“Is there any one among you who has had to watch a loved one die slowly? How many of you have wished you could speed that person’s death to spare the agonizing pain he or she was going through? I did, when my father was dying of a brain tumor. His own pain was horrible, and had I been stronger, I would have helped him to end his life. To this day, I am sorry that I did nothing to ease his unutterable pain.”
That speech of Stokes was surely what got Larry McNeil off, although all the way through the trial, the prosecution argued that Stokes had a conflict of interest in the case. “I see no conflict of interest here,” the judge said to the assistant district attorney. “If anything, one might assume that Mr. Stokes would resent the defendant for his part in attempting to besmirch him. Objection overruled.”
Objection overruled became the byword of the trial as, time and again, the prosecution attacked Stokes and his methods, only to be rebuffed from the bench. When the jury after a short deliberation returned a verdict of innocent for Larry McNeil, there was applause and cheering in the courtroom.
McNeil did not inherit the column Cameron Clay had written for so many years—no one did. As Lon Cohen told me later, “Both Cordwell and Haverhill felt he was still too green to get a high-visibility column like that, although they’ve kept him on the staff as a feature writer, and he has done some damn good human-interest stuff. If I were to guess, I’d say that after a couple of more years, he just may end up getting a column like Clay’s after all. So all in all, things have worked out well for him.”
For the other principals in the Cameron Clay case, it was a mixed bag. Roswell Stokes burnished his flamboyant reputation by his impassioned defense of Larry McNeil, and if anything, because of the case’s publicity, he now seems to be in even greater demand as a defense attorney. How Clay would have hated that.
Kerwin Andrews suffered a crushing rebuke when the city’s building and zoning officials rejected his plans for his ambitious Andrews Point project. Part of their concern was the shoddy construction work that had been done on several of his earlier projects. In addition, however, the developer had been up to his old tricks of trying to bribe his way to success, and he got caught when a high-principled zoning inspector reported him.
As the Gazette’s editorial about the event, headlined castles in the sand, read: “This setback, for all intents and purposes, brings an end to the meteoric career of Kerwin Andrews. In all likelihood, the once high-riding developer will never again be able to enlist the backers necessary to fund his grandiose projects. Of more pressing concern to Mr. Andrews is avoiding indictment. Here is a cautionary tale of a man’s boundless—and reckless—ambition.”
Millard Beardsley recently won yet another term as a councilman. For the first time, he had a serious challenger, a youthful reformer who promised to represent the district with “honor, dignity, and a crusading fervor.” Early newspaper polls had the challenger running ahead, but these polls apparently focused too heavily on the more youthful and disaffected members of the electorate. When Election Day came, Beardsley was swept in by a comfortable margin, claiming that “when push comes to shove, the people know who can do the most for them. I humbly accept their affirmation.”
Michael Tobin, the disgraced former cop, only outlived his nemesis Cameron Clay by a few months. Tobin had a fatal heart attack, and his body was found on the floor of the florist shop in Yonkers where I had met him and persuaded him to meet with Nero Wolfe.
“That newspaper columnist killed him!” Tobin’s tearful widow told a TV reporter. “Just as sure as he had taken a gun and shot him. Mike was a broken man. What a sorry way New York City has treated one of its most hardworking and loyal servants.”
As I was going through the Sunday Times society section the other day, I came across an item on the weddings pages that brought me up short. The headline read the banker takes himself a diva, and the photograph showed a beaming Serena Sanchez wearing a long gown and a tiara standing beside a tall, white-haired swell whose smile was every bit as wide as her own. The caption: “Edgar Baxter Harrison IV, chairman of the Continental Trust Company, and the opera singer Serena Sanchez at the reception following their wedding on the grounds of The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island.” The accompanying article chronicled the “whirlwind romance” that followed their having met at a Metropolitan Opera party.
I put down the paper and telephoned Lily Rowan. “I ran across an interesting item in today’s Times,” I told her.
“Is that right? Whatever was it about?”
“I believe you can guess.”
