Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 43

by The Father Hunt

  As I said, I nearly let it slide by. It hit me a little later as I was telling my jaw and cheek muscles to get set to hide another yawn, and I made a mistake. I forgot the yawn and my jaws opened wide for it. That led me into a second mistake, which often happens. Preferring not to let Thorne know that he had told us a fact which might be significant, I tried to go on as I had been for an hour, looking more awake and alert than I was, and I overdid it, but by that time his talking trance was in command and it would have made no impression on him if I had wiggled my ears.

  But Wolfe noticed it, and that was what kept him from going on and on and making a night of it unless Thorne ran down. So it was only half past one and they had only got to the middle of Monday afternoon when he looked at the clock and said he was too tired to continue, and Thorne must be too. Miss Denovo would deeply appreciate Thorne’s cooperation, and he and Mr. Goodwin would see if they could find a hint in any of the items Thorne had supplied. As Thorne used both hands on the chair arm to get to his feet I was thinking that I would have to steer him out and down the stoop steps, and possibly even go and get the Heron to cart him home, but he did all right. Going down the hall he put a hand to the wall once to steady himself, and outside he stood and brought his shoulders up and took a couple of deep breaths, but he made it down to the sidewalk without any trouble. I stayed to watch him for about thirty paces. Okay.

  As I entered the office Wolfe growled at me, “You got something. What?”

  I went to my desk and sat. “Nothing would please me more than to catch one you should have caught and missed, but I can’t claim it on this. I think we’ve got a nibble. I don’t know whether it’s the father or the murderer, or possibly both, but I think it’s a nibble. Last Sunday afternoon at Miss Rowan’s place in the country three people came who had not been invited and weren’t expected. Two of them were friends of hers—well, acquaintances; I had met them there before—who have a place half an hour away. The third one was their weekend house guest, a man named Floyd Vance. They said they had mentioned to him that Archie Goodwin was often at Lily Rowan’s for weekends, and he had got them to drive him over because he wanted to meet me. I gathered from what he said that what he really wanted was to meet you. He said he was a public-relations counselor. He said that if anybody needed expert handling of his public image a private detective did, and he would like to create a presentation to propose to you. He also said that if we were working on a case and I would tell him about it, he could use that as a basis for the presentation. At that, naturally, I looked and listened, but decided he was just trying to find another sucker for his racket. I now sincerely hope I was wrong. Two comments. One, there are probably very few Floyd Vances around. Two, allowing for the twenty-three years, he fits Salvatore Manzoni’s description just fine.”

  “I would like some beer,” Wolfe said.

  “You’re already two bottles ahead and it’s going on two o’clock.”

  “Satisfactory,” he said, leaving it open whether he meant the beer or the nibble. He gripped the edge of the desk to push his chair back, rose, and headed for the hall. For a second I thought he was walking out, to go to bed with the nibble, but he turned left in the hall. He was going for beer. When he returned he had a bottle and a glass in one hand and a snifter in the other. He put the bottle and glass on his desk, got the cognac bottle from the stand and poured a couple of ounces in the snifter.

  “You might easily have missed it,” he said, and went around to his chair, opened the bottle, and poured.

  I whirled the brandy around in the snifter and said, “I almost did. If it’s only a coincidence I’m through with the detective business for good. We’ll soon know, one way or another. The quickest and most obvious would be to have Salvatore Manzoni take a look at the public-relations Floyd Vance, but twenty-three years is a long time and it might not prove anything. Of course the receptionist at Thorne’s could settle it that it was the public-relations Floyd Vance that she shooed out that May day, but that would only prove that it’s a real nibble.”

  I put the snifter to my lips and tilted my head back enough to get a good gulp. Wolfe, having waited until the bead was down to precisely the right level, raised his glass.

  “Fingerprints,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “We get his and give them to Cramer and they match or they don’t.”

  “No.” He licked foam from his lips. “If they matched we’d be in a fix. Mr. Cramer would have a murderer, but we would still need a father, and he would be locked up and inaccessible. You said he wanted to meet me.”

