Too Many Clients (10 page)

Wolfe looked up at the clock. “It’s my dinnertime. It doesn’t please me to hurt a man needlessly, Mr. Hough, and your puerile imposition on Mr. Goodwin doesn’t rankle. On the contrary; you gave him that address and he went there, and as a result we have a client.” He pushed his chair back and rose. “What you have told us will be divulged only if it becomes requisite.”

“Who is your client?”

When Wolfe said that was hardly his concern, he didn’t try to insist. I permitted myself to feel sorry for him again as he left the chair. He was in a hell of a spot. He wanted to see his wife, he had to see her, but what was he going to say'Was he going to explain that he was responsible for her finding a reception committee when she went to get her umbrella'Was he going to admit�I turned that switch off. He had married her, I hadn’t. When I went to the front to let him out, I stood on the stoop for a minute to see if there was someone around who was curious enough about him to follow him. There wasn’t. I shut the door and went to join Wolfe in the dining room.

The two letters in the morning mail hadn’t been answered, and when we returned to the office after dinner and had finished coffee we attended to them. One was from a Putnam County farmer asking how many starlings he wanted this year, and the other was from a woman in Nebraska saying that she would be in New York for a week late in June, with her husband and two children, and could they come and look at the orchids. The reply to the first was forty; Wolfe always invites two dinner guests for the starling pie. The reply to the second was no; she shouldn’t have mentioned the children. When the answers had been typed and Wolfe had signed them, he sat and watched while I folded them and put them in the envelopes, and then spoke.

“Your exclusion of Mr. and Mrs. Perez is no longer valid. They knew they would get the house.”

Of course I had known that was coming. I swiveled. “It’s a funny thing about the Bible. I haven’t been to church for twenty years, and modern science has proved that heaven is two hundred degrees Fahrenheit hotter than hell, but if I was asked to put my hand on a Bible and swear to a lie, I’d dodge. I’d say I was a Hindu or a Buddhist�Zen, of course. And Mr. and Mrs. Perez undoubtedly go to mass once a week and probably oftener.”

“Pfui. To get a house, perhaps not; but to save their skins?”

I nodded. “Thousands of murderers have lied under oath on the witness stand, but this was different. They still sort of think I’m their detective.”

“You’re incorrigibly mulish.”

“Yes, sir. Same to you.”

“Nor is that imbecile Hough excluded. I call him an imbecile, but what if he is in fact subtle, wily, and adroit'Knowing or suspecting that his wife was going to that address Sunday evening, he got her keys, went there himself, killed Yeager, and left. Monday something alarmed him, no matter what; perhaps he told his wife what he had done, or she guessed, and her attitude brought dismay. He decided he must take some action that would make it seem highly unlikely that he had been implicated, and he did. You and I concluded yesterday that the impostor had not known Yeager was dead�not an assumption, a conclusion. We now abandon it.”

“It’s not incredible,” I conceded. “I see only three holes in it.” “I see four, but none of them is beyond patching. I’m not suggesting that we have advanced; indeed, we have taken a step backward. We had concluded that that man was eliminated, but he isn’t. And now?”

We discussed it for two solid hours. By the time we went up to bed, toward midnight, it looked very much as if we had a case and a client, two clients, and we didn’t hold one single card that we were in a position to play. Our big ace, that we knew about that room and that Yeager had been killed in it, was absolutely worthless. And the longer we kept it up our sleeve, the more ticklish it would be when the police found a trail to it, as they were bound to sooner or later. When Wolfe left for his elevator he was so sour that he didn’t say good night. As I undressed I was actually weighing the chance, if we called Fred off, that the cops wouldn’t pry it loose that we had been there. That was so ridiculous that I turned over three times before I got to sleep.

The phone rang.

I understand that some people, when the phone rings in the middle of the night, surface immediately and are almost awake by the time they get it to their ear. I don’t. I am still way under. I couldn’t possibly manage anything as complicated as “Nero Wolfe’s residence, Archie Goodwin speaking.” The best I can do is ” ‘Lo.”

A woman said, “I want to talk to Mr. Archie Goodwin.” I was still fighting my way up. “This is Goodwin. Who is this?”

“I am Mrs. Cesar Perez. You must come. Come now. Our daughter Maria is dead. She was killed with a gun. Will you come now?”

I was out from under. “Where are you?” I reached for the switch of the bed light and glanced at the clock. Twenty-five to three.

