Archie Meets Nero Wolfe (2 page)

“It won’t cost you anything to give me a try,” I argued.

Bascom sighed. “You got any kind of work record at all? What were you doing before you walked in here?”

“I was a night guard at one of the North River piers.”

“That so? I read a short bit in this morning’s
Daily News
that a couple grifters got bumped off someplace along there last night. Helluva thing.”

“I was the one who bumped them off.”

Bascom’s mouth dropped open. “The hell you say! Who were you working for?”

“The Moreland operation. I reported to Luke Bates.”

“Geez, I know Bates. Did a job for him a few years back,” Bascom said. “One of his dock crew was pilfering watches and jewelry. Didn’t take us long to nail the stupe.”

“Watches, that’s just what these guys last night were after, and fancy clocks, so I was told.”

“So you did Moreland a favor. You get tired of working for them?”

“They canned me. Said I was trigger-happy.”

“Are you?”

“I never fired a pistol in my life until last night. And I got shot at first. I’m only walking around because their aim was lousy.”

Bascom leaned back and stroked his stubble-covered chin. “The name’s Archie Goodwin, right? Mind if I call Bates?”

“Be my guest,” I said as he thumbed through a dog-eared notebook and picked up his phone.

“Hey, Luke, it’s Del Bascom. How you been?”

“Yeah, things are plenty tight here, too. Understand you had quite a ruckus there last night. No kidding? Jake McCaffey caught it, huh? Well, he was lucky to have lived this long, the swine.”

Bascom listened for another minute or so, then said, “Luke, I’ve got a guy here named Archie Goodwin. What do you think of him? Uh-huh ... yeah ... yeah, uh-huh. Okay. Yeah, we ought to grab a bite one of these days. Be good to get caught up.”

He cradled the receiver and fixed his gaze on me. “Bates says you’re a good man, as far as he could tell after two weeks on the job. He didn’t want to sack you, but Old Man Moreland wouldn’t budge. He thinks any publicity for his operation is bad publicity, never mind that you did them a big favor by getting rid of McCaffey and his lamebrained sidekick. Word on the street is those two knocked off a couple of guys some years back but never got fingered for it.”

“They almost knocked off a third one last night,” I said. “How about giving me a try on something? Like I said, it won’t cost you a cent.”

Bascom sat back and rubbed his chin again. “Tell you what, Goodwin, I’ve got this job I put a freelancer on, but he didn’t get anyplace at all with it. It’s a missing persons case—maybe.” He went over to a filing cabinet and pulled out a thin file, handing it to me. “Wilda will show you the empty office that got used back when I had a staff. Take a look at what’s in here, and see if it gives you any ideas.”

I
plopped down at one of the two desks in a windowless office next door to Wilda’s anteroom and opened the folder, marked
CHAPMAN
. After twenty minutes, I had digested everything Bascom and his freelance operative, a guy named Phelps, had learned, which wasn’t much. The client was one Muriel Chapman, age forty-seven, at an address on the Upper West Side. Her husband, Clarence, age fifty-one, had failed to return home from work as a salesman in the camera department at Macy’s Herald Square store on the first Friday in September, now more than two weeks ago. She had heard nothing whatever from or about him in that time.

She had told Bascom her husband was “honest, hardworking, a good provider who neither smoked nor drank.” The couple, native New Yorkers, had been married twenty-four years and was childless.

The police had been notified regarding missing persons and unidentified bodies, but nothing had turned up about Clarence Chapman. A snapshot in the folder showed him to be a middle-aged man with a handsome, angular face, a thin mustache, and dark, slick hair parted in the middle.

Bascom suggested to Mrs. Chapman that perhaps her husband wanted to lose himself, but she replied
vehemently
(so the report said) that “he was very happy here,” and she quickly volunteered that “he never looked at other women, even really beautiful ones who passed us on the street.” She added that none of his clothes were missing, other than what he wore the day he disappeared.

Phelps had talked to the manager of Macy’s camera department, who told him Chapman was a model employee, never late, always well dressed, and that virtually every month, he led the department in sales. The manager had no idea why he hadn’t shown up for work.

