Death on Deadline - Robert Goldsborough Page 0,9
meals. I was interested that day, as we consumed the salmon mousse and then the omelet, as to whether Wolfe would consider Ian MacLaren some form of business or simply a topic of curiosity. Twice I brought up his name, and each time I got the answer clearly—MacLaren fell into the business category; Wolfe refused to talk about him, preferring instead to hold forth on contemporary architecture, in particular the trend away from the “less-is-more” school, in favor of more ornamentation on buildings. He clearly favored the latter.
After we made the omelet disappear and went to the office for coffee, Wolfe started in on the stack on his blotter. I watched his face as he paged each of the four; it was a series of grimaces, pursed lips, slight shakes of the head, and in one case, an outright shudder. “More wretched than I had imagined,” he pronounced, ringing for beer. When Fritz came in with the tray, Wolfe thrust the papers at him. “Take these and destroy them immediately,” he barked.
“I wish you wouldn’t hold things in,” I said. “Say what you feel.”
“Pfui. I assume you looked at them?”
“Yeah, I skimmed a couple as I walked back from the newsstand. Pretty grim.”
“‘Grim’ hardly covers it. They are abysmal caricatures of journalism. The depth of news coverage is farcical, the editorials simplistic and Neanderthal, the graphics grotesque.” He thumped the blotter with his finger, an unusual show of energy.
“At a quick glance, I thought the L.A. paper’s sports section was pretty good,” I ventured. “Lots of statistics.”
“Fodder for the gamblers, no doubt,” Wolfe grumbled.
“It’s so cheerful here that I’d like nothing more than to while away the afternoon talking about Ian MacLaren’s contributions to the Fourth Estate, but as you may recall, I have a three-thirty appointment with our client the diamond merchant. That should result in a fat check, made out to you, so it would be nice if I showed up on time.”
“I have noted your unswerving devotion to duty,” Wolfe said, “and I hope you will manage to be home on time for Mr. Cohen’s arrival.” I had an answer ready, but before I could unload it, he was back behind his book.
I figured the morning walk to Times Square was enough exercise for one day, so I felt no guilt whatever in flagging a cab to midtown for my meeting with Gershmann. He didn’t want me to come to his office on Forty-seventh Street in the diamond market, suggesting instead a back booth in a deli about a block away.
He was waiting when I got there at exactly three-thirty. It took me about a half-hour to lay the whole thing out, including all the evidence needed to convince him that an employee was taking home a lot more than his salary every week.
After I finished, Gershmann pumped my hand, thanked me more than he needed to, and pulled out his checkbook. If he was chagrined that he had to go outside the close-knit diamond community for help, he didn’t show it. “Just out of curiosity,” I said, “and although it’s none of my business, how do you plan to deal with the situation?”
“There are very definite procedures for this kind of thing,” Gershmann said in a voice that dropped thirty degrees. I didn’t press the matter further. As we shook hands again, he handed over the check in an amount hefty enough to keep the brownstone running for several weeks. And that’s saying plenty, because not only does Wolfe need to ante up for such incidentals as the four cases of beer he consumes every week, he also has to pay me, his confidential assistant, man of action, and all-round gofer, to say nothing of Fritz, the finest chef in the universe, and Theodore Horstmann, who fusses over the ten thousand orchids in the plant rooms up on the fourth floor.
And then there are the grocery bills and the books, of course, but you get the idea. Simply put, the place takes a lot of cash to keep it going. And that cash only comes in if Wolfe feels like working, which is seldom before the bank balance slips to five figures. Right now, that balance was well above the danger level, and would be even higher tomorrow with the addition of Mr. Gershmann’s generous draft. We were in for a leisurely spell.
I got back to Thirty-fifth Street a few minutes after five, which meant Wolfe was still up playing with his orchids. I unlocked the