Alan Vanneman's Three Bullets

Getting Started

2011-07-19T05:20:00.000-07:00

After graduation I lived with my folks. My dad’s a contractor, and he got me this job with a friend of his. The guy was kind of a jerk, but it was OK. We were working on this housing development, and he was teaching me about electricity. I was hanging out with Louis, mostly. He lived in this little house that was practically out in the mountains, with his mother. There was this waterfall near his house where you could crawl back under the rock and behind the water and just watch it fall. When the sunlight would shine through it it was like the water was exploding, or like the light was exploding. It was really cool.

I did that for about six months. Louis had this girlfriend whose family gave her five thousand dollars when she graduated from high school. Louis said he was going to invest it for her, I guess in a new car for him, although he hadn’t gotten it yet. He had this old beat-up Honda Civic. Anyway, this girl’s brothers came around to Louis’ house with an ax, and they chopped up all four tires on his Honda, so he couldn’t leave. My dad had like five or six mounted tires in our garage. I don’t know where he got them. Anyway, I put four of them in the back of dad’s truck and went over to Louis’. We changed all four tires and Louis followed me home in his Honda. I left dad’s pickup in the driveway and then Louis drove me into Culpeper. After that I bought his car for $500 in cash. When I gave him the money Louis said “OK, if anybody asks you, you don’t know where I went.” Well, I didn’t, but I could guess that he took the bus into Washington.

Then about a week later the police came looking for me. They said Louis was going to be indicted for felonious conversion. They said they were going to charge me with being an accessory, but they didn’t. I didn’t know that he was going to be indicted when I bought his car, and I didn’t know where he’d gone. My dad was pretty mad, about the tires, I guess. He didn’t like Louis very much. Also, the cops were giving me a hard time. This old guy I worked with asked me if I wanted a job in Washington and I said sure, because it was like get out of town.

I knew some guys in Alexandria who had a house, and they let me sleep on their sofa for $25 a month. This job was on Capitol Hill, right near the Capitol, polishing railings. That was all it was. They have all these brass railings around the buildings, and this guy and I would polish them. I got $7 an hour, which was OK, but it wasn’t the greatest work. I’d watch all these girls go by, going to some air-conditioned office, while I was sweating my butt off. At nine o’clock in the morning it would be ninety degrees. Then the guy fired me. We didn’t get along. Also I didn’t always show up on time.

After that I didn’t work for awhile. It was pretty unstable where I was staying. We were up a lot at night so I slept most of the day. It was okay until my cash ran out. The guys I was living with started to give me a hard time, like this one guy didn’t want me to watch TV because I didn’t help pay for the electricity. Also they had these porno tapes that I couldn’t look at because they weren’t mine. This guy was a real pain. Then this oth-er guy told me about this job I could get with the law firm he worked for. He worked in the copying department, which was all these printers and stuff. It paid like $8.50 an hour because it was from two to ten, and there was a lot of overtime. Also it was air-conditioned, even though it was like in the basement of this big building.

So now I work at Culbertson and Manning. Jerome is the shift manager. He practically lives there, like he comes in around ten and leaves at midnight. He’s an older guy, about 30, a recovering alcoholic. He will always tell you that—“I’m a recovering alcoholic.” It’s a big thing with him. Jerome had to keep busy. He works like 80 hours a week, a lot of it overtime but some he doesn’t even get paid for. “It’s better than sitting at home, looking at Regis and Cathie Lee,” he says. Well, I guess.

I hang out with Jerome a lot now. A lot of times when we get off shift we drive around in this Ford Explorer he has, which is pretty cool. He’s got a 454 engine and these monster tires. Usually there are four or five of us, like the white guys. The black guys all think Jerome is a jerk, because he doesn’t do drugs. They think we’re all crackers. Anyway, it’s Jerome’s shift, and it’s mostly white guys. We can’t go to bars because of the alcohol. Usually we buy pizza and ride around. Jerome pays for everything because he likes having us with him. I don’t think we’re really screwing him. Jerome is kind of a maniac when he drives. He saw this cop video about this 15-year-old girl who was arrested for doing 110, so he always wants to do that. We go out on US 1 sometimes and he says he gets it up to 120. Well, I don’t know. The truck shimmies so much it’s hard to tell. When the windows start rolling down by themselves, he slows down a little. You have to wear a seat belt because of the way he bounces you around.

Once he went around a curve and the Ranger really swayed, and this guy in the back says “this motherfucker’s top heavy,” and Jerome says, “this truck ain’t top heavy, there ain’t nothing that will tip this motherfucker over,” and he goes around this next curve re-ally tight and we flip right over, wham! down this embankment and wham! right back on the tires again. So all this shit from the floor is all over us and I say “are we having fun yet?” That was pretty cool.

After I went to work at C&M, I started seeing this girl, Rosalie. She was going to be an actress. Well, that was what she said. She hadn’t acted in much. She used to be in these “Night of Mystery” parties, where these actors would go to a party and act out a mystery for the people at the party. She would tell me about all these rich married guys hitting on her. She wasn’t really that pretty. If you saw her, you wouldn’t think she was an actress. She lived in this house on Capitol Hill with these two gay guys, who were actors, Ralph and Bruno. Bruno was this little German guy. I was there once when he was all upset because this play he was in was reviewed in the paper and the reviewer said he looked like a rodent. I guess that would be limiting.

Rosalie was the first girl I had sex with. Later I found out it wasn’t as good as it should have been. I didn’t like her that much, really. She was kind of fat. I guess she liked me more than I liked her. She kept wanting me to move in with her. She slept on this futon in the basement. I couldn’t see that. I don’t think I was very good in bed, or on the futon. I’d go off pretty quickly. She’d say “that was great,” but I don’t think it was. After we did it a few times I didn’t want to do it any more. Rosalie would talk about stuff, like should she get a ring for her navel. Well, do it. Who cares? But she never did. Finally, we had a fight about it and we broke up.

Jerome was glad when we broke up. “Girls will fuck you up” he says. I don’t think Je-rome’s gay, but he’s like against women. “Women are fucking trouble.” “A man without a plan is not a man.” He likes to say that. “A man without a plan is not a man.” “What’s your plan, man?” I tell him “to keep this joint lit.” He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like dope. “Zero tolerance, motherfucker.” He’s always telling us he’ll fire us if he catches us smoking pot. He thinks I smoke it all the time, but how can I, when I’m at work 10 hours a day and out driving with him until 4 in the morning? I tell him I’m going to buy a Jeep Wrangler, that’s my plan. They’re pretty cool. I like those rollbars they have, and those big tires. Jerome thinks it’s important for a young man to buy an expensive car. That’s what he calls me, young man. “A young man like you needs a real car, not that piece of shit you’re driving.” He tells me I need to work for a year at C&M and make a 50 percent down payment and the bank will give me a loan. He says he’ll help me. He wants me to get one with monster tires like his, which would be a couple of thousand extra. But I don’t want one of those really redneck trucks that cost like $40,000. Jerome says he can get me as much overtime as I want. Well, thanks, but I don’t want that much. I have almost $2,000 in the bank already. I do work Sunday overtime when we have it, because it’s double time. But I need to do more than work at C&M and party with Jerome.

After I broke up with Rosalie I started going to bars. First I have to get served, and then I try picking up a girl. Getting served is pretty cool. Usually I can get a beer but that’s it. I still look pretty young. I only need to shave like once a week. When we were in bed together Rosalie would call me babyface. Thanks a lot. What I like to drink is tequila, except I really don’t. If I have three I’m under the table. I’m not much of a drinker. A lot of times I’ll get served, and if there are no girls there I’ll leave. Getting served is what counts.

There are a lot of clubs around C&M that I can go to after work, like on a Friday or Saturday, if I’m working. Jerome gets pissed off if I go. Sometimes he’ll take us all out to dinner at a nice restaurant so we won’t leave him alone. But usually if it’s Friday or Sat-urday I’ll take off. Usually I take the Metro because my car really is a sort of a piece of shit. The tires aren’t all the same size, and they’re really bald, so I can’t get it through inspection. Also the transmission is shot. I don’t want to put a lot of money into it because I figure I’ll get my Wrangler in less than a year.

I don’t make it with girls much. I’m pretty shy. Also being a copy guy isn’t so cool. Once I was talking with this girl and she seemed to like me a lot. Then it turned out she thought I was a copier repair guy, like I went around to offices and fixed them. When she found out I just made copies she kind of deflated. I try to go to bars like around nine or ten. After girls have had a few drinks they don’t ask you as much about what you do.

Once I was in this bar which is up the street from C&M on Connecticut called Timber-lakes and I met this girl who was pretty gorgeous. She was older than me. They usually are. If I’m around Georgetown or GW it’s like “you don’t go to college?” I don’t need that. I started talking to this girl and I was telling her about going to the Bayou, which is this club near the river, to hear this band Brain Damage, because this guy I know from C&M is in the band. They’re sort of like Porno for Pyros. Well, sort of like them. She started telling me that she was a songwriter, and I was like, this is really cool, maybe she has a song that Brain Damage could do, so I’m asking her about who she likes and stuff like that. Then she told me that she tore up all the songs she wrote and I’m like why do that? Finally I left, and I thought, she doesn’t really write songs. She made that up to impress me. To impress me! I was already impressed. She was gorgeous. Everything about her was great, her hair, her clothes, her make-up. If you saw her on the street you’d think, well, if I had a girl like that, everything would be cool.

Since I broke up with Rosalie, I have slept with a few girls, like one-night stands. Girls are funny. They think my accent is cute. I have sort of a southern accent. This one girl told me I have a body like a Greek God. I don’t. I play in this zombie soccer league, which is like for guys who work second shift. Our games are like ten o’clock. I like to play, but I’m no Greek God. We don’t always play because guys don’t show up a lot. Jerome works out for an hour each morning before he comes to work.

He’s always talking about upper-body strength because his hero is Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s seen “Terminator II” about a hundred times. Also he has this tape with “Bad to the Bone” on it. That’s his favorite song. He doesn’t know anything about music. Of course he hates hip-hop. He thinks the Spice Girls are hip-hop. I bought one of their tapes which I put on when he’s not looking, because he hates them so much. They’re not really a group.

Jerome gives me a hard time for being a vegetarian. “Real men eat meat,” he says. Like he’s really a tough guy. He doesn’t understand that everything has its own balance. A human being has one kind of balance and an animal has another. So if you eat an animal you upset your balance. Also violence upsets your balance. I guess I’m a pretty non-violent kind of guy.