  “Yeah. If he’s it, what he really wanted was to find out if we had got anywhere and if so how far. How he knew we were on it is a question, but we don’t have to answer it. Sure, I could get him here, and then what? Do you think you could ask him anything that would help without giving him a guess that we’re on him? I don’t. There would be the same risk in seeing the receptionist at Thorne’s. She might tell him.”

  He poured beer, leaned back and closed his eyes, and pushed his lips out. He pulled them in and pushed them out again. That was a new one; it had never happened before. The lip act, leaning back and closing his eyes and working his lips out and in, was routine; that meant he was working, working hard, and interruptions were not allowed. But that was the first time he had ever started it with beer just poured, and how would he handle it? How would he know when the bead was down to the right level with his eyes shut? By God, he did. When it was down to where it would just cover his lips as he drank, he opened his eyes, reached for the glass, drank, put the glass down, leaned back, closed his eyes, licked the foam off, and sent his lips out and in. I decided he must have practiced it when I wasn’t around.

  I usually time the lip act, since there’s nothing else to do except try to guess what he’ll come up with. That time it was three minutes and ten seconds. He opened his eyes, straightened up, and asked, “They’re coming at nine o’clock?”

  I said yes.

  “I suppose a public-relations person has an address? An office?”

  I got the Manhattan book and found the page. “Four-ninety Lexington Avenue. Not the best. It should be Madison.”

  “Tell them to trace him back and cover nineteen forty-four thoroughly, but not to risk prompting him. That will be no problem with Saul and Fred, but with Orrie make it emphatic as usual.”

  “Right.” I had emptied the snifter during the lip act, and as he pushed his chair back I went to pour another swallow. It might put me to sleep a few seconds quicker.

  Chapter 12

  Not a fly. Flies don’t buzz. Mosquito. No. Too loud. What the … Oh. House phone, for God’s sake. I opened an eye, stretched an arm and got it, said, “Well?”

  Fritz’s voice said, “Good morning, Archie. He wants you.”

  I glared at the clock on the bedstand, realized that it actually said twenty-five minutes past eight, and swung my feet around. Figuring out whether I had failed to turn the alarm on, or it had tried to stir me and it had failed, would have to wait. I called for will power, gave it time to deliver, made it to my feet, concentrated on locating the door, and stepped.

  The door of Wolfe’s room, which is above the kitchen, at the rear of the house where he gets the sun in winter, stood open. When I entered, with my bare feet making no sound, he was seated at the table, with the Times propped on the rack, dropping a bit of toast into the sauce of eggs au beurre noir. When I cleared my throat he got the toast to and into his mouth before he turned his head.

  “The time is out of joint,” I said.

  He frowned. “I don’t talk in quotations, even Shakespeare, and neither do you.”

  “Miss Rowan does sometimes and she likes that one. As you see, I am no longer on daylight saving. Apparently you are.” He was fully dressed: a nice clean yellow shirt with narrow maroon stripes, a maroon tie, and a brown summerweight self-striped suit. Up in the plant rooms he would shed the jacket and put on a smock.

  He swal
lowed a bite of egg and said, “It’s nearly nine o’clock.”

  “By daylight saving, yes, sir. I’ll brief them while I’m eating breakfast.”

  “Only Saul. We won’t risk it with Fred and Orrie. Tell them to be on call. You and Saul will decide on your approach and you may need them later. First, is he involved? If yes, merely as the murderer, with a motive that doesn’t concern us, or also as the father? We can’t waste our time and the client’s money just on finding a culprit for Mr. Cramer.” He dropped toast in the sauce.

  “I’m waking up,” I said. “Or I got ideas in my sleep. Last night I said we don’t have to answer the question how he knew we were on it, but if he’s the father it may be important. If he’s the father there’s some connection between him and Cyrus Jarrett, or why did Jarrett send the checks? And if Jarrett told him that Nero Wolfe is out to find the father, and if he is also the murderer, what about Miss Denovo? We might lose a client. I doubt if you want another casualty like Simon Jacobs on the record, and I certainly don’t. I suggest that we’d better get her out of circulation.”

