Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 45 (8 page)

“No.” He was scowling at her. “No one can ‘handle’ Mr. Goodwin. But he handles himself reasonably well, and he wouldn’t divulge information he got as my agent without my consent. My problem is handling me. Your fatuous attempt to hoodwink me relieves me of my commitment, but I too am a licensed private detective. If Mr. Cramer learns that those seven people were here last evening, as he probably will, and if he comes to see me, as he almost certainly will, I’ll be in a pickle. I have many times refused to disclose information on the ground that it was not material, but the fact that your husband went to that room and opened that drawer in order to put LSD in the whisky is manifestly material. Confound it, they even have the LSD—that is, you
say
they have it.”

“They do. They showed it to me.” She opened her bag and took out the checkfold. “I’ve made one idiotic mistake with you and I don’t intend to make another one. I’m going to give you a check for one hundred thousand dollars, but I have sense enough to know that I have to be careful how I do it. If you think that I think I can pay you and Goodwin for not telling the police about the LSD, I don’t. I know I can’t. But I do think they will never get Browning, and I think you might. I think the only chance of getting him is if you do it. I don’t care what it costs. The hundred thousand dollars is just to start. You may have to give somebody twice that much for something.” She slid the pen out and started to write on the check stub.

“No,” Wolfe said. “You can’t pay me at all on the terms you imply. I certainly would not engage to demonstrate that Mr. Browning killed your husband. I might engage to try to learn
who
killed your husband and to get evidence that would convict him. As for withholding information from the police, that must be left to my discretion. Mr. Goodwin and I are disinclined to share with others information that gives us an advantage.”

“It
was
Browning. Why do you think it wasn’t?”

“I don’t. He is as likely a candidate as anyone—much the most likely, if he knew of your husband’s intention to drug the whisky.” He swiveled to face the red leather chair. “Miss Haber. You didn’t tell Mr. Browning about it, but whom did you tell?”

“Nobody.” It came out louder than she intended, and she repeated it, lower. “Nobody.”

“This is extremely important. I
must
know. This time you are expected to tell me the truth.”

“I
am
telling you the truth. I
couldn’t
have told anyone because I didn’t know myself. I didn’t know what the LSD was for until last Saturday evening, three days ago, when Mrs. Odell told me … When she asked me …”

Wolfe turned to Mrs. Odell with his brow up.

“
I
believe her,” she said, and he turned back to the secretary.

“Do you go to church, Miss Haber?”

“Yes, I do. Lutheran. Not every Sunday, but often.”

He turned to me. “Bring a Bible.”

On the third shelf from the bottom, at the left of the globe, there were nine of them, four in different editions in English and five in foreign languages. I picked the one that looked the part best, in black leather, and crossed to the red leather chair.

“Put your right hand on it,” Wolfe told her, “and repeat after me: With my hand on the Holy Bible I swear.”

I held it at her level and she put her hand on it, palm down, flat, the fingers spread a little. “With my hand on the Holy Bible I swear.”

“That I did not know what Mr. Odell intended to do.”

She repeated it.

“With the LSD I had procured from Mrs. Odell.”

She repeated it.

“Until Saturday, June seventh.”

She repeated it.

Wolfe turned to the client. “You can suspect Mr. Browning only if you assume that he knew what your husband was going to do. Miss Haber didn’t. I don’t suppose you or your husband told him. Whom did you tell?”

“I didn’t tell anybody. Absolutely nobody. So Peter must have. I wouldn’t have thought—but he
must
have. Of course there were people who wanted Peter to be the new president, not Browning, and he must have told one of them. For instance, Ted Falk, but Ted wouldn’t have told Browning. I can give you names. Sylvia Venner. Then there’s a man in public relations—”

“If you please.” He had turned his head to look at the wall clock, “It’s my lunch time. You can make a list of the names, with relevant comments. But there must be no misunderstanding about what you expect me to do. My commitment is to try to learn who killed your husband and get evidence that will convict him. Just that. Is that clearly understood?”

“Yes. But I want to be sure … No. I suppose I can’t be.” She opened the checkfold. “But if it wasn’t Browning … Oh, damn it.
God damn it
.” She wrote the check.

8

a
t twenty minutes to seven, Theodore Falk, in the red leather chair with his legs crossed, told Wolfe, “It would depend on what it was he was going to do.”

