The Last Coincidence (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 4)

by Robert Goldsborough

  Todd Halliburton lived in a four-story number that looked to have already gone through the upgrading process. As in the case of Rojek, he apparently lived alone on the top floor, at least according to the mailbox. I leaned on the call button, got no response, and hit it again with the same result. Two out of three still isn’t bad, I thought as I went down the steps to the sidewalk, noodling over whether to stake the place out or find some food.

  My stomach won the debate hands-down, and at twelve-forty I was parked on a stool in a second-rate lunch counter on Sixth Avenue drinking second-rate coffee and eating peach pie. The pie actually was respectable to the degree that I ordered a second piece, checking my watch. It had been forty minutes since I left Halliburton’s—time for another try. I dialed his number at the pay phone near the door and on the third ring got a hoarse “Hello?” I hung up, scolding myself for not being patient enough to keep watch on King Street. Now I would have to talk my way into his apartment from the foyer, which figured to be harder than in the cases of Polly Mars and Rojek. As I walked back from the diner, I turned over possible approaches, settling on one that seemed to have a fair chance of success.

  This time when I pressed the button, I got a response that sounded roughly like “Whosit?”

  “A college buddy of Sparky’s,” I said, pitching my voice an octave high. The buzzer sounded, and I climbed my third apartment-building staircase of the weekend. This case was going to keep me slim. At the fourth-floor landing I saw a door ajar, and as I neared it, Todd Halliburton, all five-feet-five, pulled it open.

  “Hi, what’s … You!” he yelped, his eyebrows climbing halfway up his forehead. He tried to slam the door, but my foot was too fast and I wedged it between the door and the jamb. “What the hell do you want?” he cried, trying to push me out.

  “To see you for a few minutes,” I said, forcing the door farther open, muscling him backward and working my way into the apartment.

  “If you don’t get out of here, I’m calling the police.” He retreated into his living room.

  “Go ahead,” I told him, grinning. “I can give you the number and tell you who to ask for. Actually, you’ll be saving them some trouble, because they’ll be wanting to talk to you before long anyway.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” He stopped backing up and put his hands on his hips defiantly. He was wearing tennis shorts and one of those powder-puff-colored short-sleeved pullover shirts with a swamp creature glued on where a pocket should be.

  “I’m talking about the murder of your friend Linville.”

  “Well, they got the guy, didn’t they? It was on TV and in the papers. Thank God.”

  “They got a guy,” I corrected. “But not the right one. Or maybe I should say not the right guy or woman.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says Nero Wolfe,” I answered quietly. “And when Mr. Wolfe talks, the police listen.” Okay, so I was indulging in hyperbole, but given my audience, it seemed apt—and effective.

  “So let me get this straight,” Halliburton said, head cocked to one side and hands still on hips. “Nero Wolfe—that’s your boss, I know—says Michael James didn’t kill Sparky? What kind of bull is that? The paper said he confessed.”

  “Don’t believe everything you read. Mind if I sit?”

  He obviously minded, but for the moment, anyway, I had him cowed, and he sat too, looking about as relaxed as a taxpayer undergoing an IRS audit. I gave his living room a quick once-over; it was small, bachelor-messy, and not nearly as well-furnished as Rojek’s, to say nothing of the Polly Mars–Noreen James digs. At this rate, I’d be able to free-lance an article on the varied life-styles of New York singles for one of the shelter magazines.

  “Okay, here’s the story,” I said, leaning forward. “Mr. Wolfe has a client—”

  “Ha! Of course,” Halliburton snapped. “That’s it. Wolfe’s trying to make money off all this, and—”

  “Look,” I said coldly, returning the interruption, “you don’t much like having me here. Well, the more you butt in, the longer I’m going to stay. If I were you, I’d keep my mouth shut and my ears open.” I had the same urge to belt him that I did the night he shot off his mouth in front of Morgana’s, but I suppressed it. “As I started to say, Mr. Wolfe has a client, Noreen James, and—”

  “Noreen?” His eyes widened and his eyebrows went up again. “She’s the one who hired Wolfe?”

