Murder in the Ball Park

by Robert Goldsborough

  At one minute past eleven, I heard the hum of the elevator, and seconds later, Wolfe entered, placing orchids in the vase on his desk. After asking if I had slept well—I had—he eased into his chair and rang for beer.

  “I have been to the bank,” I told him. “Your dear friend Mr. Hopkinson sends you greetings and salutations. He was almost giddy when he saw the numbers on Miss DuVal’s check.”

  “The gentleman may not be so solicitous if we soon withdraw the precise amount you deposited today,” he remarked, pouring beer and watching the foam settle in the glass.

  “Why in the world would we do that?”

  “Archie, I have not yet decided to accept Mrs. Milbank—or Miss DuVal if you prefer—as a client.”

  “Well, you certainly acted like you were working when Lon Cohen was here last night. And it seems to me that by depositing that check today, you have committed yourself.”

  Wolfe narrowed his eyes. “I have committed to absolutely nothing.”

  “But last night, you said that I was to expect instructions this morning. I am ready,” I told him.

  “Do not badger me, confound it.”

  “All right, I won’t. I will give you a choice instead: Either you take on Elise DuVal as a client, or I will. I mean it. You can grant me a leave of absence, or if that does not fit with your plans, I will resign and move out, giving you two weeks’ notice, of course. I am told there’s a very comfortable co-op building just three blocks east of here that has some vacancies, including a nice one-bedroom setup on the sixth floor. It goes without saying that I would miss Fritz’s wonderful—”

  “Flummery!”

  “No, sir, not flummery. Back in the Dark Ages, I seem to recall that you hired me to be a man of action, a burr under your saddle. Well, I have not been seeing enough action lately, and when that happens, I get rusty. When I get rusty, I tend to get grouchy, and having two grouches under the same roof at the same time is a recipe for trouble.”

  “So you think I am grouchy?” Wolfe murmured, raising his eyebrows.

  “I do indeed.” He hates it when I use indeed because it’s a favorite word of his. “Although you may have a fancier word than grouchy for that mood you so often find yourself in.”

  Wolfe began tracing circles with his right index finger on the arm of his chair, indicating that I had gotten to him. He was speechless for the moment, and damned angry to boot.

  After two minutes of silence, Wolfe spoke. “All right, Mr. Goodwin, you want action, you will get it. Your notebook. What I am about to put forth would tax even your capacity to commit great amounts of detail to memory.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  For the next half hour, Wolfe piled on the instructions with relish, and in great detail. He was still sore that I had called him grouchy, but I didn’t care. We appeared to have ourselves a case.

  I tackled my easiest chore first—calling Elise DuVal. “You now are officially a client of Nero Wolfe,” I told her.

  “Wonderful, Archie! What do we do now?” she chirped. “I’m ready to take orders from you. I promise to be a good and obedient soldier.”

  “Excellent. First, you will say nothing about our arrangements to the police—absolutely nothing. They will find out soon enough about this, and they won’t be happy.”

  “But shouldn’t they know? It might make them work harder.”

  “Believe me, lady, the department is working plenty doggone hard as it is, many of the higher-ups probably damned near around the clock at this point. The newspapers, the mayor, and a passel of civic groups all are screaming at them, demanding action. For the moment, just sit tight and trust the brain of Mr. Wolfe. We will be giving you regular progress reports.”

  “But, Archie, I feel like I should be contributing something to the effort, other than money.”

  “I have a feeling that before this is over, you will have plenty of opportunities to contribute. For now, though, wait until you hear from us.” Elise held me on the line for another few minutes, asking all manner of questions about how we were going to proceed and begging me to let her help. I finally got rid of her by promising to telephone her often with progress reports.

  My next task was to talk to Mona Fentress, whose husband was listed in the Manhattan directory at a Park Avenue address. To my surprise, the lady answered the telephone. When I introduced myself as Nero Wolfe’s assistant, said we had been hired to investigate the senator’s death, and asked if I could see her, the curt response was, “Why should I want to talk to you?”

  “Why shouldn’t you, Mrs. Fentress? So far, the police apparently haven’t gotten anywhere in finding whoever shot your boss.”

  “They certainly haven’t,” she snapped. “What makes you and your Mr. Wolfe, famous as he is, believe that you can do any better than them?”

  “Let me turn the question around: Could we do any worse?”

  Silence at the other end. “I really don’t see how I can help you,” she finally said with a sigh, her voice now decidedly less aggressive.

  “I honestly am not sure, but I don’t see that you have anything to lose, other than an hour of your time or maybe even less,” I said in what I hoped was my most persuasive tone.

  “All right, if it can help find who did this thing,” she said. “Where should I meet you?”

  “You’re not very far from Grand Central, I believe.”

  “Not at all, only about a ten-minute walk or a two-minute taxi ride, why?”

  “There is a little café on the lower level of the terminal next to a same-day dry cleaners. The joint doesn’t look like much, but they do have wonderful coffee, maybe the best you’ll find in Midtown. Do you think you could you be there in, say, twenty minutes or so?”