  He made a face. “Fritz.”

  That was what he calls flummery. It was true that when, for security reasons, it had been necessary to have a female guest sleeping and eating in the South Room, which is above Wolfe’s, Fritz hadn’t been able to hide how he felt about it, but Wolfe hadn’t even tried to hide how he felt.

  “I’m aware,” I said, “that if we did it again Fritz might leave and you might too. I don’t mean here. She spends most of her days at Miss Rowan’s, and she could spend her nights there too until we get him or drop him. Miss Rowan has two spare rooms. I’ll suggest it. Anything else?”

  He said no and I went back up a flight to do in ten minutes what usually takes me thirty. By the time I got down to the kitchen, having stopped in the office to tell Fred and Orrie that Saul and I were going to pick up a trail and might need them later, my fog was starting to clear.

  A detective is supposed to get onto things and people, but I gave up long ago trying to get onto Fritz all the way, so I didn’t bother to try to guess how he had known Fred and Orrie would be leaving and Saul would be staying. He knows Saul loves his eggs au beurre noir, and there were two chairs and two places ready at my breakfast table. Saul went to the range to watch him baste, and said he had tried it a hundred times but it never tasted the same. As we ate I told Saul about Floyd Vance and the various angles, and we took our second cups of coffee to the office to consider ways and means. Wolfe had said that the first question was, Is he involved? but Saul agreed with me that it couldn’t do any harm to regard that as answered and proceed accordingly. He also agreed that it would help if he had a look at him, and I got at the phone and dialed the number of Nathaniel Parker, the lawyer.

  “Yes, Archie?” I like the way Parker says yes, Archie. He knows that handling something for Wolfe can be interesting but that it may be tough and ticklish, so the yes, Archie is half glad and half sad.

  I told him it was nothing much this time. “Just a little chore. A man named Floyd Vance has an office at Four-ninety Lexington Avenue. He’s a counselor, but not at law, at public relations, which as you know is a much newer profession. The chore is to ring him and tell him you have a client who is thinking of engaging his services, and you would like to send a man to discuss it with him. The name of the man is Saul Panzer, whose qualifications you know about. He can go any time, the sooner the better. I’m going out, but Saul will be here to take your call. You have the name? Floyd Vance.”

  “I have it. What if he wants particulars?”

  “You’re not prepared to give him any.”

  “That’s a good way to put it. I am certainly not prepared. Give the genius my regards.”

  He meant it, but he knew I knew exactly what he would put in a long footnote. I dialed another familiar number to make another request and then went up to my room for a quick shave and change. The ten minutes before breakfast hadn’t been enough.

  It was too hot to walk the more than two miles to East Sixty-third Street, and anyway I had told Lily I would be there by eleven-thirty. It was five minutes short of that when I pushed the button at the penthouse door and got a mild surprise when Mimi opened it. When I am expected at a certain hour it’s nearly always Lily who comes, I think on account of some kind of a notion she has about a maid admitting a man who has a key. I have never tried to dope it. Other people’s notions are none of my business unless they get in the way. Then I got a second mild surprise. I had told Lily on the phone that I wanted to see both her and Miss Denovo, but even so, why were they out on the terrace at that hour with a pitcher of iced tea when they should have been inside working? The penthouse was air-conditioned. Was Lily actually still … To hell with it. I was working. I moved another chair over, between them, sat, accepted an offer of tea with lime and mint, and said, “Don’t mind my manners, I have a busy day ahead.” I turned to Lily. “We’re working on a problem for Miss Denovo. We’ve been on it—”

  “Archie! No.”

