Fade to Black (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 5)

by Robert Goldsborough

  This time the deep breath came from Wolfe, who fixed me with one of his this-conversation-is-over glares before burrowing back into The Last Lion.

  “Don’t you wonder whether Mills and Company will hire you?” I said to the cover of the book. “Aren’t you at least a little bit curious?”

  Wolfe put down the volume and raised his shoulders a half-inch before lowering them. “Archie, you pride yourself on your ability to set odds on a variety of occurrences. Now I shall set some: I give you four-to-one that Mr. Mills calls within the next thirty minutes to accept my proposal. Actually, I am being generous; he is likely to telephone within fifteen—”

  Wolfe was stopped by the ring of the phone, which I answered. “All right, Mr. Goodwin, Mills/Lake/Ryman agrees to the fee, although I have to tell you in all honesty that I think it’s fairly outrageous.” It was Boyd Lake, and he sounded exhausted.

  “You’ll get your money’s worth, Mr. Lake,” I told him. “What time do all of you get to the office in the morning?”

  “It varies—I’m usually here by eight-forty-five, and so is Sara. Rod frequently is in before that—we tend to put in some long days. Most of the rest arrive between eight-thirty and nine, depending on what they’re working on.”

  “I’ll be there at eight-thirty tomorrow,” I said. “Who should I ask for?”

  “Rod, I suppose, although I know you’ll be seeing all of us. He would have rung you back just now himself, but he’s putting out a fire. Angry client, you know?”

  “By any chance named Acker Foreman?”

  The Englishman managed a weak laugh. “No, not this time, thank God. This is small stuff by comparison. But when any of our clients are upset, they always ask to talk to Rod, for which Sara and I are eternally grateful. He’s a master at diplomacy. We’ll look for you here tomorrow morning.”

  “Fine. And I assume a cashier’s check for twenty-five thousand dollars will be waiting for me?”

  Lake muttered something to the effect that it would. After I hung up, I turned to Wolfe, who leaned back and considered me through lidded eyes, the folds in his cheeks deepening. For him, that’s the equivalent of an ear-to-ear grin.

  “Don’t get too smug,” I said. “As you heard, that wasn’t Mills who called.”

  “The effect is the same.”

  “All right, then be smug, if it makes you happy. We’ve still got twenty-two minutes before we get to attack Fritz’s flounder with cheese sauce. How about some instructions regarding my visit tomorrow to the wonderful world of the hyperbolic sales pitch and the high-powered sell?”

  That quickly erased his smugness; work or even the thought of it invariably sobers him. He drained the glass of half its beer, presumably to recharge his batteries. “Your notebook,” he said sharply.

  SIX

  TUESDAY MORNING AFTER BREAKFAST, I rechecked the address Mills had given me for the agency. It was down near the Battery, so I left the house a little after eight and flagged a taxi on Ninth Avenue. The cabbie zigzagged his way south and east, dropping me in front of a nondescript two-story brick building on Fletcher near South Street Seaport. Its architecture was early warehouse, but the brilliantly polished brass plate next to the front door with the words MILLS/LAKE/RYMAN on it proclaimed that I was at the right place.

  My watch read eight-twenty-nine as I walked into the small lobby, which instantly dispelled all images of a warehouse. So did the vision behind the semicircular receptionist’s desk. “May I help you?” she said softly with a practiced smile. The movement to brush a curl of butterscotch hair from her cheek was equally rehearsed.

  “Sounds good to me. I’m here to see Mr. Mills,” I said, letting her see that my teeth had been polished last week.

  “Your name please?”

  I pronounced it, and she picked up the orange phone, which perfectly matched the color of an abstract tapestry on the wall behind her. “Yes, he’s expecting you,” she said, hanging up and putting her smile on automatic pilot again. “Up the steps and all the way down to the left, as far as you can go.”

  I thanked her and climbed one flight of carpeted stairs, emerging on an upper floor that had fluorescent lighting and cubicles separated by white, five-foot-high partitions. I walked down a long corridor to an open area where another vision, this one wearing dark hair and a dark green blouse, sat behind a white desk. “Ah, you are Mr. Goodwin,” she said in a voice that made me want to hear her talk some more. And she knew how to make a smile seem genuine, too. “Please go right on in.” She gestured toward one of two doorways behind her.

