Write me a Letter

don’t forget your apple,” I said, following him out the door and down the hall to the next door but two, the sign on which read 516 capt. lorna t. chapman, a & a. He rapped once on the door, then barged in, with me at his heels.
    ”Momma? Brought you a visitor. You busy?”
    ”Not for you, dear,” said Momma, beaming up at him from behind a large and well-cluttered desk.
    ”V. Daniel,” I said, crossing to her. ”V for Victor.”
    We shook hands.
    ”Nice meeting you, dear,” Momma said. She was a—to put it politely—Rubensesque woman, somewhere in her forties. Actually, large is what Momma was. Very large. All over and in every direction. She was wearing a huge, woolly, flowered caftan affair, a string of wooden beads about the size of kiddies’ play blocks, large, brightly painted wooden earrings, a Mickey Mouse wristwatch, and sticking up from the back of her mop of unruly hair, two things that looked like wooden chopsticks.
    ”How do you do, Captain Momma,” I said. ”Or would it be Mrs. Momma?”
    ”Just call me Momma,” she said, with a happy sigh. ”Everyone else does, including the dog. Sit, sit, take the weight off and tell me what Momma can do for you today.”
    I lowered myself carefully onto a spindly-looking chair across from her; Jasper perched on a corner of her desk. She dug out a package of crumpled Winstons from somewhere under her horse blanket, offered them around, got no takers, then lit up one for herself and took a deep puff. ”Candy?” She pushed a tin of assorted fruit flavors in our direction. Jasper took one and began sucking noisily on it.
    I filled Momma in on the story so far and passed over Evonne’s list. Momma thought for a moment, then switched on her PC and went to work. Jasper watched her flying fingers with a sort of reluctant fascination.
    Almost immediately, it seemed, she said, ”Two matches, kids.”
    ”Finger-lickin’ good,” I said.
    ”I’ll be goddamned,” Jasper said.
    Momma scrabbled through the mess of papers on her desk, found a clean sheet, then copied down from the screen ”Ronald & M. Rubin, 1224 Lexington , Beverly Hills ” and ”Thomas L. & G. Gowan, 44 Wilkins, Westwood.”
    ”No recovery from either place so far, it says here and it don’t lie.”
    ”Any chance of finding out precisely what was stolen?” I asked her.
    ”If it’s art, antiques, identifiable jewelry over a certain value, stuff like that, sure,” she said. ”And I ought to know, because it’s Momma who inputs it all. If it was just TVs, VCRs, stuff like that, no, you’d have to go downstairs and dig up the original responding officer’s probably illegible report.”
    Momma tapped in another set of instructions, waited a few seconds, then whistled.
    ”Thought so. Thought I remembered that one. ‘Chinoiserie. Collection faience. Art deco lamps and figurines. Early American quilts. Paul Revere teapot. Rugs. More rugs. Bit of everything. Jackson Pollack. Two Hockneys.’ ” She shook her head; a few more strands escaped from her straggly bun. ”Stupid. Who’s going to buy a hot Hockney?”
    ”Not me,” I said. ”I don’t know how to ride anyway.”
    Momma blew some smoke skyward. Jasper groaned and shifted himself off the desk.
    ”That let’s me out,” he said. ”I’m not art or antiques, thank God. You want anything else, you know where I am. See ya, Momma. Hello to Frank and Annie.”
    He bustled out. I picked through the candies looking for a lemon, orange, or green one, but they’d all gone already. ”Now what?” I said. ”What now?”
    ”Well, dear,” Momma said, ”one of us had better check that the Rubins and the Gowans who are on my list are the same Rubins and Gowans on your list.”
    ”Use your phone?” I asked.
    ”Nine for an outside line,” she said. ”I’ll get back to what I was doing before you two pests came in to upset my rhythm.”
    I obtained the numbers of the Rubins and Gowans from the phone company after a certain amount of trouble and a lie or two, as neither of them was, as usual, a listed number. Shortly thereafter I got Mrs. Rubin on the line. I told her I was calling from the Los Angeles Police Department Downtown Station, which I was.
    ”Oh, no,” she said. ”Something’s happened to Ron.”
    ”Not at all,” I said hastily. ”No bad news. It might even be the opposite. I just have a few questions to ask you about the robbery that took place on your premises earlier this year, it’s possible we may