Angels in Heaven

prevent him from asking
Fred (or anyone else he came across) what floor the real Cul. Ass. was on and
have him drop in on a mystified Ethel. I also made sure I interposed my not
inconsiderable bulk in between him and the notice board that listed the
whereabouts of all the building’s tenants and which we had to pass to get to
the elevator. I only prayed he wouldn’t spot it on the way out or that if he
did, he’d merely assume it was a mistake or, like I said, that the Cul. Ass.
had more than one office in the building.
    After a spot of Alphonse and Gaston
when the elevator arrived, in we went and up we went without further
conversation. When we entered our office, Doris was (pretending to he) on the
phone, a pencil behind one ear and a wad of gum in her mouth, the pencil her
idea, the gum mine.
    “Certainly,” she was saying. “One
hundred and fifty posters, no problem. Monday at the latest. Will you send
someone to pick them up or do you want us here to arrange delivery? Fine. We’ll
leave it like that, then. Grassy-ass. Adios.”
    She hung up and scribbled a note in
her desktop diary.
    “That was Mrs. Oliver about the
posters for the pottery exhibition,” she said.
    “Oh, swell,” I said. “Lt. Esparza,
may I present our Miss Day.”
    He had been casually checking out the
place while Doris finished up on the phone; now he advanced on her, clicked his
heels together, took one of her hands reverentially and kissed the air an inch above
it.
    “ Ay, qué linda ,” he said, holding on to her hand
perhaps a second or two longer than strict protocol demanded. But perhaps
not—how much do I know about kissing hands?
    “Why, hi there, Lieutenant,” Doris said coquettishly. And she had the nerve to flutter her false eyelashes at him, but
the effect wasn’t quite as devastating as she’d hoped because the last thing
I’d done before leaving to meet the lieutenant, to make her look more like a
secretary, was to present her with a horrible, garish pair of plain-glassed
specs I’d bought in L. A., the kind with pink plastic wings sticking out both
sides.
    “You’re just doing this to get even,
Prof,” she’d said when I’d handed them over to her with a flourish.
    “How right you are, Teach,” I’d said.
    I made a big production of unlocking
the inner office door, which caught the lieutenant’s attention, as it was
supposed to do, then I held it open and gestured him in.
    “Any calls?” I asked Doris over my shoulder.
    “The big chief called, twice,” she
said.
    “Right,” I said, following the
lieutenant into the main office, but not before he’d bestowed a last, gleaming
smile at qué linda, and her likewise at him. I carefully locked the door
behind us. Benny, who was tearing a (blank) strip of paper off the
(unconnected) telex, crossed to one of the filing cabinets, unlocked a drawer,
took out a cardboard file, inserted the message into it, then locked up the
drawer again.
    “More about Nicaragua,” he improvised to me in an aside meant to be overheard. He then greeted our visitor, apologizing
for keeping him waiting momentarily, asked him to kindly seat himself, which he
did, in one of the spare chairs drawn up in front of my desk, Benny taking the
other.
    “Keith,” I said, putting my glasses
on, “would you get me the latest from the file on John Brown, please.”
    “Certainly, sir,” he said. Hopping up
again, he went back to the filing cabinet, unlocked a different drawer, took
out another folder, extricated two pages from it, locked the drawer again, then
came back and deposited the papers gently in front of me—during which time I
thumbed on the intercom and told Miss Day to hold all calls except Washington.
Miss Day said, “Sure,” and popped her gum. During the same time Lt. Esparza was
taking a not-so-casual look around.
    Among the items of particular
interest that he saw were the flag on my desk, of course, the telex machine, of
course, the large map of the world, of course, all the office fittings and
fixtures, of course, the photo of me and my adoring family, to say nothing of
the cur, of course, and also a few new touches we’d added just for lucky old
him—a framed, signed (by me, “To my good friend Blackie”) photo of J. Edgar
Hoover’s unmistakable mug, which was sitting on my desk, courtesy Celebrity
Photo Service on the Strip (with retouches by Wade’s Pictorial); also, from the
same source, a framed photograph of Richard M. Nixon apparently shaking