Nearly Nero

by Loren D. Estleman

  I was disappointed. I’d anticipated a beard you could lose a shoe in, sandals, and a white robe, which was what I would have expected if there was some clerical error and I ever actually stood before the gates to Paradise. Stoddard’s companion could use a shave—could have used it last week, in fact—but it was more stubble than flow, and his rusty sports coat, yellowing collar, grubby jeans, and scuffed brogans slashed at the toes to let the corns breathe would have turned him away from any restaurant in Brooklyn, if not the eye of the needle. He smelled of the can, as well as of the alley behind Skipper Dan’s House of Fish on Day-Old Saturday. Carbon-dating being out of the question, I pegged him as somewhere between fifty and nine hundred and sixty-nine; or was that Methuselah? I’m rusty on the Old Testament. If there was any hope for me at all, it was grounded in the Gospels.

  “Okay if I call you Saint?” I asked our distinguished visitor.

  He said nothing. He looked as patient as one, I’d say that for him. Stoddard said, “He don’t exactly talk your ear off. All we can get out of him is his name, and it ain’t even that.”

  “Saint Peter,” said our guest. Flat vowels: Chicago?

  “See?”

  Entering the dining room we found Claudius Lyon exactly where anyone who read Archie Goodwin’s accounts of Nero Wolfe’s investigations would expect him at that hour, rooted at the head of the long table with utensils at the ready. Upon our appearance, he did something almost without precedent; although if it were entirely so in Wolfe’s case, he’d never have considered it. He hopped to his feet and inclined his chins in a gesture of respect. “Sir, you are welcome in my home. Please be seated at my right hand.”

  In response to the tilt of a puffy palm, Stoddard’s charge took possession of the honored place; gaining his host no points with the captain, who like Wolfe’s Inspector Cramer considered himself the guest of honor at any gathering, even one ostensibly social. Knowing how well the chief of Brooklyn Bunco took disappointment, I hoped the boss wouldn’t slip his trolley the rest of the way and forget his promise to give me a clean slate when the axe came down.

  Stoddard seized one of the chairs reserved for the unanointed and stuck a Lucky between his teeth, without lighting it. He chewed a pack a day.

  “Since the New York Police Department won’t, allow me to apologize to you for your detainment. Apart from worrying some of our fellow citizens in regard to your safety, you’ve committed no offense.”

  “Loitering,” Stoddard growled. “Disturbing the peace.”

  “The U.S. Supreme Court has found the charge of loitering unconstitutional under the First Amendment. As to the other, I don’t concede that causing concern regarding one’s welfare belongs to the same category as shouting obscenities in public or playing a radio too loud.”

  “Vagrancy, then. He hasn’t a penny on him.”

  “Nor do I; nor does the queen of England, or for that matter anyone who depends on credit, which is most of us. Come now, Mr. Stoddard. I suggest you release this man.”

  “Even your precious Constitution says I can hold him for forty-eight hours without charging him.”

  “Muleheaded.”

  “What?” A cigarette got bit through.

  Lyon paled, but was spared worse by the arrival of Gus, who ladled out the soup. We dined in silence for a quarter-hour. Even Stoddard, who’d read up on the Wolfe canon in order to lay a snare for his imitator, put up with the master’s rule against discussing business during a meal. When the dishes were cleared away, we returned to the office, where Lyon compounded the insult to the captain by offering the man in his custody the comfort of the orange leather chair facing the desk. I gave the little glob of wax points for chutzpah. Maybe the captain’s new status of client as opposed to mortal enemy had put some lead in his pencil. Stoddard took it, in any case; although it cost him the price of a fresh cigarette to replace the one he’d gnawed to bits. He threw himself into one of the green chairs.

  Lyon addressed his companion. “Returning to the subject of our precious Constitution: You’re entitled to an attorney, if you wish, at no cost to you.”

  “Saint Peter” said nothing. He didn’t even shake his head.

  “If he’d opened his mouth to ask, he’d’ve got one,” was all Stoddard said.

  “No doubt you informed him. You must be bored,” he told our honored guest. “In lieu of the distraction of conversation, might I offer you something to read? The Bible, perhaps. I take the liberty of assuming it’s high on your list.”

