The Naked Typist

12

“I fucked up.”

Steve Winslow frowned. Well, at least she wasn’t mincing any words.

Steve had just finished dinner and gotten back to his Greenwich Village apartment when Mark Taylor had called to tell him what happened. He’d taken a cab back uptown and gotten to the Taylor Detective Agency just in time for Marcie Keller’s debriefing.

Which wasn’t pleasant. Mark Taylor wasn’t in the best of moods. He obviously agreed with Marcie’s succinct assessment of the situation, and Steve figured it was only his presence that was keeping Taylor from taking her head off. So Steve found himself in the uncomfortable position of being a buffer between them. Which wasn’t easy, since he was pretty pissed off too.

“Tell me about it,” Steve said.

Marcie grimaced. “It was a bonehead play. I blew it.”

“We know that,” Taylor snapped. “Just give us the details.”

“Tell it from the beginning,” Steve said. “How did you pick him up and what happened?”

Marcie took a breath. “Okay. I staked out Castleton Industries on Third Avenue as instructed. I spotted him leaving work at approximately five-fifteen. I tailed him from there to an address on Fifth Avenue that turned out to be the apartment of Milton Castleton. He went in, came out an hour and five minutes later, and walked to a singles bar on Third Avenue about two blocks up from Castleton Industries.

“I followed him in, approached him at the bar, tried to lure him into conversation. He wasn’t having any. Which was strange, ’cause I was making myself look like an easy score. He wasn’t interested, so I figured he was either gay or he was meeting someone.

“Turned out he was meeting someone. Girl comes in. Short brown hair. Attractive face. Subtle makeup. Slim body, big breasts. I figure it’s her, the one I was told to look out for.

“So I got a big decision to make. If they leave there I gotta tail them, but it’s gonna be hard not to be spotted after trying to pick up the guy. What I should do is call for backup, but if they’re leaving right away there’s no time. The only phone’s in the back of the bar, the bar’s crowded and it’s not an easy call. I gotta watch and see what they’re gonna do. If they leave, I’m gone. If they stay, I call.

“Now he’s gone to meet her by the door, and they’re standing there and talking so I’m ready to go. But then he’s bringing her back to the bar where he’d been drinking. I figure they’re staying, I figure I’m shot as a tail, I gotta call for backup, then go back to my place at the bar, listen in on the conversation if I can, maybe even get an introduction. So I go to a phone to make the call.

“I figure wrong. The guy just went back for his bar bill. He grabs it, heads for the door. I drop the phone, try to follow, but it’s crowded, he’s got a head start, and by the time I get out the door they’re gone.”

She shrugged. “And that’s it. That’s the story. I fucked up, plain and simple.”

“That’s for sure,” Taylor said. “How many drinks you have?”

Marcie stiffened somewhat. Her chin came up. “Two.”

“Two what?”

“Martinis.”

Taylor snorted. “Shit.”

“I’m not drunk,” Marcie said. “I can hold it. I was trying for a pickup. I wasn’t gonna impress the guy as an easy lay sitting there drinking Diet Coke.”

Taylor opened his mouth to say something, but Steve held up his hand.

“Now hang on, Mark,” Steve said. “It’s a fuckup, but the way she tells it, I don’t see what else she could have done. Let’s stop worrying about what we didn’t get, and see what we got.”

Steve turned to Marcie. “Now, the girl who came in-can you describe her any better?”

Marcie frowned. “Brown hair. Blue eyes. Clear complexion. Not pale, but not heavily tanned either. Her face was attractive, but not glamorous. Plain, simple, but nice. She was wearing a light blue business suit. Stylish but conservative. Big breasts, like I said, but deemphasized by the clothing. The impression I got was a practical, no-nonsense woman.”

Steve nodded. “’That’s her, all right. Damn.”

“I know,” Taylor said. “It’s frustrating as hell.”

“I take it I’m off the case?” Marcie said. ‘Off the case’ was wishful thinking. She was hoping she wasn’t fired.

Taylor might have been about to say exactly that, but Steve jumped in. “No, Mark, keep her on.”

Taylor frowned. “Why?”

“ ’Cause she made contact. And the bar’s only two blocks from Castleton Industries. Which means maybe it’s a place David Castleton regularly hangs out. Pops in for a drink after work. If so, it’s too good to pass up.” He jerked his thumb at Marcie Keller. “Now, there’s no way she could meet him anywhere else. That would be too big a coincidence and make him suspicious. But in the same bar it would be perfectly natural. So, Marcie, I want you to go hang out in the same bar tomorrow night. If Castleton comes in, make a play for him again.”