  “Yes, but it would have to be for coffee only, not a meal. I’ve got a one o’clock lunch with a state assemblyman who may hire me to be on his staff.”

  “Well, that being the case, we certainly don’t want to keep the gentleman waiting, do we?”

  “No, even though it would be a comedown from a job with a senator. But I like to be working, particularly in the political world.”

  Chapter 7

  Thirty minutes later, we sat in a back corner booth of the little joint with cups of coffee poured by an efficient but surly waitress. I had arrived a few minutes before Mona Fentress and had acclimated to darkness when she came in and peered around. I waved her over, noting that with her slender figure and flowing blonde hair, she looked every bit as much like a film actress as Elise DuVal.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said when she slid into the booth opposite me. “As I told you on the phone, I will not waste your time.”

  “At the moment, I have all sorts of time, Mr. Goodwin, other than today’s lunch. At the risk of stating the obvious, my job has disappeared.”

  “Please call me Archie.”

  “I will, and I go by Mona to almost everyone. I seem to remember seeing your picture in the newspaper at one time, and Mr. Wolfe’s, too. Probably a case the two of you solved.”

  “Make that a case Mr. Wolfe solved. I’m just his water boy and spear carrier.”

  “I doubt that very much . . . Archie. But I feel like I have seen you somewhere else, and recently.”

  “You have. Coincidentally, I was at the Polo Grounds on that afternoon, sitting just a few rows away from your party. I was one of the people who rushed over, even before the police arrived.”

  She flinched. “It was all such a blur. You must not have stayed around for very long.”

  “I didn’t. My friend and I were just onlookers who happened to be at that particular game. We would not have been good eyewitnesses, as we didn’t see anything until after the senator was down.”

  “Did you and Nero Wolfe take the case because you had been there at the time?” she asked.

  “No, Mona, we didn’t. My being t
here was coincidental. We were approached by someone who has hired us.”

  “Who?”

  “Sorry, but I can’t tell you that, at least not now.”

  She sniffed and pulled out a cigarette, which I torched with my lighter. “So . . . you want to see if you can pry any information from me, but you’re not forthcoming yourself, is that the situation we have?” she said between puffs, tilting her chin in a combative pose.

  “I should think you would be glad Mr. Wolfe is working to learn who killed your boss,” I told her, dodging the question.

  “Oh, I am, Archie, truly I am,” she said, softening her tone. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve been so distracted and so out of sorts ever since . . . what happened.”

  “Understandable, absolutely. Do you think you can go back over the events of that day at the ball park with me, or will it be too painful for you?”

  “God knows I’ve relived it enough times already, particularly with the police, so I guess I can stand it one more time.”

  “Good, I appreciate that. First, tell me who was in your party at the game, and where they were sitting.”

  “There were five of us. Keith Musgrove, our pollster, had the seat on the aisle. Todd Armstrong, our young intern not long out of college at NYU, was on his right. He was helping me with press relations. Then came Orson, with me next to him, and on my right, Ross Davies, who was Orson’s campaign manager and strategist.”

  “Good. Now let’s take it from just before that Giant player, Reed Mason, hit the home run.”

  She ground out her barely smoked cigarette and took a sip of coffee. “As you know since you were there, it was a perfect day, and we all were enjoying ourselves. Because you were close by, you may have noticed that each of us carried a small American flag.”

  “Yeah, that was hard to miss.”

  “As you may be aware, Orson was known as a great flag lover. It pretty much had become his trademark, and this, you may remember, was Flag Day. As his press secretary, I was dead set against the flag business when he first got excited about it several years back. He even wanted to dub himself ‘Mr. Stars and Stripes,’ for Lord’s sake.

  “I felt the whole thing was incredibly hokey, and I tried several times to talk him out of it, without success. That just goes to show how badly I misread the pulse of his electorate. They loved it, and when he offered to give away American flags, dozens of people in the district, possibly as many as a hundred or more, took him up on it.”

  “That could get pretty costly.”

  “So you would certainly think, but not really,” Mona said, taking the first sip of her coffee. “He sweet-talked a flag-making outfit up around Mount Kisco into giving us a great deal on a bulk order, and we, in turn, made sure to credit the manufacturer to everyone who got a free flag. Their business boomed as a result, and everyone came out ahead. Honestly, there were times when Orson looked like an absolute genius. He even had a campaign called ‘American flags make great Christmas gifts,’ in which he urged people to buy flags from the Mount Kisco operation.”

  “Politics and the free-enterprise system working hand-in-hand,” I said. “Let’s get back to the game.”

  “Oh yes, sorry. Ever since . . . what happened, I tend to go off on tangents. All right, when the home run got hit, we all jumped to our feet and the spike heel on my right pump snapped off—they were damned expensive shoes, too, my favorites, which I had no business wearing to a baseball stadium. Chalk it up to vanity. I tipped to my right, hitting the metal armrest and almost landing on Ross Davies, who was next to me on that side. And I have a vague recollection of Orson leaning over my other armrest and putting his arm around me to keep me from falling. Then . . . then he just collapsed, fell down across the two seats and against me. I know that I didn’t hear gunfire or anything like that.”

