Stop the Presses!

by Robert Goldsborough

  “I am,” Wolfe said. “That burst water pipe that caused extensive damage to the complex. I seem to recall that you had no comment for Mr. Clay, at least according to his column.”

  “That’s right, and I’ll tell you why, dammit. Several years earlier, that bastard called me and wanted a comment about a residential complex I was planning to develop up in Westchester County, near White Plains. I knew very little about Clay at the time. Naively, I figured it would be good public relations for me, given how well read his column was, so I told him all about my plans for these buildings.

  “When his column ran the next day, I didn’t recognize any of my quotes. He ripped me up one side and down the other, calling me a ‘con artist’ who wanted to despoil the pristine nature of that part of Westchester with tall buildings, turning the area into what he called ‘Manhattan North.’ By the way, if you’re interested, that column of his killed the project. That was the first and only time I took a telephone call from Cameron Clay.”

  “You certainly had reason to dislike him.”

  “That puts me in the company of many other people.”

  “I will not argue the point,” Wolfe said. “Do you know where you were the night, or the early morning, when Mr. Clay died?”

  “Refresh me on the date,” he said. I gave it to him.

  “I was probably at home,” Andrews said. “I’ve got a penthouse place on the Upper West Side. Before you ask, I live alone, and I almost always sleep alone. I have been divorced twice, and I am not about to try finding Wife Number Three.”

  “Mr. Clay had a similar lack of marital success,” Wolfe said.

  Andrews ran a hand through his thick hair. “I hope that is the only thing we had in common,” he said. “I would not want to find myself associated with the man in any way. If that makes me a suspect in what you believe was his murder, so be it.”

  “As I indicated to you earlier, I am not yet prepared to state that Mr. Clay was murdered.”

  “Nice to know you’re keeping an open mind,” Andrews said after I had refreshed his drink. “At the risk of reversing our roles and making me the interrogator, what did you personally think of Cameron Clay?”

  If Wolfe was surprised by the question, he did not show it. “I met the man once and found him to be most unhappy. I would say his was an unfulfilled life.”

  “If you are trying to generate sympathy for him, you have come to the wrong place,” Andrews said.

  “Such was not my intention, sir. You chose to ask me a question, and I responded candidly.”

  “Point taken,” Andrews said. “I believe I now have indulged you and Goodwin sufficiently. Do you have any further questions for me?”

  “I think not. Mr. Goodwin will see you out.”

  “Not terribly cordial, was he?” I said to Wolfe when I had returned to the office. “I asked if I could help him flag a taxi, and he said, ‘The last thing I need is any help from you.’”

  “Perhaps he remains upset at the way you got him to come here.”

  “We’ve been over that, and I’m not about to revisit it,” I replied. “You wanted to see him, I delivered him. Andrews’s only bruises are to his oversize ego, and that can stand a little bruising anyway. Where do we go from here?”

  “I would like to know if Mr. Clay made a will, and if so, who its beneficiaries are. Mr. Cohen may be able to give us that information.”

  “Do you want me to call him now?”

  “No, tomorrow will be soon enough.”

  Chapter 25

  I called Lon after breakfast. “How nice to hear from you,” he said with only the slightest touch of sarcasm in his voice. “Do you have anything to report that I can take to my bosses? Mr. Haverhill, in particular, is getting antsy. And when he gets antsy, we all get antsy.”

  “Patience, patience. When a master is at work, he must not be hurried.”

  “Swell. If I tell that to the man who owns the operation, he’ll toss me out of his office on the seat of my pants.”

  “Well, word it another way to him, then. Now, I have a question for you.”

  “I will try to suppress my shock.”

  “Do you know if Cameron Clay made a will, and if so, who is the executor?”

  “That is actually two questions. But I do happen to have the answers to both. There is a will, and Larry McNeil is its executor. I also have another piece of information that you may find of interest.”

  “Fire away.”