“We are at home. They took us to look at her, and we are just come back. Will you come?” “Is anybody there'Policemen?”

“No. One brought us home, but he is gone. Will you come?” “Yes. Right away. As fast as I can make it. If you haven’t already�”

She hung up.

I like to take my time dressing, but I am willing to make an exception when necessary. When my tie was tied and my jacket on, and my things were in my pockets, I tore a sheet from my notebook and wrote on it:

Maria Perez is dead, murdered, shot-not at home, I don’t know where. Mrs. P. phoned at 2:35. I’m on my way to 82nd Street.

AG

Down one flight I went to the door of Wolfe’s room and slipped the note through the crack at the bottom. Then on down, and out. At that time of night Eighth Avenue would be the best bet for a taxi, so I headed east.

It was one minute after three when I used my key at the basement door of 156 and entered. Mrs. Perez was standing there. Saying nothing, she turned and walked down the hall, and I followed. Halfway along she turned into a room on the right, the door of which I had pushed open Tuesday evening when I felt an eye on me. It was a small room; a single bed, a chest of drawers, a little table with a mirror, and a couple of chairs didn’t leave much space. Perez was on the chair by the table, and on the table was a glass and a bottle of rum. As I entered he slowly lifted his head to look at me. The eye that he half closed in emergencies was nearly shut.

He spoke. “My wife told you that day we sit down with friends. Are you a friend?”

“Don’t mind him,” she said. “He drinks rum, half a bottle. I tell him to.” She sat on the bed. “I make him come to this room, our daughter’s room, and I bring him rum. I sit on our daughter’s bed. That chair is for you. We thank you for coming, but now we don’t know why. You can’t do anything, nobody can do anything, not even the good God Himself.”

Perez picked up the glass, took a swallow, put the glass down, and said something in Spanish.

I sat on the chair. “The trouble with a time like this,” I said, “is that there is something to do, and the quicker the better. You have no room in you right now for anything except that she’s dead, but I have. I want to know who killed her, and you will too when the shock eases up a little. And in order�”

“You’re crazy,” Perez said. “I’ll kill him.”

“He’s a man,” she told me. I thought for a second she meant that a man had killed Maria and then realized that she meant her husband.

“We’ll have to find him first,” I said. “Do you know who killed her?”

“You’re crazy,” Perez said. “Of course not.”

“They took you to look at her. Where'The morgue?”

“A big building,” she said. “A big room with strong light. She was on a thing with a sheet on her. There was blood on her head but not on her face.”

“Did they tell you who found her and where?”

“Yes. A man found her at a dock by the river.”

“What time did she leave the house and where did she go and who with?”

“She left at eight o’clock to go to a movie with friends.” “Boys or girls?”

“Girls. Two girls came for her. We saw them. We know them. We went with a policeman to see one of them, and she said Maria went with them to the movie but she left about nine o’clock. She didn’t know where she went.”

“Have you any idea where she went?”

“No.”

“Have you any idea who killed her or why?” “No. They asked us all these questions.”

“They’ll ask a lot more. All right, this is how it stands. Either there is some connection between her death and Mr. Yeager’s death or there isn’t. If there isn’t, it’s up to the police and they’ll probably nail him. Or her. If there is, the police can’t even get started because they don’t know this was Yeager’s house-unless you’ve told them. Have you?”

“No,” she said.

“You’re crazy,” he said. He took a swallow of rum.

“Then it’s up to you. If you tell them about Yeager and that room, they may find out who killed Maria sooner than I would. Mr. Wolfe and I. If you don’t tell them, we’ll find him, but I don’t know how long it will take us. I want to make it clear: If her death had nothing to do with Yeager, it won’t hamper the police any not to know about him and that room, so it wouldn’t help to tell them. That’s that. So the question is, what do you want to do if it did have something to do with Yeager'Do you want to tell the police about him and the house, and probably be charged with killng Yeager'Or do you want to leave it to Mr. Wolfe and me?”

“If we had gone away last night,” Mrs. Perez said. “She didn’t want to. If I had been strong enough�”

“Don’t say that,” he commanded her. “Don’t say that!”

“It’s true, Cesar.” She got up and went and poured rum in his glass, and returned to the bed. She looked at me. “She never had anything with Mr. Yeager. She never spoke to him. She never was in that room. She knew nothing about all that, about him and the people that came.”

“I don’t believe it,” I declared. “It’s conceivable that an intelligent girl her age wouldn’t be curious about what was going on in the house she lived in, but I don’t believe it. Where was she Sunday night when you took Yeager’s body out and put it in the hole?”

