Archie Meets Nero Wolfe

by Robert Goldsborough

  The millionaire held out the suitcase and the tall man grabbed it, backing toward the Chevrolet and keeping his gun leveled. He then stopped and knelt down, snapped the latches on the suitcase, and opened it, peering inside. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, he shut the case and rose, backing toward the car with his gun still drawn.

  “Daddy!” the anguished cry came again, and Williamson moved in the direction of the panicked little voice. I slipped out of the auto, and as I did a gunshot cracked. The man with the suitcase staggered once, recovered his balance, and fired, apparently at his attacker. I went into a prone position on the pavement and saw Orrie Cather fire and shout, “You child-snatching bastard, let’s see how you like this!”

  Cather and the tall man exchanged more shots, at least two or three each, and I heard a groan from somewhere behind me. It sounded like Fred Durkin’s voice. The tall man clutched his side and climbed into the front passenger seat of the Chevy as the car squealed off, bouncing along the rough pavement. I fired twice from a crouch, trying for one of its tires, but all I hit was the car’s trunk.

  “Durkin’s down!” Del Bascom yelled as he and Saul Panzer came running up to join Cather, who stood in the roadway cursing and watching the kidnappers’ car disappear onto the night. “Geez, Orrie, you know you weren’t supposed to start shooting,” Panzer growled as he knelt next to Fred.

  “I’m okay, Saul,” the big man said, struggling to get to his feet. “Just nicked me in the shoulder and spun me around. My pride got hurt the most.”

  “We’re over here,” Williamson cried. “Give us a hand.”

  We all went to a spot along the cast-iron zoo fence where Tommie Williamson was sobbing, and with good reason. The boy was handcuffed to the fence, although apparently otherwise unharmed. “Any way we can get these things off him?” his father pleaded as he knelt in the grass next to his son.

  “You got a tool kit in your trunk?” Panzer asked him.

  “Not with anything that would work here,” Williamson said as we began to hear the damnedest collection of noises from the darkness of the zoo—roaring and bleating and howling and cawing and other strange sounds coming from strange creatures. We had awakened the populace.

  We also had drawn the attention of some of a particular two-legged species. A patrol car, siren wailing, had drawn up and played a spotlight on us. “What’s all this and what about the gunfire?” a beefy patrolman demanded as he climbed out, revolver drawn and playing his flashlight on the strange tableau of a crying boy handcuffed to a fence and six men gathered around him.

  “It’s a long story,” I told him when no one else chose to respond.

  “I’ll just bet it is, son,” he said, “but my partner and me, we got us all kinds of time to listen.”

  CHAPTER 13

  First things first. The patrolman and his partner pulled metal cutters from their trunk, which they used to free a tearful Tommie Williamson from the fence. All of us, the two cops included, were anxious to learn details of the boy’s ordeal, but his father refused to let anybody talk to him.

  “I am Burke Williamson, you may have heard of me,” he said to the badges, “and my boy here was kidnapped the day before yesterday. Thanks to these men, I have him back, and I am now taking him home, whether you like it or not. I will be happy to discuss the matter with you or your superiors, but not tonight.”

  It was clear from their expressions that the coppers indeed knew who Williamson was, and they made no attempt to stop him as he picked up his still-sobbing son and carried him to the Pierce-Arrow. “All right, boys,” the patrolman, named Finnegan, said as Williamson drove away, “just stay right where you are while I call the precinct. Then we are all going down there so you can have a little chat with the lieutenant. He’s going to want to know just how this peaceful piece of the Bronx got turned into a Wild West shootout.”

  “Didn’t you hear Williamson!” Saul Panzer barked as Finnegan slid into the phone booth. “His kid got kidnapped, and while we’re standing here, they’re getting away, headed up Southern Boulevard in a black Chevy coupe.”

  “And who might all of you be?” Finnegan said, sticking out a chin as if daring someone to take a swing at it.

  “Like Williamson said, we found the boy,” Panzer said. “He hired us. We’re all private investigators.”

  “Police not good enough for the job, huh?” his partner put in as Finnegan used the instrument in the booth.

  Panzer wisely did not respond.

