“I couldn’t say.”
“Do you see him often?”
“I don’t pay no attention.”
“Have you ever seen him?”
“A couple times, sure.”
“Could you tell me what he looks like?”
“What goes on? You a cop or a bill collector or what? Or you want to sell him something?”
“None of those. I just want to get in touch with him. I thought you might help me out. I’d appreciate it.”
She smiled reluctantly. “You don’t look like any of those things except maybe a salesman. He’s a mousy little guy. I mean you wouldn’t ever look at him close. He could be five-foot-four or five-foot-seven, and thirty-five or fifty-five. Just one of those people you don’t look at.”
“Does he have a secretary?”
“If he has, I’ve never seen her or heard her. I’m too busy to keep my nose in what goes on across the hall. Honest, I’m sorry I can’t help you, but honest to God, I couldn’t even tell you what it says on the door — and I couldn’t care less.”
I smiled, “I was going to ask you where he lives, but I guess that’s no good.”
She smiled, and again it looked as if it hurt her mouth. “I could maybe help a little bit. I got a hunch he lived right in that office for a while. It’s against the rules, but who’s going to check? I figured that because I’d smell something cooking when I’d come in in the morning. But I haven’t smelled anything lately.”
“Have you ever seen an army officer in uniform on the stairs? Man in his fifties? Florid complexion?”
“I don’t have time to keep going up and down the stairs and anyway, I keep my door shut all the time. That junky music from downstairs drives me nuts. The same records, over and over and over, and if all that’s down there is a dance studio, I’ll eat every record they got in the place. We’ve been here nine years and it gets worse and worse. The doctor talks about moving, but will he ever do anything? Not him. We’ll be right here the day the goddamn place falls down.”
I backed to the door. “Thanks a lot.”
“For what?”
I went down the stairs. The sailor was gone. The girl in black slacks and cerise shirt was still there, cupping her elbow in her palm, shoulders against the wall, staring at the floor, smoking. She gave me an opaque look as I went by her, tramped on her cigarette, and went into the dance studio. Another record started to play.
I walked three blocks to my car. The rain had stopped. I tossed the raincoat onto the back seat. I put the car in a lot near the hotel and went to my room and called Mottling from there. I got him on the line and told him in as casual a voice as I could manage that I had decided to back Granby.
“I’m sorry, of course,” he said smoothly, “but thanks for letting me know.”
“That was the arrangement. Glad to do it.”
“I guess you know I hate like the devil to give up this job. Thanks again for letting me know, fella. ’By now.”
I hung up and frowned at the wall. The reaction had been too perfect, too casual. There was no doubt that he had known. Dolson had known, Lester had known, and Mottling had known. The phone rang, startling me. I picked it up.
“Gevan? Stanley Mottling again. Wondered if I have your permission to tell Mrs. Dean? She’s anxious to know.”
“I thought I’d go out there and tell her myself later on today.”
“I think that’s a good idea. See you at the meeting on Monday.”
The moment I hung up, the phone rang again and the switchboard girl downstairs said, “I’m holding a call for you, Mr. Dean. Go ahead, miss.”
“Gevan?” I recognized Perry’s voice. She was upset.
“Yes, Perry.”
“I’m across the street from the offices. This is the second time I tried to get you this morning, Gevan. I’m scared. Somebody got into my files last night, or before I got in this morning. The Acme folders are gone. I could still get totals from the books but they won’t mean as much because they don’t show the items.”
“Was the file locked?”
“Yes. It’s a combination safe file. But when Captain Corning came here, he got authority to change all the combinations on the safe files. He’d have a list in his office, of course. Colonel Dolson could have gotten hold of that list, wouldn’t you think?”
After a few moments she asked in a small voice, “Are you still there, Gevan?”
“Sorry, I was thinking. There should be duplicates in the Army office files. Do you think Alma Brady could grab those, if they haven’t already disappeared?”
“I thought of that when I couldn’t get you on the phone. I made an excuse to go over there. She didn’t come in this morning.”
“Maybe she was too upset after last night. Do you have her address? I could go see her. You said a rooming house, didn’t you?”
“Go by my house headed east and take the next right. It’s in the middle of the block. A green and white house on the left. I think the number is 881. I’ve got to get back, Gevan. I haven’t told Mr. Granby about files being missing. Should I? He’ll be wild.”
“Keep it to yourself for a while. If there isn’t a big furor, somebody is going to start wondering why. It may make them nervous.”
It was just eleven o’clock when I parked in front of the only green and white house in the middle of the block. She had missed the number, but not by much. I went up onto the porch. The wind rocked a green wicker rocking chair. I pushed the bell and above the wind’s sound I could hear it ring in the back of the house. I felt uneasy. Through the glass of the door, between lace curtains; I saw a vast woman waddling down the hallway toward the door, emerging from the gloom like something prehistoric.
She opened the door. She couldn’t have been more than twenty pounds too light for a fat-lady job in any circus. Her eyes were pretty, and the rest of the huge face sagged in larded folds. She was a prisoner inside that flesh. Somewhere inside the half-barrel haunches, the ponderous, doughy breasts and belly, stood a woman who was not old and who had once been pretty. Her tiny pink mouth crouched warily back in the crevice between the slablike cheeks.
Her voice was thin and musical. “Good morning.”
“I wonder if I could see Miss Alma Brady.”
“You can find her over to Dean Products. She works civil service over there, for Colonel Dolson.”
“She didn’t report for work this morning.”
“That’s funny! If somebody’s sick, the other girls, they tell me. I can’t get upstairs and the girls, they all take care of their own rooms, so I wouldn’t see her if she was sick in bed. Come to think of it, I didn’t see her go out this morning.” She moved to the foot of the stairs. The hall floor creaked under her weight.
“Alma! Alma, honey!” Her voice was thin, clear, and young. She was a yard across the hips.
We listened and she called again and there was no answer. I said, “She might be asleep. If you could tell me which room I could go and check.”
“Well — I don’t like to break the rules and that’s one of the rules, about no men on the second floor.”
I had to try my Arland magic again. “My name is Dean. Gevan Dean. Dean Products. I can show you identification.”
“I was wondering where I’d seen you and now I know it was in the papers, so I guess it’s all right if you go on up, Mr. Dean. Golly, I didn’t know Alma knew you. You go right on up and straight down the hall toward the back of the house to the last door on the left. You know, funny thing, that girl’s been on my mind lately. She used to be so sunny, and lately she’s been awful sour.”
I went up two stairs at a time. The hall had a girl smell — perfume and lotions and astringents and wave set. And the echoes of night gigglings, and whispered confidences and man hunger and pillows salted with tears.