I laughed. “Wonderful. When you’ve recovered maybe you’d like to join my detective agency. I’ve never wanted a partner before, but you’d bring class to the operation.”
The mischievous smile appeared briefly, weakly; he shut his eyes again. “It’s a deal, dear Victoria,” he said. I had to strain to catch the words.
Dr. Metzinger bustled in. “You’ll have to leave now, Miss Warshawski.“
I got up. “When the police talk to you, give them a description of the man. Not anything else. Random burglar after your silver, perhaps. And put in a good word for me with Lotty-she’s ready to flay me.”
The lids fluttered open and his brown eyes twinkled weakly. “Lotty was always a headstrong, unmanageable child. When she was six-”
Dr. Metzinger interrupted him. “You’re going to rest now. You can tell Miss Warshawski later.”
“Oh, very well. Just ask her about her pony and the castle at Kleinsee,” he called as Metzinger hustled me out of the room.
The policeman stopped me in the hallway. “I need a full report on your conversation.”
“For what? Your memoirs?”
The policeman grabbed my arm. “My orders are, if anyone talks to him, I have to find out what he said.”
I jerked my arm down and away. “Very well. He told me he was sitting home on Thursday afternoon when a man came up the stairs. He let him in. Mr. Herschel’s an old man, lonely, wants visitors more than he wants to suspect people. He’s got a lot of valuable stuff in that apartment and it probably isn’t too much of a secret. Anyway, they got into a tussle of sorts- as much as a thug can be said to tussle with an eighty-year-old man. He had some jewelry cleaner in his desk, acid of some kind, threw it at him and got a knife in his side. I think he can give you a description of sorts.”
“Why did he want to see you?” Metzinger demanded.
I wanted to get home more than I wanted to fight. “I’m a friend of his niece, Dr. Herschel. He knows me through her, knows I’m a private detective. An old man like that would rather talk to someone he knows about his troubles than get caught in the impersonal police machinery.”
The policeman insisted on my writing down what I had just told him and signing it before he let me go. “And your phone number. We need a number where we can reach you.” That reminded me-I hadn’t gotten to the phone company. I gave him my office number and left.
Traffic on the Edens was thick by the time I reached it. It would be a parking lot where it joined the Kennedy. I exited on Peterson and headed south on side streets to Montrose. It was six-fifteen when I got to the Bellerophon. Setting my alarm for seven, I pulled the Murphy bed out of the wall and fell across it into a dreamless sleep.
When the alarm rang, it took me a long time to wake up. At first I thought it was morning in my old place on Halsted. I switched off the ringing and started to go back to sleep. It dawned on me, however, that the bedside table was missing. I’d had to reach over the side of the bed to the floor to turn off the clock. This woke me enough to remember where I was and why I had to get up.
I staggered into the bathroom, took a cold shower, and dressed in the new crimson outfit with more haste than grace. I dumped makeup from my suitcase into my purse, pulled on nylons and boots, stuck my Magli pumps under my arm, and headed for the car. I had a choice of the navy pea jacket or something filled with smoke, and chose the pea jacket-I’d just be checking it, after all.
I was only twenty minutes late to the Hanover House, and happened to arrive at the same time as Phil. He was too well behaved to look askance at my outfit. Kissing me lightly on the cheek, he tucked my arm into his and escorted me into the hotel. He took boots and coat from me to check. The perfect gentleman.
I’d put my makeup on at traffic lights and run a comb through my hair before leaving the car. Remembering the great Beau Brummell, who said that only the insecure primp once they’ve reached the party, I resisted the temptation to study myself in the floor-length mirrors covering the lobby walls.
Dinner was served in the Trident Salon on the fourth floor. Smaller than the Grand Ballroom, it seated two hundred people who had paid a hundred dollars each for the privilege of dining with the archbishop. A gaunt woman in black collected tickets at the entrance to the salon. She greeted Phil by name, her thin, sour face coming close to pleasure at seeing him.
“I guess it’s Dr. Paciorek, now isn’t it? I know how proud your parents must be of you. And is this the lucky young lady?”
Phil blushed, suddenly looking very young indeed. “No, no, Sonia… Which table for us?”
We were seated at table five, in the front of the room. Dr. and Mrs. Paciorek were at the head table, along with O’Faolin, Farber, and other well-to-do Catholics. Cecelia and her husband, Morris, were at our table. She was wearing a black evening gown that emphasized her twenty extra pounds and the soft flab in her triceps.
“Hello, Cecelia. Hi, Morris, good to see you,” I said cheerfully. Cecelia looked at me coldly, but Morris stood up to shake hands with me. An innocuous metals broker, he didn’t share the family feud against Agnes and her friends.
For a hundred dollars, we got a tomato-based seafood chowder. The others at our table had already started eating; waiters brought Phil and me servings while I studied the program next to my plate. Funds raised by the dinner would support the Vatican, whose assets had been depleted by the recent recessionary spiral and the fall of the lira. Archbishop O’Faolin, head of the Vatican Finance Committee, was here to thank us in person for our generosity. After dinner and speeches by Farber and O’Faolin, and by Mrs. Catherine Paciorek, who had graciously organized the dinner, there would be an informal reception with cash bar in the George IV Salon next to our dining room.
The overweight man on my left took a second roll from the basket in front of him but forbore to offer me any: hoard the supplies. I asked him what kind of business he was in and he responded briefly, “Insurance,” before popping half the roll into his mouth.
“Splendid,” I said heartily. “Brokerage? Company?”
His wife, a thin, twittery woman with a wreath of diamonds around her neck, leaned across him. “Harold is head of Burhop and Calends’ Chicago office.”
“How fascinating!” I exclaimed. Burhop and Calends was a large national brokerage house, second in size behind Marsh and McLennan. “It so happens I’m working for Ajax Insurance right now. What do you think the impact would be on the industry if an outside interest acquired them?”
“Wouldn’t affect the industry at all,” he muttered, pouring a pint of Thousand Island dressing over the salad he’d just received.
Phil nudged my arm. “Vic, you don’t have to do a suburban Girl Scout impersonation just because I asked you to dinner. Tell me what you’ve been doing, instead.”
I told him about my fire. He grimaced. “I’ve been on call almost all week. Haven’t seen a paper. I sometimes think the world could blow up and the only way I’d know would be by the casualties coming into ER.”
“But you like what you do?”
His face lit up. “I love it. Especially the research end. I’ve been working with epileptics during surgery to try to map neuron activity.” He was still young enough to give an uneducated audience the full force of his technical knowledge. I followed as best I could, more entertained by his enthusiasm than by what he was actually saying. How you get a verbal response from people whose brains are being operated on carried us through some decent halibut steak, which Phil ignored as he drew a diagram in pen on his cloth napkin.