The Golden Spiders (Crime Line)

When I got to Bowen’s room there was no one there. More waiting. I had been sitting awhile, thinking of pigs’ knuckles, when the door opened to admit a young man with a tray, and I thought hooray, someone in this joint is human after all; but without even glancing at me he went to Bowen’s desk, put the tray down on the desk blotter, and departed. When the door had closed behind him I stepped to the desk and lifted the napkin, and saw and smelled an attractive hot corned-beef sandwich and a slab of cherry pie. There was also a pint bottle of milk. The situation required presence of mind, and I had it. It took me maybe eighteen seconds to get back to my chair, settle the tray in my lap, and bite off a healthy segment from the sandwich. It was barely ready for swallowing when the door opened and the District Attorney entered.

To save him any embarrassment, I spoke up immediately. “It was darned thoughtful of you to have this sent in, Mr. Bowen. Not that I was hungry, but you know the old saying, we must keep the body up with the boy. Bowen for mayor!”

He showed the stuff he was made of. A lesser man would either have grabbed the tray from me or gone to his desk and phoned that a punk had swiped his lunch and he wanted another one, but he merely gave me a dirty look and turned and went. In three minutes he was back with another tray, which he took to his desk. I don’t know whose he confiscated.

What he wanted was to clear up eighty-five or ninety points about the report Mandelbaum had just given him.

So it was nearly three o’clock when I arrived, escorted, at 240 Centre Street, and going on four when I was ushered into the private office of Police Commissioner Skinner. The next hour was a little choppy. You might have thought that, with a citizen as important as me to talk with, Skinner would have passed the order that he wasn’t to be disturbed for anything less than a riot, but no. Between interruptions he did manage to ask me a few vital questions, such as was it raining when I got to the garage, and had any glances of recognition been exchanged by Horan and Egan, but mostly, when he wasn’t answering one of the four phones on his desk, or making a call himself, or speaking with some intruder, or taking a look at papers just brought in, he was pacing up and down the room, which is spacious, high-ceilinged, and handsomely furnished.