  Nothing again. We got more comment out of Lyon’s blasted tomatoes.

  Lyon leaned forward in his seat; and damned if I didn’t see a gleam in those little pig’s eyes. “Forgive me. It never crossed my mind that perhaps you can’t read.”

  A tectonic plate moved under the rock that supported greater New York; a snowball formed in hell, a politician told the truth, and “Saint Peter” opened his mouth.

  “Sure I can read. Think I’m stupid?”

  “By God!” Stoddard plucked out his Lucky and threw it into a corner. “Why didn’t you say something before this?”

  I smirked. “ ‘Up till now everything’s been all right.’ ” Facing the captain’s black face, I felt my own grow white. “Sorry. Old joke.”

  “I apologize.” Lyon was still addressing the man in the orange chair. “Sometimes you have to prick someone’s vanity to get him to open up. No Bible, then.”

  “Anything but.”

  At most times, the man seated in the preposterously huge chair behind the preposterously huge desk looked like a little boy sitting in his father’s place on Take Your Child to Work Day. When, however, he sat back and rotated an index finger in one ear, he filled both chair and desk. It meant, as surely as Wolfe’s lips pushing out and pulling back in, that he had something solid to work on at last. He was coaxing oxygen into the tight whorls in his brain to wake up the gray cells.

  I’d seen him at that for hours or minutes, and was prepared to suffer any abuse from Stoddard, corseted as he was by his new role as customer, when Lyon removed his finger and wiped it delicately with a green silk handkerchief. To “Saint Peter”: “Forgive me if I ask something personal. Your parents weren’t very religious, were they?”

  “That’s putting it mildly.” Now that he’d gone beyond three syllables, I definitely noticed the Chicago accent. “My mother called herself an agnostic, but my father was more direct. ‘Thank God I’m an atheist.’ It was his favorite joke.”

  “Then why in God’s name—if you’ll excuse the expression—did they name you Saint Peter?”

  “Peter’s the family name. I guess they thought by naming their boy Saint they were putting one over on the devout. I’d have told that to this nimrod, if he’d given me the chance. The minute I gave him my name he thought I was crazy.”

  He chuckled then, and drew a dirty cuff across his lips when saliva trickled out. “I sure wasn’t about to give him any satisfaction beyond that. Meanwhile I got three hots and a cot, and all at the expense of the NYPD.”

  “So you’re not the man who decides who lets whom in through the gates of Heaven.”

  “If there’s anything to it, I guess the man who does will understand.” Saint Peter cut a look at Stoddard. “You might have some explaining to do.”

  Lyon frowned at the fuming Stoddard. “You have no grounds for keeping this man in custody. Far from obstructing justice, he’s cooperated with it in every way, including providing it with his true identity.”

  The captain’s face worked; then a grin broke loose, like the sun poking its way through storm clouds. He rose from his chair. “You’re right. Thanks again for the feed. Here’s a little something for your next.” He drew a can of oysters from his vest pocket and stuck it across the desk.

  Lyon kept his hands under the top. “Thank you, but Gus’s religion prohibits eating or serving shellfish.”

  Saint Peter declined the offer of cab fare, explaining as he stood that he was within walking distance
of a shelter he enjoyed. By that time Stoddard was long gone, with the evidence against Lyon back in his pocket.

  “You were right, Arnie,” Lyon said. “I was naive. Mr. Stoddard tried to rope us after all. I have his ignorance of the Hebrew faith to thank for my salvation. And your counsel, of course. I should have known you’d spot a man’s dishonesty where I could not.”

  I wasn’t sure how to take that; being a crook gives you the same advantage over both an honest and a dishonest man, but how a fruitcake thinks is anyone’s guess.

  “How’d you know he was on the level and that his name was really Saint Peter?”

  “Mr. Stoddard said it best. An insane man knows insanity when he sees it, and when he does not. Clearly the fellow was telling the truth. At a guess, the blasphemy of his christening offered no compunctions to his parents, hence the assumption that they were not believers. Once I asked myself if his name was as reported, the rest was simplicity itself.” He sighed. “To the devious man, like our friend the captain, there is nothing so obscure as the obvious.”

  Whereupon he laid aside the weighty tome on his desk and picked up Mary Higgins Clark with a happy little sigh.

