The One About The Green Detective

 

I'd better start with the joke. It explains a lot, though not enough, of course.

 

The mailman comes to a house on the day before Christmas. He's pushing mail through the slot when the door opens. A woman is standing there. She says, "Why don't you come in and have some coffee? It's cold out there."

"Well, sure, why not?" says the mailman. She's a very attractive woman. And it is cold.

The woman sits the mailman down at the table and serves him not only coffee, but a full breakfast: waffles, bacon, syrup, orange juice.

The mailman is baffled, but he doesn't object. The food is delicious. The woman sits across from him, nursing a cup of coffee, smiling encouragingly.

The mailman finishes the meal and looks at the door. "Well, thanks, that was wonderful," he says. "I'd better -"

"Do you want to come upstairs?" says the woman.

The mailman's eyes widen, but the woman just nods and raises her eyebrows to reinforce the question.

So the mailman follows her to the bedroom. There they make slow, languorous love. The woman is generous and affectionate, but afterwards, when the mailman is stroking her hair, and readying a thousand questions, she says pertly, "Time to go."

The mailman bites his tongue, not wanting to question a good thing. He dresses and heads downstairs.

At the door, the woman stops him. "One last thing, I almost forgot." She fishes in her purse and pulls out a dollar bill, and hands it to him.

This is the straw that breaks the camel's back. "Listen lady," says the mailman. "First you give me breakfast. It was wonderful, I'm not complaining. Then we make love. It was fantastic. I don't understand, but it was fantastic. Now you're giving me a dollar. What's the game? I need an explanation."

"Well, it's almost Christmas," says the woman.

"Yeah?"

"This morning I reminded my husband that we should do something for the mailman. My husband said, 'Fuck him, give him a dollar.' "

"What about breakfast?" says the mailman.

"Oh, breakfast was my idea," says the woman brightly.

 

 

In 1959, when I was twenty-two years old, I went to work for the Conmoy

Agency in Cleveland, Ohio. This is how it happened, and it isn't a joke, even if it starts like one. I was in a bar and the guy next to me said, "When'd you get out, soldier boy?"

"How'd you know I was Army?"

"So many different ways I couldn't pick one. You stink of Army. What you having?"

"Uh, a Manhattan."

"Give him another one," the man told the bartender.

I quickly emptied the drink in front of me, while the bartender made me another. "What do you do?" I asked the man.

"I'm a Conmoy Man. You know what that is?"

"It's a private security agency, right?"

"Conmoy leases his operatives for security sometimes. We're a detective agency."

Now he had my interest. Detective to me was Lew Archer. The base library had just gotten The Doomsters in hardcover and I'd burned through it in a night.

Other guys liked Hammer, but to me Spillane was kid stuff. Ross Macdonald's Lew knew life. I wanted some of that.

"What's the case you're on now?"

"Me, I work in the office now. But the Agency's always working on dozens of cases, not just one."

This was disappointing. It sounded like bureaucracy, not investigation. "Were you ever on a case I'd have heard of?"

"Sure, lots."

"Name one."

"The Nigger in the Candyshop. Everybody knows that one."

I had heard of that, though I couldn't say where or when. “You solve it by yourself?"

"Nobody solves it by themselves, soldier, except in the movies. We're a big outfit, lots of ears, lots of guys out pounding pavement. That's how things get done."

I was impressed enough. "There's always enough clients to keep a team that big in work?" I asked. "Or is that why you do security stuff?"

"Let me introduce myself," said the man, sticking out his hand. "L. J. Dranes."

"Lieutenant Oscar Fife," I said, and took his hand.

"Well, Oscar, pleased to meet you. Security work is good steady money, sure, but it also gets us and about. In circulation. Work comes out of that. See, Conmoy isn't exactly like the usual snoop agency. We don't sit around waiting for clients to turn up. We generate the work ourselves, from the ground up."

"Really?" I said, not sure what he meant.

