'Inform him you will deliver his terms to me.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Inform him that only I can authorize payment under these circumstances.'
'I understand, sir.'
'And endeavour to ascertain his full name and address.
'Yes, sir,' I said, suppressing a sigh. Sometimes they still treated me like a mailroom boy.
3
When I came out of Mr Tabatchnick's fish-lined sanctuary, I stopped at Thelma Potts' desk to get the telephone number of the mysterious Marty, then proceeded down the main staircase.
Mr Romeo Orsini was holding court on the third-floor landing, surrounded by aides, most of them women. He was in his middle sixties, tall, erect, with thick, marvellously coiffed snow-white hair. He carried himself with the vigour and grace of a man one-third his age, and his pink complexion, dark, glittering eyes, hearty good health, meticulous grooming, and self-satisfaction produced the image of the perfect movie or TV lawyer.
Romeo Orsini specialized in divorce actions, and was enormously successful in obtaining alimony and child support payments far in excess of his clients' most exaggerated hopes. It was also said that he was frequently the first to console the new divorcee.
I was hoping to slip around his group on the landing without being noticed, but his hand shot out from the circle and clamped on my arm.
'Josh!' he cried gaily. 'Just the man I wanted to see!'
He drew me close and, not for the first time, I became aware of his cologne.
'Heard a joke I think you'll appreciate,' he said slyly, grinning at me.
My heart sank. All the jokes he told me involved small men.
'There was this midget,' he began, looking around his circle of aides. They were preparing their faces to break into instant laughter, several of them smiling already.
'And he married the tallest woman in the circus,' Orsini continued. He paused for effect. I knew what was coming.
'His friends put him up to it!' he concluded, followed by guffaws, giggles, roars, and thigh-slapping by his assistants. To my shame, I laughed as loudly as any, and finally broke free to continue my descent, cursing myself.
On the ground floor, I was confronted with the bristling presence of Hamish Hooter, the office manager.
'See here, Bigg,' he said.
That's the way Hooter began all his conversations: 'See here.' It made me want to reach up and punch him in the snoot.
'What is it, Hooter?' I said resignedly.
'What's this business about a private secretary?' he demanded, waving a sheet of paper in my face. I recognized it as a memo I had forwarded the previous week.
'It's all spelled out in there,' I said. 'I've been typing all my own correspondence up to now, but the workload is getting too much. I can't ask the secretaries and typists to help me out; they all have their own jobs.'
'Dollworth didn't need a secretary,' he sneered.
'Dollworth was a notoriously poor record-keeper,' I said. 'He admitted it himself. As a result, we have incomplete histories of investigations he conducted, no copies of letters he may have written, no memos of phone calls and conversations. Such records could be vital if cases are overturned on appeal or reopened for any reason. I really have to set up a complete file and keep it current.'
'I can't believe you're so busy that you can't handle it yourself,' he said. Then he added nastily, 'You seem to have plenty of time to gossip with Yetta Apatoff.'
I stared at him. He really was a miserable character.
What's more, he looked a miserable character.
He was of average height, but with such poor posture (rounded shoulders, bent back, protruding potbelly) that he appeared shorter. He had an extremely pale complexion, with small, watery eyes set too far apart. His lips were prim, and his nose looked like a wedge of cheddar.
He had jet-black, somewhat greasy hair, and he was, I was happy to note, going bald in back. He combed his slick locks sideways in an attempt to conceal the tonsure.
His voice was high-pitched and reedy, somewhere between a whine and a yawp. He also had the habit of sucking his teeth after every sentence, as if he had a little fibre of celery in there and couldn't get it out. Let's see, what e l s e. . Oh yes, he had eyes for Yetta Apatoff (hot, beady eyes), and that alone was enough to condemn him as far as I was concerned. I knew they lunched together occasionally, and I could only conclude that she accompanied him out of pare kindness, as one might toss a peanut to a particularly disgusting, purple-assed orangutan in the zoo.
'So I gather I'm not getting a secretary,' I said.
'You gather correctly,' he said, sucking his incisors noisily.
I looked at him with loathing. But if I couldn't outwit that beast, I'd turn in my Machiavelli badge. I spun away from him, marched down to my office, slammed the door.
The first thing I did was call Marty's number. I let it ring ten times, but there was no answer. So I gathered up my notebook, stopwatch, and coat, and started out on a routine investigation.
Yetta Apatoff was at her desk, but she was busy with an elderly couple who were trying to explain something to her in heavily German-accented English. Yetta waggled her delicious fingers at me as I went by. I waggled back.
I spent the morning establishing that a young client 33
could not have robbed a camera store in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, on Eighth Avenue at 40th Street at 12.06
p. m. and travel nineteen blocks in time to be positively identified at an electronics trade show at the Coliseum on Columbus Circle at Eighth Avenue and 59th Street at 12.14.
Three times I travelled from the Bus Terminal to the Coliseum by taxi, three times by subway, three times by bus (making the return trips by cab in all cases). I used the stopwatch and timed each northbound run to the split second, keeping very careful notes.
I completed the time trials at about 2.30 in the afternoon. I had a hamburger and dialled Marty's number from a pay-phone. Still no answer. I was getting a little antsy.
Marty had said the deadline was 5.00 p.m.
Yetta Apatoff was on the phone when I entered the TORT building at approximately 3.20. She smiled up at me (a glory, that smile!) and, still speaking on the phone, handed me a small sheet of paper. Another memo. This one was from Mr Teitelbaum's secretary. I was to call her as soon as I returned.
I went into my office, took off my coat, dialled Marty's number. Still no answer. I then called Ada Mondora, Teitelbaum's secretary. She said he wanted to see me as soon as possible, but was busy with a client at the moment; she'd buzz me as soon as he was free.
Then I took off my jacket, sat down at the typewriter, and began to bang out a report on the time trials.
My office, on the first floor, was not quite as small as a broom closet. There was room for one L-shaped desk, with the typewriter on the short wing. One steel swivel chair.
One steel armchair for visitors. One steel file cabinet. A wastebasket, a coat tree, a small steel bookcase. And that was it. When Roscoe Dollworth, with his explosive girth, had occupied the premises, this cubbyhole seemed filled to overflowing. I provided a little more space, but the room was still cramped and depressing. No windows. If I succeeded in obtaining a secretary, my next project would be larger quarters to accommodate the secretary. My ambition knew no limits.
I had almost finished typing my report when Ada Mondora called and said I could come up now. I put on my jacket, went into the men's room to make myself presentable, then climbed the stairs to the second floor.
'Hi, Josh,' Ada said in her bass rumble. She was pushing fifty and sounded as if she had smoked Coronas all
