“Yes, it’s been a while. Where are you, Herb?”
“Call box on Eighteenth Street. If you need me to ferry you someplace, I can be at your place before your watch makes fifteen rotations.”
“Fine. I’ll be waiting out in front.”
Herb was good for his word. Fourteen minutes later by my watch, he pulled up at the curb and stuck his head out the window. “Looks like you’ve had some trouble lately,” he observed.
“I’ll tell you about it as we go to police headquarters,” I said.
Herb Aronson is chatty but not nosy, and he silently listened to my edited tale of woe as we drove south to 24 °Centre Street, where the nerve center of the New York City police department stood majestically, looking like a state capitol, complete with an elaborate dome.
“That’s quite a story, Archie,” Herb said as I climbed out of his taxi. “I’ll be right here when they get through with you. Good luck.”
I knew the way to Inspector Cramer’s office, having been there too many times for my taste. I waited in his anteroom, my only company being his grim-faced secretary, who was clattering away on her ancient Smith-Corona.
After ten minutes, the door to the inner sanctum swung open and the man himself came out, coatless and with sleeves rolled up. “All right, Goodwin, follow me,” he said. “We’ll take a look at our man through the one-way glass.”
We went into an unadorned room that had one wall of glass, which looked on another plain room with a steel table and two chairs. “That’s Hartz,” Cramer said, indicating a man in prison garb seated on one side of the table, facing another man who turned out to be a plainclothes cop I didn’t recognize.
Cramer pushed a button. This alerted the cop in the next room, who told his charge to “Stand up, walk once around the table, stop, face left, face right, face that way.” I was able to view Hartz head on and in two profiles. It was the first guy who had been tailing me, all right. I had gotten that quick look at him in profile just before his trailing partner gave me the concussion. I told Cramer.
“A tough nut,” the inspector said. “We can’t get one damned word out of him, even with threats of him being charged with murder.”
“You figure he’s the one who plugged Chester Miller?”
“Yeah, but we can’t prove it. We got his .38 when we searched his room, all right, but we’ve got no shell to compare it to, although the autopsy said the wound was almost surely caused by a .38. And as you probably read, the bullet that killed Miller exited his head and is God-knows-where now. We don’t even know where the poor sap was shot before his body was dumped in the Hudson.”
“So now what?”
“Based on you identifying him, we can hold him on a battery charge, as well as his being in this country without a legal visa.”
“Has he got a lawyer?”
“Oddly, no. He knows he’s entitled to one, a public defender at the very least; he understands English, although he doesn’t speak it very well. But he seems content to sit in his cell with his lips sealed. And nobody has come forward to help him. The guy has been hung out to dry by his friends, if you want to call them friends.”
“You need me for anything else?”
“No, go home and rest. You still don’t look all that great.”
“Thanks for your candor,” I told him, glad to be leaving the building.
Chapter 22
The next several days dragged by. I am not used to sitting around doing nothing more than opening the mail and typing a few letters for Wolfe. I once told him that I am supposed to be a man of action to complement his man of brains, but now the most action I’m getting is standing and walking over to the three-drawer cabinet to enter the orchid germination records that Theodore’s temporary replacement, Carl Willis, brings down every afternoon. I had once told Wolfe “that if you keep a keg of dynamite around the house, you’ve got to expect some noise sooner or later. That’s what I am, a keg of dynamite.”
On the subject of Willis, I had no idea how he was getting along upstairs with the orchids, because he is as closed-mouthed as Horstmann. And when I have asked Wolfe how the new man is working out, he just grunts. Unfortunately, I have never learned to accurately translate his various grunts.
Speaking of Wolfe, he just entered the office after his morning session with the orchids and rang for beer. After going through the morning mail, which I had opened and stacked on his desk, he cleared his throat, which sometimes happens when he was prepared to speak.
“Archie, on some occasions in the past, you have accused me not keeping you apprised of my plans when we are working on a case.”
“On ‘some occasions’, you say? Make that ‘lots of occasions’!”
“As you wish,” he sighed. “I am about to bring you up-to-date.”
“Please do. I feel like my joints are getting rusty from lack of stimulation.”
“Because of your enforced inactivity, I have asked Saul to continue our investigation into the series of events triggered by the attack upon Theodore. He will be coming over sometime today to confer with you.”
“Swell. He can feel free to pick my brain. Nobody else is doing anything with it.”
Wolfe ignored that shot and picked up his latest book, Roosevelt and Hopkins, by Robert Sherwood. I returned to typing up his dictation from the day before, making sure to hit the keys extra hard, which always irritates him. For years he has offered to buy a noiseless typewriter, but — perhaps out of sheer perversity — I have insisted that I’m comfortable with the machine we have.
After lunch and after Wolfe had gone up to the plant rooms, Saul Panzer arrived and we settled down in the office, me at my desk and Saul in one of the yellow chairs. “Well, you look marginally better,” he observed.
“I’ll take marginally. I understand from Wolfe that you are going to be filling in for me on the street.”
“Hey, I’m not trying to horn in on your—”
“It’s okay,” I said, waving his comment aside. “I know damned well that for at least the next several days, I am not going to be out on the streets fighting the forces of evil. I am turning that task over to you.”
“Remind me to thank you for your confidence. Of course, I know some of what’s been going on, but for now, assume I’m coming into all of this fresh,” Saul said. “Don’t be afraid to tell me about any details — or people — you think I might already have knowledge of.”
“I probably don’t have to tell you this, but I will anyway: Keep a piece with you at all times. These people, whoever they may be, are not playing games.”
“Give me your thoughts about the characters you’ve run into.”
“I’ll start with Liam McCready, who runs the pub bearing that name.”
“I’ve seen him, but that’s all. We’ve never spoken.”
“He’s what I think of as the typical Irishman, and that’s how I think he sees himself, too: Hail-fellow-well-met, full of the blarney, convivial, colorful. Good qualities for a barkeep. Makes you feel welcome, whether or not he’s being sincere. Would I trust him? My vote is still out on that.
“Next is the super at the Elmont, a dismal and seedy-looking guy named Erwin Bauer, whose personality is the polar opposite of McCready’s. He’s not very forthcoming, to say the least. Maybe I’m being overly suspicious, but he seems like a man who is hiding something.
“Then there’s that Italian grocer across Tenth Avenue from the Elmont, who told Orrie, as you recall, that the building is a ‘very bad place, cattivo.’ You will also recall that when Orrie pressed the grocer, the guy clammed up. Maybe you can pry something more out of him. You have the finesse that Orrie lacks.”