The Doorbell Rang (7 page)

I hadn’t heard the elevator, so Wolfe must be in the kitchen, and I headed for it. But he wasn’t. Neither was Fritz. Had he actually climbed the stairs'Why'The only other way was down. I chose that, and as I descended I heard his voice. It came from the open door to Fritz’s room, and I stepped to it and entered.

Fritz could have had a room upstairs, but he prefers the basement. His den is as big as the office and front room combined, but over the years it has got pretty cluttered-tables with stacks of magazines, busts of Escoffier and Brillat-Savarin on stands, framed menus on the walls, a king-size bed, five chairs, shelves of books (he has 289 cookbooks), a head of a wild boar he shot in the Vosges, a TV and stereo cabinet, two large cases of ancient cooking vessels, one of which he thinks was used by Julius Caesar’s chef, and so on.

Wolfe was in the biggest chair by a table, with a bottle of beer and a glass. Fritz, seated across from him, got up as I entered, but I moved another chair up.

“It’s too bad,” I said, “that the elevator doesn’t come down. Maybe we can have it done.”

Wolfe drank beer, put the glass down, and licked his lips. “I want to know,” he said, “about those electronic abominations. Could we be heard here?”

“I don’t know. I’ve read about a thing that is supposed to pick up voices half a mile off, but I don’t know about how much area it covers or about obstructions like walls and floors. There could be items I haven’t read about that can take a whole house. If there aren’t there soon will be. People will have to talk with their hands.”

He glared at me. Since I had done nothing to deserve it, I glared back. “You realize,” he said, “that absolute privacy has never been so imperative.”

“I do. God knows I do.”

“Could whispers be heard?”

“No. A billion to one. To nothing.”

“Then we’ll whisper.”

“That would cramp your style. If Fritz turns the television on, fairly loud, and we sit close and don’t yell, that will do it.”

“We could do that in the office.”

“Yes, sir.

“Why the devil didn’t you suggest it?”

I nodded. “You’re in a stew. So am I. I’m surprised I thought of it now. Let’s try it here. In the office I’d have to lean across your desk.”

He turned. “If you please, Fritz. It doesn’t matter what.”

Fritz went to the cabinet and turned a knob, and soon a woman was telling a man she was sorry she had ever met him. He asked (not the man, Fritz) if it was loud enough, and I said a little louder and moved my chair nearer Wolfe. He leaned forward and growled, eighteen inches from my ear, “We’ll prepare for a contingency. Do you know if the Ten for Aristology is still in existence?”

My shoulders went up and down. It takes a moron or a genius to ask a question that has no bearing whatever. “No,” I said. “That was seven years ago. It probably is. I can ring Lewis Hewitt.”

“Not from here.”

“I’ll go to a booth. Now?”

“Yes. If he says that group still- No. Whatever he says about the Ten for Aristology, ask him if I may call on him tomorrow morning to consult him on an urgent private matter. If he invites me to lunch, as he will, accept.”

“He lives on Long Island the year around.”

“I know he does.”

“We’ll probably have to lose a tail.”

“We won’t need to. If I am seen going to him so much the better.”

“Then why not call him from here?”

“Because I’m willing, I even wish, to have my visit to him known, but not that I invited myself.”

“What if he can’t make it tomorrow?”

“Then as soon as possible.”

I went. As I mounted to the hall and got my coat and hat and let myself out and headed for Ninth Avenue, I was thinking, two rules down the drain in one day-the morning schedule and not leaving the house on business-and why'The Ten for Aristology was a bunch of ten well-heeled men who were, to quote, “pursuing the ideal of perfection in food and drink.” Seven years back, at the home of one of them, Benjamin Schriver, the shipping tycoon, they had met to pursue their ideal by eating and drinking, and Lewis Hewitt, a member, had arranged with Wolfe for Fritz to cook the dinner. Naturally Wolfe and I had been invited and had gone, and the guy between us at the table had been fed arsenic with the first course, caviar on blinis topped with sour cream, and had died. Quite a party. It had not affected Wolfe’s relations with Lewis Hewitt, who was still grateful for a special favor Wolfe had done him long ago, who had a hundred-foot-long orchid house at his Long Island estate, and who came to dinner at the old brownstone about twice a year.

