Hawk stayed in the lobby. No one was likely to hit me in the office of the man they'd been trying so hard to keep out of trouble. I found Whitfield's name on the directory and went to the thirty-seventh floor at a rate sufficient to make my ears block. I got out of the elevator, swallowing to clear my eustachian tubes. The foyer was deeply carpeted in banker's gray. Straight ahead was a large mahogany desk and a, receptionist.
I said, 'My name is Spenser. I have an appointment with Prez Whitfield.'
'Yes, sir,' she said with a lovely smile. 'I'll tell him you're here.'
She picked up the phone and punched a button. Her fingernails were painted a muted pink.
'Mr. Spenser is here,' she said into the phone. Then she hung up. Almost at once the door behind her opened and a woman came it wearing a gray pinstripe suit and a white shirt with a ruffled bow at the collar.
'Mr. Spenser,' she said. 'Please come in.' I followed her. The skirt of her suit came just to the bend of her knee. She wore black pumps. We walked through another waiting room with a black oak desk in it and a woman sitting at it who wore dark maroon nail polish. I followed the pinstripe through one of a set of raised-panel oak doors into an office that looked out over Boston Harbor and south past Dorchester and the painted gas tanks along the Southeast Expressway. In front of the big windows a man sat at a bleached maple worktable, nearly bare of papers, with a phone bank near the left-hand corner, and a couple of manila folders stacked on the right. Against the left wall was another desk with a lot of papers and a similar phone bank and an empty black swivel chair with arms.
'Mr. Spenser,' Pinstripe said, 'Mr. Whitfield.'
Whitfield rose but didn't put out a hand. I stood opposite him across the desk.
'I'll see Mr. Spenser alone, Helen,' Whitfield said. He was looking steadily at me.
'Fine,' Pinstripe said, and went out and closed the door.
Whitfield and I remained standing. He was a short man, and overweight. His hair was short and combed straight back and he had a clipped mustache that was sprinkled with gray. Dark suit, white shirt, yellow tie. Yellow was supposed to be the new power color.
Whitfield kept staring at me. His eyes were very pale blue and unblinking. The killer stare. I looked back. The office was silent. Everywhere money must have been being dispersed and collected and counted. But no sound of it reached the office. Whitfield pursed his lips silently, as if coming to a negative conclusion on my loan application. He looked some more.
'I'm getting bored,' I said. 'You want me to faint or anything?'
'Sit down,' Whitfield said.
I sat in a mahogany chair upholstered in black leather. Whitfield went and sat in his high-backed leather swivel. He leaned back slightly and folded his arms, still gazing at me. I waited.
There were paintings of sailing ships on the walls.
'What game are you playing?' Whitfield said.
'I'm trying to find April Kyle, and I'm trying to find out what happened to Ginger Buckey, and how come someone killed her?'
Whitfield made a short dismissive shake of his head. 'I'm not concerned,' he said, 'with how you waste your time. When it's yours. I want to know what game you're playing with me.'
'You knew Ginger Buckey,' I said. 'You took her to the Crown Prince resort in St. Thomas and she dumped you and went off with a reed man named Robert Rambeaux. He's dead too.'
'If you make any such allegation before a witness,' Whitfield said, 'I will certainly sue you.'
'Sure,' I said. 'But what I'd rather is that you tell me about Ginger, and maybe about April.'
Whitfield slapped his open hand down on the desk. 'Are you crazy?' he said. 'Who the hell do you think you're talking to. You're looking for a couple of adolescent chippies and you come into my office and ask me? Do you have any idea what you're doing?'
'I didn't say they were chippies,' I said.
Whitfield leaned forward over the desk, letting the swivel chair come forward with him. 'Don't play cute games with me, pal,' he said.
'Warren,' I said, 'if you keep scaring me to death this is going to take all day. You think you're a powerful guy. You think it's because of something in you that you're powerful, so you figure to unleash a little of that power on me and watch me get limp and shriveled.'
Whitfield's eyes were narrowed a little and both hands were flat on the top of the desk as he looked at me.
'But you're not a powerful guy,' I said, 'and what power you have isn't in you, it's in the job, in the fact that you control a lot of money and a lot of jobs and people want both, so they suck around. I don't want either. I want to know what you know about Ginger Buckey, and I'm going to find out.'
Whitfield raised his hand. With the index mnger extended he jabbed toward me with it. I kept right on talking.
'And until I find out,' I said, 'I'm going to be so annoying that it will make your eyes water.'
'I don't know what you're talking about,' Whitfield said. 'I've been to the Crown Prince Club locally once or twice for lunch. I occasionally vacation in St. Thomas. But I don't know any Ginger Whatsis, or any April.'
'Yeah you do,' I said, 'and you know Perry Lehman who runs the place and you know some other stuff that Mr. Milo doesn't want me to mnd out, and I want to know what that is too.'
The name Mr. Milo rocked him. He sat back and some of the edge went off his voice. 'Mr. Milo?' he said.
'Un huh.'