"Let me tell you about it…"

By the end of the night I had an appointment for an interview at Conmoy.

 

 

"What's good today?" I said, laying one of the Agency’s fives on the counter of the fish shop. I hated fish. “Why can’t you tell me where you heard the joke?"

"Everything you see on the ice is good and fresh today. About the joke, I could tell you, I just don't want to.”

"That guy Leonard was sure you were the one who told it to him. I'll take two of those flounders.”

"Flounder, you mean," said the counterman. “Two flounder.”

"Whatever. Where'd you hear the joke?”

"Maybe if I had an idea what the big interest was,” he said, wrapping the fish.

I scuffed my feet in the sawdust. I’d memorized a lot of Agency lines to use when I ran into resistance. Dranes had gone over it with me, and underlined the ones that would work, given my age. "My old man ran out on us,” I recited. “He sent a card postmarked Akron so I came up here to look. He used to tell that old chestnut every time he touched the stuff.”

Old chestnut. The emphasis was always supposed to be on how old and familiar the joke was, the closer you got. The hotter the trail.

I was on my own out here in Akron, with a pocket full of the Conmoy expense account, tracing the Mailman on Christmas Case. The man at the fish counter was the twenty-seventh link on the chain, further than I’d been before. I’d only worked two other cases: The Texan and the Golden Tuba, which had taken three weeks of research to peter out to nothing, until Conmoy closed it down, and The Gas Station Attendant’s Beautiful Wife, which I’d worked for a week and then had yanked away from me the minute it got interesting. They’d sent a bunch of top Conmoy men out to California right after, but nobody in the office would tell me a thing. I might have been part of solving that case, for all I knew.

For all I knew.

Dranes had talked about pounding pavement. Now I was one of a million guys the Agency had out tracing jokes back, teller by teller, but all us lower-echelon guys were supposed to tell the office any time things felt like they were heating up. The fishmonger's stalling probably qualified.

Now he sighed and looked around, like he was afraid someone else was listening. He'd somehow changed his mind about telling me. "Well, I didn't hear it from your pa," he said. "My cousin Dewey is a regular card. When he told that joke it was funny, had a bunch of guys on the floor. Not like when you told it."

"I heard it too many times," I said. "It's not funny to me. Where can I meet your cousin?" As I said it I put the stinking package under my arm and laid another five on top of the one on the counter.

"That's too much for the flounder," he said.

"It's a tip," I said, getting witty. "I'm looking for a tip in return."

"Dewey and Leon Staley," he said, sweeping up the bills. "Staley's Tow and Pull, on Racine Avenue. They're both my cousins, but Dewey's the one with the sense of yuks. Bet he don't know your pa, though." He glared at me.

"Maybe, maybe not," I said. "Dewey and Leon Staley. Thanks." "Don't get 'em mixed up," he said. "Leon's got a temper on him."

"Right. Thanks." I tossed the package in the trash right outside the fish shop. Its fluid heaviness made me nauseous.

The company car, a Nash Rambler, was parked around the corner. I unfolded my map of Cleveland and found Racine.

 

 

Rudy Conmoy himself sat in on my job interview, but it was another man who asked the questions, which included some pretty personal stuff. Family history, schooling, experiences with women. I did my best to make it a shortcut to what I figured they wanted to know: that I could cope with life's seamy underside. I probably sounded like an ass.

Rudy Conmoy broke in and told me a quick joke. It was the one about the chicken who goes into the library. He told it good, and the three of us laughed, me a little nervously.

"That's funny," he said. "Right?" He lit a cigarette and looked at me and I suddenly felt a chill.

"Sure," I said.

"Want to tell me why?" he said.

I thought a minute, but didn't risk anything.

He went on, "It's got animals in it, that's why. Like Bugs Bunny. The things Bugs does, they wouldn't be too funny if they happened to you, right?"

The way he said it made me afraid for Bugs if he ever met up with Conmoy. "No, sir."

