Death of a Tall Man (5 page)

“What?” said Inspector O'Malley.

“Nothing,” Bill told him. “A quotation. Misapplied. However, Inspector, that's the way things are. You'll find it all in D.D. 14.”

Inspector O'Malley was morose. He said he had. He said it was a hell of a note.

“It looks to me, Bill, like you slipped,” he said. “I don't say you slipped. I say it looks to me like you slipped.”

“Possibly,” Bill said. “I'm sorry, sir.”

“What's sorry?” Inspector O'Malley wanted to know. Bill merely nodded, agreeing by implication it wasn't much.

“If you have any suggestions, Inspector,” he said, politely.

O'Malley shook his head firmly. He said Bill knew he didn't interfere with responsible officers, which was untrue; he said that he couldn't do everything, could he? He said, “You young cops!” with a falling inflection and an air of great weariness. Bill Weigand, who was used to this, merely waited, with politeness.

“All right,” O'Malley said. “O.K., Lieutenant. Put it on the back of the stove. Maybe it will boil.”

“Right,” Bill said. “I can't think of anything else. It isn't as if—”

A buzzer sounded on Inspector O'Malley's desk. O'Malley looked resentfully at a box with a grid on the front of it. He reached out, hesitated, pushed firmly down on a lever on the box. The box gave a harsh wail and O'Malley jumped.

“Damn' gadget,” O'Malley said, with compressed fury. He pushed the lever up again. He yelled at the box.

“Well!” he yelled.

The box cleared its throat, a little nervously. Bill Weigand recognized the throat.

“Sergeant Mullins, sir,” the box said. “Report of homicide in the Medical Chambers, East Fifty-third Street. Looks important, sir.”

“Why?” said O'Malley, without compromise in his voice.

“It's a doctor, sir,” Mullins said, and cleared his throat again.

“What's important about a doctor?” O'Malley said.

“Yes, sir,” Mullins said. “I see what you mean, sir.”

“The hell you do,” O'Malley said.

“Yes, sir,” Mullins said. “I thought the papers, Inspector. Medical Chambers and everything.” Mullins, in the box, cleared his throat again. “I thought the Loot—I mean, I thought you'd want to know, Inspector.”

Bill Weigand watched O'Malley subside. O'Malley began to subside, he noticed, when Mullins said “papers.” It was a word to conjure with, and Mullins had conjured. It was a word like “commissioner,” like the two words “district leader.” Bill Weigand did not smile, but there was a smile in his mind.

“Yeah,” O'Malley said. “The papers. Why didn't you say it was in the Medical Chambers?”

Mullins, without stopping to clear his throat, said he was sorry.

“Is it a name?” O'Malley wanted to know. This time Mullins hesitated.

“Seems like I've heard it,” he said. “Dr. Andrew Gordon. He's an optician.”

O'Malley looked at Weigand, and Weigand nodded.

“Oculist,” Weigand said. “Eye doctor. Well known, I think.”

“He's an oculist, Mullins,” O'Malley said. “Sure he's well known. Don't you read the papers?”

“Yes, sir,” Mullins said.

“Well,” O'Malley said. “Stand by, Sergeant. Weigand will pick you up if he wants you.”

He flicked the lever on the box down. The box wailed. He flicked it back up again.

“Damn' gadget,” O'Malley said.

Bill Weigand was standing up. O'Malley nodded.

“Ought to take it myself,” O'Malley said. “You young cops. But naturally, I've got a hundred things.”

“Naturally,” Weigand agreed.

“Well,” O'Malley said, “what you waiting for, Bill?”

Bill wasn't waiting. He was moving toward the door. Deputy Chief Inspector O'Malley watched him go. Deputy Chief Inspector O'Malley leaned back in his chair, bit the end off a cigar and then laid the cigar in a brass ashtray. He leaned his head back against the high, upholstered rest on his chair. He closed his eyes, so that he could think better.

