The War Against Miss Winter (4 page)

B
Y NINE THE NEXT MORNING
I was at the office packing Jim’s files into liquor-store crates Eloise had delivered in my absence. I was miserable from the moment I arrived. The radiators wouldn’t stop belching, filling our floor with enough heat to roast a turkey. I tried to adjust the thermometer, but the knob came off in my hand, fell to the floor, and rolled beneath the cast-iron coils. My only option was to prop the office door open and hope the subzero street level weather would rush up the stairs and lower the temperature to somewhere near tropical.

I’d left the bathroom window open to give Churchill access outside, but rather than taking advantage of this liberty, he’d messed all over my desk and turned his still full food and water dishes upside down. I was so put off by his tantrum and the resulting smell that I decided to set aside my fear of Jim’s office. I shifted the crates to his desk and did my best to ignore Churchill’s whines. He was one minute from getting zotzed.

The office appeared untouched since my last visit. The closet door was open, confirming that the horrors last seen had been purged, and the blinds were up, flooding the room with sunlight. For my piece of mind, I checked the desk drawers and found the .38 and the bottle of gin (now half empty) where I’d left them.

I clicked on the radio for entertainment and spun the dial until I landed on a broad who was more tenor than soprano butchering “He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings” for
The Garry Moore Show
. I sang along with her and turned my attention to the files in the bookcase.

There was little rhyme or reason to what he’d kept there. One folder contained years of correspondence with men whose return addresses were either Attica or Riker’s Island. A list of the letter writers was affixed to the inside of the file, with the dates of their incarceration carefully
outlined. For those who had been released, there was further notation indicating whether or not Jim had been in contact with them. Other folders held case files, though the cases themselves were remarkably dull—no different from the hundreds we kept track of in the outer office. The only thing that distinguished them was that no client’s name appeared anywhere in the files—instead there was a number and a letter used for identification purposes—and the case descriptions lacked Jim’s usual detail and instead relied on pithy one-sentence descriptions. I found the system so hinky that as I worked I jotted down the code on a scrap of paper, hoping to unravel a pattern. If there was one, I never found it.

After a few hours of work, I gave up looking at the contents of the folders and decided to put them in numerical order. This helped me increase my pace until several dozen folded half-sheets slid from their containment and scattered across the floor.

“For crying out loud.” As I bent down to retrieve them, Churchill promenaded around the desk, stopping in the dead center of the papers. “Off.” He didn’t move. “Shoo.” Still he stood. I snagged one of the folded half-pages and threw it at him. As he breezed from my range, the nerves in my fingers signaled that I’d touched something familiar. The slick paper, the brightly colored covers, the photo inserts: these were theater programs!

I dumped them on the desk and searched for a sign as to why they were being retained. None of the folders was labeled, though the top one bore a cryptic, penciled note asking, “What would shock you?”

“A radio in a bathtub,” I told Churchill. “And talking cats.” I scanned the programs, looking for some common link between the shows. I assumed Jim was tracking an actor whose wife feared backstage hankypanky, but as I read cast list upon cast list, no common name emerged. Even the endless list of stage managers, scene designers, carpenters, and electricians progressed with no overlap. If anything, the programs proved there was such a ceaseless number of actors and technicians in New York it was a wonder anybody ever got a second job.

The plays had foreboding, metaphoric names like
Blind Mice
,
The Pig and the Swine
, and
Franklin’s Folly
. I hadn’t heard of most of the companies who’d staged them, but that was no surprise; the city was full of theater companies I’d never heard of and would never work for. Still, something was off about these productions: not a single one of them listed a playwright, though two went so far as to claim anonymous authorship. That
was
hinky. The writers I knew would die before they forfeited a byline.

I set the programs aside and took another look at the folder. Jim’s scrawl filled the interior, listing the titles of the plays that corresponded with the programs, followed by the dates of the productions. There was additional writing that made no sense in the context of what I’d seen, then a quote written in a more careful hand: “The play’s the thing.” Finding Shakespeare in Jim’s office was like discovering him wearing lacy women’s drawers. What was next? An autographed photo of Cary Grant?

