Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 33 - Too Many Clients Read online

  Arriving, I mounted the seven steps to the stoop and pushed the bell button. My key isn’t enough when the chain bolt is on, as it usually is when I’m out. When Fritz opened the door and I entered, he tried not to look a question at me but couldn’t keep it out of his eyes—the same question he hadn’t asked that afternoon: Did we have a client? I told him it was still possible, and I was empty, and could he spare a hunk of bread and a glass of milk? He said but of course, he would bring it, and I went to the office.

  Wolfe was at his desk with a book, leaning back in the only chair in the world that he can sit down in without making a face, made to order by his design and under his supervision. The reading light in the wall above and behind his left shoulder was the only one on in the room, and like that, with the light at that angle, he looks even bigger than he is. Like a mountain with the sun rising behind it. As I entered and flipped the wall switch to cut him down to size, he spoke. He said, “Umph.” As I crossed to my desk he asked, “Have you eaten?”

  “No.” I sat. “Fritz is bringing something.”

  “Bringing?”

  Surprise with a touch of annoyance. Ordinarily, when an errand has made me miss a meal and I come home hungry, I go to the kitchen to eat. The exceptions are when I have something to report that shouldn’t wait, and when he is settled down for the evening with a book he is in no mood to listen to a report, no matter what.

  I nodded. “I have something on my chest.”

  His lips tightened. The book, a big thick one, was spread open, held with both hands. He closed it on a finger to keep his place, heaved a sigh, and demanded, “What?”

  I decided it was useless to try circling around. With him you have to fit the tactics to the atmosphere. “That slip I put on your desk,” I said. “The bank balance after drawing those checks. The June tax payment will be due in thirty-seven days. Of course we could file an amended declaration if someone doesn’t turn up with a major problem and a retainer to match.”

  He was scowling at me. “Must you harp on the obvious?”

  “I’m not harping. I haven’t mentioned it for three days. I refer to it now because I would like to have permission to take a stab at digging up a client instead of sitting here on my fanny waiting for one to turn up. I’m getting calluses on my rump.”

  “And your modus? A sandwich board?”

  “No, sir. I have a possible target, just barely possible. About that man who came to hire me to spot a tail, Thomas G. Yeager. I got two cabs and had them waiting at seven o’clock, one for him to take and one for me to follow in. He didn’t show up. I got tired waiting and rang his house, and Purley Stebbins answered the phone. I went around a corner and there was a car with Purley’s driver in it, in front of Yeager’s house. I rang Lon Cohen and he wanted to know why I had phoned him to ask about Thomas G. Yeager two hours before Yeager’s body was found in a hole on West Eighty-second Street. With a hole in his head. So our client was gone, but it occurred to me that his going might possibly get us another one. He was a big shot in his field, with a big title and a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and it could be that no one but me knew of his suspicion that he was being tailed or was going to be. Also the address that he thought he was going to be tailed to was One-fifty-six West Eighty-second Street, and it was in that block on that street that his body had been found. So I spent some of your money. Besides paying the two hackies for their time, I gave them an extra forty bucks to forget where they had been—that is, I gave it to Mike Collins. Al Goller preferred to do his forgetting for personal reasons.”

  Wolfe grunted. “Your initiative. They may already have the murderer.”

  “Then you’re out forty dollars in addition to the fifty-three dollars and sixty cents spent on behalf of a client from whom we won’t collect because he’s dead. But it’s not as simple as that. Actually our client is not dead. Or, putting it another way, we didn’t have a client. On my way home I stopped in at the Gazette to ask Lon Cohen to forget that I had phoned to ask him about Thomas G. Yeager, and there was a folder on his desk with some items about Yeager, including three pictures of him, which I looked at. The man who came this afternoon to hire me to spot his tail was not Yeager. No resemblance. So I suppose it’s more accurate to say we didn’t have a client.”

