Nearly Nero

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Got you, Woodbine,” greeted Stoddard when I opened up. “Lyon too. Using police services for private business.”

  “Business involves statements and receipts and scratches in a ledger. This is a hobby. And police records are public property.”

  I’d cribbed the speech from Lyon. There was more to it, but a steel fist shot out of a coat sleeve and took up the slack in my windpipe. I squeaked—plagiarizing again from the boss.

  I never found out how far he intended to take it, because Jillian and Jasper Hull came out of the office to see what all the noise was about. When Stoddard saw them his eyes returned to their sockets and he let go.

  When I finished coughing I made introductions and told everyone what he and she needed to know to that point. We went into the office, where the captain commandeered the orange chair, leaving two of the smaller green ones for the other guests.

  Promptly on the hour, the building shook from the elevator rattling in the shaft, but the effect of the maestro’s big entrance was spoiled when it got stuck between the second and first floors. This had happened before, and there was only one way to jar it back into operation. He was loath to do it with an audience. However, after a moment of mulling, the thudding began; pictures danced on the walls, and anyone with half an imagination could picture the chunky little passenger jumping up and down in the car. Finally the mechanism kicked back in with a dry chuckle and the cage settled to ground level. Lyon emerged, vest, lapels, and pocket handkerchief in perfect alignment, but his face was as red as the fruit of the Lycopersicum anormalus in the pot he held in both hands.

  Jasper stifled a snort as the host made his dignified waddle to his chair; it was the first time I’d seen the little squirt behave like a normal child.

  When he was seated, Lyon nodded to each visitor, making eye contact with none. “Thank you for coming. The presence of Miss Hull and Mr. Stoddard is an unexpected pleasure, however uninvited.”

  The two thus named started to talk at the same time. Stoddard found his manners in some cluttered corner and shut his mouth. Jillian Hull said, “I’m glad the police are here. It will make it easier to prefer charges against you for swindling a minor.”

  “Mr. Stoddard investigates fraud, which, as he can tell you, requires an exchange of money. Young Master Hull will confirm that I’ve declined compensation of any kind.”

  Stoddard thumped the arm of his chair with a horned palm. “You don’t have to, as long as you can get the police to do your work for free.”

  Lyon swallowed, stifling a squeak. “Hardly free. I pay confiscatory taxes that contribute in no small measure to your department’s budget. The information I obtained there is community property and was connected only indirectly to my investigation. I conducted it merely to confirm my suspicions. Mr. Woodbine?”

  I got up from my desk and handed Jasper the fax we’d received that day from NYPD Brooklyn.

  “Is that the man you met in the hospital last spring?” Lyon asked.

  The boy started bouncing in his seat; there was hope for him yet. “That’s him! That’s my father!” He gave it to his aunt, who looked up from it and nodded. “It looks like a mug shot,” she said.

  “It is. The man’s name is Randolph Otto. Currently he’s in the New York State Penitentiary in Ossining, serving a sentence of ten to fifteen years for burglary. It’s his second offense.”

  “His name’s William Thew.” Jasper was sullen again.

  “The name doesn’t appear among his known aliases. I hardly expected it to.” Lyon scowled at the plant on his desk and pinched a leaf, squashing a bug. He wiped his hand and returned the hanky to his pocket. “When you met, it was May, a particularly pleasant month this year. I suspected the man was there for no legitimate purpose when you told me he was wearing a heavy overcoat. In warm weather, bulky coats are useful for one thing only: concealing stolen items. Armed with that supposition, I turned to the police to determine whether they had investigated a complaint of plundering at Brooklyn General during that time. The news that a suspect had been arrested and convicted was a bonus. I congratulate your brother officers, Mr. Stoddard.”

  The captain said something inappropriate for a lady and child in the room, or for that matter my Uncle Burt. I’d have made an example of him if my throat weren’t still sore.

  “The late Ms. Hull—Jasper’s mother—had nothing of value in her room,” Lyon continued; “otherwise, I’m sure Jasper would have noted that something was missing and included that fact when he reported the events of that day to me. Mr. Otto left her room empty-handed.”

