“Go ahead.”
“Let’s say that Mr. Wolfe knew nothing about any racket but merely wanted to stir them up. Say he didn’t single out Miss Estey, she was just first on the list. Say I made the offer not only to her, but also to Mrs. Horan, Angela Wright, and Vincent Lipscomb, and would have gone on if Mr. Wolfe hadn’t called me in because Paul Kuffner was at the office accusing me of putting the bee on Miss Wright. Wouldn’t that be a more interesting basis?”
“It certainly would. Uh-huh. I see. In that case I want to know what they all said. Start with Miss Estey.”
“I’d have to invent it.”
“Sure, you’re good at that. Go ahead.”
So there went the best part of another hour. When I was all through inventing, including answers to a lot of bright questions, Mandelbaum got up to leave and asked me to wait there. I said I would go get something to eat, but he said no, he wanted me on hand. I agreed to wait, and there went another twenty minutes. When he finally returned he said Bowen wanted to see me again, and would I kindly go to his room. He, Mandelbaum, had something else on.
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.