Politics Is Murder Chapter 4

It took me about ten seconds to realize that the stiff wasn’t Hillary. The blue pant suit and the hairdo had me fooled. I flashed my light on the face and saw that it was Brock. He wasn’t Hillary, but he was dead, courtesy of a slug that had drilled him right through the forehead.

I was very glad that I was wearing gloves. I stepped back a little and let the beam of my flashlight play over Brock’s body. He was wearing lipstick and other makeup to go with the wig, as well as women’s shoes. I guess he had to get those by special order, because for a short guy Brock had big feet.

I touched Brock’s arm. He was stiff and cold. It was a sure bet that he’d been killed on Thursday night. Whoever had done it wasn’t around. I had the place to myself.

I looked around the room and found what I wanted—Brock’s laptop. He was a Mac man. I’ve always found Macs a little fancy for my taste, but they are easy to operate. I took out my laptop and hooked it up to Brock’s. This was going to take some time, but I figured that I had time, if I didn’t mind spending it with a corpse. The odds were a million to one that there was only one other person in the world who knew that Brock was dead, and he wasn’t telling. According to everything Saul had seen, Brock didn’t have much of a social life, so it wasn’t too likely that anyone would come looking for him. Anyway, that was how I was going to play it.

The laptop I brought along had been specially outfitted by a serious hacker that Wolfe and I have consulted on more than one occasion. It’s got two extra hard drives and will handle a terabyte of data without gagging. If you don’t know what a terabyte is, let’s just say that I was able to copy Brock’s entire hard drive without even breathing hard.

Once I had the whole hard drive on my machine it was easy. I read through everything that Brock had written for the past couple of weeks, which wasn’t much. There was his “history” that Ann had mentioned, but he hadn’t touched it. I thought I might have gold when I found his diary, but apparently Brock wasn’t the type to unburden himself. There were references to people, usually by initials, and sometimes by a single initial, so unless you knew something about Brock’s social life—and I didn’t—it wasn’t much to go on. He did have “AC” down for lunch on Friday at the Plaza. So he probably hadn’t planned on being murdered.

Finally I came to a folder that was password protected. It was big, and fat, and mysterious. Thanks to some nice custom software I was able to override all the little tricks Apple builds into its machine and found Brock’s password. I opened the folder and found a single file, which Brock had cleverly named “1”. It was about forty megs, which sounded like a video file, but when I tried to get in it was no go. I set the software to search for the password, but it just wasn’t there. This was a specially encrypted file that Brock had loaded onto his machine a couple of weeks ago. There had been a lot of reformatting and some industrial-strength erasing, which suggested to me that Brock had gone to a pro for the work. I had the feeling that if I tried to crack that file and blew it I’d have some serious egg on my face.

This looked like a problem that I couldn’t solve where I was. I dearly wanted to delete “1” from his hard drive, but I had to let it go. The odds were a thousand to one that that file was the one that Ann wanted, but the odds were also at least ten to one it was tied somehow to Brock’s murder. Destroying evidence is illegal and also unsportsmanlike. Using some special software, I cleaned up Brock’s machine so that no one could tell that I had been inside. Maybe Steve Jobs could figure out what I had done, but it would take him a week, and he’d have to want to know what had happened awfully bad.

I was just disconnecting my machine from Brock’s when he sat up. Corpses will do that. The muscles tighten, and up she goes. But you have to have spent a lot more time in a morgue than I have not to jump when it happens. He had his back to me, which made it a lot easier, but not easy enough. My muscles tightened too, and I stood up from the chair. Now that I taken care of our client, maybe there was something I could do for Mr. Brock.

Whoever had killed him had not walked in or out of the alley. I was betting on that. So how was it done? I went up another flight of stairs to a very neat little studio, with seven-foot-ceilings and a pair of tiny windows. I opened a large closet and found my answer: a hatch to the roof, a hatch that wasn’t locked from the inside.

It was a well-made hatch, so there was no water damage. I wanted to open it, but decided against it. There are a lot of people in New York who have nothing better to do than look out the window, and the sight of a man climbing out of a hatch in a roof might be just the sort of thing to catch their eye. So I let the hatch be and went back down to the second floor. I took one last look at David Brock, in his Hillary wig, his lipstick, and his pearls. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do for him, but I had the feeling that I was going to catch his killer before I was done.

I had gone south a block on Sullivan when Saul caught up with me.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“Good for me, bad for Brock,” I said. “He caught a slug in the forehead two days ago.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. It was a small caliber, a twenty-two, I’m guessing. It was in a back room, on the second floor. Unless you were standing right outside, you couldn’t have heard it. There’s a roof hatch, unlocked. Let’s take a walk around the block and see how he did it.”

We walked back up Sixth Avenue to MacDougal. Saul nodded at a walkway between two buildings.

“There it is,” he said. “At the end of the main alley there’s a fire escape. He went across the roof, and then down and out. He’d have to jump a few walls. He must be a kid.”

“Okay,” I said. “You better leave.”

“Do you want me to call it in?”

“No, I’ll do it.”

“I’m sorry, Archie. You can dock me the C note.”

“Forget it. We weren’t looking for this.”

I walked up MacDougal and caught a cab to Thirty-Fifth Street. When I got out I saw a polished black sedan sitting three doors down that might have set off some alarm signals but it didn’t. We do live in a tony neighborhood, after all, and chauffeured cars aren’t that rare. I knocked on the door and Fritz came and removed the chain to let me in. He seemed to be flustered about something but I was in too much of a hurry to pay much attention. I rushed into the office, almost colliding with Hillary Clinton as I did so.

It was the real deal this time around. Our meeting was a surprise to both of us, but she had her hand out in three-fifths of a second. A constituent is a constituent, after all.

“Senator, this is my assistant, Archie Goodwin. Archie, this is Senator Clinton.”

Somehow, I hadn’t even noticed that Wolfe was in the room, which was probably a first for me, and maybe for him.

We shook hands. She fixed her sharp eyes on me and gave me a big smile.

“Senator Clinton was gracious enough to have lunch with me,” Wolfe continued. “She has been giving us enormous assistance with the situation in the Balkans.”

“Mr. Wolfe is the one who has been giving enormous assistance,” Hillary said. “His research and analysis have been superb.”

Wolfe looked like he was about to blush. I was expecting him to say something about all the work I had done—learning to type in Serbian, for example— but he didn’t.

“Well, this is an honor,” I said.

Not brilliant, I admit, but considering that three hours ago I thought I was leaning over the senator’s corpse, not bad. I stepped out of her way and unconsciously started looking for her security guard. Then I realized that there wasn’t one.

“Where’s the Secret Service?” I asked.

“Oh, I took a page from Eleanor,” she said. “Look.”

She opened her purse and took out a small black Marley thirty-two.

“Wouldn’t the NRA love this!” she laughed. “It’s only a five-round clip. I figure that if I need more than five bullets, they’re going to get me.”

I didn’t say anything. I guess even Methodists can have a little sang-froid.

“We don’t mean to keep you, Senator,” Wolfe said, as though being in the same room with me might be some kind of imposition.

It isn’t often that it’s Wolfe who shows a visitor to the door, but obviously this was one of those times. Since the hallway wasn’t really built for three when one of the three weighs in at a seventh of a ton, I was discreet and walked behind. When the door opened I could see the black sedan had pulled up right in front and two men were getting out. Frankly, I felt safer.

“You weren’t going to invite me to lunch?” I asked.

“You certainly would have been had you been here,” Wolfe replied. “I didn’t tell you in advance because the senator’s staff prefers not to give advance notice of her plans. Unfortunately, you chose to absent yourself.”

I was about to say “nuts” but decided against it. Much as I wanted to ride Wolfe about getting up close and personal with Hillary, the news I had was too hot to wait.

I did wait until Wolfe got himself comfortable in his chair and rang for beer.

“You’re going to need that,” I said, sitting behind my desk. “The news I’ve got isn’t pretty. David Brock has been murdered. He caught a twenty-two through the forehead.”

“Confound it!” Wolfe made little circles on his desk with a forefinger. “This is not what I wanted to hear.”

