Homicide Trinity (16 page)

“Yes.”

“Have any of them been conclusively eliminated?”

“No. Not conclusively.”

Wolfe closed his eyes. In a moment he opened them. “That seems to cover it.” He took a breath. “Of course I don’t like this. And you’re not squeezing it out of me, though you think you are. I would tell you nothing and take the consequences if it weren’t that I need some
information that I can get only from you. I have to know where the gun came from that Mrs. Hazen left with me yesterday. If you’ll agree—”

“She left a gun with
you?
”

“Yes. I’ll tell you about it, and give it to you, if you will give me its history at the earliest possible moment. I want your word.”

“You won’t get it. Mrs. Hazen is charged with murder. If she left a gun with you it’s evidence in a murder investigation.”

Wolfe shook his head. “No. It’s evidence in my investigation, but not in yours. You have your gun, the one the murderer used. How can it embarrass you to tell me about this one?”

Cramer considered it. “You’re going to tell me what she said about it.”

“I am.”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

“I have your word?”

“Yes.”

“Get the gun, Archie.”

I went to the safe and squatted to twirl the knob. Ordinarily I leave it unlocked when I’m in the office, but with that box in it I was taking no chances, so after I had worked the combination and got the gun I shut the door and turned the knob. As I crossed to Cramer I spoke. “By the way, I asked a question that wasn’t answered. What make is your gun? The one that killed him.”

“Drexel thirty-two.”

“So’s this.” I handed it to him. “Of course there are millions of Drexel thirty-twos.”

He gave it a look, and darned if he didn’t sniff it. As I said, that’s automatic. Also he flipped the cylinder open for a glance.

“It was fired yesterday,” Wolfe said, “by Mr. Goodwin, to get a bullet. The bullet I gave you.”

Cramer nodded. “Yeah. There’s nothing on God’s earth you wouldn’t do. It could have been … What the hell, it wasn’t. Okay, let’s hear you.”

Wolfe unloaded. He didn’t enjoy it and neither did I,
spilling it, but we had to know about the gun and it might have taken us days. He skipped the details, including no quotes, but gave it straight, both parts, before the news came over the radio and after. He didn’t include my reasons for deciding that she hadn’t shot her husband, but I didn’t mind; it might have got Cramer confused and that would have been a pity. He was a little confused anyhow; toward the end he was frowning, pulling at his lip now and then, a wary look in his eyes. When Wolfe finished he sat looking at it before he spoke.

“What have you left out?” he demanded.

Wolfe shook his head. “Nothing material. You said you wanted the substance; you have it. How long will it take to trace the gun?”

“I don’t get it. After she came to you with that fairy tale, and the news came about her husband, and you learned that we were holding her, you took her for a client? I don’t get it. I have never known you to take a murderer for a client. Whether it’s just your goddamn luck, or what, I don’t know, but you haven’t. Why did you take her?”

A corner of Wolfe’s mouth turned up. “I asked Mr. Goodwin’s opinion and he said she was innocent. His judgment of women under thirty is infallible. How long will it take to trace the gun?”

“Nuts.” Cramer stood up. “Maybe an hour, maybe a week. I’m taking Goodwin. They’ll take his statement at the District Attorney’s office, a complete report of the conversation. I’ll have a man here at two o’clock to take yours. If I took you down you’d only—”

“I shall sign no statement. I am not obliged to. If you send a man he won’t be admitted. If you have questions, ask them.”

Cramer’s round red face got redder. But that was as far as it went; his memory of what had happened on the three occasions he had taken Wolfe downtown was presumably what stopped him. He stuck the gun in his pocket and turned to me. “Come on, Goodwin. We’ll see.”

As I arose the phone rang and I reached to get it. It was Nathaniel Parker. He was upset. “Archie? Nat Parker. Mrs. Hazen is being held on a charge of homicide, of course without bail. I want to see Wolfe before I see her. I have to know what she told him yesterday. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Fine,” I said. “He’s in a perfect mood for it. Come ahead.” I hung up, told Wolfe, “Parker will be here in twenty minutes,” and went to the hall for my coat and hat, with Cramer at my heels.

D
uring the next nine hours I had various opportunities to try to sort it out. En route in a police car to the DA’s office, later from there to Homicide West on 20th Street, and several waiting periods while assorted officers of the law, including the DA himself at one point, decided what to do next.