  Mills’s office was smaller than I had expected. It was a corner room all right, and with windows on two sides, but given the view from them, so what? I figured he must be a railroad buff, because the walls were covered with splashy Art-Deco-style posters that looked like they came from the 1920s. They had chic, smug-looking women on them and advertised trains serving London, Paris, Venice, and a bunch of other towns I never heard of. As I walked in, Mills was on the phone behind a cluttered desk that was really a table. He was in his shirtsleeves, tie loosened, and wearing bright green suspenders. The dark crescents under his eyes had deepened. “Okay, I know that,” he said into the receiver, motioning me to a chair facing him. “Yeah, all right … I’ll take care of it, I’ll tell him. Yes, yes, I’ve gotta go. Good-bye.” He hung up and shook his head. “Goddamn prima donna. That was one of the commercial producers we use—he’s good, but he thinks he knows everything and he doesn’t get along with Boyd, who knows what our clients want. Somehow, I always end up in the middle. Enough of that. I see you found our little corner of Gotham. Want some coffee? Lisa can get you a cup—high-octane or decaf.”

  “No thanks, I’ve had my quota for the morning. It’s been years since I was in an advertising agency. The last time was up on Madison Avenue.”*

  “The business has changed in New York.” Mills leaned back and slipped his thumbs under his green suspenders. “Almost nobody’s on Madison any more—just a couple, including our fat cat buddies, Colmar and Conn. It’s just too damn expensive. A lot of the shops have moved west of Fifth Avenue or south, some of them, like us, way south. The big guys are pretty well scattered, and the little guys—again like us—could never afford Madison Avenue rents, anyway. But this is perfect.” He freed his thumbs and made a sweeping gesture with one arm. “Rehabbed building, used to be a small chemical company, office and labs and a shipping department, that sort of thing. Nothing fancy, as you can see. We don’t own the building, of course, but we got ourselves a good deal on the lease. Oh, and before I forget it, here’s your first installment, as requested.” He picked up an envelope and handed it to me. I opened it to find a cashier’s check for twenty-five big ones, made out to Nero Wolfe.

  “Thank you,” I told him. “Have you been in this building since the agency began?”

  “Practically. The three of us met while we were all working for one of the bigger agencies in Midtown—Bradley-Watts, you’ve probably heard of them. Anyway, we got to know each other pretty well, and we—Boyd, Sara, and I—started talking about how it would be to have our own shop. This seemed particularly logical because of our different skills. Although I was on the creative side early in my career, I’m really more a sales guy, a ‘Mr. Outside’ used to dealing with clients, most of whom are pretty demanding. Boyd and Sara are creatives who don’t care if they never see a client. Boyd’s a copywriter, one of the best anywhere, despite his weakness when it comes to the American vernacular.”

  “As in tinhorns?”

  Mills chuckled. “Yeah, as in tinhorns. And Sara’s strengths are in the art and graphics areas. So we felt we had a good balance, for starters. And our goals were modest. Nothing huge, mind you, just a nice-sized operation with only a few clients—but good ones.”

  “And, presto! You did it.”

  “Yes and no,” Mills said, leaning back and letting his arms dangle. “The ‘yes’ is that right now we’re close to the size that we originally visualized.
The ‘no’ is that we never wanted to have one client dominate our billings the way Cherr-o-key does.”

  “So why did it happen?” I asked.

  Mills raised his arms as if each hand held a hundred-pound barbell, then let them drop again. “Why does it ever happen? Greed, of course, the bald, unadulterated variety. When we first pitched Foreman two years ago, we didn’t figure we had a prayer of getting any of the Cherr-o-key business. Hell, we knew the guy was a bastard to deal with, but we also knew what kind of money went with the business. And I guess you could say we were like every other agency that’s taken him on: We thought we could tame him—will him to our way of thinking, you know? What folly.”

  “Hubris, as Mr. Wolfe would say.”

  “I know the word, and Wolfe’s right. Anyway, now you’re pretty well up-to-date.”

  “Pretty well. Anybody here ever work for Colmar and Conn?”

