At seven o’clock I was back at the Rosenkrantz place. The house at night looked much like the house during the day, only with enough lamps blazing to light the Queen Elizabeth. There were lights upstairs and lights downstairs. There were mushroom-shaped guide lights along the front walk and two high-powered spots for the front lawn. There was another spotlight shining from the roof onto the drive. If you intended to sneak up on the Rosenkrantzes, you didn’t want to do it dressed in burglar black.
I took the front stairs this time. I had on my good suit, a navy blue so deep it looked black, with a pressed white shirt, a red-and-blue-striped tie, a red handkerchief, and freshly polished loafers. I’d had a shower and a shave. It was five minutes after seven. The front door opened before I rang. It was my friend from the afternoon, without the gun this time.
“They let you in here too?” I said. “I didn’t know it was that kind of place.”
He stepped back to let me pass. “Mr. Foster.”
I went in and took off my hat. “I guess they only allow artillery at the servant’s entrance. It’s certainly more welcoming this way.”
He closed the door. “This time Miss Rose let me know you were expected.” He hesitated a moment. “I’m sorry about...”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I like to have people point guns at me every once in a while. Reminds me I’m still alive.”
He gave a slight nod, and vanished through the archway on the left without a word.
The front hall was open to the second floor ceiling, where a tarnished bronze chandelier cast just enough light to make the space gloomy. The front door was set between twin staircases that led up to a catwalk hallway. There were three doors on the catwalk along with the French doors directly overhead that opened to the upstairs patio. The floor was largely covered with overlapping Persian rugs that bore the marks of foot traffic from each of the stairwells to the squared arches off to the left and right. Here and there rich maroon tiles could be seen where the floor was exposed. Two large breakfronts at the back of the hall were stuffed with books and porcelain dolls.
The sound of men laughing burst forth from one of the upstairs rooms. It was a frantic sound that suggested alcohol.
The Mexican came back. “Miss Rose, she’s not feeling very well tonight.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“She won’t see you tonight.” He smiled. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Of course,” I said. “We all serve at her pleasure.” I started to fit my hat back on my head when a telephone rang with extensions in several of the rooms. The Mexican and I stared at each other in the silence only a ringing telephone can create. Then he said, “Excuse me,” and went back through the archway from which he had come.
The noise stopped, and then Shem Rosenkrantz stumbled out of one of the upstairs rooms calling “Clotilde....” He was in his shirtsleeves with black suspenders holding up pants that sagged in the middle. His face was red from drinking too much and his nose was covered with broken blood vessels from drinking too often. His straw hair was parted down the center. He looked like a stereotype of the great American author, which is what he was. “Clotilde...It’s that man again about your damn horse!” He saw me then and stopped. “Who the hell are you?”
I tipped my hat. “Just one of the hired help.”
“Well tell my wife to answer the damn phone,” and he headed back into the room.
I thought about that for a moment and decided Rosenkrantz’s order overrode the Mexican’s plea of Chloë Rose’s frailty. I followed where the servant had gone and was in the dining room when I heard him say in some further-off room, “The telephone, miss.” I stopped, and her voice said something I couldn’t make out. I looked around the room. There was a phone extension on the sideboard. I went to the phone and picked it up, covering the mouthpiece with my hand.
“I’ve told you before,” Chloë Rose said, “Constant Comfort is not for sale.”
I grabbed a pencil by the phone and scrawled “Constant Comfort” on the top sheet of the notepad lying beneath it.
“He’ll give you three horses in trade, good horses, and he said that you can renegotiate your contract.”
“I don’t care what he said, he should have the decency to call me himself. And the answer is no, you little,” she hesitated to think and then spat, “pissant.”
“Hold on, Miss Rose, we’re all working for the same guy.”
“That’s right, working for him, not owned by him. Good evening.”
The phone rang off, although I could still hear the man breathing. He could probably hear me. I gently replaced the receiver on the base, tore the top sheet off the pad and pocketed it, and then walked casually out of the room into the front hall. A minute later, the Mexican emerged as well from where he had no doubt had to hold the phone for the ailing Chloë Rose so the weight wouldn’t strain her. “Nice place,” I said, looking up with my hands in my pockets as though I were admiring the moldings. “Some real nice pieces in there,” indicating the other archway with my head, cool and convincing as a long-nosed dummy. “Well, I’ll be in my car down the street if I’m needed,” and I took the main entrance before he could respond.
I walked the mushroom-lighted path to the street, and then down the middle of the street to my car. It was almost as hot outside as it had been at noon. A perfect night for car sitting, if you were cold-blooded. I got in behind the steering wheel and rolled down the windows on both sides. I thought about breaking the first rule of a nighttime stakeout and lighting a cigarette and decided that it didn’t matter if I got spotted. The whole job was cockeyed already. A stakeout and follow job required two people for it to be done properly. And I hadn’t even been granted access to my client, Knox’s assurances notwithstanding. The only way those two facts added up to something that made sense was if I really was just here for show, a piece of set decoration, and not a very necessary one either. This case already had a mystery man on the set, a mystery man on the phone, the mystery man that the man on the phone was bargaining for, the mystery man who was drinking and laughing with Shem Rosenkrantz upstairs. I was one too many. I felt like I had come to the party late and got seated at the wrong table.
I took out a match and lit it on my thumbnail the first time. I took a drag of my cigarette and watched the tip glow orange. I thought about the phone call. I didn’t know what to make of it or even if there was anything to make of it. It was your regular strong-arm phone call. All of the up-to-date movie stars got them. They found it invigorating.
I smoked and watched as one by one the inside lights went out in each of the houses on the block. The outdoor lighting gave the neighborhood an ominous look. At nine, the Mexican came out and walked towards Montgomery. He would catch the Number 3 bus on Sommerset to go home. At 11:30, a police cruiser came around, right on time. It pulled up alongside me and I had to get out my license and laugh at a few corny jokes before they went away. I must have lit at least three more cigarettes, but I wasn’t counting. My mouth felt like cotton. I wouldn’t have turned down a drink.
Eventually the lights downstairs went out. The front hallway chandelier went next. I waited for the upstairs rooms. If there had been two people laughing when I first came in, and I thought there had been, then someone should be ready to come out just about now, or they had a houseguest that I should have known about. That was if there had been two voices. It could have been the radio.
A car started at the back of the house. I could make out the taillights through the next-door neighbors’ hedge as it backed out down the drive. It wasn’t the LaSalle I had seen earlier; this was a tan Buick sedan. It pulled out into the street facing me, which gave me a clear view of the driver: Shem Rosenkrantz, his face bloated and sour with drink. Someone was sitting in the passenger seat next to him and when the car passed under a streetlight, I caught the passenger full in the face: Hub Gilplaine. That was Hub Gilplaine the nightclub owner, casino operator, and publisher of pornographic books—the sort with more words than pictures, if that made any difference. I knew him by sight on account of how often he got his picture in the paper for donating to one charity or another. He sat tense and upright, his face pinched, clearly worried for his safety with Rosenkrantz at the wheel, and with good reason.
The glare of the Buick’s headlights brightened my windows as the sound of their motor went by and then darkness and the engine draining away. I looked behind me in time to see them turn left at the next block. It would take them out of the development to one of the major arteries, Woodsheer or Sommerset. I looked at the house, and saw each of the upstairs windows go dark. Chloë Rose was in for the night. But Shem Rosenkrantz was out with a known pornographer. And he was in no condition to drive. Some concerned citizen had to make sure they were safe. I started my car and swung around in a wide U-turn.