She said she didn’t care for cocktails but loved wine, which of course got her an approving glance from Vukcic, who had spotted me entering and had himself escorted us upstairs-honoring not me, but his old friend Wolfe. Then she evened up by turning him down flat on Shad Roe Mousse Pocahontas and preferring a steak. I trailed along with her to be sociable. When we had been left to ourselves she lost no time opening up.
“Are you a cop, Mr. Truett?” I grinned at her. “Now listen, girlie. I’m easy to pick up, as you discovered, but I’m hard to take apart. You said you had a lot to tell me. Then we’ll see what I have to tell you. What makes you think I might be a cop?” “Because you asked about Waldo Moore, and the only thing about him any more is how he got killed, and that’s a thing for a cop, isn’t it?” “Sure. It’s also a thing for anyone who is interested. Let’s put it that I’m interested. Are you?” “You bet I am.” “In what way?” “I’m just interested. I don’t want to see anybody get away with murder!” There was a quick blaze in her eyes, one flash, up and out. She added, “He was a friend of mine.” “Oh, was he murdered?” “Certainly he was!” “By whom?” “I don’t know.” With sudden accurate movement, but nothing impetuous about it, she covered my hand, there on the tablecloth, with both of hers. Her fingers and palms were warm and firm, and neither too moist nor too dry. “Or maybe I do.
What if I do know?” “Well, considering your character as I know it? I suppose you’d be a good little girl and tell papa.” She kept my hand covered. “I wish,” she said, “you had taken me where we could be alone. I don’t know how to talk to a man until after he has had his arms around me and kissed me. Then I know what he’s like. I could tell you anything then.” I sized her up. If I had let myself get cooped up in a booth at Rusterman’s with a chronic nymph and that was all there was to it, at least I could preserve my dignity by not letting it cost me anything but twenty bucks or so of Wolfe’s money. But I doubted if that was it. My analysis indicated that she simply had her own definite opinion of what constituted human companionship, and I wasn’t prepared to argue with her.
I slid out clear of the table, got upright, drew the curtain across the entrance to the booth, got on my knees on the seat beside her, and enfolded her good. Her lips, like her hands, were warm and firm, and neither too moist nor too dry. She not only had her theory about companionship, she was willing to submit it to a thorough test, which is more than some people will do with their theories. When it was obviously time to go I backed off, went and pulled the curtain open, and got back into my seat. As I did so the waiter entered with our baked grapefruit.
When he had it arranged and left us she asked: “What were you doing in Hester Livsey’s room? What you just did with me?” “There you go again,” I protested. “You said you had a lot to tell me, not to ask me. How do you know Moore was murdered?” She swallowed some grapefruit. “How did I know it would be all right if you held me and kissed me?” “Anybody would know that from looking at me. Thanks for the passing mark, anyway. You couldn’t tell Moore was murdered just by looking at him, with his head smashed flat. Even the cops and the city scientists couldn’t.” Her spoon had stopped in mid-air. “That’s an awful thing to say.” “Sure. Also it’s fairly awful to say a guy was murdered, especially when he was your friend. How good a friend?” She ate some grapefruit, but, as it seemed to me, not to gain time for deciding what to say, but just because she felt like eating. After three more sections had been disposed of she spoke.
“I called him Wally, because I didn’t like Waldo, it sounds too intellectual, and anyway I often use nicknames, I just like to. My husband’s name is Harold, but I call him Harry. Wally and I were very close friends. We still were when he-got murdered. Didn’t I say I could tell you anything?” She spooned for grapefruit.
“Your husband?” I tuned the surprise out. “Bendini?” “No, his name is Anthony, Harold Anthony. I was working at Naylor-Kerr when I was married, nearly three years ago, and I didn’t bother to change my name there. I’m glad I didn’t, because he’ll let me get a divorce sooner or later.
When he got out of the Army he seemed to think he had left me put away in moth balls. Wally would never have been silly enough to think that about me. Neither would you.” “Never,” I declared. “Does your husband work at Naylor-Kerr?” “No, he’s a broker-I mean he works for a broker, on Nassau Street. He’s educated, some college, I can never remember which one. I haven’t been living with him for quite some months, but he isn’t reconciled to losing me, and I don’t seem to be able to persuade him that we’re incompatible, no matter how much I explain that it wasn’t true love, it was just an impulse.” She put her spoon down. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Truett. I really and truly loved Wally Moore. One way I know I did, I have never been jealous of anyone in my life, but I was with him. I was so jealous of all his other girls I would think of ways they might die. You wouldn’t think I could be like that, would you? I wouldn’t.” My reply was noncommittal because the waiter arrived with the steak. After he had served it, with grilled sweet potatoes and endive and the wine, and left the reserve there on our table over a brazier of charcoal, I picked up my knife and fork but was interrupted by Rosa.
“This looks wonderful. I’ll bet that curtain’s stuck so you couldn’t close it again.” I went and closed the curtain. This time she left her seat too, and we had companionship standing. All the time it lasted the warm inviting smell of the steak came floating up to us, with a tang in it that came from the poured Burgundy, and the combination of everything made it a very pleasant experience.
“We mustn’t let it get cold,” I said finally.
She agreed, with good common sense, and I pulled the curtain open for air.
That wrecked most of the remaining barriers. By the time the meal was finished I had enough to fill six pages, single-spaced. She gave me most of it in straight English, but on the two or three points where she merely implied I am supplying my own translation. Beginning with the day he started to work, Waldo Wilmot Moore had gone through the personnel of the stock department like a dolphin through waves. There could be no conservative estimate of the total score he had piled up, because there had been nothing conservative about it. I got the impression that he had tallied up into the dozens, but Rosa was probably exaggerating through loyalty to his memory, and only four names stood out-and two of those were men.
GWYNNE FERRIS, according to Rosa, was a Perfect bitch. Being a born beckoner and promiser, she had tried her routine on Moore, had been caught off balance, and had had her beckoning and promising career abruptly terminated, or at least temporarily interrupted. She was about Rosa’s age, in her early twenties, and was still a stenographer in the reserve pool after nearly two years.
BENJAMIN FRENKEL, a serious and intense young man who was assistant head of a section, and who was generally regarded as the third-best letter dictator in the whole department, had been beckoned and promised by Gwynne Ferris until he didn’t know which way was south. He had hated Waldo Moore with all the seriousness and intensity he had, or even a little extra.