  Chapter 3

  Naturally I expected to get a strong reaction, and I did. Wolfe straightened up to reach to the desk for his bookmark, a thin strip of gold which he used only for books he considered worthy of a place on the shelves in the office. As he inserted it in the book Fritz appeared with a tray and brought it to my desk. Seeing that Wolfe was putting his book down, he winked at me approvingly, and I swiveled to get at the tray. There was a bowl of chestnut soup, a cucumber-and-shrimp sandwich on toast, a roast-beef sandwich on a hard roll, home-baked, a pile of watercress, an apple baked in white wine, and a glass of milk.

  A question of etiquette. When we are at table in the dining room for lunch or dinner, any mention of business is taboo. The rule has never been formally extended to fill-ins, but Wolfe feels strongly that when a man is feeding nothing should interfere with his concentration on his palate. Having disposed of the book, he leaned back and shut his eyes. After a few spoonfuls of soup I said, “I’m too hungry to taste anyway. Go right ahead.”

  His eyes opened. “Beyond all doubt?”

  “Yes, sir.” I took in a spoonful and swallowed. “His name was typed on the pictures. Also there was a picture of him in a magazine. A face like a squirrel with a pointed nose and not much chin. The man this afternoon had a long bony face and broad forehead.”

  “And, calling himself Yeager, he said that he expected to be followed to a specified address on West Eighty-second Street, and Yeager’s body was found near that address. How long had he been dead?”

  “I don’t know. Give them time. Besides what I’ve told you, all Lon knew was that the body was in a hole in the street dug by Con Edison men, it was covered with a tarp, and it was found by boys whose ball rolled in.”

  “If I approve of your proposal to explore the possibility of getting a client and earning a fee, how do you intend to proceed?”

  I swallowed soup. “First I finish these sandwiches and the apple and milk. Then I go to Eighty-second Street. Since the body was found in a hole in the street, it’s quite possible that there is nothing to connect it with that neighborhood or that particular address. He could have been killed anywhere and taken there and dumped. The blocks in the Eighties between Columbus and Amsterdam are no place for a big shot in a big corporation. The Puerto Ricans and Cubans average three or four to a room. I want to find out what business Yeager had there, if any.”

  “You would go now? Tonight?”

  “Sure. As soon as I empty this tray.”

  “Pfui. How often have I told you that impetuosity is a virtue only when delay is dangerous?”

  “Oh, six thousand.”

  “But you are still headlong. In the morning we shall get many details that are lacking now. There may be no problem left, except the identity of the man who came here in masquerade, and that may no longer be of interest. Now, of course, it is. How long was he with you?”

  “Twenty-five minutes.”

  “We may need a record of what he said. Instead of dashing up to Eighty-second Street you will spend the evening at the typewriter. The conversation verbatim, and include a complete description.” He picked up the book and shifted to his reading position.

  That took care of the rest of the evening. I still would have liked to take a look at 156 West 82nd Street before the cops got interested in it, if they hadn’t already, but Wolfe did have a point, and it was his money I had given Mike Collins. Typing my talk with the bogus Yeager was no strain, merely work. I have reported orally many conversations much longer than that one, with more people involved. It was a little short of midnight when I finished. After collating the sheets, original and carbon, and putting them in a drawer, removing the orchids from the vase on Wolfe’s desk and
taking them to the garbage pail in the kitchen—he wants them gone when he brings fresh ones in the morning—locking the safe, seeing that the front door was bolted, and turning out the lights, I mounted two flights to my room. Wolfe was already in his, on the second floor.

  Usually I get down to the kitchen for breakfast around eight-thirty, but that Tuesday morning I made it earlier, a little after eight. I wanted to go straight to the little table where Fritz had put my copy of the Times on the reading rack, but impetuosity is a virtue only when delay is dangerous, so I made myself exchange greetings with Fritz, get my glass of orange juice, stir it, and take a couple of sips. Then I went and got the paper. Would the headline be YEAGER MURDER SOLVED?

  It wasn’t. It was EXECUTIVE SHOT AND KILLED. I sat down and took another sip.