“She was in her bed asleep. This bed I’m sitting on.”

“You thought she was. She had good ears. She heard me enter the house Tuesday evening. When I came down the hall the door to this room was open a crack and she was in here in the dark, looking at me through the crack.”

“You’re crazy,” Perez said.

“Maria wouldn’t do that,” she said.

“But she did. I opened the door and we spoke, just a few words. Why shouldn’t she do it'A beautiful, intelligent girl, not interested in what was happening in her own house'That’s absurd. The point is this: If you’re not going to tell the police about Yeager, if you’re going to leave it to Mr. Wolfe and me, I’ve got to find out what she knew, and what she did or said, that made someone want to kill her. Unless I can do that there’s no hope of getting anywhere. Obviously I won’t get it from you. Have the police done any searching here?”

“Yes. In this room. The first one that came.”

“Did he take anything?”

“No. He said he didn’t.”

“I was here,” Perez said. “He didn’t.”

“Then if you’re leaving it to us that comes first. I’ll see if I can find something, first this room and then the others. Two can do it faster than one, so will you go up and tell that man to come�no. Better not. He already knows too much for his own good. What you two ought to do is go to bed, but I suppose you won’t. Go to the kitchen and eat something. You don’t want to be here while I’m looking. I’ll have to take the bed apart. I’ll have to go through all her things.”

“It’s no good,” Mrs. Perez said. “I know everything she had. We don’t want you to do that.”

“Okay. Then Mr. Wolfe and I are out and the police are in. It won’t be me looking, it will be a dozen of them, and they’re very thorough, and you won’t be here. You’ll be under arrest.”

“That don’t matter now,” Perez said. “Maybe I ought to be.” He lifted the glass, and it nearly slipped from his fingers.

Mrs. Perez rose, went to the head of the bed, and pulled the coverlet back. “You’ll see,” she said. “Nothing.”

An hour and a half later I had to admit she was right. I had inspected the mattress top and bottom, emptied the drawers, removing the items one by one, taken up the rug and examined every inch of the floor, removed everything from the closet and examined the walls with a flashlight, pulled the chest of drawers out and inspected the back, flipped through thirty books and a stack of magazines, removed the backing of four framed pictures �the complete routine. Nothing. I was much better acquainted with Maria than I had been when she was alive, but hadn’t found the slightest hint that she knew or cared anything about Yeager, his guests, or the top floor.

Perez was no longer present. He had been in the way when I wanted to take up the rug, and by that time the rum had him nearly under. We had taken him to the next room and put him on the bed. Maria’s bed was back in order, and her mother was sitting on it. I was standing by the door, rubbing my palms together, frowning around.

“I told you, nothing,” she said.

“Yeah. I heard you.” I went to the chest and pulled out the bottom drawer.

“Not again,” she said. “You are like my husband. Too stubborn.”

“I wasn’t stubborn enough with these drawers.” I put it on the bed and began removing the contents. “I just looked at the bottoms underneath. I should have turned them over and tried them.”

I put the empty drawer upside down on the floor, squatted, jiggled it up and down, and tried the edges of the bottom with the screwdriver blade of my knife. Saul Panzer had once found a valuable painting under a false bottom that had been fitted on the outside instead of the inside. This drawer didn’t have one. When I put it back on the bed Mrs. Perez came and started replacing the contents, and I went and got the next drawer.

That was it, and I darned near missed it again. Finding nothing on the outside of the bottom, as I put the drawer back on the bed I took another look at the inside with the flashlight, and saw a tiny hole, just a pinprick, near a corner. The drawer bottoms were lined with a plastic material with a pattern, pink with red flowers, and the hole was in the center of one of the flowers. I got a safety pin from the tray on the table and stuck the point in the hole and pried, and the corner came up, but it was stiffer than any plastic would have been. After lifting it enough to get a finger under, I brought it on up and had it. The plastic had been pasted to a piece of cardboard that precisely fitted the bottom of the drawer, and underneath was a collection of objects which had been carefully arranged so there would be no bulges. Not only had Maria been intelligent, she had also been neat-handed.

Mrs. Perez, at my elbow, said something in Spanish and moved a hand, but I blocked it. “I have a right,” she said, “my daughter.”

“Nobody has a right,” I said. “She was hiding it from you, wasn’t she'The only right was hers, and she’s dead. You can watch, but keep your hands off.” I carried the drawer to the table and sat in the chair Perez had vacated.

