I swerved aside and halted for a survey through the open door. Joel Fickler, the boss, was at the rack where Carl usually presided, taking a man’s coat to put on a hanger. A man with his hat on was backed up to the cashier’s counter, with his elbows on it, facing the whole shop. Two other men with their hats on were seated near the middle of the row of chairs for waiting customers, one of them next to the little table for magazines. They were discussing something without much enthusiasm. Two of the barbers’ chairs, Ed’s and Tom’s, were occupied. The other two barbers, Jimmie and Philip, were on their stools against the wall. Janet, the other manicurist, was not in sight.
I stepped to the doorway and was going on in. The flatfoot blocked me. “Accident in here. Only customers with appointments allowed in. You got an appointment?”
“Certainly.” I stuck my head through the doorway and yelled, “Ed! How soon?”
The man leaning on the counter straightened up and turned for a look. At sight of me he grunted. “Who whistled for you?”
The presence of my old friend and enemy, Sergeant Purley Stebbins, of Manhattan Homicide, gave the thing an entirely different flavor. Up to then I had just been mildly curious, floating along. Now I snapped to attention. Sergeant Stebbins is not interested in petty larceny. I didn’t care for the possibility of having shown a pair of murderers to chairs in our front room.
Purley scowled at me. “Is this going to turn into one of them Nero Wolfe babies?”
“Not unless you turn it.” I grinned at him. “Whatever it is. I dropped in for a shave, that’s all, and here you boys are, to my surprise.” The flatfoot had given me leeway, and I had crossed the sill. “I’m a regular customer here.” I turned to Fickler, who had trotted over to us: “How long have I been leaving my hair here, Joel?”
None of Fielder’s bones was anywhere near the surface except on his bald head. He was six inches shorter than me, which may have been one reason why I never got a straight look into his narrow black eyes. He had never liked me much since the day he had forgotten to list an appointment with Ed I had made on the phone and I, under provocation, had made a few pointed remarks. Now he looked as if he had been annoyed by something much worse than remarks.
“Over six years, Mr. Goodwin,” he said. “This,” he told Purley, “is the famous detective, Mr. Archie Goodwin. Mr. Nero Wolfe comes here, too.”
Purley snorted. “Famous!”
I shrugged. “Just a nuisance.”
“Yeah. Don’t let it get you down. You just dropped in for a shave?”
“Yes, sir. Write it down and I’ll sign it.”
“Who’s your barber?”
“Ed.”
“That’s Graboff. He’s busy.”
“So I see. I’m not pressed. I’ll chat with you or read a magazine or get a manicure.”
“I don’t feel like chatting.” Purley had not relaxed the scowl. “You know a guy that works here named Carl Vardas? And his wife Tina, a manicurist?”
“I know Carl well enough to pay him a dime for my hat and coat and tie. I can’t say I know Tina, but of course I’ve seen her here. Why?”
“I’m just asking. And to have it on the record in case it’s needed, have you seen Vardas or his wife this morning?”
“Sure, I have.” I stretched my neck to get closer to his ear and whispered, “I put them in our front room and told them to wait, and beat it up here to tell you, and if you’ll step on it—”
“I don’t care for gags,” he growled. “Not right now. They killed a cop, or one of them did. You know how much we like that.”
I did, indeed, and adjusted my face accordingly. “One of yours? Did I know him?”
“No. A dick from the Twentieth Precinct, Jake Wallen.”
“Where and when?”
“This morning, right here. The other side of that partition, in Tina’s manicure booth. Stuck a pair of scissors in his back and got his pump. Apparently, he never made a sound, but them massage things are going here off and on. By the time he was found, the Vardas pair had gone. It took us an hour to find out where they lived, and when we got there they had got their stuff and beat it.”
I grunted sympathetically. “Is it tied up? Prints on the scissors or something?”
“We’ll do all right without prints,” Purley said grimly. “Didn’t I say they lammed?”
“Yes, but,” I objected, not aggressively, “some people can get awful scared at sight of a man with scissors sticking in his back. I wasn’t intimate with Carl, but he didn’t strike me as a man who would stab a cop just on principle. Was Wallen here to take him?”
Purley’s reply was stopped before it got started. Tom had finished with his customer, and the two men with hats on in the row of chairs ranged along the partition were keeping their eyes on the customer as he went to the rack for his tie. Tom, having brushed himself off, had walked to the front and up to us. Usually Tom bounced around like a high-school kid, in spite of his white-haired sixty-some years, but today his feet dragged. Nor did he tell me hello, though he gave me a sort of glance before he spoke to Purley: “It’s my lunchtime, Sergeant. I just go to the cafeteria at the end of the hall.”
Purley called a name that sounded like Joffe, and one of the dicks on a chair by the partition got up and came.
“Yerkes is going to lunch,” Purley told him. “Go along and stay with him.”
They went, with Tom in front. Purley and I moved out of the way as the customer approached to pay his check and Fickler sidled around behind the cash register.
“I thought,” I said politely, “you had settled for Carl and Tina. Why does Tom have to have company at lunch?”
“We haven’t got Carl and Tina.”
“But you soon will have, the way the personnel feels about cop killers. Why pester these innocent barbers? If one of them gets nervous and slices a customer, then what?”
Purley merely snarled.
I stiffened. “Excuse me. I’m not so partial to cop killers, either. It seemed only natural to show some interest. Luckily I can read, so I’ll catch it in the evening paper.”
“Don’t bust a gut.” Purley’s eyes were following the customer as he walked to the door and on out past the flatfoot. “Sure, we’ll get Carl and Tina, but if you don’t mind we’ll just watch these guys’ appetites. You asked what Jake Wallen was here for.”
“I asked if he came to take Carl.”
“Yeah. I think he did, but I can’t prove it yet. Last night around midnight a woman was hit by a car at Eighty-first and Broadway. She was killed. The car kept going. It was found later parked at Ninety-sixth and Broadway, just across from the subway entrance. We haven’t found anyone who saw the driver, either at the scene of the accident or where the car was parked. The car was hot. It had been parked by its owner at eight o’clock on Forty-eighth Street between Ninth and Tenth, and was gone when he went for it at eleven thirty.”
Purley paused to watch a customer enter. The customer got past the flat-foot with Joel Fickler’s help, left things at the rack, and went and got on Jimmie’s chair. Purley returned to me:
“When the car was spotted by a squad car at Ninety-sixth and Broadway, with a dented fender and blood and other items that tagged it, the Twentieth Precinct sent Jake Wallen to it. He was the first one to give it a look. Later, there was a gang from all over, including the laboratory, going over it before they moved it. Wallen was supposed to go home at eight in the morning, when his trick ended, hut he didn’t. He phoned his wife that he had a hot lead on a hit-and-run killer and was going to handle it himself and grab a promotion. Not only that, he phoned the owner of the car, at his home in Yonkers, and asked him if he had any connection with the Goldenrod Barbershop or knew anyone who had, or if he had ever been there. The owner had never heard of it. Of course, we’ve collected all this since we were called here at ten fifteen and found Wallen DOA with scissors in his back.”