I took the picture of Chapman, closed the folder, and went into Bascom’s office. “Okay, I’ve been through the stuff,” I told him. “Anybody made a check of camera shops around town?”

Bascom threw me a disappointed look. “Now why would we do that?”

“Maybe he’s selling cameras someplace else now. The guy’s got to live.”

“Think, Goodwin. The only way he could get a job with another camera outfit would be to use Macy’s as a reference, and his new store would surely call Macy’s to verify his service and his ability. Chapman’s boss would have told Phelps if somebody had called there checking on him.”

“Yeah, I suppose. But I’d like to poke around anyway. Just call it a hunch.”

“Go ahead,” Bascom said, rolling his eyes. “What the hell, it’s not costing me anything.”

T
earing out the pages listing camera stores from one of the Manhattan classified directories in Bascom’s office, I drew a frown from Wilda and grinned at her in response. I didn’t bother to count the number of listings, but there were plenty. My knowledge of the island’s street system and addresses wasn’t very good yet, but I knew enough that I could put together a plan. Besides, I had bought a map of Manhattan, and I’m a quick learner.

I began by ruling out any shops within six blocks of Macy’s, which I now knew was at Thirty-Fourth Street and Broadway. Too much chance of Chapman being recognized in that neighborhood. Same on the Upper West Side, specifically centering on the intersection of Eighty-Third and Amsterdam, where the Chapman apartment was.

That left the rest of Manhattan, plus Brooklyn, Long Island City, and the farther reaches of Queens, as well as the other boroughs. But I chose to focus on Manhattan, realizing that even so I might be setting out on a wild goose chase that would give Bascom something to laugh about with his fellow operatives.

T
he next morning, with the picture of Clarence Chapman and my newly purchased street map in hand, I started downtown, working my way through the Financial District, Chinatown, Little Italy, and Greenwich Village. I stepped into each camera shop long enough to eyeball the employees and raise a few eyebrows, although I never stayed inside long enough to be questioned. I ran the risk, of course, that this, a Wednesday, might be Chapman’s day off.

I hit what seemed like dozens of places on the big east-west thoroughfares like Fourteenth and Twenty-Third Streets. Most of them were small operations, one or two employees grinning and eager behind the counters. At a few minutes after noon, I stopped at a little café on Lexington near Thirty-Seventh and sat at the counter with a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. I pulled out the telephone book pages and unfolded them, noting the shops I had visited and crossing them out. I was maybe 25 percent of the way through the Manhattan camera establishments. A long afternoon awaited, and very likely another day, or two, or three.

After lunch and a six-block sweep of both sides of Lexington, I walked north along Madison Avenue, which I learned was the heart of the city’s advertising business. It also had numerous places selling cameras, including three in a two-block stretch. At the third of these, Devereaux Cameras & Film, I saw him through the window, showing a Kodak to a matronly woman wearing a flowery hat and one of those hideous fox fur wraps complete with the animal’s head and sightless eyes.

I walked in and pretended to study the array of cameras in the display cases. A second salesman asked if he could help me, but I replied that I was just looking.

Much of my looking, at least surreptitiously, focused on the man I knew to be Clarence Chapman—no question. His dress was immaculate: a blue, pin-striped, double-breasted suit that looked new and a blue-and-yellow-striped silk tie.

His spiel went with his clothes: smooth, sharp, crisp, and the woman clearly was drinking it in. I contemplated waiting until after he had closed the inevitable sale and then approaching him, but decided to learn more about the man first. I left the shop, noting that its closing time was five p.m.

I had an hour to kill, so I parked at the counter of a little coffee shop just off Madison. By my second cup, I found myself on friendly terms with the counterman, a talkative little hunchback named Kevin. “I’ve been looking at camera shops around here,” I told him. “I want to get one for my uncle; his birthday’s coming up. You know anything about this Devereaux place up the street?”

“A little. ’Course their help don’t come in here much. Too snooty for the likes of us,” he sneered. “Rich dame owns the place.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Surprised you ain’t heard of her, Alicia Devereaux. She’s one of them society types who hasta have a cause.”

“What kind of cause do you call running a camera store?”

