by Rex Stout
"Over six years, Mr. Goodwin," he said. "This," he told Purley, "is the famous detective, Mr. Archie Goodwin. Mr. Nero Wolfe comes here too."
"The hell he does." Purley, scowling at me, said in a certain tone, "Famous."
I shrugged. "Just a burden. A damn nuisance."
"Yeah. Don't let it get you down. You just dropped in for a shave?"
"Yes, sir. Write it down, and I'll sign it."
"Who's your barber?"
"Ed."
"That's Graboff. He's busy."
"So I see. I'm not pressed. I'll chat with you or read a magazine or get a manicure."
"I don't feel like chatting." Purley had not relaxed the scowl. "You know a guy that works here named Carl Vardas? And his wife, Tina, a manicure?"
"I know Carl well enough to pay him a dime for my hat and coat and tie. I can't say I know Tina, but of course I've seen her here. Why?"
"I'm just asking. There's no law against your coming here for a shave, since you need one and this is where you come, but the sight of either you or Wolfe makes me want to scratch. No wonder, huh? So to have it on the record in case it's needed, have you seen Vardas or his wife this morning?"
"Sure I have." I stretched my neck to get closer to his ear and whispered, "I put them in our front room and told them to wait, and beat it up here to tell you, and if you'll step on it-"
"I don't care for gags," he growled. "Not right now. They killed a cop, or one of them did. You know how much we like that." 68
I did indeed and adjusted my face accordingly. "The hell they did. One of yours? Did I know him?"
"No. A dick from die Twentieth Precinct, Jake Wallen."
"Where and when?"
"This morning, right here. The other side of that partition, in her manicure booth. Stuck a long pair of scissors in his back and got his pump. Apparently he never made a sound, but them massage things are going here off and on. By the time he was found they had gone. It took us an hour to find out where they lived, and when we got there they had been and got their stuff and beat it."
I grunted sympathetically. "Is it tied up? Prints on the scissors or something?"
"We'll do all right without prints," Purley said grimly. "Didn't I say they lammed?"
"Yes, but," I objected, not aggressively, "some people can get awful scared at sight of a man with scissors sticking in his back. I wasn't intimate with Carl, but he didn't strike me as a man who would stab a cop just on principle. Was Wallen here to take him?"
Purley's reply was stopped before it got started. Tom had finished with his customer, and the two men with hats on in the row of chairs ranged along the partition were keeping their eyes on the customer as he went to the rack for his tie. Tom, having brushed himself off, had walked to the front and up to us. Usually Tom bounced around like a high-school .kid�from his chair to the wall cabinet and back again, or over to the steamer behind the partition for a hot towel�in spite of his white-haired sixty-some years, but today his feet dragged. Nor did he tell me hello, though he gave me a sort of a glance before he spoke to Purley.
"It's my lunchtime, Sergeant. I just go to the cafeteria at the end of the hall."
Purley called a name that sounded like Joffe, and one of the dicks on a chair by the partition got up and came.
"Yerkes is going to lunch," Purley told him. "Go along and stay with him."
"I want to phone my wife," Tom said resolutely.
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"Why not? Stay with him, Joffe." Yes, sir.
They went, with Tom in front. Purley and I moved out of the way as the customer approached to pay his check and Fielder sidled around behind the cash register.
"I thought," I said politely, "you had settled for Carl and Tina. Why does Tom have to have company at lunch?"
"We haven't got Carl and Tina."
"But you soon will have, the way the personnel feels about cop-killers. Why pester these innocent barbers? If one of them gets nervous and slices a customer, then what?"
Purley merely snarled.
I stiffened. "Excuse me. I'm not so partial to cop-killers either. It seemed only natural to show some interest. Luckily I can read, so I'll catch it in the evening paper."
"Don't bust a gut." Purley's eyes were following the customer as he walked to the door and on out past the flatfoot. "Sure we'll get Carl and Tina, but if you don't mind we'll just watch these guys' appetites. You asked what Jake Wallen was here for."
