I wouldn’t care to try it again.” “Could you identify him?” “Oh, certainly. There was no question about that.” “Why do you say murdered? Did they catch the guy and hang it on him?” “No. I understand that the police regard it as an accident-what they call a hit-and-run.” “Then it wasn’t murder. Technically.” Naylor smiled at me. His neat little mouth wasn’t designed for anything expansive, but it was certainly meant for a smile, though it went as quick as it came. “Mr. Truett,” he said, “if we are to work together we should understand each other. I am rather perceptive, and it would probably surprise you to know how much I understand of you already. One little fact about me, I have always been a student of languages, and I am extraordinarily meticulous in my choice of words. I detest euphemisms and circumlocutions, and I am acquainted with all the verbs, including those of the argots, which mean to cause the death of. What did I say happened to this man Moore?” “You said he was murdered.” “Very well. That’s what I meant.” “Okay, Mr. Naylor, but I like words too.” I had a strong feeling that no matter what his reason had been for tossing this at me right off the bat, if I fielded it right I might at least end the inning, and possibly the game, that first morning. I tried. I grinned at him. “I have always been fond of words,” I declared. “I never got worse than B in grammar, clear to the eighth grade. Not that it’s any hide off of me, but since we’re speaking of words, when you say Moore was murdered I take it to mean that the driver of the car knew it was Moore, wanted him dead or at least hurt, and aimed the car at him. Doesn’t it come down to that?” Naylor was looking up at the wall behind me. His eyes stayed that way, with no glint showing because they were upraised, until I twisted my neck to see what he was looking at. All that was there was a clock. I untwisted back to him, and his gaze came down to my level.
He smiled again. “Twenty minutes past ten,” he said resentfully. “I understand, Mr. Truett, that Mr. Pine has hired you to survey our personnel problems. What do you think he would say if he knew you were sitting here at your ease, prolonging a discussion of a murder which has no possible connection with your job?” The damn little squirt. The only satisfactory way to field that one would have been to pick him up and use him for a dust rag. Under the circumstances that satisfaction would have to be postponed. I swallowed it, stood up, and grinned down at him.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m a great talker. It was nice of you to listen. Why don’t you put through a voucher in triplicate, or however you do it, docking me for an hour? I deserve it, I really do.” I left. If the “uh, complexities” that Pine had mentioned included a desire on the part of his brother executives and him to tie a can to Kerr Naylor’s tail, I was all for it. He sure was tricky and mean. He had me so sore that I went from his office straight to the main arena, took a random course through the labyrinth of desks, glancing in all directions at faces, shoulders, and arms, and took my time picking one who had probably been a Powers model and got fired because she made all her colleagues look below standard.
I sat on the corner of her desk and she looked up at me with the clear blue eyes of an angel and a virgin.
I leaned to her. “My name is Peter Truett,” I told her, “and I’ve been hired as a personnel expert. If your section head hasn’t told you about me…” “He has,” she said, in a sweet musical voice, a contralto, which is my favorite.
“Then please tell me, have you heard any gossip recently about a man named Moore? Waldo Wilmot Moore? Did you know him when he worked here?” She shook her head. “I’m awfully sorry,” she said, sweeter than before if anything, “but I only started here day before yesterday, and I’m leaving on Friday. Just because I can’t spell! I never could spell.” Her lovely fingers were resting on my knee and her eyes were going straight to my heart. “Mr.
Truman, do you know of any job where you don’t have to spell?” I forget exactly how I got away.
CHAPTER Seven
I had been assigned a room of my own, about the right size for an Irish setter but not big enough for a Great Dane, about midway of the row of offices that ran along the uptown side of the arena. It contained a cute little desk, three chairs, and a filing cabinet with a lock to which I had been given the key.
Apparently there were nothing but shanties across the street, since the window had space outside, and if you took it at a slant there was a good view of the East River.
I went there and sat.
It seemed I had breezed into something with insufficient consideration of strategy and tactics. As a result I had already pulled two boners. When Kerr Naylor had unexpectedly jumped the gun by shoving Moore and murder at me, I should have shrugged it off as a man with a single-track stomach and no appetite for anything but personnel problems. And when he side-stepped and caught me off balance, I should have backed clear up and looked it over, instead of getting peeved and spilling Moore’s name to a vision of delight that couldn’t spell. I was too exuberant.
On the other hand, I certainly didn’t intend to spend a week or so just getting myself established as a personnel expert. I sat there through two cigarettes, thinking it over, and then went and unlocked the filing cabinet and got out a couple of the folders I had stowed there. On one of them the tab said STOCK DEPARTMENT- STRUCTURAL METALS SECTION/font›, and on the other STOCK DEPARTMENT-CORRESPONDENCE CHECKERS SECTION. With the folders under my arm, I emerged to the arena, crossed it by a main traffic aisle, and knocked at the door of an office on the other side. When a voice told me to come in I entered.
“Excuse me,” I said, “you’re busy.” Mr. Rosenbaum, the head of the Structural Metals Section, was a middle-aged, bald-headed guy with black-rimmed glasses. He waved me on in.
“So what,” he said without a question mark. “If I ever dictated a letter without being interrupted I’d lose my train of thought. No one ever knocks around here, you just bust in. Sit down. I’ll ring later, Miss Livsey. This is the Mr. Truett mentioned in that memo we sent around. Miss Hester Livsey, my secretary, Mr.
Truett.” I was wondering how I had ever missed her, even in that colossal swarm outside, until it struck me that a section head’s secretary probably had her own room.
She was not at all spectacular, not to be compared with my non-speller, but there were two things about her that hit you at a glance. You got the instant impression that there was something beautiful about her that no one but you would ever see, and along with it the feeling that she was in some kind of trouble, real trouble, that no one but you would understand and no one but you could help her out of. If that sounds too complicated for a two-second-take, okay, I was there and I remember it distinctly.
