of the wooden models on his desk, an early Airmaster with black fuselage and golden wings. He moved it through the air, following it with his eyes and making a sputtering engine sound, the opiates having rendered him so boyish that it was hard to hate him, almost.
“That’s good of you,” I said.
“It’s Huff and that crowd on the board that’s been trying to replace me with the Missus. They think you’re a bad influence on me.” Down towards the carpet the Airmaster dove, saved at the last minute from disaster by the sure hand of its designer, who performed a couple of tricky loops on the way back skyward, still making that engine sound in the back of his throat. “And you’re paid too much versus what you actually do around here. You have some enemies in your own department, you know.”
“Mrs. Caspian,” I said.
“Nah, the big gal likes you, she’s the one who’s headed off an open rebellion down there.”
I was stunned to learn this about Mrs. Caspian, who’d never addressed a civil or unnecessary word to me in the entire time I’d known her. “I thought they all liked me okay down there.”
“There’s someone else they figure should be department head. I was thinking maybe I’d transfer you.”
“It’d be the same any place else. The fact is I ought to be on your personal payroll and not the company’s, but it’s your company and you run it the way you see fit.”
“You got that right, boy. Anyway, watch yourself around Huff.”
“Hell, I don’t even know him.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’s the comptroller, he knows what you make, and he hears what goes on in your department. Which is pretty damned irregular. Thing is, see, Huff would love to see me carted out of here in a straitjacket so’s he could run the financial side his way, but that’s not going to happen, is it?” He brought the Airmaster down onto his desk for a perfect three-point landing, and I was impressed to note that its Lilliputian tires actually spun.
“How do you know all this?”
“Miss Grau keeps her ears open and tells me everything there is to know around this godforsaken place. Everybody talks to her, and a lot of people figure she probably doesn’t like you because you’re a bad seed and encourage my degenerate tendencies.” He laughed, as if that were the most ridiculous idea he’d come across all week.
I DROVE TO Stanley’s at Kellogg and Oliver and ordered a cup of coffee from a heavy, slouching waitress whose weak chin managed some sort of structural alchemy that made her wide face rather pretty. She stared at me after she brought the coffee, her manner neither hostile nor flirtatious, just curious. I did my best to ignore her as I wrote down a list of my known nemeses on a yellow legal pad.
I started with all the men in my department, and parenthetically added Mrs. Caspian to the list, albeit with a pang of guilt after hearing that she’d stood up for me. Until I could verify that, though, I would treat her as a possible quisling, just like everyone in the Publicity and Marketing Department.
Then I wrote down the name of Ernest J. Huff, the comptroller. I added the three members of the Board of Directors with whom he was allied: Mr. J.T. Burress, Mr. Wilbur Lamarr, and Mr. George Latham. The four of them had opposed Collins on matters of wartime production and postwar retooling, and I assumed they were the ones trying to replace the old man with his compliant wife. I put Mrs. Collins on there, too, just for the hell of it.
The waitress refilled my coffee cup and I asked her for a glazed donut to match her eyes. I added Hiram Fish to my list, not because he posed any real threat to me or the boss but because he was a fink who looked like a gigolo. I added Billy Clark because he’d stirred up all the trouble that ended up with the boss on narcotics, which was turning out to be a pain in the balls.
The waitress brought my donut and kept looking at me. Finally she spoke.
“Did you go to WU around ’36, ’37?”
“I sure did,” I said.
She grinned, and though it made her look familiar I still couldn’t place her. “Duane something?”
“Wayne.”
“That’s it! Remember me? Wanda Blythe? We had Biology together.”
I affected a look of joy. “Wanda, swell to see you.” Dear God, though, it wasn’t. I remembered