka to drink, he ordered beer. That annoyed him.

  He did not like either of the dinner choices on the menu and he asked the stewardess if he could whip up a batch of his Green Pepper Veal Surprise for everyone on the plane.

  “Sorry, sir, we don’t have any veal,” the stewardess said.

  “That’s all right. I don’t need veal. That’s one of the surprises.”

  Chico shook her head at the stewardess.

  “Well, I don’t really think so,” the stewardess said. “Regulations, you know.”

  “No wonder airlines are going broke,” Trace groused. “You’ve lost your spirit of adventure.”

  “That’s right,” chipped in a bald-headed man seated across the aisle from Trace. “Everything’s dull and the same. Take off and land. Take off and land. Take off and land.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Chico mumbled. “I kind of like an unbroken pattern of take off and land when I fly.”

  “Quiet, woman,” Trace said. The stewardess walked down the aisle. Trace said to the man in the opposite seat, “That was a good offer I just made. I’m a gourmet chef, you know.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s right. I’m a private detective. We’re all great cooks.”

  “I didn’t know that,” the man said.

  “You probably don’t read enough,” Trace said. “Right from Nero Wolfe on. We’re all good cooks. Hell, even Sherlock Holmes. Except he mostly cooked up cocaine.”

  “I read Mike Hammer. I don’t think Mike Hammer ever cooked,” the man said warily.

  “Well, that was Mike Hammer. What did he know? I’ll tell you. If he cooked, he’d still be going strong. Instead of being reduced to beer commercials.”

  “I heard you ask the stewardess for beer before. What kind was that?”

  “You’ve heard of Miller High-Life?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was Polish Low-Life. They didn’t have it, though. I only drink imported beers. It’s part of my image as a big private detective.”

  “Trace, will you be quiet?” Chico said, pulling on his sleeve.

  “I pump iron too,” Trace told the man. “And I run forty-seven miles every day. Wear out a pair of track shoes a week.”

  “That’s a lot of miles,” the man said. “How long does that take you?”

  “About sixteen hours,” Chico interrupted. “That’s why he’s not a very successful detective. He’s always either running or sleeping.”

  “She’s just on the snot because they wouldn’t let her bring her wok on the plane to cook for me,” Trace explained, and winked at the man. “But I’ll calm her down. You know women.”

  “Sure do,” the bald man said.

  “I’ve been well served by many women. But this one is the best,” Trace said. He tried to put his arm around Chico, but she slapped it away.

  “What’d you do that for?” he asked.

  “What was that supposed to mean?” She imitated him. “‘I’ve been well served by many women.’”

  “Oh, that. I heard a big mystery writer say that once on television. I didn’t know what the hell it meant either, but I thought it had a ring to it.”

  “Yes. A stupid sexist ring,” Chico said.

  “There you go, bringing sex into it. Sex, sex, sex. I’m t
ired of sex all the time.”

  “Remember that,” Chico said. “When I am being well served by many men. None of them you.”

  Trace was still grouchy when they landed at Kennedy Airport in New York. He put on a terrible fake French accent when they got into a taxicab, trying to convince the driver that he was a French diplomat. He whispered to Chico, “Then he’ll try to charge us a hundred dollars for the trip into the city and I’ll have the bastard arrested for gouging.”

  The driver charged them twenty-one dollars and fifty cents.

  Trace gave him twenty-five dollars.

  “Give him another five for his honesty,” Chico said.

  When the driver pulled away, Chico said, “I guess he wasn’t fooled by your accent. Better luck next time.”

  “Next time, I’ll try Japanese,” Trace said. “Maybe they only gouge Orientals.”

  Trace left Chico behind to unpack, bathe, and unwind, and he took a taxi to the office that retired Police Sergeant Patrick Tracy had opened above Bogie’s restaurant on West Twenty-sixth street.

  On the second-floor landing, he saw a door on which a white oak-tag sign had been inscribed with black plastic stick-on letters from a hardware store. In block capitals, it read:

  TRACY DETECTIVE AGEN Y

  Trace found the missing letter C on the floor and stuck it back onto the sign, then walked inside, The office was one large room that had once been an efficiency apartment. Off to the side was an open bathroom door. Sarge was sitting, facing the door, behind a small desk that looked as if it had been used in a kindergarten class. A beaten-up green metal filing cabinet was behind the desk. The walls had three Playboy centerfolds and a calendar. Trace was about to say that the calendar was open to the wrong month when he saw it was also for the wrong year.

  Against the wall next to the door was an old brown velvet sofa. Most of the velvet’s nap had worn away and white threads were visible.

  Sarge got up as Trace entered.

  “Nice place,” Trace said. “Trezz chick.”

  “Hi, son,” Sarge said cheerily, and shook Trace’s hand. “It’ll be nicer when I get some money to decorate. When’d you get to town?”