LUDIC LOG

Mrs. Roark's house was outsized and showy, like you figure an architect's house would be. It wasn't even a house, really, it was a big showplace where she happened to live. It even had a plaque on the front that said "New York's Greatest Building". There were sharp angles and flags and little jutting edges everywhere you looked. The sky was dark and mean. It was about to rain all over New York's greatest building.

I went inside and instantly got corralled by some monkey-suited functionary who took my overcoat, handed me a glass of whiskey that was almost as good as it was expensive, and told me to wait in the chancellery. I told him I didn't have any idea what a chancellery was, so he showed me. When I said thanks he gave me some big speech about the dignity of labor freely accepted and fairly paid.

"I'll keep that in mind," I said. "Sounds really wise." I really would keep it in mind; usually when someone gave me a speech about fair work for fair pay it was because they wanted to stiff me out of my expenses. Not that the Roarks needed to watch their pennies; she was born into the big money and his oversized modernist monstrosities were all over the city.

I sat on the lip of a plush white chair, letting my eyes roam around for something worth looking at, when Mrs. Roark came in. She was worth looking at. Slender and hammer-hard and sharp enough to cut yourself on. She was in her home, a temple built just for her, but she looked uncomfortable in the room, in her clothes, in her own body.

"Mr. Marlowe," she said, in a voice that didn't drink. I did.

"Mrs. Roark. It's a pleasure to meet you."

She nodded. "I've long been curious about the men of your profession," she said, sitting across from me dramatically. If anyone could sit dramatically, it was her. "There is, I think, among detectives -- or private eyes, as I understand you like to be called -- an individualism, a commitment to the self and its hidden truth, that I find admirable. You stand against the main, you expose the secret lies they tell themselves, the lies that pile up and become a slag heap of self-deception that threatens to drown us all."

There was nowhere I could go with that, so I let it pass. I put down the glass that Monkey Suit had kindly given me of his own free will; it was empty anyway. I was sorry about that. "I understand your husband's gone missing."

"Yes, Mr. Marlowe," she said, tossing her head to one side. I wanted to tell her that there was no need to play to the balcony, since there was only one other person in the room and he was sitting right across from her, but I got the feeling she wouldn't take it too well. "Three weeks since my Howard disappeared from the world, leaving it darkened and purposeless. The motor of my life has ground to a halt; its shaft has been pulled out. I curse the day I was born a woman, that with so simple a vanishment can I be cast into shadow."

I rattled the glass a little in hopes that someone would hear the ice tinkling. "What about the police?" I asked. "Missing Persons has a lot more resources than I do."

"I distrust the police, Mr. Marlowe. They are small malformed men devoid of spirit." Her eyes narrowed up like she smelled someone. "They are public servants and as such they are condemned to ever cater to the base and grasping hands of a population of leeches, ever looking for someone to blame. The police are second-rate, a commonality of received knowledge."

"Can you think of any reason why Mr. Roark might have wanted to disappear?" I had to ask, although I figured I already knew. My head was starting to hurt, and the liquor cabinet must have been a hundred miles up the hallway.

"Of course not, Mr. Marlowe. My husband is not the sort to desert his duties in the light of some petty quibble. He has always stood firm and unyielding, like the sky-tempting towers he designs, in the face of the myriad carpings of those who would tear his greatness down to their level." She paused for what seemed like a long time, or maybe it just seemed like a long time because she wasn't talking. "Mr. Marlowe, it is of paramount importance that my husband be returned to me. He completes me. He takes the base stuff of which I am made, like the rough stone of that gray and cloudy quarry where I first laid eyes on his hard straight angular frame, and shapes it into something truly great. He is the end of ends, the reason unto himself; he is what he should be. He is courage incarnate against a cowardly world, a golden pinnacle in a society more concerned with means and averages. He builds up to his own level while others pull down to their own. He..."

I interrupted her. I figured if she kept it up, I was going to need a nap and she was going to need to be alone. "Mrs. Roark," I said, nicer than she deserved, "I'll find your husband, but honestly, you're putting me to sleep with all that bafflegab."

She stood up to her full height, which I thought she was already doing. "Mr. Marlowe," she said for the eighteenth time, "if you're to be paid your fee you'd do well to keep a more civil tongue in your head. Part of your standard contract, I would assume, specifies a certain respect towards your clients. And on a personal note, you may not wish to hear it, but you would be a better man if you patterened yourself after Howard Roark. I know I am."

I told her I'd work on it, and took my leave. In the car, I thought about that oration Roark gave at his trial a couple of years back. He talked just like she did, only longer.

I decided to take my time on this one.