It was complicated enough even before an assistant DA kindly permitted me to use a phone, around three o’clock, and I called Wolfe. Of course the game was button, button, who had the gun when and where? Either gun. If Lucy Hazen had lied, how much? Had the gun that the maid had seen in the drawer Tuesday morning been the one that had shot Hazen or the one she had brought to Wolfe? If the former, Lucy was a liar and also either was a murderer or could name him. If the latter, who had put it in the drawer and when? And why? It wasn’t that there were no possible answers; there were too many. And too many of them made it too likely that Lucy had made a monkey of me and therefore were not acceptable.

The first hour or so I was entertained by an assistant DA named Mandel, who was not a stranger to me, and a
Homicide Bureau lieutenant, and it was obvious that the gun puzzle was as tough for them as it was for me, though they didn’t say so. Then, while we were having sandwiches and coffee, no recess called, at Mandel’s desk, a phone call came for him, and he took the lieutenant to another room, and when they returned their attitude was quite different. Apparently they were no longer interested in guns; they concentrated on what Lucy had said to Wolfe and me, her exact words; and finally, a little before three o’clock, Mandel called a stenographer in and told me to start dictating my statement. Of course the room was wired for sound, and they would have fun later comparing my dictated statement with what I had told them. It was then that I insisted on making a phone call and was escorted to a booth.

I got Wolfe. “Me. In a booth at the DA’s office, and it may be tapped. They should be finished with me by the end of the week. They were curious about guns, and then a phone call came and they weren’t. I thought you might like to know.”

“I already know.” He didn’t sound depressed. “Mr. Cramer phoned shortly after one. The gun we gave him had been traced without difficulty. It was purchased by Mrs. Hazen’s father, Titus Postel, in 1953, and he committed suicide with it five years ago, in 1955.”

“And she had it?”

“Not established. I have told Mr. Parker to ask her when he sees her this afternoon. Meanwhile I have got Saul and given him an errand.”

I would have liked to ask him what errand, but that wasn’t advisable since we might have company on the line. Saul Panzer, the first and best man on our list when we need help, charges more than any other freelance operative in New York, and is worth five times as much. I told Wolfe I might or might not be home for dinner.

Dictating my statement to the stenographer, I had to keep jerking my mind back to it. The gun puzzle was okay now for the cops, since they had tagged Lucy; now
they didn’t have to buy it that she had been nutty enough to take the gun home after she shot him and put it in the drawer, and the next day get it and take it back to the car. It was much neater. She had got the gun from the drawer Monday, put the one she had, that had been her father’s, in its place, and left it in the car after she shot him. And Tuesday she had got the gun from the drawer and brought it to Wolfe as a prop for her fairy tale, evidently not knowing that guns have numbers that can be traced. What better could you ask for?

But for me, unless I was ready to give Lucy up as a bad job, it was what worse could I ask for. Before, there had been too many answers; now there weren’t any. I had to file it while I dictated my statement, in which I was supposed to include everything Lucy had said to us in Wolfe’s office, and while I went over it after it was typed, and it wasn’t easy. Then I was taken to the office of the DA himself, and he and Mandel pecked at me for an hour, and when they finished, around 6:30, and I supposed that was all for the day, I was informed that Cramer wanted me at Homicide West. If I had balked they would have booked me as a material witness and Parker couldn’t come to the rescue until morning, so I took it.

In one respect it was an improvement. The dick at Homicide West whom Cramer sent for sandwiches happened to be civilized enough to think that even a dog has a right to eat what he likes, and I got what I asked for, corned beef on rye and milk. Except for that, it was just more of the same, for more than two hours with Cramer and Sergeant Purley Stebbins. I didn’t even have the satisfaction of getting a chance to break my record with Lieutenant Rowcliff. I once got him stuttering in two minutes and twenty seconds, and I have a bet with Saul Panzer that I can do it in two minutes flat with three more tries.

Cramer and Stebbins finally decided they had had enough of me. It was 9:32 by my watch, and 9:34 by the clock on the wall, which was wrong, as I crossed the reception room of the precinct house to the door, and on
out. I stood on the sidewalk for three good breaths of the cold fresh air, giving my lungs a treat and deciding which way to turn. If right, toward Eighth Avenue, it would be for a taxi; if left, toward Ninth, it would be for a fifteen-minute walk. Voting for the walk, I moved, and had taken three steps when my shoulder was grabbed and yanked from behind and a voice came, with feeling: “You dirty rat!”