It took a while to get him because the call had to be switched to the greenhouse or the stables or maybe the john, but it was a pleasure for him to hear my voice; he said so. When I told him Wolfe would like to pay him a call he said he would be delighted and that of course we would lunch with him, and added that he would like to ask Wolfe a question regarding the lunch.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to do,” I told him. “I’m calling from a booth in a drugstore. Excuse my glove, but is there any chance that someone is on an extension?”

“Why-why no. There would he no reason& “

“Okay. I’m calling from a booth because our wire is tapped and Mr Wolfe doesn’t want it known that he suggested calling on you. So don’t ring our number. It’s conceivable that you might get a call tomorrow afternoon from someone who says he’s a reporter and wants to ask questions. I mention it now because I might forget to tomorrow. The idea is, this appointment, our coming to lunch tomorrow, was made last week. All right?”

“Yes, of course. But good heavens, if you know your phone is tapped-isn’t that illegal?”

“Sure, that’s why it’s fun. We’ll tell you about it tomorrow-I guess we will.”

He said he would save his curiosity for tomorrow and would expect us by noon.

There is a TV set and a radio in the office, and when I got back I was expecting to see Wolfe there in his favorite chair, probably with the radio going, but the office was empty, so I proceeded to the rear and down to the basement and found him where I had left him. The television was still on, and Fritz was sitting watching it, yawning. Wolfe was leaning back with his eyes shut, and his lips were going, pushing out and then in, out and in. So he was working, but on what'I stood and looked at him. That’s the one thing I never break in on, the lip operation, but that time I had to clamp my jaw to keep my mouth shut because I didn’t believe it. There was absolutely nothing he could be hatching. Two full minutes. Three. I decided he was only practicing, it was a dry run, went to a chair, sat, and coughed loud. In a moment he opened his eyes, blinked at me, and straightened up.

I moved my chair closer. “All set,” I said. “We’re expected by noon, so we should roll by ten-thirty.”

“You’re not going,” he growled. “I telephoned Saul. He’ll come at nine.”

“Oh. I see. You want me here in case Wragg sends them to confess.”

“I want you to find Frank Odell.”

“For God’s sake. Is that what your lips squeezed out.”

“No.” He turned his head. “A little louder, Fritz.” Back to me: “I said after lunch that you had made it clear that it would be futile to establish that the FBI committed that murder. I retract that. I will not bow to futility. We must arrange a situation in which none of the three alternatives would be futile. They are: one, establish that the FBI committed the murder; two, establish that they didn’t; and three, establish neither one, let the murder go. We prefer by far the second alternative, and that is why you are to find Frank Odell, but if we are forced to accept the first or the third we must manage circumstances so that we will nevertheless be in a position to fulfill our obligation to our client.”

“You have no obligation except to investigate and use your best efforts.”

“Your pronouns again.”

“All right, ‘we’ and ‘our.’ “

“That’s better. Just so, our best efforts. The strongest obligation possible for a man with self-esteem, and we both have our full share of that. One point is vital. No matter which alternative circumstances compel us to accept, Mr Wragg must believe, or at least suspect, that one of his men killed Morris Althaus. I can contrive no maneuver by us that would contribute to that; I was trying to when you returned. Can you?”

“No. He either believes it or he doesn’t. Ten to one he does.”

“At least we have the odds. Now. I need suggestions regarding the arrangement I intend to make with Mr Hewitt tomorrow. It will take time, and I’m dry. Fritz?”

No response. I turned. He was sound asleep in the chair, probably snoring, but if so the TV covered it. I suggested moving to the office and trying some WQXR music for a change, and Wolfe agreed, so we woke Fritz and thanked him for his hospitality and told him good night. On the way to the office I stopped off for beer for Wolfe and milk for me, and when I joined him he had the radio going and was back of his desk. Since it was going to take time I brought a yellow chair and put it near his. He poured beer, and I took a swallow of milk and said, “I forgot to say that I didn’t ask Hewitt about the Ten for Aristology. You wanted to see him anyway and you can ask him tomorrow. And the program?”

He spoke.

It was well after midnight when he went to the elevator and I went to get the sheets and blankets and pillow for my second night on the couch.