I like going to girls’ apartments. I feel like I’m a spy. They always have nice places, like they’ll have plants in the bathroom. You should see the bathroom where I live. Girls have these magazines like Cosmopolitan and Elle about how to be gorgeous and drive men insane with desire. I read one that said you should always have lots of red things in your bedroom. Yeah, I guess that works. The best time I’ve had with a girl she wasn’t really a girl, I mean she was a woman. She was a lot older than me, like 30. I met her in this bar at Union Station. I was just having a beer. Her name was Sheryl. She was a school teacher from Colorado. I guess she thought I was funny, because she laughed at everything I said. We had a beer and she said “Why don’t you show me Washington?” She was laughing when she said it.

Anyway, we went on the Metro, which she hadn’t done before. We went over the Potomac, which she thought was neat, and then we went to the airport. They have this new building which I’ve been to a couple of times that has some pretty nice bars, where you can watch the river and the planes taking off. Also I usually get served there. We were talking the whole time. She knew a lot about music. When she was young she had gone to all these concerts, like the Grateful Dead like 15 years ago and the first three Lollapalooza tours. Also she’d spent a lot of time in San Francisco. She used to go to this club where the Red Hot Chili Peppers played before they became famous. She had this coupon for a restaurant on Capitol Hill so we went back there. After that we went back to her hotel room.

She was beautiful. She had a beautiful stomach and beautiful thighs and a beautiful crotch, just the way you want a girl’s crotch to be, with really thick pubic hair in this little triangle. But she was really flat-chested. In fact, she wore like falsies, I think, like her bra was sort of plastic. But that was OK, because the rest of her was so beautiful. I felt really peaceful when I was with Sheryl, not the way I was with Rosalie at all. I was always tense with her. I read this article once by a woman about how to give oral sex, like “the man in the little boat,” or “the little man in the little boat.” I can’t remember. Anyway, that’s the clitoris. So I thought I’d try it. I started licking her crotch along the line of her vagina, and I could see it open up. She started moaning and I kept licking and her vagina opened up more and more, and I could see her clitoris.

So I thought I’d try it. I started licking her crotch along the line of her vagina, and I could see it open up. She started moaning and I kept licking and her vagina opened up more and more, and I could see her clitoris. It was like it was a science experiment, because it happened just like the woman said in the article. I started licking her clitoris, really softly. I remember in the article the woman said that whatever you do you should keep on doing it, like everything should be very rhythmical. So I kept on licking and then she had an orgasm. She just drew her legs and her hips back. Later I told her I loved her be-cause she was bushy. I meant her crotch hair. I guess I must have blushed when I told her that because she laughed for about ten minutes. She was really beautiful. After that we made love like six times, almost all night. In the morning she told me she had to leave. I wanted to come out to Colorado to see her, but she kept saying no. I wouldn’t take the hint so finally she told me she was married. Thanks a lot! She was wearing this little gold ring that was set with emeralds. How was I supposed to know? I was like disappointed but not mad. I felt so great from having made love six times but now I wasn’t going to see her again. I just didn’t want her to go.

After I had sex with Sheryl I guess I thought I had women figured out, like I was cool, but it didn’t work out that way. The next time I was with a woman was this woman I met in this Irish bar on Connecticut Avenue called the Four Provinces. They have like Irish folk music and people dancing. It’s pretty cool. Anyway, I met this girl and we started talking. After about an hour she says to me “let’s go someplace quiet” and I said okay. I was kind of drunk because I had had a tequila shooter and a beer or two. We went to this other bar to have a glass of wine. I’m almost surprised they served me because I must have looked like this little drunk kid. Sometimes people don’t hassle you, which is nice. Anyway, we were talking, and all of a sudden she leans across the table and then all of a sudden we’re frenching. I was about to explode but then she started sucking on my lip, like she pulled it inside her mouth. It was weird but I didn’t care, because I was all ready to get laid. So we finished our wine and went back to her place and started making out. She was pretty sexy but she kept sucking on my lip until it was like bleeding. I don’t know what the fuck was wrong with her. Finally I couldn’t take it. We got into an argument and I was really pissed off because she was so weird. Also, I was really drunk. That pissed me off too. I knew I was going to be drunk for a long time, that I’d have to sleep it off, but I couldn’t exactly sleep with her. Finally I just went in the bathroom and locked the door and went to sleep in the bathtub. Then like five hours later I hear her beating on the door. She was really making a racket. She says “I want you out of my bathroom!” Well, I figured it was her bathroom, so I’d have to go, but I was really pissed. I was still drunk but I was hung over too. When I went outside I couldn’t tell what time it was. It was all gray out, kind of misty and really humid. She lived way up on Wisconsin Avenue. I started walking toward downtown and then I stopped at this bus stop. I waited for like half an hour but no bus came, so I started walking again. Then it started raining, and by the time I got to the next bus stop I was soaked. I stayed inside this little shelter. Finally a bus came and I got on it. I was all wet and steamy and sleepy. I felt like I was a bum. I got off in Georgetown and walked across Key Bridge to Rosslyn and caught the Metro back to my place. That was the pits.

Since that happened I haven’t gone out as much. I feel like someone gave me a di-amond and then they took it back, and now I don’t know how to get one for my own. I think about Sheryl a lot. I guess I shouldn’t but I do. It was just one night but I really miss her smile and her laugh. I’m not sure if I should stay in the city. I like DC okay but I miss the country sometimes too. But I figure that when I get my Wrangler I’ll be more organized. Like, if I meet this girl and she eats my lips off, I won’t have to walk home.

©Copyright Alan Vanneman 2011

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Dinner at Our House

2011-07-05T20:06:00.000-07:00

Dinner at our house didn’t go exactly according to plan. I enjoy having parties, and for the last seven years we’ve been having regular gettogethers “for the arts.” Ginnie says I’m a bit of a troublemaker but that’s not so. I love music, and I love people, and most times they go together, though not always. Ginnie says I push things. It’s her house, or her money at least, so I can’t cross her too directly. We live in Baltimore, on the fringe of Hopkins, in a beautiful old house overlooking Thompson’s park, with a real music room and a rosewood grand piano. I feel I’ve been given a lot, and I should give back to the community. Ginnie feels I like to make trouble, but I don’t, not really.

Ginnie likes to remind me of the time I made some remarks about Harry’s wife that I probably shouldn’t have, and Harry decked me. Apparently I performed a perfect back flip. I can’t vouch for that, because I didn’t see much. I remember coming to on the floor and Ginnie leaning over me saying “Are you hurt?” and me saying “Yes, I’m hurt,” and her saying “No, I mean are you really hurt?” and me saying “No” and her saying “Good, because I haven’t laughed this hard since Hogan’s Heroes went off the air.” But that incident was atypical. I mean, it was really atypical.

Once a month we have a group over for a night of music. Music’s the main thing, though the dinner’s important as well. You wouldn’t guess to look at her, but Ginnie’s Polish, Polish all the way through, and she likes to help students. I say I like to help students too, and most of the time she believes me. I do like the musicians. There’s such a horrible pressure on them, to be a genius. Does anyone deserve such a burden? I don’t think so. I’m a psychologist, dealing from nine to five with middle-class trauma. There’s nothing to write a book about. My patients are afraid to fly, afraid to succeed, afraid to fail. Mostly, they’re afraid. And yet, what do they have to worry about, really? Nothing. Think of a poor musician, out there with nothing between you and ignominy but your ten little fingers or your vocal chords. A hangnail or a coldsore can cost you a scholarship. So I like to provide young people with an audience. And besides, I love being able to listen to live performances of fine music in my own home. Is that so bad?

That evening we had the usual crowd overway too many psychologists in their forties, but what can you do? Jan and Joe, Arnie and Amy, Bob and Brenda. I swear I didn’t plan it that way! They’re Ginnie’s colleagues, every one. She teaches at Hopkins, in psychology, of course. I’m desperate for variety, and some-times that’s my undoing. Leopold can be counted on to make a little trouble. Leo-pold and Janice. Leopold’s a violinist with the symphony. He’s in his late forties, very Polish, and an incredible roué. The man will not leave women alone. Janice tolerates it, somehow. Their children, David and Alice, are angels. Our two, Brian and Bobby, ages 11 and 13, are oafs in comparison. David and Alice enjoy classical music. They have manners. Manners! I’m sure Brian and Bobby don’t regard me as human. They don’t treat me as human. The way they look at me, I think they’d be delighted to trade me for a full set of Game Boy cartridges and an SUV. So long, Dad! But David and Alice are angels. I’ve often wondered how I could invite them over without their parents. I can’t do that. I need Leopold for his contacts. When he isn’t grabbing the women, he has a very good ear for the music business. Compulsive father, shrinking mother, perfect children. You figure it out.

Our guest for tonight is male, fortunately, which makes me feel easier about inviting Leopold. Rafael is from Uruguay. How can you not help a violinist from Uruguay? I almost feel like telling Ginnie this is proof of the nobility of my intentions, which it damn well is. I don’t want trouble, I want entertainment.

Grushenka is fine for entertainment. She’s my age, early forties, very very Polish, and prone to fainting spells when standing near young men. She falls two or three times a night. Half the time they’re so slow on the uptake they just let her drop, but she doesn’t mind. She’s thankful for the trip. Good old Grushenka. Sometimes she’s a little too much of a comfort. When you start to wonder if you shouldn’t slow down on your drinking, you can always tell yourself that you’re not having as much as Grushenka, and that’s too easy.

We had young people over too, of course, mostly Poles, but also some Hungarians, mostly in the arts. They’re very European. They dress entirely in black, and smoke like chimneys. Usually they’re connected to Theatre Arts at Hopkins. It makes for some balance, so our poor artiste isn’t out there entirely on his lonesome with a bunch of geezer psychologists.

We had Maurice and Connie over that night as well. I suppose I wasn’t as up on things as I should have been. I had heard that Connie was getting restlessand looking at Maurice it was hard to blame herand I felt they needed to get out. People shouldn’t let their problems fester. Ginnie says I like to preside at divorces, but that’s not so. There’s nothing so feeble as an untested virtue, I like to say—I don’t know where I picked that up but it’s very true. If a divorce is hovering in the wings of our little circle, it has to be faced. Someone has to take charge of things, and encourage resolution. Liquor, I’ve found, is a psychologist’s best friend in these matters.

