“I’d like to see Lieutenant Demeter,” I said.
“Your name?”
“Philip St. Ives.”
“How do you spell it?”
I spelled it for him, he wrote it down, and disappeared. In a few moments he was back. He opened the door at his right and motioned me through. “This way,” he said. I followed him into a room that contained some desks, chairs, and telephones. He pointed to a door at the far end of the room. “Right through there,” he said. I went through that door into a smaller room that contained two gray metal desks, some matching chairs, and two men in shirt sleeves who sat behind the desks. There was one window, but the Venetian blind was lowered and I couldn’t tell whether they had a view of the Capitol.
“Lieutenant Demeter?” I said.
The older of the two men looked up from a sheet of paper he was reading. He was in no hurry. “I’m Demeter,” he said. “What’s your problem?”
“I’m Philip St. Ives,” I said. “I’ve been hired by the Coulter Museum to buy the shield back from whoever stole it.”
Demeter carefully put the paper he had been reading in the exact center of his desk, leaned back in his chair, rested his hands on its arms, and inspected me with small, black beanlike eyes that darted around my face until they finally decided to settle on my nose. He was built like a stubby tube, I noticed, as thick as he was wide. Meaty shoulders sloped abruptly from the size-seventeen neck that supported a big-jawed head which had a nice crop of black hair that looked as if it had been wet-combed in a vain attempt to get a few of the curls out. His jumbo nose, all angles and flaring, hairy nostrils, jutted out over a wide mouth with thin red lips. He also had a carefully trimmed mustache that would have done credit to Ronald Colman if one could remember back that far. Lieutenant Demeter could; he was at least forty; maybe even forty-five.
“You look hot,” he said. “You’re sweating. Take a chair.”
I took a chair and, still looking at me, or at least at my nose, he said, “Call the Wingo woman at the Coulter Museum. See if she’s got a St. what?”
“Ives,” I said.
“See if she’s got a St. Ives working for her.”
The other man in shirt sleeves picked up his phone and dialed a number. He was younger than Demeter, somewhere in his early thirties, and he also had curly hair, but it was blond, and his eyes were blue. He didn’t wear a mustache under his snub nose, which was peeling a little from sunburn, so I decided that Demeter might not be his idol.
When the younger man got through dialing, he said, “This is Sergeant Fastnaught, Mrs. Wingo. We have a party here who says he’s been hired by the museum in connection with the stolen shield.” He paused. “What’s your first name, mister?” he said to me.
“Philip.”
“That’s right,” Fastnaught said into the phone. “Philip St. Ives… I see… thank you, Mrs. Wingo.” He hung up the phone, leaned back in his chair, and locked his hands behind his head. “She said that they hired him this afternoon.”
Demeter nodded, still fascinated by my nose. “We get a lot of nuts in here,” he said. “You got any identification?”
I took out my wallet and handed over a New York driver’s license, which he read all the way through before handing it back.
“He’s who he says he is,” Demeter said to Sergeant Fastnaught, shifting his black eyes away from my nose for the first time. Fastnaught shrugged and Demeter resumed his inspection; this time he focused on the knot in my tie. “They’re going to try to buy it back, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re the money man?”
“I just carry it.”
“How come you?”
I got up from my chair and started toward the door. “Forget it,” I said.
“Just hold on, St. Ives,” Demeter said. “Don’t be so goddamned sensitive.”
I turned at the door. “You knew who I was when I walked in the door. The Wingo woman told you about me yesterday or the day before. But you’ve got to go through your act. The sergeant over there even makes like he’s calling Frances Wingo. The only thing wrong with that is her prefix begins with 23 and he dialed 67 or 78 or something. What did he call, the weather or the time?”
Sergeant Fastnaught grinned at me. “The weather. It’s a hundred and two outside.”
“I know,” I said.
“All right, St. Ives,” Demeter said. “You can jump down off of your high horse now. You want us to apologize? I’m sorry and Sergeant Fastnaught is sorry, aren’t you, Fastnaught?”
“Extremely,” Fastnaught said.
“It’s just that we don’t get many big-time go-betweens from New York,” Demeter said, “and we sort of like to see how they tick. In fact, I don’t think we ever had a big-time go-between from New York in here before, have we, Fastnaught?”
“Never before,” Fastnaught said. “Not from New York. Or from any place else for that matter.”
“So, Mr. St. Ives,” Demeter said, folding his arms across his chest, “what can we do to make your stay in Washington as pleasant as possible?” His voice dropped from a mellow baritone, to a harsh bass. “What’re you getting, your usual ten percent?”
“That’s right.”
“That would be twenty-five thousand,” Demeter said.
“Less expenses,” I said. “I pay my own.”
“Twenty-five thousand,” Demeter said, a little dreamily this time. “Fastnaught and I together hardly make that much in a whole year.”
“And on top of that you have to buy your own bullets,” I said.
Demeter unfolded his arms and leaned across his gray metal desk toward me. “Today I called a guy I know in New York about you,” he said. “You know what he told me?”
“No, but something sweet, I hope. You mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead. Light up. Just be sure you throw the ashes and the butt on the floor. You got to remember this is a police station. This guy in New York I talked to. He said that you’re okay in the go-between trade as long as everybody acts like at gentleman. You know. Nice. He said he didn’t know how you’d be if things got, well, you know, a little crude. He said you’d never run into one like that.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I haven’t.”
“That’s what my friend in New York said. He also said that you’re cautious.”
“I thought he said careful,” Fastnaught said.
“Fastnaught here was listening in,” Demeter said. “Maybe he did say careful, but I thought he said cautious.”
“I’m both,” I said.
“My friend said you handle these go-between deals just like you play poker. Cautious.”
“Careful,” Fastnaught said.
“What else did Ogden have to say?” I asked.
“Nothing much; just to tell you hello.”
“You going to handle this one in a carefully cautious manner?” Fastnaught said.
“That’s right.”
“Uh-huh,” Demeter said, nodding his big head in a satisfied manner. “Fastnaught and I were hoping you would because whoever stole that shield, what’s it called, the shield of—”
“Komporeen,” Fastnaught said.
“Yeah, that’s right. Komporeen. Sounds like something you’d see about midnight with Maureen O’Sullivan, doesn’t it? Well, anyway, Mr. St. Ives, whoever stole the shield of Komporeen might turn out to be just a little crude. You’ve heard about the dead spade, haven’t you?”