Write me a Letter

at the game because they were still talking about it and about the Canadien’s chances if they ever got to the Stanley Cup finals. 1
    ”Is Fran in on any of this?” I asked Will.
    He blushed and looked away.
    ”Ah,” he said, ”nah, she’s just an old friend.”
    ”Tell you what to do,” I said, ”so she’ll go on believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and Provigo. Get her a ten-pound glazed ham tomorrow and tell her you met the delivery truck up the street looking for her house and you wanted to save the kid a trip.”
    ”Good idea,” he said. ”Listen, was that you, too, the other call I got from my sister, somethin’ about havin’ a baby?”
    ”Not me,” I said. ”That was the Mother of the Year Sara here.”
    ”That’ll be the day,” she muttered darkly.
    ”What was all that about,” Will asked.
    I tried desperately to summon up a blush but failed.
    ”It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said weakly. Will looked puzzled, but let the matter drop.
    ”Got any more good ideas?” he said. ”Like what the fuck we do now?”
    ”Why don’t we send the kids home to some nice hot milk and then to bed,” I said, counting out a lot of money to cover the bill, ”and then perhaps you and I might retire to a friendly tavern and discuss that very subject at our leisure.”
    ”OK by me,” Will said. ”I better call Fran first so she don’t worry about me, like I been mugged or somethin’.” He bustled off toward the phones at the back. The waitress departed with my money.
    ”I don’t wanna go to bed, is there any night life in this town, George, can we go dancing maybe?”
    ”Stick with me, blue eyes,” Marlon said in his Humphry Bogart voice. ”And I’ll dance your pretty feet off. Say good-bye to Will for us, will you?”
    I said I would. They got up, collected their coats, scarves, and hat from the rack near the door, and left to dance their pretty feet off. Will returned, looking pleased about something. The waitress returned, looked around unsuccessfully for Lover Boy, probably to give my change to, then said, ”Attend.” I attended. She got out her order pad, scribbled a phone number and a name on it, tore out the page, then gave it to me, then gave me a wink. I winked back.
    ” Pour lui ,” she said.
    ”His name’s Marlon, actually,” I said, tucking both bills away carefully in my wallet. What a forward hussy. If she thought I was about to put any obstacle in the path of my dearest friend Sara’s love affair, she could just think again, and besides, I had another use for that second bill. I wonder why she thought he was poor. I left her a sizable tip—two pinkbacks and the four quarters—and we got out of there.
    Short minutes later we were comfortably installed in a first-floor boîte called the BC Lounge. At the far end of the room from us a black gentleman in a green tuxedo tinkled the ivories of a white upright, delicately improvising his way through that old Oscar Peterson favorite ‘Autumn Leaves.” Someone once told me Mr. Peterson was a Canadian, but you can believe that if you want to. I was sipping a brandy and ginger ale, William nursing a scotch on the rocks and from time to time covertly eyeing two giggly matrons at the table next to ours who were enjoying their night out on the town.
    ”Sixty-two five,” I remarked after a while, ”is a considerable sum.”
    ”Tell me about it,” Will said.
    ”Which brings up again the interesting point, why did Fatso rope me in on it? It couldn’t have been just my good looks. I take it, Will, that we both agree the money was dirty money because if it was clean, Fats could have called in the cops. Which leaves the question, or begs it, even, why did he not enlist the services of some of his many Italian or Sicilian associates?”
    ”Search me,” said Will.
    ”I figure it was because he didn’t want them to know he’d lost the money because it was theirs,” I said. ”Which thought came to me a minute ago in the men’s room. We know Fats operates as a middleman between fuzz and felon, and versa vice. Say the sixty-two five was just another regular monthly payoff from one to the other. To sever the connection between the two, it makes a brief pit stop up at Fats’ on the way. You better believe he won’t want either one to hear he’s carelessly mislaid their money—at best he’s out of a highly lucrative job, at worst he’s chucked off the roof of an extremely tall