Hotline to Murder

pass. Even though it’s breaking. And let me risk another question, even if it means another bruise on my ego. You told me you were going to have a mentor tonight. Tell me about your mentor.”
    Tony said, “Yes, I did have a mentor. She was very good.”
    “Jesus, you sound like a first-grade reader. What was her name?”
    “Uh, Sally,” Tony said, using Shahla’s Hotline alias. Among his other faults, Josh was a bigot.
    “And is this Sally a babe?”
    The last thing Tony was going to do was to admit to Josh that she was a babe. He said, “She’s a teenager. She’s seventeen.”
    “So, is there a statute of limitations on babedom? Today’s teenyboppers are hot. I’ll bet she was wearing low-cut jeans and a top that was barely there. And a thong. Did you happen to notice when she bent over? Or does your new-found sanctity prevent you from peeking?”
    Josh was uncomfortably close to the truth. To head him off, Tony said, “I took several calls. One was from a guy who was talking about blowing his brains out.”
    “Holy shit.” Josh’s blue eyes widened, and he looked at Tony with what might be respect. “Did he have a piece?”
    “He said he did.”
    “What kind?”
    “Our discussion didn’t go into that kind of detail. I got him to take it into another room.”
    “So, did you convince him that life was worth living?”
    Tony hesitated. That was the question he had been asking himself all the way home. “I…I’m not sure.”
    “You mean, at this very moment he might be lying on the floor with his fucking brains scattered all over the room?”
    A gruesome picture flashed into Tony’s head. He said, slowly, “At this very moment he might be lying on the floor with his fucking brains scattered all over the room.” He couldn’t look at Josh. He knew Josh was staring at him, with the freckles covering his face changing color, as they did when he felt emotion.
    “Noodles, you need another beer.”
    Josh tossed this one across his body, and it spattered Tony and the sofa with cold water. Beer was Josh’s answer to all the world’s problems. Maybe Josh was right. By the time he went to bed, Tony had drunk at least a six-pack.

    CHAPTER 3
    It was Friday evening, August 30, two weeks after his first mentoring session. Tony walked into the building where the Hotline was located. Once again he smelled the odor he had come to associate with it. Perhaps it was some sort of cleaning compound.
    Instead of riding the elevator, he went up the stairs, taking them two at a time, all the way to the third floor. He was glad there was nobody at the top to see him puffing—to see how out of shape he was.
    He had also taken the stairs at his second and third Hotline sessions with a mentor, eschewing the elevator. Why? He could barely admit it to himself, but the reason apparently had to do with the fact that he wanted to get into better shape, lose those extra pounds that pushed his belt out. Why? It was ridiculous to think that he would do something he had never done in his life, at least for a woman—any woman, let alone for a seventeen-year-old. Someone who was legally jailbait.
    He had not seen Shahla since the first session. His mentors for the other two sessions had also been teenagers, a boy and a girl, and they had been good, but they had made no lasting impression on him. Now he was on his own, an experienced listener. As he walked to the office, he wondered whether there would be anyone else on the lines tonight, or whether he would be alone. He barely dared hope that Shahla would be here, and he knew the odds were long against it. She had not been signed up on the calendar the last time he had looked, several days before.
    Tony tried the handle of the brown door. It was locked. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes to seven. Perhaps there was no listener on the four-to-seven shift. Sometimes that happened with a volunteer organization. Fortunately, he had learned the combination to the lockbox on the door. He entered it and pulled off the cover, looking for the key inside. Except that the key wasn’t there. What was going on?
    He was at a loss, a feeling he was unfamiliar with. What should he do? Could there be somebody in the office behind the locked door? He had already stored the office phone numbers in his cell phone. He took out the phone and called the administrative office number. No answer. He tried the Hotline number. No answer.
    Maybe this was his way out. He had made a good-faith