In the four and a half hours since lunch, much had been done but nothing visible had been accomplished. We had discussed the Cramer problem. If and when he came, I could open the door only the two inches the chain on the bolt allowed and tell him Wolfe wasn’t available and there was no telling when he would be, and I was under instructions to tell nobody anything whatever. He probably couldn’t get a warrant, since all he could tell a judge was that some of the people involved in a murder case had spent part of an evening in the house, but if he did, and used it, we would stand mute—or sit mute. Or I could open the door wide and let him in, and Wolfe would play it by ear, and we voted for that. There was always a chance that he would supply one or more useful facts.

We had also decided to spend thirty-one dollars an hour, for as long as necessary, of the client’s money, on Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, and Orrie Cather—eight each for Fred and Orrie, and fifteen for Saul. If no one had known that Odell intended to go to Browning’s room, the bomb couldn’t have been intended for him, and it was going to take more doing than having people come to the old brownstone for some conversation. I had phoned Saul and Orrie and asked them to come Wednesday at ten o’clock, and left a message for Fred. And I had phoned Theodore Falk, Odell’s best and closest friend, and told him that Wolfe wanted to have a talk with him, without an audience, and he said he would come around six o’clock.

By a couple of phone calls—one to a vice-president of our bank and one to Lon Cohen—I had learned that Falk was way up. He was a senior member of one of the oldest and solidest investment firms and sat on eight boards of directors. He had a wife and three grown-up children, and he and they were also solid socially. Evidently a man the race could be proud of, and from personal observation the only thing I had against him was his buttoned-down shirt collar. A man who hates loose flaps so much that he buttons down his collar should also button down his ears.

He came at 6:34.

Wolfe told him that he needed all the information he could get about Odell. Specifically, he needed the answer to a question: If Odell decided to do something secretly, some shabby deed that would help him and hurt someone else, how likely was it that he would have told anyone? And Falk said, “It would depend on what it was he was going to do. You say ‘shabby’?”

Wolfe nodded. “Opprobrious. Mean. Furtive. Knavish. Tricky.”

Falk uncrossed his legs, slid his rump clear back in the red leather chair, which is deep, recrossed his legs, and tilted his head back. His eyes went left and then right, in no hurry, apparently comparing the pictures on the wall—one of Socrates, one of Shakespeare, and an unwashed coal miner in oil by Sepeshy. (According to Wolfe, man’s three resources: intellect, imagination, and muscle.)

In half a minute Falk’s head leveled and his eyes settled on Wolfe. “I don’t know about you,” he said. “I don’t know you well enough. A cousin of mine who is an assistant district attorney says you are sharp and straight. Does he know?”

“Probably not,” Wolfe said. “Hearsay.”

“You solicited Mrs. Odell.”

I cut in. “No,” I said. “I did.”

Wolfe grunted. “Not material.” To Falk: “Mr. Goodwin is my agent, and what he does is on my tally. He knew my bank balance was low. Does your firm solicit?”

Falk laughed, showing his teeth, probably knowing how white they looked with his deep tan. “Of course,” he said, “you’re not a member of the bar.” He lifted a hand to rub his lip with a finger tip. That helped him decide to say something, and he said it. “You know that the police have a vial of LSD that was in Odell’s pocket.”

“Do I?”

“Certainly. Mrs. Odell has told me that she told you. Has she told you what he was going to do with it?”

“I’m sharp, Mr. Falk.”

“So you are. Of course you’ll tell her what I say, but she already knows that I think she knew what Pete was going to do with the LSD, though she won’t admit it, and no wonder, not even to me.”

“And you knew.”

“I knew what?”

“What he was going to do with the LSD.”

“No, I didn’t. I don’t know even now, but I can make a damn good guess, and so can the police. So can you, if Mrs. Odell hasn’t told you. Going to Browning’s room and opening that drawer, with LSD in his pocket? Better than a guess. You would call it shabby and opprobrious for him to dope Browning’s whisky? And knavish?”

“Not to judge, merely to describe. Do you disagree?”