“Yeah. I guess you’ll have to earn those orchids. The police are bound to discover a lot of phone calls between Ann Coulter and Brock, and they’re going to wonder what they were talking about. And if they find out that Ann came up here with a million in cashier’s checks, which they will if they bother to look, they’re going to wonder a lot.”

“Have you informed Miss Coulter?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Wolfe inhaled and then let out about a bushel of air. He was looking off in the distance, not at me, as though he wanted to pretend that I hadn’t told him about Brock’s murder.

“You have disturbed my digestion,” he said, still not looking at me.

“I apologize.”

“Thank you.”

Fritz arrived with Wolfe’s beer.

“Oh, Archie,” he said, “I was so sorry that you were not here for our luncheon for the senator. Such a gracious lady!”

I hid a smile. I even sorrier than before that I had missed Hillary’s act. Any woman that could make both Wolfe and Fritz act like schoolboys was something special.

“I had business downtown,” I said.

“Have you eaten? I saved a pheasant for you.”

“I’m fine. I had a couple of doughnuts at eleven.”

Wolfe shuddered.

“Archie, is this true? You haven’t eaten since? Fritz, bring Archie a plate.”

All at once I had his sympathy. I should have led with the no lunch.

“Forget it,” I said. “What I’ve got won’t wait.”

Wolfe opened his beer with the golden opener a client had given him and put the bottle cap in his desk drawer. Then he poured the beer so that there was a quarter-inch of foam at the top of the glass. He drank from the glass and licked the foam from his upper lip.

“Confound it,” he said again. “Let’s have it.”

So I gave it to him, the whole thing. He hates to ask about computers, but he didn’t have much choice. He asked me to repeat a couple of things about Brock’s hard drive, but finally he got it straight. When he did he got up from his chair and went over to the globe and gave it a whirl.

“You spent hours in that mews, when any minute the police could have arrived.”

“I took a chance, yes.”

“You took more than a chance. Mr. Brock’s murder has complicated this case immensely. What was once tawdry but trivial has been converted into a game that can only be played for the highest stakes. You should have consulted me. This was an extreme step to have taken on behalf of a dubious client.”

“Nuts. If I had consulted you there’s no way you could have given me an answer I could use. And I would have ruined your luncheon. And you can have it as my considered opinion that there’s no way in hell that Ann Coulter could have gotten in and out of that mews without Saul seeing her.”

“She is a young woman.”

“She’s young, but she’s no Mary Lou Rettan, who’s an acrobat, by the way.”

Ten years ago, Lily Rowan had made me take her niece to see Mary Lou in Peter Pan. I guess I still hadn’t gotten over it.

Wolfe wouldn’t let it go.

“What are the odds of Miss Coulter making the journey you described if her life depended on it?”

“In one piece? Twice? A thousand to one. Besides, if you were David Brock, would you let Ann Coulter climb down your roof hatch and shoot you, particularly if you were dressed like Hillary Clinton?”

Wolfe started to smile, but he ironed it out.

“She could have lain in wait,” he said.

“Nuts,” I said again. “Anyway, this guarantees that Ann won’t stiff you for the other three orchids, and it could double your fee.”

“Indeed. Archie, you will leave here and walk east. You will make a call to the police from the Pennsylvania Station, to inform them of the murder. Immediately thereafter you will walk several blocks and call Miss Coulter. Unless she is an absolute ninny, which we know she is not, she will wish to see me.”

Wolfe raised his head and looked at the clock. It was three-thirty.

“Tell her to be here at six. Tell her that if she arrives earlier, she will not be admitted. If you wish, you may inform her of some simple methods of avoiding immediate contact with the police, but you will not shelter her here.”

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Politics Is Murder Chapter 3

I was sorting through the morning mail at around nine-thirty when Saul called.

“Archie,” he said, “how’d the game go?”

“Ask Lon,” I said. “How are things in Soho?”

“Quiet. Brock came in last night around eight. We haven’t seen him since. No company.”

“None?”

“Nope. No sign of anyone but him.”

“Good. I’ll be down around eleven forty-five.”

Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven as always, with three Pleione Versailles blossoms.

“Good morning, Archie,” he said, as always. “Did you sleep well?”

“Very well,” I said, which was stretching it just a bit. “Saul called. If there’s anyone but Brock in that mews he hasn’t seen him.”

Wolfe settled in his chair and rang for beer.

“Excellent. You will meet with Saul and obtain the key to the mews. You will observe Mr. Brock’ departure. If you consider it judicious to do so, you will enter the house in Mr. Brock’ absence. Your search must be cautious. It will not do to allow Mr. Brock to become aware that his privacy has been violated. Nothing would be more likely to drive him to some petty and ill-considered act that would reduce our efforts to naught. If he has made copies of this file and secreted them on the premises, then we are flummoxed. You will inspect his computer. You will determine if the files are there, and if copies have been made. I assume that that is possible?”

“It’s possible, yes. There are all sorts of things he could have done, but I’ll know more once I’ve had a look at that computer.”

“And we will know more when we have the terms he intends to present to Miss Coulter at their luncheon. Miss Coulter’s surmise that Mr. Brock will not relinquish the coercive grip he maintains on her at his own initiative is, I believe, valid. As he spreads his net we must fashion one of our own that will encompass his meager device.”

Fritz arrived with Wolfe’s beer.

“Thank you, Fritz,” he said.

I watched as he opened the bottle with the gold-plated opener a client gave him and poured the beer so that there was a quarter-inch of foam at the top of the glass. He drank from the glass and licked the foam from his upper lip. He set the glass down and looked at me.

“If you are confident that the computer has the only copy of the file, you will remove it.”

“I’d say it’s a million to one that he’s got at least two copies of the file. If we erase the one, he’ll know it, and he’ll be mad.”

“No doubt. Then you must simply learn as much as you can learn, and wait to hear Miss Coulter’s account of their conversation. If we have a clear idea of how he intends to play his hand it will be more feasible to ensure his actual compliance with his proffers.”

When he was done with me he picked up The Empire of the Steppes. I suppose he couldn’t wait to get back to Genghis Khan.

I walked over to Tenth Avenue and caught a cab down to Washington Square and then walked the rest of the way to Sullivan, where I met Saul.

“He’s still inside,” Saul said.

“I think I’ll take a walk around the block,” I told him.

I walked around the block. As I approached him Saul shook his head so I kept on going. When I came back from my second go-round Saul headed into a coffee shop. He sat in a booth facing a window so that he could watch the street.

“He still hasn’t shown,” he said, as I slid in across from him.

As he spoke my cellphone started buzzing. I clicked it open and put it to my ear. I didn’t have to guess who it was.

“Archie, he isn’t here. I called his cell and he didn’t answer. What should I do?”

“Sit tight,” I told her.

“I’m not sitting, I’m standing.”

“Well, grab a seat. Unless he’s way ahead of us he hasn’t left yet.”

“You mean you know where he lives?”

“I’m not saying that. Have a glass of wine and if he doesn’t show in fifteen minutes call me.”

Saul ordered a corned beef and a glass of seltzer. I took a corned beef and a glass of milk, just to be sociable. I was hoping that I wouldn’t have a chance to eat, but I did. Ann called, and I told her to hang out until one. If he didn’t show by then, she should leave Brock a message, go back to her hotel, and sit tight until she heard from me.

“What’s his game?” Saul asked, when I put away my cell.

“Don’t know. Maybe he got cold feet.”

I felt like asking Saul if he was absolutely sure that Brock was in the mews, but I didn’t. If Saul said he was there, he was there. At a quarter to one I called Wolfe.

“It’s me,” I said. “Brock hasn’t shown at the Plaza. Saul says he came in early last night and hasn’t left. He hasn’t called Ann. She’s called his cell twice and he hasn’t answered.”

“Confound it.”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing?”

“Having lunch with Saul. The mews is on a cul-de-sac and we’ve got a clear view of the entrance. And we’ve got another man down the street.”

“What are you eating?”

He really thought that was important.

“A corned beef sandwich and a glass of milk.”

“Mr. Brook’s waywardness has cost you sautéed veal kidneys with mushrooms, accompanied with braised sorrel.”

“I’ll be sure to give him a piece of my mind when I see him.”

“Indeed. What do you propose to do?”

