The Man Who Loved Women to Death by David Handler Page A

coming in that morning either, although he was down in the basement a lot stacking stuff. As for your next question, why didn’t he report her missing, he claims Diane kept talking for weeks about taking a ski trip with her sister. When she didn’t show for work on Tuesday he figured that’s where she was, and either she forgot to tell him or she did tell him and he forgot.”
    “Any chance Malik’s the answer man?”
    “Doubtful. He’s a high school dropout, below average language skills. Plus he doesn’t know how to type. Which is the same shit my computer keeps telling me. Like, I turned up a gee just got paroled in Pennsylvania after pulling seven years for stalking a chick, okay? Under occupation they list ‘dishwasher.’ I’m thinking, okay, maybe he’s worth looking up: Trouble is, he can only read and write at a fourth-grade level. Our man’s way smarter than that. He ain’t no mumbling crackhead lives out of garbage cans. He’s someone you’d go home with. She did.”
    “This being your so-called information age, I’m assuming that if a similar unsolved crime had taken place somewhere else in the country—”
    “We’d be on it in a flash, dude. I didn’t turn up a thing. The answer man is all ours.”
    “Lovely.”
    “Check this out,” Very went on. “There’s no Greek coffeeshop around the corner from the pet food store. Nearest one’s way over on First and Thirtieth. Man behind the counter don’t remember anybody camped out there drinking coffee with twelve sugars any time recently.”
    “How about the Yushie bar?”
    “Several in the area, but so far he’s ringing no bells. You ask me, he made a lot of that shit up. Which just makes our job harder.”
    “That may have been the whole idea, Lieutenant.”
    “You got that right, dude.” He sighed grimly.
    “So what now?”
    “We canvas the people who ride the numero uno train same time she did every morning. Maybe somebody saw something. We check the welfare hotels for recent arrivals. We check the psychiatric hospitals for recent departures—addicts, sex offenders, gees who write kook letters, gees with a history of violence, gees with mommy hang-ups. We talk to social workers who work with young fathers. We talk to drug counselors. We work the restaurants, ’specially places that routinely take on parolees or mental outpatients. We dog the details, dude, every single goddamned one of ’em, no matter how many man hours that takes. Because, dig, that girl was found in the park. And that fucks with the people’s heads. Scares ’em shitless.” Romaine Very sounded serious. More serious than I’d ever heard him. “Now listen up—no one, but no one knows how you hook up to this thing. Just me and my immediate superior, and he’s sworn to secrecy. So the press should not be on to you. They get on to you, let me know, okay?”
    “Okay, Lieutenant.”
    “Everything cool?”
    “I think I can safely report that everything is not cool.”
    “Are you cool?”
    “I’m fine.”
    “Stay with me, dude,” he said, and then he hung up.
    But I wasn’t fine. Merilee knew it as soon as she joined me in bed after supper, which had been late. Rehearsal had run long. Her director, a hot young filmmaker, had never done a play. In fact, Merilee was starting to think he had never seen a play.
    “You look awfully pale, darling,” she observed fretfully. She had on her red flannel nightshirt. She always wears that when work is going poorly. Comfort food for the limbs, she calls it. “Your feet are positively gelid. And you barely touched your dinner.”
    “I’ve never liked lamb shanks. Ask anyone.”
    She glanced down at Lulu, who was curled up between us. “Why, even Lulu looks glum.”
    “Lulu always looks glum. It’s one of her charms.”
    Merilee was silent a moment. We both were. My mind was elsewhere. My mind was on that typewriter, an Olivetti Studio 44.
    “They’re always out there, darling,” she said quietly. “The