The yank had turned me some and I turned myself the rest of the way. It was Theodore Weed. His hands were fists, and the right one was back a foot, with the elbow bent. His eyes were blazing and his bony jaw was set.

“Not here, you damn fool,” I said. “Even if you drop me with one swing, which is doubtful, I’ll yell police as I go down and here they’ll come. Besides, I have a right to know why I’m a rat while I’m still conscious. Why?”

“You know why. You’re a filthy stool, and Nero Wolfe too. You’re working for Lucy? You are like hell. You gave the police the gun.”

“How do you know we did?”

“Things they asked me. Do you deny it?”

My brain was a little tired after the long day, but it was doing its best. This character was by no means crossed off. We only had his word for it that he would give both arms to help Lucy; he had said himself that she didn’t know how he felt about her. A chat with him wouldn’t hurt and might help, but I couldn’t take him home with me until I knew what Wolfe had on his program, if anything.

He still had fists. “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “We’ll go around the corner to Jake’s and I’ll buy you a drink and we’ll discuss it. Then if you still want to take a poke at me Jake will let us use the back room provided we let him watch. Afterwards you can comb your hair if you’re up to it. It needs it.”

It didn’t appeal to him, but what would have? A couple of passersby, noticing his stance and his fists, had stopped to see, and a harness bull, emerging from the station, had also stopped. So he came.

At Jake’s, when we had sat at a table by the wall and given our orders to the white apron, and I said I had to make a phone call, he got up and came along to the booth. Very bad manners, but I didn’t correct him. I even let him stand in the door of the booth so I couldn’t close it. I dialed a number and got it.

“Me. In a booth on Eighth Avenue. Theodore Weed is here at my elbow. He stopped me on the sidewalk to tell me that you and I are filthy stools because we gave the gun to the cops. When I asked him how he knew we did he said from things they asked him, which is possible since he had just come from Homicide West, probably from a session with Rowcliff, and you know Rowcliff. I’m buying him a drink, but I thought you might like to apologize to him personally for tossing our client to the wolves. He has blood in his eye.”

“No. Come home at once.”

“You have Saul.”

“Not here. I need you. Mrs. Oliver and Mr. Perdis are in the front room. Mrs. Oliver has been here since seven o’clock. Mr. Khoury will arrive at any moment. I have been pestered by this confounded telephone all day. Mrs. Talbot called for the fifth time half an hour ago to say that she hopes to be here by ten o’clock, and it’s nearly that now. On second thought, bring Mr. Weed. I have a question for him.”

“You’ll have to bulldog him first.”

“Pfui. Bring him. How soon will you be here?”

I told him fifteen minutes, and hung up. “No time for a drink,” I told Weed. “Nor for a floor show, with me on the floor. Mr. Wolfe wants me. You may came along if you care to.”

“I was going there,” he said grimly, “when I saw you.”

“Good. But take it easy. He has a knife in his belt that he uses to stab people in the back.”

On the way out I handed the white apron, whose name was Gil, a couple of ones. Outside, we flagged a taxi, and as it rolled uptown I undertook to straighten him out. “Look at it,” I said. “If we’re stools and selling
her to the cops there’s not much of anything you can do but shoot us, and even that wouldn’t help her any. The fact is, we’re with her and you’re not. We know she didn’t kill her husband. Either you thought she had and probably still do, or you killed him yourself. If the former, your feeling for her has got a smudge. If the latter, you did a swell job, handling it so that she gets the credit for it. Go soak your head.”

“Why did you give the police the gun?”

“Soak your head some more. We’re working for her, not you.”

No comment until the cab was turning into 35th Street, then: “I don’t think she killed him.”

“Good for you. We appreciate it.”

“And I didn’t.”

“That’s not so important, but we’ll keep it in mind.”

At the curb in front of the old brownstone there was a black limousine with a chauffeur in it. That would be Mrs. Oliver’s. Mounting the seven steps to the stoop, I used my key, but the chain bolt was on and I had to ring for Fritz. As he took Weed’s coat and I disposed of mine, he said, “Thank God, Archie, thank God,” and I asked him what for, and he said, “For you. It has been very bad. Three phone calls during dinner, and that woman was in the front room.”