She took a long, deep drag of her smoke. “Was that a pun?”
“A what?”
“Sugar, I swear, you’ve got some kind of mind. Where was I? Ah! I told you what Albie said: the minute he goes, I should call Solly, right?”
“Yes.”
“Only, what he said was, ‘You just speak once, Rena. Then you listen.’ I remember that like it was engraved in stone. You know what a litmus test is? No? Like the test the cops have: pour some liquid into white powder, shake it up, see if it turns blue?”
I just nodded at her.
“If Solly came himself and brought Albie’s will with him, I was supposed to give him Albie’s little blue book. Just hand it over. But if Solly didn’t bring the will, I should never say a word about that book.” She took a long breath in and held it, like she was getting ready to lift a heavy weight. Off herself. “The only problem was that Solly didn’t come himself; he sent you,” she said.
“I never had the will.”
“I know. I … checked. So what would Albie want me to do?”
“Play me so I got Solly to show you the will?”
“That’s what I thought. And that’s what I was going to do. But it didn’t take long for me to see you’d already been played.”
“So either Albie never trusted her, or, now, you don’t.” My own words to Solly, ringing in my head. Albie had trusted Rena, all right—it was Solly he didn’t trust.
“Damn, he was slick,” I said.
“Who?”
“Albie. He had it all figured out. That will. Solly telling me he’d have to go see a lawyer, make out a new one. Total bullshit. I bet there never was any will. Not the kind you’d show in court, anyway. Just a list of where stuff was. If Solly went first, this girl, Grace, she was supposed to send his will to you. And she would have done it. She would have mailed it off, without ever looking at it.”
“You’re that sure? Maybe she—”
“No. Stop whatever you’re thinking. This Grace, I met her. She couldn’t even tell a lie. She’s like, I don’t know, a saint or something. There is no way Solly was anything to her but ‘Uncle Solly,’ understand?”
“That’s what you thought, anyway.”
“Check yourself, girl. You don’t know everything. You think the same thing doesn’t happen to me? Guys stare at your chest, think that’s all you are, the joke’s on them, right? You think people don’t take one look at me and decide I gotta be stupid?
“Well, you know what? About some things, I’m real smart. And I’m telling you, I know Solly. He’s … superstitious, I guess you’d say. He once told me, if he didn’t take care of Grace, her father, this guy Ken, he’d come back and haunt him. Not ‘Boo!’ like a ghost; like a hit man. Wait a minute … like a golem, is what he said.”
“A golem, that’s like a devil in human form. Albie told me about them.”
“See? Grace, she’s like … You know what Down syndrome is?”
“Sure. It’s when—”
“So here’s Solly, paying off his debt to Ken because he’s afraid Ken could come back and be this golem thing. That, he believes. And he knows what Ken the golem would do to him if he ever … did anything to his little girl.”
She stood up. Walked around in a little circle. Stopped in front of me, hands behind her back. “I want to sit in your lap, Sugar.”
“Yeah? Well, you can’t do it from there.”
She snuggled in. But it wasn’t like before. “Tell me again. About Albie being so smart, Sugar. I think you might know more about that than me. Really. I won’t say a word until you’re done.”
I took a deep breath, like I was getting ready to drive a lot of iron. I let it out slow, no burst. That’s showing you’ve got control of the weight.
“If Solly showed you whatever Albie left with him, it would have been all about money and property and stuff, Lynda. Probably where a lot of money was stashed, too. But it would have also had that thing about looking in the partners desk.
“I don’t think the whole bit about the partners desk was in any will, Lynda. You know what I think? What I think now, I mean? I think that whole partners desk thing came in when Albie knew he was going. That’s when he would have told Solly about it. I don’t think