return to his apartment for the night, Puskis summoned the elevator. It arrived quickly, and Dawlish opened the door and stood in the threshold, waiting for Puskis to enter.
“Through for the day, sir?” Dawlish asked, as always.
“Mmm, yes, I suppose I am. Listen. Mr. Dawlish, I was wondering if I might ask you, well, yes, how should I say this? Mr. Dawlish, has anyone come down to the Vaults while I have been absent? Except for the courier of course. But anyone else? Anyone who you might have dropped off and left here for a period of time, perhaps?”
Dawlish stared at him miserably but did not speak.
“If you did, well, if you did drop someone off, I certainly would not blame you or consider you neglectful in your duties.”
These conciliatory words seemed to have no effect on Dawlish, who continued to stare at Puskis.
Puskis produced a pen and proffered it to Dawlish. “If you would, Mr. Dawlish, would you return this pen to my desk the next time someone comes down here while I am absent? Other than the courier, of course.”
Dawlish took the pen from Puskis’s hand and dropped it into the inside pocket of his uniform jacket. He was uncharacteristically silent during the short ride to the lobby.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Panos’s office reeked of sardines and his mustache glistened with oil. Crumbs littered the front of his wrinkled blue shirt, collar open, tie loose down to the second button. From some quality to his expression, something in the clear brown eyes, Frings knew things were afoot.
“What in the heaven happened to you?” Panos said, looking with distaste and amusement at Frings’s ash-covered clothes.
“I was at the strike.”
“I heard about that particular thing. You find the story there, ah?”
Panos played the idiot sometimes, usually when he was sitting on something big.
“I talked to Bernal. I think that’s got everyone beat. Everything else you could get by watching from the street.”
Panos smiled. “You took notes?”
“Of course.”
“Give them to Klima. He was down there, too. Doing what, that is what I don’t know. He can write the story from that and use your notes, too.” Panos focused his eyes carefully on Frings’s face. Frings knew that Panos thought he was going to throw a fit for losing a story that big. But he was high enough that it didn’t really seem to matter, and thinking about Panos waiting for him to get mad gave him a goofy grin that he couldn’t suppress. Panos’s eyes narrowed and he yelled to his secretary, “Woman, get me Klima.”
While they waited for Klima to arrive, Panos pulled two cigars out of his desk. Panos smoked a lot of cigars, but rarely offered one of his prized Cubans. It was a sign that he was in a particularly good mood. Frings watched as Panos sliced one end off each cigar, then made a thinner slice at the opposite end with a mock guillotine that sat on his desk. Frings had heard a story that Panos had used the guillotine on the pinkie of a guy named Cantor for reasons that were unclear. Frings had run into Cantor and had noticed a missing pinkie, but didn’t get confirmation on how he had come to lose it.
Panos leaned back in his chair, sucking on his cigar, then letting the smoke rise out of his mouth as if he were some sort of overfed dragon. Frings watched this, slightly dazed from the cigar on top of the reefer. Klima came in, looking frail and bald in a too big suit and food-stained tie. He had done his best to wipe off the ash from the strike, but he was still a mess.
“Qué pasa?” he asked Panos.
“While you were down watching the blues giving those strikers the what-for, Frings was actually doing some reporting.”
Klima turned to Frings with his mangy eyebrows raised. The bottom of his jaw was red with irritation from shaving; dark, puffy bags drooped beneath his eyes. Frings wondered, as he handed his notebook over, if Klima had some kind of chronic disease.
“That is Frings’s notebook with his notes from his interview with Bernal,” Panos continued.
“From today?”
“Yes, from today. Listen, it is today your lucky day. You will use Frings’s interview in your story on the strike. You think you can do that?”
Klima nodded, confused not by what he was being asked to do, but rather by why he was being asked to do it. He looked questioningly at Frings, then was assailed by Panos.
“What do you wait for?