When Maurice and Connie showed up, Connie looked like she wanted a drink and Maurice looked like he needed one. Perhaps I was a little heavy-handed. I have a great affection for both of them. Connie is a charming woman with excellent breasts, who deserves to get the best out of life. And Maurice, Maurice has hidden depths. Connie did marry him, after all. He needs to be more forthcoming. So perhaps I was a little heavy-handed. I like for people to have a good time. And the evening went really well, too. The Hungarians brought goulash, and Rafael played with commendable brio. Leopold gave him several names, and even agreed to write him a letter of recommendation. Leo doesn’t do that for male musicians. Good food, good drink, good friends, and great music. Is there anything wrong with that?

But then around midnight I noticed that Connie had been monopolizing Rafael for about half an hour. By twelve fifteen they were playing footsie; by twelve thirty they had segued into kneesie; and by twelve forty they were working on thighsie. I’ve never seen a public double helix like that. I went out in the kitchen for another drink, and by the time I got back they were gone.

Where was Maurice? He materialized five minutes after his wife left. He’d been in the bathroom for half an hour. Once I realized what had happened, I was half-hoping that Maurice would go quietly, but he looked so forlorn I couldn’t ease him out. We sat in the kitchen until half past three, talking about the revival of Showboat. I asked him if he cared for breakfast, and when he said yes I served him an order of sausage and eggs.

He took it out to the dining room to eat, which turned about to be a bad idea. Leopold was there. Still! He’d been chasing this one Polish girl all night and ob-viously hadn’t met with any success. He started commiserating with Maurice, which of course was exactly what Maurice didn’t want to hear. I tried to intervene, verbally, I mean, but it was no go. Maurice rose heavily from his chair and started lumbering toward Leo. I figured anyone could take Maurice, so I started grappling with him. Unfortunately, “anyone” didn’t include me. He practically carried me with him on his back, and landed on Leo. The three of us struggled back and forth for a few minutes. I felt a slow but irresistible surge of power from Leo. We were rolling backwards, and I was on the bottom of the pile. I put my hand out, a bad idea under any circumstances, and it slid between the kitchen door and the jamb, right above the hinge. Leo and Maurice kept on coming. There was a resounding crack, and a hideous gasp from me, which Leo and Maurice were too drunk to hear. Finally they rolled off me and I tried to get up. My whole arm was in agony.

“Ginnie!” I bellowed. She’d retreated to the bedroom, but came running.

“I’m really hurt,” I said, as our eyes met.

“This is terrible,” said Leo. “Look, the bone is protruding from the flesh.”

I didn’t need to hear that.

“I can’t move my arm,” I said.

“I will help you,” said Leopold.

I didn’t particularly want his help, but the others were just standing there. He grabbed my arm and slid it upward. I thought the pain had sobered me, but at the first touch this wild spasm went through me and I gave a terrific shout.

“Open the door,” cried Maurice.

“It is open,” said Leo.

“No, I meant open it more.”

“Let Ginnie do it,” I gasped. “It’s her fucking door.”

Usually I don’t say “fuck.” I reserve for times of extreme stress. This was one of those times.

Ginnie extracted my arm, as I knew she would. It throbbed with pain, and my hand literally felt as though it would fall off, as if the joint was so shattered that only my skin was maintaining the connection.

“We’ve got to get you to the emergency room,” Ginnie said.

“I will drive,” said Leopold. “I insist.”

“We should call an ambulance,” said Maurice, looking miserable. I couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t having a very good night.

“Let Ginnie drive,” I said.

We started on our journey, to be interrupted by Brian and Bobby, who had to see what was happening. Ginnie gave them a short lecture—“Daddy has a compound fracture”—and sent them back to bed. Fortunately, they were too sleepy to care. Then we were on our way.

The next three hours, at the emergency room, were, if not actual Hell, then the bottom rung of Purgatory. The Emergency Room at Hopkins had two life-threatening cases ahead of me, which meant that a mere fracture had to wait. They gave me some demerol, when what I needed was oblivion. Then they fitted me with some sort of inflatable cast that more or less immobilized my arm, as well as protecting my hand.

“Isn’t this marvelous,” said Leo. “American technology.”

I was on the verge of saying something along the lines of “Yes. Thank God we’re not in Poland,” but I bit my tongue. Witticisms at the expense of one’s guests, even guests like Leo, are not appropriate. Once the cast was on, Maurice decided to soothe my nerves by reading to me from Wordsworth—In Memoriam, or In Requium, or In something. Why he had it with him, and why he thought it appropriate, I can’t imagine. I tried to signal to Ginnie to shut him up, but she was in one of her “you made your bed, now lie in it” moods, and once she gets in one of those she rarely budges. Leopold, after checking out the nurses, was reading a copy of American Fiddler.

As we sat there, the pain, the exhaustion, the Wordsworth, and the twin smells of disinfectant and blood began to have an effect on me, or rather my belly. I’d had a refresher on the goulash around midnight along with a glass of burgundy, and the two bourbons I’d had on top of that, not to mention the second-hand smoke I’d inhaled from a hundred Galoises, weren’t doing me any good. I should have just asked for a basin, but somehow the thought of puking in public, particu-larly in front of Ginnie, was too much to be borne.

“I’m going to the men’s room,” I announced, struggling to my feet.

“I will go with you,” said Maurice, still clutching his Wordsworth.

I took one step and started to fall, which roused Leo from his Fiddler.

“I will help you,” he said.

Ginnie offered as well, of course, but I urged her to stay put. I wasn’t at all sure that I was going to make it to the men’s room, and I didn’t want to end up puking on Ginnie. My feelings toward Leo and Maurice at this point were less scrupulous.

I know I’ll never get credit for it, but that walk to the men’s room was really one of my finest hours. My arm was throbbing like hell with every step, and we weren’t half way across the waiting room before I could taste that goulash, and it was ripe. As a kid I always hated puking. I admit that I got more familiar with the process in high school and college, but by the time I got my doctorate I considered myself a mature drinker. I hadn’t heaved in a decade, and I’d forgotten just how nauseating nausea can be. But I clamped my teeth and kept on walking, feeling just a little like the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae or maybe Alec Guinness at the River Kwai.

The goulash was backing up into my sinuses when Maurice and Leo eased me into the handicapped stall. I sank to my knees and grasped the porcelain with my right hand. The first three or four retches weren’t so bad. Unfortunately, that was only the beginning. The first retches emptied me out, but they also reactivated that pool of pain in my left armpit. Never has my poor body worked at such cross-purposes. My gut seemed to think that because nothing was coming out, it needed to try harder. Each spasm sent a burst of pain screaming through my armpit. The harder I tried to keep from retching, the more violent the spasm would be when it finally did come. As I sat there I hoped that Leo and Maurice were feeling good and guilty for what they had done. I remember thinking that maybe they would feel so bad they would chip in and buy me one of those Plymouth Prowlers as a get-well present, which gives you an idea of how far gone I was. Even the fact that Maurice’s marriage was falling apart gave me surprisingly little comfort.

It took a good solid hour for my body to realize that it was empty. I staggered upright, feeling worse than ever. Maurice and Leo more or less carried me back to the waiting room. Ginnie, who had received several updates from Maurice, was reading Wordsworth.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Better,” I lied. We Carrigans bend, but we don’t break. And sometimes we don’t even bend.

I had to wait another hour before I finally got to see a doctor. “That’s a nasty break,” he told me, as the nurse took off the cast. “No shit,” I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find the words.

I was on my feet and out of the hospital by noon. Nobody wants to stay in a hospital but somehow you always feel hurt when they ask you to leave. Ginnie’s sleepy, amused face greeted me as I tottered into the waiting room. Maurice and Leo had departed. She’d left hours ago to give the boys breakfast, but now she was back.

“This is what they call schadenfreude,” she told me as she took my arm.

“Schadenfreude” is German, and it means “pleasure or happiness at the misfor-tune of others.” Europeans think this is funny.

“How is Maurice?” I asked. “Is there any word from Connie?”

“Why do you care?”

“I care because I care,” I said, defensively.

It was an honest answer. Poor Maurice! With the pain in my arm under control I was starting to feel sorry for him again. He would be my next project, and a real challenge. Connie would be easier. She wouldn’t get far with Rafael, of course, but she’d get somewhere with someone. Maurice was the real problem, definitely a long-term case. Fortunately, he was young, still in his late thirties, with a decent career. He had to hold onto the career while the healing took place. He needed to take himself in hand. He’d been letting himself go. Connie’s departure, unfortunately, was just the kind of shock he needed. The trick was to prevent him from luxuriating in his sorrow. Somehow, I suspected that being a professor of Romantic Poetry offered more temptation for that sort of thing than was good for Mau-rice. He needed something more than his work, but that something was not a doomed, desperate, self-pitying romance with an unhappy divorcee or confused graduate student. Despite his forlorn, pear-shaped figure, Maurice had charm, or at least tenure, and what in academia is more charming than that? I sighed. Maurice had substance, but he was a very, very long-term project.

“Why are you sighing?” Ginnie asked.

“I’m in pain,” I said.

“If only that were true,” she remarked.

© Copyright Alan Vanneman 2011

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Stan the Man

2011-05-23T18:57:00.000-07:00

“There’s one, mommy,” said Nancy, pointing.

“Where?”

“Right there! It’s huge! It’s moving.”

Janet nodded eagerly, stepping from the rocks into the deep water in her waders.

“Wow! She’s a big one, all right,” she said. She bent over in the water and slid the steel bar she carried under the abalone’s foot.

Amy winced. She was a long way from kosher, but the grisly appetites of the gentiles still gave her the creeps. Why would anyone want to eat such a thing? She made herself not look away, so that no one would notice.

“Aaron, stand back!” she commanded her five-year-old son.

“He’s not in the way,” Janet responded cheerfully.

Amy took her son’s arm nonetheless. His fascination with the strange creatures Janet Kendall dredged from the sea bothered her. She knew there was nothing she could do—summer vacations by the sea with his gentile friends meant everything to Bernie—but she couldn’t help resisting.

There was a long pause while Janet reached her hand into the cold water.

“Did you get him?” called Ann from the shore, where she and Harriet stood guard over the younger children.

“She’s coming right up,” replied Janet, ignoring the confusion of pronouns. Abalones were always female to her until proven otherwise. With her right hand she rotated the bar, turning it gently to avoid tearing the abalone’s flesh. When it loosened she straightened and held the shell aloft in triumph.

“Let me see it, mommy,” said Nancy, as her mother clambered awkwardly towards the rocks.