She laughed. “Did it by any chance have to do with a mutual acquaintance of ours?”
“Good guess. Have you known about this for a while?”
“Not all that long. I just finished reading the same article you did, and the Times described the courtship accurately. This was really a whirlwind romance, just a few weeks.”
“I hope it turns out better than a previous marriage, which as I recall also resulted from a chance meeting at a Met party.”
“I hope so, too,” Lily said. “I happen to know Ed Harrison fairly well, and he is a fine man, a real gentleman, a word you could never apply to Cameron Clay.”
“True.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this, given that you’re pretty darned pleased with yourself …”
“I’m not sure how to take that comment, but now that you’ve started, what are you about to tell me?”
“A few days after that weekend up in Katonah, I ran into Serena at a luncheon. She told me what a good time she had, and she told me something else.”
“Am I going to have to drag it out of you?”
Another laugh. “She told me, ‘I must say, I am very taken with your Archie Goodwin. If he were the beau of anyone but you, I would do everything I could to get him.’ Now just what do you think of that, Mr. Goodwin?”
“I think the lady has shown extremely good taste. However, I have good taste as well, which is why I would never consider having a relationship with her, given the far superior relationship I already have.”
“That comment does prove that you are pleased with yourself, Escamillo, and it also proves that you do indeed have good taste. But then, so do I.”
Author’s Note
This tale is set in the late 1970s, and all of its characters are fictional. The only historical figures mentioned in the narrative are the longtime gossip columnist Walter Winchell (1923–1972) and the famed and mercurial opera diva Maria Callas (1923–1977).
At the height of Winchell’s popularity, his syndicated column appeared in two thousand newspapers worldwide and was read daily by as many as fifty million people. His Sunday night radio program, which ran from the 1930s to the 1950s, had an audience of twenty million.
The fiery soprano Maria Callas was arguably the most famous diva of the mid-century period. American-born of Greek parents, she received her musical education in Greece, but her career began to flourish in Italy. Famed for both her talent and her temperament, she had a tumultuous personal life that included a well-publicized affair with Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
The Apollo Theater on 125th Street, which Archie noted on his visit to Councilman Millard Beardsley’s office, has been a fixture in New York’s Harlem neighborhood for more than a century. Begun as a burlesque house, the theater later switched to vaudeville acts and big bands, and eventually concentrated on African-American performers and acts.
The New York Gazette, frequently mentioned in Rex Stout’s stories over the years, is a fictitious daily newspaper. The other New York papers cited in the story, the Times, the Daily News, and the Post, are, of course, actual dailies, and all are still being published.
As with my previous Nero Wolfe novels, I want to acknowledge Barbara Stout and Rebecca Stout Bradbury for their continuing support and encouragement. My thanks also go to my agent, Martha Kapla
n; to Otto Penzler and Rob Hart of Mysterious Press; and to the fine team at Open Road Integrated Media.
My warmest thanks of all go to my wife, Janet, who has been an unfailing source of support for more than half a century. What a ride we have had!
About the Author
Robert Goldsborough is an American author best known for continuing Rex Stout’s famous Nero Wolfe series. Born in Chicago, he attended Northwestern University and upon graduation went to work for the Associated Press, beginning a lifelong career in journalism that would include long periods at the Chicago Tribune and Advertising Age.
While at the Tribune, Goldsborough began writing mysteries in the voice of Rex Stout, the creator of iconic sleuths Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Goldsborough’s first novel starring Wolfe, Murder in E Minor (1986), was met with acclaim from both critics and devoted fans, winning a Nero Award from the Wolfe Pack. Ten more Wolfe mysteries followed, including Death on Deadline (1987) and Fade to Black (1990). In 2005, Goldsborough published Three Strikes You’re Dead, the first in an original series starring Chicago Tribune reporter Snap Malek. Stop the Presses! (2016) is his most recent novel.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Robert Goldsborough
Author photo by Colleen Berg
Cover design by Andrea Worthington
978-1-5040-2355-9
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