Elsie Brand kept right on typing.
Mrs. Cool held open the door of her private office. ‘Go right on in, Miss Hunter,’ she said, and then, looking at me, went on in the same tone of voice, almost as part of the same sentence, ‘I’m going to want you in five minutes. Wait.’
The door closed.
I made myself as comfortable as possible and waited.
After a while, the telephone on Elsie Brand’s desk buzzed. She stopped typing, picked up the receiver, said, ‘Very well,’ dropped the receiver back into place, and nodded at me. ‘Go on in,’ she said. She was back pounding the keys of the typewriter before I’d got out of the chair.
I opened the door to the private office. Mrs. Cool was overflowing the big swivel chair as she sat hunched up against the desk, her elbows leaning on it. As I opened the door, she was saying, ‘—no, dearie, I don’t give a damn now how much you lie. We find out the truth sooner or later anyway; and the longer it takes to find out the truth, the more time we get paid for — this is Donald Lam. Mr. Lam, Miss Hunter. Mr. Lam hasn’t been with me long, but he has the qualifications. He’ll work on your case. I’ll supervise what he does.’
I bowed to the girl. She smiled at me in a preoccupied way. She seemed to be hesitating over some important decision.
Mrs. Cool, perfectly at ease, continued to hold down the desk with her elbows. She had that motionless immobility which characterizes the very fat. Thin people are constantly making jerky motions to alleviate the nervous pressure which possesses them. Mrs. Cool didn’t have a fidget in her system. When she sat down, she was placed. She had the majesty of a snowcapped mountain, the assurance of a steam roller.
‘Sit down, Donald,’ she said.
I sat down, taking a professional interest in Miss Hunter’s profile — long, straight nose, fine chin, smooth, delicately shaped forehead, framed by glossy waves of chestnut hair. Her mind was occupied with some thought which drained all of her attention away from her present surroundings.
Mrs. Cool said to me, ‘You read the newspapers, Donald?’
I nodded.
‘You’ve read about Morgan Birks?’
‘A little,’ I said, fascinated by Miss Hunter’s abstraction. ‘Wasn’t he the one who was indicted by the grand jury in that slot-machine scandal?’
‘There wasn’t any scandal about it,’ Mrs. Cool said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. ‘They had a lot of illegal slot-machines placed where they’d do the most good and naturally there was a pay-off to the police department. Morgan did the paying. The grand jury didn’t indict him. They can’t get enough evidence to indict him. They subpoenaed him as a witness. He didn’t show up. They’re trying to find him. There’s some sort of a warrant out for him. That’s all. If they get him they can do something about the police department. If they don’t get him they can’t. Why the hell anybody wants to call it a scandal is more than I know. It’s just ordinary, routine business.’
‘I was quoting the newspapers,’ I said.
‘Don’t do it, Donald. It’s a bad habit.’
‘What about Morgan Birks?’ I asked, noticing that Miss Hunter was still very much occupied with her own thoughts.
‘Morgan Birks has a wife,’ Mrs. Cool said. ‘Her name is— is—’ She said to Miss Hunter, ‘Let’s have those papers, dearie,’ and had to ask the second time before Miss Hunter suddenly snapped to attention, opened her purse, took out some folded, legal-looking documents, and handed them across the desk. Mrs. Cool picked up the papers and calmly resumed her conversation at the point where she’d interrupted herself.
‘—Sandra Birks. Sandra Birks wants a divorce. She’s been figuring on it for some time. Morgan played into her hands by getting mixed up in this grand jury business. It’s a swell time to get a divorce except for one thing. She can’t find him to serve the papers.’
‘He’s classed as a fugitive from justice?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know how much justice there is about it,’ she said, ‘but he’s sure as hell a fugitive from something. He can’t be found.’
‘What am I to do?’ I asked.
‘Find him,’ she said, and slid the papers across the desk to me.
I picked up the papers. There was an original summons in the case Birks versus Birks, and a copy of the summons to which was attached a copy of the plaintiff’s complaint.
Mrs. Cool said, ‘You don’t have to be an officer to serve a summons. Any citizen of the United States over the age of twenty-one years and not a party to the action can make the service. Find Birks, serve him. When you make the service, you hand him the copy of the summons and the complaint. You show him the original summons, then you come back here and make an affidavit.’
‘How do I go about finding him?’ I asked.
Miss Hunter said suddenly, ‘I think I can help you.’
‘And when I’ve found him,’ I asked Mrs. Cool, ‘will he resent—?’
Miss Hunter interrupted quickly, ‘And I know he will. That’s the thing I’m afraid of. Mr. Lam might get hurt. Morgan is—’
Mrs. Cool interposed a calm, matter-of-fact, ‘My God, Donald, that’s your headache. What the hell do you want us to do? Go along with you so you can hide behind our petticoats when you poke the summons out at him?’
I made up my mind she was going to fire me sooner or later anyhow. It might as well be now. ‘I was asking,’ I said, ‘for information.’
‘Well, you got your information.’
‘I don’t think I did,’ I told her, ‘and in case you’re interested, I don’t like the way it was given.’
She didn’t even turn her eyes toward me. ‘I’m not interested,’ she said, and lifted the lid from the cigarette case on her desk. ‘Want to smoke, Miss Hunter — what the hell’s your first name, dearie? I don’t go much for last names.’
‘Alma.’
‘Want to smoke, Alma?’
‘No, thank you. Not right now.’
Mrs. Cool picked up a match, scraped it explosively against the underside of the desk, held it to the cigarette, and said, ‘As I was saying, Donald, you’ll find Birks and serve the summons on him. Alma’s going to help you find him — oh yes, you’ll want to know where Alma fits into the picture. She’s a friend of the wife — or is it a relative, dearie?’
‘No, just a friend,’ Alma Hunter said. ‘Sandra and I roomed together before she got married.’
‘How long ago was that?’ Mrs. Cool asked.
‘Two years.’
‘Where are you living now?’
‘With Sandra. She has an apartment with two bedrooms. I’m staying with her, and her brother is coming out from the East — you see, Morgan just packed up and left, and—’
‘You know Morgan, of course?’ Mrs. Cool interrupted.
‘No,’ Alma Hunter said a little too quickly. ‘I never approved of — well, of the idea. Through Sandra, I knew things about him — I think I’d prefer not to go into that if you don’t mind.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Mrs. Cool said. ‘If you’re referring to facts which don’t enter into the case, they’re none of my damn business. If they do, I’d a lot rather find them out for myself, at so many dollars a day, than have you tell me about them. Write your own ticket, dearie.’
I saw the glint of a smile in Alma Hunter’s eyes.
‘And don’t mind me when I cuss,’ Mrs. Cool went on, ‘because I like profanity, loose clothes, and loose talk. I want to be comfortable. Nature intended me to be fat. I put in ten years eating salads, drinking skimmed milk, and toying with dry toast. I wore girdles that pinched my waist, form-building brassières, and spent half of my time standing on bathroom scales.