Ozzie shook his head again.
“If you see him, you tell him Rose’s lookin’ for him. Tell him Rose is the Queen, and a good friend of Mar—of Serpentina’s. He knows Serpentina.”
“All right,” Ozzie said. He found the conversation thrilling, though he could not have said why.
“Go look now,” the woman told him as a burly attendant seized her from behind. Little Ozzie darted away.
Washington Calling
“Okay, Cliff. I’ve got a little something going to keep me occupied, but if you should need somebody to fill in, I could probably make the time.” Stubb hung up the phone.
“You look tired,” Murray said sympathetically.
“I ought to. I’ve been walking my dogs off all morning.”
“In this cold?”
Stubb shrugged and pushed back his hat. “That part wasn’t bad. A lot of the time I was in somebody’s house. Hell, I was sitting down then, so what am I bitching about?”
“You get paid yet?”
“Not yet. Couple of days. Thanks for the coffee.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean that. You’re good here. Hell, Jim, you ran up a big tab and paid it all off. When was it? Day before yesterday?”
“I guess,” Stubb said. “Jesus, I am tired. I guess it’s the cold. Gimme a B.T.L., Murray.”
“Fries on the side?”
Stubb shook his head. “I had a big breakfast.”
The door flew open, admitting a few snowflakes and a blast of frigid air. “Mr. Stubb! Mr. Stubb!” and then, “Oh, God!”
The steamy air of the sandwich shop had fogged Sandy’s glasses. She jerked them off and rubbed them on her sleeve.
“Winter’s hell, isn’t it?” Stubb said. “Same thing happened to me. Same thing happens every time I go inside anyplace. Over here.”
“Mr. Stubb, I have to talk to you. It’s important—terribly important. It really is.”
“Sure. Important to you or to me?”
“To both of us. Something’s happened.”
“In that case, we’d better get a booth in back. Bring my sandwich back there, will you, Murray?”
Murray nodded and asked Sandy, “How about you? Wanna have anything?”
“Just coffee. Gosh is it time for lunch already? A hamburger and some tea.”
“Regular or bellybuster?”
“Regular. Will you have lunch with me, Mr. Stubb? It shouldn’t offend your sense of chivalry. I’ll put it on my expense account. Usually I have a lot of trouble with that, but I don’t think I will now.”
Stubb was carrying his cup toward the rear of the sandwich shop. Over his shoulder he said, “I don’t have one. Sure, I’ll eat on your dough.”
“Really, this is very good of you, Mr. Stubb. Do you know you’re a very hard man to trace? You’re not in the telephone book, and the front desk at the Consort didn’t seem to know a thing about you. I went to the
“Don’t worry about a thing,” Stubb said. He had taken out his pencil and battered little notebook, and had begun to write as she spoke. “I’m working
“Why that’s wonderful!” Sandy paused, her plump fingers fumbling in her purse for her own notebook. “But why would a psychic need a detective?”
“For the same reason detectives need psychics. You said last night that the cops go to psychics for help in finding bodies, missing weapons, and that kind of stuff, remember?”
Sandy nodded.
“And it’s absolutely true. They do. But did you ever hear of a psychic telling the cops that the body was in the basement at four twelve West Forty-Eighth? No, what the psychic sees, maybe, is an old trunk and a broken clock.”
Sandy nodded again.
“Swell. So suppose this time it’s the psychic that wants to find somebody. She sees the trunk and the clock, right? Or whatever.”
“I see.”
“As Madame S. would say, I doubt it. But that’s what’s going on. I’m looking for a certain party, on behalf of Madame S. Those other people you met, Candy and Ozzie Barnes, are working for me.”