  Mills leaned forward and frowned, shaking his head. “I’m proud to say no to that. And nobody who’s over there ever worked here, either. So there’s no—” He stopped in midsentence, looking over my shoulder toward the doorway. I turned to see Sara Ryman standing with another woman, and neither of them looked as if they’d just won the lottery.

  “Rod, sorry to break in, but Boyd hasn’t showed up yet, and besides, Annie has something you need to hear—and Mr. Goodwin, too.” She didn’t bother to favor me with a glance. So much for detente.

  Mills got to his feet and introduced me to Annie Burkett, the art director Sara had yesterday referred to as “one of the best in the business.” I got a firm handshake and a questioning look from a face in which all the parts came together nicely, from a straight nose, wide gray eyes, and russet hair to cheekbones that belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine.

  “I haven’t told Annie why he’s here,” Sara said to Mills, still ignoring me. I began to see why her skills didn’t lie in client relations. “Maybe you should, before she starts.”

  “Absolutely,” Mills said as the women slipped into chairs on my right. “Archie Goodwin works for Nero Wolfe, the private detective, and the agency has just hired Wolfe to help us with our, uh … problem with Cherr-o-key.”

  “Which is also why Annie’s here,” Sara contributed.

  “Go ahead,” Mills told the young woman. “Goodwin knows all about this mess. Now what’s up?”

  Annie Burkett ran a hand through her hair and studied me. “Well, I just told Sara that I got a call last night—it was about eight-thirty—from a friend who works for … ”

  “Colmar and Conn.” Sara, ever helpful, finished the sentence for her. “It’s all right, Annie. I told you there’s nothing illegal about having acquaintances up there.”

  “Oh, I know. It’s just that right now they’re a dirty word around here—”

  “As they damn well should be,” Mills muttered.

  “Yes, that’s true.” Annie nodded. “Anyway, this friend—his name is Andy Swartz—called and told me he wanted to see me. He sounded awfully upset. I asked him what it was all about, and he said he didn’t want to talk about it on the phone. He asked if I could meet him that night for a drink. I told him I was just leaving for a class—I take French two nights a week—but that, yes, I could see him. I asked again what he wanted to see me about. All he would say was that it had to do with ‘the cherry drink business.’” Her voice had a soft Southern tinge.

  “Miss Burkett, were those his exact words?” I asked.

  “I think he said, ‘We need to talk about the cherry drink business.’”

  “That’s all?”

  She turned her palms up. Her cheeks flamed. “That’s all. He sounded pretty bent out of shape. I told him I’d meet him at eight tonight at Toohey’s, that’s a place on Bleecker in the Village.”

  “I know where it is. How do you happen to know this Andy Swartz?”

  “He used to see a friend of mine who worked in the promotion department at Flame and Flair magazine. Sometimes when I had a date, we’d all go out together. We’d joke a lot about being competitors in the advertising business.”

  “What does Swartz do at Colmar and Conn?”

  “He’s a creative director, and a very good one.”

  “That’s true,” Mills said. “He’s young, but he’s won a batch of awards already.”

  “Does he call you often?” I asked Annie.

  “Why, no,” she replied, eyes wider than usual. “In fact, I was surprised to hear from him. I hadn’t even seen Andy in, oh … a while.”

  “Have you ever dated him?”

  “No.”

  “Does he call you often?”

  “This was the first time,” she said, exasperation edging into her voice.

  “Any idea why he chose last night to call you?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “No, I—”

  “Mr. Goodwin, it’s obvious,” Sara Ryman said coldly. “This Swartz has some kind of information about how our work is getting leaked to C and C. He’s apparently an honest guy, and since Annie’s the only person he knows here, he wants to tell her about it.”

  “Are you sure that Miss Burkett is the only one at this agency that he knows?” I asked. “As Mr. Lake said yesterday, the advertising community is a small one.”

  Mills rapped a pen against his desk. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that. What about you two?”

  “I certainly don’t know him,” Sara said.

  Annie rubbed her cheek. Her gray eyes refused to meet mine. “If Andy has any other friends here, I’m not aware of it. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone here mention him.”

  “Well, I’m sure as hell anxious to find out what it is he wants to tell you.” Mills dropped the pen and hooked his thumbs under his suspenders again. “What are your thoughts, Mr. Goodwin?”

