Archie Meets Nero Wolfe (19 page)

“That so?” fatty said, leaning porky elbows on the counter. “And just why should that concern me?”

“I will spell it out for you, mac,” Bascom spat, leaning across the counter and sticking out his chin until it almost touched the slob. “A while back, we had a case where the owner of a restaurant didn’t want to cooperate with us about the identity of a couple of his regular customers who were wanted for a killing. We closed that eatery down the next day, and it ain’t been open since. I can give you the address if you’d like to go and see it, all boarded up. It was a nice place, too.” Bascom looked around the room idly. “Be a real shame for that to happen here, this being a going concern and all. By the way, what’s your name?” he asked, pulling out a notebook and pencil.

“Skelton, Ken Skelton. Okay, Officer, okay,” he said, holding up his palms as beads of perspiration began popping out on his forehead. “What kind of truck was it supposed to be? We got all sizes and models here.”

“Small enclosed truck, white. No printing of any kind on it. The kind that food purveyors would use.”

“Lemme check my books. We do a lot of business here.” He repeated the date Bascom had given him.

“Yeah, or maybe it got leased the day before,” the would-be cop answered.

Skelton opened a hefty ledger book and flipped a few pages. “Let’s see,” he said, tracing down a page with a finger. “Okay, this has to be the one, and it was leased on the earlier date you mentioned, then returned less than twenty-hours later: one of our Ford Model A Deluxe Delivery Trucks. We got three in our fleet. Ford sells ’em to us black, of course, but we paint ’em white. Makes ’em look a lot classier, you know what I mean?”

“Name of the person who leased it,” Bascom demanded, feigning impatience.

“Let’s see ... Lloyd Evanson, address 690 West Eighty-Seventh Street, Manhattan.”

“We’d like a description,” Bascom said. “And did this Lloyd Evanson come in here alone?”

“That I couldn’t tell you, Lieutenant, sir,” Skelton said, wiping his damp forehead with a dirty handkerchief. “I work the seven-to-three shift, and the truck got leased at, let’s see ... ten past four. That means Kirby would have been doing the paperwork on this one.”

“I would like to talk to Mr. Kirby—right now!”

“Yes, sir, anything to help the police. He should be at home now. Would you like to call him from here? You can use this instrument. I’ll dial the number for you,” Skelton said.

Bascom nodded, maintaining his strong, silent cop pose. He put the receiver to his ear, and when he got Kirby on the wire, he gave him the same routine Skelton had been fed.

“So, Mr. Kirby, describe this Lloyd Evanson to me. “Uh-huh ... I see,” he said, scribbling in his notebook. “Did he come in alone? Really—and how about his description?” Bascom listened and then wrote some more.

“And did Evanson have a valid New York driver’s license? Okay, yes ... How did he and the other man behave? Did they pay in cash or with a check? I see ... What about how they planned to use the truck? Oh, is that so? Well, is there anything else at all you can tell me that would be helpful? All right, thank you. You may be hearing from us again.” Bascom cradled the receiver on its hook and pushed the telephone across the Skelton.

“Thanks, we appreciate your cooperation,” Bascom told the fat man. “The Police Department relies on the cooperation of its citizenry.”

“Yes, sir, glad to help. So ... all this is about a murder?”

“It is indeed, Mr. Skelton. Unfortunately, regulations prevent me from commenting on the details, as I’m sure you can understand,” Bascom said, touching the brim of his fedora and executing a smart about-face.

“Oh, I understand, yes, sir, I do,” Skelton said, exhaling in relief. He was not sorry to see us leave.

H
omicide squad, huh? Murder case, huh? Pretty nervy, I’d say.”

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Bascom said, shrugging. “When you pump them full of fear, like I did with that guy, they’ll believe damn near anything you tell them. Their main goal at that point is just to see the last of you.”

“Well, his manners certainly showed a marked improvement after you explained the facts of life to him, Lieutenant Danahey,” I said.

“I do what I can, Sergeant Rourke,” he shot back with a lopsided grin.

“I got much of the telephone conversation with Kirby by hearing your end of it, but can you fill in the blanks?” I asked Bascom.