  “You wouldn’t have heard a shot with all the crowd noise around you, all of that cheering about the home run,” I told her. “What do you remember next?”

  “Pandemonium,” she said, her hand shaking as she took out another cigarette, which I lit. “I sort of remember a short man with a big nose bending over Orson and putting a hand on his neck, on his—what—carotid artery?”

  “That was my friend, the man I was sitting with. His name is Saul Panzer. He’s a private investigator who sometimes does work for Nero Wolfe.”

  “Oh. The most horrible part was Orson’s expression. His eyes were wide open, like he’d been surprised. Looking at him, it was hard to believe he was gone. I’ll never forget that moment as long as I live.”

  “You said all of this to the police?”

  She nodded. “Pretty much just the way I told it to you.”

  “All right, thanks for going through it again. I assume the police asked if you had any idea who might want to kill the senator.”

  “Yes. And I said my number one choice would be that Mafia bastard Franco Bacelli. After Orson modified his views on the route of the parkway, Bacelli starting calling him and making indirect threats.”

  “Such as?”

  “He would phone Orson and say things like ‘I hope you enjoy your last days in office,’ or ‘If things had worked out differently, you might have become governor or gone on to Washington.’ ”

  “Maybe he said that because he assumed Senator Milbank was going to lose his upcoming election.”

  “No, Archie, I don’t think that was the case. What Orson told me was that Bacelli sounded very threatening.”

  “Well, the guy has certainly issued his share of threats over the years, and he, through hit men, has followed through on a good many of those threats. Okay, anybody else that you’d like to nominate as possible killers?”

  “There’s Jonah Keller, the real estate kingpin up north. He is a loudmouth and a bully, and he’s been determined to see the parkway built. Keller views the road as a personal crusade, a bonanza for that part of the state—and, of course, for all of the realtors up that way, too. He envisions the metropolitan area growing northward and feels the road will spur that growth, which may very well be the case. He has ripped into Orson in the press, calling him a lackey for special interests, particularly all of those wealthy landowners who want to keep the area ‘underdeveloped,’ to use Keller’s term.”

  “Do you think the man is capable of orchestrating a murder?”

  Mona gave a toss of her head. “Sure, why not? I’ve met the guy, and he’s downright mean, there’s no other word for it. And he’s got a reputation for being ruthless in his business practices. Who’s to say that ruthlessness wouldn’t extend to violence?”

  “What can you tell me about the other guy up in that region, the one who heads that trade group?”

  “You’re talking about Ray Corcoran, who runs the tri-county business association. He’s a smooth operator, much more personable and amiable than Keller, at least on the surface. But he’s said some tough things about Orson, too. Called him a ‘barrier to progress’ and ‘one of the great minds of the nineteenth century.’ Archie, I’m going to anticipate your next question and rank this trio in the order I suspect them of the murder: one, Bacelli; two, Keller; three, Corcoran.”

  “You’ve obviously given this some thought. Did you share your ranking with the police?”

  “I did, Archie, and they nodded politely but didn’t seem terribly interested in my opinion, although Inspector Cramer did take some notes.” Her experience with the police sounded a lot like Elise DuVal’s.

  “Yeah, they can be that way; I’ve experienced it, too. I want to shift gears now. How would you describe your relationship with Orson Milbank?”

  She studied the half-smoked cigarette in her hand for several seconds as if wondering how it got there, then looked up and gave me a tight smile. “Just what have you heard?”

  “That the two of you worked together very closely.”

  “That is cer
tainly true. What else?”

  “Nothing I would consider to be credible information.”

  “A very diplomatic answer, Archie. What have you learned that you would tend to discredit?”

  “Why don’t you tell me that yourself, Mona.”

  “All right, I will. You have undoubtedly heard there was more than a professional relationship between us.”

  “I make a point to never believe everything I hear. As they say, talk is cheap.”

  “True, but, Archie, you must have suspicions or else you would not have raised the issue.”

  “All right, for purposes of discussion, let’s say I may be suspicious—call it one of the occupational necessities of being a private detective.”

  Mona smiled tightly. “You’re pretty glib, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe that’s an occupational necessity, too. I’ve never thought of myself that way before.”

  “All right, enough of this repartee,” she said. “May I tell you something in confidence?”

  I held up a hand. “Be careful here, Mona. I keep confidences only as long as they don’t have an effect on a case I’m involved in.”

  She laughed joylessly. “Oh, what does it matter now? I was in love with Orson, and he felt the same way about me. So there it is, out on the table. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  Wolfe is going to really hate this business, I thought. “Were your husband and Milbank’s wife aware of this?”

  “I can’t speak for sure about Elise, but Charles certainly had an idea of what was going on. If you haven’t gotten word about some of the public scenes we had, I’m surprised. You seem like a man who knows a great deal about what goes on in this city.”

  “All right, maybe I have heard rumblings.”

  “Rumblings—hah! With Charles, they were more like eruptions. The irony is that he had been playing around long before Orson and I got together. Ours has been a marriage in name only for years. Charles posing as the outraged husband is a classic study in phoniness.”