  “A modest funeral service is being held for Cameron Clay this very afternoon at a mortuary on the Upper West Side. I will be attending it as the Gazette’s representative.”

  “I am interested; give me the time and place, and there’s a good chance I’ll show up there myself.”

  When Wolfe came down from his morning orchid session, I gave him what I knew about Clay’s will, and I also suggested that I go to the service in honor of the columnist.

  “Do so,” he said. “Surely, Mr. McNeil also will be present, and it is likely you can learn more about Mr. Clay’s testament from him.”

  Just before two o’clock, I stepped out of a taxi in front of a two-story brick-and-stone mortuary in the West Seventies between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. A handful of other people were just entering, among them Lon Cohen.

  “Somehow, I suspected I’d see you,” he said. “It’s going to be a small gathering. He did not have any relatives to speak of, at least none who lived around here.”

  We went through the carpeted lobby and were directed by a man in a dark suit into what looked like a small chapel with a few rows of folding chairs facing a lectern up in front. The casket, also at the front, was closed, and there were several flower arrangements grouped around it. By far the largest, supported by a trestle, read IN MEMORY FROM YOUR FRIENDS AND COWORKERS AT THE NEW YORK GAZETTE.

  What struck me the most were the four people, two men and two women, who were getting settled in the front row. They all wore the dark uniforms and hats of the Salvation Army. “What’s that all about?” I whispered to Lon as we took seats in the back.

  “Beats me. As far as I can recall, Cameron never mentioned the Salvation Army in his columns. Maybe McNeil can enlighten us,” he said as Clay’s young assistant entered, nodded in our direction, and took a chair across the aisle. I did not recognize anyone else among the seventeen people scattered in the seats ahead of us, some in pairs, others alone.

  Piped-in organ music began playing hymns I vaguely recognized from my Sunday school days back in Ohio as we waited. After several minutes, the music faded and a thin, somber young man in a business suit stepped to the lectern and cleared his throat.

  “Good afternoon,” he intoned somberly, “I am Reverend Marcus Dettmer. Thank you all so much for coming today. We are here to celebrate the life of Cameron Clay, a man known to many thousands through his well-read column in the New York Gazette. I never had the privilege of meeting Mr. Clay, but I have learned much about the man from his coworkers on the newspaper, two of whom are here with us today.” He nodded toward Lon and Larry McNeil.

  Reverend Dettmer cleared his throat again and held the lectern with both hands. “Mr. Clay was born in Maryland, the son of a steelworker and a seamstress, and from his earliest days, he knew that he wanted to be a writer. He attended the University of Maryland, where he studied journalism, and then entered the newspaper business.” The young minister droned on, listing the various stops along the way in Clay’s career, most of which I tuned out.

  But when he got to the present, I began paying attention again. “Cameron Clay was always a fighter for the little guy and against what he felt were the entrenched interests,” he said. “To quote an oft-used phrase, but one I believe to be so very relevant in his life, Mr. Clay ‘comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable.’ It was clear that he struck a chord with readers, as I am told his column was consi
stently the most popular feature in the Gazette. His voice will be missed, and all those who cared for Mr. Clay shall miss him.”

  The rest of the brief service consisted of a prayer, Bible reading, and the singing of a hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” As we filed out of the chapel, I went over to Larry McNeil on the sidewalk. “Can I talk to you for a few minutes?” I asked.

  “Sure, Mr. Goodwin. Anything you want.”

  “First, how did those Salvation Army people happen to be there?”

  “Cameron was a great believer in the Salvation Army,” he said. “In fact, he left the bulk of his money to them.”

  “He didn’t strike me as the religious type.”

  “He wasn’t, not at all. He used to refer to himself as ‘a practicing agnostic.’ But the Salvation Army was something different.”

  “How so?”

