A Family Affair

by A Family Affair (lit)

  When the sound came of the front door closing, I crossed over for a look. He was out. I crossed back and said, "So you didn't give me an errand because you knew one of them would come. Wonderful."

  He grunted. "I have told you a dozen times, sarcasm is the most futile of weapons. It doesn't cut, it [54] merely bounces off. Why did he want the carbons?"

  "Souvenirs. Autographs. Signed by both of us. Someday they'll be auctioned off at Sotheby's."

  I looked at my watch. "It's twenty minutes to noon. Things will be all set for lunch and the customers won't start coming until nearly one. Or have you a better place to start than Felix?"

  "You know I haven't. We want everything he knows about Mr. Bassett and his guests that evening. Unless-you have slept on it, so I ask again, does Philip know what was on that slip of paper?"

  "It's still no. As I said, he was unloading. He thinks the name on it might have been Archie Goodwin. Pierre told him he wondered about it. All right, I probably won't be here for lunch."

  "A moment. One detail. If Felix supplies names, even one, and you get to him, it might serve to tell him that Pierre told you that he saw one of them hand Mr. Bassett a slip of paper. It might. Consider it."

  "Yeah. And Pierre's dead."

  I went to the hall and to the rack for my coat. No hat. The thermometer outside said 38, more like December than October, no sun, but I have rules too. No hat before Thanksgiving. Rain or snow is good for hair.

  [55] 6 With felix it was all negatives, and negatives are no good either to write or to read. Except for preferences and opinions about food and how it should be served, I knew more about Harvey H. Bassett than he did, since I had read the newspapers twice and he may not have read them at all. Television and radio, and his working day was a good twelve hours. On the big question, the names of the guests at the dinner on October 18, nearly two weeks ago, he was a complete blank. He had never seen any of them before or since. All he knew was that it had been stag. Evidently he thought better of me than Philip did; he said he had some fresh pompano up from the Gulf and wanted to feed me, but I declined with thanks.

  It was 12: 42 when I left by the front door and headed uptown. One of my more useless habits is timing all walks, though it may be helpful only about one time in a hundred. It took nine minutes to the Gazette building. Lon Cohen's room, two doors down the hall from the publisher's on the twentieth floor, barely had enough space for a big desk with three phones on it, one chair besides his, and shelves with a few books and a thousand newspapers. It was his [56] lunch hour, so I expected to find him alone, and he was.

  "I'll be damned," he said. "You still loose?"

  "No."

  I sat. "I'm a fugitive. I came to bring you a new picture of me. The one you ran Sunday, my nose is crooked. I admit it's no treat, but it's not crooked."

  "It should be, after Monday night. Damn it, Archie, I'm an hour behind. I'll get Landry, there's a room down the hall, and-" "No. Not even what I had for breakfast. As I said on the phone, when I can spill one bean you'll get it."

  I rose. "Right now we could use a fact or two, but if you're an hour behind-" I was going.

  "Sit down. All right, I'll be two hours behind. But I'm not going to starve."

  He took a healthy bite of a tuna-and-lettuce sandwich on whole wheat.

  "Not an hour."

  I sat. "Maybe only three minutes if you can tell me the names of six men who ate dinner on Harvey H. Bassett at Rusterman's, Friday, October eighteenth."

  "What?"

  He stopped chewing to stare. "Bassett? What has that got to do with a bomb killing a man in Nero Wolfe's house?"

  "It's connected, but that's off the record. Right now everything's off the record. Repeat, everything. Pierre Ducos was the waiter at that dinner. Do you know who was there?"

  "No. I didn't know he was there."

  "How soon can you find out and keep me out of it?"

  "Maybe a day, maybe a week. It might be an hour if we could get to Doh Ray Me."

  "Who is Doh Ray Me?"

  "His wife. Widow. Of course you don't call her that now, not to her face. She's holed up. She won't see anybody, not even the DA. Her doctor eats and sleeps there. They say. What are you staring for? Is my nose crooked?"

  [57] "111 be damned."

  I stood up. "Of course. Why the hell didn't I remember? I must be in shock. See you tomorrow night-I hope. Forget I was here."

  I went.

  There was no phone booth on that floor, so I went to the elevator. On the way down I pinched my memory. Having met only about a tenth of the characters -poets from Bolivia, pianists from Hungary, girls from Wyoming or Utah-who had been given a hand by Lily Rowan, I had never seen Dora Miller. Arriving in New York from Kansas, she had been advised by an artist's agent to change her name to Doremi, and when nobody had pronounced it right, had changed it again to Doraymee. You would think that a singer with that name would surely go far, but at the time Lily had told me about her she had been doing TV commercials. Though the Times may not have mentioned that Mrs. Harvey H. Bassett had once been Doraymee, the Gazette must have, and I missed it. Shock.

  I entered one of the ten booths on the ground floor, shut the door, and dialed a number, and after eight rings, par for that number, a voice came. "Hello?"

  She always makes it a question.

  "Hello. The top of the afternoon to you."

  "Well. I haven't rung your number even once, so you owe me a pat on the head or a pat where you think it would do the most good. Are you alive and well? Are you at home?"

