“Be specific.”
Sid took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Chester was suspicious of the pool players. Now longshoremen can be rough customers to begin with, but he saw them, or at least some of them, as more than that. He told Harvey and me that he felt that these guys were acting suspicious. Oh, sure, they were derisive to us and thought that we were playing a ladies’ game, but that wasn’t what bothered Chester. He said they acted like they had something to hide.”
“Did he express any thoughts as to what that ‘something’ might be?”
“I can answer that,” Harvey said. “Chester told me one night that he figured it had something to do with displaced persons, or DPs, as they are called, and Sid here agreed with him.”
“What made him think that?” Wolfe asked.
“He — and the rest of us, for that matter — had begun to notice a shift in the type of people who came into McCready’s. There were still plenty of dockworkers, all right, but there also was a new group who seemed to be foreign from my perspective. They did not talk much in the bar, at least not out loud, although they did mutter very quietly to one another. And they definitely liked their beer.”
Wolfe dabbed his lips with a handkerchief. “How many were in this new group?”
It was Sid’s turn to respond. “At any one time, maybe about a half-dozen or so. But it wasn’t always the same half-dozen. They seemed to drift in and out.”
“To what degree did they interact with the longshoremen?”
“Hardly at all. If anything, the two groups seemed to ignore each other,” Sid replied.
“Back to the longshoremen. Do either of you know if they were employed at a specific dock?”
“I do, because I heard a couple of them talking in the back room while they were playing pool,” Harvey answered. “They were complaining and loudly, about their working conditions, and one of them said, ‘That’s typical of the type of straw bosses they hire at that damned National Export Lines. They act like prison guards the way they bark orders and strut.’ That got the other pool players nodding in agreement and adding to the grumbling. It seemed like all of them were working for National Export.”
“Do either of you see any reason why someone would have targeted Chester — or Theodore, for that matter?” Wolfe asked.
“For one thing, Chester seemed to be more conscious of the presence of the pool players than Sid or me,” Harvey said. “We both tried to ignore them and their conversations. But Chester was always looking over at the group. And on at least two occasions that I can recall, he made some snide remarks to Ted about them — remarks the longshoremen easily would have heard, and did, because they sent some dirty looks in our direction.”
“What makes you think that longshoremen were behind what befell both men?”
“I wouldn’t want to say that for sure,” Harvey answered, “but I can tell you this much: I am not setting foot in that saloon again — ever!”
“Same here,” Sid echoed.
Wolfe leaned back and drew in a bushel of air. “Do either of you know any displaced persons?”
Harvey shook his head but Sid jumped in. “I do, a second cousin, Hyman, and his wife. They’re from Holland and they fled the Germans, but they were thrown into prison like so many other Jews. Fortunately, they were able to survive until the Allies liberated them, although they weren’t treated very well by the Germans, and they still aren’t what I would call fully healthy.
“They came over here last year on that DP act of the president’s and are living over in Brooklyn now in a small flat,” Sid continued. “They are struggling but surviving, and those of us related to them have pitched in one way or another to give whatever help we can. It’s the very least we can do. Another cousin of mine was able to find Hyman a job in a kosher restaurant. He had been a cook — or as he likes to put it, a ‘chef’ — in Amsterdam before the war.”
“Millions of people have suffered greatly,” observed Wolfe, who himself was sending funds regularly to relatives of his own in Montenegro and other Balkan states. “The world is still far from recovering from the ravages of the war.” He turned to Sid and Harvey. “Gentlemen, do you have any other observations that might help us as we investigate the attacks on Chester and Theodore — the man you have referred to as Ted?”
They both shook their heads, and Harvey said, “Please continue to let us know about Ted’s condition.”
“We will,” Saul said. “I will make a point of keeping you both updated, with Mr. Wolfe’s approval, of course.”
Wolfe nodded but said nothing. He rose, walking out of the office without a backward look.
“I hope we didn’t say something to insult him,” Sid remarked.
“Oh no, not at all,” I reassured our visitors, both of whom seemed understandably puzzled by their host’s abrupt departure. “He wasn’t being rude, that is just his manner. Brevity is his middle name.”
“Well, we really should be going,” Harvey said. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
“We may want to reach you again,” I told them.
“I have their phone numbers,” Saul said. There were handshakes all around, and we saw the two subdued men to the front door. After they had gone, Saul and I stayed in the office for a time, nursing our drinks and playing gin rummy. It is not necessary to discuss the outcome of the game.
Chapter 16
The next morning after an eight-hour sleep in my bedroom at the brownstone and Fritz’s breakfast of Canadian bacon, an apricot omelet, and blueberry muffins, I sat at my desk in the office getting caught up on correspondence and entering orchid germination records on file cards from notes Carl Willis had brought down.
I had just finished going through the morning mail when the phone rang. It was Doc Vollmer. “I am calling to report there has been no change in Theodore Horstmann’s condition,” he said.
“Would you call that good or bad news?”
“Neither,” he sniffed. “On the plus side, his vital signs remain strong. On the minus side, he shows no indication of emerging from the coma.”
“Is there anything that can be done to somehow awaken him?”
“There is not,” Vollmer said, his tone clearly indicating that he was appalled by my lack of medical knowledge.
“I will pass your report along to Mr. Wolfe,” I told the doctor in an icy tone of my own.
I gave Wolfe Vollmer’s report when he came down from the plant rooms at eleven. He made no comment, ringing for beer.
“I still have some of my gear in Theodore’s room at the Elmont,” I told him. “Should I pack it up and come home for good, as you have suggested?”
“I would prefer that you stay there one more night,” Wolfe said. “It is possible you will still be able to learn something.”
When Wolfe says he would “prefer” me to do something, what he really means, is You shall do this. I don’t know what he expected me to find out by staying yet another day, although I suspect that, as sometimes happens, he is currently at a dead end and is giving me something to do to show that he’s working. I was of course damned unhappy having to spend yet another night in that tired old building on Tenth Avenue, but I also long ago had gotten used to going along with orders from the man who signs my paychecks.
But lest you get the idea that I am afraid of going it alone without Wolfe out in the big, bad world, I am my own man and can quit at any time, as I have threatened in the past. In fact, on two occasions, Saul Panzer and I have discussed, if only in the vaguest of terms, starting our own detective agency.
If I am being totally honest with myself, however, one of the factors keeping me in Wolfe’s employ is that were I to leave, I would be depriving myself of Fritz Brenner’s superb meals. Does that make me weak-willed? I leave it to you to decide. Speaking of Fritz’s cuisine, I delayed going back to my home away from home until after I had feasted on one of his specialties: Cape Cod clam cakes, served with a sour sauce.