You might say that everyone who works for Mike does a little bit of everything. I was a cub reporter on a small New England newspaper when he picked me up. Now I do leg work for him, write some items for “Off-Mike,” his column, act as bodyguard, advance agent on his trips out of town, and general handy man. I love it. I love him, and I mean it quite sentimentally.
At 52, Mike Malvern has more energy, more brains, and more courage than any guy I’ve ever met anywhere. He can be wrong about things, but never because he was too lazy to find out the facts. His opinions may not be the same as yours, but he arrives at them from thinking, not from irresponsible emotions, and he’s afraid of no man, no power, and no influence on earth.
He is probably one of the most widely read columnists in America. He believes in God, in his country, and in calling a spade a spade — to coin a phrase. A lot of people hate him for the spade-work, but not nearly so many as love him for it. He’s never been afraid of the haters for himself, but he worries about his daughters. His wife died when Joan was born and he’d brought the girls up himself. There was one standing rule in the household, and it went for us as well as for Erika and Joan: Stay out as long as you like, do what you want, but if you’re not going to be where you say you’re going to be, phone in! If you’re not coming home when you’ve said you were, phone in!
Erika hadn’t phoned in that day. She hadn’t come home and she hadn’t phoned.
If it had been Joan I’d have worried. Erika was another dish of tea. She forgot once in a while, and Mike would call her down for it, and she’d put her arms around him and snuggle up to him, and two minutes later she was forgiven. Joan always phoned, but if she hadn’t, the lightning would have struck, and good!
William came in with the hot dishes — eggs, sausage, bacon, broiled lamb chops. Mike ate breakfast and he ate again about midnight, and that was all.
William said Erika hadn’t called in during the evening. “Not at no time,” he said.
The front door bell rang while Kathy and I were talking to him.
“You keep on with the breakfast, William,” I said. “I’ll take that.”
There were two guys at the front door I’d never seen before. One was tall and thin and looked like an up-and-coming copywriter for a smart advertising agency. The other was short, fair, and my first impression was that he was the dreamy type. Then he looked at me out of the frostiest blue eyes I’d ever seen, and I changed my mind. This one flipped a police badge on me in a little black case.
“McCuller. Lieutenant. Homicide,” he said, and put the badge away.
“I’m John Rand, Assistant D.A.,” the other one said. “Is Mr. Malvern in?”
“He’s in, but he’s just getting dressed,” I said. “Our day starts late here. I’m Vance Taylor, his assistant. Can I help you?” I felt a faint prickling sensation at the back of my neck. These men meant business. Homicide and the D.A.’s office. Erika hadn’t phoned in!
“We’ll wait until he’s dressed,” McCuller said.
I took them into the library. “What’s up?” I asked them.
“I think I mentioned I’m from Homicide,” McCuller said.
“We haven’t killed anybody here,” I said, trying to make it sound light.
“Please,” McCuller said wearily. “I’ve been up all night.”
“A man named Waldo Layne has been murdered,” Rand said. “We believe Malvern can give us information about him.”
Mike could give you information about almost anybody in the country, or get it for you. Waldo Layne he knew all about, to his sorrow. Waldo was Erika’s divorced husband. And Erika hadn’t phoned in!...
Mike was at his place at the breakfast table when I came back from the library. Joan and Kathy were seated at the table. Mike, I saw at once, was in a foul temper.
“Oh, there you are,” he said to me. “Sit down.”
“There’s a couple of guys in the library,” I said.
“I don’t want to see a couple of guys in the library,” he said. “Sit down.”
“But these guys—”
“Sit down, Vance. What’s the matter with you?”
I sat down, and William brought me a cup of coffee. It’s hard to describe Mike. He has a kind of pixyish quality when he’s in a good mood. He is small and lithe and his hair is light brown without a touch of gray in it. His hands are graceful, and he uses them when he talks. He plays a very good nonprofessional piano, both hot and classical.
I watched him eat. He’s a gourmet, and he insists that everything be cooked for him just so, and then he eats it so fast you can’t imagine that he’s really tasted a mouthful of it. Besides, he talks while he eats, in short machine-gun blasts.
“You haven’t heard anything from Erika?” he asked me.
“No.”
I saw the shadow of worry cross his face. Everybody who knew Mike was aware of his almost heartbreaking devotion to Erika. When his wife died he’d concentrated all the love and affection he had on his older daughter.
Erika would give anybody something of a jolt the first time he saw her. She had everything. She had a perfect figure, naturally red hair, and gray-green eyes that glowed with an almost electrical excitement. Except for the brief period of her marriage to Waldo Layne, Erika was Mike’s constant companion. She made the rounds of the hot spots with him at night, she went on his holidays with him, she knew how to do all the things that flattered and pleased him. When he gave one of his rare parties she presided as hostess with dignity, charm, and just the right amount of casualness.
She knew her way around Mike’s world with a sure instinct. As far as I was concerned, she was as out of reach as the top ornament on the Christmas tree at Radio City — so far out of reach that I didn’t really want her. And also there was Joan. But I admired and respected Erika.
That morning, sitting at the breakfast table, still holding back the news about Waldo, I remembered a conversation I’d had with her one day. It came after a row with Mike over something that had gone wrong which he thought was my fault and I thought wasn’t. Erika was sitting in the library, which opened off Mike’s office, and I guess she couldn’t have helped overhearing the argument.
“Take it easy, Vance,” she said, as I came storming out of the office.
“That maniac!” I said. “He’ll never admit he’s wrong about anything.”
“And he never is,” Erika said. She took hold of my arm and pulled me down on the couch beside her. “He can be mistaken, Vance, but he’s never wrong in principle. That’s what’s so wonderful about him.”
“Right now he’s for the birds, as far as I’m concerned.” I said.
She looked past me with a kind of a dreamy light in her gray-green eyes.
“I get rebellious myself once in a while,” she said. “He’s so arbitrary about some things. But it’s never out of meanness, or cantankerousness, or vanity.”
“It’s all very well for you to talk,” I said. “All you have to do is ask for the moon and he’ll get it for you.”
She smiled. “Sometimes I wish that wasn’t true. There is so much to live up to! Still, it’s a wonderful thing to be loved like that, Vance.”
I remembered that now, as I saw Mike’s worry. He put his knife and fork down on his plate. “I won’t have the rules broken,” he said, “particularly now. I won’t have it from any of you.”
He said it straight at Joan. I saw her look down at her hands. Joan is a small, somewhat darker edition of Mike. Some people may not think she’s pretty. I think she’s beautiful. The trouble is she doesn’t know I’m alive. She treats me like the boy next door. She knew and I knew and Kathy knew what was eating Mike. He wished one of us, not Erika, had broken the rules. I never knew Mike’s wife, but they tell me Erika is a ringer for her. It kills him when Erika makes him worry, because he idolizes her. If it were Joan it wouldn’t matter so much.