Lon took a sip of the cognac, savored it, and exhaled. “If there has been a lot of smuggling on the part of the incoming DPs, our men haven’t picked up on it. And neither, as far as we are aware, have the police or the immigration authorities. Oh, no doubt some of these people have brought things in on a small scale that they, shall we say... ‘borrowed’ from others in Europe before they left.”
“Do you have any sense of what percentage of the displaced persons who have entered this country since the end of the war are here without documentation?” Wolfe asked.
The newspaperman sighed and turned his palms upward. “I’m not sure anyone has a definitive answer to that. For as much as the government likes to claim how strict we are in allowing people into this country, the truth is that our borders really are a sieve. I am convinced that there are uncounted numbers of aliens on the streets of this city right now. We figure many of them were brought over by family members who paid somebody to get them here using phony or stolen identification papers.”
“It appears to be a furtive and burgeoning industry.”
“That’s a good way to phrase it,” Lon said. “And that so-called industry is damned near impossible to penetrate. At the risk of using a cliché, there’s a conspiracy of silence. And it seems to us at the Gazette that a lot of government officials are looking the other way, maybe because they feel it’s fruitless to try prying information out of the people responsible for bringing their relatives or friends across from Europe.”
“Clans invariably close their ranks,” Wolfe remarked. “Some of what I am about to relate, you already know, but I feel you merit transparency from Archie and me.”
With that, Wolfe launched into a detailed recitation of all that had transpired since the attack of Fritz. He left nothing out, including my run-in with those two men and my subsequent shooting of one of them, William Hartz.
“Oh yeah, we know about Hartz. He’s clammed up, right?”
“As far as we know,” I put in. “He was assigned a public defender who, last we heard, had not been able to get him to open his yap at all.”
“Have there been any further developments in that tavern shooting?” Wolfe asked.
“Nothing we’ve heard of,” Lon said. “The cops are still calling it self-defense on the part of the bar owner.”
“Do you have anything to add to what I have summarized, Mr. Cohen?”
“Not really. We are at a dead end on the whole business. I was hoping you might have some words of wisdom.”
“Wisdom seems to be in short supply at the moment,” Wolfe said. “Has your network of reporters and their sources noticed any spike in smuggling activities involving valuable merchandise?”
“No, and believe me, we have been looking. Our ‘sources,’ as you term them, are well plugged into the world of fences and other intermediaries who trade in that quaint old phrase, ‘ill-gotten goods.’ The only recent example I can think of is when a couple of months back, three pieces of priceless Renaissance artwork were discovered in the back room of a small Greenwich Village gallery, thanks to a tip we received. You may have read our article that ran at the time.”
“I did,” Wolfe said, uncapping a frosted bottle of beer that Fritz had brought in. “But I find it hard to believe that is the only example to have been discovered.”
Lon nodded. “I concur, which may indicate the degree of secrecy with which smugglers operate. I have no doubt that other examples of this kind will eventually come to light. In the meantime, though, the single most prevalent element secretly coming into this country is not riches but people, which can be viewed as both good and bad.”
Wolfe leaned back in his chair and stared straight ahead, apparently oblivious to us. Lon looked at me, his face registering puzzlement, and I rolled my eyes. Our guest drained the last of his Remisier and rose. “Time for me to be off. Thanks for the dinner, the conversation, and this,” he told Wolfe, holding up the empty snifter in a salute. He got no response and sent another puzzled expression in my direction as he rose to leave.
When I walked Lon down the hall to the door, he said, “It seems like your boss is in a trance. Was it something I said?”
“Beats me. I think I’ve told you that when he is in the middle of a case, he often closes his eyes and pushes his lips in and out, which means he’s working on a solution, which in itself is a sort of trance. But this... I’ve never seen it before.”
“Do you think he’s all right?”
“We will know soon enough,” I said as Lon went down the steps of the brownstone, shaking his head and striding off in search of a cab.
When I got back to the office, Wolfe was gone. Thinking he went to consult with Fritz about tomorrow’s meals, I went to the kitchen, but he wasn’t there. “Mr. Wolfe must have gone to bed, Archie,” I was told by our chef. Okay, the resident brain is in some sort of mood that I can’t quite read, but I am not going to worry about it until tomorrow, I told myself, as I headed upstairs to get my requisite 510 minutes of sleep.
Chapter 29
Before I fell asleep, a plan began to take root in my brain, a plan that would need Wolfe’s approval.
When I rose the next morning, the first thing I did was to look myself over in the mirror. I definitely felt I was presentable. The bruises had gradually faded, although my hair was slow in growing back in the area where I’d been sutured. But a visit to my barber, Calvin, could help to camouflage the temporary violence that had been done to my scalp.
I showered, shaved, and dressed, but instead of going straight to the kitchen for breakfast as usual, I went down one flight and knocked on Wolfe’s bedroom door.
“Yes?”
“It’s me, Archie. I need to see you.”
The response was a grunt. “You know very well I am eating.”
“This can’t wait.”
Another grunt. “Enter!”
Wolfe had nearly polished off the food on his tray, so I didn’t feel as though I had interrupted his breakfast, although his expression made it clear he was not happy to see me. “Well?” he demanded.
“I have an idea of how to move things along, and I felt I should get your approval.” I then went on to lay out my plan as Wolfe drained the last of his cup of hot chocolate. When I was done, his face was stony. “I don’t like it,” he said.
“Why not?”
“You have been through a great deal already. This could place you in further peril without substantially aiding our cause.”
“With respect, I believe what I have proposed might break the logjam we seem to find ourselves stuck in.”
Wolfe seemed unmoved, but I continued to press him. I often have called him stubborn over the years, but he is well aware that I can be just as mulish as he. We continued to spar for several more minutes, and I could sense that I was wearing him down. Finally, he said, “All right, confound it, begin your preparations, and we will talk later today.”
This was a victory of sorts. After my own breakfast, I called Calvin the barber and was able to get a nine-thirty appointment. “I need to play down this spot where I had to get my head shaved because of a cut,” I told him when I entered his two-man shop on Lexington. “What do you think?”
“One way is to give you a closer overall cut than usual, Archie. Do you see that as a problem?”
“Just don’t make me look like a buck private in boot camp.”
Calvin laughed. “Give me a little credit. I think I can do this so that no one will notice. It may take a little getting used to, but I’m sure you can handle it.”