“You’re forgetting Kragstein and Gitner again.”
“Your motive’s just as good. You’re also one of the few people who Walter would let get behind him. With him out of the way, you’d get the entire pie, not just half. Then you could hire me—or someone like me—for nickels and dimes. It’s the perfect motive. Money.”
“You’re forgetting my alibi.”
“The ‘high Government official’ you were shacked up with while Walter was getting himself killed?” Padillo made his voice put “high Government official” in quotes. “Maybe he’d been at the track too often and was down on his luck. He’d give you an alibi for a price.”
She looked at me. “Where does he get them?”
“From a wholesaler,” I said.
“There’s only one thing wrong with your theory, Padillo,” she said.
“What?”
“I wouldn’t kill Walter and you know it.”
He nodded. “There’s that.”
“I still think it was Kragstein and Gitner.”
“There’s one way to find out.”
“What?” she said.
He nodded toward the Criterion Building. “You can go ask them.”
“That’s what you’ve had in mind all along, isn’t it?”
“Why don’t we just wait for them to come out?” I said. “The king and Scales ran out on us. Maybe they’ve hired some new babysitters—Kragstein and Gitner. Maybe nobody wants them dead anymore. Maybe all four of them are sitting up there right now playing dominoes and chuckling about how dumb we are.”
“You think it’s all been dumb, don’t you, Mac?” Padillo said.
“Not dumb. Just less than brilliant.”
He nodded. “I can’t argue with that. But I’ll go in there, knowing it’s dumb, because I have to find Gitner and because once he leaves that building, my chances of finding him again will be next to nothing. Wanda’s going because of her brother. You don’t have any reason to go and if you want to sit here and drink your Scotch until it’s over, nobody’s going to object.”
“You make a nice little talk,” I said.
Padillo turned to Wanda. “That means he’s going with us.”
She shook her head slightly as if puzzled. First she looked at me and then at Padillo. “Why?”
Padillo shrugged. “Ask him.”
She looked at me again. “Why?” she said and there was real wonder in her voice.
“I don’t like to feel left out,” I said.
The lock on the front door of the Criterion Building was broken. It could have been broken that night or the month before and I bet myself it would stay broken until they tore down the building which didn’t look as if it contained much worth stealing anyway.
The lobby had a white tile floor with some black tiles that spelled out Criterion Building and it probably had looked neat and businesslike back in 1912, but now the titles were a dirty gray and some of them were chipped and broken and a lot more were missing.
The two elevators wore OUT OF ORDER signs that looked almost as old as the building. To the left Was a cigar stand, its glass case empty, its shelves bare. A man was curled up behind the case asleep, a half-empty wine bottle clutched to his chest.
“We walk,” Padillo said.
“There were lights on the third and seventh floors,” Wanda said.
We stopped at the building directory. The overhead light for the lobby was out—permanently, it seemed—and someone had rigged up an extension cord with a forty-watt bulb that dangled over the building directory. The second and third floors still had some occupants—a novelty company, a manufacturer’s representative, a collection agency, all last-gasp businesses with no need for much of a front nor the ability to pay for one. There were no occupants listed for any floor above the fourth.
“I’ll bet on seven,” I said.
“We’ll check out three first,” Padillo said. “Kragstein may be having one of his clever nights.”
At the third-floor landing Padillo, his gun drawn, opened the door cautiously to peer down the corridor. He opened it wider and slipped through. Wanda and I followed. She held the Walther in her right hand, her purse in her left. I decided to take the thirty-eight out of my jacket pocket.
The light that we’d seen from downstairs came from an office at the far end of the corridor. We tiptoed toward it, skirting a broken desk, three old wooden file cabinets, and a collection of mismatched office chairs that some former tenant had moved as far as the corridor before he said to hell with it.
The lighted door was half frosted glass and half wood. Carefully lettered in black on the glass was “The Arbitrator, Miss Nancy deChant Orumber, Editor.” Padillo motioned us to the other side of the door where we flattened ourselves against the wall. He took up a similar position next to the door knob, reached for it, turned it, and flung the door open. It banged against something inside the office. We waited, but nothing happened. We waited some more and then a woman’s voice asked in a cool, polite tone, “May I help you?”
She wore a gray leghorn hat with a wide brim and a narrow white band that had some artificial flowers attached to it. Pink roses, I think. She sat behind an old but carefully polished oak desk which was covered with what seemed to be galley proofs. Two sides of the room were lined with bookshelves that contained bound copies that had The Arbitrator lettered on them in gold ink and below that the year of their issue. They went all the way back to 1905.
She looked at us with unwavering bright blue eyes that were covered with gold-rimmed spectacles. Her hair was white and she held a fat black editor’s pencil in her right hand. Next to her on a stand was an L. C. Smith typewriter. There was a black phone on the desk and against the outer wall were three cabinets that the door had banged against. Everything was spotlessly clean.
She asked again if she could help us and Padillo hastily stuck his automatic back in his waistband and said, “Security, ma’am. Just checking.”
“This building hasn’t had a night watchman since nine-teen-sixty-three,” she said. “I do not think you are telling the truth, young man. However, you seem too well dressed to be bandits, especially the young lady. I like your frock, my dear.”
“Thank you,” Wanda said.
“I am Miss Orumber and this is my last night in this office so I welcome your company although I must say that well brought up young ladies and gentlemen are taught to knock before entering. You will join me in a glass of wine, of course.”
“Well, I don’t think that—” Padillo didn’t get the chance to finish.
“Nonsense,” she said, rising and moving over to one of the filing cabinets. “There was a time when we would have had champagne, but—” She let her sentence trail off as she brought out a bottle of sherry, placed it on the desk, returned to the file cabinet, and produced four long-stemmed wineglasses which she polished with a clean white cloth.
“You, young man,” she said to me. “You look as though you may have acquired a few of the social graces along the way. There’s character in your face. Some would probably call it dissipation, but I choose to call it character. You may pour the wine.”
I looked at Padillo who shrugged slightly. I poured the wine and handed glasses all around.
“We will not drink to me,” she said, “but to The Arbitrator and to its overdue demise. The Arbitrator.” We sipped the wine.
“In nineteen-twenty-one a man sent me a Pierce-Arrow. A limousine. The only condition was that I include his name in that year’s edition of The Arbitrator. A limousine, can you imagine? No gentleman would present a lady with a limousine unless he also provided a chauffeur. The man was a boor. Needless to say his name was not included.”
She had a lined, haughty face with a thin nose and a still strong chin. She could have been a beauty fifty or sixty years ago, one of those tall imperious types that Gibson once drew.