“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Steve said, “but Miss Harding is not my client. Her attorney is a Mr. Harold Fitzpatrick, who is probably in the car I hear coming up the driveway now. It’s been a wonderful evening, but unless you’d like to have me searched again, I really must be going.”
With that, Steve nodded to the astonished Sergeant, and walked out.
15
Steve Winslow glanced over his shoulder to make sure Sergeant Stams wasn’t following him, and then hurried through the spacious front hallway, looking for a telephone. He spotted one on a desk near the window and was making for it when a corpulent gentleman in his mid-fifties came bustling through the front door. The man saw Steve and stopped dead. “Who are you?” he demanded.
Steve looked at him. Despite the lateness of the hour, the man had on a custom-tailored three-piece suit. Short-cropped curly white hair framed a chubby face that, when smiling, probably looked as benign as that of a vaudeville comedian. At the moment, however, the cheeks were flushed, the jaw was set, and the eyes were narrowed in a suspicious stare.
Steve smiled. “For that matter, who are you?”
“Is your name Winslow?”
“That’s right.”
For a moment the man stared at him as if he could hardly believe the answer. “Then I demand to know what you’re doing here,” he said. “I told Marilyn to ask you to leave. I consider your failure to do so highly unethical and indicative of sharp practice.”
“I take it you are Mr. Fitzpatrick?”
“That’s right. And I demand an explanation.”
“I see,” Steve said. “You want me to leave, and you want me to explain. I’m afraid the two are mutually exclusive. Would you care to pick one?”
Fitzpatrick’s cheeks grew redder. “I don’t need any smart remarks either. You’re tampering with a client. Do I have to file a complaint with the Grievance Committee or would you like to tell me why?”
“Don’t hand me that shit,” Steve said. “I have a perfect right to talk to anyone I want as long as I’m not soliciting employment. Now if Marilyn wants to tell you what we were talking about, she’s free to do so, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s none of your damn business.
“However, it might interest you to know that Sergeant Stams has just arrived, and he happens to be just as curious as you are about my conference with your client. The fact that he didn’t follow me when I walked out of there indicates that he considered his business with Miss Harding far more pressing. I believe it involves a murder. Now, I wouldn’t presume to advise you, but if I were Marilyn’s attorney, I would have no doubt where my primary duty lay. Now, what was your question again?”
Fitzpatrick glared at Steve Winslow, then hurried into the library.
Steve grabbed the phone and called Mark Taylor. After the second ring, the detective’s voice came on the line.
“Taylor here.”
“Mark, Steve. I got a rush job, and I mean rush.”
“Yeah? What?”
“I want you to get both of the Bradshaw letters and the list of bills and bring them to the corner of 59th Street and Third Avenue. The southeast corner. I’ll meet you there.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Can’t I send someone? I got a lot of shit coming in.”
“No. I need you. Leave an operative on the phone, grab the stuff, and get out there. And I mean now.”
“I’ll have to-”
“Now, Mark.”
“Right.”
“You’ll probably get there ahead of me. Just wait.”
“O.K.”
“And don’t let anyone know where you’re going.”
“The operative will have to know, so he can relay information.”
“No way. It’s important. You can call and get reports, but no one is to know where you are. Got that?”
“Yeah.”
“O.K. Stop gabbing and get going.”
Steve slammed down the phone, raced out the door, and jumped into the cab. The cabbie made good time back to Manhattan, going through the Queens Midtown Tunnel and up Third Avenue. Steve paid off the cab a couple of blocks away and walked on up Third.
Mark Taylor was waiting on the corner. Steve hurried up to him.
“You got the letters?”
“And the list of bills,” Taylor said, tapping his pocket.
“Good. Give them to me.”
Taylor handed them over. “There you are. Now what?”
Steve looked around and spotted a restaurant down the block.
“See that restaurant? Go inside and get us a table. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Mark Taylor went inside. Steve waited thirty seconds, then followed him into the lobby. Taylor had already been escorted into the dining room. Steve took out his wallet, walked over to the cashier, and smiled.
The cashier, a young blonde, smiled back. “Can I help you?”
“You certainly can,” Steve said. “I need an envelope and a stamp.”
“I’m terribly sorry. We don’t sell stamps or envelopes.”
“I know you don’t,” Steve said, producing a bill from his wallet. “That’s why I’ll pay you five bucks for them.”
The cashier grinned. “You’re kidding.”
“Not at all.”
The blonde reached down under the counter and pulled out her purse. “Just a sec,” she said. She rummaged through her purse and fished out a postage stamp and a pink, perfumed envelope. “I hope the color doesn’t matter,” she said.
Steve handed her the money. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “it couldn’t be better.”
Steve took the envelope and stamp to a table in the corner of the lobby. He put the list of bills in his wallet. He put the Bradshaw letters in the pink envelope, then stamped and sealed it. He addressed the envelope to himself at his office. He hurried outside, found a mailbox, and dropped the letter in.
Steve heaved a sigh of relief. Well, one down and a lot more to go. And the first was the worst. Mark Taylor. Steve hated what he had to do, but he really had no choice.
Steve returned to the restaurant, where he found Mark Taylor sipping a bourbon at a table for two in the far corner of the dining room.
“O.K., Steve,” he said. “What’s the pitch?”
Steve glanced at the drink.
“I had to order it,” Taylor said. “The waiter was getting impatient, and I didn’t know what to tell him.”
“That’s fine, Mark,” Steve said. “I’ll have one too. It’s been quite an evening.”
“Hasn’t it? All right, Steve. We can talk now. What did you drag me down here for?”
“To have dinner.”
Taylor stared at him. “What?”
“Sure,” Steve said. “You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”
“I had some hamburgers sent up. Look, Steve-”
“But that was a while ago, wasn’t it?”