Aaron strained towards Nancy, despite his mother’s warning grasp.

“It’s time to go, Aaron,” said Amy sharply. “I don’t want you to fall in.”

“I won’t fall in,” he said.

“You come along,” she said, seizing on his defiance as a valid excuse to drag him away from the disgusting creature that Nancy held in her hands. Giving such a thing to a child!

Janet looked away, out into the ocean. She was so protective of Aaron!

“Look, mommy!”

Nancy was pointing again.

Janet turned and looked. Imagine, a large market crab, just sitting there! Beautiful! She straightened and turned towards the shore.

“We need the net,” she said.

Harriet, her sister-in-law, ran out along the rocks with the long, wooden-handled crab net and passed it to Janet. Janet took it and twirled it expertly over her head. Then she began her gentle advance on the crab, her feet treading carefully on the rocky sea bottom to avoid startling her quarry. Nancy, to Amy’s dismay, ran along the rocks back to the shore, bearing the abalone, which she showed to Aaron.

“It’s a girl,” she said, turning the shell upside down to show Aaron the green crescent. It was, in fact, the creature’s genitals, but fortunately neither Nancy nor Amy knew that.

Aaron stared, fascinated.

“Those are her eyes,” said Nancy, confidently, pointing to the stalks.

“Let me have it,” said Harriet. She didn’t know anything about keeping kosher, but she did know that lots of people did not like to look at abalones, and that Amy was one of them.

“I’ll take it,” said Ann. “Look, Greg, a great big snail!”

She held it out to her three-year-old son Greg, who stared solemnly at the beast. Nancy giggled.

“He doesn’t know what it is,” she said.

“Well, he’s only three,” Ann said. “He isn’t grown up like you.”

There was a sudden explosion as Janet swung the net high above her.

“Got him!” she cried.

Amy winced. More shellfish! And this time with claws!

“I’ll take him back to the house,” Janet said. “He’s a big one.”

She reached to grab the netting and twisted it around, looking at the crab’s lower shell.

“Yeah, he’s a male,” she said.

“Maybe Aaron would like a fig bar,” Harriet said, handing Amy a paper bag. Poor Amy! She was so squeamish!

“He’s fine,” said Amy.

“I want a fig bar,” said Catherine, Nancy’s four-year-old sister.

“Everyone can have a fig bar if they want one,” said Harriet.

Amy relented, and the three women passed out fig bars to Nancy, Catherine, Aaron, and Greg, and to Amy’s two-year-old Miriam and to Harriet’s four-year-old Joe and two-year-old Luke. Janet, the crab net resting on her shoulder like a rifle, began walking back to the beach house.
“I’ll go with you, mommy!” cried Nancy.

“You stay with your little sister,” Janet replied.

Nancy took Catherine’s unwilling hand.

“You have to do what I say,” Nancy told her sister. Catherine, stuffing the fig bar in her mouth, did not respond.

Ann smiled. Nancy was so bossy. When she was a girl, she had had an older sister just like that.

“Don’t you want the abalone?” she called to Janet.

Janet slapped her forehead like a comic in a movie.

“Yes!” she shouted.

“Mommy, can I have the net?” called Nancy.

“No, I can’t handle the crab without something to put him in. We should have thought of that before. Look for abalone but don’t go in the water. It’s much too cold.”

“Well, how can I look when you’ve got the iron?”

“Then come get it.”

Nancy sprinted forward.

“She has to do everything, doesn’t she?” said Harriet, taking Catherine’s hand.

“She gets it from her father,” said Ann.

“Gets what?” asked Aaron.

“She’s bouncy, like Tigger,” said Harriet, who knew Aaron liked Winnie the Pooh.

Nancy returned, waving the iron proudly over her head.

“Let’s find some abalone,” she said.

The children were all napping in the Kendall’s cottage, except Nancy, who was reading. The four mothers sat on the porch. They all smoked except Amy. Bernie told her it was terrible for your teeth, and anyway it was a terrible waste of money.

Janet pointed to a frigate bird, soaring high in the sky.

“Look at him! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be that graceful?”

Ann laughed.

“You wouldn’t get much rest.”

“He isn’t working. Look at the way he soars.”

“Do you think Mark is serious about politics?” Harriet asked.

“I’m afraid he is. Can you stand it? You may want to get some new friends.”

“You know Danny will do anything Mark wants.”

Janet drank some iced tea and looked at the sky. Mark wanted so much. She liked things as they were, but she knew they were going to change. Mark wouldn’t be happy unless they did. He wanted to take risks.

“He’s too late this year, fortunately. Anyway, he’s sure Ike is going to win. It’s not a good year for Democrats.”

“Harry keeps telling him that,” Ann said.

“I know he does! Thank god for Harry!” Janet laughed. “We’re safe for two years!”

“Mommy, I’m hungry,” said Joe, approaching Harriet.

“Joe! Go back to bed! You’ve hardly been asleep at all.”

“But I’m hungry!”

“You can eat in half an hour. Now, come along.”

Harriet rose and took Joe by the hand, escorting him back into the cottage.

“Aaron’s getting so tall,” said Ann, unexpectedly.

“He’s just been growing and growing!” said Amy. “Taller than all his cousins!”

That wasn’t entirely true, but it might as well have been, since the only cousins that were taller than Aaron were older.

“I was always such a shortie when I was young,” said Ann. “Then I shot up when I was fifteen.”

“Are they all sleeping?” Janet asked Harriet when she returned.

“Sound asleep,” she said.

“Mommy, can I pound the abalone?” asked Nancy, appearing from inside the cottage.

“No, it would make too much noise. Besides, you’re supposed to be resting.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Read a book.”

“I’ve read all the books.”

“Don’t whine, Nancy,” said Janet, with a touch of sharpness.

“Nancy, I think we’ve got some National Geographics at our cottage,” said Ann. “Would you like to look at those?”

“Yes!” said Nancy, delighted.

“Well, come on. We’ll go get them.”

The three women watched as Ann walked with Nancy across the sand.

“How does she do it?” said Janet, mischievously.

She laughed easily at her own joke, winking at Harriet. Amy flushed just a little, but joined in the laughter as well. The four women were all within two years of each other, but Ann looked five years younger. She was taller by two inches, and had thick, lustrous hair that Amy envied deeply. She had long, graceful legs, no belly at all, and no varicose veins. She tanned easily, and didn’t freckle.

“Danny’s lucky,” said Harriet, and the women laughed again, Amy joining in the laughter rather than responding to the joke. She thought Ann was proud. She thought Janet was wild. She liked Harriet. Harriet was simple, and straightforward, and strong, and she liked to sing. Amy always wished that she could sing.

“It’s daddy!” shouted Nancy, pointing to the boat. “It’s daddy, Cathy! Come on!”

Nancy took her four-year-old sister by the hand and started to run.

“Let go of your sister,” said Janet, grabbing their joined hands. “She’s just a little girl. She can’t run as fast as you.”

“Mommy!”

“You should know better, Nancy.”

“Mommy! I want to see daddy!”

“Well, go see him. Cathy’s going to stay here with the rest of us.”

Cathy stared silently upwards at the two contending figures. Nancy looked around the crowd of women and children.

“Come on, Aaron!” she called.

She raced off towards the dock. Aaron struggled to match her pace.

“She loves Aaron,” said Janet, laughing again.

Amy was silent again. She watched her son running and sometimes stumbling over the sand, vainly trying to keep up with Nancy. She was just like her mother, both wild.

“She can go forever,” said Harriet.

“She gets all that height from her father,” Janet said. “I worry she’ll be too tall.”

Nancy ran across the sand to the dock. She leaped down onto the sun-dried wood with a satisfying smack. Daddy’s boat was still far in the distance, just passing through the breakwater half a mile off shore. The tide was starting to come in, and she could hear the big waves boom as they hit the wet, black rocks.

Instead of running to the end of the dock, Nancy waited for Aaron. She leaned against one of the pilings and watched tiny fish approach and nibble on the algae that grew on the wood.

“You made it!” she cried, as Aaron joined her.

“Yeah,” said Aaron.

“Look at the fish. Aren’t they beautiful?”

Aaron looked. Nancy said everything was beautiful. But she had such sharp eyes.

“Let’s run!” announced Nancy.

“Let’s look at the fish,” said Aaron, putting his hands on his knees.

“They’re just minnows,” said Nancy.

“Take my hand, Aaron,” announced Amy, arriving with two-year-old Miriam in her arms.

The boat whistle tooted as the boat passed through the breach in the rocks. As it turned towards the beach Amy could see the four husbands waving.

“Yay!” cried Nancy.

She flew to the end of the dock. Aaron pulled silently on his mother’s hand.

“No,” she said. “We’ll wait until everyone else gets here.”

She couldn’t trust herself to handle both a two-year-old and a five-year-old alone. She could swim. There was that to be thankful for. Growing up in Chicago, she was used to water. She had been on a boat, and Lake Michigan was an awfully big lake. But it wasn’t the sea. The sea was bigger, unconfined. One woman on a dock with two children wasn’t enough. And she couldn’t handle Nancy at all.

“Do you see some fish, Aaron?” asked Janet.

Aaron pointed silently.

Miriam squirmed in Amy’s arms.

“Put me down, mommy!”

Helplessly, Amy released Aaron’s hand and stabilized Miriam.

“Put me down!” Miriam cried again.

Janet took Aaron by the hand. Aaron was such a quiet boy. His face was so quiet, so gentle.

The two women began walking towards the end of the dock. Ann and Harriet arrived after them, Ann with three-year-old Greg and Harriet with four-year-old Joe and two-year-old Luke.

As the boat floated parallel to the dock Harriet’s husband Danny ran forward and cast a rope over a piling. Janet’s husband Marcus, Danny’s brother, cut the engine and stepped forward to turn the wheel. At the rear of the boat Ann’s husband Harold looped a rope over a second piling. The boat was secure both fore and aft and its hull brushed against the old tires that hung from the side of the dock. Danny and Harold leaped from the boat onto the wooden planking. The boat drifted sideways towards shore with the current and the rope at the stern went taut. Marcus pulled on the rope and the boat swung towards the dock. He and Harold secured the stern with a second rope while at the bow Danny tossed a rope to Amy’s husband Bernie, who wrapped it three times in a figure eight around a large cleat fixed to the deck. Danny leaped back into the boat and disappeared into a small cabin.