“Ah, I can give you an answer to that,” Kevin said with a grin as he ran a rag over the surface of the counter. “She bought the store half a dozen years ago or so, and she makes a big deal out of giving a percentage of its profits to some charity; I think it has to do with kids’ orphanages.”

“Sounds generous to me.”

“I s’pose, but seems like her picture’s on the society pages every couple weeks or so. I think she’s in it to puff herself up.”

“Married?” I asked.

“Divorced, twice. Good-looking stuff, if you like ’em middle-aged.”

“Interesting. She ever work in the place?”

Kevin cut loose with a rasping laugh that caused the only other guy at the counter to look our way. “Nah, she wouldn’t think of lowering herself. She likes to be seen as a benefactor, but she draws the line at anything resembling common labor, and that includes sales.”

“Hmm. Any idea where she lives?”

“Park Avenue, where else? Reason I know is that the
Times
did a piece on her mansion in the sky a while back, with a batch of pictures. Looked like a palace. She gives lots of parties. All in the name of charity, so she says.”

“Pretty fancy place, eh?”

“I’d say. It takes a whole damned floor of the Winchester, which is up around Sixtieth Street. Just about the toniest address on the avenue.”

“A woman like that would be a good catch for someone,” I observed.

“Talk is, she does the catching,” he said. “Now I’m not suggesting that she’s exactly a man-eater, but she likes to have male company close at hand.”

“You seem to know a lot about her.”

Kevin grinned. “Funny thing, the stuck-up society types give me a pain, but somehow years back I got into the habit of reading about ’em. Do you think I’ve got some crazy sort of love-hate relationship?”

“Maybe, although in a strange way I suppose these people are fascinating. See, now you’ve got me interested. In my case, maybe it’s envy. This Devereaux woman have any current gentleman friends you know of?”

“There I have to say you’ve got me, pal. That’s not exactly my crowd. From photographs I’ve seen in the papers, though, she seems to prefer the dapper type, smooth, you know. The kind with those thin little mustaches you see on actors like John Gilbert in the moving pictures.”

“Well, thanks for the coffee and the conversation,” I said, leaving a dime tip on the counter and stepping out into the sunny afternoon.

A
t a few minutes before five, I stationed myself across the street from Devereaux Cameras & Film. I could see through its plateglass window that there were no shoppers in the store now and that both Chapman and the other salesman looked to be getting ready to leave. My watch read 5:02 when Chapman walked out, popped a black homburg on his head, and walked north on Madison Avenue while the other man locked up.

I had never tailed anyone before but figured in this case it was a snap because the gent had no reason to think he was being followed. I stayed on the opposite side of the street as he turned east at Fifty-Sixth, going one block to Park Avenue.

As I expected, Chapman then went north, walking with a jaunty gait and looking like a man without a care in the world. We both were on the west side of Park now, with me a discreet distance behind him. Just north of Sixty-Second Street, he turned in at the green-canopied entry to a handsome brick-and-stone structure, where he and the splendidly uniformed doorman exchanged pleasantries before he stepped into the building.

I walked on by, looking at the gleaming brass plate next to the entrance that proclaimed the edifice to be the Winchester. That, I felt, was enough work for one day, and I headed in the direction of my rooming house.

T
he next morning, I got to the office of the Bascom Detective Agency at nine o’clock sharp, greeting Wilda, who answered with her usual sniff. “He in?” I asked, gesturing toward the closed door.

“Yes. Knock first.”

I did, heard “Come on in,” and went on in, dropping into the guest chair without being invited. Del Bascom put down a sheet of paper he’d been reading, took a puff on his cigar, and favored me with a smile. “Well, Goodwin, I suppose you didn’t have any luck trying to find that missing husband, eh?”

“You suppose wrong. I’ve got the whole business figured out.”

“Yeah, and I suppose you’ve seen this Chapman, too, huh?”

“This time you suppose right. How about I bring him by here for a chat around lunchtime?”

He took the stogie out of his mouth and gaped at me. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I am not. I’ve never been much of a kidder. I’ll see you in a few hours.” I got up and walked out, assuming he was staring at my back with his mouth still open.