“Okay, here’s the sum of it. Kirby described Evanson—if that’s his name—as tall, an inch or two above six feet, very thin, and with deep-set dark eyes and black hair parted in the center. Long face, no facial hair. Another man came in with him who Kirby said could have been his brother, they looked so much alike. This second man said nothing. The one calling himself Evanson had an up-to-date New York driver’s license. Oh, and he paid for the rental in cash. Kirby said they don’t accept checks, only the coin of the realm.

“And when I asked Kirby if he knew what Evanson wanted to use the truck for, he sniffed and informed me that folks at Pollard never ask customers why they need a truck. ‘That certainly is none of our business,’ I was informed. Who’d of thought you would find a pompous ass working behind the counter of a truck rental joint in the Bronx.”

“You keep suggesting that maybe Evanson isn’t his real name. But he did have a driver’s license to prove it, right?”

“Archie, I’m easily old enough to remember when you didn’t even need a driver’s license in this state to pilot an automobile on the public thoroughfares. Since we’ve had licenses, I’d be hard put to swear that drivers are any better than they were fifteen or more years ago. But one thing I do know: licenses are easy to forge, and they get forged for all sorts of reasons. I don’t put much stock in them these days as a means of identification.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“First off, it’s at least worth looking Evanson up, just to see if he’s real and he’s listed,” Bascom said, heading for a corner phone booth just as an elevated train rumbled overhead, rattling windows in the nearby storefronts. “We’re in luck,” he said over his shoulder as he edged into the booth. “There’s a Manhattan directory in here.” He flipped the pages, then scowled. “Now we are out of luck,” he said with a snort, closing the book. “There is no Lloyd Evanson listed at 690 West Eighty-Seventh Street, or anyplace else on the island, for that matter.”

“That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

“Me neither, although I’m really not surprised.”

“As I said a minute ago, where does that leave us?”

“Seems we might want to pay a visit to that Eighty-Seventh Street address,” Bascom said, “just to see what’s going on.”

“Are we still on duty, Lieutenant?” I asked as we climbed into the Pierce-Arrow.

“Oh, why not? We can only get hanged once. Think you can find your way to the Upper West Side from here?”

“Hey, just who do you think you’re talking to? I’m an old hand around here now. Let’s roll.”

I proved that I really did know my way around the city. I didn’t check my watch, but I think we made it to West Eighty-Seventh Street in fifteen minutes, although I did hit a lot of green lights. Over near the Hudson, we found the address—the Old Dutchman Hotel, a weary four-story building on a block lined with pawnshops, diners, a bakery, a Chinese laundry, and a couple of darkened storefronts that Del Bascom guessed morphed into speakeasies after dark.

“I might have known it,” Bascom said when he saw the Old Dutchman. “A flophouse, more properly referred to as a transient hotel, Archie. Filled with winos, grifters, ex-cons, and poor saps who lost their jobs after the crash and might never find another one, unless you count panhandling on street corners. Chances are, nobody in this joint will have heard of Lloyd Evanson. But since we’re here, let’s you and me find out what we can.”

We parked and crossed the street to the building, which had an ornate canopied entrance that, as Bascom said, “dates from when this probably was an honest-to-goodness hotel, before the neighborhood went to pot.”

The lobby may have been a glamorous and welcoming area for lodgers once, but those days were gone, probably forever. More than half the bulbs in the ornate brass overhead fixtures had burned out, and the paint on both the ceiling and the walls was peeling. The overstuffed chairs, once occupied by tuxedoed men smoking cigars while waiting for their primping wives to come down to join them for a night on the town, now were unoccupied except for one bearded and shabby specimen, who snored discreetly, his Adam’s apple bobbing with each raspy breath.

A short, skinny guy with a thin mustache who wore a soiled necktie and a scowl eyed us suspiciously from his post at the registration counter. “Help you gents?” he said in a world-weary tone.

“I believe you can,” Bascom said, again flashing his badge. “Lieutenant Moran, vice squad, and this is Sergeant Baker. We’ve got some questions for you.”

“Vice? We got no vice around here,” he said defensively.

“We will be the judge of that,” Bascom snapped. “What’s your name?”

“Peterson, Merle Peterson.”

“Well, Merle, we are looking for a man named Lloyd Evanson.”

“Nobody like that been around here,” he muttered. “Don’t remember ever having somebody by that name staying with us.”

“Hmm. Maybe he was using a different tag. He’s tall, a few inches over six feet and thin, with dark eyes that are deep set. And black hair parted in the middle. He’s got a friend who looks a lot like him.”