  That was an example of a client’s notion getting in the way. “I’m talking,” I told her distinctly and returned to Lily. “It’s very personal and she doesn’t want anyone to know about it, not even you, and I’m proud and happy that she trusts me so much that she calls me Archie, so about her problem I’ll only say that she is not responsible for it. Other people created it; she merely wants to solve it. She came to see Nero Wolfe two weeks ago today.”

  “Why do you—” Amy started, and stopped.

  Lily was smiling at me. “Olé, Escamillo,” she said, and put a kiss on a fingertip and flipped it to me.

  “Last night,” I told Amy, “there was a development. With Miss Rowan here I can’t give you the details, and I wouldn’t anyhow at this stage. But it is now more than a wild guess that your mother’s death wasn’t just an accidental hit-and-run, that it was deliberate murder, and if so it’s possible that he has ideas about you. We don’t know—”

  “He? Who?”

  “You have probably never heard the name we’re interested in, and you won’t hear it now. We don’t know what motive he might have had for your mother, or if he has one for you, but once in a situation like this we made a bad mistake and once is enough.” I turned to Lily. “Can she stay here? I mean stay. Not even go out in the hall. This terrace is okay; I doubt if he has a helicopter. Until we know more than we do now. Perhaps just a couple of days, but it could be a couple of weeks. You could get a lot of work done on the book.”

  “Why not?” Lily said. “Certainly.”

  Amy was squinting at me, squinting and frowning. “But you can’t expect me … You can’t just tell me …” She looked at Lily. “If you don’t mind, Miss Rowan, I want to ask him something. I mean alone.”

  “I don’t mind,” Lily said, “but I know him better than you do. He’s working. When he’s playing he’s wonderful—usually—but when he’s working he’s impossible. He said he wouldn’t give you any details, but if you want to try I don’t mind.”

  “I do,” I told Amy. “I’ve got things to do, and anyway there’s nothing I could or would tell you. This development may be a dud, and I’ve got to find out.” I stood up. “You’ll want to go to your apartment to bring things, but don’t take all day.” To Lily: “The standard rate for bodyguarding is six dollars an hour, but you shouldn’t count the hours working on the book.”

  “May I take her to the country for the weekend?”

  “No. It’s barely possible we’ll need her.”

  “You didn’t drink the tea.”

  “And I’m thirsty.” I picked up the glass, took a couple of swallows, kissed the top of her head, and went.

  Before long the day will come, maybe in a year or two, possibly as many as five, when I won’t be able to write any more of these reports because it will be so close to impossible to move around in the city of New York that doing detective work will be restricted to phone calls and distances you can walk, and what could anyone
detect? It took a taxi forty-nine minutes that Friday to cover the four miles from East Sixty-third Street to the building where the New York Telephone Company keeps a file of old directories available for researchers, but once there, I needed only nine minutes to learn that Vance, Floyd, was listed in the 1944 Manhattan directory and his address had been Ten East Thirty-ninth Street. It had to be a business address, because there were no residential buildings in that block. That was satisfactory on two counts: one, that he had been around in 1944, and two, that his office had been in walking distance of Tufitti’s restaurant on East Forty-sixth Street for lunch or dinner. The next step, naturally, was to have a look at Ten East Thirty-ninth Street, but it had to wait because Saul was expected for lunch and a conference. When my taxi turned into Thirty-fifth Street from Ninth Avenue, Saul was just getting out of one double-parked in front of the old brownstone.

  The next hour, at the lunch table, provided nourishment for both my stomach and brain. For the stomach, sweetbreads amandine in patty shells and cold green-corn pudding. For the brain, a debate on the question whether music, any music, has, or can have, any intellectual content. Wolfe said no and Saul said yes. I backed Saul because he weighs only about half as much as Wolfe, but I thought he made some very good points, which impressed me because one recent Thursday evening at his apartment he had been playing a piece by Debussy, I think it was, on the piano for Lon Cohen and me while we waited for the others to come for poker, and Lon had said something about the piece’s intellectual force, and Saul had said no music could possibly have intellectual force. As the woman said to the parrot, it depends on who you’re talking to.