  WOLFE WHISTLE

  “I never get to travel first class with anyone sane.”

  Claudius Lyon must stay awake nights reading Archie Goodwin’s reports of his employer’s adventures just to bone up on WWND (What Would Nero Do—or not do?); God forbid that he should take some action or say anything that his personal saint might find unacceptable. His whole life is a final exam. It wears out my brain just thinking about it—but not to the point where I hand in my notice. A crackpot with unlimited funds is to a grifter like me what an aging eccentric rich childless widow is to her cat. All I have to do is humor him, curl up from time to time with Fer-de-Lance or Too Many Cooks or The Mother Hunt for a Goodwin refresher course, and it’s silk sheets and three squares for me for as long as I can manage to keep my meal ticket out of a butterfly net.

  Oh, and split what I skim off the household accounts with Gus, Lyon’s major-domo and the best kosher chef in Brooklyn, at least according to The Gus Book of World Records.

  Call me Arnie, or Mr. Woodbine if you like. Just don’t call me 67024, which is what I answered to in Sing Sing after a misunderstanding with the NYPD.

  Crooks of my type are level-headed by nature, so why a man who has enough loose screws of his own would borrow more from someone else has me stumped. My guy has an unreasoning fear of chimpanzees, so I had to lock out the Animal Planet channel. Wolfe so far as I know has no such phobia, but his dislike of venturing out of his brownstone cocoon in Manhattan is an issue Goodwin deals with on a regular basis. Corned beef is banned from Wolfe’s kitchen, barbecue of any kind from Lyon’s; both Goodwin and I have to go out after such delicacies when the craving strikes. The fat man across the bridge considers yellow the superior color in the spectrum, and if Lyon hangs one more pair of green curtains under his roof or moves in another piece of green upholstery, our home sweet home will look as if it was decorated by Kermit the Frog.

  There are places where the boss’s predispositions match Wolfe’s, without masquerading: Both men are fat (though I suspect Lyon’s five-foot-nothing height would hardly support his hero’s infamous “seventh of a ton”), both solve puzzles placed before them by outsiders, and I think Lyon’s fear of riding in moving vehicles surpasses even the master’s.

  But if anything about such travel gives him a five-alarm case of the shakes, it’s the possibility of missing his ride. I doubt I could get him on an airplane without a chloroform rag, but when his car gets stuck in cross-town traffic on the way to pick him up or—as in the case of what I’m about to relate—he has a ticket to board a specific train at a prearranged time, I’d as soon sing “Brahms’ Lullaby” to a swarm of bees as try to calm him down.

  The North American Chapter of the International Tomato-Growers Association was holding its annual convention in Youngstown, Ohio. The event was important enough to ink in, as a nod to one of Wolfe’s rare excursions outside the city. As Lyon put it, “I feel it my responsibility as a demonstration of good faith to attend the mother group and show solidarity against the upstarts.”

  See, growing orchids (you-know-who’s hobby) is a challenge to the most expert horticulturists, and impossible for anyone with a thumb as brown as Lyon’s; but as he can’t let his roof stand empty during the hours his role model tends his flowers, he grows tomatoes, which if you just leave them on their own will grow themselves. But ever since a rift in the ITGA had led to the formation of a rebel establishment calling itself the Western Tomato Growers Society, Lyon had thrown in heart, soul, and blubber with the legitimate original. He was an officer of some kind in an honorary capacity, and mounted his certificate in a frame on his office wall next to a portrait of Lester Broadacre, the botanist who introduced the tomatillo to the United States. Of course I was to accompany him to the event, which I looked forward to with the eager anticipation of an amateur colonoscopy.

  “I don’t see why we had to put our fate in the hands of a taxi driver,” he said, when we started away from the curb with our bags overflowing the trunk into the back seat: Three days and three nights in foreign territory required he travel as heavily as Count Dracula with his boxes of earth. “Is that the face of a terrorist or is it not?” He pointed a sausage-shaped finger at the cabby’s ID. His name was Maurice Feinstein.

  “Not unless he plans to blow up a Bob Evans,” I said. “Relax, boss. We’ll be at trackside an hour before our train.”

  “Now you’re tempting the forces of darkness. There will be a strike, or an accident, or he’ll take us to the wrong place.”