  "I'm alive. I'm also ten short blocks from you. Only a ten-minute walk if you feel like company."

  "You are not company. As you know, we are still trying to decide what each other is. I speak English. Lunch is nearly ready. Cross on the green."

  We hung up. That's one of the many good points: we hung up.

  Even with another tenant, it would be a pleasure to enter that penthouse on East Sixty-third Street, but [58] of course with another tenant it wouldn't be furnished like that. The only two things that I definitely would scrap are the painting on the living-room wall by de Kooning and the electric fireplace in the spare bedroom. I also like the manners. Lily nearly always opens the door herself, and she doesn't lift a hand when a man takes his coat off in the vestibule. We usually don't kiss for a greeting, but that time she put her hands on my arms and offered, and I accepted. More, I returned the compliment.

  She backed up and demanded, "Where were you and what were you doing at half past one Monday night, October twenty-eighth?"

  "Try again," I said. "You fumbled it. Tuesday morning, October twenty-ninth. But first I want to confess. I'm here under false pretenses. I came because I need help."

  She nodded. "Certainly. I knew that when you said the top of the afternoon to me. You only remind me that I'm Irish when you want something. So you're in a hurry and we'll go straight to the table. There's enough."

  She led the way through the living room to the den, where the desk and files and shelves and typewriter stand barely leave room enough for a table that two can eat on. As we sat, Mimi came with a loaded tray.

  "Go ahead," Lily said.

  I want to like my manners too, so I waited until Mimi had finished serving and gone and we had taken bites of celery. Also, at Lily's table, especially when no guest had been expected, often not even Fritz would have known what was on his plate just by looking at it, so I looked at her with my eyebrows up.

  She nodded. "You've never had it. We're trying it and haven't decided. Mushrooms and soy beans and black walnuts and sour cream. Don't tell him. If you can't get it down, Mimi will do a quick omelet.

  [59] Even he admitted she could do an omelet. At the ranch."

  I had taken a forkload. It didn't need much chewing, not even the walnuts, because they had been pulverized or something. When it was down I said, "I want to make it perfectly clear that-" "Don't do that! I've told you. Even a joke about him turns my stomach."

/>   "You're too careless with pronouns. Your hims. Your first him's opinion of your second him is about the same as yours. So is mine. As for this mix, I'm like you, I haven't decided. I admit it's different."

  I loaded a fork.

  "I'll just watch your face. Tell me why you came."

  I waited until the second forkful was with the first. "As I said, I need help. You once told me about a girl from Kansas named Doraymee. Remember?"

  "Of course I do. I saw her yesterday."

  "You sow her? Yesterday? You saw Mrs. Harvey H. Bassett?"

  "Yes. You must know about her husband, since you always read about murders. She phoned me yesterday afternoon and said she was-" She stopped with her mouth half open. "What is this? She asked about you, and now you're asking about her. What's going on?"

  My mouth was half open too. "I don't believe it. Are you saying that Mrs. Bassett phoned you to ask about me? I don't -" "I didn't say that. She phoned to ask me to come and hold her hand-that was what she wanted, but she didn't say so. She said she just had to see me, I suppose because of what I had done before, when she couldn't make it in New York and was going back home to get a meal. I hadn't really done much, just paid for her room and board for a year. I hadn't seen her for-oh, three or four years. I went, and we talked for an hour or more, and she asked if I had seen you since her husband died. I thought she was [60] just talking. Also she said she had read some of your books about Nero Wolfe's cases, and that surprised me because I knew she never read books. I thought she was just talking to get her mind off of her troubles, but now you ask about her. So I want to know-" She bit it off and stared at me. "My god, Escamillo, is it possible that I am capable of jealousy? Of course, if I could be about anybody, it would be about you, but I have always thought ... I refuse to believe it."

  "Relax."

  I reached to draw fingertips across the back of her hand. "Probably you have been jealous about me since the day you first caught sight of me and heard my voice, that's only natural, but Doraymee has never seen me and I have never seen her. Our asking about each other is just a coincidence. Usually I'm suspicious of coincidences, but I love this one. I now tell you something that is absolutely not for publication. Not yet. There's a connection between the two murders-Bassett and Pierre Ducos-and it's possible that Doraymee knows something that will help. A week before he was killed-Friday evening, October eighteenth-Bassett treated six men to a meal at Rusterman's, and Nero Wolfe wants to know the names of the six men, and so do I. Possibly she knows. The name of even one would help. Lon Cohen of the Gazette, whom you have met, says that she has holed up and won't see anybody. I'm not particular; either you might call her and ask her to see me, or you might go and ask her for the names, or you might just ask for them on the phone. As I said, even one of them. That's what I came for, and I want to thank you for this delicious hash. I also want the recipe for Fritz."

  I loaded my fork.

  She took a bite of celery and chewed. That's another good point. Her face is just as attractive when she is chewing celery or even a good big bite of steak. She swallowed. "This is the third time you've [61] asked me to help," she said. "I didn't mind the other two. In fact I enjoyed it."

