“Not wasting any time, is she?” I snapped, and Fritz said something about only being a message-taker. When Wolfe came down at six and settled in behind his desk, I told him about the call. The reaction was a shrug and a request to turn down the thermostat. “A damn good idea!” I said, standing up. “A little less heat might stimulate some mental activity around here — God knows we could use it. Maybe if I open a couple of windows too, we’ll—”
“Archie, shut up. You’re prattling. What would you have me do? Buy advertising time on television? Or erect a billboard on Times Square? Like good fishermen, we have put out our lines. And also like good fishermen, we need to exercise some patience.”
“What do you know about fishing?” I snarled as I turned the heat down. “You haven’t dropped a hook in the water since the invention of the reel.” There was more to our conversation, but that’s enough to give you the flavor, and also an indication of why there wasn’t much talking at the dinner table, despite Wolfe’s attempts to start a discussion on what New York would be like today if the Dutch hadn’t got muscled out by the English a few centuries back. It was also quiet in the office after dinner, and when the phone rang, I almost knocked over my coffee cup reaching for the receiver.
I expected Saul’s voice, or possibly Fred’s, but it was Hitchcock. “Hallo, I’ve got a little bit for you,” he said as I motioned Wolfe to pick up his instrument. “It’s quite late here, you know, but I just got a call back from Frankfurt, and I knew you were anxious. First off, I should tell you that the chap from Italy was no help. Seems Stevens’s years there were most uneventful. And I could find nothing here in London, either, except for some general grumblings that he was a strict taskmaster. But as to Munich,” he said, “my associate in Frankfurt tells me there was one untoward incident. Happened about fifteen years ago, he can get the exact date if you like. It seems a young oboe player in the Munich orchestra named Wald, Willy Wald, was dismissed by Stevens, and rather summarily, at that. Anyway, the young man was killed in a motorcar crash less than a week later. He was alone in the car, and it went off a cliff in the Bavarian Alps for no apparent reason. The authorities ruled it an accident, but there was speculation in the press at the time about suicide. Rather nasty, as you can imagine.
“Stevens defended himself by saying that Wald hadn’t been playing well enough to remain in the orchestra. The business got a good bit of publicity for a few days, but according to my Frankfurt friend, it blew over, and Stevens went on to conduct in Munich for several more seasons. I’m not sure this is of any help to you, but you said you wanted anything beyond the ordinary.”
“Quite so,” Wolfe said, “and I thank you for robbing from your sleep to report this. Anything else?” Hitchcock said there wasn’t, and we signed off.
“Well, is that what you were expecting?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Wolfe said, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers over his belly. He stayed that way for several minutes, then blinked his eyes and reached for his book. I started to say something, but the phone rang.
This time, it was Fred. “Archie, I’ve gotta go home now, or all hell will break loose with Fanny. I’ve had hookers laugh at me and swear at me and try to do business with me, but no luck on what we’re looking for. I’m whipped.”
I cupped the mouthpiece, telling Wolfe that Fred wanted to pack it in for the night, and he nodded. “Okay, make for home; maybe tomorrow will be better,” I said, hanging up. “Who am I kidding?” I told Wolfe. “Tomorrow will be more of the same, and we all know it. Let me go and talk to Hubbard; if there was a hooker around the building that night, I’ll find out.”
“No,” Wolfe said, shaking his head. “We can always do that later, if necessary. Maybe Saul will bring us news.”
But Saul didn’t. At eleven-twenty, he called in and said he’d talked to more than three dozen entrepreneurs of the street, without success. “But I want to keep at it, Archie. Ask Mr. Wolfe to give us some more time.”
“Oh, he will,” I said, watching Wolfe coax the last few drops of beer out of his glass. “In fact, I think he may give you another month if you want it. Well, it’s his money — enjoy yourself.” Saul hung up, and I told Wolfe the day’s excitement had been too much for me, that I was going up to bed. He looked up, nodded, and rang for more beer.
19
Tuesday was a xerox of Monday: snow, although now just flurries; Wolfe at his desk reading and ignoring me; and Saul and Fred somewhere out there searching for a woman who might or might not exist. I clipped my nails, shined three pairs of shoes, changed the ribbon in my typewriter, and took two suits to the cleaners. Maria called just after lunch, and I told her we had several lines out. She was back staying with Lily, although she said she could face the apartment now and might move back tomorrow. I suggested she stay put for a few more days.
“The company does Lily good,” I said. “Gives her somebody to spout off to about why the Democrats are God’s chosen people.” Maria laughed for the first time since I’d met her, and it sounded nice. I told her that if she felt up to it, I’d take her and Lily to Rusterman’s that night for a quiet dinner in one of the small rooms upstairs. She said thanks, but Jerry was coming over and they just wanted to be alone and maybe would take a walk. Not to be totally spurned, I got Lily to the phone and made a date for the two of us. Lily Rowan rarely says no to a dinner invitation.
She was oozing questions about our progress, and I told her that I didn’t think we were doing so hot. “But I haven’t been that candid with Maria,” I said, “so please don’t make a liar out of me when you talk to her. We haven’t got forever on this, although Wolfe’s acting like it. The D.A.’s office may move slowly sometimes, but on this one they’ll be trying for a fast wrap-up. I guess I would too, in their place.”
At a table upstairs in Rusterman’s, Lily eyed me over her wineglass. “M’love, are you absolutely convinced that Milner didn’t do it?”
“Aren’t you?” I asked back, doing my eyebrow trick. “You’ve had plenty of time to observe him the last few days. Do you think he’s a killer?”
She shook her head and smiled. “I really don’t, and I like to think that intuition of mine that you talk about so much really works. But who else have you got?”
“You’ll have to ask my boss about that. For all I know right now, he thinks it’s a suicide, that Stevens had a triple-jointed right arm and stabbed himself in the back.”
That was enough business talk for the evening, and Lily knew it, so we drifted into other areas, such as who was divorcing whom in her crowd and why. That was hardly a favorite topic of mine, but Lily was so entertaining that for one stretch of at least six minutes, I didn’t think once about the murder. Finally, though, she must have noticed me sneaking peeks at my watch, and for the second time in a week she suggested we should be going. “I know you’re busting to be back at your desk, Escamillo. Just promise me that when you bust the case wide open — how I love that phrase — you’ll let me be one of the first to know.” I promised I would, and then dropped her off at her place in a taxi, arriving home myself at just after ten-thirty.