by Rex Stout
I had no sight or sound of Wolfe. He was to let me know if and when there was something stirring, and I had been told how to reach him if I had to.
Meanwhile I had my schedule, and on the ninth day, a Friday, the first of September, it called for a move. Things looked right for it. Saul, on instructions, had let himself get spotted once, and Orrie twice, and Fred, without instructions, at least three times. I too had cooperated by letting myself be seen at the entrance of the Crooked Circle one night as Rackham emerged with companions. So Friday at five o’clock, when Saul phoned that the subject had entered the Romance Bar on Forty-ninth Street, I went for a walk, found Saul window-shopping, told him to go home to his wife and children, moseyed along to the Romance Bar entrance, and went on in.
Business was rushing, with as many as five at a table the size of a dishpan. Making no survey, I found a place at the long bar where two customers were carelessly leaving enough room for a guy to get an elbow through, and took the opening. After a while the bartender admitted I was there and let me buy a highball. I took a casual look around, saw Rackham at a table with a pair of males, turned my back that way, and got his range in the mirror.
I did not really expect a bite at the very first try. I thought it might take two or three exposures. But evidently he was ripe. I was in the middle of my second highball when my mirror view showed me the trio getting up and squeezing through the mob to the clear. I dropped my chin and looked at my thumb. They went on by, toward the door, and I turned to watch their manly backs. As soon as they were out I followed, and, on the sidewalk, immediately turned right, thinking to reconnoiter from the shop entrance next door. But I was still two paces from it when there was a voice at my elbow.
“Here I am, Goodwin.”
I turned to face him, looking mildly startled. “Oh, hello.”
“What’s the idea?” he demanded.
“Which one?” I asked politely. “There’s so many around.”
“There are indeed. You and three others that I know of. Who wants to know so much about me?”
“Search me.” I was sympathetic. “Why, are you being harassed?”
Color had started to show in his face, and the muscles of his jaw were called upon. His right shoulder twitched.
“Not here on the street,” I suggested. “A crowd will collect, especially after I react. See that man turning to look? You’re standing like Jack Dempsey.”
He relaxed a little. “I think I know,” he said.
“Good for you. Then I’m not needed.”
“I want to have a talk with you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Not here. At my place—the Churchill.”
“I think I have a free hour next Tuesday.”
“Now. We’ll go there now.”
I shrugged. “Not together. You lead the way, and I’ll tag along.”
He turned and marched. I gave him twenty paces and then followed. It takes the strain off of tailing a man to have a date with him, and since we had only a few blocks to go it would have been merely a pleasant little stroll if he hadn’t been in such a hurry. I had to use my full stride to keep my distance. As we neared the Churchill I closed in a little, and when he entered an elevator I was there ready for the next one.
He had a corner suite at the setback, which gave him a terrace and also a soundbreak for the street noises. It was cool and quiet in his big sitting room, with light blue summer rugs and pretty pictures and light blue slipcovers on the furniture. While he adjusted Venetian blinds I glanced around, and when he was through I told him, “Very nice. A good place for a heart-to-heart talk.”
“What will you have to drink?”
“Nothing, thanks. I had my share at the bar, and anyway I don’t drink with people I’m tailing.”
I was in a comfortable chair, and he pulled a smaller one around to face me. “You’ve got your own office now,” he stated.
I nodded. “Doing pretty well. Of course, summer’s the slack season. After Labor Day they’ll start coming back and bringing their troubles along.”
“You didn’t take on that job for Mrs. Frey.”
“How could I?” I upturned a palm. “No one would speak to me.”
“You can’t blame them.” He got out a cigarette and lit it, and his hands were almost steady but not quite. “Look, Goodwin. There on the street I nearly lost my head for a second. You’re merely doing what you’re paid for.”
“Right,” I said approvingly. “People resent detectives more than they do doctors or plumbers, I don’t see why. We’re all trying to make it a better world.”
“Certainly. Who are you working for?”
“Me.”
“Who pays you to work for you?”
I shook my head. “Better start over. Show a gun or a steak knife or something. Even if I’m not hard to persuade, I must keep up appearances.”
He licked his lips. Apparently that was his substitute for counting ten, but if so it didn’t work, for he sprang up, towering over me, making fists. I moved nothing but my head, jerking it back to focus on his face.
“It’s a bad angle,” I assured him. “If you swing from up there I’ll duck and hit your knees, and you’ll lose your balance.”
He held it a second, then his fists became hands, and he stooped to use one of them to recover the cigarette he had dropped on the rug. He sat down, took a drag, inhaled, and let it out.
“You talk too much, Goodwin.”
“No,” I disagreed, “not too much, but too frankly, maybe. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned a steak knife but I was irritated. I might name my client if you stuck needles under my nails or showed me a dollar bill, but your being so damn casual annoyed me.”
“I didn’t kill my wife.”
I smiled at him. “That’s a straightforward categorical statement, and I appreciate it very much. What else didn’t you do?”
