Outside my door I stopped short and surveyed the scene. It was a real shock. The place looked absolutely empty, in spite of all the hundreds of desks and chairs and miscellaneous objects. The girls were gone, and what a difference it made! I stood and gazed around, making one or two quick changes in my philosophy. I decided that until you single one out and she gets personal to you, a hundred girls, or a thousand girls, are just a girl. So it wasn’t accurate to look at that empty room and say to yourself, the girls have gone, the way to say it was, the girl has gone. Nursing a strong suspicion that I had hit on something that was profound enough for three magazine articles or even a book, I made my way to the elevators and down to the street. A taxi in that part of town at that time of day wasn’t to be thought of, so I went to the corner and turned right on Wall Street, headed for the west side subway.
Since I have been in the detective business for over ten years and have done a lot of leg work, naturally I have both tailed and been tailed many times, and when I’m on a case and on the move outdoors it is almost as automatic with me to keep aware of my rear as !t is for everybody to glance in the traffic direction before stepping down from a curb. It rarely happens that I have a tail without knowing it, but it did that time. She must have been in ambush in the downstairs lobby with an eye on the elevators, and followed me crosstown. I am not a loiterer, so she had probably had to trot to keep up. The first I knew of it, there in the home-going throng on the sidewalk, I felt a contact that was not merely a bump or a jostle; it was a firm and deliberate grip on my arm.
I stopped and looked down at her. She was at least nine inches below me. She kept the arm.
“You brute,” I said. “You’re hurting me.” She looked good enough to eat.
CHAPTER Twelve
“You don’t know me, Mr. Truett,” she said. “You didn’t notice me today.” “I’m noticing you now,” I told her. “Let go my arm. People will think I’m the father of your children or I owe you alimony.” That may have been a mistake. It set the tone for my association with her, or at least the beginning of it, and the good view I was having of her made it my responsibility. With her black eyes saying plainly that they ad never concealed anything and didn’t intend to, her lips confirming it and approving of it, and all of her making the comment on geometry that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points but you can’t prove it by me, she was obviously the kind of female that gets nicknamed. In Spain or Italy it would be something like The Rose Petal, and where I live it would be something like The Curves, but the basic idea is the same. That kind is often found in the neighborhood of trouble, or vice versa, and perhaps I should have given that a thought before setting the tone.
Passers-by glancing at us meant nothing to her. The only passer-by she would have been interested in was one she didn’t intend to let pass.
“I want to talk to you,” she stated. She had dimples, so tiny that the angle of light had to be just right to see them.
“Not here,” I said. “Come on.” We moved together. “Did you ever ride on the subway?” “Only twice a day. Where are we going?” “How do I know? I didn’t know we were going anywhere until you just told me.
Maybe ladies’ night at one of my clubs.” I came to a sudden halt. “Wait here a minute. I have to make a phone call.” I stepped into a cigar store, waited a minute or two for a phone booth to be vacated, slid in, and dialed the number I knew best. I knew it wouldn’t be answered by Wolfe himself, since four to six in the afternoon was always reserved for his visit with the orchids up in the plant rooms. It wasn’t.
“Fritz? Archie. Tell Mr. Wolfe I won’t be home to dinner because I’m detained at the office.” “Detained—what?” “At the office. Tell him just like that, he’ll understand.” I went back to the sidewalk and asked The Curves, “About how long a talk do you think we ought to have?” “As long as you’ll listen, Mr. Truett. I have a lot to tell you.” “Good. Dinner? If we eat together I’ll see that it gets paid for.” “All right, that would be nice, but it’s early.” I waved that aside and we aimed for the subway.
I took her to Rusterman’s. For one thing, it was the best grub in New York outside of Wolfe’s own dining-room. For another, the booths along the left wall upstairs at Rusterman’s were so well partitioned that they were practically private rooms. For another, Rusterman’s was owned and bossed by Wolfe’s old friend, Marko Vukcic, and I could sign the check there, whereas if I took her where I must part with cash Wolfe would have been capable of refusing to okay it as expense on the ground that I should have taken her home to eat at his table.
By the time we were seated in the booth I had collected bits of preliminary information, such as that her name was Rosa Bendini and she was assistant chief filer in the Machinery and Parts Section. I had also reached certain conclusions, among them being that she was twenty-four years old, that she had never been at a loss in any environment or circumstances, and that she was eligible as evidence in support of Rerr Naylor’s remark about virgins.
She said she didn’t care for cocktails but loved wine, which of course got her an approving glance from Vukcic, who had spotted me entering and had himself escorted us upstairs—honoring not me, but his old friend Wolfe. Then she evened up by turning him down flat on Shad Roe Mousse Pocahontas and preferring a steak. I trailed along with her to be sociable. When we had been left to ourselves she lost no time opening up.
“Are you a cop, Mr. Truett?” I grinned at her. “Now listen, girlie. I’m easy to pick up, as you discovered, but I’m hard to take apart. You said you had a lot to tell me. Then we’ll see what I have to tell you. What makes you think I might be a cop?” “Because you asked about Waldo Moore, and the only thing about him any more is how he got killed, and that’s a thing for a cop, isn’t it?” “Sure. It’s also a thing for anyone who is interested. Let’s put it that I’m interested. Are you?” “You bet I am.” “In what way?” “I’m just interested. I don’t want to see anybody get away with murder!” There was a quick blaze in her eyes, one flash, up and out. She added, “He was a friend of mine.” “Oh, was he murdered?” “Certainly he was!” “By whom?” “I don’t know.” With sudden accurate movement, but nothing impetuous about it, she covered my hand, there on the tablecloth, with both of hers. Her fingers and palms were warm and firm, and neither too moist nor too dry. “Or maybe I do.
What if I do know?” “Well, considering your character as I know it? I suppose you’d be a good little girl and tell papa.” She kept my hand covered. “I wish,” she said, “you had taken me where we could be alone. I don’t know how to talk to a man until after he has had his arms around me and kissed me. Then I know what he’s like. I could tell you anything then.” I sized her up. If I had let myself get cooped up in a booth at Rusterman’s with a chronic nymph and that was all there was to it, at least I could preserve my dignity by not letting it cost me anything but twenty bucks or so of Wolfe’s money. But I doubted if that was it. My analysis indicated that she simply had her own definite opinion of what constituted human companionship, and I wasn’t prepared to argue with her.
I slid out clear of the table, got upright, drew the curtain across the entrance to the booth, got on my knees on the seat beside her, and enfolded her good. Her lips, like her hands, were warm and firm, and neither too moist nor too dry. She not only had her theory about companionship, she was willing to submit it to a thorough test, which is more than some people will do with their theories. When it was obviously time to go I backed off, went and pulled the curtain open, and got back into my seat. As I did so the waiter entered with our baked grapefruit.