Write me a Letter

”Those guys in Robbery, they do their best but they’ve got huge case loads and for anything under five or ten grands’ worth, they just don’t have the time.”
    ”How about you, Vic?” Katy said, sucking the end of her swizzle stick. ”You got the time to spend if I’ve got the money to spend?”
    ”I got till two o’clock tomorrow,” I said.
    ”So come on down,” she said. ”Senate Mobile Estate. I’m the first home on the left inside the gates. It says ‘manager’ on it. It’s got yellow roses all up one wall. And a doghouse out on the porch.”
    ”Given that wealth of detail,” I said, ”I should probably be able to find it without getting totally lost.” She smiled, then touched the top of her hair carefully to see if it was all still there. It was. How I wish I could say the same.
    We had a nightcap, me and Katy and Sal and a huge tattooed truck driver called George and his tiny wife Doreen, then I gingerly eased myself off the stool, made my farewells, and wound my way back to the motel and, a few moments later, to dreamland. On my back, Doc, too. Was I glad to get that fool corset off. Was I glad I wasn’t a lady living in Victorian times when the wasp waist was de rigor , my dear. I was glad I wasn’t a lady living in any times, come to think about it. Imagine having to kiss some jerk good night on your doorstep after he’s just taken you for a meal of fish curry. No, thank you. Imagine having to stifle yawns while some Romeo is taking twenty minutes to figure out how to undo your Cross-Your-Heart bra. No, thank you. Imagine having to take some Lusting Lothario’s word for it when he swears he had a vasectomy two years ago this Wednesday. Imagine... I fell asleep imagining.

19

    It was nine-thirty the following a.m. when I knocked on the door of Katy’s mobile home, using for the purpose a brass knocker shaped like a horse’s head. Knock knock knock. The door opened; Katy greeted me and bade me enter. She was wearing a floor-length satin-looking house robe and her hair was as immaculately coiffed as it had been the night before.
    ”I wasn’t sure you’d show,” she said. ”But I made some coffee just in case. Coffee?” She led the way into the living room.
    ”You bet your boots,” I said. Just inside the door, on the wall, was a notice board that had pinned to it among other things, a calendar of the estate’s events for the month.
    ”Sit yourself down,” she said. ”Back in a jiff.”
    ”Thank you,” I said, lowering myself with some trepidation into a wing chair by the front window after removing a bag of knitting from the seat first. Katy came back from the kitchen carrying a tray on which were a Pyrex coffee maker, full to the brim, two mugs, creamless cream, sugarless sugar, and a half a Sarah Lee coffee cake.
    ”Nice place,” I said politely as she poured out the coffee. Actually, it wasn’t bad if you like living in a converted DC-10. And on top of nubbed carpets.
    ”It’s your standard single,” she said, cutting me a piece of the coffee cake. ”Twelve feet wide, fifty-six long, expandable, naturally. Runs upward of fifteen thou, thirty-five for the double. ”Your lot rent here’s about one seven five. This here is an older model, the siding’s aluminum, the panels plywood. In the newer ones, and I’ll show you one if you like, you’ve got all wood siding and your Sheetrock insulation, of course.”
    ”Of course,” I said.
    ”Ten percent down is customary,” she said. ”The rest we can finance for you over twenty years. If you’re at all interested, I’ve got a realtor’s license, as a sideline, like, I could give you a really good deal on one.”
    ”I am a detective, madam,” I said. ”I did realize what your sideline was when you were three words into your spiel.”
    She grinned.
    ”Caught in the act again,” she said, without sounding overly remorseful.
    ”The robberies,” I said. ”I want all the details you have— when, where, how, from who, what was taken, everything and anything.”
    ”Back in a jiff,” she said. I know she took longer than a jiff because while she was gone I had time to leaf through a copy of Sacramento Single Souls that chanced to be on the cocktail table right beside me. I skipped past ”My Most Creative Date,” also ”Make-over of the Month,” but deeply perused the following female ad: ”I am the woman your mother warned you about!! My dream is to participate in a mutually beneficial