“You’ve got to practice,” I advised him, watching two more old ladies come in. “Takes a lot of practice to be a good liar. May be the most important thing a detective can learn.”
“I thought about being a writer once,” Aardvark chuckled. I didn’t see anything funny in wanting to be a writer. He started to say something else, but a wave of noise from the next room drowned him out. When the sound passed, Aardvark nodded toward the other room. “Political stuff, I think. Bunch of guys with straw hats and pictures on donkeys and elephants. In the middle of a war, still thinking about politics.” He shook his head. I shook mine and chewed on an ice cube.
“Can I get you a real drink?” he asked, looking at his empty glass.
“Another Pepsi will be fine,” said I. “It’s full of calories, like the ads say. One hundred and eighty-five calories of pure energy. More than a lamb chop.”
Aardvark looked at my battered face, trying to decide if I was joking.
People a lot sharper than the Aardvark had tried to read my kisser and got nowhere. Mine is a dark face with a flat nose topped with a full head of dark hair generously sprinkled with gray. I stand about five nine and do my best to give the impression that I can take on tigers. It’s part of the job. The truth is that my nose has been smashed three times in losing causes. Once by my brother Phil’s fist, once by a flight through the windshield of a 1931 Oldsmobile, and once by a baseball thrown by my brother. I sweat too easily, dress too shabbily, and usually can’t resist the urge to open my mouth when I should keep it shut.
I smiled at an old lady in a little black hat who had looked my way. My smile scared her, and she turned to the other old lady she was with, but I wasn’t to be alone for long. Donald Meek advanced shyly and forced himself to meet my eye. Over his shoulder a possible suspect came in, a block-shaped guy about thirty-five wearing a dark suit, a black cape, a floppy white hat, and carrying a cane. He raised his chin and glanced around the room. He saw me but paused only for the space between two adjacent shots in a film and then moved on. He was a real possible.
“I’m Howard Lachtman,” the Donald Meek look-alike said, unsure of whether to hold out his hand for a handshake. Instead, he let it rise slightly. I grabbed it and said I was pleased to meet him. I’d talked to him on the phone the day before, asked him about his group, and received the invitation to come to this meeting and be the speaker.
“We’ve never had a detective talk to us,” he had said. “We have no program set yet outside of Jeff and Angela Pierce showing their prewar slides of London and Dick Campbell giving a report on …” His voice had trailed off, unable to remember what Campbell was going to report on.
“Sure,” I had agreed. “I’ll be glad to.”
And now Lachtman stood before me, coming about to my shoulders and clearly uneasy.
“We’ve never had a real detective talk to us before,” he repeated.
“I know,” I said keeping up my end of the lively art of conversation, which had all the signs of turning into the scene from
“Why do you call yourselves the ‘Engineer’s Thumbs,’” I asked, not giving a damn and trying not to lose sight of the caped character who flitted from small group to small group, arching his eyebrows into each conversation.
“Because,” Lachtman said, “‘The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb’ is the only Sherlock tale in which the great detective didn’t catch the criminal.”
I looked around for Aardvark and a fresh Pepsi but couldn’t find him.
“Why would you want to name your group after Holmes’s only failure?” I asked playing with my now-empty glass.
The question seemed to puzzle Lachtman, who resisted a powerful urge to scratch his hairless head.
“I’m not quite sure. It wasn’t my idea. I’ll have to ask my wife, Margaritte.”
The caped character finally swooped to our duo and, having overheard the last of Lachtman’s words, beamed maliciously, put his hand on the small man’s shoulder, and uttered in a powerful phony Shakespearean English favored by American drama students, “Is that Officer Margaritte who helps old ladies cross the street?”
Lachtman didn’t know how to respond. He grinned weakly and looked in the direction of the woman with whom he had entered, who was busily putting papers on the main table.
“I think I’d better help Margaritte set things up. Dinner will be served soon.”
Lachtman eased himself out from under the grasp of the caped man, who allowed his arm to rise majestically. His glance turned to me, and the silver knob of his cane rose to his chin. It looked like a John Barrymore imitation.
“You are the detective.”
“That’s what the license says,” I answered.
He cocked his head dramatically to one side, threw back his cape, and eyed me.
“Do I get the part?” I asked.
“You don’t look like a detective,” he said grandly and loud enough to take in a few of the old ladies not too far away from us.
“I’m in disguise,” I whispered. “Like Holmes. I’m really much taller, far more elegant, and with a voice that’s the envy of Harry Marble on the Columbia network news.”
“You jest,” he said.
“When I can.” If he wasn’t my madman, he was somebody’s.
“We shall see,” he said, throwing his cape over his shoulder and turning his back. “We shall see.”
It was a great second act closing line for a revival of an old melodrama, but I wasn’t sure whether he was referring to my ability to tell a decent joke or to be a detective.
A shout from the politicians next door broke through the walls, and little Howard Lachtman seemed to be getting up enough courage to call our coven to order. I moved toward the door, scaring at least one little old lady Sherlockian, who thought I was coming at her. She gasped and stepped back, proving I hadn’t completely lost my charm.
The toilet was behind a pair of wilted palms, and I found myself standing next to a reeling guy wearing a straw hat on a head of corn silk hair. He was grinning and shaking his head as we urinated side by side, the event that has brought men together in philosophical thought since the days of Socrates.
“Political rally?” I asked.
“Salesmen,” he answered. “Middle of the worst war in history. Jap troops are at the outskirts of Mandalay. The Russian front is in trouble. The Japs are after Australia, and they announced today that they’re drafting 1Bs. I’m 1B, flat feet, bad eyes. And my boss decides it would be a morale builder for the salesmen to have a mock political rally.”
He zipped his pants solemnly, steadied himself against the white tile wall, straightened his straw hat, and asked what group I was with.
“Engineer’s Thumbs,” I said.
“Engineers,” he said.
“Right,” I agreed, not wanting to make his world any more complicated than it already was.
By the time I got back everyone was seated and waiting for me. There were about twenty of them. Lachtman let out a small sigh when he spotted me and motioned with his hand to the empty seat on his left. I strolled over while the group watched me, and I had the sudden fear that I had forgotten to zip up in the washroom. I settled myself in next to Lachtman, who introduced me to Officer Margaritte.
Lachtman rose and in a far-from-steady voice said that the dinner was about to be served and that the speaker for tonight was Tony Pastor, a real detective who would be introduced more fully later by Lou Randisi. The caped crusader who sat opposite me at one of four round tableclothed tables let his eyes roll upward in anticipation.
Randisi, alias Alvin the Aardvark, sat on my left, hurrying down a scotch.
“Teaching high school is like walking in MacArthur Park. It’s nice to look at the animals, but while you’re doing it you always step in their crap.”
That was the extent of his conversation with me during the meal.
Lachtman kept his head down and attended to eating. Randisi kept his snout in his drink and his mind on his students. It was Friday, May 1, May Day 1942. He had the weekend to look forward to and summer vacation was