“I guess not. Not really. Anyway another good guess is that it was her idea, not his. You can tell her I said that, she already knows it. Of course your question is, did I know about it, did he tell me? He didn’t. He wouldn’t. If he told anybody it would have been me, but a thing like that he wouldn’t tell even me. The reason I’m telling you this, I’m beginning to doubt if the police are going to crack it, and you might. One reason you might, Mrs. Odell will probably tell you things she won’t tell them. Another reason is that with people like these, like us, the police have to consider things that you can ignore.”

“And you want it cracked.”

“Hell yes. Pete Odell was my favorite man.”

“If no one knew he was going to open that drawer, he died by inadvertence.”

“But whoever planted that bomb killed him.” Falk turned a palm up. “Look, why am I here? This will make me an hour late for something. I wanted to know if you were going to waste time on the idea that the bomb was
intended
for Odell. The police still think it could have been and there’s not a chance. Damn it, I
knew
him. It just isn’t thinkable that he would have told anyone he was going to try to bust Browning by doping his whisky.”

“If he had told you, would you have tried to dissuade him?”

Falk shook his head. “I can’t even discuss it as a hypothesis. If Pete Odell had told me that, I would just have stared at him. It wouldn’t have been him. Not his doing it, his telling me.”

“So the bomb was for Browning?”

“Yes. Apparently.”

“Not certainly?”

“No. You told us yesterday that the journalists have different ideas, and we have too—I mean the people who are involved. They are all just guessing really—except one of course, the one who did it. My guess is no better than anybody else’s.”

“And no worse. Your guess?”

Falk’s eyes came to me and returned to Wolfe. “This isn’t being recorded?”

“Only in our skulls.”

“Well—do you know the name Copes? Dennis Copes?”

“No.”

“You know Kenneth Meer. He was here last evening. He’s Browning’s man Friday, and Copes would like to be. Of course in a setup like CAN, most of them want someone else’s job, but the Copes-Meer thing is special. My guess is that Meer had a routine of checking that drawer every afternoon and Copes knew it. Copes did a lot of work on that program about bombs and getting one would have been no problem. That’s my best guess partly because I can’t quite see anyone going for Browning with a bomb. A dozen people
could
have, but I can’t see any of them actually doing it. You said one of the reporters thinks it was Browning’s wife, but that’s absurd.”

“Did Kenneth Meer check the drawer every day?”

“I don’t know. I understand he says he didn’t.”

I could fill three or four pages with the things Theodore Falk didn’t know, but they didn’t help us, so they wouldn’t help you. When I returned to the office after going to the hall to let him out, we didn’t discuss him, for two reasons: the look we exchanged showed that we didn’t need to, and Fritz came to announce dinner. The look was a question, the same question both ways: How straight was Falk? Did we cross him off or not? The look left it open.

The fact was, Wolfe hadn’t really bit into it. It was still just batting practice. He had taken the job and was committed, but there was still the slim chance that something might happen—the cops might get it or the client might quit—so he wouldn’t have to sweat and slave. Also in my book there was the idea that I had once mentioned to him, the idea that it took a broil with Inspector Cramer to wind him up. Of course when I had offered it, he had fired me, or I had quit, I forget which. But I hadn’t dropped the idea, so when the doorbell rang at 11:10 Wednesday morning and I went to the hall and saw who it was on the stoop through the one-way glass, and stepped back in the office and said “Mr. Fuzz,” I didn’t mind a bit.

Wolfe made a face, opened his mouth and then clamped his jaw, and in five seconds unclamped it to growl, “Bring him.”

9

t
hat was a first—the first time Inspector Cramer had ever arrived and been escorted to the office in the middle of a session with the hired hands. And Saul Panzer did something he seldom does—he stunted. He was in the red leather chair, and when I ushered Cramer in I expected to find Saul on his feet, moving up another yellow chair to join Fred and Orrie, but no. He was staying put. Cramer, surprised, stood in the middle of the rug and said, loud, “Oh?” Wolfe, surprised at Saul, put his brows up. I, pretending I wasn’t surprised, went to get a yellow chair. And damned if Cramer didn’t cross in front of Fred and Orrie to
my
chair, swing it around, and park his big fanny on it. As he sat, Saul, his lips a little tight to keep from grinning, got up and came to take the yellow chair I had brought. That left the red leather chair empty and I went and occupied it, sliding back and crossing my legs to show that I was right at home.