If Death Ever Slept

His eyes went over my shoulder to the couch. “If we need you on this, Orrie, you will get all the required information. That can wait.”

“Yes, sir.” Orrie got up and went.

When the door had closed behind him I spoke. “I called Lon Cohen. The bullet that killed Eber is a thirty-eight. Jarrell didn’t know that when he entered my room this morning, knocking but not waiting for an invitation. He only knew what he had heard on the radio at eight o’clock, and I suppose you heard it too. Even so, he badly needed a tranquilizer. When I report in full you’ll know what he said. It ended with his telling me to beat it quick before the cops arrived. He said to tell you he’s still your client and he’ll get in touch with you, and there’s no limit to what your discretion may be worth to him. Me too. My discretion is as good as yours. Now that I know it was a thirty-eight, I have only two alternatives. Either I go down to Homicide and open the bag, or I give you the whole works from the beginning, words and music, and you listen, and then put your mind on it. If I get tossed in the coop for withholding evidence you can’t operate anyhow, with me not here to supervise, so you might as well be with me.”

“Pfui. As I said last night, there is no obligation to report what may be merely a coincidence.” He sighed. However, I concede that I’ll have to listen. As for putting my mind on it, we’ll see. Go ahead.”

It took me two hours. I will not say that I gave him every word that had been pronounced in my hearing since Monday afternoon, four days back, but I came close to it. I left out some of Tuesday evening at Colonna’s with Lois; things that are said between dances, when the band is good and your partner is better than good, are apt to be irrelevant and off key in a working detective’s report. Aside from that I didn’t miss much, and nothing of any importance, and neither did he. If he listens at all, he listens. The only interruptions were the two bottles of beer he rang for, brought by Fritz-both, of course, for Wolfe. The last half hour he was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t getting it.

I stood up and stretched and sat down again. “So what it amounts to is that we are to sit it out, nothing to do but eat and sleep, and name our figure.”

“Not an intolerable lot, Archie. The figure you suggested last evening was half a million.”