“You’re asking me?”

“You are the man on the spot.”

I felt like saying “indeed” but I didn’t.

“I’ll sit here with Saul until one-thirty. We can give Saul another grand to watch the place through tomorrow. If Brock doesn’t call Ann by tomorrow, something has gone seriously screwy. Either he’s worked himself into a hopeless funk or someone’s leaning on him. That’s only a guess, but I just can’t see why he would bail at this point.”

There was a pause. I’m guessing that Wolfe was thinking about how much he would rather be eating sautéed veal kidneys than worrying about David Brock. On the other hand, Dave’s little scheme, whatever it was, had already netted Wolfe an Archacattleya Tyria, something he surely thought he’d never get his hands on. So, as far as Wolfe was concerned, they were just about even.

“Make the arrangement with Saul,” he said. “Stay until one-thirty or two and then return here. You told Miss Coulter to inform you immediately if she hears from the gentleman?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You will report to me at two thirty, not that I believe you will have anything to report. It appears that we have placed ourselves at the mercy of the vagaries of an imbecile.”

“Yeah. Do I tell Saul that we may want him after tomorrow?”

“No. Absent any new developments, we will end the surveillance at noon tomorrow. If Mr. Brock retires entirely into his shell Miss Coulter may demand recompense, not that she shall receive any.”

“I’ll see you at two thirty.”

I closed my cell and put mustard on my corned beef. When we finished Brock still hadn’t shown. Saul gave me the key he had, to the basement of the mews rather than the front door, and I left. I stretched my legs a bit and walked over to Eighth Avenue before catching a cab. I had the cabbie let me off at Thirty-Fifth. I got out and headed west. As I approached the brownstone I gave Ann one last call. There was nothing. Whatever was biting Brock was biting him hard.

When I knocked Fritz was there to undo the chain and let me inside.

“Archie,” he said. “I saved you two kidneys. I could serve you a lovely lunch in half an hour.”

“Forget it,” I said. “I’ve got all the kidneys I need. But I appreciate the thought.”

When I got into the office Wolfe was hard at work, reading Gousset with both hands.

“Would you like a report?” I asked, as I slid behind my desk. “I can keep it brief.”

“No,” he said.

You couldn’t keep it briefer than that. There was a heap of plant records on my desk, along with another revision of Wolfe’s article. I started typing.

I was still at it when Wolfe went up to the orchids at four. Just to be absolutely sure that nothing was happening, I called both Saul and Ann. Saul had seen nothing and Ann had heard nothing. I called them both again at a quarter to six for an update and got a repeat.

“Nothing,” I told Wolfe when he came down at six.

He grunted, adjusted his bulk in the chair and rang for beer. Then he picked up The Empire of the Steppes. From the expression on his face he was peeved at Brock and was taking it out on me.

“I finished making those corrections you gave me,” I said, handing him a new printout.

Wolfe grunted again. Fritz arrived with his beer.

“And I checked with both Ann and Saul. Nothing.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“You refer to Miss Coulter by her first name?” he asked, opening the bottle.

I let it pass. Wolfe poured the beer so that there was a quarter-inch of foam at the top of the glass. He drank from the glass and licked the foam from his upper lip.

“It is possible that Mr. Brock has lost his nerve in this matter entirely?” Wolfe asked. “Saul may be keeping watch over an empty burrow.”

“If Saul says he’s there he’s there,” I said. “If Brock wanted to walk why wouldn’t he just walk? It would take some doing to get past Saul, and nothing that I’ve heard about Brock makes me believe that he could do it or that he would do it.”

“Interesting, Archie. You are capable of arguing, if not thinking, in the alternative. You must keep this up. It is a sign of progress.”

“Yeah. Here’s an alternative. I check in with Saul after around ten o’clock. If Brock hasn’t shown by then, I go in the house myself.”

“Brilliant. And do what?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m thinking in the alternative.”

Wolfe took another drink from his glass.

“Mr. Brock,” he said, “for whatever reason, has chosen to leave Miss Coulter on tenterhooks. I feel no particular compulsion to remove her from that position.”

“You’re ready to hand back her retainer?”

“I am. I accepted it in good faith and would return in the same manner, minus expenses.”

“She’ll want the orchid as well.”

“No doubt. But she won’t get it.”

After that he pretended to be reading, but I could see that little smirk he gets when he thinks he’s being cute. He reached for his beer. Since there was scarcely half a glass remaining, there was no point in being subtle. He drained the glass and set it down.

“You know, Archie,” he said, “I believe Miss Coulter has stimulated pangs of gallantry in your breast.”

“I’m just getting tired of typing Serbian.”

“Perhaps. But I see no point of pressing the matter. Mr. Brock is a slow-moving quarry. We can afford to be patient.”

He wanted to ring for another beer, but it was too close to dinner time, so he went back to Gousset. Five minutes later the doorbell rang.

“That will be our guests,” he said.

“We have guests?” I asked.

“Indeed. I fear it will be a slow evening for you, Archie, unless you speak Serbian.”

I went to the door. There were three men who definitely looked Serbian. They were polite enough, and one of them could speak clear English, but I could tell that by calling it a slow evening Wolfe was putting me down easy. Before dinner I fixed drinks and nodded politely. During dinner I nodded politely some more and enjoyed Fritz’s braised sweetbreads. After an hour or so the one who could speak English remarked that a young man like myself shouldn’t waste his time listening to a bunch of old men, which was nice to hear, even though I didn’t have a particular place I wanted to go. I waited about twenty minutes, at which time I ran out of politeness and excused myself. I walked over to Curran Motors and took the BMW Z-4 roadster Wolfe pays me to drive and went for a ride out to Jersey. When I leave the city for no reason I know I’m restless. I listened to Harry Connick on the changer, one of his instrumental albums. I know he makes fifty times as much, easy, pretending to sing like Frank, but I still wish he’d stick to the piano. By the time I turned around I was closer to Ohio than I’d been in the past fifteen years, and there was still no Lily. I knew where she was, but I was damned if I was going to go after her. I was in danger of starting to feel sorry for myself when my cell rang.

“Archie! Where are you?”

It was Lily.

“On a case,” I said.

“That’s not what Nero said.”

“When was the last time you got a straight answer out of him? And don’t call him Nero. You know he doesn’t like it and neither do I.”

“I’m neglecting you, aren’t I?”

I laughed.

“All right, be that way. I know I am. But things are terrible down here, much worse than I thought. I’m sorry, Archie, but I’m going to have to raise an awful lot of money if I’m going to keep Arianna from ruining everything.”

“Arianna?”

“Arianna Huffington. Don’t pretend you don’t know who she is. You’ve heard me complain about her often enough.”

I laughed again, and felt better about it this time.

“It’s not that funny! Archie!”

“I know. I don’t approve of Californians either.”

“Ha! You just say that to get my goat.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Oh, Archie! I am coming back! It’s just that, well, you turn your back on these people just once, and you’re done.”

“I thought DC was for people who couldn’t make it in Manhattan or LA.”

“It is. That’s why they’re so terrible. Archie, I will make it up to you.”

I knew she was serious, but I knew she was serious about getting Bush too. She had her back up about him in a way I’d never seen her before.

“I know you will,” I said, “but it is taking time.”

“Thank you, Archie,” she said. “I won’t say anything more, because I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep.”

“There’s a light on,” I said.

She made a sound, a sound like she was a big warm cat, a big warm cat I wanted to hold in my arms.

“I’m missing you, Escamillio. I know you’re mad, and I know it’s my fault. Believe me, I’ll be home soon.”

I didn’t say anything to that, because I suspected that it wasn’t quite true. Between settling things with Arianna and with George, Lily had a bigger fight on her hands than ever before. And I wasn’t ready to lift a finger to help her.

I didn’t get back to Thirty-fifth Street until about one, and didn’t roll out of bed until around eight, which barely gave me enough time for six of Fritz’s griddle cakes with wild thyme honey. I read the Times and the Gazette and listened with half an ear while Fritz told me about all the trouble he had finding woodcocks worth the money. There were too many breeders, he said, and too much money. The woodcock was a very special bird, he said, very simple, and very delicate, and should be left alone. When Fritz talks about woodcocks he can get a little upset.