Bernie was nervous about the way they left him alone at the bow, but, if he knew what he was doing, he didn’t need any help. He waited for a moment to be absolutely sure that the rope was tight. The boat bumped easily against the dock. Behind him, he saw and heard Marcus jump onto the dock. Then the boat must be secure. He gave one last tug on the line, something he saw Marcus do on occasion, and jumped on the dock as well.

“What did you catch, daddy?” asked Nancy.

“Bernie caught a shark!” Marcus said, grinning broadly. He was a tall man, six three, and he towered over the others.

“A big shark?” asked Nancy.

“Pretty big. More than three feet. We had to shoot him, he was jumping around so much.”

“You had to shoot him! Aaron! Your daddy caught a shark and they had to shoot him!”

Aaron flushed with embarrassment at Nancy’s enthusiasm. Marcus disappeared into the boat’s small cabin.

“Here he is,” he said, holding the sleek, torpedo-shaped fish by the tail.

“Look at him!” said Nancy.

“A Mako,” said Janet.

“How do you know that?” asked Aaron.

“They’ve got the short fore fins,” said Marcus, giving one of the fins a tug. “Blues have big fins.”

Marcus held the shark’s head up. Aaron and Nancy stared at the devilish mouth and the vicious little teeth. Amy bit her lips convulsively. She had never seen such a hideous fish. Sharks and guns, and her Bernie in the middle of it. What he wouldn’t do for his goyish friends!

“Are we going to eat him?” asked Nancy.

“He’s too tough,” said Marcus. “Besides, we’ve got something better.”

He disappeared into the cabin again and brought out an enormous salmon.

“Coho!” exclaimed Janet.

“Wow!” said Ann. “Wow!”

“Took me almost half an hour to pull him in,” said Marcus, beside himself with pleasure. “He’d have snapped the line in a second if I hadn’t played him.”

Janet patted the fish.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“We found a market crab and three abalone, daddy,” said Nancy.

“Is it a big one?” asked Harold.

“It’s really big,” said Nancy.

“It’s not that big, Nancy,” said Janet.

“Big enough, I’ll bet,” said Harold.

“Did you catch anything else?” asked Harriet.

“A couple of blues,” said Danny, “but they were pretty small. They were still hopping when Mark caught the Coho, so we tossed them back in.”

The assembled families began walking back to the beach house.

“Can I carry the shark, Bernie?” Nancy asked.

Harriet laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Nancy demanded.

“Nothing.”

Nancy could see that Harriet’s eyes were shining, and so were her mother’s. She knew it wasn’t nothing. When grown-ups said it was nothing, it was always something. But she didn’t know yet what it was.

“You can carry the shark if you want to,” said Bernie.

Nancy took the shark gratefully in her arms, cradling it like a baby, so that she could see its teeth and cold, black eyes.

Did he try to bite you?” she asked.

“He was snapping like a son of a bitch,” laughed Harold.

“Harold!”

Ann was furious.

“You shouldn’t let him drink on the boat like that,” she told Marcus.

“I wasn’t drinking,” said Harold. Damn it. Damn it to hell, he thought.

“He was a mean shark, but your daddy pulled him in,” said Marcus.

“In the war, they used to catch sharks for their liver,” Janet said. “Shark liver was going for five dollars a pound.”

Nancy made a face.

“Shark liver! Ugh! Do you like shark liver, Aaron?”

“No,” said Aaron.

“Shark liver oil is good for you,” Janet said.

“Shark liver oil!” cried Nancy.

“We’ll give you some when we get home,” said Marcus.

“Daddy!”

Marcus grinned. She was playing to the crowd, just a little. Nancy was such a trouper. She didn’t know she was covering for Harold. Son of a bitch! It was over the line, sure, but it was funny. Harold was like that. Ann had to get used to it. Harold had balls, and she knew it. But not around the children. She had that attitude, and she wouldn’t quit on it.

Marcus flushed, just a bit, beneath his tan. Christ, he would like to loosen her up. Last year, when they were on the boat, she had been bending over in her bathing suit, and he had seen a pubic hair. He was in his bathing suit too and it made him so hard he jumped overboard and damn near froze. Christ!

“What are we going to do with the shark?” asked Janet.

“I don’t know. Stuff him? Do you want him on your wall, Bernie?”

Bernie chuckled to himself. What does a Jew do with a shark? Make a suit? He laughed.

“I’ll hang him in the office,” he said.

“I don’t like those eyes, staring at you,” said Ann.

“Do you think daddy should put the shark in his office?” Bernie asked Aaron.

“Sure.”

“Then it’s settled.”

“We’ll freeze him,” said Janet.

“Look at his teeth,” said Nancy.

When they reached the beach house Harriet changed Luke’s diapers and Amy changed Miriam’s, while Ann managed Greg and Joe and Catherine, keeping them outside and letting them run around while the men got settled. Marcus and Janet carried the salmon into the kitchen, followed by Nancy and Aaron. Danny opened beers for the men—Janet, and Ann, insisted that there could be no hard liquor until after dinner—and went into the “hi-fi” room that he and Marcus had constructed to protect records and equipment from sand and children. The door frame had weather-stripping on all four sides. Marcus liked his jazz. Danny selected the records carefully—Woody Herman, Dizzy Gillespie, Julie Christie, and Stan Getz. Separate speakers carried the music into both the living room and the kitchen.

“Too loud!” said Nancy, putting her hands over her ears.

“That’s Woody Herman,” said Marcus.

He and Janet put the salmon on the counter. Nancy dragged a chair from the table and climbed up on it so that she could watch.

“Get a chair,” she told Aaron.

Aaron pulled a chair away from the table and towards Nancy.

“No, you stand on the other side,” she said.

“It’s too bad that he’s so big,” said Janet. “He’ll never fit in the oven.”

“We’ll have to take off the head and tail,” Marcus said. “More for Phineas.”

Phineas was a barn cat that lived in the garage behind Marcus and Janet’s beach house. Fifty years before, it had been a stable.

“He’s not getting the head,” Janet said. “Not until I’m done with it. We can use it for chowder.”

Nancy watched, enthralled, as Marcus cut the fish’s head off, slicing through the heavy flesh right behind the gills. He cut the tail off too and put them both in the sink. Then he slit the long gut and pulled out the entrails. He put them in the sink as well and washed the blood off his hands.

Marcus drank from his beer.

“Stevenson is dead,” he said.

“It’s not good,” said Harold.

“He’s dead,” Marcus repeated.

“I don’t know,” said Bernie. “They still like him in Illinois. Ike’s heart attack has got to mean something.”

“No,” said Harold. “Ike is just too damn strong. If he has another, that’s something. The Senate and the House. That’s the biggie.”

The other men deferred, just a little, to Harold’s comments.

“That damn oil money,” said Danny, after a pause.

Harold grinned.

“We’ve got oil money too,” he said. “Rayburn and LBJ both. And Bob Kerr.”

“Fucking hillbillies,” said Marcus, in a low voice. “Fucking” was an absolutely forbidden word. “Why are they running the country?”

There was another pause as Marcus waited for the power of “fucking” to dissipate.

“Why can’t intelligence run this country?” he said. “Imagine what we could do with education if we had control of this country for one, for one damn day. Just think of it!”

“You could do a lot,” said Danny.

“You could do everything!” said Marcus. “We waste ninety percent—ninety percent!—of the intelligence of this country! We’ve got Einsteins and Picassos chopping cotton—picking oranges! The country’s run by Okies!”

“Somebody’s got to pick the cotton, and the oranges,” said Harold.

“They’ve mechanized cotton-picking, and they can do the same with oranges,” said Marcus, refusing to respond to Harold’s skepticism, or perhaps not even noticing it.

“Kids can pick oranges,” he said.

“You want to bring back child labor?” Bernie laughed.

“No! But fruit-picking is no job for a grown man or woman! We need to rationalize agriculture in this country, just as we’ve rationalized steel and autos. And the damn private sector won’t do it for us! I do not want to live in a country that makes people sleep in ditches so I can have a glass of orange juice for breakfast!”

Marcus’ face grew flushed. What a goy, thought Bernie. Because Marcus meant it. As a boy he’d been shocked to see the treatment of the Okies, of the Mexicans, of the Japanese. It went right through him. As a teenager, he had read a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and the passage describing Lincoln’s reaction to the sight of slaves at auction went right through him. What Lincoln had known, he had known. It was the same damn thing. And reason could cure it all, could cut out the ignorance and the superstition and the hatred like a surgeon’s knife. If you just had the power!

“We could rationalize this damn country,” he said. “We could!”

His eyes glowed, and he laughed.

“Here’s to the rationalization of the means of production,” said Danny, raising his beer.

All four of them laughed.

“All right, we need a better slogan,” said Marcus. “How about ‘Go, go, go, with BBD&O?’”

The men all laughed again. Out in the kitchen, Janet smiled. It was good to hear them arguing and laughing. Danny and Harold could keep him on the rails, most of the time. And Bernie. Why was he just a dentist? He was so smart. Conscientiously, she separated the salmon flesh from the bones. There was such a fine architecture to a fish’s skeleton, everything in its place. Her sharp eyes inspected the salmon carefully, looking for the last fine, hair-like bones. Now, what did they do? They did something. They had to. They upset Amy so much. Poor Amy. She worried about everything, especially Aaron.

Regretfully, Janet cut the huge filet in half. She took the smaller half and wrapped it in aluminum foil and placed it in the refrigerator. Then she spread layers of foil in her largest roasting pan and lifted the remaining filet into it, covering it with the foil. She put the pan in the refrigerator and washed her hands. She glanced into the living room, smoky and full of talk and loud jazz. She could see Bernie, quiet and happy, bobbing his head to the music. Mark was so funny. He loved music but had no sense of rhythm at all.

“Mommy?”

It was Nancy and Aaron.

“Yes?”

“Can we beat the abalone now? It’s six-thirty.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea.”

Janet went to the refrigerator and took out the three large lumps of abalone meat, wrapped in wax paper.

“Get the aluminum foil and wrap each steak,” she said to Nancy.

Nancy opened the cupboard where Nancy kept the aluminum foil and took out the roll. While she unwrapped and then rewrapped the abalone, Nancy took down a square wooden box—the whacking box, Mark liked to call it. A thick piece of wood fit inside the box. She lined the box with butcher’s paper.

“Can you carry this?” she asked Aaron.

“Sure,” he said.

“Good. Nancy, you take the abalone. Take it right out on the stoop.”

Janet followed with a croquet mallet and a sheet of butcher’s paper. They went out through the back porch and out onto the stoop.