He ignored it. “I know Annabel Frey thinks I did, and she would spend all the money my wife left her—well, say half of it—to prove it. I don’t mind your taking her money, that’s your business, but I hate to see her waste it, and I don’t like having someone always behind me. There ought to be some way I can satisfy you and her that I didn’t do it. Can’t you figure one out? If it’s arranged so you won’t lose anything by it?”
“No,” I said flatly.
“Why not? I said satisfy you.”
“Because I’m getting irritated again. You don’t care a damn what Mrs. Frey thinks. What’s eating you is that you don’t know who is curious enough about you to spend money on it, and you’re trying to catch a fish without bait, which is unsportsmanlike. I’ll bet you a finif you can’t worm it out of me.”
He sat regarding me half a minute, then got up and crossed to a portable bar over by the wall and began assembling a drink. He called to me, “Sure you won’t have one?”
I declined with thanks. Soon he returned with a tall one, sat, took a couple of swallows, put the glass down, burped, and spoke. “A thousand dollars for the name.”
“Just the name, cold?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a sale.” I extended a hand. “Gimme.”
“I like to get what I pay for, Goodwin.”
“Absolutely. Guaranteed against defects.”
He arose and left the room through a door toward the far end. I decided I was thirsty and went to the bar for a glass of soda and ice, and was back in my chair when he reentered and came to me. I took his offering and counted it by flipping the edges: ten crackly new hundreds.
He picked up his glass, drank, and eyed me. “Well?”
“Arnold Zeck,” I said.
He made a little squeaking noise, went stiff for a short count, and hurled the tall glass against the wall, where it smacked into the middle of the glass of a picture, which improved the effect both for the ear and for the eye.
Chapter 15
I admit I was on my feet when it hit. He was so slapdash that there was no certainty about his tar
get, and a well-thrown heavy glass can make a bruise.
“Now look what you’ve done,” I said reproachfully, and sat down again. He glared at me a second, then went to the bar, and with slow precise movements of his hands mixed another long one. I was pleased to note that the proportion of whisky was the same as before. He returned to his chair and put the glass down without drinking.
“I thought so, by God,” he said.
I merely nodded.
“Who hired you? Zeck himself?”
“Not in the contract,” I objected firmly. “You bought the name, and you’ve got it.”
“I’m in the market for more. I’ll take it all.”
I frowned at him. “Now I guess I’ll have to do some talking. You comfortable?”
“No.”
“Listen anyway. I’m taking Zeck’s money and I’m crossing him. How do you know I won’t cross you?”
“I don’t. But I’ll top him.”
“That’s the point exactly; you don’t. Who is Zeck and who are you? You know the answer to that. You were taking his money too, up to five months ago, and you know for what. When your wife hired Nero Wolfe to take the lid off of you for a look, you yapped to Zeck and he took aim at Wolfe, and when your wife got it with that steak knife Wolfe took a powder, and for all I know he is now in Egypt, where he owns a house, talking it over with the Sphinx. It was Zeck and you, between you, that broke up our happy home on Thirty-fifth Street, and you can have three guesses how I feel about it. I may like it fine this way, with my own office and my time my own. I may figure to work close to Zeck and get in the big dough, which would mean I’m poison to you, or I may be loving a chance to stick one between Zeck’s ribs and incidentally get a nice helping from your pile, or I may even be kidding both of you along with the loony idea of trying to earn the ten grand your wife paid Nero Wolfe. Zeck can guess and you can guess. Do I make myself clear?”
“I don’t know. Are you just warning me not to trust you? Is that it?”
“Well, yes.”
“Then save your breath. I’ve never trusted anybody since I started shaving. As for a nice helping from my pile, that depends. How do you earn it?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I don’t want it. Guess. I got the impression that I have something you want.”
“I think you have. Who hired you and what were you told to do?”
“I told you, Zeck.”
“Zeck himself?”
“I would be risking my neck and you know it.
Five grand now, and beyond that we can decide as we go along.”
It was a mistake, though not fatal. He was surprised. I should have made it ten. He said, “I haven’t got that much here.”
“Tut. Send downstairs for it.”
He hesitated a moment, regarding me, then got up and went to a phone on a side table. It occurred to me that it would be of no advantage for a clerk or assistant manager to see whose presence in Rackham’s suite required the delivery of so much cash, so I asked where the bathroom was and went there. After a sufficient interval I returned, and the delivery had been made.
“I said I don’t trust anybody,” Rackham told me, handing me the engravings. “But I don’t like to be gypped.”
It was used bills this time, Cs and five-hundreds, which didn’t seem up to the Churchill’s standard of elegance. To show Rackham how vulgar it was not to trust people, I stowed it away without counting it.
“What do you want?” I asked, sitting. “Words and pictures?”
“I can ask questions, can’t I?”
“Sure, that’s included. I have not yet seen Zeck himself, but expect to. I was first approached by Max Christy. He—”
“That son of a bitch.”
“Yeah? Of course you’re prejudiced now. He was merely scouting. He didn’t name Zeck and he didn’t name you, but offered good pay for an expert tailing job. I was interested enough to make a date to get picked up on the street that night by a man in a car. He gave—”
“Not Zeck. He wouldn’t show like that.”