I finished my coffee and went into the office. I did a little dusting and straightened a few items on Wolfe’s desk so that everything would be the way he wanted them and filled the gold Mont Blanc a client gave him with ink. At nine-fifteen I called Saul.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Not a damn thing,” Saul said. “Nobody in or out.”

“Sit tight,” I told him. “I think I’m coming down.”

I called Ann. She had called Brock but he still wasn’t answering his cell and she was getting well beyond antsy. She wanted to see Wolfe. I told her Wolfe was busy all day and that I would get back to her. Before I left I took out a special laptop I use when I’m breaking and entering computers and put it in a black carrying case. I got my hat and told Fritz to put the chain on the door and headed out. I caught a cab on Tenth and rode down to Sullivan. Saul was waiting there for me.

“I can’t stand the suspense,” I told him. “I’m going in.”

“Let me do it,” Saul said. “He might recognize you.”

“You try the door,” I said. “If he’s in, you handle it. If not, I will.”

“You think he pulled a skip?”

“I don’t know what I think. What I think is that he wouldn’t sit tight like this for two days. You said he always went out to eat.”

Saul nodded.

“So why he is so anti-social all of a sudden?”

“It’s your call, Archie.”

Saul walked down the alley while I walked the other way. Ten minutes later I walked back.

“Nothing,” Saul said. “If he’s there he doesn’t want company.”

It was dicey. The smart thing to do was sit tight, but I wasn’t having it.

“I can’t wait,” I said. “You watch me.”

I headed up Sullivan towards Washington Square. I walked three blocks until I found a coffee shop. I had a cup of coffee and two cinnamon doughnuts and glanced through copies of the Post and the News. When I was done I walked back down Sullivan and into the alley. The mews had an English basement and I walked down the steps under the stoop as though I knew what I was doing. I took advantage of the privacy to slip on a pair of gloves. The door opened and I was inside.

I was in a furnished apartment that was being used for storage—nice carpeting on the floor, but no real furniture. I walked to the back of the apartment and found the stairs. It was dark but I had my flashlight. When I got to the top of the stairs the door was locked. It took me ten minutes to pick the lock.

There wasn’t much light—the windows were hung with translucent white curtains—but there was enough so that I could see that whoever owned the place had had some money to throw around. It was the sort of Soho mews that about a million people in New York were willing to kill for. I was in a big room that looked lived in. There was a copy of the Times from Thursday and an opened copy of a book called A History of Writing lying on a coffee table. I checked in the kitchen and found a stainless-steel refrigerator with a bottle of champagne, three bottles of white wine and some take-out.

When I was done with the first floor I went up the stairs. I opened the first door that I came to and walked into somebody’s bedroom, stepping over the body of Hillary Clinton as I did so.

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Politics Is Murder Chapter 2

I called Saul in the morning and gave him the pitch. He said that locating Brock would be a breeze and that he would come by at twelve to pick up four grand in cash for expenses. There aren’t many places in this world where cash still beats plastic, but the detective business is one of them.

When I was finished with Saul I went through the emails and printed out a dozen for Wolfe to look at. He still won’t read from a computer screen. Then I checked about three dozen websites that carry information from the Balkans in general and Montenegro in particular. Most of it’s in Serbian, or Greek, or Russian, none of which I can read, of course, but Wolfe can, so I download anything that’s new and print it out for him. When I finished that I started entering the corrections Wolfe had made to an article he’d written in Serbian. As I say, I can’t read Serbian, but I’ve had lots of experience typing it. What Wolfe has said to me about the Balkans you could put in a thimble, but what he doesn’t know about what goes on there you could put in a thimble too.

When I finished with that I went out in the kitchen, where Fritz was opening oysters for lunch. Some people might think that ten in the morning was a little early for opening oysters, but if you had ever seen Fritz cook them, or Wolfe go through them, you wouldn’t. He likes to start off with a dozen oysters Portia as an appetizer and go on to three dozen batter-fried. Fritz found a new distributor who sells oysters he calls Totten Inlet Virginicas and Wolf can’t get enough of them.

I sat on a stool and watched Fritz open the oysters and slide each one into a large jar, with enough oyster liquor to keep them fresh. Fritz and I hadn’t had time for conversation over breakfast—scrambled eggs, smoked brook trout, and sourdough toast cut thick—and it was time to catch up.

“We have a case, Archie?” he asked me.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I smelt perfume when I came up this morning. Mme. Rowan is out of town, is she not?”

That’s Fritz’s little joke, or one of them. He thinks Lily takes up a bit too much of my time.

“Yes, Mme. Rowan is out of town. You should be the detective, Fritz.”

“No, Archie. You are the detective.”

He opened an oyster and hesitated.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“The edges are puckered. It is not so beautiful as the others.”

“Give it to me. I’ll never know the difference.”

“Archie. You could have la bonne bouche if you cared. It is not so mysterious.”

Fritz put the oyster down. He cut a lemon in half lengthwise and then cut one of the halves into quarters. He squeezed some lemon onto the oyster and slid it into his mouth.

“Bon,” he said.

“Bon is right,” I said.

I left Fritz and went back to the office and tidied up a bit. Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven, as he always does. He had a trio of Cypripedium calceolus blooms with him.

“Good morning, Archie,” he said, as he always does. “Did you sleep well?”

“I always sleep well when we have a client,” I said. “Saul says he’ll be by at one to pick up expense money.”

“Indeed,” said Wolf, arranging the blooms in the vase on his desk.

“How’s the Archacattleya Tyria?” I asked.

“I changed the pot, and it should do nicely,” said Wolfe. He sat down in the one chair in the world where he can feel comfortable and picked up the big magnifying glass he keeps on his desk. He turned the vase around and began to study the Cypripedium calceolus.

“The tropical varieties have become overworked, I fear, and I doubt that this new specimen has much to offer, even when considering Mr. Hawkins’ formidable gifts as a huckster. The more northerly breeds, however, have complexities that have scarcely been acknowledged, let alone explored.”

He pretended to be talking to himself, but he was talking through his hat, and he knew it. The Orchid Fancier’s Digest had had cover stories on Hawkins’ new flower for two months in a row, and they hadn’t done that in twenty years. Getting his hands on an Archacattleya Tyria without having to go through Hawkins was sweeter for Wolfe than a pound of white truffles, and he was so bull-headed he had to pretend that he didn’t give a damn. He was working so hard at it that he studied those blooms for a full minute before ringing Fritz for a beer. Since we had a client, I didn’t see the point in riding him, so I started entering plant records. At eleven-fifteen Ann called.

“Hello, Archie,” she said, putting me on the spot. I didn’t want to be on a first-name basis with her, but now there was no way I couldn’t be.

“Good morning,” I said. “Anything to report?”

“No, nothing. I hope I didn’t keep you up too late last night.”

“I’m used to it.”

“I can imagine.”

I caught a glance at Wolfe out of the corner of my eye. He was enjoying this and I wasn’t, so I had to put a stop to it.

“I’d like to chat, but I’m in the middle of another case right now.”

She laughed.

“I’m sure you’re very busy. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then. Good bye.”

“Good bye.”

I hung up the phone and looked at Wolfe.

“Miss Coulter,” I said. “With nothing to report.”

“I gathered as much,” he grunted. “An unusual woman. Guileful, yet not without charm, despite her dyspeptic intellect.”

“If you can call a crocodile charming.”

Wolfe smirked. I wasn’t having it and turned back to my keyboard. It was such a relief not to be typing in Serbian that I pounded away until one o’clock without a break, when the doorbell rang.

“That’ll be Saul,” I said.

Wolfe nodded, without looking up from his book. He had been reading René Gousset’s Empire of the Steppes for the last week, apparently under the theory that Genghis Khan had something to do with what’s going on in the Middle East. That seemed like going back awfully far to me, but Wolfe is always a sucker for the long perspective.

I walked to the door and took a look through the one-way panel, because I never like to open a door without knowing what’s on the other side, but there were no surprises this time around. It was Saul.

“What’s up, Archie?” he asked me.

“Mr. Wolfe will fill you in,” I told him.