"Call me Rudy. Around here, Oscar, jokes with people in them aren't funny. Jokes about violence, jealousy- not funny. They're serious business. They're the business you'll be in if you come work for us."

I just listened.

"You ever read Freud?" I shook my head.

"Well, you should. Freud tells us how behind every joke there’s something wrong, some kind of guilt or pain. Behind some of them there's a crime, Oscar. Not all, but some. Mr. Dranes told you how we find our own work, right?"

"Yes.”

"All right." He stubbed out his cigarette, suddenly distracted.

"Peter here will get you signed up. Nice meeting you, Oscar."

 

 

I found the Tow and Pull. It was a couple of offices fronted by a big lot full of tinker jobs. I wondered how many would ever run again. I parked across the street instead of pulling into the lot, not wanting the company car to attract attention. They sold DeSotos too, and if Dewey Staley was a big talker maybe I could play customer, get him rolling without tipping my hand.

Nobody met me in the lot. I went into the front office and tapped the bell. A grease-covered mechanic poked his head in from the side where he was working. "Leon's on the phone. It's gonna be a minute."

"Where's Dewey?" I said.

He looked at me like how could I want Dewey instead of Leon? But all he said was, "He's back there too."

I saluted him, and he went into the garage. I decided to find the men's. I went back out and around the side, thinking of it like a gas station. I didn't see the john, but there was a screen window, and I heard a voice leaking out.

"-you've got to be kidding, Phil. Nobody's gonna dig that crap back up. I made sure of that."

I crouched down there alongside a pile of fenders and listened.

"A kid with a crew cut. I'll look out for him. Okay. Okay, Phil. I got it covered."

I heard the mouthpiece clatter down into the cradle.

"You and your fucking jokes, Dewey," the voice said angrily. "I told you I was sorry already," answered a meeker voice. "Sorry don't cut it. This is costing me."

"But, Leon-"

"What?"

"You sure this isn't just one of Phil's fish stories?" The meeker voice laughed like a hyena.

"You wait," said the other voice humorlessly. "I'm gonna make a call."

I felt a weird thrill go through me. I'd stumbled into something. I was closer than I was supposed to be. I'm not sure I'd completely believed in the Conmoy Method until that moment. Now I believed in a big way.

My instincts were good, too good. I should have turned the case over when I got the hairy eyeball from the fishmonger. But there wasn't a chance in the world I was letting it go now.

I couldn't confront either Staley, not after they'd been warned. I needed another approach. I slipped back out along the side of the office and through the lot, thanking my lucky stars I'd parked across the street.

I drove up Racine a few blocks to a diner, went in and ordered coffee. It was almost two-thirty. I got the waitress to give me the Cleveland White Pages. Leon Staley was in there, Mr. and Mrs., with an address on North Wood. I jotted it in my notepad. Then I flipped to the front and found the post office that serviced North Wood.

I drove to the post office feeling so full of being a private eye I could have inflated the Goodyear Blimp by mouth.

I got directed to the route manager, a fat guy who sat like an octopus plumped in the center of a circle of mail bins. He had yellow, rheumy eyes. A drinking man.

"That's Cohen's route. You got a complaint about the service over there?"

"I'm looking for a guy who was in the service with my brother. Good-looking guy. This would've been a few years ago."

"Oh, Christ."

"What?"

"It isn't Cohen you want. You're thinking of that guy who went missing, whatsisname –" He put two clubby fingers on the tip of his chin.

"Missing?" I felt a hot flush, an intimation of real evil.

“Yeah. Kid about your age, I mean, he was back then. One day he just didn't show up. Missing persons case. Cops were out here about it."

"How long-?"

"Almost five years ago. We've still got his last paycheck in a drawer somewhere. His folks never came by for it."

"Around Christmas?" I said, a little breathlessly.

He began to nod, then stopped and looked at me. "What do you know about it?"

"Never mind. Thanks." I got out of there.