I eyeballed the other folders. The file that had been in front of the programs was overflowing with news clippings about the recent Newspaper and Mail Deliverers’ Union strike. The file behind it was an extortion case. Jim’s sparse prose told the tale of someone who was worried their career would be over if the person in the know followed through on their threats. There was no mention of money. The only detail Jim slipped into his generic description was “Nice gams. Good rack. Bad attitude.”

I shook my head at him in memoriam.

As I continued searching, a metallic tapping I assumed was the radiator grew increasingly insistent. I tried to ignore it, but my patience plummeted until all I could think about was that stupid banging. That’s when I looked up.

A man stood at the fire escape window, his head framed by the raised blackout blind. When he saw he had my attention, he waved and the tapping ceased. I decided to play it like Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective; I closed the folder, slid my hand into the desk drawer, and withdrew the .38 without being seen. Once I had it safely in hand, I approached the window and lifted the window a sliver.

“We’re closed,” I said.

He set down an intricately carved walking stick he’d used to bang on the fire escape floor. “I’m here to see Jim McCain.”

I gave him the up and down. He was meticulously dressed in a wool coat and black homburg. What I could see of his face bore a well-kept Vandyke beard. I put his age at about sixty, though it was hard to tell for sure since his lid cast a shadow over his face.

“Jim’s not here.”

“When will he be back?” His voice was low and rich, like a radio announcer’s. He removed the homburg, revealing a smooth bald head. His cheeks were carved and ruddy, his schnozzle maroon from the wind.

“It could be a while. Who’s asking?”

“My name is Raymond Fielding. Do you think I might be able to come in for a moment? It’s quite chilly out here and I’ve misplaced my gloves.” He turned his bare hands palm side up and showed me how red the skin was.

He looked harmless enough. I opened the window to its full height, then dropped the rod into the trash can and covered its landing with a cough. “I guess that would be all right.”

He climbed into the office slowly, like a reluctant child, one leg dragging behind the other. “Are you Jim’s secretary?”

“Something like that.”

“I’ve offended you.” His peepers were blue and faded by age. When he gave me the once-over, it seemed as if every detail was being taken in so it could be reproduced at a moment’s notice.

“Why would you say that?” I asked.

“Because you’re not a secretary—you just do this for the money. You have other aspirations.” He raised an eyebrow. “Is that correct?”

The only thing I hated more than someone making assumptions about me was someone who made correct assumptions about me. “Isn’t everybody trying to be somebody else?”

He cast a shadow over his shoulder. “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances, / And one man in his time plays many parts.”

Jim I could forgive for quoting Shakespeare, but this guy? It pushed him from irritating to insufferable.

“Do you know that line?” he asked, his tone making it clear he assumed I didn’t.

“It’s from
As You Like It
.”

“I’m impressed.”

He shouldn’t have been; he’d just quoted the play I was named for.

I broke his gaze and pretended to find something interesting in one of the files sitting beside me. “Look, Mr. Fielding, you’re in for a long wait.”

He nudged a leg of the desk with his cane as though to test the furniture’s sturdiness. “Is Jim out of town?”

“In a sense. He’s dead.”

Fielding blanched and slowly reapplied his hat. “My condolences.”

“That’ll get me coffee and a doughnut.”

“May I ask how it happened?”

While his response seemed genuine, I didn’t trust the guy. He was a fire escape client, which meant he had his hands in something dirty. Plus he was rich and my brief acquaintance with people of that ilk told me money and morality were mutually exclusive.

“Heart attack,” I said.

“I’m very sorry to hear that. I hadn’t known him long, but he seemed like a good man.” He traced my figure as if I was a cut of meat and he was a hausfrau trying to figure out if there was enough of me for a meal. “May I sit?”

“It’s a free country.”