Wolfe likes to do all the talking with Saul. I never know how much Wolfe wants the help to know, and if he didn’t want Saul to know that we were working for Ann Coulter, that was fine with me.

Saul sat down in the yellow chair to the left of Wolfe’s desk. He’s got this idea that the big red leather one right in front of Wolfe’s desk is for the big shots, not the help.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Wolfe,” he said.

“Good afternoon, Saul,” said Wolfe, looking up from his book. “We have a task for you, simple in description though tedious in execution. I gather Archie has given you a general overview?”

“There’s a guy living in Soho. You want us to find him and keep an eye on him.”

“Yes. The man’s name is David Brock. Have you heard of him?”

“He’s that guy who was after the Clintons.”

“Yes. If you require additional information on Mr. Brock, Archie can assist you. Mr. Brock has been subjecting our client to vague and conflicting demands for money. We certainly do not consider him a physical threat, but it is important that we locate his residence. Once he is located, we need to know where he goes and whom he sees, and whether he shares his residence with others. We require this level of information up until noon on this Friday.”

“You want a bag job?” Saul asked.

“That would be too risky. As I say, Mr. Brock constitutes at best a vague threat to our client, who desires, as clients so often do, the utmost discretion. We are dealing with people in the public eye. You will inform Archie as soon as you locate Mr. Brock, and inform him of any meetings and any activity that appears out of the ordinary.”

“Do you want video?” Saul asked.

Wolfe made a face. There’s a lot he doesn’t like about the detective business.

“Confound it. I suppose it is necessary, particularly if you see him engaged in conversations of a conspiratorial nature.”

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” said Saul.

I could see Saul glancing at his watch. Fritz would be serving lunch in fifteen minutes, and Saul has never turned down one of Fritz’s meals. But with Totten Inlet Virginicas on the menu, I was hoping that Wolfe wouldn’t be in mood to share, and I was right, which was fine by me. Saul could have my job any time he wanted it, and the less time he spent with Wolfe, the more I liked it.

“Very well,” said Wolfe, picking up his book. “Archie, I believe you said Saul required four thousand?”

“Right.”

I squatted in front of the safe and spun the dial. I’d put the cash in an envelope earlier in the morning, so I wouldn’t have to count it.

“Count it if you like,” I told him.

“That’s okay, Archie. You haven’t shorted me for at least a year.”

I was happy to let him have his joke. I followed him to the door.

“If I hit any snags I’ll give you a call,” he said.

I nodded, but he was just being polite. If Brock was in the city, Saul would find him.

I walked back in the room. Wolfe was counting bottlecaps. He’d had four in an hour. Either Ann was getting to him or the Archacattleya Tyria was.

“Now we just sit tight until Friday?” I asked.

“Yes. Saul will almost undoubtedly ascertain Mr. Brock’s location before the evening is out. I want to avoid confrontation with Mr. Brock as much as possible. One could wish that he retains but a single copy of this video, which we could obliterate without his being aware of our action. But we are advancing too far ahead of the facts.”

It seemed to me that he was doing all the advancing, and it also seemed to me that he was suggesting that, if Brock didn’t have a roomie, I should pay his place a visit on Friday while he was lunching with Ann and obliterate something. That would be a smooth way to do it, but it was also way in advance of the facts. Before I could say anything Fritz came in to announce lunch.

I couldn’t complain. I’d much rather eat oysters Portia than worry about a bag job. Fritz makes them with Mornay sauce and spinach purée, with parsley, tarragon, chives, and chervil for flavor. At the last minute he sprinkles them with Parmesan cheese and runs them under the broiler, so they’re still bubbling when he brings them out. Wolfe and I each take a dozen, but when it comes to the batter-fried I’m out of the running. I take one dozen to Wolfe’s three. To fill in the nooks and crannies Fritz gave us a salad of bibb lettuce, red speckled deer’s tongue, nasturtium flowers, white asparagus, and caviar, with roasted tomatoes on the side.

While we were eating Wolfe filled me on the migrations of Mongolian steppe peoples in the Tamarin basin, something I’d never cared much about, and still didn’t after he was done. I was glad when Fritz brought out the apple tarts and cinnamon ice cream, which I washed down with two cups of strong black coffee. After lunch Wolfe went back to the plant rooms and I felt like doing something. I checked the phone messages just to be sure that Saul hadn’t already found Brock’s little hideaway, but there was nothing. I was tempted to go down to Soho myself and start asking a few questions, but that wasn’t a good idea. As Wolfe said, we were dealing with people in the public eye, and I’ve been in the papers and on the tube myself just a little too often to get away with making discreet inquiries about somebody like David Brock. I was sure that ninety-nine percent of the people in New York City didn’t know who he was, but if you went down into lower Manhattan, the odds were going to go up. And if word happened to get back to Brock, it would queer the deal for good.

I had to face it. My job was to sit on my fanny and type. So I ran through the rest of the plant records and a few pieces of correspondence that Wolfe had left for me, including three in Serbian. I printed out copies and studied them to make sure I got all the accent marks right, because Wolfe loves to catch me and I hate to get caught. I did find a few, so I ran out another set and put them on Wolfe’s desk. When I was finished it was only 3:15, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day watching Wolfe read, so I got my hat. I walked east and caught a cab at Ninth Avenue, heading for Barneys. The salesmen there know enough not to dress me like everyone else or no one else, and by the time I left I’d ordered three suits, a dozen shirts, and half a dozen ties. That would hold me for a good six months. While I was shopping the sun had come out, so I decided to hike all the way back to West Thirty-Fifth Street. When I got back I went upstairs and put away my new ties. Then I decided that I didn’t like the way I had my ties arranged, and then I decided that if I didn’t have better things to do than rearrange my ties I had a problem. The problem was, with no detecting to do and no Lily Rowan, I didn’t have anything better to do than rearrange my ties.

I went downstairs, sat at my desk and took out a deck of cards. Lily had been down in Washington for the past week, and for three of the last four, setting up some sort of bash that was going to teach George Bush who was boss. I wasn’t sure that George was getting the message, but until he did I was going to be playing a lot of solitaire.

When I heard Wolfe’s elevator at six I scooped up the cards and put them in my desk. Acting like I had time on my hands would guarantee a crack from Wolfe about Lily’s absence and he didn’t need to be encouraged.

“I put the correspondence on your desk,” I told him as he came in.

“Thank you, Archie,” he replied.

Wolfe adjusted his four thousand ounces and rang for beer. I turned my back on him and focused on my computer, glancing through the New York Post online to make sure that they weren’t running any headlines like “Ann Coulter Pulls a Paris,” but all they had was a piece about snails invading Minnesota. I went over to the Gazette and the Daily News, and they were clean too.

For dinner Fritz gave us calf brains with black butter, almost enough to shut Wolfe up, but not quite. He wanted to talk about the movement of Muslim peoples in Central Asia and the Mogul conquest of India, and there was nothing I could do about it. Then he got sidetracked—something about Hindu temples and the use of the sacred to approach the profane—but I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about Lily and whether I should call her. I decided that calling her would be the act of a chump. In fact, I figured I was half a chump just to be wasting time thinking about it, and I also figured that if I didn’t start paying attention Wolfe might spot me, and I didn’t want that.

Fritz gave us blanc mange flavored with kirsch for dessert and, while I couldn’t complain, I wasn’t in the mood to stick around for a second helping.

“You have plans, Archie?” said Wolfe, raising an eyebrow when I turned down a second serving.

“I have plans,” I said, firmly.

In fact, I didn’t have plans, other than to get out of the house. Wolfe gave me another ten minutes on the efflorescence of erotic sculpture under the Guptas that I didn’t need while I finished my coffee and then remarked that since he didn’t seem to have my full attention I was free to leave if I wished. If he was looking for an argument, he didn’t get one. I said I appreciated his kindness and got erect. I was heading down the hallway for the staircase when the telephone rang. I went into the office and picked up the receiver. It was Saul.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt your dinner, Archie,” he told me.

“No, I was just heading out.”

“Well, I found your boy. He’s staying in a nice little mews on an alley off of Sullivan, just north of Spring. I’ve got a man on it.”

“Is it just him?”