 

 

She was the one. I felt it the minute she let me into the house. I'd been telling the joke all week and I felt like I'd entered this house a hundred times already. Of course, it wasn't the house that gave me the feeling. It was her.

Mrs. Staley opened the door and then backed up to let me in like I was bringing an entourage. I shut it behind me and took off my hat.

She was in her thirties, but just, and she had the air of a teenager fitted into the career of housewife before she knew what hit her, before she'd tasted anything of life. Which is to say I imagined I had tasted life, enough to judge. All I really knew was that she had the body of an overripe teenager, and it was fitted into her apron with difficulty.

Her face had kept its youthfulness, but it might as well not have bothered, because her eyes ruined the whole effect. They were eyes that had worn themselves out tracing the limits of a cage, like a lioness in a zoo. They weren't hoping to escape anymore, just survive. And they didn't want anyone else coming into the cage without an invitation.

"Tell me again who you work for," she said.

I'd presented myself at the door as working for the Conmoy Insurance Agency. I'd taken my cue from some fake business cards I'd seen in L. J. Dranes' desk. I didn't have the faintest idea how a Conmoy operative actually introduced himself at this juncture. Or whether he did.

"I'm an insurance agent, ma'am," I said. "May I sit down?" "Here," she said, pulling out a chair at the table in the kitchen nook. “The living room's a mess." She backed away again, as I were going to somersault into the chair. "Would you like some coffee?"

“Sure," I said, marveling. It was like we were acting it out.

She went into the kitchen, and said from there, "I didn't hear anything from Leon about insurance."

“He took out a policy on his business, but it covers the home too." I said. I craned my neck to see her, but she was out of view. “That's one of the best features."

"Uh huh," she said.

I craned the other way, for a look at the living room. Sofa, Barcalounger, no television, but a big old Victrola. The room wasn’t a mess as far as I could see.

She came out with coffee, two cups, and sat with me at the table. She seemed to have calmed herself a little in the kitchen. Popped a couple of mother's little helpers, I wondered? Her mouth didn't look so tense. But her eyes still cried for help.

I was sure I was Lew Archer now, plunging into some stifled past to let the pain and heartbreak free itself, like a doctor opening a festering wound.

"What do you need to see?" she said.

"Talking to you is as important as seeing the place," I said, and gave her my best smile. "Are you around the house most of the time?" It wasn't polite to ask a woman if she worked, those days. Assuming either way could get you in trouble.

"Yes. Why?"

"Premiums are lower if the place isn't left alone."

"Well, I sure fit that description." The boring talk clearly reassured her. She smiled back and took a pack of cigarettes out of a purse that lay on the table. "Care for one?" she said. "They're menthol."

"Sure." I'd only smoked a menthol cigarette once before. I lit hers and then mine. "No kids around," I said. "Why don't you get out more?"

A cloud crossed her expression. "Leon likes me to keep close to home. He wants a meal waiting." She brightened suddenly. "That's okay. That's what I like too."

I smoked and looked her over. "You don't get lonely?"

"Sometimes." She said it to herself. Then she put her cigarette into the ashtray and unlaced her apron and pulled it off, and my breath stopped. Her blouse wasn't as buttoned up as it could have been.

"Your name is Oscar?" she said.

"Oscar Fife," I told her again.

"How old are you, Oscar?"

I added a year. "Twenty-three."

"Do I look old to you?"

"No."

She smiled and picked up her cigarette and stared at me. I had an erection like a frozen Mars Bar.

"You seem like a nice kid, Oscar. Why are you doing this?"

"What?"

"Leon sent you to check up on me. See what I would do."

My jaw fell open. "No."

"Of course he did."

"That's not it at all," I managed.

"Tell me then."

"Is Leon a violent man, Mrs. Staley?"

The look on her face made me feel I'd recaptured the edge in this exchange. I rewarded myself with a drag on the cigarette, which I'd been neglecting. I nearly choked.

"You all right?" she asked.

"Yes, just –" I didn't want to stand because of the boner.

"Could you get me some water?"

