“No, in regular clothes, but he showed us a card in a case, New York Police Department. His name was on it, Jacob Wallen.”
“What time this morning?”
“A little after nine o’clock, soon after the shop was open. He talked first with Mr. Fickler, the owner, and Mr. Fickler brought him around behind the partition to my booth, where I do customers when they’re through in the chair or when they only want a manicure, and I was there, getting things together, and he sat down and took out a notebook and asked me questions. Then he—”
“What kind of questions?”
“All about me. My name, where I live, where I came from, how long I’ve been working there, all that kind, and then about last night, where I was and what I was doing last night.”
“What part of last night did he ask about? All of it?”
“Yes, from the time the shop closes, half-past six, from then on.”
“Where did you tell him you came from?”
“I said Carl and I are DP’s from Italy. That’s what we had decided to say. We have to say something when people are just curious.”
“I suppose you do. Did he ask to see your papers?”
“No. That will come next.” She set her jaw. “We can’t go back there. We have to leave New York today — right now.”
“Did he question Carl too?”
“Yes, but not right after me. He sent me away, and Mr. Fickler sent Philip to him in the booth, and when Philip came out he sent Carl in, and when Carl came out he sent Jimmie in. Jimmie was still in the booth with him when I went to Carl, up front by the rack, and we knew we had to get out. We waited until Mr. Fickler had gone to the back of the shop for something, and then we just walked out. We went to our room down on the East Side and packed our stuff and started for Grand Central with it, and then we realized we didn’t know anything about where to go and might make some terrible mistake, so there in Grand Central we talked it over. We decided that since the police were after us already it couldn’t be any worse, but we weren’t sure enough about any of the people we have met in New York, so the best thing would be to come to you and pay you to help us. You’re a professional detective, and anyway Carl likes you about the best of all the customers. You only tip him a dime, so it’s not that. I have noticed you myself, the way you look. You look like a man who would break rules too — if you had to.”
I gave her a sharp look, suspicious, but if she was trying to butter me she was very good. All that showed in her blue eyes was the scare that had put them on the run and the hope of me they were hanging on to for dear life. I looked at Carl. The scare was there too, but I couldn’t see the hope.
I was irritated. “Damn it,” I protested, “you bring it here already broke. What did you beat it for? That alone fixes you. He was questioning the others too and he was concentrating on last night. What about last night? What were you doing, breaking some more rules?”
They both started to answer, but she let him take it. He said no, they weren’t. They had gone straight home from work and eaten in their room as usual. Tina had washed some clothes, and Carl had read a book. Around nine they had gone for a walk, and had been back in their room and in bed before ten-thirty.
I was disgusted. “You sure did it up,” I declared. “If you’re clean for last night, why didn’t you stay put? You must have something in your heads or you wouldn’t have stayed alive and got this far. Why didn’t you use it?”
Carl smiled at me. He really did smile, but it didn’t make me want to smile back. “A policeman asking questions,” he said in the level tone he had used before, “has a different effect on different people. If you have a country like this one and you are innocent of crime, all the people of your country are saying it with you when you answer the questions. That is true even when you are away from home — especially when you are away from home. But Tina and I have no country at all. The country we had once, it is no longer a country, it is just a place to wait to die, only if we are sent back there we will not have to wait. Two people alone cannot answer a policeman’s questions anywhere in the world. It takes a whole country to speak to a policeman, and Tina and I — we do not have one.”
“You see,” Tina said. “Here, take it.” She got up and came to me, extending a hand with the money in it. “Take it, Mr. Goodwin! Just tell us where to go, all the little facts that will help us—”
“Or we thought,” Carl suggested, not hopefully, “that you might give us a letter to some friend, in this Ohio perhaps — not that we should expect too much for fifty dollars...”
I looked at them, with my lips pressed together. The morning was shot now anyway, with Wolfe sore and my chores not done. I swiveled to my desk and picked up the phone. Any one of three or four city employees would probably find out for me what kind of errand had taken a dick named Wallen to the Goldenrod Barber Shop, unless it was something very special. But with my finger in the dial hole I hesitated and then replaced the phone. If it was something hot I would be starting PD cars for our address, and Wolfe and I both have a prejudice against cops yanking people out of his office, no matter who they are, unless we ourselves have got them ready for delivery. So I swiveled again. Carl was frowning at me, his head moving from side to side. Tina was standing tense, the money clutched in her fist.
“This is silly,” I said. “If they’re really after you, you’d be throwing your money away on carfare to Ohio or anywhere else. Save it for a lawyer. I’ll have to go up there and see what it’s all about.” I got up, crossed to the soundproof door to the front room, and opened it. “You can wait here. In here, please.”
“We’ll go,” Tina said, back to her gasping whisper again. “We won’t bother you any more. Come, Carl—”
“Skip it,” I said curtly. “If this amounts to anything more than petty larceny you’d be nabbed sure as hell. This is my day for breaking a rule, and I’ll be back soon. Come on, I’ll put you in here, and I advise you to stay put.”
Tina moved. She came and passed through into the front room, and Carl was right behind her. I told them to sit down and relax and not get restless. Then I shut the door, went to the kitchen, where Wolfe was seated at the far end of the long table, drinking beer, and told him, “The check from Pendexter came and has been deposited. That pair of foreigners have got themselves in a mess. I put them in the front room and told them to stay there until I get back.”
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“A little detective work, not in your class. I won’t be gone long. You can dock me.”
The Goldenrod Barbershop was in the basement of an office building on Lexington Avenue in the upper Thirties. I had been patronizing one of the staff, named Ed, for several years. Formerly, from away back, Wolfe had gone to an artist in a shop on 28th Street, named Fletcher. When Fletcher had retired a couple of years ago Wolfe had switched to Goldenrod, and after experimenting with the staff had settled on Jimmie. His position now, after two years, was that Jimmie was no Fletcher, especially with a shampoo, but that he was some better than tolerable.
Goldenrod, with only six chairs, and usually only four of them manned, and two manicurists, was not fancy, but it was well equipped and clean. Anyhow, it had Ed, who had a razor so sharp and slick you never knew it was on you.
I hadn’t shaved that morning, and as, at noon, I paid the taxi driver, entered the building, and descended the stairs to the basement, my plan of campaign was simple. I would get in Ed’s chair, waiting if necessary, and ask him to give me a once-over, and the rest would be easy.
But it was neither simple nor easy. A medium-sized mob of white-collar workers, buzzing and chattering, was ranged three-deep along the wall of the corridor facing the door of the shop. Others, passing by in both directions, were stopping to try to look in, and a flatfoot, posted in the doorway, was telling them to keep moving.