  “All right, all of you into your car, and we’ll be right behind you. Do you know where Webster Avenue is?” Finnegan asked Panzer, who nodded.

  “That’s where we’re headed, Fifty-Second Precinct. Not six blocks from here. We’ll be right behind you, and I wouldn’t try making a dash for it. This Black Maria of ours has a lot more horses under the hood than your rattletrap, and you fellas are in enough trouble as it is. When we get to the station, we’ll flash our headlights in case you don’t recognize it or maybe decide to drive right on by.”

  We all jammed into the Ford and lurched along the torn-up pavement of Southern Boulevard with the patrol car right behind us. “What the hell is Wolfe going to say?” Orrie Cather whined.

  “Let’s worry about that later,” Panzer snapped. “Fred, how are you? You need a doctor?”

  “Nah,” Durkin said, holding his shoulder. “Bullet just grazed me. I checked and there’s hardly a drop of blood. A bandage should do it, when we’ve got time.”

  “Have you all got your PI licenses with you?” Panzer asked. Each of us told him we did.

  We pulled up in front of the old station house and got marched inside by the pair of uniforms. “Sarge, these here are the desperadoes who was shooting up Southern Boulevard,” Finnegan proudly announced to the desk sergeant, a stocky specimen whose bushy gray mustache at least partly offset the total lack of hair on his shiny dome.

  “Don’t look much like desperadoes to me,” the sergeant observed with a smirk. “A pretty motley bunch, I’d say. The lieutenant’s wanting to see ’em.”

  We got herded down a long, dark hall with paint peeling on both the ceiling and the pictureless walls and ended up in a bleak room filled with straight-backed wooden chairs, bare wooden tables, and a couple of desks pushed up against the walls. Before we could sit down, a tall, lean guy in shirtsleeves, a necktie, and suspenders burst in and looked at each of us with a tight grin.

  “Cowboys right here in the Bronx, eh? What next? Sit down, all of you. I am Lieutenant R. L. Knapp, and that’s with a K, just in case anybody here wants to file a formal complaint about me. Now I want names, identification, and the whole story about what the hell was going on out there. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that you’ve got people in that part of town all riled up, to say nothing of the animals in the zoo.”

  We all pulled out our licenses and handed them over. “I will be damned, all private dicks,” Knapp said as he riffled through the IDs. “Does one of you speak for the whole bunch?”

  “I do,” Saul said, putting up his hand.

  “And you are ...?”

  “Panzer.”

  “Well, Panzer,” Knapp said, sitting on one corner of a table, “how about you telling me what all this is about. Don’t leave anything out, or you will have to go through it all again.”

  Saul did lay the whole thing out, and each time he mentioned Burke Williamson, the lieutenant tensed up.

  “Interesting, Mr. Williamson hiring you and this bunch to find the boy,” Knapp said derisively. “Just what is it that makes you so special?”

  “Most of us have been around awhile.”

  The cop lit a cigarette and scowled. “Let me put it another way: Who’s your boss? There hasta be one.”

  Saul shrugged, clearly uncomfortable. “It’s Nero Wolfe,” he murmured after a long pause.

  “That fat eccentric who never leaves home? Well, I’ll be double damned. So somehow he found out about the kidnapping and went to Williamson loo
king to get himself an assignment?”

  “Other way around. Williamson went to him.”

  “Huh! Okay, I’m going to call Mr. Nero Wolfe right now and get his story. You got his number handy, or do I have to look it up?”

  Saul gave him the number and the lieutenant dialed it from a phone on one of the desks. “Nero Wolfe? This is Lieutenant Knapp, that’s with a K, calling from the Fifty-Second Precinct in the Bronx. ... That’s right, the Bronx. I’ve got five private operatives here with me now who say they work for you. They are”—Knapp shuffled through our licenses—“Orville Cather, Archie Goodwin, Delbert Bascom, Saul Panzer, and Frederick Durkin. ... So, they are in your employ? Uh-huh ... yeah ... And Burke Williamson hired you to find his kid?”

