“I’m to take you to Ms. Pentecost,” she brogued. “In the back with you. I’ve put down a sheet. No telling what you picked up after three days in that hellhole.”
I got in the back, careful to keep from touching any uncovered surface. I was taken on a bumpy, swerving course, with my driver slamming on the brakes whenever a pedestrian even glanced her way. We headed across the Brooklyn Bridge and into one of the nicer neighborhoods of that particular borough.
The car stopped in front of a three-story brownstone separated on either side from its neighbors by narrow, gated alleys. The woman escorted me inside, then down a short hallway lined with padded benches. I went past what looked like a well-apportioned office and up a flight of stairs to the second floor, where she took me to a small bedroom with an attached bath. A pile of clothes I recognized as my own was sitting folded on the bed.
“Ms. Pentecost took the liberty of retrieving some of your things. There’s soap and whatnot in the bathroom. Wash up good and when you’re done Ms. Pentecost will see you down in her office. You leave what you’re wearing in the bathroom and I’ll see everything gets a good washing.”
“I think your best bet is a good burning.”
She gave a snort I figured for her version of a chuckle, then left me to my bathing.
This was the first time I’d ever had use of a proper shower. I turned the spigots to scalding and stayed under there until the hot water finally gave up the ghost. I spent a few minutes brushing out my hair, which had gotten marvelously knotted after three days tucked under my cap. Then I slipped into my clean clothes—another blue denim work shirt, my second-best boots, and a pair of brown corduroy overalls I’d bought off the rack in the boys’ section and that fit like a glove. Not exactly attire for a job interview if that was what this was, but it would have to do.
I made my way downstairs and into the office I’d passed on my way in. It was surprisingly large and must have taken up half of the first floor. Massive bookshelves ran the length of two of the walls. They were packed to bursting with the kinds of books that tended toward leather-bound and likely boring. I preferred the kind that came with paper covers and lurid pictures of gun-toting molls. To be honest, I still do.
Where there weren’t bookshelves, the walls were done in wallpaper—a pleasant shade of yellow with tiny blue poppies. There was a massive oak desk at the far end and a smaller one with a typewriter against the wall to the right. The room was illuminated by standing lamps stationed in the corners, as well as a pair of lamps with frosted green shades on each desk.
Above the big desk was an oil painting as wide as I was tall of a gnarled tree standing in the middle of an empty, yellow field. I thought it was an ominous kind of picture to have looming over your shoulder.
Arranged in a loose semicircle was a collection of armchairs upholstered in the same light yellow as the wallpaper. The chairs looked practical rather than decorative, and their arrangement suggested regular gatherings of people whose attention was focused on whoever was planted in the seat of honor.
I sat in the largest of these chairs and waited. A small, ornate clock mounted on the wall ticked away the minutes.
Staring up at the painting I noticed a detail I hadn’t before—a woman in a cornflower-blue dress sitting cross-legged in the shade of the tree. I was leaning forward for a closer look when the door opened and Ms. Pentecost strode in.
She was dressed as she had been three nights ago—three-piece suit that was definitely tailored for a woman, complete with a red silk four-in-hand tie. Illuminated by the room’s warm lamplight, I could make out details I hadn’t before. She was forty-five, maybe a little younger. She had thick cheekbones that rode high enough they threatened to intrude onto her eyes, a wide mouth, and a too-sharp chin. All of it set around a nose that wasn’t quite a hook but had aspirations.
Her hair was the kind of dark chestnut most women get out of a bottle, but I was pretty sure hers was natural. A streak of iron gray traveled up from the center of her deeply lined brow and lost itself in the labyrinth of her braided bun. She carried her cane but barely leaned on it.
“I trust you’ve had the opportunity to wash,” she said, planting herself in the leather swivel chair behind her desk.
“I have, thanks.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Nothing since what they brought me for dinner yesterday,” I told her. “Bologna and cheese. At least I think it was bologna. I didn’t look too close.”
She scrunched up her nose in disgust.
“Mrs. Campbell is fixing lunch now,” she said. “Cornish hen. In this house we like our meat identifiable.”
“Sounds good to me.” An understatement. After three days of jail food and five years of circus chow, Cornish hen sounded more like a fantasy than a meal.
“Other than the de facto starvation, I hope your treatment by the police was not too egregious.”
I’d never encountered the words “de facto” and “egregious” in casual conversation, but I managed to translate.
“There was a lot of shouting, finger-pointing, and calling me a dirty, rotten liar,” I said. “But they kept their billy clubs tucked away.”
She nodded. “Good. I apologize for the delay in your release. There were bureaucratic snags, or at least that’s what my attorney was told.”
“Yeah, I think they were hoping I’d crack and tell them you planned the whole thing. Whatever ‘the whole thing’ was.”
Her hand came up like she was swatting away a fly. “The police sometimes have fancies. They have not learned the lesson that correlation does not equal causation.”
My inner translator failed. “What’s that again?”
“Just because they find me embroiled in the unraveling of a crime, it does not mean that I’m responsible for the crime. Quite the contrary. Though in this case, they have at least half a point, as my arrival did directly lead to Mr. McCloskey’s death.”
I considered that logic for a couple beats. “A guy like that, someone who bashes a man’s brains in for his watch and wallet, he’s gonna end up in jail or in the ground eventually. No fault of yours.”
A slow, satisfied nod. “A very pragmatic philosophy. Perhaps a little too grimly optimistic.”
“Okay, yeah. Right,” I said, making like I knew what she meant. “So…what’s the pitch?”
“The pitch?”
“Dee-Dee said you had an offer. That I should give it a long think before brushing you off.”
“What do you know about me and my work?” she asked.
You’ve got to take something into account. The previous five years of my life had been spent crisscrossing a big swath of the country, cooped up in trailers and truck beds, and pursuing a rather unique education. That education definitely did not include the regular consumption of New York’s newspapers.