Hazel was getting what she wanted. In the bathrooms, at the water fountain, and beside the contribution box for the sponsored Bunion Derby contestant (“Don’t Let His Dogs Get Tired!”), staffers were devoting some of their morning conversation to the disappearance of that bright-eyed fellow from Indiana, who, in truth, most of them didn’t remember.
Becky and Cuddles had both seen Mrs. Shepard’s letter, but by 10:45 they’d yet to discuss it. Inside Cuddles’ office, Becky was helping to scoop up the complimentary clutter that had accumulated during his absence.
“Disgraceful,” he said, looking at his pocket watch. “Ten forty-five. The idea that senior people can still be absent from their desks at such an hour.”
“Do you want tickets to Rio Rita?” she asked, before tossing them into the wastebasket.
Cuddles’ only response was to begin humming a Latin tune, an effort quickly interrupted by Paul Montgomery’s arrival at his door.
“Cheerio, guv’nor!” cried Paulie to Cuddles, adding something about “this lovely bird” once he noticed Becky.
“Been to England, Paulie?” Cuddles asked. The returning writer carried a ski pole autographed by his Olympic subjects; a half-yard of worsted left over from his bespoke suit and speared to the pole; three oversized menus from the ship; and six boxes of English toffee, noblesse-oblige presents for the secretaries and messengers. “You know,” continued Cuddles, “the only way you could get any worse is to be an actual Englishman. No offense intended.”
“None taken!” said Paulie, who clattered down the rest of the corridor, noisy as a junkman, toward Hazel’s desk.
“Is Rudy Vallee a pansy?” asked Spilkes, whose grave face replaced Montgomery’s in the doorway.
Cuddles waited a moment before replying: “That’s carrying Valentine’s Day awfully far, Norman. I wouldn’t send a card.”
Spilkes was trying, despite his current anxiety, to practice business as usual. He was seeking information that would allow him to decide whether the Connecticut Yankees’ saxophone player, who’d created a sensation when he sang a couple of numbers at the Heigh-Ho last month, might be a suitable Bandbox story, maybe even a cover.
“I hear he likes girls,” said Cuddles, “but not so much that they’d notice. Sort of like me.” He instantly regretted the joke—it belonged to his old, motley-wearing character—but Becky ignored him and went on tidying. “Get Sidney to handle a piece on Vallee,” he suggested. “That should be punishment enough for him.”
Max Stanwick was the next to enter.
“Any good rubouts last night?” asked Cuddles, who’d heard about Max’s current drought.
“Nah,” said Max, too discouraged to alliterate more than a pair of initial consonants: “Every tommy gun’s drilling a dry hole. This Hammer Slayer they’ve just arrested is no good; he’ll be in the chair before our lead time is up.”
“What about the Subway Slasher over in Brooklyn?” asked Becky.
“So far he’s only slashing coats,” said Max. “Besides, it’s too local.”
“Maybe he’ll start working the Express,” suggested Cuddles.
“You know,” said Max, “the Hammer Slayer would have been a good story if the woman had disappeared for a while, instead of just turning up dead with the guy’s fingerprints all over her and the ballpeen.”
Cuddles had a thought: “Has Hazel shown you this letter to the boss? From the distraught mother in Indiana?”
“No,” said Max, but as Cuddles laid out the handful of facts, he began to display a clear interest and new signs of life: “I remember him at that party. A happy little Hoosier hoisting his first hooch. I gave him some reporting tips.”
“Do you think he’s playing a trick on his parents?” asked Becky. “By disappearing, I mean.”
“No,” said Max, shutting his eyes and concentrating like a police psychic. “It’s something bad. The kid’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.” Closing his eyes even tighter, he tried seeing whether he himself had followed the advice he’d imparted at the Oldcastle party: notice everything. Could he recall anything peculiar?
“Max,” asked Cuddles, “if you were an actual cop, instead of our consonantal connoisseur of crime, what would you do first here?”
“Talk to Lindstrom,” said Stanwick, without hesitation.
“Why so?” asked Spilkes.
“He’d know who might be in the market for boys like our little Hoosier.”
“Oh, God,” said Becky, who went on to point out, hopefully, that Lindstrom himself, a different sort altogether, had also disappeared.
“Maybe it’s Peaches and Daddy in reverse,” suggested Cuddles. “Maybe our boy has found himself some seventy-year-old Mrs. Astor who’s got him on a divan up on Park Avenue.”
“I suppose,” said Max, “that if Gianni Roma’s crowd is involved, any story here would be off-limits to Bandbox, by fiat of ’Phat. Of course, the issue might not be flesh. The kid could have come up against anybody from rumrunners to the Klan.”
“If you were to write about this for the magazine,” said Cuddles, with an ardor that took the others—and himself—by surprise, “maybe you could take a different approach entirely. Make the hunt itself be what’s important.”
“Yes,” said Spilkes, thinking there might be something fresh here. “ ‘In Search of a Subscriber.’ Something like that.” A story that would build brand loyalty among readers by showing Bandbox’s loyalty to them.
Cuddles watched Spilkes consider the possibilities for the magazine, while Stanwick thought through the opportunities for himself. Within half a minute they were leaving his office, discussing the angles in low, intense tones.
“I don’t know if this can actually work,” said Spilkes.
“Norm,” replied Stanwick, who was by now truly enthusiastic, “what you don’t realize is that I invented Mrs. Shepard.”
He meant only that more than ten years ago, for a novel called McCormick’s Grim Reaper, he’d created the character of a grief-stricken midwest farm wife whose son got murdered with a piece of automated agricultural equipment; he understood the psychology of such a mother, and its appeal to the reading public.
Alas, before the writer and the managing editor entered Spilkes’s office, Chip Brzezinski, who’d been following them in the corridor at a prudent distance, succeeded in hearing only that Max had “invented Mrs. Shepard.”