“He wasn’t interested,” Taylor said.

“Sure, because he was waiting for Kelly Blaine. If he weren’t, he might be very interested. If so, try to open him up, kid him along. Pull a ‘who was that chick you stood me up for last night?’ routine on him. Think you could handle that?”

“Piece of cake.”

“Fine, Mark. That’s what I want her to do.”

Taylor shrugged. “Okay. It’s your money.” He turned to Marcie. “But if the girl shows up, you stick with her-I don’t care what it takes. Don’t rush to the phone and let her go.”

“We can solve that now,” Steve said. “Have a guy in the bar with her. Not with her, of course, but ready to move if the girl shows up.”

“Okay, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want.”

Taylor gave Marcie her instructions and she left, obviously relieved to get out of there. He watched her go and shook his head. “I think you’re being too easy on her, Steve. For my money, she fucked up.”

“Yes and no.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“As it turns out, she should have followed them instead of calling for backup. On the other hand, you could have had a man already staked out in the bar, like we’re doing tomorrow night, and she wouldn’t have had to make that decision.”

Taylor’s eyes narrowed. “You’re telling me I fucked up?”

“No, I’m just telling you what you didn’t do. Before you get hot under the collar about it, I could have told you to have backup in the bar, but I didn’t do it either. And I wouldn’t have done it, even if I’d known about it. Because there was no reason to suspect the guy would be meeting Kelly Blaine. So we didn’t prepare for it, and it’s really nobody’s fault.”

“Maybe not, but I can tell you’re still pretty pissed.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanna find Kelly Blaine. You got eight trained operatives out scouring the city for her. They can’t find her, but David Castleton does just like that.”

Taylor shook his head. “He couldn’t have found her. She must have called him.”

“She didn’t know him. They’d never met. According to David Castleton, she didn’t even know he existed.”

“That’s just his story.”

“Yeah, but why would he lie about it? I mean, if he knew her, the whole thing makes even less sense.”

“Which is saying something.”

“Right. I mean, the guy came here looking for her. If he knew how to find her, he wouldn’t have done that. So he obviously doesn’t know how to find her. But twenty-four hours later he’s meeting her in a bar.”

“Maybe he found her through his grandfather.”

“He claimed he didn’t want his grandfather to know about it. Acted embarrassed about the whole thing. That’s just what he claimed, but still. Say he went to his grandfather’s, wanted to look up Kelly Blaine’s address in the records. That wouldn’t do him any good either.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause she gave me a phony name and address, it’s a cinch she gave Castleton one too. So the grandfather wouldn’t know how to find her any more than the grandson would.”

“So maybe she called him.”

“Grandpa?”

“Sure.”

“Yeah, that’s the only explanation. But if she did that, the question is why? She’d been fired from her job, she’d gotten a settlement. If she couldn’t cash the check, that was too bad, but it wasn’t Castleton’s fault and there was nothing he could do about it.”

“Maybe that’s it, though,” Taylor said. “Maybe she wanted him to make good with cash.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“Tell him the check was worthless to her, she wanted her settlement, she wanted him to make good with thirty-three grand in cash.”

“Why the hell would he do that?”

“Well, she had him in a pretty embarrassing position.”

“ ‘Had’ is the operative word. We’d made a settlement. He had a signed release letting him off the hook.”

“Signed with a phony name,” Taylor pointed out.

“True, but still binding,” Steve said. “Castleton entered into the settlement in good faith. He can’t be held accountable if my client’s actions are fraudulent.”

“Maybe he didn’t know that.”

Steve waved it away. “Even so. I mean, give me a break. The girl rings him up and says, ‘I’m not really Kelly Blaine and I tricked you on the settlement and I want more money,’ and Castleton says, ‘Fine, why don’t you go for drinks with my grandson.’”

Taylor frowned. “I see your point.”

Steve threw up his hands. “It’s a fucking nightmare. Nothing makes sense. I got a respectable young woman prancing around naked in front of a one-way glass for the benefit of a lecherous octogenarian who can’t get it up anymore but who still likes to look. I got a horny grandson running around looking for her who hasn’t got a prayer of finding her but who does just like that. And I got a fifty-thousand-dollar cash settlement that nobody seems to want.”

“Right. So what does it all mean?”

Steve took a breath, blew it out again. He shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest idea. And that, Mark, is what is really pissing me off.”