  With my orange juice, buckwheat cakes and sausage, blackberry jam, and two cups of coffee, I read it in both the Times and the Gazette. I’ll skip such details as the names of the boys who found the body. They got their names in the papers, and that ought to last them, and anyway I doubt if they read books. He had been shot once, above the right ear, at close range, and had died instantly. He had been dead sixteen to twenty-four hours when the body was examined at 7:30 p.m., so he had been killed between 7:30 p.m. Sunday and 3:30 a.m. Monday. The autopsy might make it more definite. There had been no workmen in the excavation on 82nd Street all day Monday because needed repair times were not at hand, so the body could have been put in the hole Sunday night. The tarpaulin had been left in the hole by the workmen. No one had been found who had seen Yeager alive in the neighborhood or who had heard a shot fired in the vicinity, so he had probably been killed elsewhere and the body transferred there.

  Yeager’s daughter, Anne, was at college, Bennington. His son, Thomas G. Junior, was in Cleveland, employed at the plant of Continental Plastic Products. Yeager and his wife had left New York Friday evening to spend the weekend visiting friends in the country; he had returned to town Sunday afternoon, but his wife hadn’t returned until Monday morning. There had been no one at the Yeager house on 68th Street Sunday afternoon. Nothing was known of Yeager’s movements after he boarded a train for New York at Stamford at 5:02 p.m. Sunday.

  No one was being held by the police, and the District Attorney would say only that the investigation was in progress.

  In the picture of him in the Times he was grinning like a politician. There were two in the Gazette—one a reproduction of one I had seen in Lon’s office, and one of him stretched out at the edge of the hole he had been found in. I clipped the one in the Times and the live one from the Gazette and put them in my pocket notebook.

  At 8:51 I put down my empty coffee cup, thanked Fritz for the meal and told him I might or might not be home for lunch, went to the hall, mounted the flight to Wolfe’s room, and entered. His breakfast tray, with nothing left on it but empty dishes, was on the table by a window, and beside it was his copy of the Times. He was standing before the mirror on the dresser, knotting his four-in-hand. Since he always goes from his room to the roof for his morning two hours in the plant rooms I don’t know why he sports a tie—maybe being polite to the orchids. He grunted good morning, got the tie adjusted, and turned.

  “I’m off,” I said. “Instructions?”

  “Your initiative,” he said.

  “No, sir. That was yesterday. Are you sending me or aren’t you? Apparently it’s wide open, unless they’re saving something. He had been dead at least fourteen hours when that bozo came yesterday. What he said is in my desk drawer. How much do I have along for possible needs?”

  “Enough.”

  “Any limit?”

  “Certainly. The limit dictated by your discretion and sagacity.”

  “Right. Expect me when you see me.”

  Descending to the office, I opened the safe, got five hundred dollars in used fives, tens, and twenties from the cash reserve, closed the safe, and twirled the knob. Removing my jacket, I unlocked the bottom drawer of my desk, got my armpit holster and put it on, loaded the Marley .32, and slipped it in the holster. Ever since an unpleasant experience some years ago I never go on an errand connected with a murder with only my pocketknife. I put on my jacket and went to the hall. Coat and hat? I hate to bother with them. There was no sun outside; the 7:30 radio had said possible showers. What the hell, live dangerously. I left, walked to Tenth Avenue and flagged a taxi, and told the driver 82nd and Broadway.

  Of course I had no script; it would have to be ad lib, except the obvious first step, to find out if the city scientists had finished their research. Many of them knew me by sight, and they knew I wouldn’t be nosing around the scene of a murder just to pass the time. So, walking east from Broadway and crossing Amsterdam Avenue, I stopped at the corner for a survey from a distance, from the uptown side of 82nd Street. I have good eyes at any distance, and I could make out the “156” on a house about thirty paces from the corner. Parked cars were bumper to bumper along the curb on both sides except where barriers guarded the hole in the pavement, but there was no police car, marked or unmarked.

