He pushed his chair back, raised his bulk, walked over to the globe, which was twice as big around as he was, whirled it, and found Wisconsin.
He turned. “It’s closer to Milwaukee. Is there an airplane to Milwaukee?”
“Sure.” I stared. “The fare would be around eighty bucks, and then thirty bucks a day. Or more. Whipple might object.”
“He will have no occasion.” He returned to his chair and sat. “Veblen called it instinct of workmanship. Mine was committed when I engaged to serve Mr. Whipple. In your conversation with Miss Rowan and Miss Brooke, which you reported Wednesday evening verbatim, did you note nothing suggestive? Surely not.”
“You could call it suggestive. After she said she got good and bored in Racine she said, Then something happened, and—’ And she cut. Okay, suggestive. Maybe the roof in the big house started to leak.”
“Pfui. What if Miss Brooke’s past were a vital element in an investigation of great moment?”
“I would probably be in Racine now.”
“Then you will go. Tomorrow. Confound it, I’m committed.”
I shook my head. “Objection. Tomorrow’s Sunday and I have a personal commitment.”
He settled for Monday, and for Chicago instead of Milwaukee because there were more planes.
It was three above zero at twenty minutes past five Monday afternoon when I parked the car, which I had rented in Chicago, in a lot a block away from the office of the Racine Globe and two blocks from the hotel where I had a reservation. I have not left the parking to the hotel since the day, a few years back, when I lost an important contact because it took them nearly half an hour to bring the car. I walked the two blocks with my bag, checked in, and went out again.
I had no appointment at the Globe, but Lon Cohen of the New York Gazette had made a phone call for me Sunday evening, and a man named James E. Leamis, the managing editor, knew I was coming. After two waits, one downstairs and one on the third floor, I was taken to him in a room that had his name on the door. He left his chair to shake hands, took my coat and hat and put them on a couch, and said it was a pleasure to meet a New York newspaperman. We sat and exchanged some remarks, and I explained that I wasn’t a newspaperman; I was a private investigator doing a job for the Gazette. I said I supposed that Mr. Cohen had told him that the Gazette was thinking of running a series on the Rights of Citizens Committee, and he said no, he had told him only that I would come to ask for some information.
“But you know what the Rights of Citizens Committee is.”
“Of course. There are branches in Chicago and Milwaukee, but none in Racine. Why do you come here?”
“I’m checking on a certain individual. The series will focus on the people at the New York headquarters, and one of the important ones is a young woman named Susan Brooke. I understand she’s from Racine. Isn’t she?”
“Yes. My God, the Gazette sent you out here just to check on Susan Brooke? Why?”
“No special reason. They want to fill in the background, that’s all. Do you know her? Or did you?”
“I can’t say I knew her. Say I was acquainted with her. I knew her brother Kenneth fairly well. Of course she’s another generation. I’m twice her age.”
He looked it, with his hair losing color and getting thin, and his wrinkles. He was in his shirt sleeves, with a vest, unbuttoned. I asked, “How was she regarded in Racine?”
“Well... all right. One of my daughters was in her class at high school. Then she went away to college — if I knew which one, I’ve forgotten—”
“Radcliffe.”
“Oh. So actually her only background in Racine was her childhood. Her father had Racine background, and how. He was the smartest real-estate operator in southern Wisconsin. He owned this building. The family still does. I’m afraid I can’t help you much, Mr. Goodwin. If what you want is dirt, I know I can’t.”
I had intended to ask him if anything newsworthy had happened to Susan Brooke, or about her, in the summer or fall of 1959, but I didn’t. She was the Globe’s landlady, and they might be behind on the rent. So I told him I wasn’t after dirt specifically, just the picture, whatever it was. He started asking questions about the ROCC and what people in New York thought about Rockefeller and Goldwater, and I answered them to be polite.
It was dark when I emerged to the sidewalk, and the wind would freeze anything that was bare. I went back to the hotel and up to my room, where I was expecting company at six-thirty. In Chicago I had called on a man who had traded professional errands with Wolfe now and then. According to him, there was only one in Racine that was any good, by name Otto Drucker, and he had phoned him and made an appointment for me. In my nice warm room I took off my shoes and stretched out on the bed, but soon got up again. After only two blocks of that zero wind I would have been asleep in three minutes.
He was punctual, only five minutes late. As I shook hands with him at the door I didn’t let my surprise show. I would never have picked him for an operative; he would have looked right at home at the desk of an assistant vice-president of a bank, with his neat well-arranged face and his friendly careful eyes. When I turned from putting his coat and hat on the bed, he asked in a friendly careful voice, “And how is Mr. Nero Wolfe?”
He was almost certainly a distinguished citizen. It had never occurred to me that a private detective could get away with it. Not Nero Wolfe. He’s a citizen, and he’s distinguished, but a distinguished citizen, no.
It was a very pleasant evening. He liked the idea of eating in the room. When I said I would phone room service for a menu, he said it wasn’t necessary because the only things they knew how to cook were roast beef, hashed brown potatoes, and apple pie. If I reported the whole evening for you, you wouldn’t enjoy it as much as I did, because mostly we talked shop. Take tailing. He knew all the tricks I had ever heard of, and, because he had been working in Racine for twenty years and everybody knew him, he had had to invent some twists that even Saul Panzer would be glad to use.
But of course the point was Susan Brooke. I didn’t mention her until after we had got acquainted and had finished with the meal, which was okay, and the dishes had been taken away. All I told him was that a client was considering taking her as a partner in an important project, that anything he could tell me about her would be strictly confidential, and that he would not be quoted. I would have been disappointed in him if he hadn’t asked who the client was. He did. He would have been disappointed in me if I had told him. I didn’t.
He took his pipe from his mouth and tilted his head back to look at the ceiling. “Memories,” he said. He plumbed his head. “I did some jobs for Susan Brooke’s father. Quite a few. I could give you a line on him, but he’s dead. She was just one of the kids around town, even if her name was Brooke, and as far as I know she was never in any trouble worth mentioning. I suppose you know she went away to college.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And then New York. The years she was at college she wasn’t here much even in the summers; she and her mother took trips. In the last eight or nine years I don’t think Susan Brooke has been in Racine more than four or five months altogether. The past four years she hasn’t been here at all.”
“Then I’m wasting the client’s money. But I understand she came here, came home, when she finished college. In nineteen fifty-nine. But maybe you wouldn’t know; her father was dead then. Not long after that they left for New York. Do you happen to know how long after?”
He pulled on his pipe, found it was out, and lit it. Through the smoke screen he said, “I don’t know why you’re trying to sneak up on me like this. If you want to ask me about that man that killed himself, go ahead and ask, but I don’t know much.”