Archie Meets Nero Wolfe (10 page)

“Mr. Williamson,” Panzer said, “I continue to be convinced that your son has come to no harm, despite all that happened tonight. We believe”—he looked around to include the rest of us—“that the dead man was one of the kidnappers, or at least someone known to them, and that he planned to intercept the ransom money before it reached the others. You surely will get another call, perhaps as soon as tonight, with another set of instructions.”

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” the millionaire said, “but I don’t suppose I have a choice if I want to get my son back.” It took an effort, but he squared his shoulders. “Now, Mr. Goodwin, if you will kindly give me my keys, I am going home.”

After we drove off and headed back toward the city, Panzer found yet another telephone booth and called Wolfe, who said he wanted all of us in his office at eleven o’clock in the morning. “At this stage of the game, I got no idea what he wants to do, so I suggest that once we get back to the city, everybody get themselves a good night’s sleep—and that’s you, too, Orrie.”

“What do you mean?” Cather said. “I always get me a good night’s sleep.”

“I’m suggesting that tonight, though, you might want to do your sleeping alone,” Panzer shot back, getting a chorus of laughs from the rest of us.

I
slept late and grabbed breakfast at the counter of a beanery I had come to like just down the block from my room in the Melbourne Hotel. As I gave my teeth a workout on the link sausage and fried eggs, I went over last night’s activities, trying to dope out where we now stood and what Nero Wolfe would propose next. I didn’t like our chances, what with one corpse and the boy still being held. But I wasn’t calling the shots.

“Thanks, Mort,” I told the counterman, sliding a dime under my plate as I rose to leave. “If this ain’t the best damned coffee in town, then I sure don’t know where you would find it.”

“Just keep tellin’ me that, Archie, and pretty soon I will nail a sign up on the wall that reads ‘This is the best doggone java in New York’ and sign it ‘A. Goodwin, noted gourmet.’”

“Go right ahead. My only fee for that testimonial will be free refills of your fine brew.”

“Which you already get anyway,” he laughed as I pushed out into the sunny and pleasant morning.

By now, I was getting to feel like a New Yorker, and I liked the feeling. Wolfe’s brownstone was thirty blocks south, which made for an unhurried stroll down Eighth Avenue, during which I smiled at seven well-constructed young blonds, brunettes, and redheads walking in the opposite direction. Five returned my smile, which seemed to me a good percentage. We were to meet at eleven o’clock, which I now knew would be when Wolfe came downstairs from his morning session with all those posies in his rooftop greenhouse.

I reached the Thirty-Fifth Street address at five until eleven and rang the doorbell, answered by Fritz. “Mr. Goodwin,” he said with a bow, indicating I should hang my hat on the rack in the hall. I did and walked to the office, which already had a crowd, all of them with coffee. Panzer was in the red leather chair at the end of the desk, with Durkin planted in one of the matching yellow chairs and Cather and Bascom sharing the sofa. I dropped into the other yellow chair and accepted a cup of java from Fritz. It was at least as good as Mort’s, and maybe even better.

“Good morning, gentlemen, did you sleep well?” Wolfe asked as he moved around behind his desk and placed an arrangement of vivid purple orchids in his desk vase. He got nods all around to his question, whether or not we really did have adequate rest. Cather, for one, looked like he could use a nap.

Fritz Brenner placed the usual frosted stein and two bottles of Canadian beer in front of Wolfe, who opened one and poured, watching the foam subside. He drank, then looked at each of us in turn.

“I confess to you all that I had not foreseen last night’s occurrence. In my experience, kidnappers are not killers, of one another or of their captives. The commission of murder greatly decreases their chances of receiving a ransom.”

“So where does that leave us?” Cather posed.

“I’m getting to that, Orrie,” Wolfe said sharply. “I have been in conversation with Mr. Williamson. He called when I was up in the plant rooms to report that he has gotten another telephone message from the kidnappers. They even put his son on the line briefly. Tommie was crying, but based on his words to his father, the boy had not been physically harmed, although one is left to ponder the damage to his psyche.

“Enough speculation. Mr. Williamson has been ordered to repeat last night’s exercise, albeit at a different location in the Bronx.”

Panzer cleared his throat. “He still does not want to bring in the police, even though now it would be the supposedly high-powered New York City cops, given where the murder took place?”