“Now,” said Janet, “wrap the abalone in at least two layers.”

Nancy took the paper and earnestly wrapped a steak. Then she placed it inside the box and fit the wooden lid on top of the abalone. She took the croquet mallet from her mother and stepped back from the stoop.

“Give her plenty of room, Aaron,” said Janet.

Aaron stepped quickly away from Nancy. The little girl spread her stout legs firmly apart and swung the mallet over her head, bringing it down on the abalone with all her might.

“Bam!” she cried.

Janet laughed.

“Now, you two be careful,” she said.

As she went back inside she could hear Nancy shouting as she pounded the abalone. Janet left the door to the porch open so she could hear them, closing the door to the living room to cut down on the noise.

“Bam!” shouted Nancy, as she hit the abalone again. She swung so hard that her feet would fly off the ground when she brought the mallet down. After about ten swings she turned to Aaron.

“Now you do it,” she said.

Aaron took a swing.

“Hit it harder, Aaron,” Nancy demanded. “Slug it! Murder it!”

Aaron swung again.

“Harder!” Nancy demanded. “Hit it harder!”

Aaron raised the mallet over his head, as he had seen Nancy do. He swung as hard as he thought he could.

“Hit it harder! Murder it!”

Aaron swung again.

“That’s it! Murder it! Murder it!”

Aaron pounded the abalone.

“OK, that’s good. Let me look.”

Nancy inspected the abalone carefully.

“Two more whacks,” she said.

She put the abalone back and smashed it twice. Then they began on the second steak.

While Nancy and Aaron worked on the abalone Janet began picking the meat from the market crab. She had cooked the crab earlier in the day, when she first brought it home, and she took it from the refrigerator, all red and beautiful.

“You’re a big boy,” she told the crab.

There was an architecture to a crab’s shell, like the bones of a salmon, curious passages and compartments that must mean something, that contributed strength or buoyancy. Nancy glanced at the crab’s black, fierce, staring eyes for a second before she removed the shell. The backfin meat was thick and gleaming. She plucked it easily and put it on the plate before her. Marcus and Danny had grown up eating crabs and they both missed half of what was there. The rest were from back East and didn’t know anything. Poor Amy! And poor Ann! Such a lady!

Nancy pulled off the legs. Such nice meat! Then she went to work on the claws, cracking them with a nut cracker and using a sharp knife to split the shell just the way she wanted it. When she was done she washed her hands and covered the crab meat with Saran Wrap and put it back in the refrigerator. Then she wrapped the remains of the dismembered crab in newspaper and took it out back.

“How are you doing?” she asked Nancy.

“One more, mommy,” Nancy said.

“Let me see.”

Nancy handed Janet the two steaks. Janet unwrapped the foil. Nancy had a good eye.

“Nice,” she said.

“What are you doing, mommy?” Nancy demanded.

“I’m burying the crab shell so it doesn’t stink. Why don’t you go get the shovel for me?”

“OK.”

Nancy raced to the tool shed, followed by Aaron. She emerged with shovel, taller than she was, grasping it before her with both hands.

“Careful how you run with that,” Janet told her.

“I’m careful,” said Nancy.

Janet took the bundle of crab shell into the garden, followed by the children.

“What will happen to the shell?” asked Aaron.

“It will decompose,” said Janet, thrusting the shovel into the ground and putting her foot on it to drive it down. “It’s good for the soil. Crab shells have a lot of calcium in them.”

“Where does it come from?” asked Aaron.

“From the sea water, and from things the crab eats. You get calcium from milk, for your bones.”

“What does a crab eat?”

“A crab eats just about anything. He’d eat you if he could.”

“He’d come along and pinch you,” said Nancy fiercely, giving Aaron a pinch.

Aaron jumped.

“Don’t pinch Aaron,” said Janet.

“I was just teasing.”

“I know.”

“Would a crab really eat me?”

“No. You’re too big. But he would pinch you. You have to be careful with a crab. They can really pinch you good. When I was a girl I was pinched by a crab and had to get two stitches. See where he pinched me?”

Janet held out her hand and Aaron inspected it gravely.

“Okay,” she said. “You kids finish pounding the abalone. People will be getting hungry soon.”

“I’m hungry already!” exclaimed Nancy, suddenly aware of her deprivation.

“Well, you better finish pounding the abalone.”

Nancy glanced at her mother with a hint of irritation. Mommy was always one step ahead of her.

“Come on, Aaron,” she said. “Race you!”

Nancy flew back towards the house, with Aaron trailing far behind. Janet chuckled. Nancy loved to race people who couldn’t possibly catch her and never knew why they never enjoyed the game.

“Beat you!” crowed Nancy as she arrived at the stoop. “I’ll hit first.”

Nancy took the last abalone steak and wrapped it in the butcher paper. Then she placed it in the whacking box and fit the lid on top of it.

“Stand back,” she announced to Aaron, who had just arrived.

Nancy whacked the abalone. Janet, covering the package of crab shell with dirt, chuckled again. Kids!

She walked back to the house.

“Let Aaron hit for awhile,” she told Nancy. “You put the shovel away. I bet daddy is ready to eat.”

“You hit it,” said Nancy, handing the croquet mallet to Aaron. She took the shovel from her mother and put it over her shoulder, as Janet had done.

“Don’t carry it like that,” Janet said. “You’ll hit somebody.”

Especially Aaron, she thought. Nancy was indestructible, but Aaron wasn’t. And if Nancy gave Aaron one stitch, Amy would never forget it or forgive it.

Janet adjusted the shovel on Nancy’s shoulder so that the blade rested against it.

“Now, hold the end up so you don’t hit the ground with it.”

“I can’t hold it like that!” Nancy shouted.

“Yes, you can. You’re a big girl now. You can do it. Put your hand under it.”

Nancy struggled. It was awkward, but she could do it. All the better, Janet thought. She’ll have to concentrate.
“Off you go,” she said.

She went inside and washed her hands. She opened the door to the oven, lit a match and turned on the gas, setting the temperature at 350. She held the match over the ignition hole and the oven lit with a whoomp. She liked that old black stove, that her father had installed thirty years ago, before she was born. She blew out the match and tossed it in the trash. Then she opened the bread drawer and took out a loaf of sour dough. With a large knife she cut it into slices, and then cut the larger slices into thirds. She put the bread in a paper bag and put the bag in the oven.

The kitchen door opened. Nancy and Aaron entered.

“We murdered it, mommy,” Nancy said, handing her the abalone.

“You murdered it?”

“Yeah.”

Janet checked the abalone. It was nice and tender.

“Okay. Go wash your hands.”

“Can we go play on the rocks now?” asked Nancy.

“No, it’s too late. Besides, you kids can’t go running off by yourselves.”

“But daddy lets me.”

“Well, we have guests.”

“What are you making?”

“Crab. What do you think?”

“Yum! Can I have some?”

“Wash your hands.”

Nancy raced off to the bathroom.

“Come on, Aaron!” she shouted.

Nancy went to the refrigerator and took out a jar of mayonnaise. From one shelf she took a bowl and from another a bottle of vinegar. She mixed the mayonnaise and the vinegar in the bowl, beating them vigorously. She put the vinegar back on the shelf and took the mayonnaise back in the refrigerator, taking out the crab, along with a stick of butter. She picked over the crab once more, finding a few more shreds of membrane.

“Ready!” cried Nancy, returning from the bathroom.

“Let me see,” said Janet.

Nancy held up her hands for inspection.

“You too, Aaron,” Janet said.

Aaron held up his hands. As he did so there was a sudden burst of music from the living room.

“Daddy loves that record,” said Janet.

“Hamp and Getz,” said Nancy. She could read the words on the album, with its funny picture of flattened, twisted men.

“The vibes,” she said.

“What are vibes?” asked Aaron.

“The vibraphone. It’s those bells.”

“The vibraphone is like a xylophone,” said Janet. “What letter does xylophone begin with?”

“X,” said Nancy. “I know that.”

“It means wood sound,” said Aaron, solemnly.

“Did your Uncle Josh tell you that?” asked Janet.

Aaron nodded, still solemn.

“Aaron’s uncle is a college professor, like daddy. He studies Greek.”

“What’s Greek?” demanded Nancy.

“It’s a language. Every country has its own language. In America, we speak English. In Mexico, they speak Spanish.”

“Can I have some crab?” demanded Nancy.

“Brave Indian warrior, my Cherokee,” sang Harriet. “I can’t keep up. It’s way too fast.”

Ann was envious. She wished she could sing the way Harriet did, or play the piano the way she did. Or like Bernie.

“Where are you going, little girl?” she exclaimed at Miriam.

Miriam suddenly burst from the group, giggling fiercely.

“I’ll get her,” said Ann, over her shoulder.

She ran Miriam down and scooped her up in the air, placing the little girl on her shoulders.

Look at that, thought Amy. She does love kids.

“I’ll take her,” she said.

Ann handed over Miriam.
“She’s such a squirmer,” Ann said.

“She is,” exclaimed Amy. “I don’t know where she gets it.”

“Put me down, mommy!” shouted Miriam, her legs pumping furiously in the air.

“All right!” said Amy. “Go play on the swing where I can watch you!”

She placed her daughter on the ground. Miriam started to run away again but Amy caught her.

“I said play on the swing!” she said, sharply.

“I don’t want to!”

Amy spanked her.

“Now go play on the swing!”

Miriam burst into tears and wandered towards the swing set.

“Joe, let Miriam have your swing,” said Harriet.

“I was here first.”

“I now you were. It’s time for you to play on the trapeze. Let’s see you hang by your knees.”

Joe got up from the swing. Miriam, still in tears, advanced reluctantly towards it. She’s such a baby, he thought.

“Show us how you can skin the cat,” Harriet said.

Joe grasped the bar of the trapeze and swung his legs over his head.

“Terrific!” cried Ann.

Joe grinned proudly. He paused for a second and then turned around. Grabbing the bar, he swung his legs up over it and let his upper body hang down. His head swung more than a foot off the ground.

“You’re all upside down,” he said.

Harriet looked at her son’s smiling, upside down face.

“Terrific,” said Ann again.

“Knowland is …,” began Harold.

“Insane,” said Marcus.

“If only,” said Harold. “If only.”

“Where does he get his damn votes?” said Marcus.

“Where did Nixon get his?” said Marcus. “It’s the damn Midwest. They moved here in the Depression. It’s the damn sunshine.”

