So Merriweather was still the last one to see Brody dead. Unless...
Engel said, “Is there anybody else around when you’re doing all this? People drop in to watch or anything?”
“Oh, no.” Brock gave the collegiate smile again. “It isn’t the sort of operation to draw a crowd,” he said. “Besides, it’s illegal to have anyone present at the embalming, against the law. Oh, I think members of the family could be there, but they never are.”
It was a dead end. Engel got to his feet and said, “Well, thanks. You’ve been a big help.”
“You want a drink before you go?” Brock patted his own trim belly, said, “Something to fill the inner man, eh?”
Cavity fluid. Engel said, “No, thanks,” and then, remembering Callaghan, added, “Not on duty.”
“Oh, right, forgot about that. Well, if there’s anything else, any time at all, I’ll be more than glad to help.”
“That’s fine. Fine.”
Brock walked Engel to the door, smiled one last time, and shut the door as Engel walked away down the hall to the stairs.
Going down the stairs, it seemed to Engel he was wasting his time, going at this whole thing the wrong way. Instead of starting with Merriweather, and going through Brock to... well, to wherever, instead of doing that he should start at the other end, with Charlie Brody himself. He should talk to Brody’s wife, and he should talk to Brody’s immediate boss Fred Harwell, and he should talk to anybody else who might have known about the heroin in Brody’s suit. Even if Merriweather’s murder were connected with Charlie Brody’s disappearance — and though he still believed it was, because otherwise the coincidence was just too pat, he nevertheless realized coincidence does happen sometimes and he could yet be wrong — but even if there were a connection, he was still going at things the wrong way. He hadn’t fully realized it up to now, but now that he’d come to a dead end with Brock, he could see just how he’d been going wrong.
The trouble was, in the game of cops and robbers he just wasn’t set up to be a cop. His sympathies, his interests, his training and his inclination were all on the other side. No wonder he was going at things backward, no wonder he was coming to dead ends.
Thinking these things, he came out to the street, looked right and left, and went off to the right, toward Tenth Avenue, which was closer. There he stood, on the corner, waiting for a cab.
It took a few minutes, Tenth Avenue being a bit off the beaten path. He stood there, gradually getting impatient, and finally decided to walk down to Ninth. He’d taken half a dozen paces from the corner when a white open Mercedes-Benz 190SL rolled by, with Margo Kane, the mystery woman, at the wheel. She had replaced her black gown with white stretch pants and a bulky orange sweater, and she was looking so hard for a parking space along the curb that she didn’t notice Engel at all.
Of course there were no parking spaces, there never are in New York. Ahead of Engel, on the other side of the street, there was a cleared area along the curb by a fire hydrant, and this is where Margo Kane parked, turning the wheel with casual graceful abandon. She got out of the car — her sandals were lime-green, the same color as Brock’s polo shirt — tripped across the street on dancing feet, and went into Brock’s building.
Engel stood on the sidewalk, looking toward the doorway into which she had disappeared. “Oh ho,” he said. Not that he knew what this new development meant, if anything, not that he could immediately connect it up with the disappearance of Charlie Brody, but just that it was interesting. So interesting, in fact, that he said it a second time: “Oh ho.”
13
There was another note from Dolly, printed with lipstick on another résumé and attached with another false fingernaiclass="underline"
Honey?
Where are you?
Dont you want to see me?
Don’t you remember?
Engel remembered. He looked at the note sadly, shook his head, took it down from the door, and went into the apartment. He made himself a Scotch and water without the water, sat down by the telephone, and started making his calls.
First to Archie Freihofer, who ran the girl part of the organization. When he got hold of Archie, Engel identified himself and said, “I want to see Charlie Brady’s wife.”
“What, Bobbi?”
“That’s it. Bobbi.”
“Al, I’m sorry. We decided, all things considered, the little lady oughta have a few days to herself before she comes back on active duty. It’ll be the first of the week before she starts to work, and then to be truthful with you there’s a waiting list as long as your arm. A lot of the boys have chosen to decide, it seems to me, to make a really beautiful gesture of affection and respect for Charlie Brody and at the same time see to it a little extra cash against emergencies goes into the little lady’s stocking.”
There was no interrupting Archie once he got talking. The only thing to do was wait till he decided to stop again, even if only to take a breath. At this point, spying a little bit of silence coming up after the word “stocking,” Engel quickly threw some words of his own into the breach, saying, “No, Archie, that isn’t what I want. I’m talking about business.”
“So what have I been talking about, a game Scrabble?”
“I want to talk to Mrs. Brody,” Engel said.
Archie said, “Al, she’s using her professional name again. Bobbi Bounds.”
“Whatever name she’s using, I want to talk to her. Official business. You can check with Nick Rovito.”
“Check? I take your word for it, what do you think? You want to go see her, or you want her to come see you?”
“I’ll go see her. Is she living at the same place where she lived with Brody?”
“No, she’s moved in with a couple other girls, you know how they are they like to be with friends that understand the situation, you know?”
“What about the apartment?”
“The old one? Charlie’s? I wouldn’t know.”
“Give me her phone number, Archie. Maybe we can save time, I can meet her at the old apartment.”
“Hang on, I’ll look it up.”
Engel hung on. Archie came back a minute later, gave him the number, and Engel thanked him and broke the connection. Then he dialed the number Archie had just given him.
It was answered on the third ring by a female voice harsh with suspicion: “Yeah?”
“Is Bobbi there?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Al Engel. I’m calling for Nick Rovito, on urgent business connected with her late husband.”
“Hang on.”
Again he hung on, and the next voice he heard belonged to Bobbi Bounds, saying, “Mr. Engel?”
“I rode in the car with you yesterday,” Engel reminded her. “Up front.”
“Yes, sure, I know who you are.”
The tone of respect in her voice surprised him, till he remembered just how far down in the pecking order of the organization Charlie Brody had been. The grand send-off had tended to make him forget that.
He said, “Has everything been cleared out of the old apartment yet?”
“No, not yet. I’ve taken some of my own things, but Charlie’s stuff is still all there.”
“I want to meet you there, this afternoon. Are you free?”
“Sure, I guess so.”
Engel looked at his watch and it was four-thirty. “At six o’clock,” he said.
“Is there something wrong, Mr. Engel?”
“Not exactly. A little problem we got to get straightened out, that’s all.”