  Jillian said, “I’d brought home her personal effects the day before. She wasn’t expected to recover, and I’ve heard stories about watches and purses disappearing from hospital rooms.” She didn’t elaborate. Apparently she hated to interrupt his story, however briefly.

  “A footpad, surprised in the midst of his pillaging, will say anything to deflect suspicion long enough for him to make his escape. Unfortunately, Jillian Hull assisted him unwarily by asking if he was there to visit her sister. He seized upon that, and when she asked his name, he gave her the first thing that suggested itself.”

  Jasper hadn’t given up yet. “That don’t make sense! He could’ve said Tom Smith or John Jones. How do you come up with William Thew out of nowhere?”

  “You don’t. When you said he’d looked out the window before identifying himself, I decided to send Mr. Woodbine to Brooklyn General to photograph the view through the window.”

  I was still standing. He opened his top drawer and handed me two of the pictures I’d taken. I gave one to Jasper. It was one of the shots of the advertisement painted on the wall of the brick hardware building. The legend read:

  SHERWIN-WILLIAMS PAINT

  It Covers the World!

  An illustration accompanied it, showing a can of paint spilling its contents onto the globe.

  “I don’t get it.” The boy passed the photo to his aunt, who looked at it, then at Lyon with her eyebrows lifted.

  Lyon said, “The conditions were somewhat different from when Randolph Otto looked out on the same scene. It was spring, as I said, and tree leaves obscured parts of the sign. I’ve created an amateur artist’s rendition of the scene as it would have appeared to him. Arnie?” The fat little exhibitionist was excited, I could tell; he forgot to address me formally in company only when he could barely contain himself.

  I handed Jasper the picture Lyon had doctored with his Sharpie, blacking out the portions that would have been covered by leaves:

  WILLIAM

  the W

  The boy looked up, his pinched little face pale. “He said he was an artist!”

  “Inspiration from the same source. An artist uses paint. He wasn’t your father. At the time you were born, he’d been in prison in New Jersey for more than a year. That was his first offense.”

  Stoddard snatched the photo from Jillian, flung it to the floor, hurled himself at Lyon’s desk, and brought him up to date on his opinion of word puzzles and Lyon himself. He laid a blazing trail to the exit, leaving Lyon white and shaken. Jasper wasn’t any more pleased, but his aunt restrained him from kicking a chair and thanked Lyon for putting an end to the business. She was a pretty good sport. I wondered how she felt about semi-reformed felons.

  Lyon handed her an envelope from his drawer. It bore his letterhead and a name addressed in his childlike hand.

  “It isn’t sealed,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t presume. As the boy’s guardian you’d naturally want to know what it contained before you delivered it.”

  She left, resting a hand on one of Jasper’s hunched shoulders. Lyon and I spent the rest of the evening quietly, he reading the Hardy Boys in an E. Phillips Oppenheim dust jacket, I making marks in the Habitual Handicapper; a two-year-old named Brushstroke was running in the third at Belmont. I didn’t tell the boss I’d caught a glimpse of the name he’d scribbled on the envelope, and when I found out later it belonged to the director
of an art scholarship program at Brooklyn College, I didn’t tell him that. The program had been endowed by an anonymous benefactor. Nothing about it sounds the least bit typical of Lyon’s role model. I figure I’ll needle him with it when I frame and hang Jasper’s caricature of him.

  Which I may not for a while. Today at lunch, Claudius Lyon leaned on his elbow and held up a tired-looking lox drooping on the end of his fork.

  “Arnie,” he said, “how long have you been working for me?”

  WOLFE AT THE DOOR

  “These fisticuffs by proxy will be the death of our civilization.”

  Apart from having a name that sounded like billiard balls colliding on green felt, Heinrich Knicknacker didn’t come off as the sort that indulged in recreation, or for that matter any pastime that passed time to no profit. He was a tall scarecrow type that didn’t dress like one, with a bony face and a wheat-colored crop of Uncle Sam chin whiskers under a Homburg hat. His double-breasted blue suit with gold buttons gave him a military air and he held his gold-knobbed stick at shoulder-arms position.

  “You are Herr Lyon, no?” he greeted.

