If you’re thinking: How could this girl not know who Lillian Pentecost is? The most famous woman detective in the city and possibly the country. The woman who tracked down the murderer of Earl Rockefeller. Who discovered the identity of the Brooklyn Butcher. Who Eleanor Roosevelt herself turned to when someone tried to put the squeeze on.
All I can say is this: I can pick a lock blindfolded, walk a wire twenty feet in the air without a net, and wrestle a man twice my size into submission. How about you?
To her I said, “All I know about your game is what I picked up from the police. You’re some kind of private dick.”
“A private investigator, yes.”
“And people pay you to solve things the police have miffed.”
“I generally take cases the police have been unable to solve or, for whatever reason, are unwilling to invest time and effort in.”
“Like this guy Markel?”
“That was unusual. Markel was an acquaintance, so there was a personal element.”
She glanced away at that. Not quite a tell, but close. I noted for the first time that there was something off with one of her eyes—the left one. It wasn’t quite the same shade of gray-blue as the right. It looked just a little flat—like it was reflecting the light differently. I’d find out later that it was made of glass. She’d had several made over the years and none had managed to get the color quite right.
“So what’s this got to do with me?” I asked.
“As you might have noticed, I have certain physical limitations.”
“Yeah, I picked that up. Sclerosis, right?”
“Multiple sclerosis. That’s very perceptive.”
“I had a cousin. She was a lot worse off than you, though.” That was an understatement. Last I saw her, Laura had been spending more time in her bed than on her feet.
Ms. P nodded grimly. “Yes, I’m told by my physicians that my symptoms are progressing slower than most.” She shot a baleful look at the cane propped against her desk. “However, they are progressing.”
A glimmer of what could have been rage flickered in her good eye. She took a deep breath and a long exhale and the glimmer was extinguished.
“My profession is a stressful one, and can be physically and mentally taxing. Unfortunately, these things exacerbate my condition. This means I find myself frequently too exhausted to answer letters, arrange interviews, and otherwise deal with the more mundane aspects of my job. Mrs. Campbell is an excellent cook and housekeeper, but her skills otherwise are limited. And, to be frank, her imagination has long-ingrained limits.”
“So you want to hire me to be, what?” I asked. “A secretary? Because I can’t type and I don’t own any pencil skirts.”
“More an assistant than secretary,” she said. “While you would handle the day-to-day business of running the office, you would not be confined to it. As you discovered the other night, a certain amount of legwork is required, though rarely does it result in bloodshed. As for the office-management portion of the job, I feel confident you can learn to type. From what Mr. Halloway told me, you have a sharp mind and are proficient at picking up new skills quickly.
“And as for the dress code,” she continued, “I see no reason you cannot wear what you wish within the confines of propriety. I prefer suits, myself. I’ve found the abundance of pockets to be quite useful. In exchange, you’d be provided room and board, as well as expenses for any training I’d require of you. You would also be given a salary, paid every two weeks.”
She quoted a number that nearly sent my poker face packing. Just one of those checks would be more cash than I’d ever had in hand in my life. Still, in order to cash that check, I’d have to cut ties with everything I’d known since I left home. My friends. My family. My world. To come work for a woman I barely knew.
“Why me?” I asked. “If this is because of what I did the other night, you could slip me a few bucks now and call it even. There’s got to be better people you could get. People who actually know how to do the things you want done.”
She took a full ten seconds to respond. She doesn’t like to be scattershot with her words, and has a tendency to make people wait while she sits stone-faced, mulling over an answer.
“You might be correct,” she finally said. “But I’ve learned to trust my instincts. Seeing firsthand your powers of observation and of action, and hearing about your particular set of skills and your capacity to learn, I think you might be exactly who I’m looking for.”
Basically, yeah, there were better people for the job, but I could catch up. The deal sounded good, but not quite too good to be true. Still, there was the thing with the watch. I just couldn’t let it go.
“I appreciate the offer,” I said. “But I’ve got to ask…Are you a spy or something? There aren’t many lines I won’t hopscotch over, but signing on with a Nazi is definitely one of them.”
She arched an inquisitive eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
“The thing with the trick watch. Didn’t seem like the kind of piece you’d hide blow in. And gems are out. You’d want to hide those in something people wouldn’t want to steal. I figured it was some kind of message.”
Her look confirmed that was exactly what it was.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I didn’t tip that to the cops. I figured what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. But I don’t want that coming back to bite me, you know?”
Another long silence.
“I am not a spy, Nazi or otherwise. Nor was Mr. Markel,” she said. “Though there was a message contained in the watch, it was of a personal nature.”
“Oh.”
She shook her head. “Not that kind of personal.”
I wasn’t sure I believed that but let it go.
“Did it have anything to do with what McCloskey said at the end?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“He said something I didn’t catch. You got all excited. Asked him, ‘Who told you that?’ ”
She gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. Like she’d just realized she wasn’t quite sure what breed of dog she’d brought home from the pound. She took a deep breath and twisted her fingers together, a rare nervous habit.
“If you were to take this position, I would bring you into my confidence in nearly all of my investigations. To do otherwise would be impractical. But you would have to be resigned to the fact that I won’t share everything with you. There are certain cases—ones I have been engaged in for several years, and which involve an element of danger—that I am unwilling to expose you to. Do you understand?”