“At where I come into the picture.”
“I'm sorry, I should have explained that first. As I told you, I'm public relations on the show. We have quite a publicity gimmick in the making. On the third week of the show we will use the case of Robert Thomas, wanted by the Ohio police for raping and assaulting a poor sixteen-year-old kid. A brutal crime that took place about six years ago. He's living and working here in New York under the name of Richard Tutt. You're to keep tabs on him.”
“What does 'tabs' mean to you?”
“For the next week or two, until his case is televised, all you do is check that he's on his job every day, that he doesn't move. Won't be much work. However, from the second his 'wanted' flyer is flashed on TV screens, you're to tail him twenty-four hours a day—until we rap him, which will be—”
“Until you do what?”
Her face showed surprise. “Rap him, send him up. That's the big publicity deal. A few hours after his case is shown we have a stooge set to turn Tutt in to the police, claiming it was all a result of our show. I don't have to blueprint the rest; our sponsor does a great deal of advertising, we'll make every paper in the nation and be able to have the stooge planted on several TV news programs. I'm counting on the publicity to shove the show into a top rating.”
“How did you learn where Thomas is now?”
“We do a thorough research job on all cases. One of our writers—he practically originated the show—got the data on Thomas. We used his case to audition the show, as a matter of fact. Now you understand your job: keep Thomas in sight until we're ready to lower the boom on him.”
“This Thomas... is he... I mean, is he coloured?” She looked startled.
“Oh, no. If anything, he's a Southern cracker.”
I'd been on “white” cases before. I mean, I worked every Friday and Saturday as a special doing guard work in a department store where Sid was the personnel manager. Still, my being an all-day tail in a white neighborhood raised a few obstacles. But for fifteen hundred dollars—hell, I'd make a good try at jumping over the Empire State Building. Only it was odd that Central Telecasting—she —hadn't gone to one of the big detective outfits.
Mrs. Robbens guessed my thoughts and said, “I came to you for two reasons. In a large agency there might be a leak and I don't have to tell you that if this reaches the papers ahead of time the publicity will blow up in our faces and rum the show. So a one-man agency was needed. You were recommended to me, and I feel I can count on your discretion, even after the case is ended. From time to time we have various matters needing investigation at the studio, and this can very well be your entree to Madison Avenue.
“I always try to give you people a helping hand, so very frankly I was pleased when I learned you were a Negro.” The smile again, on the patronizing side this time.
Okay, whites can sure say the jerkiest things and I'd met her type before. At least she was jerky in a friendly way; too many of them are nasty jerks.
“Will you take the case?”
“I think so,” I said, as if I was considering it.
She opened her bag and took out a thin but beautiful pile of twenty-dollar bills. “Here's two hundred dollars as a retainer. Now, for the time being this is hush-hush, even in our office. Only my immediate boss knows about the arrest and publicity angle. Matter of fact, I'm paying you out of petty cash. You're not to phone me at Central unless it's something terribly urgent. I'm in the phone book and... Here's my home phone and address. Call me at home every night. At about eight.”
“Why every night?”
“From now on it will be the only contact I'll have with you. You don't have to go into detail, merely that things are okay. However, even over my home phone you're never to say you are a detective. In TV one never knows when a phone is tapped. Every thing crystal clear, Mr. Moore? What does 'T.M.' stand for, by the bye?”
“It doesn't stand for 'bye-the-bye,'“ I wise-cracked, “but for Toussaint Marcus, Mrs. Robbens.”
“What a charming name. Toussaint. After the Haitian patriot?”
“Aha. My father was a student of Negro history, Mrs. Robbens.”
“While we're on the name bit, it happens to be Miss Robbens. I shall call you Toussaint and you may call me Kay.”
“Let me call you what I want,” I said, wondering about the “Miss" angle. She was sporting a thick wedding ring but perhaps on Madison Avenue it was better politics to be single.
“Shall we be on our way, Toussaint?”
“Keep it down to Touie, please. Where are we going?”
“Downtown. This is the address of the freight company that employs Thomas. I'll point him out, you take the ball from there.”
“Fine.” Happily my portable wasn't in hock and I typed out a receipt. As I put on my coat I went down the hall to Ollie's room; since he was civil service the apartment was in his name. I left eighty dollars in his drawer with a note saying I was paying up the two months' back rent I owed, and the balance was against future rent.
As we stepped outside a couple of cats hanging around the stoop gave us the eye, but quietly. Miss Robbens said, “We'll take a cab. About your expense account, don't overdo the padding. Be different if Central hired you directly but I—”
“Don't worry about it,” I said, walking her over to my Jag, which left her speechless—for once. I drove across 145th Street toward the West Side Highway, thankful I had gas.
In the fifteen or twenty minutes it took us to reach Forty-first Street she told me—for no reason—all about her unhappy first marriage, how lousy her husband had been. I listened politely, wanting to tell her it takes two to be good or bad. But I kept my mouth shut.
“... The kind of male slob who objected to my having a career. Career! It's a job. What he refused to understand was that in this world of nobodies, everybody has the yen to be a somebody. I'm sure you know that.”
“I'm afraid to even try to think about it.”
She turned in the low seat abruptly. “Don't ever make fun of me! I can't stand that; it's the height of rudeness!”
“I'm not making fun of you, Miss Robbens. And—”
“I told you to call me Kay.”
She sat in silence for a minute. As I cut off the highway she asked, “Why did you buy a Jaguar, Touie?”
“As you said, everybody wants to be a somebody,” I told her, cleverly, I thought. I checked the freight-company address in my notebook. It would be a waste of time trying to find free parking space, so I turned into a parking lot, paid the man a buck. Miss Robbens showed a lot of leg getting out but I knew that wasn't what the white attendant was staring at.
It was eleven fifteen when we reached the freight company. She said, “Thomas comes out for lunch at noon. We have plenty of time and I'm hungry.”
“Nothing but joints around here.”
“I don't mind,” she said, walking toward Eighth Avenue and into one of those overgrown bars that's a combination cafeteria and gin mill. There were some dozen men at the bar and tables, all of them white, of course. We gathered another round of “looks” as we got a couple of greasy hamburgers, beers, found a table. Two characters dressed like truckers were at a table near us, and one of them, a lardy redhead in his late twenties, began talking about us in a husky whisper. I didn't have to hear to know what he was saying.