I entered one of the ten booths on the ground floor, shut the door, and dialed a number, and after eight rings, par for that number, a voice came. “Hello?” She always makes it a question.
“Hello. The top of the afternoon to you.”
“Well. I haven’t rung your number even once, so you owe me a pat on the head or a pat where you think it would do the most good. Are you alive and well? Are you at home?”
“I’m alive. I’m also ten short blocks from you. Only a ten-minute walk if you feel like company.”
“You are not company. As you know, we are still trying to decide what each other is. I speak English. Lunch is nearly ready. Cross on the green.”
We hung up. That’s one of the many good points: we hung up.
Even with another tenant, it would be a pleasure to enter that penthouse on East Sixty-third Street, but of course with another tenant it wouldn’t be furnished like that. The only two things that I definitely would scrap are the painting on the living-room wall by de Kooning and the electric fireplace in the spare bedroom. I also like the manners. Lily nearly always opens the door herself, and she doesn’t lift a hand when a man takes his coat off in the vestibule. We usually don’t kiss for a greeting, but that time she put her hands on my arms and offered, and I accepted. More, I returned the compliment.
She backed up and demanded, “Where were you and what were you doing at half past one Monday night, October twenty-eighth?”
“Try again,” I said. “You fumbled it. Tuesday morning, October twenty-ninth. But first I want to confess. I’m here under false pretenses. I came because I need help.”
She nodded. “Certainly. I knew that when you said the top of the afternoon to me. You only remind me that I’m Irish when you want something. So you’re in a hurry and we’ll go straight to the table. There’s enough.” She led the way through the living room to the den, where the desk and files and shelves and typewriter stand barely leave room enough for a table that two can eat on. As we sat, Mimi came with a loaded tray.
“Go ahead,” Lily said.
I want to like my manners too, so I waited until Mimi had finished serving and gone and we had taken bites of celery. Also, at Lily’s table, especially when no guest had been expected, often not even Fritz would have known what was on his plate just by looking at it, so I looked at her with my eyebrows up.
She nodded. “You’ve never had it. We’re trying it and haven’t decided. Mushrooms and soy beans and black walnuts and sour cream. Don’t tell him. If you can’t get it down, Mimi will do a quick omelet. Even he admitted she could do an omelet. At the ranch.”
I had taken a forkload. It didn’t need much chewing, not even the walnuts, because they had been pulverized or something. When it was down I said, “I want to make it perfectly clear that—”
“Don’t do that! I’ve told you. Even a joke about him turns my stomach.”
“You’re too careless with pronouns. Your hims. Your first him’s opinion of your second him is about the same as yours. So is mine. As for this mix, I’m like you, I haven’t decided. I admit it’s different.” I loaded a fork.
“I’ll just watch your face. Tell me why you came.”
I waited until the second forkful was with the first. “As I said, I need help. You once told me about a girl from Kansas named Doraymee. Remember?”
“Of course I do. I saw her yesterday.”
“You saw her? Yesterday? You saw Mrs. Harvey H. Bassett?”
“Yes. You must know about her husband, since you always read about murders. She phoned me yesterday afternoon and said she was—” She stopped with her mouth half open. “What is this? She asked about you, and now you’re asking about her. What’s going on?”
My mouth was half open too. “I don’t believe it. Are you saying that Mrs. Bassett phoned you to ask about me? I don’t—”
“I didn’t say that. She phoned to ask me to come and hold her hand — that was what she wanted, but she didn’t say so. She said she just had to see me, I suppose because of what I had done before, when she couldn’t make it in New York and was going back home to get a meal. I hadn’t really done much, just paid for her room and board for a year. I hadn’t seen her for — oh, three or four years. I went, and we talked for an hour or more, and she asked if I had seen you since her husband died. I thought she was just talking. Also she said she had read some of your books about Nero Wolfe’s cases, and that surprised me because I knew she never read books. I thought she was just talking to get her mind off of her troubles, but now you ask about her. So I want to know—” She bit it off and stared at me. “My god, Escamillo, is it possible that I am capable of jealousy? Of course, if I could be about anybody, it would be about you, but I have always thought... I refuse to believe it.”
“Relax.” I reached to draw fingertips across the back of her hand. “Probably you have been jealous about me since the day you first caught sight of me and heard my voice, that’s only natural, but Doraymee has never seen me and I have never seen her. Our asking about each other is just a coincidence. Usually I’m suspicious of coincidences, but I love this one. I now tell you something that is absolutely not for publication. Not yet. There’s a connection between the two murders — Bassett and Pierre Ducos — and it’s possible that Doraymee knows something that will help. A week before he was killed — Friday evening, October eighteenth — Bassett treated six men to a meal at Rusterman’s, and Nero Wolfe wants to know the names of the six men, and so do I. Possibly she knows. The name of even one would help. Lon Cohen of the Gazette, whom you have met, says that she has holed up and won’t see anybody. I’m not particular; either you might call her and ask her to see me, or you might go and ask her for the names, or you might just ask for them on the phone. As I said, even one of them. That’s what I came for, and I want to thank you for this delicious hash. I also want the recipe for Fritz.” I loaded my fork.
She took a bite of celery and chewed. That’s another good point: her face is just as attractive when she is chewing celery or even a good big bite of steak. She swallowed. “This is the third time you’ve asked me to help,” she said. “I didn’t mind the other two. In fact I enjoyed it.”
I nodded. “And there’s no reason not to enjoy this one. I wouldn’t ask you to snoop on a friend, you know that. I assume — we assume — that she would like to have the man who killed her husband tagged and nailed. So would we. I admit the one we have got to tag is the one who killed Pierre Ducos there in that house when I was going to bed just thirty feet away, but as I said, they’re connected. I can’t guarantee she will never be sorry she told you these names; when you’re investigating a murder you can’t guarantee anything, but you can name the odds. A thousand to one.” I loaded my fork. I think that stuff was edible; my mind wasn’t on it.
“I’d rather just phone and ask her. What if she says she doesn’t know their names and I think she’s lying? I like her, you can’t help but like her, but she’s a pretty good liar. I don’t want to needle her now. She’s low, very low.”
“Of course not. Make it simple. Leave me out. Just say somebody told you she saw Bassett at Rusterman’s with five or six men just a week before he was killed and they didn’t look very jolly and she wondered if one of them killed him. Nuts. Listen to me. Telling you how to use your tongue.”