She went to the kitchen tap and came back with a glass. I gulped half down in one go.

"Don't ignore my question," I said. "Is he violent?" She didn't say anything.

"You don't have to live like this," I said, throwing caution aside. A goddamn knight in tinfoil, with a stiffy under the table. “You don't have to protect him. Nobody will hurt you if you come forward."

"You'd better say what you mean," she said. Her voice was even but she was gripping the table like she wanted to break off a piece to dunk in her coffee.

"I know about the mailman," I said.

If she'd had a throat full of smoke it would have been her turn to choke. But her cigarette and coffee were on the table between us, growing as chilly as the look in her eyes.

"Would you excuse me for a minute?" she said.

"Sure."

She went upstairs. I heard a door shut, then a murmur that might have been a lowered voice. I thought about sneaking up to listen in case she was making a call. Then I spied the downstairs phone on the wall of the kitchen and thought about picking it up. I didn't do anything, and in a minute she was back downstairs.

It finally occurred to me to wonder where the Agency would find a paying client in a case like this. If Mrs. Staley wanted to cover for her husband, what was the Agency's angle?

That's me in a nutshell: always a step or two behind. If not five or six steps.

I wished all of a sudden that I'd called the Agency after my visit to the fish seller. Or at least that I hadn't told her the name Conmoy, so if I got out of there now my mistake couldn't come back to haunt me.

She only gave me a minute to think about it. Then she put her arms up on my shoulders and played with my hair. "Cute kid," she said quietly. "You should let it grow a little." Then she put her mouth up to mine.

I'd only kissed girls up to that point. Mrs. Staley made a real impression. She smelled like something only Archer would know about.

I don't know how long we stayed like that, me following her lead. It felt like a lifetime, in a way. I certainly didn't have a look at my watch. The only time I opened my eyes I saw hers were closed.

Then Leon Staley came through the door with a gun in his hand.

I hadn't gotten a look at him back at the Tow and Pull. He was at least ten years older than his wife. He was big, too. He looked like a guy who bullied prospective buyers to close deals at the lot. He made the gun look small. Mrs. Staley let me go and moved behind him. I stood there like a dolt.

"You like the way my wife tastes? You're gonna pay for that kiss, kid."

I didn't speak.

"In there," he said, pointing me into the living room with the gun. "Put the needle on the record, then put your hands in the air. "

I did what he said. It was a comedy record, Mort Sahl live at the Hungry I. Mort was making fun of John Wayne.

"Make it loud."

"Why?"

"So if I have to shoot you it doesn't bug the neighbors," he said.

I turned it up. "Is that how you did the mailman?"

"Shut up, cop."

"I'm not a cop. I'm a detective."

"Aren't you a little young to make plainclothes?"

"I'm a private detective."

"Give me a break. If you're a private eye who hired you?"

"Conmoy Agency. We find our own work."

"Did you say Conmoy?" He looked at me more puzzled than angry for the first time.

"He called it insurance," said Mrs. Staley from the doorway.

“Conmoy?” he said again to me, ignoring her.

"That's right," I said, baffled by this turn.

"Anna, go upstairs," he said, without turning away from me.

"Leon-"

"Go." She went.

"Turn that down," he said to me. I did it. He let the gun sag, and he took another step into the room. "What the fuck is this, some kind of joke?"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm square with Conmoy. I don't need this shit. You shouldn't be coming around here. A deal's a deal."

"What?"

He squinted at me, then pulled the gun up straight again. "No, you don't really work for Conmoy. You're a rookie cop who thinks he’s onto something. You're just throwing names around, hoping you'll get lucky."

"If you want to call the Agency you'll see I work for them."

"I already called the damn Agency from the lot, the minute I heard from Phil you were nosing into things. They're on their way up here."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"So just sit and listen to the funny man. We'll see who you work for."

"Can I put my hands down?"

"Go ahead."

We listened to Sahl.

