the street but someone was using it. I wound up at a phone on the rear wall of a Blarney Rose bar that had less in common with Sangfroid than the Hotel Gresham did with the Carlyle. Hand-lettered signs over the back bar offered double shots of various brands of blended whiskey at resistibly low prices.
I dialed the number Whelkin had given me. He must have had his hand on the receiver because he had it off the hook the instant it started to ring.
The conversation was briefer than the one I’d had with the Maharajah. It took longer than it had to because I had trouble hearing at one point; the television announcer was delivering football scores and something he said touched off a loud argument that had something to do with Notre Dame. But the shouting subsided and Whelkin and I resumed our chat.
I apologized for the interference.
“It’s nothing, my boy,” he assured me. “Things are every bit as confused where I am. A Eurasian chap’s sprawled on a bench in what looks to be a drug-induced coma, a wild-eyed old woman’s pawing through a shopping bag and nattering to herself, and another much younger woman’s flitting about taking everyone’s picture. Oh, dear. She’s headed this way.”
“She sounds harmless,” I said.
“One can only hope so. I shall give her a dazzling smile and let it go at that.”
A few minutes later I was back in the Pontiac studying a close-up of Rudyard Whelkin. He was showing all his teeth and they fairly gleamed.
“Subtle,” I told Carolyn.
“There’s a time for subtlety,” she said, “and there’s a time for derring-do. There is a time for the rapier and a time for the bludgeon. There is a time for the end-around play and a time to plunge right up the middle.”
“There’s a Notre Dame fan in the Blarney Rose who would argue that last point with you. I wanted a drink by the time I got out of there. But I had the feeling they were out of Perrier.”
“You want to stop someplace now?”
“No time.”
“What did Whelkin say?”
I gave her the Reader’s Digest version of our conversation as I headed uptown and east again. When I finished she frowned at me and scratched her head. “It’s too damned confusing,” she complained. “I can’t tell who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.”
“Just assume everybody’s lying. That way the occasional surprises will be pleasant ones. I’ll drop you at the Blinns’ place. You know what to do?”
“Sure, but aren’t you coming in?”
“No need, and too many other things to do. You know what to do after you’re through with the Blinns?”
“Have a big drink.”
“And after that?”
“I think so. Want to run through it all for me one more time?”
I ran through it, and we discussed a couple of points, and by then I was double-parked on East Sixty-sixth next to a Jaguar sedan with DPL plates and a shamefully dented right front fender. The Jag was parked next to a hydrant, and its owner, safe beneath the umbrella of diplomatic immunity, didn’t have to worry about either ticket or tow.
“Here we are,” I said. “You’ve got the pictures?”
“All of them. Even Atman Singh.”
“You might as well take the camera, too. No sense leaving it in the car. How about the Blinns’ bracelet? Got that with you?”
She took it from her pocket, slipped it around her wrist. “I’m not nuts about jewelry,” she said. “But it’s pretty, isn’t it? Bern, you’re forgetting something. You have to come in with me now if you want to get to the Porlock apartment.”
“Why would I want to get to the Porlock apartment?”
“To steal the lynx jacket.”
“Why would I want to steal the lynx jacket? I’m starting to feel like half of a vaudeville act. Why would I—”
“Didn’t you promise it to the cop?”
“Oh. I was wondering where all of that was coming from. No, what Ray wants for his wife is a full-length mink, and what’s hanging in Madeleine Porlock’s closet is a waist-length lynx jacket. Mrs. Kirschmann doesn’t want to have any part of wild furs.”
“Good for her. I wasn’t listening too closely to your conversation, I guess. You’re going to steal the mink somewhere else.”
“In due time.”
“I see. I heard you mention the furrier’s name and that’s what got me confused.”
“Arvin Tannenbaum,” I said.
“Right, that’s it.”
“Arvin Tannenbaum.”
“You just said that a minute ago.”
“Arvin Tannenbaum.”
“Bernie? Are you all right?”
“God,” I said, looking at my watch. “As if I didn’t have enough things to do and enough