  “Right,” I said, ignoring the latest intrusion. “Does that surprise you?”

  “Urn, no, I guess not.” He shrugged. “I mean, he is her brother and all.”

  “You obviously know Miss James.”

  Another shrug. “Well, I met her, when she was out with Sparky, you know.”

  “What was your impression of her?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I thought the question was clear. What did you think of her?”

  Halliburton still looked as if he were visiting the IRS. “A nice girl—really nice,” he said woodenly.

  “She seems to like you too,” I ventured.

  “Oh, yeah?” His face finally lost its sneer.

  “So she told me. Did you ever go out with her?”

  “Me? Hey, Sparky and I were good friends, you know? I wouldn’t have a date with somebody he was interested in.”

  “How long had you and Linville known each other?”

  “Oh, I guess maybe three, four years. I ran into him in one of the places one night, and we hit it off good. We were both just out of school.”

  “But not the same school?”

  He dismissed the question with a wave of the hand. “Hell, no. Sparky went to a couple of those fancy little colleges up in New England. Me, I’m City U all the way.”

  “But you two palled around a lot?”

  I could tell that Halliburton was running out of patience. “Hell, we hit the same spots, sometimes together. Sometimes we’d just run into each other.”

  “With the kind of money Linville had—and seemed to enjoy spending—wasn’t it kind of expensive keeping up with him?” I asked.

  “Hey, I got a little money of my own,” he muttered. “Besides, Sparky, he enjoyed being, well, generous, you know?”

  “Meaning he picked up the tab a lot?”

  Halliburton grunted a yes.

  “Ever go out on dates together?”

  “Yeah, a few times, not very often.”

  “Been to his apartment?”

  “Once or twice, but what of it? Listen, what do you want, anyway? Who do you and Wolfe think got Sparky if it wasn’t James?”

  “I’ll just be another minute or two,” I said, ignoring the question. “Why do you think Michael James—or anybody else, for that matter—would want to kill Linville?”

  A shrug. “Hey, I’ve been asking myself that question for four days.”

  “Come on,” I said, “you’ve got to have some idea about why James was so hot. And weren’t you curious, at least a little bit, about why I wanted to talk to your friend on the street last Wednesday night in front of Morgana’s?”

  “Hey, with all the harassing Sparky had been getting from the press after that last speeding ticket, I just figured it was another reporter.”

  “But you told the police you recognized me.”

  It was air-conditioned in Halliburton’s apartment, but perspiration droplets had formed on his forehead and his neck. “All right,” he said defensively, “but still, I just figured you were out to hassle Sparky somehow because of his, well, his fast life, you know? He’d gotten to be kind of a target. People would recognize him on the street and give him a hard time, you know?”

  “And you protected him by swearing at them. Courageous of you. Now, let’s go through this together, and then I’ll be gone from here, I promise. According to the newspapers, Michael James was looking for Linville the night he was killed, and he—James—made no bones about being angry with him, although even after he confessed, he apparently wouldn’t say why he was s
o sore. What’s your theory?”

  Halliburton cursed under his breath, probably revving his brain cells trying to figure out how to get rid of me. “I don’t have one, except that …”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Well, I suppose it must have had something to do with Noreen,” he said tightly.

  “Good thinking. But what?”

  “How should I know? I wasn’t in the habit of gabbing with Sparky about his social life.”

  “If you had to guess, what would make a brother angry—very angry—with someone who had spent time with his sister?”

  Halliburton spread his hands. “Well, I mean, there’s an obvious answer to that.”

  “Right. Which is?”

  “Look, if you’re trying to get me to say something bad about a friend, and one who’s dead, for God’s sake, forget it. They just buried the guy yesterday!”

  “So are you saying you don’t know anything about the extent of Linville’s relationship with Noreen James, or you know but you’re not talking?”

  Halliburton swore. That boy had a very broad vocabulary. “I don’t know squat,” he said, his voice rising. “But it seems like everything you’re telling me makes it look bad for the brother. Whatever happened between Sparky and Noreen, it sounds to me like the cops got the right guy. Now, is there anything else you want to talk about? If not, I got things to do.”