  “It’s Grand Central Station. He can’t miss it.”

  He didn’t, of course; but Lyon fretted over every piece of luggage the redcap loaded aboard his cart and scrutinized the man’s uniform, which he was convinced he’d stolen, leaving the rightful owner bound and gagged in his underwear in an equipment room. We caught our train with plenty of time to spare. I sat back, but before I could breathe a prayer of thanks for relief, he took a small square box from his overcoat pocket and laid it on my thigh.

  “If it’s valium,” I said, “you should keep one for yourself. Better make it a half-dozen, just to be sure.”

  “Open it.”

  I jerked loose the ribbon and lifted the lid. A silver-plated whistle glittered inside on a chain.

  “Put it on. I want you to keep an eye on the time, and blow it two hours before our train leaves for home. These affairs can be loud. I might miss a word of warning, and I cannot imagine a worse experience than to have to spend another day in Youngstown, Ohio.”

  “Try spending one day with you in Brooklyn,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “I said I forgot to bring my copy of Huck Finn, to read on the train.” I hung the chain around my neck and poked the whistle under my shirt. Next he’d have me sewing his name in his underwear.

  But, hey: I never get to travel first class with anyone sane.

  We reached our destination without derailing or running into a single cow, despite Lyon’s dire predictions, and alighted from our cab with him no nearer hysteria than when confronted by our mortal enemy, Bunco Squad Captain Stoddard; I, however, wished that box had contained something more calming than a police whistle. Maintaining repose in the presence of a companion who jumps out of his socks every time the car sways around a bend takes character. Which I have not any of. The sign outside the convention center hotel was like a pardon from the governor:

  WELCOME DELEGATES

  TO THE NORTH AMERICAN CHAPTER OF THE ITGA

  I won’t belabor my dozens of readers with details of the schedule. As promising as a panel entitled “The Seductive History of Lycopersicum esculentum (Part One)” might sound, or “One Hour with a Legend: A Conversation with Sir Pearson Childroot, Father of the Modern Piccalilli,” I’ll guide you past the meeting rooms to the exhibition hall. There, among such wonders
as a plant crossbred from the plum, cherry, and pear varieties of the Ecuadorian tomato, a demonstration of a revolutionary new scientific method of canning the common beefsteak, and a placard advertising an autograph party that evening featuring Mildred Cuddy, author of Ketchup or Catsup? A Guide for the Beginner, the largest and most jabbery crowd had gathered around a small square glass box mounted on a deep metal case, containing a terra cotta pot with something that looked like a gargantuan blueberry squatting at the end of a curly vine.

  “Lycopersicum rumplicus,” announced its breeder, Rear Admiral (ret.) Barton Rumple, “is the product of more than thirty years of experimentation, and no doubt contributed to my decision to leave the navy,” he said, showing tobacco-stained teeth behind a snow-white mustache. “But I think the result more than bears out the sacrifice.”

  “What’s it taste like?” I asked.

  A cold eye as blue as his exhibit regarded me. Erect in his dark blue suit, pressed stiff as aluminum siding, he might have been preparing to argue a point of strategy with John Paul Jones. Then again came that brittle yellow smile. “I have no idea. I forced this first specimen in time to display at this event, then fretted lest it overripen before the unveiling. After all that, I clean forgot to slice it up and fix myself a BLT to eat on the road.”

  Laughter rippled through his admirers. The loudest and most high-pitched came from Lyon, who by now I knew was gearing up to beg for a favor, making a spectacle of himself and anyone associated with him.

  But it wasn’t until a reception in the hospitality suite an hour later that the boss got Rumple alone.

  “A triumph, Admiral! Truly the finest specimen I’ve seen since Herbert Lydecker unveiled the floating trellis in nineteen sixty-nine.”

  Rumple snorted and stirred a vodka tonic with his swizzle. “Lydecker was a rough carpenter, not a botanist. Any fool can prevent a plant from rotting on the ground.”

  “True, true.” Lyon nodded, and went on nodding as if he’d forgotten how to stop. I wanted to shake him till his fat head rolled off his shoulders. Instead I gulped Scotch. He went on: “I wonder if you might share with me your breeding process?”