One Lonely Night

'It ought to be easy. That bridgework was unusual. One false tooth was made of stainless steel. Never heard of that before.'

The bells started in my head again. Bells, drums, the whole damn works. The cigarette dropped out of my fingers and I bent to pick it up, hoping the blood pounding in my veins would pound out the crazy music.

It did. That maddening blast of silent sound went away. Slowly.

Maybe Pat never heard of stainless-steel teeth before, but I had.

I said, 'Is Lee expecting me?'

'I told him you'd be over some time this morning.'

'Okay.' I stood up and shoved my hat on. 'One other thing, what about the guy Oscar bumped?'

'Charlie Moffit?'

'Yeah.'

'Age thirty-four, light skin, dark hair. He had a scar over one eye. During the war he was 4-F. No criminal record and not much known about him. He lived in a room on Ninety-first Street, the same one he's had for a year. He worked in a pie factory.'

'Where?'

'A pie factory,' Pat repeated, 'where they make pies. Mother Switcher's Pie Shoppe. You can find it in the directory.'

'Was that card all the identification he had on him?'

'No, he had a driver's license and a few other things. During the scuffle one pocket of his coat was torn out, but I doubt if he would have carried anything there anyway. Now, Mike . . . why?'

'The green cards, remember?'

'Hell, quit worrying about the reds. We have agencies who can handle them.'

I looked past Pat outside into the morning. 'How many Commies are there floating around, Pat?'

'Couple hundred thousand, I think,' he said.

'How many men have we got in those agencies you mentioned?'

'Oh . . . maybe a few hundred. What's that got to do with it?'

'Nothing . . . just that that's the reason I'm worried.'

'Forget it. Let me know how you make out with Lee.'

'Sure.'

'And Mike . . . be discreet as hell about this, will you? Everybody with a press card knows your reputation and if you're spotted tagging around Lee there might be some questions asked that will be hard to answer.'

'I'll wear a disguise,' I said.

Lee Deamer's office was on the third floor of a modest building just off Fifth Avenue. There was nothing pretentious about the place aside from the switchboard operator. She was special. She had one of those faces that belonged in a chorus and a body she was making more effort to show than to conceal. I heard her voice and it was beautiful. But she was chewing gum like a cow and that took away any sign of pretentiousness she might have had.

There was a small anteroom that led to another office where two stenos were busy over typewriters. One wall of that room was all glass with a speaking partition built in at waist level. I had to lean down to my belt buckle to talk and gave it up as a bad job. The girl behind it laughed pleasantly and came out the door to see me.

She was a well-tailored woman in her early thirties, nice to look at and speak to. She wore an emerald ring that looked a generation older than she was. She smiled and said, 'Good morning, can I do something for you?'

I remembered to be polite. 'I'd like to see Mr. Deamer, please.'

'Is he expecting you?'

'He sent word for me to come up.'

'I see.' She tapped her teeth with a pencil and frowned. 'Are you in a hurry?'

'Not particularly, but I think Mr. Deamer is.'

'Oh, well . . . the doctor is inside with him. He may be there awhile, so . . .'

'Doctor?' I interrupted.

The girl nodded, a worried little look tugging at her eyes. 'He seemed to be quite upset this morning and I called in the doctor. Mr. Deamer hasn't been too well since he had that attack awhile back.'

'What kind of attack?'

'Heart. He had a telephone call one day that agitated him terribly. I was about to suggest that he go home and at that moment, he collapsed. I . . . I . . . I was awfully frightened. You see, it had never happened before, and . . .'

'What did the doctor say?'

'Apparently it wasn't a severe attack. Mr. Deamer was instructed to take it easy, but for a man of his energy it's hard to do.'

'You say he had a phone call? That did it?'

I'm sure it did. At first I thought it was the excitement of watching the Legion parade down the avenue, but Ann told me it happened right after the call came in.'

Oscar's call must have hit him harder than either Pat or I thought. Lee wasn't a young man any more, a thing like that could raise a lot of hell with a guy's ticker. I was about to say something when the doctor came out of the office. He was a little guy with a white goatee out of another era.

He nodded to us both, but turned his smile on the girl. 'I'm sure he'll be fine. I left a prescription. See that it's filled at once, please?'

'Thank you, I will. Is it all right for him to have visitors?'

'Certainly. Apparently he has been thinking of something that disturbed him and had a slight relapse. Nothing to worry about as long as he takes it easy. Good day.'

We said so-long and she turned to me with another smile, bigger this time. 'I guess you can go ahead in then. But please . . . don't excite him.'

I grinned and said I wouldn't. Her smile made her prettier. I pushed through the door, passed the steno and knocked on the door with Deamer's name on it.

He rose to greet me but I waved him down. His face was a little flushed and his breathing fast. 'Feeling better now? I saw the doctor when he came out.'

'Much better, Mike. I had to fabricate a story to tell him . . . I couldn't tell the truth.'

I sat in the chair next to his and he pushed a box of cigars toward me. I said no and took out a Lucky instead. 'Best to keep things to yourself. One word and the papers'll have it on page one. Pat said you wanted to see me.'

Lee sat back and wiped his face with a damp handkerchief. 'Yes, Mike. He told me you were interested somehow.'

'I am.'

'Are you one of my . . . political advocates?'

'Frankly, I don't know a hoot about politics except that it's a dirty game from any angle.'

'I hope to do something about that. I hope I can, Mike, I sincerely hope I can. Now I'm afraid.'

'The heart?'

He nodded. 'It happened after Oscar called. I never suspected that I have a . . . condition. I'm afraid now the voters must be told. It wouldn't be fair to elect a man not physically capable of carrying out the duties of his office.' He smiled wistfully, sadly. I felt sorry for the old boy.

'Anyway, I'm not concerned with the politics of the affair.'

'Really? But what . . .'

'Just a loose end, Lee. They bother me.'

'I see. I don't understand, but I see . . . if you can make sense of that.'

I waved the smoke away from in front of him 'I know what you mean. Now about why you wanted to see me. Pat gave me part of it already, enough so I can see the rest.'

'Yes. You see, Oscar intimated that no matter what happened, he was going to see to it that I was broken, completely broken. He mentioned some documents he had prepared.'