  “Cameron had no brothers or sisters, only an uncle he was very close to. But this uncle struggled all his adult life. He drank heavily, which cost him his marriage, and he eventually ended up living in flophouses and then on the streets in Baltimore. At the low point in his life, he was living under a railroad viaduct, wrapped in pieces of cardboard. Somehow, a member of the Salvation Army found him there and brought him to their center. They dried him out, worked with him for months, and eventually helped get him a job. He and Cameron got reunited a few months before the old man’s death, also thanks to the Salvation Army, and Cameron never forgot it.”

  “I’ll be damned. By the way, did you happen to—”

  “Sorry to break in,” an elderly man in a threadbare suit said to us, “but do either of you happen to be with the Gazette?”

  “I am,” McNeil said, “why?”

  “I’ve been reading Cameron Clay’s column for years,” he said, “and it was always the best darned thing in your whole paper.”

  “Thank you very much, sir,” McNeil said. “Do you live nearby?”

  “Oh no, I’m from over in New Jersey, Hoboken. But I decided when I saw the notice of this funeral service that I thought I’d pay my respects. I wish I’d known Clay. He was a fighter, like that pastor said. Your paper has lost a good man.”

  McNeil thanked him, and he shambled off. “Before he came up to us, I was about to ask if you recognized any of the other mourners,” I said.

  “Not a one,” he said. “I guess they must have been readers of the column, like that old guy. I wish more people had shown up, though.”

  “You said Clay left most of his money to the Salvation Army, and I understand you are the executor.”

  “I am. Yes, he gave the Salvation Army four hundred thousand dollars plus whatever proceeds come from the sale of his brownstone. I get five grand, partly in thanks for my role as executor, and he made a few small bequests, to his cleaning woman, a tipster he used for column items, and the cabbie who picked him up at home every morning and took him to the office, then drove him back home. Excuse me, Mr. Goodwin, but I need to go back in and talk to the funeral director about his expenses. Another role for an executor.”

  I thanked McNeil for the information and turned to Lon Cohen, who had been talking to another of the mourners, a woman. “She was telling me how much she liked Stop the Presses!” he said. “Told me she loved it when he ‘stuck it to some big shot,’ those were her words. What do you say we share a cab back south?”

  Once we were in the yellow cab, Lon turned to me and asked, “Anything strike you about the service?”

  “It was pretty plain, and there wasn’t much of a turnout.”

  “Exactly! As I looked around the chapel, I couldn’t help thinking that, here was a guy whose name had been known all over town for years. Loved by some, hated by some, read by tens of thousands, maybe more. There were billboards all over town with his picture on them, radio commercials promoting his column. Hell, some people could name him faster than they could tell you who the current mayor is. Yet he dies and less than twenty-five people in all show up to send him off. What does that tell you?”

  “First, that Clay didn’t have many friends, real friends, maybe by choice. Second, no matter how well known a person seems to be, in most cases he gets forgotten quickly.”

  “Fame is fleeting, isn’t it?” Lon said.

  “It sure is. Can you name the last four senators from New York, not counting the current ones?”

  “I’d have to think about it for a while.”

  “Me, too. Does the Gazette have plans to replace Clay?”

  “I know the brass are in the process of mulling it over. McNeil would seem to be a strong possibility, but I get the impression that Cordwell feels he needs more seasoning.”

  “Well, he is pretty young all right, but from what Clay had said when we talked to him, he relied on McNeil and thought he would be an able successor.”

  “Yeah, Cameron had told me that, too, more than once,” Lon said. “‘I’ve trained that kid well,’ he liked to say. He was proud of Larry.”

  “Here we are at the brownstone,” I said, pulling out my billfold as I climbed out of the car.

  “Put your money away,” Lon said. “This one’s on the Gazette. I’ll take your dough next time we sit down at Saul’s poker table.”

  I started to give him a retort, but the cab already had begun to pull away, bound for the offices of America’s fifth-largest newspaper.

