LITMIR.BIZ

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I was seeking, but where it might eventually lead I didn’t know.

      “Since we recognize each other, Dr. Wurber,” I said, “you can put the gun down. I am not armed.”

      He studied me from under those eyebrows, decided to accept my statement, dropped the gun into his outer coat pocket, waved his hand to the chair beside his desk.

      “Sit down, Cora.”

      I obeyed almost gratefully. He pressed the proper button on the panel and soft wall lights went on. Then very deliberately he sat in his big chair, just around the edge of the desk from me. Silently he lined his pencil, pen, and paper cutter on the blotter before him. I half expected him to produce one of those big cards.

      “You are a very foolish girl,” he said, in that thin whine. “I could have you arrested for gaining entry under false pretenses.”

      That was a bluff. My confidence mounted faintly from zero. I made my eyes wide.

      “I hope you wouldn’t do that, Dr. Wurber. Eddie would be mad.”

      “I don’t see why you should mind what he thinks.” His eyes were still on their sight-seeing tour. I crossed my knees, deliberately, smiling apologetically as I glanced from him to my shoeless foot. His eyes beat mine by seconds. I drew my feet together demurely under the chair. The guy gave me the creeps.

      “I don’t see why you should mind at all,” he repeated impatiently. “About him, I mean.”

      “Perhaps I’m fond of him.”

      Wurber made an unpleasant chortling sound. “What women see in him . . .”

      “I suppose girls want to mother him,” I said softly.

      “Well, I want no part of him. All my years in New York—not a word against me—and now this!”

      “You mean last week—or tonight?”

      His pale eyes peered from under those brows like clams in a cave. “Tonight?”

      “That wasn’t like you thought—like it looked.”

      “No?”

      “I was curious, that’s all. I didn’t want that nice janitor to hear me, so I took off my shoes. I hope you won’t tell Eddie.”

      “My dear young lady, I never expect to speak to him again on any subject. I thought I made that clear to him.”

      “He said . . .”

      “He said . . . he said . . .” Wurber parroted. “Whatever he said, I believe none of it.”

      He pulled out a faintly scented handkerchief, mopped his brow. I glanced down at my gloved hands, folded in my lap, and figured my chances. Dad always said play your cards as though you held a royal flush. The next play in this game was a hazard.

      “Eddie didn’t send me here,” I began, and the tremor in my voice was genuine. “I came because I thought you . . . were his friend.”

      He gave an impatient grunt. I kept on, without looking at him, feeling the thin mounting tension I’d known as a little girl when I made up stories to tell Grandma. “Eddie’s hurt.”

      “You mean—Eddie has taken offense—at me?” Wurber was getting cute.

      “I mean—he’s injured. Shot.”

      “Shot!” Wurber squeaked. “By whom? How?”

      “It was an accident.” My nervousness was a helpful prop to the act. “He slammed the drawer, the gun was in there, went off. The bullet grazed him.”

      Wurber obviously didn’t believe my account of the accident. “You should have called an ambulance if he’s badly hurt.”

      “I would have, but to get an ambulance from a city hospital you have to call the police first. Even private hospitals—and most doctors—report an accident with firearms. Don’t they?”

      The doctor ignored the question, asked another with icy annoyance. “And Eddie doesn’t want to see the police?”

      “You know that.”

      “Where is he?” Wurber demanded irritably.

      “In . . . that hole, as you called it.”

      “Curse the day I ever saw the man,” Wurber muttered. “He’s always brought trouble.”

      “But you must come,” I persisted. “You couldn’t let him die. That would bring the police, too.”

      I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes lowered, for the demure effect, the helpless, spring expression. “You will come?”

      “I am still a doctor,” he said crossly, “even though—at times—I think it would be better if some people were to die.”

      A soft veil of rain enveloped the street when we came out. An impressive car with a New Jersey license was parked a few doors away. I was sure it belonged to Wurber, but he ignored it and headed toward Broadway. At the corner, in front of a dingy, eighth-rate hotel, we picked up a cab. I popped into it, my hand on the opposite door handle, just in case.

      The cabby was looking at him. Wurber hesitated, glanced at me. My hand tightened on the door handle. My expression, I hoped, was perfectly blank. Wurber gave a number on Third Avenue, got in, and sat beside me, close. I released the door handle.

      The driver looked around. “Is that in the Seventies?”

      “Near Ninetieth Street,” I said automatically. I’d been dunning a man only a few numbers away.

      Dr. Wurber nodded. His bushy eyebrows close together under the brim of his hat gave him a totally different appearance. With him, a hat was a disguise. He settled back, his knees spread, touching mine.

      I sat in rigid silence, my mind ticking faster than the meter as we crossed 72nd Street and entered the Park. The silent rain misted the lights and the windshield, filled the air with fragrance. I tried to relax, get an easier hold on myself, but my nerves wouldn’t unbend.

      What I needed was a good plan, and how could you plan when you didn’t know what came next? This could be a trap in reverse. Wurber might be leading me into one of his own. I had to take that chance.

      The cab wound skillfully through the maze of drives, the tires singing on the wet road. The buildings along Central Park South gleamed like a fairy city through the rose-gray mist. I thought of the nice safe restaurant where I had dinner and of my apartment, around the corner from it. Surely nothing serious could happen this close to home. Dr. Wurber’s elbow brushed mine and I started.

      “Cigarette?”

      I took one, accepted his light, couldn’t avoid his fat little finger lingering against mine. My skin crawled. After all his dealings with women over the years, I wondered he ever wanted to see or touch another one; but he obviously did.

      The cab crossed Fifth Avenue, headed east, then took Park Avenue, north. It was such a very little way now. I tried to empty my mind. This was no time for crossing bridges, coming or going. I had connected Dr. Wurber with Eddie Wells. If he took me to Eddie Wells, he might take me indirectly to Eddie Wells’s child.

      The cab turned under the elevated into Third Avenue. I noted the number on the first store. The address Dr. Wurber gave was in the middle of the short block. It was a rag-tag section, with cheap flats and rooming houses over small stores, the entrances to the dwellings wedged between the shops.

      We stopped. Wurber paid the driver and we crossed the wet sidewalk, Wurber clutching his black bag and picking his way in those small pointed shoes. I strode into the dingy entrance as though I knew where I was going. There were some battered mailboxes in the dirty wall of the vestibule, bells with indecipherable name plates. The door opened when a man walked out. I caught the door and Wurber and I walked in.

      The hall smelled of bad plumbing, cooked cabbage, and everlasting darkness. I hung

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