He had been there ten minutes when a trackless trolley pulled in. A slight, dark, young-appearing man wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt got off. He looked around until he spotted the Volkswagen and then walked to it, and got in.
“I just thought,” he said. “Since nobody told us to do this, we can’t put in for overtime, right?”
“When we catch him, we can,” McFadden said. “I’ll bet you believe in the Easter Bunny, too, huh?” Jesus Martinez said. Then he looked at the supplies McFadden had laid in. “No wonder you’re fat,” he said. “That shit’s no good for you.”
He reached for one of the 7-Ups, and they settled down to wait.
****
Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo & Lester maintained law offices on the eleventh floor of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building on Market Street, east of Broad. It was convenient to both the federal courthouse and the financial district.
Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson and Brewster Cortland Payne II, the founding partners of the firm, occupied offices on either side of the Large Conference Room. They shared a secretary, Mrs. Irene Craig, a tall, dignified, silver-haired woman in her fifties. Mrs. Craig had two secretaries of her own, set up in an office off her own tastefully furnished office. Although she could, if necessary, type nearly one hundred words per minute on her state-of-the-art IBM typewriter, Mrs. Craig rarely typed anything on it except Memoranda of Incoming Calls.
Her function, she had once told her husband, was to serve as sort of a traffic cop, offering, and barring, entrance to the attention, either in person or on the phone, of her bosses. Their time was valuable, and it was her job to see that it was not wasted.
She was very good at her job, and although it was a secret between them, she brought home more money than did her husband, who worked for the Prudential Insurance Company.
When she came to work, at her ritual time of 8:45, fifteen minutes before the business day actually began, she was surprised to see the colonel’s office door open. Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson rarely appeared before ten, or ten-thirty. She went into his office. He wasn’t there, but there was evidence that he had been.
There were cigarettes in his ashtray; two cardboard coffee containers from the machine way down the hall by the typists’ pool; and crumpled paper in his wastebasket. The colonel’s leather-framed doodle pad was covered with triangles, stars, a setting sun, and a multidigit telephone number Mrs. Craig recognized from the prefix to be one in London, England.
Mrs. Craig retrieved the crumpled paper from the wastebasket, unfolded it, and read it. There were names on it: Louise Button, Lt. DelRaye, Insp. Wohl (Wall?), and, underlined, Stanford Fortner Wells III. There was an address, 6 Stockton Place, and several telephone numbers, none of which Mrs. Craig recognized. And then she remembered that Stanford Fortner Wells III had something to do with newspapers; what, exactly, she couldn’t recall.
She dumped the contents of the ashtray in the waste-basket, added the cardboard coffee containers, and then carried it outside and dumped it in her own wastebasket. Then she went to the smaller office where her assistants worked and started the coffee machine. That was for her. She liked a cup of coffee to begin the day, and sometimes Mr. Payne came in wanting a cup.
Colonel J. Dunlop Mawson came in the office at ten past nine, smiled at her, and asked if Mr. Payne was in.
“Not yet, any minute,” she said.
“Let me know the minute he does, will you please? And could you get me a cup of coffee?”
He went in his office, and as she went to fetch the coffee, she saw him go to the window of his office that gave a view of Market Street down to the river and stand, with his hands on his hips, as if he was mad at something, looking out.
Brewster Cortland Payne II came into her office as she was carrying a cup of coffee, with two envelopes of saccharin and a spoon on the saucer across it to the colonel’s office.
“Good morning,” Brewster Payne said, with a nod and a smile. He was a tall and thin, almost skinny, man wearing a single-breasted vested gray suit, a subdued necktie, and black shoes. Yet there was something, an air of authority and wisdom, Mrs. Craig knew, that made people look at him in a crowd. He looked, she thought, like what a successful attorney should look like. Sometimes, especially when she was annoyed with him, the colonel didn’t look that way to her.
“Good morning,” she said. “He asked me to let him know the minute you came in.” Brewster Payne’s face registered amused surprise.
“Do you think he is annoyed that I’m a little late?” he asked, and added: “I would be grateful for some coffee myself.”
“Here,” Mrs. Craig said, handing him the cup and saucer. “Tell him I’m getting his.”
When she delivered the coffee, Brewster Payne was sprawled on the colonel’s red leather couch, his long legs stretched out in front of him, balancing his coffee on his stomach. The colonel was standing beside his desk. When she handed him the coffee, he gave her an absent smile and set it down on the desk.
Mrs. Craig left, closing the door after her. There was someone new in the outer office.
“Hello, Matt,” she said. She liked Matt Payne, thought that he was a really handsome, and more important, nice young man. She liked the way he smiled.
“Good morning, Mrs. Craig,” he said, and then blurted: “Is there any chance I could see him this morning? He doesn’t expect me, but ...”
“He’s in with the colonel,” she said. “I don’t know how long they’ll be.”
“I think this was a bad idea,” Matt said.
“Don’t be silly. Sit down, I’ll get you some coffee.”
“You’re sure?”