“Alp,” Henderson said. “That’s the funny name I’ve been trying to think of. That’s the name I told you we both laughed at.”
“Send Alp in. Tell the other guy never mind.”
He was as funny looking in real life as on his license picture: even funnier, for he was in full color in real life.
Burgess said, “Did you have a haul last night from your stand to the Maison Blanche Restaurant?”
“Mason Blantch, Mason Blantch—” He was going to be a little doubtful at first. “I pick ’em up and put ’em down so many times a night—” Then a memory quickening method of his own seemed to come to his aid. “Mason Blantch; about sixty-five cents on a dry night,” he mumbled. He went back into full voice again. “Yeah, I did! I had a sixty-five cent haul last night, in between two thirty-cent pulls.”
“Look around you. See anyone here you gave it to?”
His eyes slid past Henderson’s face. Then they came back again. “It was him, wasn’t it?”
“We’re asking you, don’t ask us.”
He took the question mark off. “It was him.”
“Alone or with somebody else?”
He took a minute with that. Then he shook his head slowly. “I don’t remember noticing nobody else with him. Alone, I guess.”
Henderson gave a lurch forward, like somebody who suddenly turns an ankle. “You must have seen her! She got in ahead of me and she got out ahead of me, like a woman does—”
“Sh, quiet,” Burgess tuned him out.
“Woman?” the driver said aggrievedly. “I remember you. I remember you perfect, because I got a dented fender picking you up—”
“Yes, yes.” Henderson agreed eagerly, “and maybe that’s why you didn’t see her step in, because your head was turned the other way. But surely when we got there—”
“When we got there,” the driver said sturdily, “my head wasn’t turned the other way, no cabman’s ever is when it comes time to collect a fare. And I didn’t see her get out either. Now how about it?”
“We had the light on, all the way over,” Henderson pleaded. “How could you help seeing her, sitting there in back of you? She must have shown in your rear-sight mirror or even against your windshield—”
“Now I am sure,” the driver said. “Now I’m positive — even if I wasn’t before. I been hacking eight years. If you had the top light on, you were by yourself. I never knew a guy riding with a woman to leave the top light on yet. Any time the top light’s on, you can bet the guy behind you is a single.”
Henderson could hardly talk. He was feeling at his throat as though it bothered him. “How could you remember my face, and not remember hers?”
Burgess stepped all over that, before the man could even answer. “You didn’t remember her face yourself. You were with her six solid hours — you say. He had his back to her for twenty minutes.” He ended the interview. “All right. Alp. Then that’s your statement.”
“That’s my statement. There was nobody with this man when I had him in my cab last night.”
They hit the Maison Blanche at the dismantlement stage. The cloths were off the tables, the last long lingering gourmets had departed. The help was eating in the kitchen, judging by the unbridled sounds of crockery and silverware at work that emanated from there.
They sat down at one of the denuded tables, drawing up chairs like a peculiar ghost party of diners about to fall to without any visible utensils or comestibles.
The headwaiter was so used to bowing to people that he bowed now as he came out to them, even though he was off duty. The bow didn’t look so good because he’d removed his collar and tie, and had a lump of food in one cheek.
Burgess said, “Have you seen this man before?”
His black-pitted eyes took in Henderson. The answer came like a finger snap. “Yes, surely.”
“When was the last time?”
“Last night.”
“Where did he sit?”
He picked out the niche table unerringly. “Over there.”
“Well?” Burgess said. “Go on.”
“Go on with what?”
“Who was with him?”
“Nobody was with him.”
There was a line of little moist needle pricks starting out along Henderson’s forehead. “You saw her come in a moment or two after me, and join me. You saw her sitting there during the whole meal. You must have. Once you even passed close by and bowed and said, ‘Everything satisfactory, m’sieu?”
“Yes. That is part of my duties. I do it to each table at least once. I distinctly recall doing it to you, because your face was, how shall I say, a little discontented. I also distinctly recall the two vacant chairs, one on each side of you. I believe I straightened one a little. You have quoted me yourself. And if I said ‘monsieur,’ as I did, that is the surest indication there was no one with you. The correct inquiry for a lady and gentleman together is ‘m’sieu-et-dame.’ It is never altered.”
The black centers of his eyes were as steady as buckshot fired deep into his face and lodged there. He turned to Burgess. “Well, if there is any doubt, I can show you my reservation list for last night. You can see for yourselves.”
Burgess said with an exaggeratedly slow drawl that meant he liked the idea very much, “I don’t think that would hurt.”
The headwaiter went across the dining room, opened a drawer in a buffet, brought back a ledger. He didn’t go out of the room, he didn’t go out of their sight. He handed it to them unopened, just as he had found it; let them open it for themselves. All he said was, “You can refer to the date at the top.”
They all formed a cluster of heads over it but himself. He remained detached. It was kept in impromptu pencil, but it was sufficient for its purpose. The page was headed 5-20, Tues. Then there was a large corner-to-corner X drawn across the page, to show that it was over and done with. It canceled without impairing legibility.
There was a list of some nine or ten names. They went like this, columnarly:
Table 18 — Roger Ashley, for four. (Lined out)
Table 5 — Mrs. Rayburn, for six. (Lined out)
Table 24 — Scott Henderson, for two. (Not lined out)
Beside the third name was this parenthetic symboclass="underline" (ו).
The headwaiter explained, “That tells its own story. When a line is drawn through, that means the reservation has been completed, filled up. When there is no line drawn through, that means they never showed up. When there is no line drawn through, and a number is added, that means only part of them showed up, the rest are still expected. Those things in the little brackets are for my own guidance, so I will know where they go when they do show up, where to put them, without having to ask a lot of questions. No matter if they come only at the dessert, so long as they come at all, the line goes through. What you see here means, therefore: m’sieu had a reservation for two, m’sieu showed up by himself, and the other half of his party never reached here.”
Burgess traced hypersensitive finger-pads over that particular section of the page, feeling for erasures. “Texture unmarred,” he said.
Henderson pronged his hand, elbow to tabletop; let it catch his head as it toppled forward.
The headwaiter shoveled with his hands. “My book is all I have to go by. My book says — to me — Mr. Henderson was alone in this dining room last night.”
“Then your book says that to us, too. Take his name and address, usual stuff, case wanted further questioning. All right, next. Mitri Maloff, table waiter.”