"I asked if he came to take Carl."
"Yeah. I think he did but I can't prove it yet. Last night around midnight a couple of pedestrians, two women, were hit by a car at Eighty-first and Broadway. Both killed. The car kept going. It was found later parked at Ninety-sixth and Broadway, just across from the subway entrance. We haven't found anyone who saw the driver, either at the scene of the accident or where the car was parked. The car was hot. It had been parked by its owner at eight o'clock on Forty-eighth Street between Ninth and Tenth, and was gone when he went for it at eleven-thirty."
Purley paused to watch a customer enter. The customer got past the flatfoot with Joel Fickler's help, left things at the rack, and went and got on Jimmie's chair. Purley returned to me. "When the car was spotted by a squad car at Ninety-sixth and Broadway with a dented fender and blood and other items that tagged it, the Twentieth Precinct sent Jake Wallen to it. He was the first one to give it a look. 70
Later, of course, there was a gang from all over, including the laboratory, before they moved it. Wallen was supposed to go home and to bed at eight in the morning when his trick ended, but he didn't. He phoned his wife that he had a hot lead on a hit-and-run killer and was going to handle it himself and grab a promotion. Not only that, he phoned the owner of the car at his home in Yonkers, and asked him if he had any connection with the Goldenrod Barber Shop or knew anyone who had, or if he had ever been there. The owner had never heard of it. Of course we've collected all this since we were called here at ten-fifteen and found Wallen DOA with scissors in his back."
I was frowning. "But what gave him the lead to this shop?"
"We'd like to know. It had to be something he found in the car, we don't know what. The goddam fool kept it to himself and came here and got killed."
"Didn't he show it or mention it to anyone here?"
"They say not. All he had with him was a newspaper. We've got it--today's News, the early, out last night. We can't spot anything in it. There was nothing in his pockets, nothing on him, that helps any."
I humphed. "Fool is right. Even if he had cleaned it up � Jbe wouldn't have grabbed a promotion. He would have been more apt to grab a uniform and a beat." ' "Yeah, he was that kind. There's too many of that kind. i< Not to mention names, but these precinct men--"
A phone rang. Fickler, by the cash register, looked at Pur- |,ley, who stepped to the counter where the phone was and answered the call. It was for him. When, after a minute, it seemed to be going on, I moved away and had gone a few Places when a voice came.
"Hello, Mr. Goodwin."
It was Jimmie, Wolfe's man, using comb and scissors above !iis customer's right ear. He was the youngest of the staff,
out my age, and by far the handsomest, with curly lips and rhite teeth and dancing dark eyes. I had never understood |#hy he wasn't at Framinelli's. I told him hello.
7i
"Mr. Wolfe ought to be here," he said.
Under the circumstances I thought that a little tactless, and was even prepared to tell him so when Ed called to me from two chairs down. "Fifteen minutes, Mr. Goodwin? All right?"
I told him okay, I would wait, went to the rack and undressed to my shirt, and crossed to one of the chairs over by the partition, next to the table with magazines. I thought it would be fitting to pick up a magazine, but I had already read the one on top, the latest New Yorker, and the one on top on the shelf below was the Time of two weeks ago. So I leaned back and let my eyes go, slow motion, from left to right and back again. Though I had been coming there for six years I d
idn't really know those people, in spite of the reputation barbers have as conversationalists. I knew that Fielder, the boss, had once been attacked bodily there in the shop by his ex-wife; that Philip had had two sons killed in World War II; that Tom had once been accused by Fickler of swiping lotions and other supplies and had slapped Fickler's face; that Ed played the horses and was always in debt; that Jimmie had to be watched or he would take magazines from the shop while they were still current; and that Janet, who had only been there a year, was suspected of having a sideline, maybe dope peddling. Aside from such items as those, they were strangers.
Suddenly Janet was there in front of me. She had come from around the end of the partition, and not alone. The man with her was a broad-shouldered husky, gray-haired and gray-eyed, with an unlit cigar slanting up from a corner of his mouth. His eyes swept the whole shop, and since he started at the far right he ended up at me.
