Boulder Street had been named at a time when the Dutch were still in possession of the city, long before construction work had reduced to rubble the huge igneous outcropping that had served as inspiration for the unimaginative appellation.
Naming the street had created a bit of a problem for the practical Dutch in that their native land was not particularly renowned for its mountainous terrain. Rolsteen in the Dutch language translated as “a rock that has rolled down from the top of a mountain.” This particular rock, firmly rooted in the earth as it was, did not seem to have rolled down from any mountain, especially since there were no mountains in this part of the city — or in any part of the city, for that matter. On the other hand, the word kei in Dutch meant “a piece of rock or stone on the ground,” which this rock certainly was. This rock, in fact, seemed to be growing right out of the ground. Kei also meant “paving stone” or “cobblestone,” which seemed like a better word than rolsteen since the Dutch planned to pave the street around the rock with cobbles. So they had opted for Keistraat rather than Rolsteenstraat, which had been a good choice in that kei also meant, in the idiom, “being very good at something,” and the Dutch had certainly been very good at paving a street around a boulder and naming it Keistraat. The British had simply, and again unimaginatively, translated the name from the Dutch, and Boulder Street it had become and still was, although there was no evidence of so much as a pebble on the street nowadays.
The street, perhaps because its boundaries had been defined long ago when the massive boulder actually existed, ran for two consecutive blocks east to west and then ended abruptly. Lining those two blocks was some of the choicest real estate in the city, many of the buildings dating back to Dutch times, all of them restored and in excellent condition. Neither Carella nor Hawes knew anyone who could afford to live on Boulder Street. But this was where the former sailor Martin J. Benson lived, and it did not escape their attention that it was only ten blocks from Ramsey University.
Martin J. Benson was not home when they got there at a little past noon. The superintendent, out front watering a dazzling display of chrysanthemums in huge wooden tubs near the curb, told them that he usually left for work at about 8:30. Mr. Benson, he informed them, worked at an advertising agency on Jefferson Avenue, uptown. Mr. Benson, he further informed them, was the Head of Creation. He made it sound as if Mr. Benson was God. The name of the advertising agency was Cole, Cooper, Loomis and Bache. The superintendent told them that the agency, under the supervision of Mr. Benson himself as Head of Creation, had invented the advertising campaign for Daffy Dots, a candy neither of the detectives had ever eaten or even heard of. They thanked him for his time, and headed uptown.
The receptionist at Cole, Cooper, Loomis and Bache was a dizzy blonde whose plastic desk plaque identified her as Dorothy Hudd — was she the Daffy Dot after which the candy had been named? She was wearing a pink sweater several sizes too small for her, and she seemed inordinately fond of her own breasts — if the attraction of her left hand to them was any indication of pride of ownership. Under guise of toying with a string of pearls that hung between both breasts (Hawes was becoming rather fond of them as well), her left hand nudged, explored, and covertly caressed the mounds on either side of it, causing Hawes to wonder what excesses of affection she might lavish upon them at the seashore, for example, when she was wearing nothing but a bikini. His mind boggled at the thought of what she might be like in bed, straddling him, those magnificent globes clutched in her hands. He did not mind dizzy blondes. He did not even mind dizzy brunettes.
Carella, happily married and presumably immune to such idle speculation, put away the shield he had just shown Dorothy, and asked her if Mr. Benson might have a moment to see them. Dorothy, toying with her multiple pearls, informed him that Mr. Benson was out to lunch just now and wasn’t expected back till 3:00. Carella politely asked where Mr. Benson might be lunching.
“Oh, gee, I don’t know,” Dorothy said.
“Would his secretary know?”
“I guess so,” Dorothy said, rolling her eyes, and toying, toying, toying with the pearls, a seemingly unconscious act that was driving Hawes to distraction. “But she’s out to lunch, too.”
“Is there any way you can find out where he is?” Carella said.
“Well, gee, let me go back and ask around,” Dorothy said, and swiveled her chair and her body out from behind the desk, and walked toward a door leading to the inner offices. She was wearing a tight black skirt that celebrated the return of the mini to America’s shores. Hawes was appreciative. The moment she disappeared from sight, he said, “I could eat her with a spoon.”
“Me, too,” Carella said, destroying the myth of blind married men.
Dorothy came back some five minutes later, smiling and taking her seat behind the desk again. Her left hand went immediately to the pearls around her neck. Hawes watched, fascinated.
“Mr. Perisello told me that Mr. Benson usually eats at a place called the Coach and Four,” Dorothy said, “but that’s only usually, and maybe he isn’t there today. Why don’t you just come back at three?” she said, and smiled up at Hawes. “Or anytime,” she added.
Carella thanked her and led Hawes out of the office.
“I’m in love,” Hawes said.
The Coach and Four was the kind of place neither Carella nor Hawes could afford on their detective 2nd/grade salaries of $33,070 a year. Designed and decorated by an American-born architect of Armenian extraction, it resembled what he thought an old English coaching inn must have looked like circa 1605, replete with hand-hewn timber posts and beams, leaded windows with handblown glass panes, wide-planked pegged floors (sagging here and there for authenticity), and a staff of buxom waitresses wearing dirndl skirts and scoop-necked peasant blouses that revealed rather more bosom than even Dorothy Hudd’s sweater had. Hawes was beginning to think this was his lucky day.
Carella asked the hostess — a willowy brunette wearing a long black gown and high heels that seemed decidedly anachronistic in this otherwise seventeenth-century English ambiance — where Mr. Benson might be sitting, and then took out a card, scribbled a note on the back of it, and asked the hostess if she would mind delivering it to his table. He watched as she crossed the room to a corner table where two men — one of them blond, the other bald — were engaged in animated conversation, no doubt discussing their latest brilliant advertising scheme. She handed the card to the blond. He looked at the front of it, printed with a Police Department seal and Carella’s name, rank, and telephone number at the Eight-Seven, and then turned the card over and read the note Carella had scrawled across the back of it. He asked the hostess something, and she pointed toward where Carella and Hawes were still standing near the reception desk, which resembled what the Armenian architect thought Dr. Johnson’s writing desk and inkstand looked like over there in Gough Square in Merrie Olde England. Benson rose immediately, excused himself to the bald man sitting at the table, and then strode across the room to where they were waiting.
“Mr. Benson?” Carella asked.
“What is this?” Benson said. “I’m in the middle of lunch.”
He was, Carella guessed, some six feet two inches tall, easily as tall as Hawes, with the same broad shoulders and barrel chest, eyes the color of slate, hair as golden as wheat. He was wearing a suit Carella was willing to bet was tailor-made, the tie a Countess Mara, the shirt monogrammed over the left breast, the initials MJB peeping out from behind the hand-stitched lapel of the suit jacket. French cuffs showed below the jacket sleeves, where they were fastened with small, gold, diamond-studded links. A pinky ring on his left hand flashed a diamond rather larger than those on the cufflinks. Carella guessed that Heads of Creation were pulling down quite a bit of bread with their Daffy Dots campaigns.