“No, Saul, he does not. Now here is our—yes, Fritz, what is it?”

“Inspector Cramer is ringing the bell,” Brenner said from the doorway to the hall. “Shall I let him in?”

Wolfe scowled, then nodded grimly. Seconds later, a stocky, angry man in a rumpled suit burst into the room, putting on the brakes as he saw all of us. “Well, I will be damned,” he said. “You’ve got your whole crew here, and then some, Wolfe. Bascom, you don’t care about the class of company that you’re seen with, huh?” he barked at Del, then turned to me. “And you’re one I don’t recognize.”

“Name’s Archie Goodwin,” I said.

“Huh! Now the name I do recognize,” Cramer muttered, taking his hat off. “You plugged a couple lowlifes on the North River piers a while back. Rowcliff told me about you, said you are something of a smart aleck. I suppose you think that you should be thanked for ridding the community of those two punks. Son, let me give you a piece of advice: go back to wherever you came from, and fast. Consorting with this group will bring you absolutely nothing but grief.”

“Mr. Cramer!” Wolfe did not raise his voice, but the words cut like a just-honed knife. “You burst in here unannounced, you rudely interrupt a meeting we are having, and you force me to look up at you when you know very well that I prefer to speak to others at eye level. Now please sit down.”

“Move, Panzer,” Cramer growled as Saul quietly surrendered the red leather chair and retreated to a seat in the back of the room. The inspector sat, pulled out a cigar, jammed it into his mouth unlit, and leaned forward, glaring at Wolfe. “I want to know what you’re up to.”

“Sir, I am a private investigator duly licensed by the State of New York, as are all of these men—including Mr. Goodwin. I am not aware that I have done anything that would imperil my right to keep that license.”

“I will be the one to decide that,” Cramer shot back. “You have a gray Heron sedan, I believe.”

“That is correct.”

“Interesting. A grifter named Barney Haskell who’s got a record as long as his arm got himself shot dead on the Concourse in the Bronx last night, and an eyewitness said he saw a Heron at the scene.”

“Mr. Cramer, do you happen to know how many Herons are licensed in the City of New York?” Wolfe asked.

“As a matter of fact, I do, because we got three men in the motor vehicle department to spend the early hours of this morning going over the records, page by page. There are one hundred nineteen. As you must know, they don’t make a lot of ’em. It’s a rich man’s car,” he added with a sneer.

“And did your eyewitness say the automobile at the scene was gray?”

Cramer frowned. “He thought so.”

“He thought so. And how many of New York’s Herons are gray?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“Did the eyewitness note the license number?”

“No, he didn’t. It was too damned dark,” Cramer muttered as he kept gnawing on the cigar.

“So, to review, mine is one of thirty-seven gray Heron sedans licensed in the city, which means it has a ... two point seven percent chance of being that particular automobile, if indeed the Heron at the scene was gray, which seems uncertain.”

Cramer’s ruddy face became even redder. “Except that when there’s trouble in this town, there’s a much higher percentage that you are somehow involved in it.”

“Twaddle. You have come here to bedevil me, sir, which I resent. A man has been killed, and you understandably seek his murderer. But you insist upon undertaking what is clearly a fishing expedition with no evidence whatever to link me or the men in this room to the crime.”

“All right,” Cramer said looking around at us, “just how does it happen that on the morning after this Bronx murder, you just happen to have your whole army gathered here?”

“Why they are present here and what we are discussing happen to be none of your affair,” Wolfe said evenly. “I could have barred your entrance to this house, assuming you have no search warrant, but I chose to allow you in because you are a high-ranking officer of the law whom I have known for a number of years. Now that you have been here and stated your case, I ask that you leave.”

“Nuts! Something stinks around this joint,” Cramer spat, throwing his chewed-over cigar at the wastebasket and missing it by a foot. “By God, Wolfe,” he said as he stood, “if I find out you’re playing fast and loose here, I’ll lift that precious license of yours faster than you can blink.” He stormed out, hat in hand, and I noticed that Fritz Brenner followed him toward the front door.

