Scam

Rothstein. Or he could have an unlisted number.
    On the other hand, he could be on his way back to the office, rather than shacking up with his deceased colleague’s wife.
    Ah, well, enough idle speculation. I headed back to Miriam Pritchert’s apartment to pick up my car.
    When I got there, it occurred to me there was one other possibility to check out.
    I went in the lobby, asked the doorman for Miriam Pritchert.
    The guy gave me a look. “Weren’t you just up there?”
    “Yes, I was. Now I’m back.”
    He shook his head. “Lady’s had a tough time. Why don’t you leave her alone.”
    Evidently, the guy still took me for a cop. It occurred to me, if he did, I didn’t have to bother to explain a damn thing.
    “Yeah,” I said. “But you know how it is.”
    The guy did. He stepped to the house phone, buzzed upstairs. After a few moments he said, “Sorry, there’s no answer.”
    “Maybe she went out.”
    “Yeah. Maybe.”
    I didn’t like the way he said that. I had the idea he’d seen her go in, knew she was there, and knew she wasn’t answering the phone.
    I wondered if he also knew she wasn’t alone.
    Assuming she wasn’t.
    My train of thought was interrupted by my beeper going off. That brought the doorman up short—he knew cops didn’t wear beepers. Which meant my welcome was worn out. The look he gave me told me, whoever I was, I had better call in, and I could damn well do it from somewhere else.
    I went to the pay phone to see what Mary Mason had for me. If she had another assignment half a block away, it was going to flip me out.
    Not quite.
    This time I was wanted by the cops.

30.
    I T WAS A SMALL, TWO-STORY frame house on a block of similar structures in Forest Hills, Queens. There were cop cars all around the place. I pulled in to the curb and got out.
    A uniformed officer on the front steps tried to give me the heave-ho.
    “Belcher wants me,” I said.
    His eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
    “Stanley Hastings.”
    “Oh, yeah,” the cop said. The look he gave me was not kind. But he jerked his thumb and said, “Come on.”
    I followed him up the steps and in the front door. There was a living room to the left, and a kitchen straight ahead, but we weren’t heading there. Instead, the cop led me upstairs.
    The top floor apparently consisted of two bedrooms and a bath. The front bedroom was empty. The back bedroom was full of cops. I walked in the door, stopped, and stared.
    The bedroom had been set up as an office, with file cabinets, bookshelves, and a desk. The body of the talent agent was stretched out on the floor. I knew her name, but blanked on it the minute I saw her lying there. Which was not surprising—I’m bad on names to begin with, and the whole scene was surreal. I mean, I’d played this scene before at the woman’s Manhattan office. Been dragged in by the cops and expected to see her there. This time I’d been summoned by the cops and not told a thing. I had no idea whose house it was or why I was there. Then I walk into what I think is a bedroom, but, no, it’s an office. What’s more, it’s just like the office I was in before when I expected to find a dead body, and here’s the dead body I expected to find lying right where I thought it should be. Somehow, it was as if the whole thing were a stage set, mocked up especially for my benefit.
    And before I even have a chance to get my wits together, there’s Sergeant Belcher, malevolence itself, snapping questions at me, as if the whole thing was somehow my fault.
    “Is it her?” Belcher demanded.
    The question was so abrupt it startled me. “Her?”
    “Yes, her. The woman you told us about. Is it her?”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “You identify her?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “Who do you identify her to be?”
    “The talent agent. I’m blanking her name.”
    “Shelly Daniels?”
    “That’s right.”
    “This is the woman you called on in her office?”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “This is the woman you paid a hundred dollars to for information?”
    “That’s right.”
    “You claim she wouldn’t give you the address and phone number of the topless dancer who set up your client?”
    “I don’t claim anything. The fact is, she didn’t.”
    “You needn’t qualify your answers with me. You see a stenographer taking anything down?”
    “I like to be accurate.”
    “Well,” Belcher said. “What a commendable trait. How did you get here?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Are you deaf? How did you get