I said I would, hung up, and got out of the oven. Nothing would have been more appreciated right then than a large coke-and-lime with the ice brushing my lips, but it was possible that Delia was already phoning him and he was at home to get the call, so I marched on by the fountain and out. A taxi got me to the corner of Sixty-ninth and Fifth in six minutes. My watch said 9:42.
I strolled east on Sixty-ninth and stopped across the street from the canopied entrance of the towering tenement of which Henry Jameson Heath was a tenant. It was no casing problem for me, since Saul Panzer had been there in the afternoon to make a survey and spot foxholes. That was elaborate but desirable, because it was to be a very fancy tail, using three shifts of three men each, with Saul in charge of one, Fred Durkin of the second, and Orrie Gather of the third. Fifteen skins an hour that setup would cost, which was quite a disbursement on what Wolfe had admited was a one-in-twenty chance. Seeing no one but a uniformed doorman in evidence around the canopy, I moseyed back to the corner.
A taxi pulled up and three men got out. Two of them were just men whose names I knew and with whose records I was fairly familiar, but the third was Saul Panzer, the one guy I want within hearing the day I get hung on the face of a cliff with jet eagles zooming at me. With his saggy shoulders and his face all nose, he looks one-fifth as strong and hardy, and one-tenth as smart, as he really is. I shook hands with him, not having seen him for a week or so, and nodded to the other two.
“Is there anything to say?” I asked him.
“I don’t think so. Mr. Wolfe filled me in.”
“Okay, take it. You know the Homicide boys may be on him too?”
“Sure. We’ll try not to trip on ’em.”
“You know it’s a long shot and the only bet we’ve got? So lose him quick, what do we care.”
“We’ll lose him or die.”
“That’s the spirit. That’s what puts statues of private detectives in the park. See you on the witness stand.”