He stared. "For God's sake," he muttered. "You? Now what?"
I was surprised for a second to see Inspector Cramer himself, head of Manhattan Homicide, there on the job. But even an inspector likes to be well thought of by the rank and file, and here it was no mere citizen who had met his end but
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one of them. The whole force would appreciate it. Besides, I have to admit he's a good cop.
"Just waiting for a shave," I told him. "I'm an old customer here. Ask Purley."
Purley came over and verified me, but Cramer checked with Ed himself. Then he drew Purley aside, and they mumbled back and forth a while, after which Cramer summoned Philip and escorted him around the end of the partition.
Janet seated herself in the chair next to mine. She looked even better in profile than head on, with her nice chin and straight little nose and long home-grown lashes. I felt a little in debt to her for the mild pleasure I had got occasionally as I sat in Ed's chair and glanced at her while she worked on the customer in the next chair.
"I was wondering where you were," I remarked.
She turned to me. She wasn't old enough to have wrinkles or seams but she looked old enough then. She was putting a strain on every muscle in her face, and it certainly showed.
"Did you say something?" she asked.
"Nothing vital. My name's Goodwin. Call me Archie."
"I know. You're a detective. How can I keep them from having my picture in the paper?"
"You can't if they've already got it. Have they?"
"I think so. I wish I was dead."
"I don't." I made it not loud but emphatic.
"Why should you? I do. My folks in Michigan think I'm acting or modeling. I leave it vague. And here--oh, my God."
Her chin worked, but she controlled it.
"Work is work," I said. "My parents wanted me to be a college president, and I wanted to be a second baseman, and look at me. Anyhow, if your picture gets printed and it's a good likeness, who knows what will happen?"
"This is my Gethsemane," she said.
That made me suspicious, naturally. She had mentioned acting. "Come off it," I advised her. "Think of someone else. Think of the guy that got stabbed--no, he's out of it--think of his wife, how do you suppose she feels? Or Inspector
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Cramer, with the job he's got. What was he asking you just now?"
She didn't hear me. She said through clamped teeth, "I only wish I had some guts."
"Why? What would you do?"
"I'd tell all about it."
"All about what?"
"About what happened."
"You mean last night? Why not try it out on me and see how it goes? That doesn't take guts, just go ahead and let it come, keep your voice down and let it flow."
She didn't hear a word. Her ears were disconnected. She kept her brown eyes, under the long lashes, straight at me.
"How it happened this morning. How I was going back to my booth after I finished Mr. Levinson in Philip's chair, and he called me into Tina's booth and he seized me, with one hand on my throat so I couldn't scream, and there was no doubt at all what he intended, so I grabbed the scissors from the shelf and, without realizing what I was doing, plunged them into him with all my strength, and his grip on me loosened, and he collapsed onto the chair. That's what I would do if I had any guts and if I really want a successful career the way I say I do. I would have to be arrested and have a trial, and then--"
"Hold it. Your pronouns. Mr. Levinson called you into Tina's booth?"
"Certainly not. That man that got killed." She tilted her head back. "See the marks on my throat?"
There was no mark whatever on her smooth pretty throat.
"Good Lord," I said. "That would get you top billing anywhere."
"That's what I was saying."
"Then go ahead and tell'it."
"I can't! I simply can't! It would be so darned vulgar."
Her full face was there, only sixteen inches away, with the muscles no longer under strain, the closest I had ever been to it, and there was no question about how lovely it was. Under different circumstances my reaction would have
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been merely normal and healthy, but at the moment I could have slapped it with pleasure. I had felt a familiar tingle at the base of my spine when I thought she was going to open up about a midnight ride up Broadway, probably with one of her co-workers, possibly with the boss himself, and then she had danced off into this folderol.
She needed a lesson. "I understand your position," I said, "a girl as sweet and fine and strong as you, but it's bound to come out in the end, and I want to help. Incidentally, I am not married. I'll go to Inspector Cramer right now and tell him about it. He'll want to take photographs of your throat. I know the warden down at the jail and I'll see that you get good treatment, no rough stuff. Do you know any lawyers?"
