My limitations force me to use the old-fashioned or garden variety of detection. When necessary to get the low-down on a party, I try to get close enough to hear what they’re saying. Or doing. As f’rexamp, outside the 2010 door of Mister Roy Yaker.
I didn’t have to lay my face against the panel. Or kneel to put my ear to the bottom of the door. I just lit a cigarette, leaned against the wall, and listened.
“Don’t rush me, dahrrling. I’m the shy type hates to be hurried.” The voice belonged to a honey in her late ’teens. Not shrill but penetrating, considering that hotel doors are purposely never soundproofed. “Where’s your biggie boy fren, dahrrling? You said he’d be here.”
Another more subdued feminine chime-in: “Yes, Mister Yaker, when’s Dow Lanerd coming? Or are we going somewhere to meet him? I’m just dying to meet that man. What is it they call him in the papers? Mister Giveaway? When is he—”
“Dow’s not going to be able to make it, kiddies.” Yaker, trying to quiet them. “We’ll have just as much fun—”
They put up a protest. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known Mister Lanerd wasn’t going to be here; that’s absolutely the only reason I—”
“Edie promised we’d meet Mister Giveaway; I’d counted on asking him some very important questions. Now you call him up, Roy boy, tell him we’re seething with—”
“He can’t come.” Yaker, again. “I just did talk to him on the phone.”
“You did not, either.”
“You don’t even know Dow Lanerd, betcha.”