Jake sighed. “I don’t care very much, understand, but have you got any witnesses at these bars where you did your drinking? Do you have anybody who can back up your story?”
Noble made himself a drink and remained at the bar, stirring the liquor with one hand and rubbing his forehead with the other. “You know how things like that are, Jake,” he said, with a petulant frown. “You have a few drinks, and talk with somebody you don’t want to talk to, and then you go out and drift somewhere else, and do the same thing. You’re looking for somebody that wants to listen to you, but everybody wants to talk about himself, and then you look for a girl, and there aren’t any, and you get drunker and sadder all the time and when it’s all over it just adds up to nothing.” He sighed despondently. “Who’d remember me? I’m just a fat man who wears loud ties and talks all the time.”
“For God’s sake, cut it out,” Jake said, disgusted and amused at the same time. “Instead of all this corn, I’d suggest you backtrack your route of that night and look for someone who can support your story. The police will get to you eventually, and they’ll want more than a dissertation on the bitter irony of solitary drinking.”
“I’ll do that,” Noble said with a switch back to his normal vigor. “Now, you’d better check on how Niccolo is coming with that job for Time.”
“Sure. First things first,” Jake said, drily, and left Noble staring after him perplexedly.
Jake walked down to his office, careful to keep his eyes straight ahead when he passed Sheila’s open door. He didn’t feel up to an apology this early in the morning. The door between his office and Toni Ryerson’s cubicle was open, and he saw that her neatly shod feet were in their customary position atop her desk. He walked into her office and said hello, and she immediately began badgering him with questions about Avery Meed’s murder.
“I don’t know a thing,” he told her, with a shrug. “He was strangled with one of his own neckties and the murderer is still at large, as authors are found of saying.”
Dean Niccolo came in through the other door to Toni’s office, with a pipe in his mouth and grinning cheerfully. He sat down, stretched out his long legs, and nodded to Jake; and Toni, Jake noticed, colored and began to shift papers about on her desk with aimless efficiency.
Jake said, “How’s the Riordan handout coming?”
“Pretty well,” Niccolo said. “I’ll have it ready by noon.”
“I’ll bet it’s good,” Toni said.
Jake wondered idly if she were in love with Niccolo. And glancing at him, tanned and muscular, with his dark features glowing with health, he decided she would be crazy if she weren’t. There was a controlled and indolent power in Niccolo that was very provocative.
Niccolo smiled at her and said, “Why, thanks. Thanks a lot.”
Toni beamed and Jake excused himself and returned to his office, closing the connecting door behind him. He found Toni’s rapt reaction to Niccolo somewhat difficult to bear.
Lighting a cigarette, he walked restlessly to the window, observing with dour satisfaction the cold cheerless view of the boulevard and lake.
For a few minutes he tried to think about the Riordan account, but his thoughts slid away from that and settled on the circumstances of May’s death.
The one ‘fact’ they had to work with, it seemed, was that Avery Meed had gone to see May at Riordan’s request, and had come away with the diary. That was what Meed had told Riordan, at least. Meed might have lied to his boss, although there was no apparent reason for that, and Riordan might have lied to Lieutenant Martin, but, again, there was no reason for it. Taking everyone’s word then, Meed had gone to May’s home, had got the diary, and had come away with it.
Then had Meed murdered May?
There was one point that made that more than a possibility. Meed had intended to buy May off; and if he had been successful then the money or check should have been among May’s effects. She would hardly have given him the diary on his promise to pay.
Therefore, since the police had found nothing of the sort, Meed must have taken the diary without paying for it — and he could hardly have done that while May was alive. Possibly, very possibly, it seemed, he might have made his offer, been refused and then been forced to kill her to get the diary.
The other possibility was that May had been dead when Meed arrived. If that were true, then May was murdered by someone with no interest in the diary, for it had been left for Meed to find.
All of this speculation led him no closer to the answers he wanted: Who killed May? Who killed Meed? Where was the diary?
There was still Mike Francesca unaccounted for, Jake knew. Mike, that amiable assassin, would have murdered May with a sigh of regret but without hesitation if it were necessary to his peace of mind and safety.
Jake’s reflections were cut short by the ring of his phone. The receptionist told him Gregory Prior was waiting and wished to see him immediately.
“Send him in,” Jake said, and settled back in his chair with a smile.
Prior appeared in the doorway of Jake’s office a moment or so later, wearing an expression of grim and righteous anger on his face. He also wore a hard worsted, pepper-and-salt tweed suit, a white Oxford cloth shirt and a green wool knit tie.
“Well, this is pleasant,” Jake said. “Sit down, won’t you?”
“Thanks,” Prior said, and sat down without relaxing the stiffness of his body. “I won’t take much of your time. I guess you’ve seen the morning papers.”
“Why, yes,” Jake said. “Why?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Did you see the Tribune editorial, for instance?”
Jake smiled innocently. “Now that you mention it, I remember it quite well. It mentioned you by name, I think. Said something about witch hunting, didn’t it?”
“You can afford to be amused,” Prior said bitterly. “Do you realize you’ve already, with that one editorial, convinced thousands of people that Riordan is merely being hounded by a snooping, bureaucratic committee?”
“Well, that was my fondest hope,” Jake said mildly. “But, after all, I didn’t write the editorial.”
Prior’s lips tightened. “I know you’re responsible for the present attitude of the press on the Riordan investigation. Frankly, I can’t understand people like you, Harrison. You’re willing, even glad apparently, to defend a thieving war racketeer like Daniel Riordan. You’ll do anything at all, I suppose, for money.”
“That’s a nice, simple way of putting it,” Jake said equably.
Prior lit a cigarette with a quick, angry gesture; then, after inhaling deeply, he looked directly at Jake and said, “Ever have any trouble sleeping nights? Do you ever ask yourself what principles, if any, you live by?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Jake said. “I don’t lure small children into alleys, and I don’t speak snidely of Free Enterprise, and I sleep wonderfully. What that has to do with the subject, however, escapes me. Getting to the point, I suggested we work harmoniously on this account, but you ignored that and, at the first opportunity, sounded off to the papers in a manner that made Riordan look like a culprit. So I hit back. You seem to want to know why I did; well, now you know.”
Prior shook his head with a gesture of controlled desperation. “You talk as if this were a boxing match. Don’t you understand that my job is to track down a man who has cheated and defrauded his country in time of war, has cost the lives of American soldiers to fatten his own bank accounts? You’re distorting and impeding that work because you’re paid to do so, and I say it’s scandalous.”