feeling, before this is over, I’m gonna have to put Cathman out of his misery.”
12
Rosemary Shields was as Claire had described her: a rotund older woman with iron-gray hair in an iron arrangement of tight coils close to her head. She escaped an air of the maternal by dressing in browns and blacks, and by maintaining a manner of cold clerical efficiency. When Parker entered her office through the frosted glass door that read:
1100
Hilliard Cathman Associates
in gold letters, she was briskly typing at her computer keyboard, making sounds like crickets in the walls. She stopped the crickets and looked up with some surprise; not many people came through that door. But Parker had dressed for the part, in dark suit and white shirt and low-key striped tie, so she wouldn’t be alarmed.
“Yes?” she asked, unable to hide the surprise, and he knew she mostly expected to hear he’d come to the wrong office.
Parker shut the door. The hall had been empty, the names on the other frosted glass doors along here describing law firms, accountants, “media specialists” and “consultants.” Camp followers of state government. “Cathman,” Parker said.
Surprise gave way to that natural efficiency: “Yes, of course,” as she reached for the phone. “Is Mr. Cathman expecting you?”
Was Cathman expecting anybody? Parker went along with the fiction that business was being done here, saying, “Tell him it’s Mr. Lynch. Tell him I’m with the Parkers.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and tapped the intercom button on the phone.
While she murmured into the phone, not quite studying him out of the corners of her eyes as she spoke with Cathman, Parker looked around at the office. It was small and square and without windows, the walls lined with adjustable bookshelves full of law books and technical journals. The one clear area of wall space, behind Rosemary Shields’ desk, contained a pair of four-drawer filing cabinets and, above them, a large framed reproduction of Ben Shahn’s Sacco and Vanzetti poster. So Cathman was not a man to give up a cause just because it was dead.
Rosemary Shields hung up: “He’ll be right out.”
“Thank you.”
And he was. Parker turned toward the inner door, and it opened. Cathman stuck his head out, like a mole out of his hole in the ground, not sure what he was going to see, and relief showed clearly on his face when he saw it was Parker out there. Fortunately, his Rosemary had gone back to her computer keyboard and didn’t see her boss’s face. Or was she in on it, along for Cathman’s U-turn into crime? Parker doubted it, but there was no way to be sure.
“Oh, yes,” Cathman said. “Mr. Lynch, of course. Come in, please.”
Parker followed him into the inner office, and Cathman shut the door, his manner switching at once to a fussy indignation. “Mr. Parker,” he half-whispered, in a quick high-pitched stutter, “you shouldn’t come here like this. It’s too dangerous.”
“Not for me,” Parker told him, and looked around at Cathman’s lair. It was a larger office than the one outside, but not by much. One wall was mostly window, with a view out and down toward the huge dark stone pile of the statehouse, a turreted medieval castle, outsize and grim, built into the steep slope and now surrounded by the scuttle of modern life. From here, you saw the statehouse from an angle behind it and farther up the hill and from the eleventh floor and the steep city in a tumble of commercial and government buildings on down to the river.
Inside here, Cathman had made a nest for himself, with an imposing partner’s desk inset green felt top, a kneehole and drawers on both sides so the partners could sit facing one another angled into a corner, where Cathman could look out the window and still face the door. There were more bookcases in here, but better ones, freestanding, with glass doors that closed down over each shelf. Framed diplomas and testimonials and photos were spaced around the walls. An L-shaped sofa in dark red and a dark wood coffee table filled the corner opposite the desk.
Cathman, calmed by Parker’s indifference, but still feeling wronged, came forward, making impatient brushing gestures at the sofa. “Yes, well, at least you used a different name,” he said. “Sit down, sit down, as long as you’re here. But I already told you, I repeatedly told you, I’ll be happy to meet you anywhere, anywhere at all, answer any questions you have, just phone me and”
“Sit down,” Parker said.
They were on opposite sides of the coffee table. Cathman blinked, looked at the sofa, looked at Parker, and said, “My secretary”
“Rosemary Shields.”
Cathman blinked again, then thought, and then nodded. “Yes, you do your research. You probably know all there is to know about me by now.”
“Not all,” Parker said.
“Well, the point is,” Cathman said, “Miss Shields will expect me to offer you a cold drink. We’re not equipped to do coffee here, but we have a variety of soft drinks and seltzer and so on in the refrigerator under her desk. Business meetings begin with that, she’ll expect it. What would you like? I can recommend the Saratoga water, it’s a New York State mineral water, very good.”
The local politician to the end. Parker said, “Sure, I’ll try it.”
“Pleasesit down.”
Parker sat on the side of the sofa where the light from the window would be behind him. Easier then to see Cathman’s face, harder for Cathman to see his. Meanwhile, Cathman went back to the door, opened it, murmured to Miss Shields, shut the door, and returned. “She’ll bring it, in just a moment.”
“So this is the time we talk about the weather, right?”