  “Two more questions,” I said, standing as an enticement for him to answer. “As one of Linville’s good friends, can you think of anyone else who might wish him ill?”

  “Nobody,” he answered, also getting up. “Sparky was a warm, fun-loving, good guy. He’d do anything for a friend.”

  I let the remark stand without comment. “Okay, last question: What happened after you two left Morgana’s last Wednesday night?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Where did you go? How long were you and Linville together?”

  Halliburton pressed his lips together. “I’ve been over all this with the cops.”

  “Fine, now you can go over it with me.”

  I got a sigh and a roll of the eyes, but he knew he wasn’t getting rid of me until he answered. “We took a cab to a little place several blocks farther along Second Avenue, the Owl, and had a couple of beers, then I left around eleven-thirty or so and took a cab home. Sparky had parked his car a few blocks away and he offered to drive me—but I said no thanks. That’s way out of his way.”

  “So he stayed in the Owl?”

  “Just to finish his drink. He said he wanted to make one or two more stops—maybe Orion, he said—and … that’s the last I saw of him, sitting at the bar.”

  “Did you run into anybody you knew there?”

  “Uh-uh.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t a place either of us went much. I think I’d only been in there one other time.”

  “All right,” I said coolly. “I guess that’ll hold me—at least for now.” I walked into the foyer, with Halliburton trailing in my wake. I opened the door, pivoted toward him with a neutral expression, and went out into the hallway. Somebody in the building had had corned beef and cabbage for Sunday dinner. The door slammed behind me—hard—and his voice came through the wood clearly: “From now on, stay away from here,” he said.

  The big bully.

  SEVENTEEN

  ALTHOUGH IT DIDN’T SEEM THAT late, my watch insisted on telling me it was twenty past two when I got out of a cab in front of the brownstone. After my session with Todd Halliburton, I had toyed with walking north from the Village, which I’ve done on several occasions, but instead decided to use some of Noreen James’s money. After all, I’d just had to spend fifteen minutes with a two-legged weasel, and it seemed to me that that act alone entitled me to something, say another taxi ride.

  I buzzed to get in, which, given Fritz’s absence, meant rousting Wolfe from the office to unlock the front door. He swung it open, scowling. “Well, did you miss me?” I asked cheerfully.

  “Inspector Cramer telephoned twenty minutes ago,” was his tart response. “The weapon presumably used to dispatch Mr. Linville has been located.”

  “You’ve got my attention,” I said when we were in the office. “I’m all ears.”

  “That is comforting to know,” Wolfe replied with no trace of irony. “It was indeed a tire iron,” he said after getting himself resettled behind his desk, a feat roughly comparable to docking the QE2. “Apparently the one missing from that pile of tools on the floor in the parking garage. The inspector reported that it was found in a trashcan several doors east of where Mr. Linville lived by a building superintendent.”

  “And James said he went west from the garage.”

  Wolfe moved his head imperceptibly, which for him constitutes a nod. “Mr. Cramer has a dilemma. As you know, he has arrested someone who readily—almost eagerly—confessed to the murder of Barton Linville, relieving him and the police of intense media and civic pressure. But in so doing, he also took into custody a young man, the members of whose family he has known with affection for more than a generation.”

  “Nobody ever said life is easy, particularly for a public servant,” I countered. I can be philosophical at times, despite what anybody says.

  “Granted. However, I am inclined to extend a minimum of compassion to the inspector in this instance.”

  “That’s doggone decent of you.”

  “Or practical,” Wolfe remarked dryly. “When Mr. Cramer telephoned, I told him I wanted you to view the purported weapon.”

  “I’ll bet that got a laugh.”

  “Hardly. He agreed without complaint.”

  “He is in a bind.”

  “Yes. He knows he has the wrong person but can do nothing about it and will climb into any lifeboat that will pull him aboard.”

  “Even one with Nero Wolfe manning the oars?” I asked.

