The Devil Met a Lady by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

some clean ones. I ducked into the bakery a step before the storm hit. Today’s specials were chocolate Willie Bests, gingerbread W. C. Fieldses, and vanilla Shirley Temples. I bought a dozen Fieldses and Temples from the smiling old lady behind the counter and munched on Curly Top while I waited for the storm to pass.
    “Ran out of FDRs early,” the old lady said while I watched people dash through puddles outside. “His birthday was Saturday.”
    I was through all of the vanilla curls and was down to the beaming smile. I bit into it. I smiled back at the proprietress.
    “We try to keep up with famous birthdays,” she said.
    “Doesn’t the agent … what’s his name, Niles, Grover Niles, have his office upstairs?”
    The old lady wiped her hands on her white apron at the sound of Niles’s name.
    “Yes,” she said, busying herself with cookie trays.
    “Which ones are the hardest?” I asked.
    “Which—?”
    “Stars are the hardest?” I explained, starting on a W.C.
    “Oh.” She paused, tray in hand, and looked out the window at the rain for inspiration. “Leading men, women,” she said. “Hard to tell a Tyrone Power from a Robert Taylor, or an Ann Sheridan from a Mary Astor in a cookie or even a cake. Comedians and kids are easy. Tell you a secret.”
    I looked serious and tried to keep the ginger crumbs in my mouth.
    “You know who this is?”
    She was holding up a Willie Best.
    “Willie Best,” I said.
    “To you, Willie Best. I sold two dozen to Lew Ayres. Thought he was buying Stepin Fetchit.”
    “Why not say it’s Bill Robinson and pair him up with Shirley Temple?” I suggested.
    The idea struck home; she beamed at me and decided to give me a crumb of information as she rearranged a tray of Lassies a young boy brought in from the rear of the shop.
    “He owe you much?” the woman asked.
    “Who?” I said, walking over to catch the kitchen smells and observe better her arrangement of the kennel.
    “Niles,” she said. “You process server, collection agency?”
    “Private detective,” I said, shifting my bag of cookies so I could pull out my wallet and show it to her. “Toby Peters.”
    “Howard Duff on the radio is one of my favorites,” she said. “Saw a picture of him in a fan magazine. I could do a Howard Duff cookie.”
    “Call it a Sam Spade cookie,” I suggested, putting my wallet away. “Nobody knows what Duff looks like.”
    “Then the customers would think it was a bad Bogart.”
    “Niles,” I reminded her.
    “Deadbeat,” she said pleasantly. “Always behind in rent. Landlord’s going to toss him next month for sure.”
    The kind of guy who might pull out his nest egg, a record he bought in 1938.
    “Busted,” she said. “I ought to know. I own the building. What’d he do now?”
    “It isn’t now. It was five, six years ago. He up there?”
    “Yeah,” she said, backing away from the display case to survey her dog cookies upside down. “Heard him walking around.”
    “Rain’s slowing a little,” I said.
    “A little. Dogs are easy,” she said, rearranging the cookies a little more. “Asta’s a favorite. No one knows Rin-Tin-Tin anymore.”
    I moved to the door.
    “Come back when we’ve got Laurel and Hardy. Usually Thursdays. Big sellers. Easy to do.”
    “Thanks,” I said and ducked through a few feet of light rain to the entrance to GROVER NILES, THEATRICAL BOOKINGS, UPSTAIRS.
    I opened the door and made my way up the stairs. They were narrow, but reasonably well lighted and clean. I gave credit for that, right or wrong, to the cookie-baking landlady.
    Niles’s door was just where I’d left it five years before. The years had not been kind to her. She was losing paint. I walked in. The waiting room had changed. There were still five wooden chairs along the wall for the deluge of clients, and a reception desk facing the door. The room was just as empty as it had been the last time I had been here.
    Grover Niles had neither receptionist nor