  I said, “That’s right.”

  “Herr Lyon, I am Heinrich Knicknacker.” His a’s were short and he coughed his k’s. I thought he was hawking up a cat.

  “You misunderstood. You said I am Herr Lyon, no, and I confirmed the analysis. I am Herr Woodbine, yes. I answer the door for Herr Lyon when Gus is absent.” One more Herr and I’d need to dive into the throat spray.

  He adjusted the monocle he wasn’t wearing. “Who is this Gus?”

  “The major-domo, and also the best kosher chef in Brooklyn. Currently the second best in Westport, Connecticut, where he’s visiting his brother, who’s the best there. That may not be fair to Gus, though, as you can swing a two-pound brisket anywhere in that state and not graze anyone remotely Jewish. Meanwhile we’re dining on sardines and cream soda. Would you care to join us?”

  “I would not. I seek consultation with Claudius Lyon.”

  “In that case you’ll have to wait ten minutes. He’s finishing dinner, if you want to call it that.”

  That was acceptable, and I hung up his hat and showed him into the front room, which is a reasonable enough facsimile of Nero Wolfe’s front room in his Manhattan brownstone, given that Archie Goodwin, the man who answers the door for Wolfe when Fritz, Wolfe’s Gus, is absent, has never provided specific details about its appointments in his accounts of his employer’s affairs. Claudius Lyon, who’s dedicated his adult life to duplicating Wolfe’s, had spent many hours poring over the record with that result, so his decorator had had carte blanche with chinoiserie and chintz. Personally I thought it looked like the cabin of a junk sinking in Beijing harbor, if it has one; but since I’d split a seventy-five markup on the materials with the decorator I kept my trap shut.

  I reported to the dining room, where the little meatball was indeed forking sardines straight from the can and washing them down with the sticky beverage he prefers to Wolfe’s beer.

  “Send him away. My digestion is in sufficient distress without entertaining guests. I yearn for Gus’s matzo.”

  “He looks like money.”

  “Phooey. I’m made of money.”

  “Also lard, but it’s your money Nathaniel Parker’s interested in. You need liquid funds to blitz him at the start.”

  He chewed on that along with a mouthful of greasy fish. Parker, who represented Nero Wolfe in all things legal, had written Lyon recently, demanding he cease and desist his imitation of Parker’s client immediately or face a civil suit for identity theft. We were sure that Captain Stoddard, Lyon’s nemesis in the Brooklyn Police Department, had put the bug in Wolfe’s ear. Practicing private investigation without a license irked him in general, but he’d made nailing Lyon a personal crusade.

  But my little speech of encouragement was a waste of time, bigger than and almost as fat as the man I worked for. Unlike his lazy idol, Lyon never passed up an opportunity to act like a genuine detective; but he paid me to pretend to have to prod him, because that’s what Archie Goodwin did for the man he worked for. If it weren’t for spending my days off bribing jockeys at the track for inside information, that sanity, I’d be as bananas as the boss.

  “Very well, I’ll see him, but only as a distraction from this nuisance. He may be a police plant to entice me into accepting payment for my services, leading to my arrest.”

  That surprised me on two counts. First, the only “plant” I expected him to recognize was the tomato variety, which he cultivates in place of the notable Nero’s more challenging orchids; second, because as the only official crook in residence I should have been the one to suspect Stoddard’s sneaky hand. Lyon’s amateur status protects him from prosecution, but Stoddard isn’t above entrapment, or for that matter thumbscrews. With Lyon in the jug, I’d have to go back to stealing from strangers. The cook at Sing Sing hasn’t Gus’s way with a blintz.

  Ten minutes later, when Lyon was swinging his heels above the floor in the overstuffed throne behind his cruiser-class desk (everything in the office was built to Nero Wolfe’s much larger scale, making its occupant look even more like a member of the Lollipop Guild than had nature herself), I plopped Heinrich Knicknacker into the orange leather chair reserved for VIPs. He got right down to business in Prussian fashion.

  “I own a chain of German restaurants on the East Coast. Last year I went into semiretirement and placed my nephew, Oscar, in charge, purely in a management capacity; I maintain controlling interest. Now he wishes to have me declared mentally incompetent so he can inherit right away.”