  “Yes. He said that you should call Sergeant Stebbins, who will arrange for you to see the tire iron at police headquarters.”

  So that was why, while Saul Panzer and his out-of-town visitor were using my tickets at Shea Stadium watching Dwight Gooden throw a two-hitter against St. Louis in a game that included a Mets’ triple play, I was down at One Police Plaza visiting Purley Stebbins, who, like Cramer, seems never to take time off. A word here about the estimable sergeant: Purley is an old-school policeman, make no mistake. And he looks like an old-line cop ought to look, at least as I visualize it. He’s big without being fat, probably only an inch taller than me but a lot thicker. You’d be pressing it to call Purley handsome, but he’s got a strong face: big ears, big square jaw, bristly brows over eyes that don’t miss a thing. He doesn’t laugh much, but then, in his line of work, he doesn’t see a whole lot to laugh about. He doesn’t like criminals of any variety, and he isn’t much fonder of private detectives, including me and Wolfe. Oh, he’s usually civil, at least as civil as Purley ever gets, but he doesn’t waste words and he doesn’t conceal his disdain for anyone who makes money doing what he feels only the police are qualified to do. And besides, he thinks Wolfe has made him look bad a couple of times, which is hard to argue with.

  But Purley also follows the chain of command scrupulously, and if Cramer tells him to bark, he barks—without complaint. “Okay, here we are,” he gruffed after we had entered a small windowless, colorless room where a stocky little guy with glasses and a white smock was doing paperwork at a high table.

  “Jenks, show us the item,” Purley said tonelessly.

  Jenks, who was wearing what looked like surgical gloves, opened a drawer in a gray cabinet and drew out a silver-colored L-shaped tire iron, the longer leg of which measured about a foot. “No touching,” he cautioned like an elementary-school teacher as he held it out.

  “Looks like dried blood,” I said in my most professional voice, remarking on the brownish discoloration around the elbow of the tool.

  “Could be,” Jenks said.

  “Yeah, could be,” Purley echoed, throwing me a “You’ve-seen-it-and
-I’ve-done-my-duty-so-now-go-home” expression. I had indeed seen all I wanted to, but Purley always brings out the worst in me, so I kept peering at the iron, which Jenks clasped tightly. “Find any prints?” I asked.

  Jenks looked at Stebbins for some sign as to whether he should respond, and Purley, bless his uncomplicated self, shook his head. No subtlety there.

  “Okay, that’s enough, let’s go,” he told me. “Thank you, Mr. Jenks.”

  The little man nodded without expression as we walked out. In the hall, I thanked Purley for his hospitality and told him Wolfe also was appreciative, which must have impressed him, because he blinked once, or maybe it was twice.

  Back at the brownstone after yet another taxi ride that would go onto Noreen James’s bill, I rang the bell, and had the door unbolted and opened by Fritz, recently returned from wherever he spent the day—I didn’t ask. In the office, I found Wolfe leaning back with his eyes closed.

  “Taking a catnap?” I asked innocently as I slid into my chair.

  He snorted, opening his eyes but making no other moves. “Report,” he said.

  “Do you mean on my trip downtown to look at the apparent murder weapon, or on all my activities of today?”

  “Both,” he said, ringing for beer.

  With that, I reconstructed my visits to both Rojek and Halliburton, giving Wolfe plenty of the dialogue, which he appreciates, but making no value judgments. It took me twenty-three minutes.

  “Your impressions of the two men?” he asked after I had finished.

  “Mixed; I’ll take them one at a time. First, Rojek: basically a decent guy, although more than a tad on the stuffy side. If he has a sense of humor, he’s learned to suppress it masterfully. His feelings about Noreen James? Intense, and he’s obviously interested in her for the long haul—he said as much without hesitation, and I believe him. Did he kill Linville? Possibly. My initial reaction is to say ‘no way,’ but then, he appears to be in love with her. And love, or so I’ve heard, can do strange things to a man’s character, especially when the object of his affection has been ill-used. Take that crazy case over in Jersey where the meek little clothing-store stock clerk shot and wounded the professional wrestler who—”