“Watch your language,” said Janet, entering with the abalone.

“Abalone!” cried Marcus.

“Only for those who don’t say ‘damn,’” she said, putting down the platter.

She had cut the abalone in strips, rolled it in breadcrumbs and fried it. Mark loved market crab, but he adored abalone. Janet purposely made him reach for it, because he was quite capable of eating the entire platter himself if she didn’t prevent him from doing so. She preferred to serve it on separate plates, but he didn’t like it that way. The huge salmon, the shark—there was going to be a lot of drinking tonight, and pot later on. She knew Amy hated that. They could take the kids to Danny and Harriet’s house. But not right away. Not until later. Mark liked to have the women around, and Harriet and Ann liked to have fun. They didn’t want to be housewives, away from the men. Neither did Janet.

“Beautiful, Janet,” said Marcus, his eyes sparkling.

“I found it, daddy,” said Nancy, following closely behind.

“You did?”

“Uh-huh. And I found the crab too.”

“You have sharp eyes.”

“Can I have a sip of your beer?”

“Just a little sip.”

“Just a tiny sip,” said Janet. “And just one.”

Marcus handed her the bottle of Miller’s High Life. Janet watched her carefully as she tilted the bottle back.

“That’s enough,” Janet said.

“Mommy, I hardly had any.”

“That’s enough for a little girl. You shouldn’t have any.”

“I’m not a little girl! I’m a big girl.”

“Have some abalone,” Janet said.

Greedily, Nancy took the largest piece of abalone and gobbled it up.

“Have some abalone, Aaron,” Bernie said.

Aaron took the smallest piece and ate it carefully. They only had abalone at the Kendalls’.

“Have some more,” urged Janet.

Aaron hesitated but Nancy did not.

“Not you, Nancy,” said Janet. “Aaron’s our guest.”

Nancy’s face flashed with irritation.

“She can have my piece,” said Aaron.

“He said I could,” said Nancy triumphantly, claiming the largest remaining piece.

“That’s enough for you,” said Janet. “You kids leave the grownups alone now.”

Dinner lasted two hours. Ann presided over the children’s tables, while the adults sat outside drinking wine and cursing Knowland and McCarran. Harriet came over and they sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and the “Farmer In The Dell.” Nancy and Aaron came to the adults’ table for dessert. Nancy sat on Marcus’ lap and Aaron sat on Bernie’s. Harriet came back from the children’s tables and they sang “Getting to Know You” and “Bye, Bye Blackbird.” Then the men went back inside to listen to more jazz and drink martinis. Nancy loved the noise and excitement. “That’s Dizzy Gillespie,” Marcus said, bouncing her on his knee. Nancy wanted a sip of martini but she knew mommy wouldn’t allow it.

“Come on, Nancy,” Janet said, reaching for her hand. “We’re going over to Danny and Harriet’s house.”

“Why?”

“So you kids can sleep. It’s too noisy here.”

“I’m not tired!”

“Well, you will be soon.”

“No I won’t.”

“Yes, you will. Luke and Miriam and Greg are already asleep.”

“They’re babies.”

“Nancy, come along.”

“Do I have to, mommy? Aaron and I aren’t tired.”

“Nancy. Give your daddy a hug.”

“Give your daddy a big hug, baby,” said Marcus.

Nancy hugged him fiercely, delaying her departure as long as possible. Aaron watched her with curious eyes.

“Now come along,” said Janet, sharply. “I need you to help Catherine.”

The four mothers collected the children. Janet knew that after Marcus had two martinis in him he would be wanting to smoke marijuana. She knew that Amy would be livid, terrified. She had to get them moving. Luke and Miriam and Greg were already asleep, and Catherine and Joe were nodding. Only Nancy and Aaron were awake, and Aaron, silent Aaron, was ready for bed. His big, dark eyes were drooping.

“Get Jennie,” Janet told Nancy. Jennie was Catherine’s favorite doll.

“I want Jennie,” Catherine said.

“I’ll get her,” said Nancy.

Janet picked up Catherine and rested her on her shoulder. At four she was a real burden, but it would take Catherine forever to walk the fifty yards to Danny and Harriet’s.

Assembling all the children with their toys, towels, bathing caps, shoes and socks took more than half an hour. Marcus was asking Ann to dance with him, but she had her hands full with Greg, sleepy but squirming now that he had been picked up.

“The music’s too loud,” Ann told Marcus.

He didn’t understand.

“Just one dance,” he said.

“Marcus, these kids have got to get their rest,” said Janet. “They’ll be cranky all day.”

“Come back later,” he said. “When they’re asleep.”

“We will,” said Janet.

Marcus wanted to hear Ann say it, but she didn’t. The women set out, each with a child in her arms, and Nancy and Aaron on foot. They walked slowly through the sand, through stiff, waist-high beach grass. The tide was high and they could hear the waves pounding rhythmically on the sand. The froth glowed magically in the moonlight.

“It’s so beautiful,” said Ann.

“Look at that cloud!” said Harriet.

Far out at sea they could see an almost perfectly round cloud, silver in the moonlight, resting on the horizon, the glittering sea stretching out to meet it.

“What is it?” asked Amy.

“It’s a storm,” said Janet. “It’ll be here in a couple of days. Remember that big storm two years ago, Nancy, just after your birthday, when the shutter blew off?”

Nancy nodded.

“It looked just like that. We better nail down the shutters this time.”

“It’s so beautiful,” said Ann.

Aaron stared at the silver ball so far away from him. Behind them, there was a sudden burst of noise from the beach house. The men had turned up the volume of the hi-fi.

“Cherokee!” said Nancy.

“Stan!” the men shouted, their voices carrying out into the darkness. “Stan! Stan! Stan!”

© Copyright Alan Vanneman 2011

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Three AM Zurich Time

2011-05-16T18:44:00.000-07:00

I needed sweaters principally. I have slacks, thanks to Richard’s sad but timely demise. I could use few belts, perhaps, and a few ties. It never hurts to have more. And shoes. But principally sweaters. Niki likes me to look nice, in a flawless, understated way, but he’s no shopper, and he expects you to take care of the details. A Patek Phillipe every Christmas, but when Niki’s not there I buy my own groceries. This time everything was platinum, even the camera, because it’s our third year together. Don’t tell me the man isn’t romantic! But I can’t bore Niki. He’s too fucking rich. You can’t imagine how rich Niki is. I’ve learned a lot just reading about him.

Which is why I’m sitting in Zurich International, wearing nondescript, second-hand clothes and a cap, pretending I’ve missed my flight and waiting for the phone to ring. I’m wearing the cap because people remember blondes. It’s 2:20 Zurich time and if I don’t get the call by 3 I’m driving back to Paris in my “borrowed” car. That’s François’ idea. He’s crafty, is François. Of course, the car is “borrowed” from his wife’s cousin, but it’s very French to steal from your relatives. Why hurt a stranger when you can injure family? But nothing’s going to go wrong. I wouldn’t do anything that would go wrong just to get my hands on a dozen sweaters. But I do need them. Niki pays for insouciance, and I deliver. Insouciance, blonde hair, and perfect, perfect skin. And I can’t be insouciant for two weeks in St. Moritz without a dozen perfect sweaters right out of the box.

Niki loves skiing. So I love skiing too. You didn’t know I could ski? For a cute Japanese billionaire I’d learn algebra. Besides, I’m quite the thing in my thousand-dollar jumpsuit. They’re so industrial—all zippers and pockets and black space-age fabric. He can’t wait to get me out of them. I am special to Niki. I’m not just a pickup, not just another boy. It’s the skin. Every day is Pearl Harbor Day when I’m around.

Which is why I’m still in Zurich International at 3:10, when good little boys and girls are all home in bed. Bad little boys and girls are apt to run late. At 3:12 the phone does ring. I pick it up and an English voice is reciting numbers, which I copy down. Ten minutes later a money machine is throwing cash at me—$2,000. The money goes in a little bag. I take a parking-lot elevator down to the third level and meet Paolo. Paolo is my contact. Paolo is dirty, ragged and smelly. He’s everything I’ve spent my life getting away from. But Paolo has the sweaters.

Paolo takes me to his van. “We go,” he says. I don’t like this, but I get in. I can see there are no sweaters. I trust Paolo. I trust him because he hasn’t already hit me over the head and taken the money. He wouldn’t take me someplace in the van so he could hit me over the head and take the money. This isn’t the movies. He’d just do it, right here and now.

So we go for a ride, on the Bahnhofstrasse. I’ve been shopping here. But this time we’re going in the back. Paolo has the key. He hands me a pair of surgical gloves, the product with a thousand uses. So nice to have when you’re doing something you shouldn’t. I see why he’s brought me. I’m a mule. We grab nylon luggage, black, very nice, and start filling them with Bally leather jackets. After I carry five bags I get to get my sweaters. Also some lovely Gucci belts and an armload of Hermes ties. I can use them as stocking stuffers. I’ll be popular. I get Hermes scarves for Mischa, Maka and Sheba, Niki’s wife and daughters. I’ll be meeting them in Paris. I teach them French, English and tennis. We go shopping together. I’m charming. They love me. Maka and Sheba call me “ichibano berubetto,” which they say means “way cool.” I can’t help thinking that it really means “cheap Yankee faggott who smells of rotten pork,” but I don’t ask. I’m charming. I give good milage.

We’re back in the van. I want to go the airport, or at least near it, but Paolo isn’t interested. We’re going someplace else. I don’t like this, and start to argue. Paolo shows me this little gun he has, and even chambers a round to impress me. I’m impressed. I’m not riding in a van with a smart crook who carries an unloaded gun to frighten civilians. I’m riding with a dumb crook who might shoot me by accident. I can’t afford to be shot. I’m luxury goods. I can’t afford a scratch, can’t afford a bruise. Niki doesn’t come to me because he wants to be reminded of pain and suffering and the march of time. Niki wants perfect abs and perfect quads, perfect lats and perfect delts, crotch hair like spun gold and perfect, perfect skin.

So now I’m in a room in what must be the only bad motel in all of Switzerland. It’s 5:30 in the morning and the rock music from next door is deafening. And that’s the good news. The bad news is that Paolo is shoving coke up my nose with his finger, and we haven’t even unloaded the van. The boy wants to party and I haven’t got the time. I should be half way to Paris by now, half way to my daily 45-minute workout, half way to dinner with the girls and breakfast the following morning with Niki. I need 24 hours to recover from a sleepless night and I haven’t got them, and from the way Paolo is snorting coke we’ll be here past noon. I can’t afford this, and neither can my skin.