  Knapp’s face flushed as he listened to whatever Wolfe was saying. “Yeah, I hear that the kid is back home safe now, but cases like this are really for the police, not amateurs ... no, the kidnappers—I should say alleged kidnappers—got away. They exchanged fire with your boys, right out there on the public street.... Oh, you’ve heard from Williamson ... he said what? ... well, I hardly think that’s being fair to the Police Department. We have caught countless kidnappers over the years.”

  The lieutenant ground out his cigarette on the table leg and passed a handkerchief over his forehead. “No, we don’t plan to hold them, although this town doesn’t need a bunch of vigilantes shooting up our neighborhoods ... We—What? He wants to speak to you,” Knapp snarled at Saul Panzer, handing him the telephone.

  “Yes, Mr. Wolfe, all right. We’ll be there. Yes, sir.” Saul cradled the receiver.

  “I wasn’t through talking to him!” Knapp bellowed.

  “Sorry, he hung up.”

  Knapp glowered at each of us in turn, exhaling loudly. “You’re a fine bunch, and a good reason why we need tougher standards for certifying private dicks in this burg and this state. Why don’t you all get the hell back to Manhattan where you belong and stay out of the Bronx? We don’t need the likes of you up here.” He tossed our licenses onto the table and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. For several seconds, we just looked at one another.

  Orrie Cather broke the silence. “I sure woulda liked to hear Wolfe’s end of that conversation,” he said, grinning.

  “I can guess at least some of what got said,” Del Bascom put in.

  “Instead of speculating, let’s get out of here before the lieutenant changes his mind,” Saul said. “Mr. Wolfe wants to see us at eleven a.m. tomorrow.”

  “These morning meetings at the brownstone are getting to be standard procedure,” I observed. “The Williamson boy is back at home safe. What needs to be talked about now?”

  Saul shot me a look. “Archie, you don’t know Nero Wolfe very well yet. Even though he’s earned his money from Williamson, he’s not going to be happy as long as the kidnappers are on the loose. It’s a matter of pride. As far as he’s concerned, the job is only half done.”

  “Then there’s that little matter of Inspector Cramer,” Durkin pointed out as we filed out of the precinct. “He still thinks we had something to do with that murder last night, and he’d like nothing better than to nail Wolfe—and us—with it. He figures the killing ties in somehow to the kidnapping.”

  Cather cut loose with a horse laugh. “For my money, Cramer’s got the last part figured out right. That wasn’t no coincidence.”

  “I think we all agree, Orrie,” Panzer said as he fired up the rented Model A and we rumbled away from Precinct Fifty-Two, happy to be saying our good-byes to the Bronx and Lieutenant Knapp with a K.

  Little did we know that before long, we all would be back in that borough.

  CHAPTER 14

  We five already were sipping coffee in Wolfe’s office the next morning when he came down from the plant rooms and got settled in the custom-made chair behind his desk. He nodded to each of us and rang for beer.

  “That cretin lieutenant in the Bronx tried to bedevil me, but, of course, you all know that. I trust you were able to leave the police station immediately after my telephone conversation with him,” Wolfe said.

  “Very quickly,” Saul Panzer said. “Something you told him seemed to upset the officer.”

  “No doubt,” Wolfe replied, the folds of his cheeks pulling away from the corners of his mouth in what I later learned was his version of a smile. “Mr. Williamson telephoned me minutes after his son had been freed. I told Lieutenant Knapp that the hotel executive contemplated writing a letter to one or more daily newspapers praising our efforts in getting his son released and questioning whether the New York Police Department could have done as well.”

  “Think Williamson really will go ahead with that letter?” I asked.

  “I confess the suggestion for such an epistle was mine, although when I broached the possibility, Mr. Williamson said he would consider it, so I was not indulging in total fabrication with the lieutenant,” Wolfe said. “Now to business. First, something for each of you.” He picked up a stack of envelopes and passed them to Panzer, who distributed them. I opened mine and pulled out a check, drawn on Wolfe’s account, for $500. Delighted, and figuring mine was rightly the smallest amount of the five, I was hardly surprised to see wide grins on the faces of the others.

