“Wanamaker’s been on the phone practically all morning, calling all kinds of people. And he had me clear the large conference room for him for three o’clock.”
I nodded. “Council of war. Good. That’ll save a lot of footwork. Tell him I’m here, will you?”
“Does it have anything to do with what happened last night, Tim?”
“The council of war? Probably. I’m not sure yet.”
“You can tell me about it tonight. You are coming over for dinner, aren’t you?”
“Six o’clock,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”
“We’ll have steak. And salad.” She got to her feet. “I’ll be right back.”
I watched her walk into the inner office. Last night had been one of the few times I’d ever seen her lose control, let her emotions run away with her. And now she was back to normal again, talking about steaks and salads instead of about running away. If I were ever to get married, which was doubtful, Cathy Evans would be the woman.
She came back a minute later, held the door open, and said, “His Honor will see you now.” She winked at me.
“Golly,” I said. I patted her hip on the way by, and went on into the inner office, a huge, high-ceilinged, dark mahogany square, and behind the magnificent desk sat His Honor, Mayor Daniel Wanamaker, a paunchy type with a jolly baby-kissing face like a shaven Santa Claus and a pair of wire-framed spectacles that glinted in the light. He’d been Mayor of Winston for the last fourteen years, and theoretically he was local head of the Party in Power. But it was only theoretically. He was a figurehead for Jordan Reed, and he knew it as well as anybody.
“Ah, there, Tim,” he said jovially as I came in, but the joviality was a little more forced than usual. Behind the big smile and the glinting spectacles, Dan Wanamaker was a worried man. “I hear you got into a ruckus last night,” he said.
“That’s what I’m here about.”
“Here? You should be talking to Harcum, Tim. After all, he’s the Chief of Police.”
“Sure. I understand you’ve got a meeting set for three o’clock.”
He managed to frown and still keep smiling at the same time, something only politicians can do. “Cathy shouldn’t tell you my little secrets, Tim,” he said.
“It’s no secret,” I told him. “The Citizens for Clean Government are riding into town playing Grant, and we’re supposed to play Richmond. I know about that. I also know that was the cause of the ruckus last night. Somebody’s afraid I’ll play with this reform outfit, and—”
“Now, Tim!” he cried, giving a pretty good imitation of shocked surprise. “You don’t think anybody in Winston, anybody you know from around—”
“Let’s skip that part,” I said. “I do think it, and so do you.”
He shook his head sadly. “Tim—”
“Look, Dan,” I said, interrupting him. “When you were elected Mayor for the very first time, you put me on your staff. Right?”
He nodded emphatically. “Certainly. Four thousand dollars per annum. And you’re worth every cent of it, Tim, I want you to know that.”
“Why? What makes me worth it?”
He blinked. “Well—”
“I’ll tell you why,” I said. “Because I can be relied on to do my work and keep my mouth shut. Because, to take a handy for instance, ten years ago when you played footsie with the repaving bid—”
“Now, Tim, now, now. That was a long time ago, Tim.”
“There’s a lot of stuff more recent. But I want you to think about the fact that I kept my mouth shut ten years ago, and I want you to think about what that means. For the last ten years, you’ve been sitting behind this desk. If I hadn’t kept my mouth shut, you’d have spent the last ten years sitting behind bars, and you know it.”
“Tim, it’s give and take,” he said. “We all watch out for one another. You do me favors, I do you favors, that’s the way of the world.”
“Sure it is. I go along with that one hundred per cent. But what kind of a favor was that ruckus last night?”
He smiled and sweated, sweated and smiled. “Tim,” he said, fatherly, smiling so hard I could hear his jaw creak. “Tim, I swear to you I had nothing to do with that. Why should I have you murdered, Tim? Why should I have anybody murdered?”
“I’m not saying it was you. I’m saying it was somebody in this town. I’m saying it was somebody who’s going to be at that meeting at three o’clock.”
His smile was tacked on with thumbtacks. His gaze drifted away from mine, and his chubby hands worked on the desk. “Tim,” he said, “maybe you’d better come to the meeting yourself. If there’s been a misunderstanding—”
“There sure as hell has been a misunderstanding.”
“You come to the meeting, Tim,” he said. He met my eye again, and redoubled the smile. “We’ll straighten it out,” he assured us.
“I’ll be there,” I said. “But first I’ll see the reform boy myself. And I just may take Ron Lascow along with me.”
Five
Hezekiah Harcum is Chief of the Winston Police Department. Hezekiah being one of those names, he’s been called nothing but Harcum for the last thirty years or more, and by now he’s almost forgotten that he has a front name too.
After leaving Dan Wanamaker’s office, I walked back down the hall, past the elevators, and through the door marked “Chief of Police — Private — Use Other Door.”
The girl still had her clothes on, but if I’d showed up five minutes later it would have been a different story. She and Harcum were on the green-leather sofa, not quite sitting and not quite lying down. She was blond, doll-faced, big-eyed, and built like a new convertible. Harcum had been in the process of putting the top down.
He saw me and jumped up, howling. “What the hell you coming through that door? You come around the other way, same as anybody else.”
“Since when?” I’d known Harcum all my life. He was a big kid when I was a little kid, and a uniformed cop when I was a big kid, a plainclothes cop when I was just recently a plainclothes civilian, and Chief for the last eight years. I had always come through the private door, and Harcum’d never had a reason for bitching about it before.
He did now. “Since right this minute,” he answered me. “You get the hell out of here and come around the other way.”
The hell I would. I told him to do something to himself that would have left the blonde unemployed, and he growled, “Watch your language.”
The blonde oozed up from the sofa, rearranging herself, and said, “I’ll see you later, honey. For lunch.” She had a voice like warm banana yogurt.
“I’ll pick you up at the motel,” he told her, gushing and gawking all over the place. He escorted her to the private door and patted her on the fanny as she left, with the manner of a small boy being daring. Then he locked the door — which he should have done to begin with if he didn’t want anybody barging in — and turned to glare at me.
“Ease off, Harcum,” I said. “I’ve been coming in that way for years. If you wanted me to start going around the other way, you should have said so around 1946.”
He thought it over, and finally shrugged. “It was a shock, Tim, that’s all. I hadn’t even thought about that door.”
“Looked like you weren’t thinking about much else at all.”
He had sense enough to be embarrassed. Harcum had never been much of a ladies’ man, not even in his prime. Now, at forty-seven, he was less of a prize than ever. Stocky to begin with, years of soft easy exercise-free life with the local law had left him paunchy and double-jowled and stoop-shouldered. His black hair was thinning fast, and no matter how much he combed the remainder over the bald spot the top of his head still reflected light.