“Well, Mrs. Morley! This is a surprise Do you always let yourself in? If I’d known you were coming I would have left the door off the latch.”
“Please don’t be boring about the door, Mr. C. Those old spring locks wouldn’t keep the cat out. You didn’t actually want me to stand waiting in the hall, did you? With the Water Music from your bathroom? Besides, this old credit card’s expired.” She held up a mangled plastic card and dropped it with a dramatic gesture into the waste-paper basket. I walked around her, feeling that if I could recapture my desk, I could get the interview on a firm footing according to all the rules on the subject. I already had a feeling that Pia Morley didn’t necessarily bend where the rules said “fold.” Once I’d claimed my chair, I waved her to one of the others on the client’s side of the desk. She took it, composing her skirt under her as she sat. I offered her a cigarette and instead of taking out her own, she took one of mine. She wasn’t given to showing her independence in small ways. I leaned across towards her with a lighted match. She steadied my hand and bent to the flame. She was wearing a pink blouse, cut like a man’s shirt, that almost failed to contain her. A dim outline of lace appeared through the broadcloth and gave an electric jab to my innards. She wore her hair tied up at the back of her head, but there was enough left over to frame her face provocatively. Her eyes had been made up lightly and her lips parted in a smile that showed straight white teeth. There was no missing the long curve of her neck or the diamond studs in her earlobes.
“To what do I owe the honour?” I asked. She crossed her legs grandly without bothering to check the horizon of her hemline.
“I’m trying to make up my mind whether or not I’m going to like you,” she said, missing my ashtray by inches and not worrying about it. “You’ve been lifting up a lot of stones in the last two days, Mr. C.”
“Let me remind you now that it was you who spoke of lifting up stones first. Sure I have. I’m working on a case. That’s no secret. I’m trying to find Larry Geller and see if I can get him to give back the money he’s taken.”
“You know the police are doing the same thing?”
“Sure. We’re all in this together. Only they have more patience than I have. They can afford to wait until Geller makes his move and then grab him. By ‘grab him’ they mean get extradition proceedings underway. When I hope to grab somebody, it’s a little more physical than that.”
“You don’t look like a muscle man. You surprise me, Mr. C. I can’t actually imagine you manhandling people. You don’t seem the type.”
“Well, between the two of us, I haven’t had to manhandle too many lately. I may be out of practice. But I do what I have to do. Mostly talk to people. Sometimes it works.”
“You talked to Sid and Nathan.”
“No law against that, Mrs. Morley. I’m entitled.”
“You’ve been asking questions about me. Me and Sid.” I nodded my admission, and she cocked her head to one side and flashed her eyelashes at me. “I don’t like to have questions asked behind my back, Mr. C. I don’t like it. I don’t know anything about Larry Geller you can’t read on the front page of tonight’s Beacon. So, I want out, please. I said ‘please,’ remember. I always start by saying ‘please.’”
“And when that doesn’t work?”
“But it’s going to work, Mr. C. Because you’re one smart detective, aren’t you?”
“Never top of my class.”
“But you’ve learned so much since then.”
“And it’s built all this.” She looked at the hanging fluorescent fixtures and then at the light coming dustily through the Venetian blinds. She inclined her head as though acknowledging a point. I shrugged it off. A tendril of brown hair fell over her forehead and I wondered how she’d managed that. She leaned over my bleached oak desk trying to look tougher than she could in a pink button-down shirt with lace showing through.
“Mr. C. I’m asking you to lay off Sid and me. Sid’s already told you everything he knows. Everything he’s willing to tell, anyway. He’s not going to rat on his brother. You’ve got sense. Would you spill your guts to me about your brother?” I thought of my brother Sam. I could see him in his operating-room greens worrying about a parking ticket.
“You’ve made your point, Mrs. Morley. And you know I’m not lifting stones because I like lifting stones. It’s all part of a job I’m being paid to do. With me around it means the stage isn’t cluttered up with the aggrieved and the hard done by. I’ve got the blessing of the whole community. I’m sanctioned.” She looked at me evenly while taking a pull at the cigarette. She slowly let the smoke out.
“Supposing, just supposing there’s more in it for you to let sleeping stones lie? What then?” I stroked my chin where the beard was beginning to show through at the end of the day. I pushed my swivel chair back from the desk and rocked on the point of equilibrium and thought. She watched me like she had put a bunch of chips down on twenty-two black and the wheel was still going around. And I watched the way the lace came into focus under the broadcloth every time she breathed in.
“Mrs. Morley …”
“Don’t call me that. Call me Pia. My friends call me Pia.”
“Look, you’re not making me an offer to look the other way because of the tricks your boy-friend’s brother has been playing. You have reasons of your own.”
She tried not to let on I’d hit a nerve. That was one way of looking at it. The other way was to admit that I may have been miles from the truth. She extinguished her cigarette butt in the ashtray. Her nails were pink, like her shirt. “You have a wild imagination, Mr. C. I can’t think where you get your notions from. I want you to be my friend, Mr. C. Nobody tells me anything. Whenever I ask Sid, he just grins or chews on his cigar. He never tells me anything. Except that he loves me I mean. I can get him to tell me that, because I’m so back and forth with him about us that it’s a joke. He doesn’t think it’s funny, but what can I do about it? That’s the way I am. That’s the way I’ve always been.” She reached on the floor for the taupe bag she’d brought in with her and began to make signs of leaving. I got up, and started coming round the desk.
“You must pick my lock again sometime.” She ignored that, and pushed herself out of the chair.
“Now, I’ve stayed too long. I don’t want to get a ticket.”
“I’ll bet you have friends who would take care of a little thing like that.”
“Yes, I have friends, Mr. C. I hope that you’ll be a friend. At a time like this friends are very comforting, don’t you think?” She gave me the full force of her pouting smile, held it for a second longer than it took to make its point. She said goodbye and left me standing in the middle of my office wondering where she’d gone. She had that sort of presence that I find confusing. I walked over to the door and shut it, then came slowly back to my desk. Pia Morley had left a lingering fragrance behind her. I hadn’t noticed it when she was two feet away from me. Nice, I thought, very nice.
NINE
I was asleep, having one of those amorphous dreams where it isn’t unusual to find Napoleon and Marilyn Monroe on the same football field marking exam papers or folding laundry. At first I thought it was the alarm clock, perched on the usual pile of paperbacks beside the bed, but the dial told me it was only two in the morning. It had to be the phone, and it rang again to prove my point.
“Yes?”
“Cooperman? It’s Nathan. Nathan Geller.”
“I know which Nathan. What can I do for you at two in the morning?”
“Is it that late? I’ve been working. I lose track. Anyway, what I’m calling about is this: I’ve heard from Larry.”
“Why are you telling me? I’m practically a perfect stranger.”