Pamela North, bent over so that her body above the hips was parallel with the floor, backed out of her apartment door. She held her hands down, palms out, and made small pushing motions with them, meanwhile saying, “No, no.” A small cat, made of India rubber, with a cafe au lait body and upstanding, deep brown ears, looked at her out of blue eyes and made a low, surprised sound. Pam North continued to push the air with her right hand and reached for the door with her left, planning to pull the door closed. The small cat crouched and waved a suddenly bushy tail. Pam got the door with her fingertips and began to pull it toward her. The cat waved the bushy tail. The door was only six inches ajar when the cat moved. It was a movement so fluid, so lithe and, above all, so rapid, that the eyes could hardly follow it. Now you saw her; now you didn't. It was like a flame of a candle going out.

It was Martini North going out. She went over Pam's grasping right hand. She landed running; she frolicked down the apartment-house corridor.

“Teeney,” Pam North said, in deep reproach. “You're a bad girl.”

Martini stopped when she heard what was, for her, the operative portion of her name. She stopped; it seemed, midway in a leap. She sat down, all in one motion, and looked around at Pam. The little cat's eyes were round and surprised and innocent. It was clear that she was seeing Pam for the first time.

Pam left the door part-way open and advanced.

“Bad cat,” Pam said, in low, sad tones. “Bad cat.”

Martini watched Pam's approach with pleased interest. When Pam was two steps away she crouched and smiled. Pam said, “Nice Teeney,” in tones of caress. She reached out a hand. Teeney threw herself over her own shoulders, landed trotting and went down the corridor. Her trot was ridiculously purposeful. It was also, apparently, downhill. Although she was not pleased, Pam laughed.

“Teeney,” she said, “you have the silliest hind legs. Here, Teeney.”

Martini stopped and sat down facing Pam. She raised her right rear foot, looked at it with wonder, and used it to scratch her right ear. Pam sat on her heels.

“Teeney,” she said, in a voice of great interest. “Look, Teeney!”

Pam herself looked. She looked at her own fingers, briskly patting the carpeted floor. She used her nails to scratch the carpet, producing a small scraping sound.

Martini unwound herself, wrapped her tail around her bottom neatly, looked at Pam North's face and then bent her head slightly forward and looked at Pam's finger. Pam continued to scratch the carpet. Martini's interest grew; she subsided to the floor, with her legs under her. Then she began to swish her tail again. It had become a normal tail; now, for the second time, it bushed. Flattened on the floor, moving with infinite secrecy, Martini began an advance. Each leg moved with its own poised caution. Each foot came down like a petal falling, touched the surface in exploration, by infinitesimal degrees took the weight of cat. Martini was creeping over a jungle floor, wary of the faintest sound of crumbled leaf. Muscles rippled along her little, compact body. She advanced by inches. She stopped, waited, advanced again. Her eyes were fixed on Pam's finger. She was four feet away, three—she was almost within reach of Pam's hands.

Then she leaped for the kill. She leaped sideways, so that she passed the hand. As she passed it, half in the air, half on her feet, she flicked it with her right forepaw. And she touched Pam's hand with all claws sheathed, with infinite lightness. Landing, she continued. She continued at a lope, rocking like a hobbyhorse. She reached the partly open door, made a sharp right turn, and went through the aperture. Pam moved, with only human celerity and grace, after her. Martini was sitting inside the door. She was washing her back. She paid no attention whatever to Pamela North, so Pamela North closed the door gently—so as not to pinch Martini if she changed her mind—and went on about her business.

Cats, Pam thought to herself, are certainly something. It must be very funny to be a cat, she told herself, as she waited for the elevator. Because you don't know what you're going to do next and I don't think you recognize your hind feet when you see them. The elevator stopped and Pam got in. “And certainly not your tail,” Pam continued. It was only when the elevator man turned and looked at her that Pam realized she had, as she unpredictably did, spoken aloud. He was an elevator man she knew quite well. Still.

“I said, have you seen the mail?” Pam told him.

“Oh,” the elevator man said, and looked relieved. “It doesn't come until about one thirty usually, Mrs. North. The second delivery, that is.”

Pam looked at her watch. It was one fifteen. It
is
always later than you think, Pam thought. She reflected. And hungrier, usually, she added. If she walked briskly, she could get to Charles, which was only around the corner, in two or three minutes. The trouble with not having anybody to lunch with was that you forgot to go when you planned to, and then you got hungrier and ate more and if you weren't careful you spoiled your dinner. Things would be simplified if Jerry didn't have to go to his office or, since he obviously did, if he didn't have to have so many lunches with agents and people.

