Maybe they saw me tear that off.
If they did, so what?
“Mr. Danton, Ms. Grunblatt will see you now.”
Sylvia Grunblatt was sitting behind a large, cluttered desk. She was not svelte, but neither was she unpleasingly plump. She had very intelligent eyes.
“What can the embassy of the United States do for Roscoe J. Danton of The Washington Times-Post?” she greeted him. “How about a cup of coffee for openers?”
“I would be in your debt,” Roscoe said.
She poured coffee into a mug and handed it to him.
“Sugar? Canned cow?”
He shook his head.
“What brings you to the Paris of South America?” Grunblatt asked.
“I’m writing a feature with the working title, ‘Tacos and Tango.’”
“Sure you are,” she said. “What did you do, get demoted? I’m one of your fans, Mr. Danton, and you don’t write features for the Sunday magazine.”
“How about one with the lead, ‘U.S. diplomats living really high on the taxpayer’s dollar in the Paris of South America’?”
“If you were going to do that, you wouldn’t tell me.”
“I came down here to see Alex Darby,” Roscoe said.
“Nobody here by that name,” she said.
“You mean ‘Nobody here by that name now,’ right?”
“We had a commercial counselor by that name, but he’s gone. Retired.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t seem to recall. I could find out for you, but then we would get into privacy issues, wouldn’t we?”
“Or security issues. You know who cut his checks, Miss Grunblatt.”
“One, it’s Ms. Grunblatt—but you can call me Sylvia if ‘Mizz’ sticks in your craw.”
“And you may call me Roscoe, Sylvia.”
“And two, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Mr. Darby was our commercial counselor. Who fed you that other wild notion?”
“Eleanor Dillworth, another longtime toiler in the Clandestine Service of the agency whose name we dare not speak.”
“You know Eleanor, do you?”
“Eleanor came to me. Actually, she and her friend Patricia Davies Wilson came to me. Do you know Patricia?”
“I’ve heard the name somewhere. Eleanor came to you?”
“Both of them did. Whistles to their lips.”
“And who—at whom—did they wish to blow their whistles?”