Merle’s pockmarked face broke into a sly grin. “Shoot, that ain’t no friend, that’s his brother. You gotta be talking about them Jasper boys, a couple of surly, no-account bums if you ask me. I’m glad to say they’re gone.”

“Gone where?” I asked.

“No idea. They checked outta here two, three days ago. And happy as could be, they was.”

“Jasper, huh?” Bascom said. “What are their first names?”

“Leon and Edgar was what they put down when they checked in here a month or so back.”

“Did they fill out a registration card?”

“Nah, we ain’t that formal. Just wrote their names in the ledger.”

“Let’s see it,” Bascom demanded.

Merle rolled his eyes as if he was being asked to perform strenuous work. He turned pages until he nodded and smacked his cracked lips. “Here we are.” He spun the big book around to Bascom, pointing a bony index finger at names.

“Both Leon and Edgar signed in, let’s see ... more than three weeks ago now, but they didn’t put down a previous address,” Del said.

“Most of ’em don’t,” Merle said. “They like to keep private.”

“And they don’t always use their right names, do they?” I asked.

“We don’t ask a lot of questions here, Sergeant. If they got the money—always in advance, that is—they get a room.”

“These Jasper brothers, are they twins?” Bascom asked.

“Nah. They do look sorta alike, but Leon, he must be the older one, because I heard him call Edgar ‘little brother’ a few times. And Leon’s slightly taller, too.”

“You didn’t like them, did you?”

“They was mean ones, Lieutenant, it didn’t take long to see that. A lot of rough customers have come through here these last four years since I’ve been working the front desk, but those two, they gave me the willies, I’ll tell ya.”

“Oh? In what way?”

“They’d come in from the outside and laugh about somebody they beat up just for the fun of it. One night I heard Edgar tell Leon that he had knocked some old man down over on Amsterdam and when the poor sap’s glasses had fallen off, he stepped on ’em and smashed ’em, then took his money, all of two or three bucks. They both got a good laugh out of that. Made me sick to hear.”

“I can understand that. You said they were happy when they left here.”

Merle nodded. “Plenty happy. They came down from their room laughing, slapped the key on the counter, and one of ’em, I forget which, said to me, ‘So long, sucker. You may die here, but not us, no siree. We just found us that big ol’ pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.’”

“And, of course, they didn’t tell you where they were going or what their new address would be, right?”

“Right. But that ain’t surprising. Most of ’em who leave here don’t give us a forwarding address. Lots of times, they probably don’t know themselves where they’re headed. Most likely to another hotel that’s cheaper’n this one.”

“One more thing, Merle,” Del Bascom said, “does the name Barney Haskell mean anything to you?”

He scratched his head, nodding. “The old-time grifter? Didn’t he just get himself shot dead?”

“That’s the one. Did you know him?”

“No, just heard tell of him; he was pretty well known on the street. He never stayed here, though, at least not since I been on the job.”

“Well, thank you for your time, Merle. We appreciate it,” Bascom said as we left the seedy flophouse.

“Hard to imagine that there are places cheaper than this one,” I said when we were outside.

“As far as flophouses go in this old town, you haven’t seen anything yet, Archie. Some of the joints have more rats than people in them. This one’s elegant by comparison, if you can believe it.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it. Well, seems like there’s no doubt who those two guys were that had Tommie in the auto that night in the Bronx. Both of them tall, dark, and skinny. The Jasper boys, if—to use your words—that’s their real name. And the one matches the description of the guy who went to the Williamson kitchen keeping the cook occupied with that phony story about delivering produce she had ordered. All the while the other guy, likely the brother, was snatching Tommie Williamson right out of his own backyard.”

“Looks like it had to be them all right, although I never got a good look at either one in all the confusion and gunshots and darkness. Cather nicked one, though, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, I think so. The guy let out with a yell. Well, I’ve got to head back to Long Island and pick Tommie up from school. Then it’s off to Nero Wolfe’s place tonight with Williamson to meet with Inspector Cramer. Figures to be a damned interesting session.”

“No doubt. Drop me off at the nearest subway station. When I get back to the office, I’m going to telephone Saul Panzer and see if he knows of any pair of brothers who work cons. He’s got all kinds of sources. And I’ll give three-to-one odds that when we do find them, their names won’t be Evanson or Jasper.”