Chapter Twenty-Two

Malone stood back and surveyed the room in which Anna Marie slept. It was, he decided, perfect. He’d arranged the flowers himself, and they turned the room into a bower. There was a thermos of coffee on the bed table, and a note telling her to order anything she wanted from room service and to keep out of sight of the waiter.

He’d considered adding to the note the fact that he loved her but, he’d decided, that had better wait.

Tonight he’d present her with the negligee. Maybe he could pick up a few other trinkets that she’d like.

He tiptoed out of the room after one last glance at her and closed the door very softly.

Back in his own room he looked at himself critically in the mirror. There had been times when he looked worse, but he couldn’t remember them. His suit was rumpled and dusty, his shirt was a complete wreck. For perhaps the thousandth time in his life he wondered why he couldn’t get into a fight without getting his collar torn off. His necktie—one of his favorites—had been lost somewhere along the way.

His black eye had developed into something really spectacular. The other eye was red-rimmed and puffed from lack of sleep. The bruise on his jaw was an interesting shade of violet. He needed a shave.

The little lawyer stripped to the skin and stood under an icy shower until every nerve in his body tingled. He shaved carefully, wincing when his razor touched the bruise. He considered going to the barber’s and having the black eye painted over, then decided against it. It was a magnificent shiner, and he was secretly proud of it.

He selected the dark blue double-breasted suit with the pin-stripe. A proper choice, he thought, for the conservative and respectable businessman he had become. The red and blue striped tie. Finally he looked again in the mirror. The effect was wholly pleasing.

At one minute to nine he opened his office door and stopped whistling to say, “Good morning, Maggie, any calls?”

Maggie dropped her magazine and said, “Good God! What are you doing here?” She looked at him closely. “John J. Malone, you’ve been fighting again!”

“Just a quiet evening with friends,” Malone said airily. “Think nothing of it.”

“But,” she said, “it’s nine o’clock in the morning!”

“Nothing surprising about that,” Malone said. “Once in every twenty-four hours it’s nine o’clock in the morning. And from now on, that’s the hour I arrive at the office. You may not realize it, but I’m a changed man.”

She sniffed. “You don’t look very changed to me,” she commented. She looked at her message pad. “Mick Herman wants his tools back. He needs them in order to pay your fee.”

“Tell him the fee can wait,” Malone said. “I may need the tools another day or two.”

“Judge Seidel wants you to contribute to a benefit.”

“Send him ten bucks,” Malone said, “and take it out of that last fee for getting a traffic ticket fixed.”

“The Toujours Gai Lingerie Shop is sending over that negligee—C.O.D.”

“Pay for it out of the petty cash,” Malone said.

Maggie looked at him coldly. “There’s exactly one dollar and seventy cents, and two three-cent stamps in the petty cash,” she told him.

“Oh, all right.” He drew a wadded mass of bills from a trousers’ pocket, fished out a hundred dollar bill, and gave it to her. “Pay for it with that. Put the change in the petty cash. And get Mrs. Childers on the phone for me.”

He went on into his office and left her staring, bewildered, at the closed door.

Inside his office he tossed his hat on a chair, lit a cigar, and, feeling very businesslike indeed, sat down at his desk to examine the morning mail. Bills. Three envelopes addressed in three different feminine handwritings. An invitation to buy two tickets to a testimonial dinner for a union official. He looked at them for a few minutes, then swept them all into his desk drawer, just as Maggie opened the door and said, “Mrs. Childers on the phone.”

He picked up the telephone, leaned perilously far back in his chair, and said, “Good morning, my dear Mrs. Childers. I suppose you wonder why I’m calling you up so early.”

“Well,” she cooed, “I am just the least little wee bit curious, and I can’t help hoping—”

“That’s it,” Malone said cheerily. “I’ve decided that since I’m going to devote myself wholeheartedly to your case, I will accept the retainer after all.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” she said. “I’ll send it over. By special messenger!” There was a brief silence. “Mr. Malone?”

“Yes?” Malone said, his senses sharpening.

“I have just a tiny confession to make. I didn’t quite tell you everything yesterday.”

Malone sat up straight. “My dear lady, go right ahead. No client of mine ever needs to keep any secrets from me. Your lawyer should be like your doctor, you know. You should tell him everything—absolutely everything.” He didn’t think for a minute that she would.

“Oh, that’s so right, Mr. Malone,” she said. “I—I’ll tell you—it’s that, well, there is something else I want you to do for me. Besides finding that unfortunate girl’s family, if she had one.”

“My services are at your command,” Malone said gallantly.

“You’re so kind!” she breathed over the phone. “I wonder—maybe, I’d better come down and tell you about it in person.”

“That would be fine,” Malone said. “Any time this afternoon. Unfortunately, I’m tied up all this morning.”

“Four o’clock?”

“Perfect,” Malone said. He hung up and wondered what the hell she had in mind. Well, whatever it was, he’d cope with it somehow. He thought happily of the fat fee that ought to be involved.

He stretched, slapped himself on the chest, and reflected that the life of a respectable, hard-working businessman who got to his office at nine every morning was exactly what suited him.

He rose, went to the door, and said, “Maggie, I’ve got some very serious thinking to do. Under no circumstances am I to be disturbed until I let you know. No matter who or what it is.”

He walked over to the couch, loosened his tie, took off his shoes, stretched out with a luxurious yawn, and ten seconds later was sound asleep.

When he woke at twelve he felt like a new man.

There had been a faintly disturbing dream. He sat on the edge of the couch, wriggling his toes and thinking about it. The details of it eluded him, but it had something to do with identical twins. Alike, even to the point of identical fingerprints and cavities in their teeth.

“Silly dream,” he told himself. No two things in the world could be exactly alike, except perhaps those two apartments—Anna Marie’s and the empty one. He scowled. Silly or not, the dream did have some significance, if he could just put his finger on it. He closed his eyes and tried to think. Twins. The two apartments. Something. He felt that an important fact was just beyond his reach of mind, but he could never quite get to it.

At last he gave up. The way to deal with those elusive thoughts, he’d found in the past, was to ignore them. Sooner or later they came along of their own accord.

He put on his shoes, straightened his tie, and walked into the outer office.

“I heard you thinking,” Maggie said scornfully.

“I do not snore,” Malone said with indignation. He picked up the long white box marked Toujours Gai Lingerie Shop and looked at it lovingly.

“This came,” Maggie said. She handed him an envelope.

He opened it and took out the ten one hundred dollar bills.

“I knew you’d come to your senses about bribes,” Maggie said.

“Strictly business,” Malone told her. He stuffed five of the bills in his pocket and handed the rest to her. “Pay the rent and the phone bill, pay your back salary, and fix up the overdraft at the bank. If there’s any left over, maybe you’d better put it in the bank, too. We might need it sometime.”

He went back in his office and sat down behind his desk.

Maybe the dream was trying to tell him that the two apartments were not exactly alike. He tried to picture them. The windows here. The doors there. The built-in bookcases—

He was interrupted by Maggie, who came in and laid a card on his desk. Al Harmon, it read.

Under it was scribbled in pencil, “Special Investigator for the D.A.’s office.”

“What the hell,” Malone said. He scowled at the card. “Oh, well, send him in.”

The man who came through the door was the young man in the tan raincoat.