Write me a Letter

teeth, of which he had just enough left to whistle through.
    ”Dunno if I can handle that much action, Vic,” he said. ”I might have to lay part of it off.”
    I grinned. We haggled good-naturedly about the odds; you could always haggle over the odds with Tim, but it was odds on it would get you where it got me—nowhere.
    After lunch I walked the two blocks to the travel agency my pal Ron owned half of and caught him just as he was going out for his lunch. Ron Rogg was an obliging, mild-mannered, corpulent gent of some forty summers, who had a fondness, or is it weakness, for embroidered waistcoats and tartan caps; he’d been Evonne’s travel agent before becoming mine as well. On the wall behind his desk was a glass-fronted cabinet containing a tiny portion of his collection of hand-painted, lead toy soldiers, all from the Napoleonic era, about which he’d bore you stiff given the slightest opening.
    Ron had half my requirements already waiting—first-class round-trip L.A. — New York TWA ticket stubs. It took him but a minute or two to provide the other item I needed, and then photocopy it; he wouldn’t take a dime for it, either, sterling chap that he was. I paid for the tickets with plastic, winked at Evie, the lucious signorina at the next desk who’d been with him at least as long as I had, then Ron went for his belated lunch and I drove downtown to Fats’.
    I was prepared for Fats. I was even prepared for Fats if he was prepared for me in some sneaky way. I was wearing a lightweight white cotton jacket over my Hawaiian shirt, with my wallet in the inside breast pocket. I had my story together, with documents to prove it, I hoped, and I had that more-than-together expense sheet.
    After ten minutes of circling the block his office was on, plus a few adjoining ones, I finally left the car in an official parking lot; what the hell, this was no time to quibble over a few bucks. Five, actually; those bandits.
    Fats buzzed me in and I went up. The front office was empty except for the water cooler, which was also empty. I continued on to the inner office, where Fats was relaxing in his favorite armchair.
    ”Where’s Legs Diamond, Jr.?” I said. ”Out playing marbles with the other kids?”
    ”Dunno,” Fats said. ”I think he went back to Chi. He kept complaining there wasn’t enough weather out here.”
    ”Better no weather than what Chicago gets,” I said, sinking into the chair opposite him and laying the folder with my paperwork on the glass table in between us.
    ”Fats,” I said, ”here it is. I got some good news and some bad news.”
    ”I hate conversations that start like that,” he said. ”Dom DeLouise, you know him? Comic right? Heard him once say in Vegas his wife once started a conversation with him like that. The good news was she was leaving, the bad news not till next week.”
    I smiled, although you well know by now that I am not particularly fond of any humor based on antifeminism. ”The good news is,” I said, ”I found William Gince.”
    ”No shit,” Fats said. ”How?”
    ”By spending two days with my assistant in a small room at Kennedy Airport in New York , New York .”
    ”So where is William Gince?”
    ”Ah,” I said. ”Thought I’d hold that little detail till I laid the bad news on you.”
    I opened up the card folder and tossed him the expense sheet, and receipts appertaining, to which I’d added the ticket stubs from Ron.
    ”Voila,” I said. ”That’s French for something.”
    Fats examined the sheet, occasionally checking an entry against one of the bills. He looked at the scribbled cab receipt from ”Ramon” with particular distaste.
    ”I know, I know,” I said. ”Guy could hardly speak English, let alone write it.” Fats passed to the next item. ”Airport bus into town,” I said. ”For two of us, twice, a lot cheaper than a cab. And please note there’s no hotel receipt for the night we spent in New York , we stayed with friends of mine, what the hell, why run up your bill needlessly?”
    ”Thanks a million,” he said. Too bad it’s so hard to fake hotel bills these days as they are all computer printouts. I wondered if my PC couldn’t produce a passable imitation of one if I knew how to do it and had the appropriate stock. Certainly something to look into on a rainy day.
    Fats had a few additional queries but his heart wasn’t really in it; with surprisingly little reluctance he took out his wad and peeled me off $1,244, plus