If Death Ever Slept

I can’t tell you what Wolfe did Tuesday and Wednesday because I wasn’t there to see, but if you assume that he did nothing whatever I won’t argue-that is, nothing but eat, sleep, read, drink beer, and play with orchids. As for me, I was busy. Monday night they kept me at 20th Street-Rowcliff and a Sergeant Coffey-until four o’clock in the morning, going over it back and forth and across and up and down, and when they got through they knew every bit as much as Cramer and Stebbins had already known when they took me down. Rowcliff could not believe that he wasn’t smart enough to maneuver me into leaking what I was at Jarrell’s for, and I didn’t dare to make it clear to him in words he would understand for fear he might see to it that Wolfe didn’t get what he wanted for brain exercise. So daylight was trying to break through at my windows when I turned in.

And Tuesday at noon, when I had just started on my fourth griddle cake and my second cup of coffee, the phone rang to tell me that I would be welcome at the DA’s office in twenty minutes. I made it in forty, and was there five solid hours, one of them with the DA himself present, and at the end they knew everything that Rowcliff did. There was one little spot where the chances looked good for my getting booked as a material witness, but I bumped through it without having to yell for help.

My intention was, if and when I left Leonard Street a free man, to stop in at Homicide West to see if Cramer had decided to let me look at the reports, but I was interrupted. After finally being dismissed by Mandelbaum, as I was on my way down the hall from his room to the front, a door on the right opened and one of the three best dancers I had ever stepped with came out. Seeing me, she stopped.

“Oh,” she said. “Hello.”

An assistant DA named Riley, having opened the door for her, was there shutting it. He saw me, thought he would say something, decided not to, and closed the door. The look Lois was giving was not an invitation to dance, far from it.

“So,” she said, “you’ve made it nice for us, you and your fat boss.”

“Then don’t speak to me,” I told her. “Give me an icy stare and flounce out. As for making it nice for you, wrong address. We held on till the last possible tenth of a second.”

“Hooray for you. Our hero.” We were moving down the hall. “Where are you bound for?”

“Home, with a stopover.”