Rex Stout
The Father Hunt
1
It happens once or twice a week. Lily Rowan and I, returning from a show or party or hockey game, leave the elevator and approach the door of her penthouse on top of the apartment building on Sixty-third Street between Madison and Park, and there is the key question. Mine is, Do I stay back and let her do it? Hers is, Does she stay back and let me do it? We have never discussed it, and it is always handled the same way. When she gets out her key as we leave the elevator she gives me a smile which means, 'Yes, you have one, but it's my door,' and I smile back and follow her to it. It is understood that mine is for situations that seldom arise.
That Thursday afternoon in August we had been to Shea Stadium to watch the Mets clobber the Giants, which they had done, 8 to 3, and it was only twenty past five when she used her key. Inside, she called out to Mimi, the maid, that she was home, and went to the bathroom, and I went to the bar in a corner of the oversized living room, with its 19-by-34 Kashan rug, for gin and ice and tonic and glasses. By the time I got out to the terrace with the tray she was there, at a table under the awning, studying the scorecard I had kept.
'Yes, sir,' she said as I put the tray down, 'Harrelson got three hits and batted in two runs. If he was here I'd hug him. Good.'
'Then I'm glad he's not here.' I gave her her drink and sat. 'If you hugged that kid good you'd crack a rib.'
A voice came. 'I'm going, Miss Rowan.'
Our heads turned. The young woman in the doorway to the living room was a newcomer to the penthouse. I had
seen her only twice, and she was easy to look at, with just enough round places, just round enough, properly spotted on her five-foot-four getup, and her warm dark skin just right for her quick brown eyes. Her dark-brown hair was bunched at the back. Her name was Amy Denovo and she had got a diploma from Smith in June. Lily had hired her ten days ago, at a hundred a week, to help her find and arrange material for a book a man was going to write about Lily's father, who had made a pile building sewers and other items and had left her enough boodle to keep a dozen penthouses.
She answered a couple of questions Lily asked, and left, and we talked baseball, concentrating on what the Mets had, if anything, besides Tommy Davis and Bud Harrel-son and Tom Seaver, and what they might have if we lived long enough. We dawdled with the drinks, and at six o'clock I got up to go, leaving Lily plenty of time to change for a dinner she had been hooked for, where people were going to abolish ghettos by making speeches. I had a date, later, where I intended to abolish the welfare of some friends of mine by drawing another ace or maybe jack.
But down in the lobby I was intercepted. Albert, the doorman, was moving to open the door for me when a voice spoke my name and I turned, and Amy Denovo left a chair and was coming. She gave me a nice little smile and said, 'Could you give me a few minutes to ask you something?'
I said, 'Sure, shoot,' and she glanced at Albert, and he took the hint and went outside. I said we might as well sit and we went to a bench at the wall, but the door opened again and a man and woman entered, crossed to the elevator, and stood.
Amy Denovo said, 'It
I hadn't noticed the dimples before. They are always more taking on a dark skin than on a light skin. 'You're twenty-two,' I said.
She nodded.
'Then maybe one minute will do it. Don't marry him
now, you're too young to know. Wait a year at least, and-'
'Oh, it isn't that! It's
'Don't think marriage isn't personal. It's too damn personal, that's the trouble. If you mean a few hours, not a few minutes, I'm sorry; I have an eight o'clock date, but there's a place around the corner that sells drinks and makes good egg-and-anchovy sandwiches. If you like anchovies.'
'I do.'
The door opened and two women entered and headed for the elevator. That was not the place to discuss
She was all right to walk with, no leading or lagging and no silly step-stretching. At that time of day
