My office smelled of dust and stale cigarette smoke. I went over and opened the window behind my desk a little, letting in the traffic noise from Taylor Street below. Then I knelt down gingerly by the steam radiator and fiddled with the controls and listened to the pipes banging somewhere in the bowels of the building.
A hot plate rested on the top of the single metal file cabinet, and I went there and lifted the lid on the coffee pot sitting on it and looked inside. A faint greenish substance had gathered around the edges of the coffee I had made three mornings ago. I carried the pot into the alcove on the right-hand side of the single room, washed it out in the sink, and made some fresh. After I had plugged in the hot plate, I sat behind the desk in my overcoat, listening to the ringing knock of the radiator, waiting for it to warm up and for the coffee to boil. The clock on the wall above the file cabinet read 10:37.
I picked up the phone and called my answering service. There were no messages from anyone I cared to call back. I thanked the girl and told her I would be in for a while.
The coffee began bubbling. I got up again and poured some into a clean cup and carried it back to the desk. I stared at the steam rising in faint curling wisps and wondered where I was going to start today.
Martinetti had not called, and that meant there were still no further developments. I did not particularly care for the idea of driving down to Hillsborough and facing the pall of gloom that would be the Martinetti household, but that seemed to be the only logical way of approaching an investigation. I could talk to each of the people there, do a little circumspect probing …
The sound of the knob turning and the door being pushed open caught and held my attention, and I watched with some surprise the harried form of Dean Proxmire step into the office.
He wore a belted tan trenchcoat, stylish and nicely cut, and there was some color in his hollowed cheeks from the stinging wind. His lips were pursed into a thin horizontal line, and his deeply hooded eyes told me that he was nervous and very tired, and perhaps just a little unsure of himself. He shut the door, looked at me, looked away, and let his gaze flicker over the office: the pale papered walls and the pebbled-brown asphalt tile floor; the old leather couch outside the low rail divider, set beneath a framed photograph of my license and a photograph of my graduating class at the Police Academy; three chairs and a small table with a dusty glass ashtray on it and some magazines that nobody had ever read; the file cabinet, of a somber gray metal, sharing the wall beyond the alcove with the steam radiator and a four-color calendar featuring a sunset on bucolic meadows; the second-hand oak desk with its cluttered surface and the coffee cup sitting in the middle of the memo blotter and me behind it watching him steadily.
Proxmire took it all in very slowly, and what he saw seemed to give him some assurance. He put his eyes on my face and left them there and walked purposefully through the gate in the divider and over in front of the desk. I got up on my feet because I did not want him talking down to me in any way. I said, “Good morning, Mr. Proxmire.”
“Is it?” he said stiffly.
I let that pass. “What can I do for you?”
“I understand you’ve consented to do some investigating for Mr. Martinetti.”
I shrugged noncommittally.
“Well, I should think after what happened to you, you’d want no more part in this business,” he said. “I should think you’d be damned glad to have gotten out of it with your life.”
“Which means what, Mr. Proxmire?”
“Just what I said.”
“I take it you don’t like the idea of my continuing on the case in an investigative capacity.”
“Frankly, I don’t like it at all.”
“Why?”
“Would you like the flat truth?”
“Of course.”
“I have my doubts as to your competency,” Proxmire said. The belligerence in his voice seemed a little forced.
“Is that right? Would you mind telling me the reason?”
“That should be obvious.”
“Martinetti doesn’t blame me for what happened two nights ago.”
“Listen,” Proxmire said, “I don’t like the idea of someone like you snooping around. God knows, we’ve got enough problems just now, what with no word on Gary …”
“We, Mr. Proxmire?”
His cheeks seemed to gain more color. “The Martinettis, I meant.”
I said, “And just what did you mean by ‘snooping around’?”
“You know perfectly well what I meant,” Proxmire said. “Martinetti has some damn-fool notion that someone who was in his house the day of the ransom delivery is responsible for what happened to you, for murdering the kidnapper, Lockridge. And he wants you to check up on us.”
“You don’t care for that theory, I take it?”
“No, I don’t!” Proxmire said emphatically. “It’s plainly ridiculous. The District Attorney’s people seem to feel it was a partner of this Lockridge, and that’s what I think too.”
“What harm can it do to check all the possibilities?”
“It’s a waste of time and money.”
“My time and Mr. Martinetti’s money,” I said. “Why should that bother you so much?”
“Damn it-”
“Or are you worried about what an investigation might turn up? Do you have something to hide, Mr. Proxmire?”
A tic had gotten up under his left eye, and it made the lower lid jump spasmodically. He said, too quickly, “Of course not! What would I have to hide?”
I shrugged. “I couldn’t say.”
“Are you insinuating I had something to do with what happened?”
“I’m not insinuating anything at all,” I said. “You came to me, Mr. Proxmire, remember that.”
“Listen here, I won’t have you asking a lot of personal questions and upsetting everyone at a time like this! Mrs. Martinetti is on the brink of total collapse …” He broke off, as if he had realized that he might be telling me just a little too much in an indirect way. I could hear the click of his teeth as he clamped his mouth tightly shut.
I said quietly, “I don’t have any intention of upsetting anyone. And the only things I’m interested in are those that might pertain to the chain of events involving the kidnapping. Whatever else I might know or happen to find out is irrelevent to the job I was hired for; I don’t intend to make use of it in any way at all.”
We stood there staring at one another. The tic under Proxmire’s eye caused him to avert his head finally, and as soon as he did that he turned around and went over to the door. He looked back at me just before he went out, and there were a plethora of emotions mirrored on the gaunt planes of his face. He was a man under a severe strain-not the kind of strain Martinetti was under, perhaps, but one which could be just as damaging internally. I listened to his footsteps retreating along the hallway outside.
I sat down again. It was a nice morning so far: first Channing, and now Proxmire, who did not want me doing any specific investigating for Martinetti. One because he stood to lose three hundred thousand dollars of his money and needed someone to blame for it, and the other because he was having an affair with, and was apparently in love with, Louis Martinetti’s wife. Or were the motivations even deeper than that? Was Proxmire, or maybe Channing, afraid I would discover something else …?
Well, that kind of speculation was useless at this point. I drank some more coffee and thought that I wanted a cigarette; but there were none in the office, and I would have to go downstairs and over to the luncheonette to get a package. I did not feel like doing that. It was probably just as well, because I had the habit licked by two days now, and the first couple were always the hardest, wasn’t that what they always told you?
The telephone rang.
I looked at it and wondered if it was a reporter, and thought that if it was I would hang up on him. I caught up the receiver and gave my name, and a very small, very timorous, almost inaudible feminine voice said haltingly, “Are … are you the detective who is involved with the Martinetti kidnapping?”