Considering, as I emerged to the sidewalk, how little I did know, next to nothing, that it was either go home and sit on it or learn something somehow, and that the Gazette building was only a five-minute walk, I turned east at 44th Street. Lon Cohen’s room is on the twentieth floor, two doors down the hall from the corner office of the publisher. When I walked in, having been announced, he was at one of the three phones on his desk, and I sat. When he hung up he swiveled and said, “No welcome. If you were a real pal you would have told me this morning and we could have had a photographer there.”
“Next time.” I crossed my legs to show that we had all day. “You will now please tell me whose body I helped discover and go on from there. I’ve got amnesia.”
“The twilight edition will be on the stands in half an hour and costs a dime.”
“Sure, but I want it all, not only what’s fit to print.” Before I left, nearly an hour later, he had two journalists up from downstairs. The crop that can be brought in on a hot one, including pictures, in less than five hours, makes you proud to be an American. For instance, there was a photo of Mrs. Martin Kirk, then Miss Bonny Sommers, in a bikini on a beach in 1958.
I’ll stick to the essentials. Bonny Sommers had been a secretary in a prominent firm of architects, and a year ago, at the age of twenty-five, she had married one of its not-yet-prominent young men, Martin Kirk, age thirty-three. There were contractions as to how soon it had started to sour, but none on the fact that Kirk had moved out two weeks ago, to a hotel room. If he had developed a conflicting interest, its object hadn’t been spotted, but efforts to find and identify it were in process. As for Bonny, it was established that she was inclined to experiments, but the details needed further inquiry and were getting it. Four names were mentioned in that connection. One of them was James Neville Vance, and another was Paul Fougere, the tenant, with his wife, of the ground floor of Vance’s house. Fougere was an electronics technician and vice-president of Audivideo, Inc.
As for today, Kirk had phoned police headquarters a little before noon, saying that he had dialed his wife’s number six times in eighteen hours and got no answer; that he had gone to the house around eleven o’clock, got no response to his ring from the vestibule, used his key to get in, pushed the button at the apartment door repeatedly and heard the bell, without result, and departed without entering; and that he wanted the police to take a look. He had been asked to be there to let a cop use his key but had declined.
Bonny Kirk had last been seen alive, to present knowledge, by a man from a package store who had delivered a bottle of vodka to her at the apartment door, and been paid by her, a little before one o’clock Monday afternoon. The unopened vodka bottle, found under the couch with blood on it, had been used to smash Bonny Kirk’s skull sometime between one P.M. and eight P.M. Monday, the latter limit having been supplied by the medical examiner.
Among those who had been summoned or escorted to the DA’s office were Martin Kirk, James Neville Vance, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Fougere, and Bert Odom, the janitor. Presumably some of them, perhaps all, were still there.
For all that and a lot more I’m leaving out I didn’t owe Lon anything, since on our give-and-take record to date I had a credit balance, and I didn’t mention the necktie. Of course he wanted to know who Wolfe’s client was and what about Vance, and it never hurts to have Wolfe’s name in the paper, not to mention mine, but since the whole point was that Wolfe was short on clients I decided to save it. Naturally he didn’t believe it, that Wolfe had no client, and when I got up to go he said, “No welcome and no fare you well either.”
I took a taxi because Wolfe likes to find me in the office when he comes down from the plant rooms at six o’clock, and he pays me and I had spent the day on personal chores, but with the traffic at that hour I might as well have walked, and it was ten past six when the hackie finally made it. As I was climbing out, a car I recognized pulled up just behind, and as I stood a man I also recognized got out of it — a big solid specimen with a big red face topped by an old felt hat even on a hot August day. As he approached I greeted him, “I’ll be damned. You yourself?”
Ignoring me, he called to my hackie, “Where did you get this fare?” Apparently the hackie recognized Inspector Cramer of Homicide South, for he called back, “Forty-second and Lexington, Inspector.”
“All right, move on.” To me: “We’ll go in.”
I shook my head. “I’ll save you the trouble. Mr. Wolfe has a new book and there’s no point in annoying him. The tie was mailed to me, not him, and he knows nothing about it and doesn’t want to.”
“I’d rather get that from him. Come on.”
“Nothing doing. He’s sore enough as it is, and so am I. I’ve wasted a day. I’ve learned that the spot on the tie is human blood, but what—”
“How did you learn that?”
“I had it tested at a laboratory.”
“You did.” His face got redder. “You left the scene of a crime, withholding information. Then you tampered with evidence. If you think—”
“Nuts. Evidence of what? Even with blood it’s not evidence if it isn’t the same type as the victim’s. As for leaving the scene, I wasn’t concerned and no one told me to stay. As for tampering, it’s still a perfectly good spot with just a few threads gone. I had to know if it was blood because if it wasn’t I was going to keep it, and if a court ordered me to fork it over I would have fought it. I wanted to find out who had sent it to me and why, and I still do. But since it’s blood I couldn’t fight an order.” I got the souvenirs from my pockets. “Here. When you’re through with them I want them back.”
“You do.” He took them and looked them oven “There’s a typewriter in Vance’s place. Did you take a sample from it for comparison?”
“You know damn well I didn’t, since he has told you what I said and did.”
“He could forget. Is this the tie you got in the mail this morning and is this the envelope it came in?”
“Yes. Now that’s an idea. I could have got another set from Vance. I wish I’d thought of it.”
“You could have. I know you. I’m taking you down, but we’ll go in first. I want to ask Wolfe a question.”
“I’m not going in, and one will get you ten you won’t get in. He’s not interested and doesn’t intend to be. I could come down after dinner. We’re having lobsters, simmered in white wine with tarragon, and a white wine sauce with the tomalley and coral—”
“I’m taking you.” He aimed a thumb at the car, “Get in.”
4
I got home well after midnight and before going up two flights to bed hit the refrigerator for leftover lobster and a glass of milk, to remove both hunger and the taste of the excuse for bread and stringy corned beef I had been supplied with at the DA’s office.
Since my connection with their homicide had been short and simple, the twenty seconds I had spent in the Kirk apartment, and my connection with Vance hadn’t been a lot longer, an hour of me should have been more than enough, including typing the statement for me to sign, and it wasn’t until after nine o’clock that I realized, from a question by Assistant DA Mandel, what the idea was. They actually thought that the tie thing might be some kind of dodge that I had been in on, and they were keeping me until they got a report on the stain. So I cooled down and took it easy, got on speaking terms with a dick who was put in a room with me to see that I didn’t jump out a window, got him to produce a deck for some friendly gin, and in two hours managed to lose $4.70. I called time at that point and paid him because he was getting sleepy and it would have been next to impossible to keep him ahead.