  “I don’t have any more clue than you do about what Swartz wants to tell Miss Burkett. However, I do feel it would be a good idea if I showed up at Toohey’s tonight, too.”

  “But Andy might not open up to me with someone else around,” Annie said, leaning forward in her chair and looking earnest.

  “Agreed, but he won’t know I’m around. I’ve been in Toohey’s, I know the layout. I assume you’ll sit in a booth—there’s lots of them there, and Swartz is going to want privacy. In the immortal words of Miles Archer, ‘You don’t have to look for me; I’ll see you all right.’ When Swartz unloads whatever it is that’s bugging him, you give a signal for me to come over, say a dropped napkin, and we’ll talk some more. Even Mr. Wolfe will tell you I’m pretty fair at worming information out of people who may not want it wormed out of them.”

  “Who’s Miles Archer?” Annie said, looking puzzled.

  Sara folded her arms disapprovingly. “Oh, he’s a character from The Maltese Falcon. Sounds to me like our Mr. Goodwin has been reading too many detective stories, or the movies made from them.”

  “By golly, you’ve got me,” I told her. “And here I threw that reference in just to impress you.”

  Sara sniffed. “You’re a parody of a detective. I think we can do nicely without your advice.”

  Once again Mills ran interference for his touchy partner.

  “I don’t agree,” he said. “I like the idea of Goodwin being there tonight. Like he said, he’s had a lot of experience getting people to talk, and Swartz might tell Annie only part of the story. Goodwin may be able to wring more out of him. Besides, I’d feel better if somebody else was around, in case Swartz … well, does something.”

  “Oh, God, you men all come out of the same mold,” Sara grumped. “You’ve been exposed to too damn many James Bond movies. What do you think the guy’s going to do, pull a gun—no, make that a ‘gat’—on Annie?”

  “Okay then, let’s leave it to her to decide,” Mills said, turning to Annie. “Do you want Goodwin there tonight, or not?”

  The shy gray eyes studied me again. Then, for the first time, she smiled, if only slightly, revealing two dimples. “Okay, I … yes, I guess th
at would be a good idea. I mean, I’m not afraid of Andy, although I agree that Mr. Goodwin would have a better chance of finding extra things out. But … ” She looked at me questioningly.

  “Yes?”

  “You wouldn’t get rough or anything like that, would you?”

  I suppressed a smile. “No, I wouldn’t get rough, Ms. Burkett. That’s really not my style, unless of course I’m treed or backed into a corner. And I don’t expect that to happen tonight.”

  “I don’t either,” she said, smiling again. “Although to be honest, I am kind of nervous about this.”

  “Don’t be,” I reassured her. “Before I leave, give me a quick description of Swartz.”

  “Well, he’s not all that tall—maybe two, three inches shorter than you are, probably three. Black hair, real curly, and it partly covers up his ears. Round face. Sometimes he wears glasses, the kind without rims.”

  “Build?”

  “About average. He’s not fat, but not real skinny either,” she said.

  “How old?”

  “About thirty-two, I think, but to me, he looks a little younger.”

  “Okay. Remember that you may not be able to spot me tonight, but I promise I’ll be where I can see you. And when you think Mr. Swartz has said all he’s going to say and you’re ready for me to make it a threesome, drop your napkin, or give it a good shove off the table. I guarantee that I’ll be standing next to you less than fifteen seconds after it flutters to the floor.”

  I couldn’t resist tossing that last bit in, strictly for Sara Ryman’s benefit. She obviously had visions of me sitting up nights reading Chandler and Hammett and studying Sean Connery’s stalking tactics and mannerisms and saloon demeanor on the VCR.

  Who am I to disillusion her?

  *Before Midnight, by Rex Stout.

  SEVEN

  I SPENT THE REST OF the morning moving through the M/L/R offices and meeting staff members, who looked at me with expressions varying from curiosity to suspicion and downright hostility. Mills escorted me around, introducing me as “Archie Goodwin, who with Nero Wolfe is helping us look into our problem with Cherr-o-key.” To show I was working, I went through the motions of asking a few questions here and there, getting suitably bland answers for my efforts. Nobody I asked said they knew Swartz, although most of them had heard of him.