IV
Mrs. Martha Bendix, Executive Director of the Bendix Domestic Agency and an office neighbour of mine, was a big, hearty woman with a male haircut and a laugh like the bang of a twelve-bore shotgun. She was coming out of her office as I was coming out of mine, and, as soon as I saw her, I knew I wanted to talk to her.
‘Hello there, Vic,’ she boomed. ‘Where have you been hiding yourself? Haven’t seen you in days.’
‘I want to see you, Martha. Can you spare a moment?’
She looked at her wrist-watch, about the size of a cartwheel, decided after all she wasn’t in any hurry and opened the office door.
‘Come on in. Suppose you want to pick my brains again, huh? I gotta date, but it’s nothing important.’
She led the way through the outer office where a pale blonde with a face like a happy rabbit pecked at a typewriter and gave a coy little smile as she passed.
‘If Mr. Manners calls, Mary, tell him I’m on my way down,’ Martha said, and breezed into her cream-and- green office.
I followed her in and closed the door.
‘Turn the key, ‘Martha said, lowering her voice. It probably could still be heard at the far end of the corridor, but she im-agined she was speaking in a conspirator’s whisper. ‘I’ve a bottle of Vat 69 that wants breaking open, but I wouldn’t like Mary to think I drink in office hours.’ She hoisted a bottle into sight as I sank into an armchair. ‘I wouldn’t like her to think I drink at all, for that matter.’
‘What makes you so positive she doesn’t know?’
‘What makes you so damn positive she does?’ Martha said and grinned. She slapped a threeinch snifter down on the desk in front of me. ‘Rinse your phlegm out with that.’
‘There are times, Martha, when I don’t believe you’re even civilized, to hear you talk,’I said, collecting the glass. ‘Well, bung-ho.’
‘Fungus on your adenoids,’ she boomed, and downed her drink at a gulp. ‘Not bad, huh? Want another?’
I shook my head, and accepted the three coffee-beans she dropped on the blotter before me.
‘Well now, what’s your trouble?’ she asked, sitting down and getting to work on the beans herself. ‘What do you want to know this time?’
‘I’m trying to find out something about a Filipino named Toa Souki; Serena Dedrick’s chauffeur. She engaged him in New York, and I’m wondering if your New York office handled the job.’
Martha looked insulted.
‘My good man! I’ll have you know we don’t handle coloured people. You’re not sticking your nose into that case, are you’
I said I was sticking my nose into that case.
‘How can I get a line on Souki?’
Martha scratched her head with the paper-knife while she thought.
‘I suppose I could find out for you,’ she said, a little grudge-ingly. ‘Syd Silver runs the biggest colour agency in New York. He’s a friend of mine, the dirty little rat! I’ll ask him. If his boils aren’t bothering him, he might find out for you. Anything in it for him?’
‘A hundred bucks.’
Martha’s eyes popped.
‘Why, for a hundred bucks that guy would drown his mother in a quart of beer.’
I said I didn’t want him to drown his mother in a quart of beer. All I wanted was the lowdown on Souki.
‘Consider it done. I’ll have some dope for you in a couple of days. Will that do?’
‘I’ll make it a hundred and fifty if I can get it by tomorrow morning and if the dope’s worth having.’
‘You’ll get it,’ Martha said, climbing to her feet. That guy’s a genius at stirring up dirt. That all?’
‘Yeah. Well, thanks, Martha, you’re always helpful. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
Martha grinned.
‘Tell me something, Vic. When are you marrying that dark-eyed lovely you keep in frustration in your office?’
‘If you mean Paula, I’m not marrying her. I wish you wouldn’t keep harping on that subject whenever we meet. Haven’t I told you she isn’t the marrying type?’
She gave me a nudge that nearly dislocated my spine, and let off a laugh that rattled the windows.
‘You ask her and see,’ she said. ‘There’s no such animal as a non-marrying woman. Those who aren’t married haven’t been asked.’
V
I parked the Buick in the forecourt of the apartment house on Jefferson Avenue and walked into the quiet of the lobby.
A girl, not the foxy-faced Gracie, was sitting behind the counter, the telephone harness hitched to her chest. She was chewing gum and reading the funnies, and from the bored expression on her face I concluded they were no funnier than those Gracie had been reading the first time I had come in here.
Maxie, the bowler-hatted bouncer, popped out from behind his pillar and scowled at me.
‘Hello,’ I said, and gave him the teeth. ‘Where do we talk?’ His small eyes, set deep in the fat-veined face, showed suspicion and surprise.
‘What do we want to talk for?’ he growled, his moustache bristling. ‘I haven’t anything to say to you. Besides, I’m busy.’
That seemed to be the cue for the mercenary theme, so I took out my bill-fold and hoisted a ten-dollar bill into sight.
‘Let’s go somewhere quiet and talk,’ I said.
He studied the ten-dollar note thoughtfully, groped with a thick, dirty finger amongst his back molars, fished out a slab of something and deposited it on the seat of his trousers. Then he looked at the girl behind the counter.
‘Hey! I’ll be downstairs if you want me. Don’t let anyone up.’
She didn’t bother to drag her eyes away from the funnies, but she did manage to incline her head a couple of inches to show she heard and understood.
Maxie plodded off towards the elevator.
We stood side by side, breathing over each other as the elevator took us down to the basement.
He led the way along a white-tiled passage, lit by lamps in wire baskets to a small office that consisted of a desk, two chairs and a signed photograph of Jack Dempsey over a soot-filled fireplace.
He sat down behind the desk, pushed his bowler hat to the back of his head and relaxed, breathing gently through his thick, fat nose. His eyes never left the ten-dollar bill for a second.
I gave it to him. I knew he wouldn’t concentrate on anything else until he had it. Fat, nicotined fingers closed on it and stowed it away in a pocket somewhere in his rear.
‘Perelli,’ I said.
He wiped the end of his nose on his coat-sleeve, puffed out a small quantity of garlic and beer fumes and sighed.
‘Aw, hell! Not him again?’
‘Certainly. Why not?’
‘Every cop in the City has been talking to me about Perelli. I’ve got nothing to tell you I haven’t told them.’
‘That doesn’t mean a thing, since I don’t know what you told them. Suppose you answer a few questions: questions I bet the police didn’t ask you.’
‘Well all right,’ he said with no enthusiasm. ‘So long as you pay for my time I don’t care.’
I rolled a cigarette across the desk to show him this wasn’t going to be a hurried session, and he wasn’t to
