She gulped once or twice at that. Why would someone push a nice young man like Mr. Warshawski to his death? I didn’t know, I told her, but it was possible those files might give me some kind of clue. I explained to her that I was a private investigator by profession. That seemed to satisfy her: she promised to hunt them up for me while Lois was at lunch.

I asked her if there were anyone else in the office with whom Boom Boom might have quarreled. Or, failing that, whom he might have been close to.

“The people he worked with most were the sales reps. They do all the buying and selling. And, of course, Mr. Quinchley, who handles the Board of Trade on his computer.”

She gave me names of some of the likelier prospects and went back to her desk. I went out to the pit to see if I could find Brimford or Ashton, two of the reps Boom Boom had usually worked with. They were both on the phone, so I wandered around a bit, getting covert stares. There were some half dozen typists handling correspondence, bills, contracts, invoices, who knows what else. A few cubbyholes like Boom Boom’s were stuck along the windows here and there. One of them held a man sitting at a computer terminal—Quinchley, hard at work with the Board of Trade.

Phillip’s office was in the far corner. His secretary, a woman about my age with a bouffant hairdo I’d last seen in seventh grade, was over interrogating Janet. What does that cousin of Warshawski’s want now? I grinned to myself.

Ashton hung up his phone. I stopped him as he started dialing again and asked if he’d mind talking to me for a few minutes. He was a heavyset guy in his middle or late forties; he followed me goodnaturedly into Boom Boom’s cubicle. I explained again who I was and that I was trying to find out more about Boom Boom’s job and whether he had tangled with anyone in the organization.

Ashton was friendly, but he didn’t want to commit himself to anything. Not with a strange woman, anyway. He agreed with Janet’s description of my cousin’s job. He liked Boom Boom—he livened the place up quite a bit, and he was smart, too. Didn’t try to trade on his relations with Argus. But as to whether he quarreled with anyone—he didn’t think so, but I’d have to talk to Phillips about that. How had Boom Boom and Phillips gotten along? Again, I’d have to ask Phillips, and that was that.