“I’m from
Candy pursed her mouth. “That must have been Jim.”
“Who’s Jim?”
“A friend of ours. Maybe you ought to come with us.”
Baker’s Dozin’
“Come in,” Stubb said, and all three tried to crowd in together, Sandy Duck caught and crushed between Candy and Barnes.
“God, but I’m glad to see you,” Candy said. She sat on a bed, kicked off one of the galoshes the police had given her, and began to rub her plump, pink foot.
“What are you doing here?” Stubb asked Barnes.
Candy grunted, obstructed by her belly as she tussled with the other galosh. “I made him come, Jim. I was talking to him while you were up here, and he hasn’t anyplace to stay tonight. He just parked his sample cases and stuff in the bus station.”
Their hostess snorted like a small, well-bred horse. “Am I to have this mob domiciled with me?”
“Not me, Madame Serpentina,” Sandy Duck declared. “I only want to interview you—I told you over the phone.”
“And I told you that I do not grant such interviews. I am a witch, not a politician!”
There was a brief flash and the click of a shutter. Sandy lowered her little one-ten and looked at it with satisfaction. “That’s great, I think. With your head back like that. It looked like you were exorcising.”
“I would gladly ring my bell and light my candle, if they would make you go. Ozzie, I certainly did not invite you to my room, but now that you have come, please get this creature out.”
Barnes smiled. “I’ll be happy to, Madame Serpentina. But of course it might be better not to have a commotion. I think the best way might be to work out a compromise that would leave good feelings all around, and since you’ve laid it in my lap—if you’ll excuse the expression—here’s what I propose. Let Sandy ask three questions. I’ll see to it that she doesn’t pack them, doesn’t ask two questions as if they were one. You answer them fully and fairly, and when you’ve answered the third, Sandy will go out with no urging. Won’t both of you agree that’s reasonable?”
Stubb chuckled. “You should have been a diplomat, Ozzie.”
“She must also promise not to harass me in the future.”
Still clutching her camera, Sandy raised her hand. “I won’t harass. I may ask to see you, but if you say no I won’t push.”
“All right then, it is agreed—with the proviso that my answers need satisfy only my own sense of my own worth. I cannot promise they will be satisfactory to you.”
“Okay!” Barnes was beaming. “What’s the first one, Sandy?”
“Wait a minute.” The associate editor’s fingers fluttered as she jammed her camera into her purse. “I have to think … .”
“I have not got all night.”
Stubb added, “Hell no. There’s something I have to talk over with the rest of you when this girl’s gone.”
“Well, I have to think about it. I came up here with a list of about a hundred questions. Now I’m only going to get to ask three. The least you people can do is give me time to decide which three it’s going to be.”
“I said,
“Hey,” Stubb put in. “I’m hungry as hell—I don’t think I’ve eaten since breakfast. While she’s making up her mind, how about getting on that phone and asking room service to bring up a club sandwich and a cup of coffee?”
Candy laid a pink hand on the telephone. “Wait a minute, if anybody’s going to eat around here, I’m in. There’s probably a menu in this drawer.”
“What is the use!” The witch gave a theatrical gesture of despair. “Perhaps we should ask for stuffed pig, did we not have one already.”
“If you mean me, forget it. A pig, maybe. But stuffed? Forget it. I’m so empty I can feel my stomach folding up. Now listen to this.” Candy held up the room service menu. “‘Pompano Amandine—luscious filets of fresh pompano, flown up daily from Miami, broiled in a mixture of farm butter, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and grated almonds.’ That’s for me.”
“Right,” Stubb said. He had taken a small notebook and a mechanical pencil from inside his coat. “What to drink?”
“Beer. Pie afterwards. Peach, if they’ve got it. Or apple. They’ve always got apple.”
“Right. What about you?” He looked toward the witch. “It’s your room, after all.”
“I am delighted you recall it. I had thought it forgotten that I will be paying for all this.”
“Sure. By the way, it’s about time you phoned the desk to ask about your seventy bucks. But wait till I get this order in. What’ll you have?”
