"Cat got your tongue, Jiggs?"
When in doubt, charge, he thought. "I'm no traveling salesman, Shoo. I've got two boys at home and a wife I love. What's that got to do with us? I want to see you tonight."
"Where are you?" she asked. He gave her his room number at the Sherwood.
"Wait right there," she said, her words very clipped and businesslike. "I'll call you back. My date tonight was half business anyway. I'll see."
Half business? thought Casey. Mine is all business, honey. Or it was when I called you. Damn General Scott for messing up a man's life like this, anyway. What did I ever do to you, General?
Shoo called back promptly. "Come over to my place, sort of sevenish," she said. "We'll have a drink and worry about dinner later."
"What's the address again, Shoo?" It occurred to him that Marge at least would have been pleased that he couldn't remember it.
"Go to hell, Colonel." The voice was brisk, but the little snort was not without affection. "Look it up in the phone book-and I don't mean the yellow pages, big operator!"
He found the number, jotted it down and then went out to saunter along Madison Avenue in the warm May sunshine. Normally the fever of New York repelled him, but today a south wind had blown away the smog and he felt exhilarated. He watched with amusement as sullen, hurried figures pushed past him and the trim legs of the stenographers clip-clipped ever faster along the sidewalks.
He wished he could do something useful before evening, but when he ran through the short list of his friends in New York it added up to nothing. He couldn't approach the military officers he knew, and his few civilian acquaintances worked in fields far distant from Millicent Segnier's magazine Cherie or MacPherson's Regal Broadcasting Corporation.
Casey walked on idly, over to Fifth Avenue, up past the Plaza and into the corner of Central Park, then across to Madison again and back to his hotel. He went into the men's bar, now filling with noon-hour trade, and ordered a double martini. The thing to do, he thought, is knock myself out and get a good sleep this afternoon. He was short about ten hours' sleep this week and he realized he couldn't go much longer on reserve energy. Besides, it wouldn't be very smart to get drowsy tonight.
After six hours' sleep, he felt ready for his delicate encounter with Shoo Holbrook. Casey dressed in a dark-blue lightweight suit, the only civilian summer suit he owned, shaved again with the electric razor, and knotted his red-and-black striped tie. He formed the knot carefully; Shoo once complained that the knot in his Marine uniform tie was too big, and it would please her to think he had remembered.
For Christ's sake, he thought, who'd think I'd ever turn into that kind of an operator?
He took a cab to her apartment house, in the East Sixties off Park. The doorman, the self-service elevator, the narrow hall with its gray carpeting, even the number 315 on her door, all reminded him again of a weekend he thought he had succeeded in forgetting.
Shoo opened the door and reached for his hand. The brown hair, he noted, still framed her forehead in a soft curve and her nose crinkled prettily in pleasure at seeing him. As usual, she wore little make-up except lipstick. She had on gray toreador pants, quite tight, and a yellow shirt. Her feet were bare inside her sandals.
She stepped back, hands on hips, and surveyed him.
"I never saw you before in civilian clothes," she said. "I like you better in uniform, Jiggs. But you'll do as is. You'll definitely do."
Casey grinned and fingered the knot in his tie. "Small enough, Shoo?"
She stepped quickly to him then, held his face in her hands and kissed him lightly. "That's for remembering," she said.
He lit her cigarette and they sat at opposite ends of the window sofa. The questions came in a rush. What was his job now? What was he doing in New York? Did he still like martinis?
"I do, but I seem to recall that they can be awful dangerous for a married man." His mind jumped back two years to the night when they had started with martinis and had never got around to eating at all. Tonight, he promised himself, is going to be altogether different.
"On the rocks," he said as she went to the kitchen.
"My, you are getting older, Jiggs."
This apartment, he thought, is sure the wrong place for resisting the forcible overthrow of the government -or any other institution. Shoe's taste in decor was splashy. In a large semiabstract painting on the wall two bulls, black with green horns, seemed about to charge each other against background slashes of crimson and orange. An ivory-colored floor lamp was topped by four orange shades, each facing in a different direction. Even the coffee table, a solid chunk of pitted driftwood supporting a heavy glass top, ran at weird angles. A bright orange cloth on the dinette table matched the insides of the bookcases. Is a person really supposed to live here, Casey wondered, or just stop by now and then to sin?
The martini pitcher was nicely filled and beaded with condensation. Shoo poured his drink over ice, but took her own with nothing but a tiny olive. They laughed as much as they talked. Shoo gushed stories of the office politics, sponsor demands, and actor tantrums of what she called "my idiot trade." They slipped easily into the casual banter of two years ago.
Finally she fell silent and eyed him for a long moment.
"This atmosphere," she said, "is one of abysmal pal-ship, Colonel. My little girl's instinct tells me you haven't come courting at all, Jiggs, you just don't have your radar turned on tonight. I can see it in that honest face of yours. You want something else. What is it?"
Casey laughed and winked at her. The evidence was certainly plain before them: she had consumed two drinks while his glass still stood half full.
"I knew you'd find me out sooner or later, Shoo," he said. "I'm in New York to find out some things. I thought you might be willing to help me-in confidence."
"Look, dear," she said, "I don't know a thing about bombs or the little things that whiz around the world with men in them. And if you're one of those counterspies, I don't know a single solitary Russian, thank you."
"This is politics, Shoo." He was going to have to be careful here, but he had rehearsed it. "Washington is a very complicated place, and sometimes a military man does things that have nothing to do with guns or missiles."
"How well I know, sweetheart."
"Anyway, I'm doing a little gumshoe work for some Democrats who are afraid General Scott, my boss, might try to run against President Lyman two years from now."
"Oh, delicious." Shoo curled her feet under her and raised her cigarette like a symphony conductor's baton. "Ask me some questions, quick."
"Will you promise to keep everything we say a secret?"
"Of course. I'd love to be an undercover operative in something sordid and political. They call me Little Miss Mum's-the-Word at the office."
Casey fiddled with his drink and loosened his tie. "Well, we hear that General Scott has been having an affair with a good friend of yours, Millicent Segnier. Remember, I met her once?"
"Oh, Milly." Shoo pouted in disappointment. "That's no secret. They've had a thing since God knows when. You could announce it in ten-foot lights in Times Square and it wouldn't surprise anybody."
"Maybe not," Casey said, "but I don't think it's ever got into the papers. Anyway, we need to know more about it-from you, if possible."
"Who's 'we'?"
"Let's just say some of the President's friends."
"My, my," she said. "Washington is complicated, isn't it? You work for General Scott by day-and against him by night."
"Well, yes, sort of. How about it?"
"I adore President Lyman," Shoo said, "and I think people are being miserable and unfair to him now when he's trying to get rid of that frightful bomb. I mean it, Jiggs."