There were more than a hundred Odells in the phone books of the five boroughs, but no Frank. That established, I sat at my desk at half past nine Friday morning and considered recourses. It wasn’t the kind of problem to discuss with Wolfe, and anyway he wasn’t available. Saul Panzer had come at nine o’clock on the dot, and instead of going up to the plant rooms Wolfe had come down, put on his heavy overcoat and broad-brimmed beaver hat, and followed Saul out to the curb to climb into the Heron sedan.

Of course he knew that the heater, if turned on full, could make the inside of the Heron like an oven, but he took the heavy coat because he distrusted all machines more complicated than a wheelbarrow. He would have been expecting to be stranded at some wild and lonely spot in the Long Island jungle even if I had been driving.

It took will power to fasten my mind on the Frank Odell caper, which was merely a stab in the dark blindfolded, ordered by Wolfe only because he preferred the second of the three alternatives. Where my mind wanted to be was on Long Island. In all my experience of Wolfe’s arrangements of circumstances I had never known him to concoct anything as tricky as the program he was going to rope Lewis Hewitt in for, and I should have been there. Genius is fine for the ignition spark, but to get there someone has to see that the radiator doesn’t leak and no tire is flat. I would have insisted on going if it hadn’t been for Saul Panzer. Wolfe had said that Saul would sit in, and he is the one man I would turn any problem over to if I broke a leg.

I forced my mind onto Frank Odell. The obvious thing was to ring the New York State Parole Division and ask if they had him listed. But of course not on our phone. If the FBI knew that we were spending time and money on Odell after what Quayle had said about him, they would know it wasn’t just prudence, that we thought there was actually a chance that he was involved, and that wouldn’t do. I decided to play it absolutely safe. If some G-man reads this and thinks I’m overrating his outfit, he isn’t inside far enough to know all the family secrets. I’m not inside at all, but I’ve been around a lot.

After going to the kitchen to tell Fritz I was leaving and to the hall for my coat and hat, I let myself out, walked to Tenth Avenue and on to the garage, got permission from Tom Halloran to use the phone, dialed the Gazette number, and got Lon Cohen. He was discreet. He didn’t ask me how we were making out with Mrs Bruner and the FBI. He did ask if I knew where he could get a bottle of brandy.

“I might send you one someday,” I said, “if you earn it. You can start now. About two years ago a man named Frank Odell was sent up for fraud. If he behaved himself and got a reduction he may be out and on the parole list. I’ve gone in for social work and I want to find him, quick, and rehabilitate him. You can get me, the sooner the better, at this number.” I gave it to him. “I’m keeping my social work secret, so please don’t mention it.”

He said an hour should do it, and I went out to the floor to give motor vehicles a look. Wolfe buys a new one every year, thinking that reduces the risk of a collapse, which it doesn’t, and he leaves the choice to me. I have been tempted to get a Rolls, but it would be a shame to ditch it after only a year. That day there was nothing on the floor I would have traded the Heron for. Tom and I were discussing the dashboard of a 45 Lincoln when the phone rang and I went. It was Lon, and he had it. Frank Odell had been released in August and would be on parole until the end of February. He lived at 2553 Lamont Avenue, Bronx, and he had a job at a branch of the Driscoll Renting Agency at 4618 Grand Concourse. Lon said that a good way to start rehabilitating him would be to get him in a poker game, and I said I thought craps would be better.

I decided to take the subway instead of a taxi, not to save the client money, but because I thought it was about time to do something about tails. There had been two days and nights since the FBI had presumably got interested in us, and twenty-five hours since they had asked Perazzo to take our licenses, and I still had seen no sign that I had company. Of course I had dodged or hadn’t looked. I now decided to look, but not while walking. I waited until I was at the Grand Central subway station and had boarded an uptown express.

If you think you have a tail on a subway train and want to spot him you keep moving while the train is under way, and at each station you stand close enough to a door so that you might get off. At a rush hour it’s difficult, but it was ten-thirty in the morning and we were going uptown. I had him by the time we made the third stop-or rather, them. There were two. One was a chunky specimen, barely tall enough to meet the specifications, with big brown eyes that he didn’t know how to handle, and the other was the Gregory Peck type except for his curly little ears. The game, just for the hell of it, was to spot them without their knowing I had, and when I got off at the 70th Street station I was pretty sure I had won it. Out on the sidewalk again, I ignored them.