Wolfe picked up the vase on his desk and squinted at the orchid, frowning. “All of you except Mr. Goodwin know my ambivalent feelings about Inspector Cramer,” he said. “He is unimpeachably honest and unquestionably brave, two traits sadly not always present in members of this city’s constabulary. However, he also is impetuous, imperious, and quick to anger when a more measured response would better serve him. So be it.

“Now, let us move on to the business at hand. One or more of you may well think ours is an unwise and ill-conceived foray, but I believe that tonight Tommie Williamson will be returned safely to his family. The kidnappers likely have committed murder, although it is barely possible the killing of Barney Haskell was done by someone not connected with this affair.

“In either case, the people holding Tommie will be eager to grab their money and flee, gladly releasing the boy. They—and I use the plural pronoun advisedly—are in enough trouble already, and they simply have too much to lose by harming an eight-year-old.”

“What’s the deal tonight?” Panzer asked.

“The deal is this: First, Saul, you are to rent an automobile, a sedan of some common make—you know them far better than I. We cannot risk having the Heron spotted again. As it is, we had the good fortune that the witness last night was unable to read the license plate.

“So much for that,” Wolfe went on, glancing at a sheet of notepaper. “The caller ordered Burke Williamson to be at the Southern Boulevard gate to the Bronx Zoo at nine o’clock tonight with the money. He told Mr. Williamson to answer the phone in the booth near the zoo entrance, which will ring precisely at nine, and he then will receive further instructions.”

“Geez, these characters sure love their phone booths, don’t they?” Durkin said.

“This approach lets them remain anonymous and unseen for as long as possible,” Bascom offered.

“Mr. Bascom is correct,” Wolfe said, “and unfortunately, we must play by their rules, at least until the boy is released. As was the case last night, Mr. Williamson will drive from home to the specified meeting place with Mr. Goodwin hidden in the automobile. He specifically requested Mr. Goodwin again because he liked the way he handled himself when they happened upon the dying man.

“Saul, you will drive the second automobile again, and with the same passengers, unless any of you would prefer to avoid what may be a potentially perilous situation.”

“Hell, I wouldn’t miss this shindig for the world!” Orrie Cather said, clapping his hands.

“Me neither,” chimed Fred Durkin.

“Count me in,” added Del Bascom. “I haven’t had this much action in weeks. I’m starting to feel almost young again.”

“Here is where tonight’s operation will differ,” Wolfe said. “The machine driven by Saul will precede Mr. Williamson’s automobile to the area by fifteen minutes, parking about a block away to the ... Saul?”

“Southern Boulevard runs north and south, with the zoo bordering its east side, and we will be to the south of the gate.”

“But you will be within view of the zoo entrance and the telephone booth in question, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All four of you will be armed again and are to stay inside the automobile. Mr. Williamson will know you are there, and he knows to signal you if the need arises.”

“What about me?” I asked.

“You will remain out of sight but be prepared to rush to Mr. Williamson’s aid, if necessary, or to rescue the boy. But resist playing the role of hero by trying to prevent transfer of the money to the kidnappers. As Mr. Williamson has told me twice now, ‘They can have the blasted cash, every cent of it. It means nothing to me.’ Any other questions?”

“It seems funny they would pick a busy street like Southern Boulevard,” Saul said, “where they run the risk of being spotted by a passing police cruiser or a passerby who ends up calling the cops. The Concourse location made sense, because their initial telephone call took Williamson to a quieter street.”

“They likely will follow the same pattern here and you may eventually find yourselves on some little-traveled byway once again,” Wolfe said. “Any further concerns or questions?”

No one spoke as we got to our feet. Wolfe rose and came around the desk, looking at each of us in turn. “I fully realize that this assignment is not without some peril, as I am sure all of you do. But if each of you uses your intelligence guided by experience, I feel confident of the outcome.”

Leaving the brownstone, I wished that I felt as confident as Nero Wolfe.

I
could describe the events leading up to what happened just outside the Bronx Zoo, but it would basically be a rehash of the previous night’s activities. One difference was that when the five of us, with Panzer at the wheel of a rented Model A Ford, drove out to the Williamson rendezvous on Long Island, nobody had much to say, unlike our trip twenty-four hours earlier when we all laughed and joked about Nero Wolfe’s eccentricities, including his lack of geographical knowledge. Tonight, nobody seemed to be in a joking mood.