Death of a Doxy (Crime Line)

I nodded. "Now and then you are a sap." I stood up. "As you know, Orrie, and as I know, you think it would be fine if you had my job. That's all right, there's nothing wrong with ambition. But what if you had got too ambitious? What if you knew there was nothing there to point to you? What if you had arranged for one man, me, to go there at a quarter past four, and for another man, maybe a cop on an anonymous tip, to arrive a few minutes later? It wouldn't have hooked me for murder, since the ME would set the time, but I would have the keys on me, not only yours, and the rubber gloves, and that would have been good for at least a couple of years. Of course I didn't really believe it, but being the nervous type -"

"Balls." He was staying put, his head tilted back. "What are you going to do?"

I looked at my wrist. "Dinner will be half over, and anyway I ate. I'm going home and eat two helpings of creme Genoise. You crush eight homemade macaroons and soak them in half a cup of brandy. Put two cups of rich milk, half a cup of sugar, and the finely cut rind of a small orange into -"

"So clown it!" he yelled. "Are you going to tell Wolfe?"

"I'd rather not."

"Are you?"

"As it stands now, no."

"Or Saul or Fred?"

"No. Nor Cramer nor J. Edgar Hoover." I went to the couch for my hat and coat. "Don't do anything you wouldn't expect me to do. You know what doctors call professional courtesy?"

"Yeah."

"I sincerely hope you won't need any."

I went.

Chapter 2

The New York Times knows how to put things. "It does not appear that Miss Kerr was employed anywhere or engaged in any regular activity." You can't beat that, leaving it wide open for all types of minds.

At the little table in the kitchen where I eat breakfast, with the Times on the rack facing me, I poured Puerto Rico molasses on a buckwheat cake and told Fritz, "It would be a good murder to work on. Walking distance."

At the big table inspecting dried mushrooms, with an eye on me to know when to start the next cake, he shook his head and said, "No murder is good to work on. When it's a murder the doorbell scares me and I never know if you'll come back alive."