  Begging the pardon of the tenants of the block, it was a slum. Fifty or sixty years ago, when the stone was new and clean and the brass was shiny, the long row of five-story houses might have been a credit to the city, but no more. They looked ratty and they were ratty, and it was a bet that they would crumble any minute if they hadn’t been jammed together. There weren’t many people on the sidewalk, and no kids, since it was school hours, but there was quite a gathering around the barriers surrounding the hole, which was some fifteen yards beyond Number 156. There was a cop there riding herd on them, but he was merely a flatfoot. There was no sign of Homicide or DA man.

  I crossed the street and walked along to the barriers. Over the shoulder of a woman in a purple dress I could see two workmen down in the hole, so the scientists had finished with it. While I stood looking down at them my sagacity came up with five conclusions:

  1. Yeager had had some connection with someone or something at Number 156. Whoever the guy was who had come and hired me, and whatever his game was, and whether he had killed Yeager or not, he certainly hadn’t just pulled that address out of a hat.

  2. If Yeager had been killed elsewhere and the body had been brought to this spot deliberately, to impress someone at 156, why hadn’t it been dumped on the sidewalk smack in front of 156? Why roll it into the hole and climb down and put a tarp over it? No.

  3. If Yeager had been killed elsewhere and the body had been brought to this spot not deliberately, but accidentally, merely because there was a hole here, you would have to swallow a coincidence that even a whale couldn’t get down. No.

  4. Yeager had not been shot as he was entering or leaving 156. At any time of night the sound of a shot in that street would have brought a dozen, a hundred, heads sticking out of windows. So the shooter runs or steps on the gas pedal. He does not drag the body to the hole and roll it in and climb down and put a tarp over it. No.

  5. Therefore Yeager had been killed inside Number 156, some time, any time, after 7:30 p.m. Sunday, and later that night, when there was no audience, the body had been carried to the hole, only fifteen yards, and dropped in. That didn’t account for the tarp, but no theory would. At least the tarp didn’t hurt it. It could have been to postpone discovery of the body until the workmen came.

  In detective work it’s a great convenience to have a sagacity that can come up with conclusions like that; it saves wear and tear on the brain. I backed away from the barrier and walked the fifteen yards to Number 156.

  Some of the houses had a sign, VACANCY, displayed at the entrance, but 156 didn’t. But it did have a sign, hand-printed on a piece of cardboard fastened to the pillar at the foot of the steps going up to the stoop. It said SUPERENTENDANT, with an arrow pointing to the right. So I went right and down three steps, then left and through an open doorway into a little vestibule, and there in front of my eyes was evidence that there was something special about that house. The
door had a Rabson lock. You have a Rabson installed on a door only if you insist on being absolutely certain that anyone who enters must have either the right key or a sledgehammer, and you are able and willing to shell out $61.50.

  I pushed the bell button. In a moment the door opened, and there facing me was one of the three most beautiful females I have ever seen.

  I must have gaped or gasped, from the way she smiled, the smile of a queen at a commoner. She spoke. “You want something?” Her voice was low and soft, without breath.

  The only thing to say was “Certainly, I want you,” but I managed to hold it in. She was eighteen, tall and straight, with skin the color of the wild thyme honey that Wolfe gets from Greece, and she was extremely proud of something, not her looks. When a woman is proud of her looks it’s just a smirk. I don’t think I stammered, but if I didn’t I should have. “I’d like to see the superintendent.”

  “Are you a policeman?”

  If she liked policemen the only thing to say was “Yes.” But probably she didn’t. “No,” I said, “I’m a newspaperman.”

  “That’s nice.” She turned and called, “Father, a newspaperman!” and her voice raised was even more wonderful than her voice low. She turned back to me, graceful as a big cat, and stood there straight and proud, not quite smiling, her warm dark eyes as curious as if she had never seen a man before. I knew damn well I ought to say something, but what? The only thing to say was “Will you marry me?” but that wouldn’t do because the idea of her washing dishes or darning socks was preposterous. Then I became aware of something, that I had moved my foot inside the sill so the door couldn’t close, and that spoiled it. I was just a private detective trying to dig up a client.