  Chapter 26

  When Wolfe came down from the plant rooms, he first asked me about Clay’s will, and I told him of the Salvation Army bequest.

  “A noble organization,” he said. “However, I would not have expected Mr. Clay to be a supporter of theirs, despite what they did to aid his uncle.”

  “That surprised me as well. Maybe there was someone with an honest-to-goodness heart under that hard-shell exterior.”

  “Perhaps. Tell me about the funeral service.”

  I gave him one of my verbatim reports. One of my strengths has always been the ability to recite back conversations and other events word-for-word. Because of the brevity of Clay’s service, this was hardly a challenge.

  As I did the recitation, Wolfe leaned back in his chair, hands interlaced over his belly. After finishing, I got no reaction and started to ask him what he thought, but I caught myself. His eyes were closed and lips were pushing in and out, in and out. Even if I had spoken, he would not have heard me. He was somewhere else and I couldn’t reach him. No one could when he was in this state.

  Excited as I was, there was nothing for me to do but wait. I timed him, as I always did when he was in one of these trances. Fritz stepped into the office to say something, probably a question for Wolfe about dinner, but I put a finger to my lips and pointed at the man in the chair. Fritz understood immediately and backed out without a sound. He’s seen this exercise many times, and his face registered excitement.

  Thirty-eight minutes later, Wolfe opened his eyes wide and came forward in his chair, resting his hands palms down on his desk blotter. “Archie, there are times when I ignore the obvious, as I have done here. I sit before you chagrined.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, so I kept quiet.

  “I need to see them all,” he said.

  “By all of them, you mean … ?”

  “Everyone: Mr. Cohen and his superiors at the Gazette, the five individuals whom Mr. Clay feared, and Mr. McNeil.”

  “I don’t like to be a naysayer, but that may be difficult. It was hard enough to get those five potential murderers here once, with the exception of Serena Sanchez, who came willingly, and it will be even harder to bring them back without having them delivered here bound and gagged.”

  “If this makes things easier for you, tell them I now know how Mr. Clay died, and it will be in their best interest to attend a meeting here.”

  “Are you planning to invite Inspector Cramer as well?”

  “I am, which p
robably means that if he comes, and I believe he will, he will bring our old friend Sergeant Stebbins along with him.”

  “Old friend indeed. Should I tell our guests the police will be represented?”

  “No, let it be a surprise,” Wolfe said. Because of his trance, he had not rung for beer, which he did now. When Fritz brought in two chilled bottles and a glass on a tray, he wore a puzzled expression. I winked at him and silently mouthed the words, I’ll fill you in later.

  As usual, I was several miles behind Wolfe, although I was beginning to get a glimmer, albeit a faint one. “When do you want to have this gathering?” I asked Wolfe.

  “Would I be unreasonable to suggest tomorrow night?” he said.

  Well, here we go again, I said to myself. “Of course you would, but what’s new about that?” I warned Wolfe that it might be several days before I could get these people rounded up, but he held fast. Where to start? For no particular reason, I chose Councilman Millard Beardsley and dialed his office on 125th Street.

  The same silken-voiced young woman I had talked to on the phone before answered.

  “Is this April?” I asked, recalling her name from my visit to Beardsley’s office.

  “Yes, it is. How may I help you, sir?”

  “My name is Goodwin, Archie Goodwin. You may remember me from my visit a few days ago.”

  “Yes, yes, I do, Mr. Goodwin,” April said, caution entering into her tone. She obviously had not forgotten my scuffle with the slow-moving bodyguard. “How may I help you, Mr. Goodwin?”

  “I would like to talk to Mr. Beardsley. Is he in the office today?”

  “No, he is out in the district, visiting constituents. May I have him telephone you?”

  I gave her our number and said it was extremely important that I talk to him as soon as possible. “I will give him your message, sir, as soon as he returns, which I expect will be within the next hour.” I wanted to prolong the conversation, just to hear her voice, but I merely thanked her.