  “Mr. Williamson will be here later to dine with me, at which time I plan to press him to let us continue the investigation,” Wolfe said, interlacing his hands over his middle mound. “As I had feared, he seems content to close the books on the matter, now that his son is safely home. I will not, of course, expect any further remuneration from him, as he already has been most generous. But I am going to request continued access to his household staff because I feel the solution both to the kidnapping and the Bronx murder lies close to the Williamson home. Here is my question to all of you: Considering the sums you just received, would you be willing to consider those amounts payment in advance for additional work on the case? If not, I fully understand.”

  “I can’t speak for the others,” Saul Panzer said, waving his envelope, “but this is more dough than I’ve made in the last eight months combined. Mark me down as still being on board.”

  “Me, too,” Del Bascom seconded. “I hate to see a job left unfinished.”

  Fred Durkin nodded his agreement. “Count me in. Like with Saul, this check is a godsend. It’s going to make me a hero to my wife, and that’s hard to do.”

  “I’m game,” Orrie Cather said. “What the hell, I got nothing else cooking.”

  “I’ll make it unanimous,” I chimed in. “Besides, I work for Del, and if he’s all tied up here, there’s nothing else for me back at the office. And on top of that, I want to see how all this plays out.”

  “Satisfactory,” Wolfe said. “I will inform Saul as to our next step, and he will relay that information to each of you. Two more things: Point number one, I was mildly disturbed to learn from Mr. Williamson that gunfire had broken out last night. Did you initiate that, Orrie?”

  Cather nodded, wearing a chagrined expression. “Yeah, I did, but by that time the kid was safe with his father over by the fence, and the kidnappers were about to take off. I just hated to see those bastards get away clean. I think I clipped one of ’em, although he didn’t go down and climbed into the car. Archie got off a couple of shots, too. They fired back, and Fred got nicked.”

  “It was nothin’, barely a scratch,” Durkin muttered.

  “The shots disturbed Mr. Williamson, although they were of little importance to him compared to his getting Tommie back. By the way, the boy appears to be unharmed and in good health,” Wolfe said. “Point number two, because none of you mentioned it, am I correct in assuming that the one kidnapper you saw, however briefly, bore no resemblance to anyone in the Williamsons’ employ?”

  “Correct by me,” Panzer said. “This guy was taller—and thinner—than any of the men: the butler; Bell, the chauffeur; Carstens, the gardener; and Simons, the stableman. Anybody else see it differently?”

  “Not me,
” Durkin said. “The guy was skinny as a rail, seemed like he was underfed.”

  “Unlike you,” Cather gibed as we all broke into laughter.

  “Gentlemen, we will gather again soon,” Wolfe said, rising. That was our clue to leave, and we did.

  Bascom and I took a taxi back to his office, talking about the case the whole way. “It’s the damnedest business I’ve ever been involved in, Archie,” he said, firing up a cigar and rolling down the cab’s back window. “Williamson’s got his boy back, which is the most important thing by far. But he doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by losing all that money.”

  “Well, he is said to be one of the richest men in New York, right?” I posed. “The ransom probably just put a small dent in his fat wallet.”

  “Maybe, but still, I think he’d want to get all that cabbage back. Pride and all. Plus, it’s possible that whoever took Tommie also plugged that grifter two nights ago on the street, which means that our Mr. Burke Williamson just might have a killer on his payroll.”

  “Be interesting to find out what the kid knows.”

  “That is, if Williamson will ever allow him to talk to anybody,” Bascom huffed.

  “Or if Williamson will even let us talk to his staff again,” I said. “Loyalty is a fine thing, but it can be carried too far.”

  Bascom took out a fin and slapped it down on his knee with a flourish. “Five says one of his employees is behind all this.”

  “No bet,” I laughed, “unless you give me odds—very long odds.”

  There was no reason for me to hang around the Bascom Detective Agency office, given that we had no business at present other than the Williamson case, so I left Del there with his paperwork and his cheap stogies and ambled down to my local bank to deposit the bulk of Wolfe’s check, taking out enough to make me feel really flush for the first time since arriving in New York.

  My next move, naturally enough, was to celebrate my new prosperity with a real dinner. For weeks, I had been walking by a restaurant in the East Sixties that seemed beyond my reach: starched linens, flowers on every table, polished silverware, crystal glasses, and elegant-looking customers who did not seem to be aware that we were in the midst of a depression.