Write me a Letter

was whenever I was in the office, otherwise it went into the safe out back. Written on the paper in my untidy scrawl were a seven-digit number with two other numbers tacked on, a five-digit number and one of four digits.
    ”What’s that, Prof?” the twerp wanted to know. ”The combination to the safe?”
    ”In a way,” I said. Telephone companies, including the one that sent me my bill every month, Pacific Tel, have a special number. If you’re fuzz or belong to one of several other accredited law enforcement agencies, which includes me out, and call that number and identify yourself correctly, you can obtain, among other things, a read-out of a suspect’s phone bill for whatever time span you require. Unfortunately, the procedure for obtaining unlisted phone numbers is more complicated, which is why I’d asked Curly to obtain the Ginces’. I dialed the special number, then asked to be put through to the appropriate extension. A lady answered. She said her name was Miss Hanoran and wanted to know how she could help me. I read off my brother Tony’s shield number and the code number he’d been assigned by the telephone company, which I happened by mere chance to stumble across at his place one day. I forget just where, in some drawer or his wallet or wherever.
    I asked the helpful Miss Hanoran, if her computer worked that fast, could she tell me of any long distance calls that had been made after 4:22 that afternoon from the Ginces’ number. I was hoping, of course, that wherever William was, it wasn’t in a motel just around the corner.
    ”Just one sec,” said Miss Hanoran. After slightly longer than that she was back on the line, saying, ”At four twenty-four a call was placed to five-one-four seven-eight-seven-four-one-one-two.” I repeated the number to her, writing it down.
    ”Five-one-four,” I said. ”Where’s that?”
    She told me.
    ”Oh, merde,” I said. ”I mean, merci for everything.”
    ”Bonjour,” said Miss Hanoran.
    ”Well?” the twerp said eagerly as soon as I’d hung up.
    ”I’ll give you a hint,” I said. ”It’s worse than Timbuktu . I’ll tell you if you tell me what ‘Sybiline’ means.”
    ”Like a oracle or fortune-teller,” she said.
    ” Montreal ,” I said. ”Go get down that cheap atlas you gave me and let’s see if it’s even on the map.”

8

    Now don’t get your dander up, all you Eskimos and Frenchies and wheat farmers and canoe paddlers, all you Malamutes, pea soupers, Hans Brinkers, and Newfies north o’ the border, I was just having my little joke. Everyone knows Montreal is not only on the map but it’s also on a big river, the name of which escapes me at the moment. It could be the Mackenzie. And as all sports lovers know, Montreal also has a huge cement igloo that cost the earth and then some where the ever-hopeful Montreal Expos try and play baseball. And speaking of which manly pursuit, remind me to pass by Fred’s and put a goodly sum down on the Dodgers winning the World Series, even Tim’ll have to give me at least a hundred to one. And I better do it afore I go, it is hard counting out greenbacks one by one when you’ve lost half your fingers from frostbite. *
    Montreal... it has had a decent hockey team from time to time, I admit, not too surprising for a city that has only about three days of summer and an awful lot of ice the rest of the time. And when you’ve got that much ice, you can’t put it all into highball cocktails, you have to skate on it and bowl on it and have horse races on it and fish through it and mush over it, it made me shiver just thinking about it. But Montreal in early April, maybe it would be spring up there by now, like it was in sensible places—I started rummaging through the wastepaper basket under the desk.
    ”Now what’cha doin’?” said Sara.
    ”Looking up what the temperature was yesterday in Montreal ,” I said. I dug out yesterday’s Herald and found the weather page, on which they always listed temperatures of major cities around the world, primarily to give Californians something to gloat about. ”Guess what?”
    ”What?”
    ”Yesterday the mercury shot all the way up to thirty-eight in Montreal ,” I said. ”That’s almost a heat wave for them. The natives probably stripped down to their last parka.”
    ”What a sissy,” she said. ”Me, I don’t mind the cold, I kinda dig it.”
    ”Who cares about you,” I said. ”It’s me that’s going to have to break the ice in