"Something I can help you with?" Tim asked me.
"I don't know what I'm looking for myself."
"Well, take your time. Nobody's going to bother you in here. And Mike...if you find anything, you yell, hear?"
"Don't worry, Tim. And thanks."
Mitch Temple had been more than an ordinary Broadway gossip columnist. Here and there little gems appeared that I remembered turning into cold, hard news stories later on. He had roved from one end of town to the other, Broadway his theme, but branching off into sidelines that turned him into a part-time crusader when he got hold of something. His series on the Mafia caused a full investigation of their activities with several convictions. Twice he got on politics and made a few faces red around town.
Dulcie McInnes and Gerald Ute appeared here and there when they either hosted a party or were guests at one. Some of Dulcie's escorts at society soirees were international figures in politics or finance. She was top-echelon jet set, traveling all over the world for the Proctor Group. Although Mitch reported her as being at different affairs of state and involved with pleasantries accorded the United Nations delegates, she didn't seem to show any political persuasion or be attached to anyone in particular.
Gerald Ute came in for a little closer coverage. He was always financing some far-out project or sounding off on things from scouting to the foreign problems. Twice, there was a romantic link to some prominent matron, but nothing came of it. In one column Mitch hinted that he had used his influence with the delegate of the deposed dictator of a South African nation to nail a fat mineral-rights contract for one of his companies, but in today's business arrangements, that's par for the course.
There were other names I recognized and others I didn't. For three consecutive weeks Mitch hammered at the hypocrisy of the United Nations regarding their commitments, naming Belar Ris, who had come out of obscurity after World War Two with a fortune behind him and had led an uprising that turned his country's colony into an independent nation that elected him their U.N. delegate. He was trying to force an acceptance of the part-Arabian complex headed by Naku Em Abor. Well, Mitch lost that one, I thought. The country was in and old Naku was being feted at Gerald Ute's party right now. Mitch tried a lot, but he didn't win them all. Despite his personal investigation and reporting of facts, two labor unions kept top hoods in office, an outlaw strike damn near destroyed the city and a leading politician was re-elected even though he had a close affiliation with the Communist Party.
I had another ten minutes before I had to leave, so I took out the last of the folders in the drawer. They made interesting reading, but weren't at all informative. Belar Ris's name came up again, once when he got flattened by some playboy in a gin mill and once when the Italian government accused him of being associated with a group marketing black-market medicines for huge profits. There were a few other hot squibs about show business personalities and some minor jabs at the present administration that weren't unusual.
About a third of Mitch's columns had been covered, and as far as I was concerned, it had been a waste of time. It had taken more than what he had written to cause him to be killed. Anybody with any common sense wouldn't want to tackle the entire newspaper staff and the police. And right there was the rub again. Supposing it wasn't someone with common sense...just a plain psychopath?
At twelve-twenty-five I was in the lobby of the Proctor Group Building getting a nervous look from a night watchman. Five minutes later Dulcie came in with a wave to both of us and he looked relieved to see her. Someplace she had changed to a skirt and sweater with a short coat thrown over her shoulders and she looked like a teen-ager out on a late date.
"Been here long?"
"Five minutes. Good party?"
"A social success. You left early or you would have met the great heads of great nations."
I said one word under my breath and she suppressed a giggle, her eyes laughing at me.
She had the key to a private elevator that whisked us up to the tenth floor, the area reserved for the photographers. She found the switch, threw the lights on and led me down the corridor past the vast film-developing and processing laboratory, the stages where the models were posed against exotic backdrops, down to the offices where we found the one labeled Theodore Gates.
"Here we are." She pushed the door open and stepped inside, turned the button on the desk lamp and walked to the cabinets along the wall. "Service, wasn't it?"
I nodded. "Greta Service."
She slid the drawer out, thumbed through a few envelopes and drew out one with Greta's name typed across the top. Inside were duplicate photos of the ones in the master file and a resume of Greta's experience. The address was the one in Greenwich Village.
"No good," I said. "We'll need a later address."
She stuffed the folder back and shut the drawer. "Wait a minute." There was a rotary card file on Gates' desk and she flipped it around, stopped and said, "Could this be it?"
I looked at it. The notation listed her name, the Village number with a line drawn through it and another at the Sandelor Hotel, a fourth-rate fleabag on Eighth Avenue. A series of symbols at the bottom of the card may have been significant to Gates but didn't mean anything to me. In the bottom corner was another name, Howell.
"Well?"
"It's the only lead I got. I'm going to follow it up."
"Perhaps you could call first and..."
"No...I don't want to spook her off." I laid my hand over hers. "Thanks, kitten. I appreciate this."
There was a sad little expression in her eyes. "Would it be too much to ask...well, you do have me curious...can I go with you?"
I took her arm. "Sure, why not?"
We got out of the cab at the Sandelor Hotel and went into the lobby. It was a place for transients and permanent guests too impoverished or old to go any further. A musty smell of stale smoke and hidden decay hung in the air where it had been gathering for decades. The carpet was threadbare in front of the sagging cracked leather chairs, and in line to the desk and staircase. Drooping potted palms were spotted in the corners, two in front of the elevator that had an OUT OF ORDER sign on it.
The desk clerk was another relic, half asleep in a chair, three empty beer bottles beside him. I walked up and said, "You have a Greta Service here?"
He looked at me through half-opened eyes and shook his head. "Nobody by that name."
"You sure?"
"I said so, didn't I?"
Then I remembered the name on the bottom of the card and said, "How about Howell?"
He turned partly around, glanced at a chart pinned to the wall and nodded. "Second floor, two-oh-nine." He reached for the phone.
"Forget it," I told him.
For just a second he started to get irritated, then he took one hell of a good look at me, seemed to shrink back a little, made a motion with his shoulders and settled back into the chair. I took Dulcie's arm and steered her toward the stairs.
I knocked on the door twice before I heard a muffled sound from inside. When I knocked again a sleepy voice said, "All right, all right, don't knock the door down." I heard a chair being kicked, a soft curse, then a stripe of light showed under the door. The chain slid back, the lock clicked and the door swung open.