Here’s the inventory of Maria’s private cache:

1. Five full-page advertisements of Continental Plastic Products taken from magazines.

2. Four labels from champagne bottles, Dom Perignon.

3. Three tear sheets from the financial pages of the Times, the stock-exchange price list of three different dates, with a pencil mark at the Continental Plastic Products entries. The closing prices of CPP were 62%, 61%, and 66%.

4. Two newspaper reproductions of photographs of Thomas G. Yeager.

5. A newspaper reproduction of a photograph of Thomas G. Yeager, Jr., and his bride, in their wedding togs.

6. A newspaper reproduction of a photograph of Mrs. Thomas G. Yeager, Sr., with three other women.

7. A full-page reproduction from a picture magazine of the photograph of the National Plastics Association banquet in the Churchill ballroom, of which I had seen a print in Lon Cohen’s office Monday evening. The caption gave the names of the others on the stage with Yeager, including one of our clients, Benedict Aiken.

8. Three reproductions of photographs of Meg Duncan, two from magazines and one from a newspaper.

9. Thirty-one pencil sketches of women’s heads, faces, some with hats and some without. They were on 5-by-8 sheets of white paper, of which there was a pad on Maria’s table and two pads in a drawer. In the bottom left-hand corner of each sheet was a date. I am not an art expert, but they looked pretty good. From a quick run-through I guessed that there were not thirty-one different subjects; there were second and third tries of the same face, and maybe four or five. The dates went back nearly two years, and one of them was May 8, 1960. That was last Sunday. I gave the drawing a good long look. I had in my hand a promising candidate for a people’s exhibit in a murder trial. Not Meg Duncan, and not Dinah Hough. It could be Julia McGee. When I realized that I was deciding it was Julia McGee I quit looking at it. One of the brain’s most efficient departments is the one that turns possibilities into probabilities, and probabilities into facts.

10. Nine five-dollar bills of various ages.

Mrs. Perez had moved the other chair beside me and was on it. She had seen everything, but had said nothing. I looked at my watch: twenty minutes to six. I evened the edges of the tear sheets from the Times, folded them double, and put the other items inside the fold. The question of obstructing justice by suppressing evidence of a crime was no longer a question. My lawyer might maintain that I had assumed that that stuff wasn’t relevant to the murder of Yeager, but if he told a judge and jury that I had also assumed that it wasn’t relevant to the murder of Maria Perez, he would have to concede that I was an idiot.

With the evidence in my hand, I stood up. “All this proves,” I told Mrs. Perez, “is that Maria had the normal curiosity of an intelligent girl and she liked to draw pictures of faces. I’m taking it along, and Mr. Wolfe will look it over. I’ll return the money to you some day, I hope soon. You’ve had a hard night and you’ve got a hard day ahead. If you have a dollar bill, please get it and give it to me. You’re luring Mr. Wolfe and me to investigate the murder of your daughter; that’s why you’re letting me take this stuff.”

“You were right,” she said.

“I’ve earned no medals yet. The dollar, please?”

“We can pay more. A hundred dollars. It doesn’t matter.”

“One will do for now.”

She got up and went, and soon was back with a dollar bill in her hand. She gave it to me. “My husband is asleep,” she said.

“Good. You ought to be too. We are now your detectives. A man will come sometime today, and he’ll probably take you and your husband down to the District Attorney’s office. They won’t mention Yeager, and of course you won’t. About Maria, just tell them the truth, what you’ve already told the policeman, about her going to the movie, and you don’t know who killed her or why. Have you been getting breakfast for the man up above?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t bother this morning. He’ll be leaving pretty soon and he won’t come back.” I offered a hand, and she took it. “Tell your husband we’re friends,” I said, and went out to the elevator.

Emerging into the bower of carnality, I switched on the light. My mind was so occupied that the pictures might as well not have been there, and anyway there was a living picture: Fred Durkin on the eight-foot-square bed, his head on a yellow pillow, and a yellow sheet up to his chin. As the light went on he stirred and blinked, then stuck his hand under the pillow and jerked it out with a gun in it.

“At ease,” I told him. “I could have plugged you before you touched it. We’ve got all we can use, and it’s time to go. There’s no rush; it’ll be fine if you’re out of here in half an hour. Don’t stop down below to find Mrs. Perez and thank her; they’re in trouble. Their daughter was murdered last night�not here, not in the house. Just blow.”