“Don’t reckon you’d mind, would you?” I said and reached for the case. The ID card said that he was a detective with the Metropolitan Police Department and that his name was James Knaster. It also said he was thirty years old. I studied the card and then handed the case back.
I gave him a huge wink. “Keepin’ an eye on her, huh?”
“What’s your name, friend?”
“Longmire. Harvey A. Longmire.”
“Why don’t you just run along, Mr. Longmire?”
“You vice?” I said and before he could reply I went on with my rube act, which even Ruth says isn’t bad. You know what she’s doin’, don’tcha? She’s sittin’ up there in a fancy wrapper you can see right through drinkin’ Scotch whiskey and hit not yet noon.”
“Look, fella—”
“Reckon the best thing I can do is go tell her that you’re out here keepin’ an eye on her sinnin’ ways. Dear Lord, I’m just so glad our old Mom and Daddy ain’t alive to see this.” I shook my head sorrowfully and patted the sill of the car door. “Well, Detective Knaster, it sure has been pure inspiration just talkin’ to you.”
I turned and started back toward Audrey’s house. Behind me I could hear the Plymouth’s engine start. I looked back as Knaster pulled the car out from the curb and drove off. He didn’t look at me. I waved anyhow.
Like Georgetown, Washington’s Foggy Bottom was once a slum. A black slum. But now it’s home for the State Department and there isn’t much fog to speak of, although there are those who will argue that it has increased markedly since the State Department settled in.
What’s left of the Foggy Bottom residential area is still rather fashionable, and therefore expensive, and Jean-Jacques Le Gouis, my Uncle Slick, wouldn’t have dreamed of living in any other kind of neighborhood. Home to him was a small house on Queen Anne’s Lane where it was even more difficult to park than in Georgetown. However, I found an empty slot after only fifteen minutes and perhaps two quarts of gasoline. Taking the gasoline into consideration I estimated that the free parking space had saved me approximately thirty-five cents. Somehow I resisted the temptation to jot it down.
The house was a narrow, two-story, flat-front frame building painted a light pastel blue with cream trim. The front yard was about the size of your average living room rug and a lot of painstaking care had been spent on turning it into a Japanese garden. There was even a little pool with a little bridge that had a little stone troll on guard. The troll looked faintly Asiatic. I had been assured that the garden was quite authentic, but I could only think of it as precious. I refused to think of it as cute. After all, he was my uncle.
I rang the bell twice and while I waited I admired the thick old wooden door that had been cut down from one that once had provided entrance into a century-old Presbyterian church that had been razed to make way for a McDonald’s. My uncle was always scouting demolition sites for fine old wood, stained glass, marble, and other interesting doodads that he somehow incorporated into his decorating scheme that included an all-marble bathroom with a huge stained glass window depicting Moses in the bullrushes.
I was about to ring again when I heard his voice ask, “Who is it?” He didn’t open the door to just anyone. Not many people in Washington do, other than my sister. But Slick had grown especially wary since the time he reluctantly had opened it to a soft-spoken young couple who claimed to be Jehovah’s Witnesses. They had promptly bopped him over the head and made off with about $2,000 in cash and valuables.
When he said, “Who is it?” again I replied, “It’s your poor nephew, Uncle. Come to seek a boon.”
He opened the door then. “Well, dear boy.”
“I’m forty-three, Slick.”
“Almost a child. I’m fifty-six.”
“You don’t look it.”
“Don’t lie to an old man, Harvey.”
I wasn’t really. He still had all of his hair and it was thick and glossy and black on top and silver at the sides. He had kept his weight down and there wasn’t much sag to his lean face that had some interesting lines that a stranger might have taken for character. It was, all in all, a handsome, faintly hawkish face that easily could have passed for fifty or maybe even forty-nine and if I hadn’t known that he couldn’t see three feet in front of him, I would never have suspected that his green eyes were covered by contacts.
My uncle’s living room was furnished with antiques that he had collected over the years so I sat down gingerly on a couch that looked to be the sturdiest of the lot.
“Have you had lunch?” he asked.
“Audrey fed me.”
“Well. How is Audrey?”
“All right.”
“I was about to have a martini, but since you’ve eaten perhaps you’d like something else.”
“A beer would be fine.”
My uncle nodded, went through the dining room into the kitchen, and came back with a tray that bore a tall Pilsener glass, a bottle of imported Beck’s beer, another glass, and a small silver shaker that I presumed contained his martini. He put the tray down, poured my beer, gave the shaker a couple of swirls, filled his glass, and carefully sipped his drink.
The final part of his ritual was a solemn, judicious nod and after he was through with that I said, “What do you care what happened to Arch Mix?”
“I like your moustache. Is it new?”
“It’s two years old.”
“It makes you look faintly like Fredric March. A young Fredric March, of course.”
“Come on, Slick.”
He reached inside his blue blazer, brought out a silver cigarette case, politely offered me one, which I refused, took one for himself, lit it, and then smiled and said, “Audrey told you of my interest, of course.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, you might say I have a professional interest in what happened to Arch Mix.”
“I thought you’d retired.”
“From the agency, dear boy, but not from life. I started up my own little consultancy about a year ago. Yes, I suppose you wouldn’t know about that because we haven’t seen each other in almost two years, isn’t it?”
“About that.”
“I got your Christmas card. Did you get mine? Yours was really quite clever.”
“Ruth did it.”
“How is that charming woman?”
“Fine.”
“Remarkable woman.”
“Yes.”
“However does she stand the isolation?”
“She has me.”
“Yes, she does have you, doesn’t she, and the goats, too, of course.” He made it sound as if the goats were her salvation.
“Let’s get back to Mix,” I said.
“Well, dear boy, I suppose I really should ask why you would even care that I’m interested in what happened to Mr. Mix.”
“Roger Vullo is going to pay me a lot of money to tell him what I think happened.”
“Just for your thoughts on the matter?” He had picked up immediately on the think I had used, which was another good reason to call him Slick.
“Just for my thoughts,” I said.
“Little Roger,” Slick said in a musing, almost dreamy tone. “I knew his daddy quite well, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yes, we served in the OSS together. Little Roger wasn’t born then, of course.”
“No.”
“I understand he has set up a foundation of sorts to look into all kinds of interesting things.”
“Conspiracy,” I said. “He sees it everywhere.”
“Well, they do seem to be burgeoning everywhere.”
“Conspiracies?”
“No, dear boy, organizations or foundations or committees or what have you that have been set up to poke about in them. Most of the time they seem to be dead set on casting my former masters as the villain in each piece.”