Tailing on New York streets, if you know you have it and want to shake it and aren’t a birdbrain, is a joke. There are a thousand dodges, and the tailee merely picks the one that fits the time and place. There on Tremont Avenue I moseyed along, glancing occasionally at my wristwatch and at the numbers on doors, until I saw an empty taxi coming. When it was thirty yards away I scooted between parked cars, flagged it, hopped in, told the hackie as I pulled the door shut, “Step on it,” and saw Gregory Peck stare at me as we went by. The other one was across the street. We did seven blocks before a red light stopped us, so that was that. I admit I had kept an eye on the rear. I gave the driver the Grand Concourse address, and the light changed, and we rolled.

Some realty agency branch offices are upstairs, but that one was on the ground floor of an apartment building, of course one of the buildings it serviced. I entered. It was small, two desks and a table and a filing cabinet. A beautiful young lady with enough black hair for a Beatle was at the nearest desk, and when she smiled at me and asked if she could help me, I had to take a breath to keep my head from swimming. They should stay home during business hours. I told her I would like to see Mr Odell, and she turned her beautiful head and nodded to the rear.

He was at the other desk. I had waited to see him before deciding on the approach, and one look was enough. Some men, after a hitch in the jug, even a short one, have got a permanent wilt, but not him. In size he was a peanut, but an elegant peanut. Fair-skinned and fair-haired, he was more than fair-dressed. His pin-stripe gray suit had set him, or somebody, back at least two Cs.

He left his chair to come, said he was Frank Odell, and offered a hand. It would have been simpler if he had had a room to himself; possibly she didn’t know she was cooped up with a jailbird. I said I was Archie Goodwin, got out my case, and handed him a card. He gave it a good look, stuck it in his pocket, and said, “My goodness, I should have recognized you. From your picture in the paper.”

My picture hadn’t been in the paper for fourteen months, and he had been behind bars, but I didn’t make an issue of it. “I’m beginning to show my years,” I told him. “Can you give me a few minutes'Nero Wolfe has taken on a little job involving a man named Morris Althaus and he thinks you might be able to furnish some information.”

He didn’t bat an eye. No wilt. He merely said, “That’s the man that was murdered.”

“Right. Of course the police have been around about that. Routine. This is just a private investigation on a side issue.”

“If you mean the police have been here, they haven’t. We might as well sit down.” He moved to his desk, and I followed and took a chair at its end. “What’s the side issue?” he asked.

“It’s a little complicated. It’s about some research he was doing at the time he was killed. You may know something about it if you saw him during that period-say the month of November, last November. Did you see him around then?”

“No, the last time I saw him was two years ago. In a courtroom. When some people that I thought were friends of mine were making me the goat. Why would the police be seeing me?”

“Oh, in a murder case they can’t crack they see everybody.” I waved it away. “What you say about being made the goat, that’s interesting. It might have some bearing on what we want to know, whether Althaus was in the habit of doctoring his stuff. Was he one of the friends who made you the goat?”

“My goodness, no. He wasn’t a friend. I only met him twice, while he was doing that piece, or getting ready to. He was looking for bigger fish. I was just a hustler, working for Bruner Realty.”

“Bruner Realty?” I wrinkled my brow. “I don’t remember that name in connection with the case. Of course I’m not any too familiar with it. Then it was your friends in Bruner Realty who made you the goat?”

He smiled. “You certainly are not familiar with it. It was some outside deals that I had a hand in. That all came out at the trial. The Bruner people were very nice about it, very nice. The vice-president even arranged for me to see Mrs Bruner herself. That was the second time I saw Althaus, in her office at her house. She was nice too. She believed what I told her. She even paid my lawyer, part of it. You see, she realized that I had got mixed up in a shady deal, but I explained to her that I hadn’t known what I was getting into, and she didn’t want a man who was working for her company to get a bum deal. I call that nice.”

“So do I. I’m surprised you didn’t go back to Bruner Realty when you got-when you could.”

“They didn’t want me.

“That wasn’t very nice, was it?”