  I nodded. "And there's no reason not to enjoy this one. I wouldn't ask you to snoop on a friend, you know that. I assume-we assume-that she would like to have the man who killed her husband tagged and nailed. So would we. I admit the one we have got to tag is the one who killed Pierre Ducos there in that house when I was going to bed just thirty feet away, but as I said, they're connected. I can't guarantee she will never be sorry she told you these names; when you're investigating a murder you can't guarantee anything, but you can name the odds. A thousand to one."

  I loaded my fork. I think that stuff was edible; my mind wasn't on it.

  "I'd rather just phone and ask her. What if she says she doesn't know their names and I think she's lying? I like her, you can't help but like her, but she's a pretty good liar. I don't want to needle her now. She's low, very low."

  "Of course not. Make it simple. Leave me out. Just say somebody told you she saw Bassett at Rusterman's with five or six men just a week before he was killed and they didn't look very jolly and she wondered if one of them killed him. Nuts. Listen to me. Telling you how to use your tongue."

  "No butter today, thank you. All right. There's lemon-sherry pudding and I want to enjoy it, so 111 go to the bedroom and get it done."

  She pushed her chair back and rose. "Friday, October eighteenth."

  "Right."

  She went. My watch said 2: 21. If she got names, I wouldn't enjoy my lemon-sherry pudding, so it was advisable to get that done, and I pushed the button and Mimi came. Her eyes went down to my plate and up to me. "You ate more than half of it, Mr. Good win. What do you think?"

  "To be honest, Mimi, I don't know. When I've got [62] a job on my mind I forget to taste. 111 have to come again."

  She nodded. "I knew you were working on something, I can tell. Shall I do an omelet?"

  I said no thanks, just the pudding and coffee, and she took my plate. In four minutes she was back, and I burned my tongue on the coffee because my stomach sent up word that it wanted help. Of course the pudding was no stranger. Mimi is good at puddings and parfaits and pastries. Also at coffee.

  I was licking my spoon when Lily came, talking as she entered. "Don't get up. I got one name."

  She sat. "That woman is really low, I don't know why. He was twice her age, at least that, and I supposed she married him just to get in out of the rain. Didn't she?"

  "I don't know, I never met her. You got a name?"

  "Yes, just one. She said she didn't know who the others were, but one of them was a man she knew."

  She handed me a paper, light green, a sheet from her 5-by-8 memo pad. "She called him Benny. He's an engineer, with NATELEC, Bassett's company. More coffee?"

  "No, thanks. You show promise. Well raise your pay and-" "I'll do better as I go along. You skip. You're not yourself when you'd rather be somewhere else."

  She picked up her spoon.

  "I would not rather-I don't need to tell you what I'd rather."

  I stood. "I'll tell you everything someday, and I hope you like it."

  I skipped.

  In the elevator I looked at the slip. Benjamin Igoe. That was all, and I should have asked her how to pronounce it. On the sidewalk I stood for half a minute, then headed west and turned downtown on Madison. I had to decide how to handle it-using my intelligence guided by experience, as Wolfe put it. By Fifty-fifth Street it was decided, but my legs would [63] get me there as soon as a taxi or a bus, so I kept going. It was five past three when the doorman at Rusterman's saluted and opened for me, so the lunch rush would be over and Felix could and would listen.

  That was all he had to do, listen, except for pronouncing it. I spelled it, and he thought probably Eego, but I preferred Eyego, and since I had been born in Ohio and he had been born in Vienna, I won. When that was settled and he was thoroughly briefed, I went to the bar and ordered an Irish with water on the side. Even after the coffee my stomach still seemed to think something was needed, and I made it Irish to show Lily there was no hard feeling. Then I went and consulted the phone book for the address of National Electronics Industries. Third Avenue, middle Forties, which was a relief. It might have been Queens. I left by the side door.

  They had three floors of one of the newer steel-and-glass hives. The directory on the lobby wall said Research and Development on the eighth. Production on the ninth, and Executive on the tenth. He might be anything from stock clerk to Chairman of the Board, but you might as well start at the top, so I went to the tenth but was told that Mr. Eyego was in Production. So I pronounced it right. On the ninth a woman with a double chin used a kind of intercom that was new to me and then told me to go down the hall to the last door on the right.

  It was a corner room with four windows, so he wasn't a stock clerk, though you might have thought so from his b
rown overalls with big pockets full of things. He was standing over by a filing cabinet. I had never seen a more worried face. That might have been expected, since the president of his company had died only five days ago, but those brow wrinkles had taken at least five years. So it was a surprise when he said in a good strong baritone, "A message from Nero Wolfe? What the hell. Huh?"

  [64] My voice went up a little without being told to. "I said message, but it's really a question. It's a little complicated, so if you can spare a few minutes-" "I can never spare a few minutes, but my mind needs something to take it off of the goddam problems. All right, ten minutes."

  He looked at his watch. "Let's sit down."

  There was a big desk near a window, but that was probably where the goddam problems were, and he crossed to a couch over by the far wall. He sat and crossed his legs in spite of the loaded pockets, and I pulled a chair around to face him.