The Missing Chapter

“Oh, now I get it. If I don’t sit still for an interview with you, the implication is that I’ve got something to hide, is that it, Goodwin?”

“You interrupted me — for the second time.” I kept my voice even and amiable. “What I was about to say was: but I’m certain you’d do anything you could to help identify the murderer — if there is one.”

I knew he was still on the line because I could hear angry breathing. After about fifteen seconds, he strung a series of expletives together, none of which can be used on vanity license plates in any state. The man belonged in publishing, all right: He had a fine grasp of the language and used a few words I made a mental note to look up later in Wolfe’s Oxford Dictionary of American Slang.

“All right, dammit, I’ve got a nightmare of an afternoon, but I can spare a few minutes,” Billings said after he’d finished spewing venom. “Come at three — I’m on the eighteenth floor. I assume you know the address.”

I assured him I did, and at two-fifty-six, I sauntered into the Art Deco lobby of a mature skyscraper on Madison Avenue in the Forties. The Westman & Lane Publishing Company occupied four floors, sixteen through nineteen, and its roster of employees, which included Keith Billings, took up more than one-fourth of the building directory. When I got off the elevator at eighteen, I found myself facing a massive reception desk. Behind it rose a large backlit display of Westman & Lane’s current publications, artfully arranged on several glass shelves. Also behind the desk sat a young man with oversized dark-rimmed glasses and curly black hair tied in a ponytail. He looked up from the book he had been reading and blinked his complete indifference in my direction.

“I’m here to see Keith Billings,” I said. “The name is Goodwin.”

He considered me with more indifference. “He expecting you?” When I said yes, the young dynamo tapped out a number on his phone and pronounced my name. He then nodded, cradled the receiver, and twitched his ponytail to the left. “Through that door,” he droned. “About halfway down on the right. Can’t miss it.”

I would have said thanks, but I didn’t want to distract him from his book, which he had dived back into. I pushed through into a long corridor. Where GBC-TV had been white all over, this place was gray, from the fabric walls to the carpeting. Office doors were spaced every few feet on both sides. An identical nameplate next to each one proclaimed its occupant in sans-serif capital letters. Many of the doors were open, revealing rooms barely big enough for one medium-sized desk, a couple of guest chairs, bookshelves filling one wall from floor to ceiling, and editors, all of whom seemed busy, presumably editing.

That is what Keith Billings was doing when I cast a shadow across his desk from the doorway. He looked up from a sheaf of papers, ran a hand through a forest of brown hair that already looked like it had been styled by an eggbeater, and tossed a frown in my direction. “Archie Goodwin, occupation — detective. Come in, sit down,” he said without warmth, gesturing toward his pair of standard-issue tubular chairs. Both had piles of books on them, so I took the smallest stack, placing it on the floor, and sat.

“Oh — sorry about the mess,” Billings muttered. “As you can see, housekeeping’s not high on my priority list.” He got up, all five-feet-seven of him, stalked to the door, shut it with a bang that unquestionably put a kink in the heavy editing going on up and down the hallway, and returned to his desk. “That’s the only way to keep from getting interrupted around here, and even a closed door is no damn guarantee. Now, you wanted to talk about Childress — go ahead.”

Billings planted elbows on the two clear spots on the desk top, resting his chin on clasped hands. I put him at no more than thirty-five, and maybe a year or two younger. His neck was thick and his face was square and ruddy, with wide cheekbones and eyes that I would have called black, although they probably were dark brown, complete with deep circles under them. He looked like a man who took life seriously and smiled only on alternate Wednesdays. He and the late Mr. Childress must have made quite a pair.

“As I said on the telephone earlier today, Mr. Wolfe has been engaged by someone who believes Charles Childress was murdered. And he agrees with—”

“Where’s the evidence?” Billings growled. “And what do the police think? The papers haven’t printed a single word about murder. Nothing — not one damned word.”

“Interruptions can come from both sides of a closed door,” I responded calmly. “On the phone, you told me how busy you are, and I don’t doubt that for a minute. But this will go much faster if you allow me to complete the sentences I start.”

He twitched a hand irritably. “Okay, go on, go on.”