She walked across the lobby and through the door. And she was confronted by a miracle. In front of the door—not across the street or down at the end of the block, although either would have been itself miraculous, but actually in front of the door—there was a taxicab with its flag up! It was almost impossible to believe. Even as—with that wild surge of exultation which, that spring, so few New Yorkers ever had the opportunity to enjoy—Pam North leaped across the sidewalk, skepticism fought for the upper hand.

It would be waiting for someone. It would be a taxicab which would go only in one direction, and would shake its head glumly—long-sufferingly—if urged to go in another. It would be time for it to go over to the upper West Side, where all taxicabs seemed to live, and pull in. It would have a broken clutch. It would be out of gas. Or it would be merely whimsical.

As she leaped, Pam's face took on that look of entreaty which, that spring, was the fixed expression of all New Yorkers who sought to become passengers in taxicabs. She looked anxiously at the driver, who regarded her with detached speculation. He was middle aged and jaundiced. He knew his power. Above good and evil, above—oh, infinitely above—the tiny needs of small scurrying folk, he waited her coming. It was not for him,
deus ex machina
—and what a
machina,
to be sure!—to indicate in advance his final, august decision. He pretended he did not know what Pam North was about. Not until she was opening the door, perhaps not until she was in and seated, would he look at her with slow surprise—surprise and effrontery—and say, “No, lady,” and give whatever whimsical reason he used between one fifteen and one twenty on Mondays.

There were several ways of meeting this, if you were unwillingly a pedestrian that spring and sought to improve your lot. The simplest was the take-it-for-granted technic. Utilizing that, you merely assumed taxicabs were what they had once been, available, and entered and spoke firmly. Then the driver spoke more firmly and, usually, you got out. The next—Pam's own favorite—was the please-it's-just-a-short-run method. That involved a bright, but suitably submissive, smile, to be turned on just as you reached for the handle of the door. A slight wistfulness helped, sometimes. Frequently this method got you refused before you were entirely in the cab—a concession, this.

There were other methods. There was the stern, I'll-tell-a-cop-on-you method. There was the desperate situation, or I've got-to-get-to-the-hospital method—seldom efficacious, particularly when used by women. There was the promising or Boy-what-a-tip-I'm-going-to-give-you method. And there were variants of all these. They were alike only, at last, in their common inadequacy. And all involved, first, the miracle of the cab-with-its-flag-up. That was where you began.

Pam was beginning there. Her first startled leap—which was a little, somehow, like one of Martini's leaps—carried her halfway across the sidewalk. It was involuntary, almost a reflex. The rest of the way, Pam moved more slowly. She only trotted. The taxicab did not move. Sometimes they merely went away while you were reaching for them, remote in their contempt. This, at worst, was one of the coquettish ones. It might be wooed. Pam reached it, and still it did not move. She reached out a hand and touched its door handle. The touch was almost a caress. She looked quickly, with her prettiest smile, at the driver. He looked at her with no comment in his face. But his face did not reject her; did not utterly reject her. It reserved decision. Gently, so as not to frighten the taxicab, Pamela North turned the door handle. (There had been a time, dim now in memory, when taxicab drivers reached back and opened the door for passengers. It was strange to remember that time, even mistily—even fleetingly.) Pam turned the door handle. It was probable, of course, that the door would not open. Many taxicabs, in those months, opened only on one side. Some did not, it appeared, open at all. They were merely decoys. This one opened.

The door did not fall off, which was always, also, slightly to be expected. It was secured inside by a heavy rope, but the rope allowed a medium-sized opening. It was quite sufficient for Pam North, who was barely medium sized herself. She slipped in, still cautiously—there was a chance, naturally, that the cab might be half filled with original settlers—and, when she found herself alone, sat down gingerly on the edge of the seat.

Now, slowly, with majesty, the driver turned toward her. Now was the moment. He was about to speak. Tensely, perched more tentatively than any bird, Pam North waited. He spoke.

“Where to, lady?” he said.

His voice was almost like anyone's voice. It was not harsh or condemning; it was not even notably contemptuous. Its tone accepted Pam as, at the least, a candidate for the human race—an entry, not yet scratched.