“Maybe Roy made a copy,” she said hoarsely.
“A possibility,” I agreed. “Still, why tell me?”
She nervously fiddled with her hair. “Because I had to tell someone, if just for my sanity. And unless I’m very wrong, you’re used to hearing people’s secrets — and keeping them. As I said before, I don’t think you’re the type that goes around passing judgment on people.”
I smiled. “Maybe I should charge by the half-hour for therapy. Okay, so you’ve unburdened yourself to me. Now what?”
“Now... at least I feel better,” Carola responded with a smile of her own.
I studied her well-arranged face, trying to figure out how much to believe. After a few seconds, I suggested we go, leaving the waitress a healthy tip to compensate for the business that got driven away by my sparring with MacKay. It didn’t alter her dour expression any, though; some people just can’t take a joke.
When we got outside I flagged a cab for Carola, and as I opened the door, I assured her she was every bit as good a person as anyone else in the tabernacle. She smiled but looked doubtful. Quite possibly she was considering the source of her assurance.
Twelve
I walked back to the brownstone, climbing the front steps at six-twenty-five. I hit the buzzer, knowing Fritz would have put the chain lock on the door. He answered on the second ring.
“Your face,” he said as he pulled the door open.
“Fritz, you have a wonderful knack for stating the obvious.”
He frowned as I crossed the threshold. “But your face, Archie — it needs attention.”
“I repeat my comment,” I told him, marching to the office, where Wolfe wrestled with the London Sunday Times crossword puzzle.
He looked up and grunted. “Your face,” he said.
“It must be this house. I’ve been back for all of thirty seconds, and the only two people I’ve encountered greeted me with the words ‘Your face.’ I think I’ll go to the plant rooms to see Theodore. He almost never speaks to me except to gripe about something, but maybe he’ll say, ‘Your face — I recognize it.’”
Wolfe scowled. “Perhaps Inspector Cramer is correct when he insists that you will clown your way to the grave. What happened?”
“I ran into a fist, but only once. The other guy wasn’t as fortunate.”
“Indeed. Get cleaned up, and then report.”
I went to my room and analyzed the damage in the mirror. A spot on my left cheekbone the size of a half-dollar had turned plum-colored. I soaked a washcloth in cold water and held it on the spot for sixty seconds, then dried it gingerly and covered the area with a bandage. When I got back to the office, Wolfe had defeated his puzzle and was hypnotizing himself by watching the bubbles rise in his beer glass.
I dropped into my desk chair and turned to face him. “Okay, here it is from the beginning,” I said, giving him a verbatim report on the last eight-plus hours, from my arrival at the Silver Spire to my mini-scrap with MacKay and my hailing a taxi for Carola Reese. He kept his eyes closed and his fingers laced over his center mound the whole time, never once commenting.
After a half-minute of silence, to which he contributed nothing of genius, I went on. “It did seem kind of funny, Carola running into the guy after all those years.”
He twitched his shoulders, which constitutes a shrug. “Perhaps, but she did mention she rarely comes to Manhattan. Encountering Mr. MacKay may indeed have been happenstance. Do you think that she and Mr. Wilkenson maintain a purely professional relationship?”
For years, Wolfe has been absolutely unwavering in his belief that I can penetrate the deepest recesses of the female mind. He’s wrong, but after all this time I hate to disillusion him. “It’s about even money,” I answered, “with maybe a slight tilt toward their having a little something going. She seemed too anxious to deny it.”
He closed his eyes again. “Well,” I said after another half-minute, “what now?”
“It is dinnertime. Lobsters in white-wine sauce.” One thing about Wolfe, you always know what his priorities are. We did what we were supposed to with Fritz’s lobsters while I heard a monologue on why the railroads were the greatest single force in America’s westward expansion during the late 1800s.
When we were back in the office with coffee, I asked Wolfe if he had any instructions. He muttered something that sounded vaguely like “None” and opened his book, Labor Will Rule, by Steven Fraser. I was in the process of giving him a strongly phrased retort when the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” I said loudly. “Maybe it’s a prospective client, wanting you to find her lost Chihuahua that broke loose from its leash on Beekman Place.”
Our visitor was Inspector Cramer. “Come in,” I said warmly, pulling open the door. “We were just getting ready to play mumblety-peg on Wolfe’s desktop with a Swiss Army knife, but golly, we can do that any old time.”
“You’re a real gas,” Cramer snorted as he lumbered in and made for the office. “What happened to your face?”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t notice. I accidentally wandered into the path of a little granny on Rollerblades who was heading for the spring clearance sale at Macy’s.”
I can’t report on whether that drew a smile, because Cramer’s back was to me as he chugged into the office and plopped down in the red leather chair. Wolfe looked up from his book with raised eyebrows.
“Yeah, I wonder why I’m here, too,” Cramer said. “If I wanted comedy, I could sit home with my feet up and watch the cop shows on TV instead of listening to your court jester here.” He jerked a thumb in my direction for emphasis.
“I agree that Archie’s humor is often threadbare,” Wolfe said, exhaling. “I’ve spoken to him about it repeatedly, including tonight. It is a trial.”
“Yeah, well, believe it or not, I didn’t come to discuss Goodwin’s pacing and timing. I want to know what’s going on with the Durkin business.”
Wolfe drank beer. “I know Fred has been charged with murder. Have there been further developments?”
“Oh, balls, stop playing around! You know damn well what I’m talking about. Goodwin spent more than four hours today at that religious monstrosity over on Staten Island. Somehow I don’t believe he was praying.”
Wolfe flipped a hand. “Archie’s visit to the church should not surprise you; I stated earlier our intent to determine the identity of Mr. Meade’s murderer.”
“Uh-huh. And what have you found?”
“Candidly, not enough to make an accusation.”
Cramer huffed. “I’m not surprised, given that the right guy’s already been nailed.”
“No, sir, that is not true — I know it, and you know it. If you were convinced of Fred Durkin’s guilt, you would hardly tie up the valuable time of one or more of your men having them tail Archie.”
“Damn straight,” I put in to show that I was offended. I also was irked that I hadn’t spotted my shadow at the Silver Spire. I wanted to ask Cramer if one of his grunts had seen me TKO MacKay on Third Avenue, but I passed on that.
“All right, so we had somebody on Goodwin,” Cramer shot back, pulling a cigar out of his pocket and jamming it into his mouth. “I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you, especially when it comes to saving the skin of one of your own.”
“Come, Mr. Cramer,” Wolfe said, moving forward in his chair and waggling an index finger, “if you are suggesting we would attempt to shift blame for murder to an innocent individual, you are riding the wrong highway.”
“That’s the only way you’ll get Durkin off.”
“I think not. And I am presumptuous enough to seek your aid. I was planning to telephone you tonight with three questions. First, have your men conducted a thorough search of Mr. Meade’s office?”