You came to realize very quickly that the best things in life were not only not free, but were usually the most expensive things in life; and that the rich, far from being miserable neurotics, were pleasant, contented people who led charming, satisfying lives. And so you worked to make some money but in the process became a fouled-up moral cripple. It was all very confusing.
The thing was, Jake decided, that he probably was made to be a poor newspaperman, instead of a rich philosopher. At any rate, he realized, the days ahead would not be rosy sequences from a grade B picture.
But he wasn’t worried too much about it now.
He was worried about murder. He had a conviction that he could explain the bewildering and violent events that had begun with the murder of May Laval. However, a conviction wasn’t enough. He had to marshal his guesses into a concrete, unassailable pattern of evidence; he had to put his conviction into an equation that would solve the identity of a clever murderer. Or possibly two.
That was enough to worry about at the moment.
The reception room of the agency was darkened, and the thick carpet muffled their footsteps as they walked across the floor and into the corridor that led to Jake’s office. From where they stood they saw a narrow beam of light coming from the open door of the art department; but they heard no sound and the floor was apparently deserted.
“I’m scared,” Sheila said. Her voice was matter-of-fact, but Jake felt her hand tighten on his arm.
“Don’t feel superior about it,” he said. “So am I. Let’s go.”
They walked down the dark corridor, keeping close together and unconsciously moving quietly and cautiously.
Inside his office Jake snapped on the overhead lights, and then walked into Toni’s office and did the same.
He went behind Toni’s desk and looked through the open door to his own office. Sheila said, “She could see your desk, all right. Maybe Niccolo wasn’t lying, Jake.”
“Something’s wrong,” Jake said. “Look, sit down in Toni’s chair and put your feet on the desk.”
“What’s your idea?”
“I’m not sure.”
He went into his office and sat behind the desk. Sheila called out from Toni’s office, “Okay, I’m set.”
Jake turned his head and saw Sheila’s slim ankles crossed on the top of Toni’s desk. She was wearing black suede pumps with tiny bows over the instep. He could also see her knees where the skirt had pulled up.
He stood up and walked back to Toni’s office. Sheila said, “What’s wrong, Jake?”
“Somebody is lying, if only on a technicality,” he said. He lit a cigarette with an automatic gesture. “I’ve used that office for two years and I know what I’m likely to see when I look around. One of the familiar sights was Toni’s ankles. But that was all I saw. Now under the same circumstances I get a view of your legs that is quite a bit more revealing.”
Sheila came around to his side. “What does it mean, though?”
Jake didn’t answer her; instead he got down on his knees and inspected the legs of the desk. And he found what he had expected to find. The depressions made in the carpet by the legs of the desk were clearly visible; and they were about a foot behind the present position of the desk’s legs.
“Somebody moved the desk forward enough to make Niccolo’s story check,” he said.
“Who?” Sheila asked.
Jake sighed and shook his head. “Hard to say. Let’s review the facts. Niccolo made a compromising statement to me this afternoon. He indicated that he knew I’d received the diary. Logically, the only person who would know that would be the person who sent it to me. Right?”
“I knew you received the diary,” Sheila said. “Don’t forget that, Jake.”
“I’m passing you by for the moment,” he said. “Getting back to the facts; Niccolo had a plausible explanation for his information. Toni told him about it, he said. However, he said she saw me while she was sitting at her desk. That’s impossible. However, it now appears that such a thing is possible, because Toni’s desk was moved, and its present position makes Niccolo’s story a thing of pristine beauty.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We’re going calling,” Jake said. “I’ve always wanted to see Toni in her native environment. This seems like a good chance. Come on.”
Toni Ryerson lived on the near North Side in the fifteen hundred block of Clark Street. The neighborhood had been deteriorating for decades but the progress had been halted, or rather rerouted, during the war, by an influx of single girls who had come from smaller cities to work in Chicago; and by the colony of homosexuals, artists, writers, and draft evaders, which had sprung up in the area at the same time, apparently attracted by its flavor of fin de siècle decay, and the low rent. Now the district boasted a number of studios with slanted windows blinking toward the north, and pizzeria bars and sidewalk cafés.
Jake paid off their cab and stepped out into the snow before Toni’s address, a three story brownstone apartment building.
“Why should she live in a place like this?” Sheila asked as they went up to the entrance.
“Who knows?” Jake shrugged, looking for Toni’s name in the hallway. “She probably thinks it’s a slice of raw, pulsing life, and she wants to do a little pulsing. Actually she wants a suburban home with an incinerator and mortgage, and a husband who cheats on her at American Legion conventions.”
“Ah, bitter,” Sheila sighed. “Do you really believe you can figure out human motivations so accurately?”
Jake found Toni’s name halfway down the metal rack and punched the adjacent button. Then he smiled at Sheila. “In a word, no. I don’t know what Toni wants, or anybody else, for that matter. I was guessing, and indulging my craving for epigrammatic inanities.” He kissed her hard and quickly on the mouth. “I know what I want, however.”
The buzzer sounded; and Jake pushed open the door and followed Sheila up the uncarpeted steps. A door opened above them and Toni’s voice called, “Who is it?”
Jake said, “Jake and Sheila. Can we see you a minute?”
“Why, sure,” Toni said cheerfully.
She waited for them on the third floor landing. They exchanged hellos and followed Toni into her one-room apartment, where Stravinsky was coming from a record player and one glaring, unshaded bulb hung from the ceiling.
“How about a drink?” Toni said.
Jake said, “No thanks. I want to talk to you a moment.”
“Why, sure,” Toni said again. She looked puzzled. “Let’s sit down, anyway.”
There were several wooden chairs in the room, surrounding an immense table on which a portable typewriter was almost lost in a clutter of books and manuscript.
Toni pulled a chair from the table and sat down, with her legs crossed, tailor fashion.
Jake sat on the edge of her work table. “Here’s the reason for the visit, Toni,” he said. “Yesterday somebody sent me May Laval’s diary. Niccolo has told me that you were at your desk when I got it, and recognized the diary from the descriptions of it in the papers. Is that right?”
Toni looked guilty. “Yes, I saw it, Jake.”
“And you told Niccolo about it?”
“I–I didn’t know I was doing wrong. I’ve just got a big mouth, I guess.”
“There’s no reason you shouldn’t have told Dean about it,” Jake said. “It was just one of those things, and you had a perfect right to mention it to anyone.”