“Well, it’s the philosophy of it. After all, I had been convicted. The president of the company is a pretty tough man. I could have gone to Mrs Bruner, but I have a certain amount of pride, and I heard about this opening with Driscoll.” He smiled. “I’m not licked, far from it. There’s plenty of opportunity in this business, and I’m still young.” He opened a drawer. “You gave me a card, I’ll give you one.”

He gave me about a dozen, not one, and some information about the Driscoll Renting Agency. They had nine offices in three boroughs and handled over a hundred buildings, and they gave the finest service in the metropolitan area. I received a strong impression that Driscoll was nice. I listened to enough of it to be polite, and thanked him, and on the way out I took the liberty of exchanging glances with the beautiful young lady, and she smiled at me. That was certainly a nice place.

I strolled down the Grand Concourse in the winter sunshine, cooling off; I hadn’t been invited to remove my coat. I was listing the items of the coincidence:

1. Mrs Bruner had distributed copies of that book.

2. Morris Althaus had been collecting material for a piece on the FBI.

3. G-men had killed Althaus, or at least had been in his apartment about the time he was killed.

4. Althaus had met Mrs Bruner. He had been in her house.

5. A man who had worked for Mrs Bruner’s firm had been jailed (made the goat?) as a result of a piece Althaus had written.

That was no coincidence; it was cause and effect in a hell of a mess. I started to sort it out but soon found that there were so many combinations and possibilities that you could even come up with the notion that Mrs Bruner had shot Althaus, which wouldn’t do, since she was the client. The one conclusion was that there was a needle in this haystack, and it had to be found. Wolfe had stolen another base. He had merely asked Yarmack if the articles Althaus had written for Tick-Tock were innocuous, and had merely told me to find Odell because he couldn’t think of anything sensible for me, and here was this.

I couldn’t have called Wolfe even if he had been at home, and I decided not to ring him at Hewitt’s. Not only does a place like that have a dozen or more extensions, but also G-men had probably followed him there, since Saul had been told to ignore tails, and tapping a line in the country was a cinch for them. I happen to know that they once- But I’ll skip it.

But I was not going to go home and sit on it until he got back. I found a phone booth, dialed Mrs Bruner’s number and got her, and asked if she could meet me at Rusterman’s at twelve-thirty for lunch. She said she could. I rang Rusterman’s and got Felix and asked if I could have the soundproofed room upstairs, the small one. He said I could. I went out and got a taxi.

Rusterman’s has lost some of the standing it had when Marko Vukcic was alive. Wolfe is no longer the trustee, but he still goes there about once a month and Felix comes to the old brownstone now and then for advice. When Wolfe goes, taking Fritz and me, we eat in the small room upstairs, and we always start with the queen of soups, Germiny a l’Oseille. So I knew that room well. Felix was there with me, being sociable, when Mrs Bruner came, only ten minutes late.

She wanted a double dry martini with onion. You never know; I would have guessed hers would be sherry or Dubonnet, and certainly not the onion. When it came she took three healthy sips in a row, looked to see that the waiter had closed the door, and said, “Of course I didn’t ask you on the phone. Something has happened?”

I had a martini to keep her company, without the onion. I took a sip and said, “Nothing big. Mr Wolfe has broken two rules today. He skipped his morning session in the plant rooms, and he left the house on business-your business. He is out on Long Island seeing a man. That could develop into something, but don’t hold your breath. As for me, I just made a trip to the Bronx to see a man named Frank Odell. He used to work for you-Bruner Realty. Didn’t he?”

“Odell?”

“Yes.”

She frowned. “I don’t- Oh, of course. Odell, that’s the little man who had all that trouble. But he-isn’t he in prison?”

“He was. He was paroled out a few months ago.

She was still frowning. “But why on earth were you seeing him?”

“It’s a long story, Mrs Bruner.” I took a sip. “Mr Wolfe decided to try getting a start by checking a little on FBI activities in and around New York. Among other things, we learned that last fall a man named Morris Althaus had been gathering material for a piece on the FBI for a magazine, and seven weeks ago he was murdered. That was worth looking into, and we did some checking on him. We learned that he did a piece called ‘The Realty Racket’ a couple of years ago, and as a result a man named Frank Odell had got a jail sentence for fraud. Mr Wolfe had me look him up, and I located him and went to see him and learned that he had worked for your firm. So I thought I ought to ask you about it.”