“I said I haven’t seen Zeck. He gave me the layout. He said his name was Roeder—around fifty—”
“Roeder?” Rackham frowned.
“So he said. He spelled it—R-o-e-d-e-r. Around fifty, brown hair slicked back, face wrinkled and folded, sharp dark eyes, brown pointed beard with gray in it.”
“I don’t know him.”
“He may be in a different department from the one you were in. He did name Zeck. He said—”
“He actually named Zeck?”
“Yes.”
“To you? That’s remarkable. Why?”
“I don’t know, but I can guess. I had previously been tapped by Max Christy, some time ago, and I think they’ve got an idea that I may have it in me to work up to an executive job—now that Nero Wolfe is gone. And they figure I must know that Christy plays with Brownie Costigan, and that Costigan is close to the top, so why not mention Zeck to me to make it glamorous? Anyhow, Roeder did. He said that what they wanted was a tail on you. They wanted it good and tight. They offered extra good pay. I was to use as many men as necessary. I took the job, got the men, and we started a week ago yesterday. Christy comes to my office every day for the reports. You know what’s been in them; you know where you’ve been and what you’ve done.”
Rackham was still frowning. “That’s all there is to it?”
“That’s the job as I took it and as I’ve handled it.”
“You weren’t told why?”
“In a way I was. I gathered that they think you might be a bad influence on the District Attorney, and they want to be sure you don’t start associating with him. If you do they would probably make a complaint. I suppose you know what their idea is of making a complaint.”
The frown was going. “You say you gathered that?”
“I didn’t put it right. I was told that in so many words.”
“By Roeder?”
“Yes.”
The frown was gone. “If this is straight, Goodwin, I’ve made a good buy.”
“It’s straight all right, but don’t trust me. I warned you. Those are the facts, but you can have a guess without any additional charge if you want it.”
“A guess about what?”
“About them and you. This guess is why I’m here. This guess is why I went into that bar so you would see me, and followed you out like a halfwit to give you a chance to flag me.”
“Oh. So you staged this.”
“Certainly. I wanted to tell you about this guess, and if you were in a mood to buy something first, why not?”
He looked aloof. “Let’s have the guess.”
“Well—” I considered. “It really is a guess, but with a background. Do you want the background first?”
“No, the guess.”
“Right. That Zeck is getting set to frame you for the murder of your wife.”
I think Rackham would have thrown another glass if he had happened to have it in his hand, possibly at me this time. His blood moved fast. The color came up in his neck and face, and he sort of swelled all over; then his jaw clamped.
“Go on,” he mumbled.
“That’s all the guess amounts to. Do you want the background?”
He didn’t answer. I went on. “It won’t cost you a cent. Take the way I was approached. If it’s a plain tailing job with no frills, why all the folderol? Why couldn’t Christy just put it to me? And why pay me double the market of the highest-priced agencies? Item. If Zeck has his friends at White Plains, which is far from incredible, and if the current furore is upsetting their stomach, there’s nothing they would appreciate more than having their toughest unsolved murder case wrapped up for them. Item. Hiring me is purely defensive, and Zeck and his staff don’t function that way, especially not when the enemy is a former colleague and they’ve got a grudge.”
I shook my head. “I can’t see it with that background. But listen to this. Roeder came up to my office and stayed an hour, and do you
know what he spent most of it doing? Asking me questions about the evening of April eighth! What has that got to do with my handling a tailing job? Nothing! Why should they be interested in April eighth at all? I think they brought me this job, at double pay, just to start a conversation with me and soften me up. It has already been hinted that Zeck might like to meet me. I think that to frame you for murder they’ve got to have first-hand dope from someone who was there, and I’m elected. I think they’re probably sizing me up, to decide whether I’m qualified to be asked to remember something that happened that night which has slipped my mind up to now, at a nice juicy price.”
I turned my palms up. “It’s just a guess.”
He still had nothing to say. His blood had apparently eased up a little. He was staring at my face, but I doubted if he was seeing it.
“If you care to know why I wanted you to hear it,” I went on, “you can have that too. I have my weak spots, and one of them is my professional pride. It got a hard blow when Nero Wolfe scooted instead of staying to fight it out, with your wife’s check for ten grand deposited barely in time to get through before she was croaked. If the ten grand is returned to her estate, who gets it? You. And it could be that you killed her. I prefer to leave it where it is and earn it. Among other things, she was killed while I was there, and I helped find the body. That’s a fine goddam mess for a good detective, and I was thinking I was one.”
He found his tongue. “I didn’t kill her. I swear to you, Goodwin, I didn’t kill her.”
“Oh, skip it. Whether you did or didn’t, not only do I not want to help frame you, I don’t want anyone to frame anybody, not on this one. I’ve got a personal interest in it. I intend to earn that ten grand, and I don’t want Zeck to bitch it up by getting you burned, even if you’re the right one, on a fix. Therefore I wanted you to know about this. As I told you, I haven’t got it spelled out, it’s only a guess with background, and I admit it may be a bum one. What do you think? Am I hearing noises?”