 

Rudy Conmoy himself walked in about fifteen minutes later, with L.J Dranes and another guy. They must have started from Cleveland as soon as they got the call. I don't know if Staley knew it was Conmoy he was talking to but Conmoy sure made an impression on him fast. "You did the right thing calling," he said. "We're pretty sure it stops with this kid. Our man inside the Akron force is checking it out, but there doesn't seem to be anything brewing."

"Well, I don't like it," said Staley, making jabbing motions at me with the gun.

"I understand. We'd like to make it up to you, Staley. Consider yourself square with us for a year, how's that?"

"That's something. But what about this kid?"

"We'll take care of him. Dranes, get the kid out of this man's house already."

"Wait a minute," said Staley. "The kid says he's with you."

"Never seen him before," said Conmoy. "But don't you worry about that. We'll figure out who he's with. It's not your problem anymore. Shouldn't have been in the first place."

I'd been practicing keeping my mouth shut, but this was too much. "Mr. Conmoy, tell him –"

"Shut up," said Conmoy in a way that made me do it. "Dranes, I said get him out of here." He opened his wallet, and said to Staley, "You deserve a reward, actually. You shouldn't have to do our work for us –“

I caught how Staley's expression changed when he saw the denomination of the bill in Conmoy's hand, then Dranes pushed me out the door.

 

We were in the insurance business after all. That was the funny part. The Conmoy Agency was a protection racket, was another way to put it. Dranes lit both our cigarettes and explained it to me in Conmoy's Lincoln while we waited for Conmoy to come out.

"There isn't any margin in solving cases like ours, Oscar. The jokes cover guilt. We do the same thing."

"The office files – that's all stuff you're covering up. You only solve them to put the squeeze on people. Those are blackmail files."

"Blackmail's an unpleasant word, Oscar."

"But why was I on the Mailman case? You already had Staley in your pocket."

"He was one of those fellows who get cocky and don't want to pay. We like to keep the pressure up, make sure the joke stays fresh. Your job was to give him a little hotfoot by getting close, then report back. It's a standard operation."

"You never even put me on an unsolved case?"

"The Gas Station Attendant's Wife was new," he said. "You did a good job with that, Oscar. Conmoy was impressed." He chuckled. "I guess you did a pretty good job on Staley, too." He chuckled a bit more.

Conmoy and his other man came out. "Don't use the word blackmail if you want to keep this job," said Dranes before they got to the car. He pulled the coffin nail out of my mouth and stubbed it into the ashtray.

Conmoy tapped on my window. I rolled it down. "Give me your keys. Andy's going to drive your car back." I gave him the .key, and he passed them to Andy. "Get in the back," he told me.

Dranes took the wheel, and Conmoy got in the passenger seat. He didn't say anything until we got on the highway back to Cleveland. Neither did Dranes.

Finally he said, "You want to star in a joke, Oscar?"

"What?"

"I said do you want to star in a joke?"

"No," I said.

He turned around and leaned over the seat and grabbed me by :he collar. "You sure? Because you're close. You're this close." He jammed me back against the seat and the door. "I could put you in a joke in a New York minute." He wasn't yelling, just talking calmly. But there was a little fleck of spit on his lower lip.

"No, Mr. Conmoy."

"You want this job, Oscar?"

"I'm not sure."

"Not sure. Your little prodigy's not sure. Stop the car, Dranes."

"Come on, Rudy," said Dranes.

"Stop the car. I mean it."

We pulled over. It was dark now. We were on a stretch of highway that was nowhere. There was a water tower in the distance, and a ditch at the side of the road.

"Out."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Conmoy."

"Out."

 

 

That was some time ago. They left me there on the side of the road and I had to hitch back to Cleveland. Once or twice after that I saw someone I knew was a Conmoy man working security at some public event, but I never saw Dranes or Conmoy himself again. I did another stint in the service before I ended up in the insurance biz for a while, the real insurance biz. Ironic, isn't it.

That's all. What do you want, a punch line?