“Nah. I ate enough. Tell you the truth, my stomach’s kind of jumpy. I got us something that’ll really help.”
I bustled him out to the Nova before he could proclaim it ta the diner at large. When we were safely inside the car, he flourished a fistful of paper at me. I tried turning on the overhead light, but that had died during the car’s first hundred thousand miles. I pulled out of the lot and stopped under a streetlamp. Mr. Contreras had lifted a bunch of work orders from Klosowski’s Emergency Electrical Repair van.
“I saw the door wasn’t locked when we went by, and then, while we was eating, I thought, well, why not? They’ll look more official than anything we could make up down at your office.”
We had decided to take a chance on finding my office still in the clear and go in there to try to manufacture a document that would get us into Crawford, Mead. Mr. Contreras was right: these would be much better than something jerry-rigged on my Olivetti.
“And,” he added, his voice squeaking a bit with excitement, “I got you a cap, too—you ought to cover up those curls of yours.”
He pulled a Klosowski cap from his back pocket. “Too bad you didn’t find me a false mustache and a beard as well. You know, I think we’d better move on south. Looks to me like someone’s heading for the van. This might be his favourite hat.”
We parked the Nova on Adams and circled around on foot to come at the Pulteney from the north. After getting in and out unmolested yesterday I was pretty sure we were dealing with people amateurish enough not to associate me with an office, but there was no point in revealing a car we’d been at such pains to get.
The elevator was having one of its rare fits of functionality. I would take it up while Mr. Contreras followed on foot. I gave him the key to the stairwell door with instructions to go hell for leather for the cops if I was under attack, not to leap into the fray.
His jaw set stubbornly. “I ain’t the kind of guy who’s going to run the other way when a lady’s getting beat up. You’d better resign yourself to that.”
To my dismay he pulled a pipe wrench out from under the boilersuits. It was his favorite weapon, one that he used with more gusto than ability. I started to debate the point with him, then decided there wasn’t time. The likelihood of my being jumped didn’t seem that great, anyway.
When the elevator creaked to a halt on the fourth floor, I turned off its light and slid out the door on my knees, propping my left hand on the wall for balance, holding the
Smith & Wesson in front of me with my right. The hall seemed clear; I used my pencil flash for a quick survey and didn’t see anyone.
The Pulteney management doesn’t encourage its tenants to use the facilities: night-lights are unheard of in the hallways. I got to my feet and tiptoed down to my own door. After using the building for twelve years, it was easy to move around in it in the dark.
As I’d hoped, no one was lurking—either in the hall, or inside my place. I had the lights on and one of Mr. Contreras’s filched work orders in the Olivetti when he came in—it had taken him a while to figure out how to open the stairwell in the dark.
“So they could have beaten you to a pulp while I was back there fooling around with the darn door. As if I don’t already feel bad enough sending Eddie Mohr to his death.”
I rested my wrists on the keyboard. “It didn’t happen that way. He chose to sign on to some deal with Diamond Head—you didn’t make him do that. Your calling him didn’t make them shoot him, either: it probably only accelerated the timetable. If we’d seen him this afternoon—”
“You might have talked some sense into him and he’d still be alive. You don’t need to be nice to me, doll, just to save my feelings. I can see there’s more to this business of talking to people than I’ve figured out.”
I got up from the machine and put an arm around him. “The worst thing you can do in an investigation is slow yourself down chewing over what you did wrong. When the case is finished you can take some time and try to learn from your mistakes. But when you’re in the middle of it— you just have to be like the Duke of Wellington—forget about it and go on.”
“Duke of Wellington, huh? He’s the guy that beat Napoleon, right?”
“The very one.” I sat back down at the typewriter. “Tell me something evil-sounding that could go -wrong with someone’s electrical outlets—something so bad, we can’t let anyone watch us while we work for fear they’ll fry their eyeballs.”