Murder Is My Dish by Stephen Marlowe Page A

wrong profession, if you can call other people’s troubles a profession. Then I identified myself and asked to speak with Mr. Baylis, anyway, and please. He came on the line a moment later.
    â€œChester?”
    â€œIn the flesh and out of a job. I loused it up for you, Mr. Baylis.”
    â€œYou’re telling me,” he said with a nervous laugh.
    I didn’t say anything.
    â€œOh, I don’t mean that. I mean the whole thing. The D.C. papers played it up big. They’ve never liked me, you know. Chester, do yourself a favor. Never have a famous father.”
    â€œIt’s too late for that. I guess I’m lucky.”
    â€œThey crucified me just because I’m the Paranaian legal representative in this country. As if I’d had a hand in kidnaping or killing Rafael Caballero.” The nervous little laugh again. Over the phone it couldn’t be appreciated, unless you knew what Preston Baylis looked like. He looked like a more intellectual Ernest Hemingway, when Hemingway was in his prime. The nervous little laugh went with his looks like butterscotch topping goes with a rare T-bone steak. But Preston Baylis had the misfortune of being born the son of the late, great supreme court justice of the same name. They said he was the spit and image of his father, on the outside. On the inside the best he had was the nervous little laugh. It was the only thing which hadn’t belonged to his father. The rest was pale shadow and footsteps and shoes much too big for him to fill.
    â€œI never even met Rafael Caballero.”
    â€œI know. You told me.”
    â€œI never even met Indalecio Grande. But that doesn’t stop them from hanging him in effigy outside my house.”
    â€œFrom doing which?”
    â€œThe pickets. They’re all over the place. There are cops stationed on the lawn.” He laughed the nervous little laugh again. “I’m practically in a state of siege out here.”
    â€œI come out?”
    â€œIs it about Caballero?”
    I said it was about Caballero in a roundabout way.
    â€œI wish you wouldn’t. I just want to forget it. I have nothing to do with it really.”
    I said I would like to see him anyway.
    â€œWell, all right, if you must.”
    â€œHow would noon be?”
    He told me noon would be as good as any other time. He said, with his nervous little laugh, that perhaps the pickets would call it a day by then. They had assembled on the street outside his place just after sunrise. They’d been at it for hours.
    I hung up, shaved, showered, dressed, and went outside for something to eat. When I finished it was still only ten-forty. Since it was only about a twenty-minute drive to the Baylis home in College Park, I had more than enough time for a Sunday morning visit to my office and decided to use it. I drove over there in my white De Soto convertible. F Street was almost deserted and the Farrell Building, across the street from the Treasury Department at the corner of 15th Street, was closed for the Sabbath.
    I rang the night bell. When nothing happened, I rang it again. In a little while a sleepy-looking face over a pair of narrow shoulders in a maroon-and-tan elevator operator’s uniform appeared on the other side of the door. The glass of the door had been cleaned and polished and waited, gleaming, for Monday’s fingerprints and smudges. The elevator operator seemed surprised to see anyone.
    His face was a new one to me, so I showed him the photostat of my detective license, signed by no less a personage than Police Commissioner Eric Mann. It seemed to satisfy him. “Important case, huh, Mr. Drum?” he said.
    I gave him my most mysterious nod and he locked the door and took me up in the elevator. “I wait?” he said.
    I nodded again and walked down the corridor to my office. Chester Drum, Confidential Investigations , the black lettering on pebbled glass said. Envelopes were stuffed into the mail