Alligator except that the embroidered device on the breast was not that reptile but a bird in flight. I guess it was supposed to be a swallow, either winging its way back to Capistrano or not quite making a summer, because the brand name was Swallowtail. It had never quite caught on and I can understand why.
I added a pair of rundown running shoes, filled my pockets with burglar’s tools—an attaché case wouldn’t fit the image I was trying to project. I got out a clipboard and mounted a yellow pad on it, then set it aside.
I dialed Onderdonk’s number again and let it ring. Nobody answered. I looked up another number and no one answered it, either. I tried a third number and a woman answered midway through the fourth ring. I asked if Mr. Hodpepper was in, and she said I had the wrong number, but that’s what she thought.
I stopped at a florist on Seventy-second and picked up an assortment for $4.98. It struck me, as it has often struck me in the past, that flowers haven’t gone up much in price over the years, to the point where they’re one of the few things left that give you your money’s worth.
I asked for a small blank card, wrote Leona Tremaine on the envelope, and inscribed the card Fondly, Donald Brown. (I thought of signing it Howard Hodpepper but sanity prevailed, as it now and then does.) I paid for the flowers, taped the card to the wrapping paper, and went outside to hail a cab.
It dropped me on Madison Avenue around the corner from the Charlemagne. A florist’s delivery boy does not, after all, arrive by taxi. I walked to the building’s front entrance and moved past the doorman to the concierge.
“Got a delivery,” I said, and read from the card. “Leona Tremaine, it says.”
“I’ll see she gets them,” he said, reaching for the bouquet. I drew it back.
“I’m supposed to deliver ’em in person.”
“Don’t worry, she’ll get ’em.”
“Case there’s a reply,” I said.
“He wants his tip,” the doorman interposed. “That’s all he wants.”
“From Tremaine?” the concierge said, and he and the doorman exchanged smiles. “Suit yourself,” he told me, and picked up the intercom phone. “Miz Tremaine? Delivery for you, looks like flowers. The delivery boy’s bringing them up. Yes, ma’am.” He hung up and shook his head. “Go on up,” he said. “Elevator’s over there. It’s apartment 9-C.”
I glanced at my watch in the elevator. The timing, I thought, could not have been better. It was three-thirty. The doorman, the concierge and the elevator operator were not the crew who’d seen me enter last night, nor had they been around when I left with Appling’s stamps in my attaché case. And in half an hour they’d go off duty, before they’d had a chance to wonder why the kid with the flowers was spending so much time in Ms. Tremaine’s apartment. The crew that relieved them wouldn’t realize I’d come delivering flowers and would assume I’d had legitimate business with some other tenant. Anyway, they don’t hassle you as much on the way out, assuming you must have been okay to get past their security the first time around. It’s different if you try to carry out the furniture, of course, but generally speaking getting in’s the hard part.
The elevator stopped on Nine and the operator pointed at the appropriate door. I thanked him and went and stood in front of it, waiting for the sound of the door closing. It didn’t close. Of course it didn’t. They waited until the tenant opened the door. Well, she was expecting the flowers anyway, so what was I waiting for?
I poked the doorbell. Chimes sounded within, and after a moment the door opened. The woman who answered it had improbable auburn hair and a face that had fallen one more time than it had been lifted. She was wearing a sort of dressing gown with an oriental motif and she had a look about her of someone who had just smelled something unseemly.
“Flowers,” she said. “Now are you quite sure those are for me?”
“Ms. Leona Tremaine?”
“That’s correct.”
“Then they’re for you.”
I was still listening for the sound of the elevator door, and I was beginning to realize I wasn’t going to hear it. And why should I? He wasn’t going anywhere, he’d wait right there until she’d taken the flowers and given me my tip, and then he’d whisk me downstairs again. Terrific. I’d found a way