Theodore’s recovery was gradual and took many months. He started coming across the Hudson one day a week, and then two, being that Vollmer had prescribed for him a gradual reentry into his former work schedule.
Once he had fully recovered, Theodore related to us, and to Inspector Cramer, his memory of the beating he took. With him grumbling all the way, I drove Theodore to Rikers Island where, through a one-way glass, he identified William Hartz as one of the two men who had attacked him as he walked that fateful night a few blocks from the Elmont. He also viewed a death photograph of Emil Krueger and said that he “looked like” the other man in the attack, although he could not be positive.
As for Carl Willis, who had filled in as Wolfe’s orchid nurse, he was happy enough to begin relinquishing his temporary role. The two had managed to tolerate each other, although the relationship was never smooth and certainly far from amiable. Wolfe considered the new man to be marginally knowledgeable about the orchidaceous world. Willis, in turn, felt that his overseer was a martinet who criticized his every move. I know this, because I heard his complaints almost every time he came downstairs to give me the orchid germination material to enter into the files.
It was a sure thing that the “team” of Wolfe and Willis would soon be dissolved, and that Theodore would eventually be returning to the plant rooms on the top floor of the brownstone on a full-time basis. Where he would live was yet to be determined, but it definitely would not be in a certain five-story building on Tenth Avenue in the heart of Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen.
Author’s Note
The preceding work is fiction, but the saga of Nazis infiltrating the United States after World War II is far from fictional. An instructive volume in the writing of this story is The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men by Eric Lichtblau (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Boston; New York, 2014). In his book, two-time Pulitzer Prize — winning newspaperman Lichtblau shows how Nazis, many of them using forged identification, came to the United States and managed to blend into the society, in numerous cases reinventing themselves and building new lives and careers, not just in New York, but elsewhere as well. The book makes chilling reading.
One striking example is that of a German-born woman who during the immediate postwar years lived in anonymity as a housewife in Queens, married to an American construction worker. It was later discovered that she was a guard at a Nazi concentration camp who regularly beat women prisoners and killed several of them. She was returned to Germany, tried, and imprisoned for life. She was released for health reasons three years before her death in 1999.
In addition to the Lichtblau work, I have relied on several other sources, each of which has been helpful in increasing my knowledge and appreciation of the Nero Wolfe corpus, which Rex Stout developed over more than four decades. These are: Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-Fifth Street: The Life and Times of America’s Largest Private Detective by William Baring-Gould (Viking Press, New York, 1968); The Nero Wolfe Cookbook by Rex Stout and the Editors of Viking Press (Viking Press, New York, 1973); The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe by Ken Darbyas told by Archie Goodwin (Little, Brown & Co. Boston, Toronto, 1983); and Rex Stout: A Biography by John McAleer (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1977). The McAleer book won an Edgar Award in the biography category from the Mystery Writers of America.
I give my heartfelt gratitude to Rex Stout’s daughter, Rebecca Stout Bradbury. Rebecca has been a continuing source of support and encouragement in my continuation of her father’s wonderfully developed characters and settings.
My thanks and my appreciation also go to my agent, Martha Kaplan, to Otto Penzler and Charles Perry of Mysterious Press, and to the strong team at Open Road Integrated Media.
And a tip of the hat to my long-time friend and encourager Max Allan Collins, an award-winning mystery author and screenwriter. Max suggested to me that I write a Nero Wolfe story in which Theodore Horstmann would play a larger part than is usually the case. This I have done, although Mr. Horstmann would hardly have appreciated the role to which he was consigned in this narrative.
As a final and most important note, both my love and my boundless thanks go to Janet, my wife and guiding star of more than fifty-five years, who continues to be my greatest source of inspiration. Without her, I would be incomplete and rudderless.