  Lyon asked him the terms of his will.

  “It is a short document. Oscar is the sole beneficiary. He is all the family I have.”

  “Have your lawyer draw up a new will. Leave your estate to a favorite employee or the charity of your choice.”

  “I have thought of this, but my attorney informs me that if my nephew succeeds in his aim, any new will would be thrown out of court on the grounds of—I forget the phrase.”

  “Diminished capacity,” I said. “I tried the same scam on my old man, but he turned me over to the cops on a separate matter before I could have the papers drawn up.”

  Knicknacker looked for explanation to Lyon, who scowled at me like a gassy baby. “Mr. Woodbine has an adolescent sense of humor. Are you incompetent, Mr. Knicknacker?”

  “I most certainly am not.” He pointed his chin whiskers square at his interrogator.

  “What, then, has your nephew to offer as evidence?”

  “Memory lapse. He overheard me during a telephone conversation and claims that in the middle of it I forgot who I was addressing.”

  “What was the conversation?”

  “I would rather not say.”

  Lyon moved the potted Lycopersicon hybridum on his desk to give him a straight shot at the speaker. Since a quadriplegic can grow a tomato just by ignoring it, that was as much exercise as he’d take all day. “A wise man once said no one can prove a negative,” he said. “He might have added that it’s even less possible when the subject won’t cooperate. Arnie?”

  I looked at him dumbly. He kept jerking his head leftward. I thought it was a seizure. Finally I put down my notebook, got up from my chair, and asked him in a low voice if he needed an ambulance.

  “Don’t you know a signal when you see one?” he whispered.

  “Signal?”

  “Hat! Hat!”

  When I realized it wasn’t an asthmatic attack either, I went out and retrieved Knicknacker’s Homburg from the foyer. I tried to hold it out like Gus in his best servant’s mode, but I must have looked like a haberdasher, because Uncle Heinrich kept staring at it without recognition. I wondered if his bean was actually beyond its sell-by date, as his nephew insisted.

  “Good day, sir,” Lyon said. “I am not semiretired, and haven’t time to waste.”

  Which was a bluff. He’d had his successes, but Americans being Americans, a man who o
ffers his service gratis is generally regarded to be charging exactly what they’re worth. Lyon’s legal trouble was only part of the reason for his bad cess; how could he ape his hero’s sleuthing prowess with nothing to sleuth?

  The gambit worked. Knicknacker sat flexing and unflexing his bony fingers on the knob of his stick, then acknowledged defeat with a nod.

  “I have a weakness,” he confessed. “Not a serious one, but I enjoy making wagers on sports events. Can you assure me this conversation will be kept in confidence?”

  Lyon nodded in turn, playing accordion with his many chins. “In this I have an advantage over other private inquiry agents, who can’t shield themselves behind the seal of attorney-client privilege in a court of law. I have no license to place in jeopardy.”

  “And Herr Woodbine?”

  “Mr. Woodbine is merely contrary. I trust him with my secrets if not my silver.”

  I put indignation on my face, but it was halfhearted. Having no character I consider myself a fair judge of one, but I’d fumbled when I’d piped our potential client as a man who had no truck with games and such. I couldn’t remember spotting him at any of the bookmaking operations in my circuit.

  “I accept your assurances. At the time Oscar came in on my end of the telephone conversation, I was having a heated difference of opinion with my, er, contact man. He persisted in saying that all five of the football games I had bet upon had gone against me, but I reminded him that it was four only. I had placed a substantial sum on the fifth, and my team had managed to cover the spread.”

  “Do you remember all the games at issue? Arnie?”

  I was ahead of him, seated at my desk with my hands on the computer keyboard. Lyon fills his many leisure hours reading whodunits, not watching sports; he sneaks the stories into his plant room when he wants everyone to think he’s monkeying with his beefsteaks and Romas. He wouldn’t know the Packers from Pittsburgh. Without hesitating, the well-dressed scarecrow remembered all the games and which teams he’d bet on. That worked in favor of his story; a loser has to be pretty far off the beam to forget where his money went.