“I think so. We haven’t seen anyone else. Of course, it’s early. We’ve got until Friday noon to be sure, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Once I found him I didn’t want to ask any more questions. Oh, and I got you a key.”

“Is that all? No engraved invitation?”

“I’m still working on that.”

“Okay, but we’re going to have to dock you.”

“Yeah. It’s only for the basement, not the front door. But you won’t have to stand there on the stoop with a hammer and chisel.”

Of course, there were a hundred ways Saul could have gotten that key, but the odds of getting it were a thousand to one against. But that was Saul.

“I’ll tell Wolfe. Hold on.”

I turned around. While I’d been talking Wolfe had seated himself behind his desk and was deep into The Empire of the Steppes.

“Saul’s found Brock,” I told him.

“So I gathered,” he said, dryly.

“And a key.”

“Indeed. Inform Saul that we are increasing his daily rate by one hundred dollars.”

“Yeah. Do you have instructions?”

“None. This matter is in more than capable hands.”

“Wolfe says to sit tight,” I told Saul. “He’s bucking your daily rate by a C-note.”

Saul chuckled.

“Have a good night, Archie,” he told me.

“Yeah.”

I hung up the phone and started out the door.

“Archie,” said Wolfe. “Before you leave, there is a small but significant matter that I wish to discuss with you.”

I turned.

“Archie,” he said, looking straight at me with those damned sharp eyes of his, “the very nature of our relationship implies that a certain deference on your part is owed to me. Particularly when you are aware that you are in my presence, it is inappropriate for you to refer to me in conversation merely by my surname, without the conventional honorific.”

“You mean I should always call you mister.”

“That is the appropriate inference.”

I never liked it when Wolfe got cute with me about the difference between “infer” and “imply,” and of all the times that he had, this was the time that I liked it least.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

“See that you do.”

The way he settled back in his chair may not have implied that I wasn’t needed, but I inferred it anyway. I turned on my heel.

“I may be back late,” I said.

If he made a reply I didn’t hear it. I was up the stairs in a hurry and so mad that I took a shower. That gave me a chance to think. There was only one place where I was headed, and that was the Flamingo. But what was I going to do there? I decided that I wasn’t going to think about that. I wasn’t in the mood for black so I put on something that Hugo Boss called “contemporary evening wear” in navy flannel that had set me back two grand, with a tan silk shirt with a light check. If Wolfe saw me in that outfit he’d be sure to make a crack, but I wasn’t going to let him decide what I was going to wear, even though I knew that if we got into it I’d be likely to say something less than deferential. I just steamed on past the door and out the stoop. If he saw the bait, he ignored it.

I walked east to Tenth Avenue and caught a cab. When I got to the Flamingo it had just the right flavor, plenty of noise, and plenty of class. I still hadn’t decided whether I was going to behave myself or not when that decision was taken away from me. A crowd of Lily’s friends showed up around twelve and they weren’t in a hurry to leave. I wasn’t going to try to outwait them, so I left around one, bound for West Thirty-Fifth Street and all alone.

Thursday was more of the same. I spent the morning dissembling the two Marleys I kept in the safe, oiling them and putting them back together again. Saul called at ten to say that he still hadn’t seen anyone but Brock use the mews, and Ann called at eleven fifteen to say that she hadn’t heard from Brock. I told her to sit tight and get ready for her lunch on Friday. Wolfe hit me with a new set of corrections for the Serbian piece he’d been working on, which got me through lunch and into the afternoon. Just before he left for his afternoon session with the plants Wolfe gave me an Internet search on a dozen new sites in three different languages, none of which I could read. There was plenty of material to run out and then a new set of corrections to the Serbian piece, so that by the time we sat down to Fritz’s stuffed breast of veal I was feeling a lot more like a secretary than a detective. Still, tonight was poker night, and with Saul on stakeout down in Soho I might even have a chance to win a few bucks. And in fact I was close to six hundred dollars ahead at midnight when Lon Cohen took it all away with a jack-high straight flush in diamonds. That left me still fifty to the good, but Lon was close to a thousand. When I got into bed at one-thirty that night I was thinking that I could use a little excitement.

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Politics Is Murder Chapter 1

“I apologize for arriving at such a late hour. I’ve been spending an awful lot of time in DC lately, and I just got back on the shuttle.”

Ann Coulter crossed her legs. She had very nice ankles, which I always appreciate in a woman, even when she’s a conservative. The slim, black silk dress she was wearing didn’t look like it came from DC.

“My associate Mr. Goodwin and I both have a preference for late hours, Miss Coulter. Would you care for a drink?”

“Why, yes, I would. Frozen Stoli if you’ve got it.”

Wolfe turned to me.

“Archie?” he said.

I went to the liquor cabinet and opened the sliding door that conceals the little refrigerator we installed to cater to fussy guests.

“Straight up or on the rocks?” I asked.

“Oh, you better put a couple of cubes in there. I don’t want to talk too much and you don’t want me passing out on you.”

I fixed her glass and then made one for myself—two fingers of Haig & Haig Pinch poured over the big, fat, old-fashioned cubes Wolfe insists on. While I was bar-tending Wolfe rang for Fritz to bring him a beer. He was just finished pouring the foam when I handed Ms. Coulter her glass.

“You may smoke if you like,” Wolfe told her.

She raised her eyebrows.

“I thought you didn’t approve of smoking.”

“I do not. But I do like to maintain the pretense that I reside in a city where the trappings if not the substance of personal liberty have not been entirely extinguished.”

Ann opened her handbag and took out a golden pack of cigarettes. I didn’t catch her brand but I’m guessing it was American.

“My God,” she said, lighting up and blowing a plume of smoke into the air. “This is why I came to New York. Cheers, Mr. Wolfe.”

We all had a taste. When she put down her glass Ann stubbed out her cigarette.

“I do appreciate the thought, but this is too pretty a room to smoke in,” she said. “Now, Mr. Wolfe, I expect you would like to know why I am here.”

“Indeed I would,” said Wolfe. “I do not believe I am obstreperous in my opinions, but surely you must be aware that they differ markedly from your own.”

“Yes, I am aware, and I am also aware that Mr. Goodwin does not care for me.”

She turned to me and smiled.

“I believe you were quoted as saying that I give blondes a bad name?”

“I never read the columns,” I said.

“Perhaps not. You also said that the only honest thing about me was the color of my pubic hair.”

“They must have caught me without my ice cubes.”

“I hope you made this appointment with more purpose than to subject my assistant to impudent raillery,” said Wolfe.

“So I did, Mr. Wolfe. To be brief, someone has something of mine that I want back.”

“Is this a criminal matter?” asked Wolfe.

“Blackmail is criminal, isn’t it? If you mean have I done something criminal, the answer is no.”

“I would require a few specifics. And, if I accept the case, utmost candor. But I must acknowledge that curiosity alone prompted me to grant you this interview. I have no real need of employment at this time and, I must confess, no real desire to do you a favor.”

She simpered just a bit, if that isn’t being unfair, and drank some of her vodka.

“I wasn’t expecting a favor, Mr. Wolfe. I am quite prepared to pay you a decent fee, but I have an additional inducement as well. You are familiar with the name of Richard Hawkins?”

“Mr. Hawkins is a commercial dealer in orchids of marked financial success.”

Wolfe didn’t put much of a spin on it, but he didn’t have to. I knew he hated Hawkins’ guts.

“Then perhaps you know that Mr. Hawkins recently obtained proprietary rights to a new genus of epiphytic orchids discovered in New Zealand?”

“No one can own a wild orchid.”

“Yes, but Mr. Hawkins’ firm purchased the only area in New Zealand where these orchids are to be found. It is possible that others exist for the taking, but their discovery will be difficult.”

Wolfe finished his beer and rang for another.

“I assume you have a point?”

“I do. You know that these orchids are a unique discovery, a genus that appears to be prior but closely related to several of the leading genera, a sort of missing link, so to speak, offering extraordinary opportunities for interbreeding and the development of hybrids.”

“Mr. Hawkins is quite adept at promoting his wares. He also has a remarkable gift for beguiling his customers into believing that his goods are worth the prices he charges for them.”

“Perhaps you would like to see one of the blossoms,” Ann said, opening her purse. “I have four healthy plants as well.”

