“If I happen to forget, I am sure you’ll remind me.” I said, using a word I won’t repeat and hanging up. I turned to Wolfe and repeated my conversation with Lon, along with a summary of the description I had given him earlier of Chester from my bridge game at McCready’s. “He seemed like a decent sort,” I continued, “although he did admit to being curious about the overall mood in that back room at the bar.”
“Do you feel we would be imposing upon Saul to ask that he appear at McCready’s again tonight, ready for bridge?” Wolfe asked.
“I don’t. I assume you want him to act surprised about what happened to Chester Miller.”
“Your assumption is accurate.”
“I also assume you expect me to call him.”
“Accurate again.”
I dialed Saul and he answered after several rings as Wolfe picked up his instrument. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but one of your fellow bridge players was found dead in the Hudson.”
“No, I hadn’t. Who’s the victim?”
“Chester Miller, and he had been shot in the head. We got the word from Lon Cohen.”
“Has it been in the papers yet?”
“The police report came too late for the Times and the other morning papers, but according to Lon, it probably will make the Gazette’s first edition, which should be hitting our front steps any minute now.”
“Saul, would you be able to go to McCready’s tonight?” It was Wolfe, who had joined the conversation.
“Yes, sir. You’ll want me to gauge the mood in there, right?”
“It would be helpful to get the benefit of your observations.”
“I will drop in at McCready’s and report back. Will you again be on your stool at the bar, Archie?”
I looked at Wolfe, who shook his head. “No, I’ll take a pass tonight,” I said. “But I plan to assess the mood — if there is one — in that flophouse across the street where I’ve been staying.”
The Gazette had indeed arrived. Standing on the front porch, I leafed through it and found a two-paragraph item in the lower left-hand corner of page 28.
The body identified, by papers on his person, as Chester Miller, 67, was discovered floating in the Hudson this morning by a passerby at Fifty-Eighth Street. The victim was wedged between pilings adjoining a Hudson River pier.
The police reported that Mr. Miller had been shot in the head and that the bullet had exited his skull. He was a retired employee of the U.S. Post Office and had been a mail carrier until his retirement three years ago.
I showed Wolfe the item without comment. “It would appear that being a bridge player in the back room at McCready’s can be detrimental to one’s health,” he said, tossing the Gazette aside. Ever the wit.
That evening, I returned to my quarters in the Elmont, hoping to run into some of my fellow residents. On the way up the stairs to the fourth floor, I encountered an individual I had not seen before, a thin, almost emaciated man in middle age who wore his salt-and-pepper hair short and was dressed in clothes that seemed to be made for a larger person.
“Hello, my name is Art,” I said with a grin, holding out a hand. “I don’t believe I have seen you before.”
The man didn’t quite recoil, but he clearly was startled. He took my hand and made a feeble attempt at shaking it, then pulled away.
“Have you lived here long?” I asked, pressing the issue and forcing him to speak.
He looked like he wanted to run, but I was blocking the way down the stairs. “I... am new, very new,” he said, pronouncing each word precisely, as if trying, without much success, to mask an accent. He was only partially successful, at least to my ears. Based on that short sentence, he might have been from almost anywhere in Europe. I pressed on.
“And your name is?” I asked, maintaining my grin.
“George.”
“Where do you come from, George?”
“I am... how would you say it... a displaced person. I am from... Poland.”
“It must have been very hard for you to get here.”
“Very hard, yes,” George said, clearly eager to end the conversation and get away from me.
“How many other displaced persons have come to New York?”
He shrugged, palms up. “I do not know,” he answered, eager to squirm by me and head down the stairs.
“Well, I am glad you were able to make it here,” I told him, stepping aside. He took the steps two at a time and did not look back.
Chapter 12
I allowed George — if that was his name — to get well away from me before I reversed course and went down to the lobby, then crossed Tenth Avenue to McCready’s. I took one of the stools at the bar and ordered the usual scotch on the rocks, making no attempt to look in the direction of the back room. What I did see out of the corner of my eye, however, was that George, who I had just accosted in the stairwell of the Elmont, stood at the far end of the bar in what seemed to be a very private conversation with Liam McCready. And both of them were looking at me as they talked. Situations like that could give a guy a complex.
I ignored them, pretending to focus on the Dodgers game on television. After a few minutes, none other than McCready himself — without George — came up to me from behind the bar. “I do not believe I know you,” he said with a smile, “but I have seen you in here a few times now, and I do like to get to know my customers. I am Liam McCready.” He was husky without being fat, had red hair beginning to go gray, and with Ireland showing all over his ruddy face and evident in his speech.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking the freckled hand that had been offered. “I’m Art Horstmann.”
“I am glad to see you, and also pleased that you have chosen to patronize our humble establishment. Do you reside in the neighborhood?”
“Yes, at least for now. I’m right across the street at the Elmont.”
“By ‘at least for now,’ does that mean your stay there is to be of but a temporary nature?”
“I’m from out of town, a little burg in Ohio that no one has ever heard of, and I have come here looking for my cousin Ted, who seems to have disappeared.”
“Really? And you have no idea what did happen to him?” the barkeeper asked, resting thick arms on the scarred mahogany surface of the bar.
“No idea whatever. Actually, you might have seen him there in your back room, playing bridge,” I said, hoping he had not noticed me in that game one night myself.
“Ah, yes, the bridge players,” McCready said, nodding. “They have always seemed to be indeed a pleasant bunch. So, he was one of them?”
“Yes, so I’m told. And while I am here, I’ll be staying in his apartment right across the street.” I had wondered if McCready might mention what had happened to Chester Miller. He didn’t.
“I am surely sorry to hear about your cousin, Mr. Horstmann — or can I call you Art?”
“Sure, you can, I’m not the formal type. Seems like you have always got a lively crowd in here,” I observed.
“At night, that is truly the case, but during the day it can get pretty slow in here. A lot of our customers are longshoremen from over on the docks,” McCready said, jabbing a thumb in the direction of the Hudson. “But the minute their day shift is done, a good many of them head straight over here. I like to think of our little establishment as a haven where they can relax and enjoy themselves after putting in an honest day’s work.”
“Admirable,” I said. “Have you run the bar for a long time?”
“Several years, it has been. I took it over after my uncle died. I am from Ireland, County Donegal.”