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Hoover’s sending another agent to deal with the case. He’s afraid our men up here may have gotten too pally with Tammany Hall.”
    Rosenblatt and Gilligan exchanged a foreboding look. Then Gilligan scowled.
    â€œSay, if your job was just tailing the d … lady, how didja know this stiff had anything to do with Tammany?”
    â€œMr. Thorwald told me. That is, when Mrs. Fletcher recognized Carmody and told us his name, Thorwald recalled that Pascoli had talked about him and the articles he was writing. Naturally I informed Mr. Hoover.”
    â€œNaturally,” said Rosenblatt gloomily. “Why the heck did this hafta happen the week before the election? Even if it all happened like you said, Sergeant, the Hearst and opposition papers will make hay. O.K., Lambert, let’s hear what you saw out there.”
    Daisy was pretty sure Lambert had nothing to add to her evidence, so she only half listened. She pondered the scenario Sergeant Gilligan had built up.
    It sounded reasonable, if one assumed Daisy had wrongly identified Carmody’s voice. An expert at ferreting out secrets, he might have turned to blackmail. Though her impression of him was of an unrelenting honesty, it was based
on nothing more than his ferocious forthrightness. She had scarcely exchanged a word with him.
    But she had heard him speak, and she was almost convinced he was the one who made the remark about the “red cent.” Almost.

6
    D aisy returned exhausted to the Hotel Chelsea, with instructions not to depart from New York.
    After leaving Rosencrantz and Guildenstern trying to rouse the somnolent Thorwald to give his evidence, she and Lambert had descended to ground level to find a mob of reporters on the pavement. Sidewalk.
    Held off by the friendly doorman and a patrolman, they were baying for blood, or at least for any scrap of information. They obviously knew, presumably through Pascoli, that one of their own had been foully done to death. Fortunately the Town Talk editor had apparently not described either Daisy or Lambert. The newsmen harassed them on general principles—they had actually been inside the building where the murder had taken place!—but did not guess they were witnesses.
    The young agent forged ahead through the crowd, forcing a path for Daisy. She kept her mouth shut. If they knew anything about her at all, the sound of her voice would give her away.
    As they walked back along Twenty-third Street to the
hotel, Lambert kept trying to apologize, for having been set on to follow her and for having failed to keep her out of trouble. Wearily, she cut him short, drawing his attention to an evening newspaper billboard with a notice about a “special” on the murder.
    Someone had nosed out that the victim was staying at the Hotel Chelsea. A lesser mob of reporters had gathered on the sidewalk, but they were less aggressive than their brethren at the Flatiron Building. Balfour, the black doorman, was managing single-handedly to keep them out of the lobby, with constant reiterations of “A private hotel, ge’men. Residents and their visitors only.”
    Daisy reflected that Alec would long since have sent a constable or two to take charge.
    She and Lambert entered without too much difficulty. “It won’t be so easy,” said Lambert gloomily, “once this lot of newshounds puts their heads together with the others and they figure out we’re connected with both the hotel and the Flatiron Building.”
    â€œI expect there’s a back door they’ll let us use,” Daisy consoled him.
    â€œYeah, sure! I’ll go speak to the manager right away.”
    He forged ahead towards the registration desk, while Daisy paused in the lobby. It was teatime, and the Misses Cabot were lying in wait.
    Miss Genevieve raised an imperious hand. Daisy considered pretending she had not seen, but she wanted her tea, not to mention information which Miss Genevieve was more