Write me a Letter

front of a low, glass-topped table he did his business from; I guess he’d read in some childish ”how to succeed in business” rag that the way to make a potential client feel at home isn’t to put him on one side of a huge desk and you in a taller chair on the other. And tally ho! if he didn’t have fox-hunting prints on the walls.
    There was a booze cabinet in one corner disguised as a tallboy and an old-fashioned wind-up gramophone complete with horn in another. Fats himself, like I said, was fat. He was wearing a sleeveless white shirt with his initials monogrammed on the pocket; it was unbuttoned enough so the observant could detect he was wearing an off-white string vest underneath. His dainty feet were clad in highly polished snakeskin loafers, the tassles of which had little brass bits on the ends. He had a gold wedding ring on the appropriate pinkie but otherwise no jewelry except on one pudgy wrist he wore that kind of very expensive, aluminum-looking chronometer pilots wear even in bed that tell you everything including when your matzoh balls have boiled three minutes.
    ”So what you got for me, Fats?” I inquired, sitting on the arm of the spare chair.
    He arose in a surprisingly spritely fashion, considering his bulk, crossed to a set of wooden drawers, on top of which sat a small, compact TV—radio-tape deck, unlocked the top drawer, took out a sheet of paper, crossed back to me, and dropped it in my lap.
    ””You drinkin’?” he said.
    ”Maybe later,” I said.
    ”Just holler,” he said.
    ”William Gince,” I read off the top of the piece of paper. There followed an address on Lynwood Gardens, which I surmised was in a part of L.A. called Lynwood, which I knew was east and a bit south of LAX, the main L.A. airport. There followed after that a phone number, which I took to be that of the missing William Gince, then the words ”mother/sister, s.a.,” then the initials ”B.F.” and that was all. I turned the paper over to see if there was anything helpful on the back, like a map with a line saying, ”I am hiding here,” with an arrow pointing to a house of ill repute in West Texas . No such luck, needless to say.
    ”‘Mother/sister, s.a.,’ meaning same address?”
    ”Brains,” said Fats. ”Wish I had ’em.” He took a bottle of soda water out of the booze cabinet, uncapped it, and poured the contents carefully into a blue-tinted tumbler, then took a sip.
    ”Not a lot on paper, is there,” I said. ”Not even an IOU.”
    ”We go a lot on trust in my business,” Fats said, poker-faced.
    ”I bet,” I said. ”You big Boy Scout, you. The initials ‘B.F.,’ what do they refer to?”
    ”Nothin’ that concerns you,” Fats said. ”That’s the guy who recommended him is all.”
    ”I’m surprised he hasn’t taken off for the Outer Hebrides , too,” I said. ”So how much is this guy into you for?”
    ”Six grand,” he said. ”It’ll be seven Saturday. Eight a week Saturday.”
    ”You make the Bank of America look generous,” I said. ”So why didn’t he go there?” Fats said. ”He knew the score. I didn’t drag him up here, he just walked in. If you don’t like the odds, stay out of the game.” And six to five is what the odds in that game are, rather six for five, you borrow $100 bucks, you pay back $120 seven days later, amigos. In five weeks the interest, or vigorish, equals what you borrowed to start with. And if you don’t come up with at least the interest, pleasant types like myself and Mickey come a-calling just as you’re heating up your Swanson’s TV chicken dinner with peas.”
    ”Why me, Fats?” I asked him, as I had not so long ago put to someone a lot prettier than him. ”Why not the boys in blue or one of your regular collectors or even that punk outside who’s lowering the tone of your waiting room?” Fats shrugged. ”I don’t like to bother them with penny-ante shit like this,” he said. ”Besides, I’m gettin’ soft, I guess, I like to help out the needy and the unemployed from time to time.”
    ”Touché, Fats,” I said. What I thought was, Fats, you’re not only fat, you’re a liar. It seemed to be my day for them. Why pay me a grand or so when he could get some amiable cop to take on the chore for a case of Four Roses and a jar of Hot-Styx? Something was no doubt up; maybe I’d find out what it was somewhere along the way. I figured I’d take the job, what the hell. It has already been established that I could use