He lowered himself into one of the two chairs in front of the desk. The leg I thought was lazy proved to be counterfeit. It bent somewhere in the middle of his thigh then reclined with the elasticity of a pool cue. “Have you heard my name before?” he asked.

I crossed my arms and did my best to appear annoyed. “No. Should I have?”

He smiled, made a pile of his hands, and set them atop his cane. “No. I just assumed that, as Jim’s assistant, you would be familiar with
his clients.”

“Is that what you were?”

“Yes, I was. A new one.” He paused, waiting for my response. I had a feeling this was the point where I was supposed to admit that I did know about him, but since I didn’t I couldn’t.

“Look, I’m not sure what you want from me. I don’t know what Jim promised to do for you and unfortunately he’s not going to be stopping in to tell me. He’s gone and all accounts are closed. You’re going to have to go somewhere else.”

He held my gaze and the corners of his mouth tipped upward. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” I asked.

Fielding leaned back in the chair and looked at the floor. “Jim was looking into a private matter for me. He called me before Christmas and told me he had uncovered some important information, but gave no details. I was supposed to meet him today to find out what he had learned.”

“So? I don’t know what Jim knew. I can’t help you. Hire another dick.”

He looked up. “You misunderstand, Miss…?”

I slid onto the desktop and crossed my legs. “Winter. Rosie Winter.”

“Even if you don’t know what Jim discovered, there’s a record of it somewhere in this office, presumably among all these things you’re packing up to store away. The information Jim was seeking for me was so sensitive that I don’t dare go to another detective. The more people involved in this business, the greater risk there is to me. Do you understand?”

I understood he was paranoid, sure. “I guess.”

“I would like you to continue the investigation for me. I’m not asking that you do much. Just locate any record of what Jim may have discovered and follow up on any leads he may have made.” His hand disappeared into his overcoat and emerged with a roll of bills. I should’ve stopped him then, but the smell of all that freshly baked dough was too strong to turn down.

“What do you think, Miss Winter?”

“I could be persuaded.” Churchill slinked into the room and paused long enough to stretch his hind legs. He continued his path and settled next to Fielding’s false limb. “What did you hire Jim to do?” I asked.

“He was helping me track down some…missing papers.” When he spoke, everything sounded like a euphemism.

I retrieved a pen and stenographer’s pad from the desk and tried to look officious. “What are they?”

He checked the room and, once he was assured we were alone, leaned toward me. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”

I dropped the pen. “Let me get this straight: You want me to find some missing papers, but you don’t want to tell me what’s on them?” I picked up a stack of stationery and waved it at him. “No problem. Case solved.”

“I understand this is unorthodox, but you must trust me—the less you know the better.”

I rolled my eyes and prayed for patience. “Where did you store the papers?”

He returned to his earlier position: both hands placed atop the cane. “I kept the only copy in a safe in my house.”

“And who had access to the box?”

His expression remained calm as though he’d been through this line of questioning many times before. “Nobody.”

“You married? Got kids?”

“Neither. No one should’ve been able to access it but me.” Churchill yowled and pushed his head against Fielding’s artificial leg. When the motion didn’t get him the pat he believed he deserved, he extended his claws and dug them into Fielding’s pants.

“Churchill—no!” I banged the desk but still he clung to his makeshift scratching post.

Fielding looked bewildered at my outburst before realizing that a cat was attached to his limb. “My leg!” he moaned. He jabbed his cane at Churchill and the cat detached and scurried out of the room.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

Fielding examined his pant leg and gradually regained his earlier
composure. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m not bleeding. No harm done. Where were we?”

What was this guy trying to grift? The only thing that leg of his could bleed was sap. “We were talking about access. So you don’t live with anybody else?”

“I have a manservant, but he certainly doesn’t know the combination to the safe; nor would he have any reason to be interested in its contents.”

I rubbed my eyes, hoping that by doing so everything I was seeing and hearing would start to make sense. “If the papers were locked in a box nobody had the combination to but you and nobody had access to it but you, who, pray tell, do you think took it?”