“Is she genuinely dumb?”
“If she’s dumb, so is Oppenheimer. That’s why I prefer to call her potty. She thinks the way she thinks we think women think.”
From Abe’s office Delia went to her own. It had belonged to Lieutenant Corey Marshall, now Senior Lieutenant of Uniforms with Captain Fernando Vasquez, and had lain vacant for less than half a day before Delia swooped, announcing that she needed space for spreading out huge sheets of paper. Carmine had pointed out that she had masterminded his own removal to Mickey McCosker’s suite of offices to have ample spreading room, but he may as well have saved his breath. Yes, but that space was actually Carmine’s, she spread out her sheets on sufferance, she needed her own space …
Silvestri gave in, whereupon his niece badgered him for better furniture that, she wheedled, “betrayed the domain and the hand of a woman.” In like manner she had usurped the quite unofficial position of second-in-command of Carmine’s team; if Carmine were absent, Nick, Buzz and Donny all looked to her to issue the orders. How it had happened was a mystery, except that Carmine for one knew how much of the Commissioner lay in her nature. Hesitate, and Delia would take over.
This case was interesting, she thought as she hung up the tiger outer wear and went to a long, narrow table already bearing four large sheets of paper: her C.U.P. banquet seating plans.
The Chubb table, first of those down on the floor, was the most intriguing, she decided, whizzing on her wheeled chair until she hovered over it. Four Chubb Governors and their wives, three of the Parsons and their wives, His Honor Judge Douglas Wilbur Thwaites and his wife, Dotty, and Dean Robert Highman and his wife, Nancy. The four governors occupied one end of the table, the three Parsons the other, with Dean Highman next to the Parsons and Judge Thwaites next to the governors. As Bobby Highman’s college, Paracelsus, was a Parson endowment, it made sense to seat him in proximity, but no wonder Doubting Doug was in such a royal snit — Governor William Holder, next to him, had once made mincemeat of D.A. Thwaites by getting a guilty-as-sin defendant acquitted. Which might have been all right, save that Holder continued to rub in the defeat every time he saw the now Judge, who rightly blamed the jury, not Holder’s defense.
Two of the Gentleman Walkers of Carew were seated at the C.U.P. table, Delia noted: Dapper Dave Feinman, escorting the editor-in-chief, Fulvia Friedkin, and suave Gregory Pendelton, squiring the director of design, Hester Grey. Publishing, Delia reflected, attracted females, and actually offered them some top management positions — rare in business. The Doctors Hunter were on the high table, but the three Tunbulls and wives were all seated with C.U.P. That meant they must do all C.U.P.’s printing — how interesting!
Very well: coffee with Dotty Thwaites, a chat with Nancy Highman, a long and charming interview with Hester Grey, and — would Abe mind if she tackled Emily Tunbull? The two cases were so entwined, and it would take a crafty woman to prise the lid off Emily’s pot of malice, sheer hearsay though it was. Then, of course, she had to see how the search through the banquet’s detritus was progressing …
Carmine walked through the door.
“Oh, goodie!” said Delia. “Chief, may I please have the C.U.P. table? It’s stuffed with women, and you have your work cut out dealing with the men.”
He had lost a little weight and was looking, thought his most devoted fan, extremely well. With winter upon them, she had expected a return of last winter’s rather rheumatic gait, but thus far he was moving like a supple youth. Such a very attractive man! Knowing herself a platonic admirer insofar as that were possible, Delia appreciated Carmine for what he was: a man of forty-eight, built like a bull but trim, with the face of a Roman emperor — autocratically good looking, with a pair of jewel-colored eyes that saw clear through to the soul.
Thinking he’d be teaching school, he’d majored in English and Math from Chubb, but after going to his great love, police work, he had pursued a leisurely Master’s degree that discussed the rising tides of urban violence in terms of the huge changes in literary metaphor as evidenced by the Raymond Chandler school. It had been a good but not important thesis that wouldn’t have procured him a doctorate, but ambition wasn’t why he had done a Master’s. That belonged to the boredom of the bachelor years.
“You look well,” she said before he could answer her first question. “No arthur-itis.”
“Desdemona filled some horse-sized capsules with turmeric — you know, the powder turns a curry yellow? She read somewhere that it’s good for rheumatics, as she calls them. And she’s right — or something is. No aches and pains this winter.” He came to look at the C.U.P. table plan. “Yes, Deels, this one is definitely yours. Abe tells me that Mrs. Davina Tunbull is heavily into incriminating herself.” He perched the edge of his rump on the table.