“Four!”

She had Wolfe’s attention. She took out a clear plastic box that contained a single, large orchid. The petals and sepals were creamy white, but the lip was a rich, reddish purple.

“Archacattleya Tyria is the scientific name, I believe,” she said, handing him the box.

Wolfe snorted.

“Mr. Hawkins is ever the salesman,” he said, taking out the big magnifying glass he keeps in his desk.

Fritz came in with a beer but Wolfe didn’t notice. He spent about ten minutes going over the blossom without saying a word.

“Remarkable,” he said at last.

“Four healthy plants,” Ann repeated.

“You obtained them legally?”

“Of course I did. He gave them to me.”

“If you can obtain four Archacattleya Tyrias from Mr. Hawkins I wonder that you could require my services, in any matter.”

“I appreciate the compliment. But the fact remains that I do require your services.”

“And you are willing to incur Mr. Hawkins’ ire when he discovers your treachery?”

“As you say, no one can own a wild orchid. In any event, you will be free to develop hybrids at your leisure and then present them to the world a few years down the road.”

I won’t say that Wolfe smiled, but there was definitely something resembling a smirk on his face. The opportunity to stab Hawkins in the back was an offer he couldn’t refuse. He poured the beer Fritz had brought, bringing the foam a quarter inch from the rim.

“A cunning inducement,” he said at last. “Naturally, I would insist on an appropriate fee, entirely apart from the orchids, and a pledge of discretion on your part.”

“You can have that,” she said. “I don’t want anyone to know that I’ve been here.”

“Very well, Miss Coulter. Absent an extraordinary complication, I will accept your case.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wolfe. Perhaps Mr. Goodwin will be so kind as to give me some more vodka.”

She gave me a smile, but left me feeling just a little like a waiter. But giving her a wisecrack would be reaching, so I just bit my tongue and poured.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll have just one cigarette as well.”

She lit a cigarette and began.

“This goes back to when I was just starting out in Washington,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone, didn’t know what I was doing, and no one knew me. I had been living with a man and he threw me out. I was dumb enough to track him down at a party and try to have it out with him. I’d had a few drinks first to get my courage up, which of course was another mistake. It was like one of those scenes you see in the movies, where the heroine makes a complete ass of herself. I had gotten a ride to the party but I didn’t want to see anyone, so I just stormed out on my own. When I got out on the stoop I realized that I didn’t know where I was and that I didn’t have a place to stay. I lit a cigarette and tried to figure out how long I’d have to sit there before I was sober enough to figure out what to do when the door opened and someone sat down beside me.”

She took a drink of her vodka and stopped to think about it a little.

“It was David Brock. I didn’t know who he was, but he asked me if I needed a ride. There was something very sweet about him. He had this beat-up old car. The man I’d been living with was older, of course, with a Mercedes. I’d been impressed by that.”

She laughed.

“That night with David was so wonderful. He was such a little boy, but with no hesitations. I told him everything, about how Jerry had changed the locks on me, and I still had a few things in the apartment, things I wanted, and I didn’t want to have to ask Jerry to get them for me, one thing in particular. David said he could pick any lock and it was my stuff. It was a very fancy building, of course, but David just walked in and stared everyone down. He was amazing! And he picked the lock! I thought he was f*cking Cary Grant!”

She laughed.

“So I had my stuff. It was three in the morning and we went out for subs at an Eddie Leonard Sandwich Shop. You know, fifteen great varieties. I couldn’t stop laughing. I guess that was the one time in my life that I got to be a kid. David let me stay in this group house where he was living. Of course, I was mad about him for awhile, but it didn’t take me too long to figure out that he was gay. Then I got busy and he got busy, and it was completely different between us. We’d meet at parties and we’d just be a pair of hot young conservatives on the make, that’s all. It was business.

“I lost touch with David for a time and then I happened to run into him when he was having all his trouble with his book about Hillary. He was at a party and he was very drunk, very bitter. I had this stupid intuition that he shouldn’t be left alone, so I took him to my place. I tried to get him to talk, but he wouldn’t. In the morning he seemed completely dead, so I just left him. I ran into some people and didn’t get back until close to midnight. He was gone, but he’d left a sheet of paper. It said ‘You thought we were even. We weren’t, but now we are.’”

Ann took a long drag on her cigarette and put it out.

“I didn’t know what he meant, but I certainly didn’t like the sound of it. I had a premonition that unfortunately proved to be true. Because I had told David what I especially wanted from Jerry’s apartment, at least some of it. Jerry had a lot of video equipment, early stuff. I used to tape myself to see how I could come across on TV.”

She shrugged.

“You can see where this is going. It wasn’t with Jerry, and I won’t tell you whom it was with, but if anyone saw it, I’d have to move to New Zealand. I was a damn fool to tape it, and a bigger fool to keep it, but anyway, here I am.

“A week later I got a letter from David, very manic. He said it would be our little secret, but that from now on I would have to be nice to him. I guess he thought I should have defended him somehow. Well, I kept expecting him to ask me for something--introductions, invitations, whatever--but he never did. After a year or so I got up my nerve and took him out to dinner and asked him just what he planned to do with that tape and what he wanted from me. He apologized for having taken it. He said it was a low point in his life and he was through making threats. He said I didn’t have anything to worry about. But when I asked him to give it back he said no. He said he’d never make a copy and he’d never show it to anyone, but he wasn’t giving it back. He said it made us even, which I didn’t care for.”

She rattled the ice cubes in her glass and finished her vodka.

“So I didn’t hear from him at all for awhile, until just recently, when there was all this fuss about his new book. He called me and he sounded very hurt, very threatened. He said I was one of the people who had ruined him. He said I knew people and I could get him a book contract with a $3 million advance. I said that was impossible and he started crying. Then he pulled himself together a little and told me that it better be possible or I would be sorry. A week later I received a package in the mail.”

“Where did you receive it?” asked Wolfe.

“Where? Oh, DC. I have an office there.”

“Did you keep the package?”

“Of course. It had a New York postmark. David’s been staying at the Plaza. I mean, he hasn’t been keeping many things a secret.”

“I see. What was in the package?”

“My tape. And a note from David. He said he’d made a copy, and I had three weeks to come up with the book offer. He included a book proposal, if you can call it that. About two pages of insults.”

“Directed towards you?”

“No, not me. Conservatism. Christianity. The Puritan Heritage. How Christian guilt enslaved us, how it had been responsible for slavery. That Lincoln was gay, that Jefferson was gay.”

“What did you do?”

“I burned the tape and I called him, but he’d told the desk not to accept my calls. Then two weeks later he called me. He sounded completely different. He said to forget about the book proposal, that it was nonsense, and that he was sorry for acting like an ass. I tried to play him a little bit, saying we should get together for lunch, that it would be romantic having lunch at the Plaza. He laughed at that and said he wasn’t there any more, a friend was lending him a house in Soho. He sounded very smug about that, like that proved he had connections.”

“Did you ask him who had lent him the house?”

“No, I didn’t want to go that far. I definitely felt he was being secretive about it. I was trying to get up my nerve to confront him directly about the video when he said that it was time to make an end to the whole thing. He said he was wrong to have asked for three million, but he deserved something substantial for having kept my secret so faithfully. He said he wanted something ‘reasonable but substantial’—that was how he put it. I’m meeting him for lunch at the Plaza in three days.”

“But you doubt his good faith.”

“Yes. I’m presuming that he’s converted the video into some sort of digital format. As long as there’s a single copy left, there could be a million in a matter of hours. Anyway, he obviously enjoys holding this over my head, a part of him does, at least. If I leave David to his own devices, he’s never going to destroy that last copy.”

She rattled her ice cubes again and sucked on the water.

“More vodka?” Wolfe asked.

“No. I’ve gotten through the worst. Mr. Wolfe, I’ve come to you because of your reputation. You have resources, you have influence, and you have discretion. I’m going to meet with David in three days and I’ll pay him, at least $500,000, to destroy that video. But I’m willing to pay you another $500,000 to make sure he holds up his end of the bargain.”

Wolfe grunted.

