Finally, Cramer rose slowly and moved toward the office door. If he was not a beaten man, he certainly was one who was on the ropes. I walked him to the front door and tried to make small talk but was met with the same lack of success as when he had entered the brownstone.
“You two certainly managed to take the sun out of what is a very bright day,” I said when I was back in the office. “If Cramer had been any lower, his chin would have bounced off the steps on his way out.”
I got no response from Wolfe, and I was not about to press him regarding his mood or that of the sullen inspector. My job description includes many duties, but in-house morale officer is not among them. Wolfe retreated behind his latest book, and I typed up dictation from yesterday, banging as hard as I could on the keys of the solid, old Underwood.
Chapter 27
That afternoon, when Wolfe was upstairs playing doctor to his orchids, I got a call from Del Bascom. “Hope you haven’t had to dodge any bullets,” I told him.
“Nah, all is well, Archie. Thought you’d like to know I saw your friend Charlie King at the Cabot and Sons dock, and he sends his best. I bought him lunch and we talked about Doug Halliwell.”
“You have my undivided attention.”
“Mr. Halliwell is not the most popular individual along the North River piers. Charlie has several men on his payroll who once worked for Halliwell, and they couldn’t wait to get away from National Export. They had plenty to say about him.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, he’s a mean son-of-a-bitch, for starters. Deckhands who now work for Charlie say he’s abusive to his men and plays favorites. After work when some of the crew head for the bars, Halliwell expects them to buy his beers, and sometimes his meals. Those that don’t get stuck with the crappiest jobs.”
“Is there anything else we should know about him?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’ve saved the best — or maybe the worst — for last, but it will sure interest you and Wolfe. It seems that Halliwell has a buddy at the National Export dock on the other side of the pond in Hamburg. This, too, comes from one of Halliwell’s former crew members who’s now with Cabot and Sons. The guy in Hamburg, whose name Charlie King’s man does not know, works with Halliwell to smuggle DPs across the Atlantic on National Export cargo ships.”
“I’ll be damned, but not surprised. Is that a lucrative business?”
“King seems to think so. A lot of these poor homeless souls, who can’t get visas because they’re so limited, are desperate to get out of Europe, and they’ll pay whatever they have got. It isn’t hard to see why, given what we’ve been hearing about food and housing shortages over there.
“So, there’s a displaced persons’ smuggling channel, apparently being run by National Export, one or more of whose employees figure to be making dirty money,” Bascom went on. “But there probably are other similar routes in which DPs are being smuggled into the United States as well, wouldn’t you think?”
“Sure,” I agreed. “Where there is a profit to be made, the lowlifes come out from under their rocks and move in for a cut of the action.”
“My question is this, Archie. Wouldn’t all of these DP smugglers want to keep low and peaceful profiles to avoid having their business — as dirty as it is — come to light? Yet it seems like this particular operation is full of violence: Your man Horstmann beaten nearly to death; you coming close to getting finished off yourself; and then that poor fellow Miller, whose body was found in the river.”
“And there’s yet another piece of violence you may not be aware of.” I told Del about what had happened in McCready’s bar. “Maybe it has no connection to these other incidents, or to the National Export Lines, but the dead man, name of Krueger, was a displaced person from Germany.”
“I’m not a believer in coincidences, Archie.”
“Both Wolfe and Cramer have said the same thing in the past, and on more than one occasion.”
“I guess that puts me in good company,” Del said. “The way I look at it, there has to be some other element to this smuggling operation, probably a thing of great value, like maybe gold or diamonds or old paintings by masters — anything that would be seen by some as worth killing for. I know of a case where a man in Westchester County poisoned his aged aunt to get hold of the world-class coin collection that had belonged to her late husband.”
“As Wolfe has often said, ‘Greed knows no boundaries.’ Of the three possibilities you mentioned, I would tend to rule out artwork, which often is too large to be smuggled without being spotted. Gold and diamonds, on the other hand, can be more easily hidden. Maybe Charlie King has some insight.”
“I doubt it, but I’ll ask him,” Del said, and we signed off.
When Wolfe came down from the plant rooms, I repeated my conversation with Bascom, and after pushing the button for beer, he leaned back, closing his eyes. I thought he was about to go into the routine where he pushes his lips in and out, in and out, which usually means he is in a trance that ends with the solution of a mystery. But I was to be disappointed.
Wolfe opened his eyes and mouthed Bascom’s words, Anything that would be seen by some as worth killing for. And then he mouthed them again.
“Okay, here’s the way I’ve got it figured,” I told him as he popped open the first of two beers Fritz had brought in. “Somebody is using these displaced persons to smuggle goods into this country, probably things like gold and jewelry of all kinds, stuff that likely got seized from people in Europe during and after the war. After all, the DPs are being smuggled in themselves, so what better carriers of other smuggled material? You’ve got to admit that’s one slick way around our customs people.”
Wolfe looked at me and blinked, but said nothing. “Am I boring you?” I asked.
“Boring me? Not at all. I am thinking about dinner.”
“Well, that’s all right, then. I felt perhaps you might be interested in the case I thought we were concentrating on. I’m going to skip dinner here and see if Lily wants to go to Rusterman’s and then dancing at the Churchill.”
“But we’re having—”
I interrupted Wolfe. “I know what Fritz is serving tonight, and I will be sad to miss it, but I am in need of some stimulation, which seems to be in short supply here.”
Before Wolfe could respond, I picked up the phone and dialed Lily Rowan’s number. She answered after several rings. “Escamillo, I am glad to hear from you. I have been wondering how you are.”
“Recovering nicely. I realize this is very late notice, but would you care to dine with me this evening at Rusterman’s and then trip the light fantastic on the dance floor at the Churchill?”
“Well, I must say this is late notice indeed, but I would be churlish if I said no to you, Escamillo. After all, it was only three weeks ago that I called you two hours before curtain time and asked you to accompany me to the opera when a lady friend of mine backed out because of a cold.”
“Then that makes us even, and it’s a date. I will pick you up at seven.”
Lily insisted that we first have cocktails in her tenth-floor penthouse on East Sixty-Third Street. While we were consuming Gibsons, I telephoned Rusterman’s and booked a table for two — normally impossible on such short notice for anyone but Nero Wolfe or someone closely associated with him.
A few words here about Rusterman’s, which is on Lexington Avenue between Forty-Ninth and Fiftieth Streets. Newspaper critics generally consider it to be the city’s finest restaurant, and it is owned by Marko Vukcic, Wolfe’s oldest and best friend. The two grew up together in the Balkans and fought in a resistance movement that Wolfe prefers not to discuss.