She shook her head, answering, I thought, my question about lawyers, but no. She didn't believe in answering questions. "About your being married," she said, "I hadn't even thought. There was an article in the American magazine last month about career girls getting married. Did you read it?"
"No. I may be able to persuade the district attorney to make it a manslaughter charge instead of murder, which would please your folks in Michigan." I drew my feet back and slid forward on the chair, ready to rise. "Okay, I'll go tell Cramer."
"That article was silly," she said. "I think a girl must get her career established first. That's why when I see an attractive man I never wonder if he's married; by the time I'm ready for one these will be too old. That's why I wouldn't ask you if you know anyone in show business, because I wouldn't take help from a man. I think a girl--"
If Ed hadn't signaled to me just then, his customer having left the chair, there's no telling how it would have ended. It would have been vulgar to slap her, and no words would have been any good since she was deaf, but surely I might have thought of something that would have taken effect. As it was, I didn't want to keep Ed waiting so I got up and crossed to his chair and climbed in.
"Just scrape the face," I told him.
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He got a bib on me and tilted me back. "Did you phone?" he asked. "Did that fathead forget again?"
I told him no, that I had been caught midtown with a stubble and an unforeseen errand for which I should be presentable and added, "You seem to have had some excitement."
He went to the cabinet for a tube of prefabricated lather, got some on me, and started rubbing. "We sure did," he said with feeling. "Carl, you know Carl, he killed a man in Tina's booth. Then they both ran. I'm sorry for Tina, she was all right, but Carl, I don't know." He moved to my left cheek.
I couldn't articulate with him rubbing. He finished, went to wipe his fingers, and came with the razor. I rolled my head into position, to the left, and remarked, "I'd sort of watch it, Ed. It's a little risky to go blabbing that Carl killed him unless you can prove it."
"Well, he had fits." The razor was as sharp and slick as usual. "What did he run for?"
"I couldn't say. But the
cops are still poking around here, even an inspector."
"Sure they are, they're after evidence. You gotta have evidence." Ed pulled the skin tight over the jawbone. "For instance, they ask me did he show me anything or ask me anything about some article from the shop. I say he didn't. That would be evidence, see?"
"Yes, I get it." I could only mumble. "What did he ask you?"
"Oh, all about me, name, married or single�you know, insurance men, income tax, they all ask the same things. But when he asked about last night I told him where to get off, but then I thought what the hell and told him. Why not? That's my philosophy, Mr. Goodwin�why not? It saves trouble."
He was prying my chin up, doing the throat. That clean, I rolled my head to the right to turn the other cheek.
"Of course," he said, "the police have to get it straight, but they can't expect us to remember everything. When he came in first he talked with Fickler, maybe five minutes. Then Fickler took him to Tina's booth, and he talked with Tina. 76
that Fielder sent Philip in, and then Carl and then lie and then Tom and then me and then Janet. I think pretty good to remember that." i I mumbled agreement. He was at the corner of my mouth. "But I can't remember everything, and they can't make e. I don't know how long it was after Janet came back out fore Fielder went to Tina's booth and found him dead. pfhey ask me was it nearer ten minutes or nearer fifteen, but %% say I had a customer at the time, we all did but Philip, and !>I don't know. They ask me how many of us went behind the Wrartition after Janet came out, to the steamer or the vat or to :>get the lamp or something, but I say again I had a customer I at the time, and I don't know, except I know I didn't go because I was trimming Mr. Howell at the time. I was working the top when Fickler yelled and came running out. They can ask Mr. Howell."
"They probably have," I said, but to no one, because Ed had gone for a hot towel.
He returned and used the towel and got the lilac water. Patting it on, he resumed, "They ask me exactly when Carl and Tina went, they ask me that twenty times, but I can't say and I won't say. Carl did it all right, but they can't prove it by me. They've gotta have evidence, but I don't. Cold towel today?"