“That may be impossible,” he said. “Wittingly or unwittingly, Mr. Brock may have allowed copies to have passed beyond his control. The man you describe appears to be thrashing about with no stratagem beyond the impulse of the moment. But if in fact he has been acting in cold blood your goose may already be cooked.”

Ann smiled.

“Then I have to take that chance. Will you accept me as a client?”

“You offered an unusual inducement, Miss Coulter. I must insist on the transfer of at least two of the orchids you mentioned. You have acknowledged that it may be impossible to resolve this matter in a manner entirely to your satisfaction. Your problem is ticklish, and I have always found that it is best to treat such problems in writing. Archie, your computer.”

“No!” said Ann, sharply. “I don’t want anything in writing. It’s ticklish, all right, but I’m not signing my name to anything.”

“Then certainly I must insist on the plants.”

Ann bit her lip.

“I was afraid you would be like that,” she said. “But I only brought one. If Archie—Mr. Goodwin—will be so kind as to fetch that shopping bag I brought with me.”

There are several things Archie doesn’t care for. One is fetching and another is being on a first-name basis with Ann Coulter, but the thought of that poor little archacattleya sitting all alone in the hallway had Wolfe’s seventh of a ton in an uproar and it was my job to calm things down. I went out into the hallway and brought back her big, gleaming Hermés shopping bag and set it down in front of her. She took out a few handfuls of chiffon and then reached in to pull out a clear plastic carrying case with a single potted orchid inside, about a foot high. There was only one bloom, but it was a dead ringer for the one sitting on Wolfe’s desk.

Wolfe let out a deep exhalation of air when she placed the case in front of him. He lifted the lid and took out the plant. He picked up his magnifying glass and inspected the bloom carefully. He took out a pollinating stick and probed the flower gently for pollen. He put the pollen carefully on a white sheet of paper and examined it under his glass.

“It appears to be genuine,” he said at last.

“It’s genuine. I’m not here to play games. You should have a conventional retainer as well. I brought along ten cashier’s checks for $7,500 each, made out to bearer. Will that do?”

She held up an envelope.

“That will do,” said Wolfe. “Archie?”

I went around to collect the checks. Since they were as negotiable as cash, I wanted to put them in the safe, but I didn’t want to appear fussy, so I just took the envelope and went back to my desk.

“You are cautious,” said Wolfe. “I do report my transactions to the IRS. I dislike taxes, but I do not disdain them.”

She fluttered a hand.

“Fine. Do you want me to meet with David on Friday?”

“Yes. Make clear your intentions to him as you have stated them to me, without mentioning, of course, that you have hired me. Be receptive, but avoid any appearance of weakness. Maintain a business-like composure. Above all, do not attempt to threaten him, in words or manner. As you say, he enjoys the sensation of control. Do nothing that would deny him that sensation.”

“Very good. Shall I contact you?”

“Yes. Call each day at eleven fifteen, including Friday. Tell us if you have heard from him or have learned anything else. I doubt that I will have additional instructions for you. I thank you for this orchid, Miss Coulter. Now I must care for it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wolfe,” she said, rising to her feet. “And thank you, Archie.”

She gave me a big smile, bigger than I wanted. Did I say I didn’t want to be a on a first-name basis with her? But correcting a blonde at one in the morning is a bit fussy, and I’d already decided I didn’t want to do that. I slipped the envelope in my coat pocket and got erect.

“Do you need a cab?” I asked.

“Oh, no, I’ve got a limo,” she replied, giving me another reason to dislike her. I walked her out into the hallway and took her coat off the rack, a charcoal trench that felt like a blend of cashmere and silk. I was going to hand it to her but she turned her back to me so there was nothing I could do but help her to put it on.

“Thanks,” she whispered. “I hear you can be a gentleman when you want to be.”

“Miss Rowan keeps me on a pretty short leash,” I said.

“Really?” she laughed. “I hadn’t heard that!”

She pulled the belt tight around her slender waist and headed for the door.

“You don’t have to open it,” she said. “Good night, Archie.”

I watched her through the one-way glass, to make sure she made it to the car. Then I went back into the office. Wolfe had his lens out, studying the orchid. I squatted in front of the safe and spun the dial.

“Archie,” said Wolfe.

“Yes?”

“I want you to call Saul Panzer in the morning. I want you to locate this house in Soho where Mr. Brock is residing. Tell Saul we will need three reliable men to keep Mr. Brock and the house under constant surveillance. In addition, I want you to determine whether Mr. Brock has any company.”

I put the envelope in the safe and spun the dial.

“You want a bag job?” I asked.

“No at the present time. On Friday morning, Saul will follow Mr. Brock. If it is feasible, you will enter the house and learn all that you can about the number and location of the copies that Mr. Brock may have made of this video. If in your judgment you are confident that it is wise to do so, you will eliminate the copies you have found. You will, of course, commit no other offense.”

“Fine. What do you think Brock is up to?”

“I doubt if he knows. He appears to be an injured soul. Such persons are likely to be more dangerous to themselves than others, but they should never be backed into a corner. Now I must tend to this orchid. I seriously question Mr. Hawkins’ classification. Surely this is a Vanda.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it.”

I picked up the Hermés bag and started folding it.

“You find Miss Coulter attractive?” he asked.

“When I want your advice about blondes I’ll ask for it,” I said. “It was you who took this case, not me.”

“Indeed. Then I will only remark that it would be reasonable to obtain appropriate guarantees of Miss Coulter’s full compliance with the terms of our agreement, particularly since we have, at her request, kept no written record.”

“You mean keep a copy of the video.”

“That would be one option.”

“Sure. But how will I know if it’s her?”

“That I gather will not be a problem.”

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Politics Is Murder Chapter 4 Part 5

Wolfe shuddered.

“Archie, is this true? You haven’t eaten since? Fritz, bring Archie a plate.”

All at once I had his sympathy. I should have led with the no lunch.

“Forget it,” I said. “What I’ve got won’t wait.”

Wolfe opened his beer with the golden opener a client had given him and put the bottle cap in his desk drawer. Then he poured the beer so that there was a quarter-inch of foam at the top of the glass. He drank from the glass and licked the foam from his upper lip.

“Confound it,” he said again. “Let’s have it.”

So I gave it to him, the whole thing. He hates to ask about computers, but he didn’t have much choice. He asked me to repeat a couple of things about Brock’s hard drive, but finally he got it straight. When he did he got up from his chair and went over to the globe and gave it a whirl.

“You spent hours in that mews, when any minute the police could have arrived.”

“I took a chance, yes.”

“You took more than a chance. Mr. Brock’s murder has complicated this case immensely. What was once tawdry but trivial has been converted into a game that can only be played for the highest stakes. You should have consulted me. This was an extreme step to have taken on behalf of a dubious client.”

“Nuts. If I had consulted you there’s no way you could have given me an answer I could use. And I would have ruined your luncheon. And you can have it as my considered opinion that there’s no way in hell that Ann Coulter could have gotten in and out of that mews without Saul seeing her.”

“She is a young woman.”

“She’s young, but she’s no Mary Lou Rettan, who’s an acrobat, by the way.”

Ten years ago, Lily Rowan had made me take her niece to see Mary Lou in Peter Pan. I guess I still hadn’t gotten over it.

Wolfe wouldn’t let it go.

“What are the odds of Miss Coulter making the journey you described if her life depended on it?”

“In one piece? Twice? A thousand to one. Besides, if you were David Brock, would you let Ann Coulter climb down your roof hatch and shoot you, particularly if you were dressed like Hillary Clinton?”

Wolfe started to smile, but he ironed it out.

“She could have lain in wait,” he said.

“Nuts,” I said again. “Anyway, this guarantees that Ann won’t stiff you for the other three orchids, and it could double your fee.”

“Indeed. Archie, you will leave here and walk east. You will make a call to the police from the Pennsylvania Station, to inform them of the murder. Immediately thereafter you will walk several blocks and call Miss Coulter. Unless she is an absolute ninny, which we know she is not, she will wish to see me.”

Wolfe raised his head and looked at the clock. It was three-thirty.

“Tell her to be here at six. Tell her that if she arrives earlier, she will not be admitted. If you wish, you may inform her of some simple methods of avoiding immediate contact with the police, but you will not shelter her here.”

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