I’d really like to discuss this with Paolo and work something out, but he isn’t listening. He’s pulling my pants off and shoving me on the floor. Everything about Paolo screams pitcher but I’m in for a surprise. He’s got his head in my lap, and he’s slobbering like a Newfoundland retriever. I’m shoved up against the sofa and starting to feel a little desperate. I can’t get the coke out of my nose and I can’t get Paolo off my dick. I’m thinking I may never see Niki again when I notice that Paolo’s little gun has worked its way out of his hip pocket so that it’s resting on the small of his back.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I grab, point and pull. There’s a very sharp little bang, right in the middle of my lap, and Paolo goes over without a sound. I suppose if I had picked a bad angle I’d have come up very short indeed, but I didn’t pick a bad angle. I get Paolo off me and pull up my pants. I’m still wearing the surgical gloves, which is a pearl beyond price. I get in the van and grab my bag. I decide I don’t have the nerve to drive the van back to the airport to get François’ wife’s cousin’s car. I don’t know why, but I don’t. Maybe I’m afraid to drive. Instead, I decide to take the train. I know there’s a tram line nearby because I can hear the wheels groaning on the turns. I wish I could take another bag or two, but I can’t. They don’t match my outfit. I’m traveling student, not Euro-trash. I catch a tram, and an hour later I’m back on the Bahnhofstrasse, heading for the train station. I’m filthy and sweaty and unshaven, and I’m wearing cheap clothes. It’s raining, and I’m walking along the most fashionable street in Zurich at seven in the morning with a heavy bag thrown across my shoulder. All I need is a sign that says “I am smuggling luxury goods into France.”

But nobody at the station gives a damn. The passengers at this hour are a bunch of Italians and Turks, keeping warm with coffee and cheap vodka. The staff are Swiss. As long as you don’t piss in public, they don’t give a damn. A train for Neuchâtel comes almost immediately, which gives me hope that I won’t be remembered, as long as Paolo’s body isn’t discovered for a day or two. That’s my life, all of a sudden. As long as the body isn’t discovered for a day or two, I’m all right.

Once we’re underway I toss the gloves out the window and sit with my legs crossed because I’ve noticed that I’ve got Paolo’s blood on my inseam. The train is rocking slowly and I’m reading schedules. I’m so casual I’ve thrown the bag in the upper compartment. I’m not even looking at it. I suppose I’m taking a chance but if you can’t trust the Swiss who can you trust? I’ll be in Neuchâtel in an hour, where I’ll catch the 9:20 to Dijon. I’ll be in Dijon before eleven. I’ll catch the 11:35 to Paris, which gets in at 3:40. When I get to my apartment I’ll take a shower, change, and take Le Metro to Le Gym for an afternoon workout. I’ll go three stops past my stop and drop my shoes, socks, underwear, shirt, hat and jacket in the trash. I’ll hope to God the Swiss aren’t up to speed on DNA, because if they search Paolo’s mouth they’re going to find some bodily fluids I’d rather not discuss in public. After my workout I’ll have a long, hot shower, a sweet toot—my brand, not Paolo’s—and a long, hot massage. I’ll change at the gym and meet Mischa and the girls for dinner at 7:30. I’ll be in bed before midnight and up at ten for Niki and champagne. I’m sorry for Paolo, but really. A boy needs his rest.

©Copyright 2011 Alan Vanneman

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The Transfiguration of W. H. Auden

2011-04-28T19:23:00.000-07:00

“Alice is what, after many years of suffering and countless follies and errors, one would like, in the end, to become.” — W.H. Auden

W. H. Auden stared at himself in the mirror. “Dear, dear, Wystan,” he mur-mured. “Dear, dear.”

Friends were waiting. Let them wait. That’s what friends were for, to suffer. All pleasures faded with age, save one, the pleasure of being the cause of suffering in others.

Auden drank from the glass of gin that sat on the back of the water closet. It was poor gin, because Auden was a poor man. To be rich, or at least comfortable, was not beyond Wystan’s capabilities, but it was beyond his desire. There was a comfort in his wretchedness. He was free, after all, from the necessity of keeping up appearances, of pretending that he wished to be presentable, which he did not. It was pleasant to see people wince at the sight of him, it was worth even wearing glasses, which unfortunately obscured his hideous, rheumy eyes.

Auden chuckled over the word, displaying his stained dentures and unhealthy gums. He was a rheumy ruin. Those wrinkles! Certainly the worst in Christendom, a warning to all who might seek comfort in the flesh. Behold the true Christian, stinking of gin and filthy with tobacco. Auden held up a hand to display its thick, horny fingers and brutally gnawed nails, stained nicotine yellow, subdued to the narcotic that sustained him. Tobacco, even more than alcohol, and far more than sex—though sex retained its potency even now—was his refuge and consolation. One could always smoke, always. The stink of tobacco permeated every aspect of his existence, from his slippers to his soul.

Auden drank decisively from the glass of gin. He would get drunk tonight, drunker even than usual, to celebrate this new awareness of his suffering and his ruin. For Auden did suffer. It was not pleasant to know that the one thing in life that kept him going was the pleasure of inflicting suffering on others. How foul he was to C, his latest boy, a wretchedly bad poet, so pathetic that he would even allow Auden to kiss him. How despicably he treated poor Hannah Arendt, despising her for a preening boche! How vicious he was to Norman Podhoretz, and how pleasant to know that the future of American letters was entrusted to such vulgar hands!

A sharp, hard spasm stabbed Auden in his belly. He stared helplessly into the mirror, unstrung by the pain. He had drunk the gin too quickly. His vanity had betrayed him into believing that he could still drink like a young man. He was an old man now, fit only for a slow, lingering alcoholism. He felt the room contract, as though his senses were forsaking him. He tried to call for help, but he could not speak. The face in the mirror seemed to sag and shudder. He looked awful. Could that creature really be him? All his life he had been ugly, but now! The blotched, spongy flesh seemed ready to fall from his bones. His long, slow, careful decay was collapsing before his very eyes, overthrown by a single, over-bold draught of gin! Auden groaned. He tried to cling to the washbasin, but there was no power in his arms. He was stupid, useless, a living corpse, a summation of sin, his whole life a willed mockery of what it should have been. With his last strength he stared into his hideous face. What shame was his! To die with this knowledge! This was his soul’s last, monstrous gift to itself. Auden’s chin struck the washbasin with a brutal thud. His head banged against the side of the tub.

He felt himself falling in darkness. The concussions, though they registered on his body, caused no pain. His poor, sodden corpse. To be abused in such a way! He was ripe, after all. He felt a fleeting pity for his friends. They came for poetry, and received death instead, the worst of gifts. How he had repaid their kindnesses! What shame!

He stopped falling at last. The darkness was all around. What was waiting for him? What could be? God’s face, or the dry, hungry hands of Beelzebub? He waited patiently for the darkness to recede. He was ready, after all.

“Wake up, Alice. You’re oversleeping.”

Auden stirred. A linen sheet, moist with an English moistness, brushed against his face. He pushed it away and sat up in bed. How easy it was! He almost floated into the air. The brutal weight of the body, the ever-tightening grip of the flesh that had held him for decades, had vanished. Auden sprang from the bed and landed with a soft thump. He was tiny!

Eagerly, he beheld his hands, the soft, dimpled hands of an English girl, with perfect, never-bitten nails. He pulled back the sleeves of cotton shift he was wear-ing, revealing arms round and white enough to tempt the wrath of Hera.

The door opened.

“Alice? Why, you haven’t begun to dress.”

“I’ll be ready in a minute,” he said, in a soft, musical voice. His speech! How tiny he must be to have such a high-pitched voice! Tiny lungs pumping mere thimblefuls of air, tiny, trilling larynx! What marvels to behold! He dashed to the mirror, ignoring the indistinct figure of the servant and avoiding easily the over-sized furniture, so strange, and so strangely familiar.

He stared long at his small, round face, framed with thick, dark-brown hair. He had thought, from the Tenniels, that he would be blonde, but he adjusted imme-diately. Of course, he was Alice Liddell, the true Alice, not someone’s imagina-tion. How serious I am! he thought, looking into his own tiny, dark eyes, eyes that shone under delicate, dark brows. Then he grinned a fierce, little-girl grin. Teeth! He had teeth! What unearned gifts! He poured water from a pitcher and washed proudly in the cold water. Here was Christian duty made palpable and correct! He picked up an oversized brush and began brushing his hair. I must not stint, I must not shirk, he thought, slowly brushing the thick hair and counting the strokes until he reached a hundred. That was, he knew, what girls do.

He put down the brush, went to “her” closet, and found a sort of robe, white with lace and little roses. This is what he would wear? Almost without thinking, he headed out into the hallway to the bathroom. Dark walls towered around him. He entered the bathroom, illuminated by a pair of hissing gas jets. He felt a sud-den wave of pity for little girls like Alice, all alone and barely begun in life, chained to the banality of the body. But his mood changed quickly. Alice was not so helpless after all. The mysteries of the Victorian bathroom, so barbaric at first glance, explained themselves fully after a moment’s thought. The conveniences, though primitive, were well thought out. Everything requisite to the modesty of a young girl was at hand. He seated himself confidently on the Brobdingnagian chair, relieved both his bladder and bowels, and cleaned himself carefully. That was that. He climbed down and put his robe back on. Returning to his room, he dressed quickly. It was remarkable that it was so easy. He gazed hardly at all at his small, naked body. To do otherwise would be unworthy of Alice. Then he re-turned to the mirror and inspected himself carefully. Now he was “herself,” he decided. He would taper off and disappear, and Alice would become herself again.

For what had become of Alice, he thought, descending the massive steps. She must have been here before. Was she now displaced? Would she return? What would she think of him if she did? How did he know all that he knew?

Breakfast was a question of watching and waiting. Adults and children clus-tered around the table, his sisters, one younger and one older, and his parents. They greeted him unremarkably, and he they. He climbed, with a little difficulty, into his enormous chair, which seemed scarcely to raise his head above the level of the table. Father and Mother talked, of course, while servants came in with large plates and covered dishes. He noted with some envy how much taller Ina was than he. Edith was much shorter. Ina condescended terribly to them both, but then, she could hardly be expected not to.

Auden ate his boiled egg, with a piece of toast and a slice of bacon. He had somehow believed—it was the Britisher in him—that in Victorian times everything was as it should be, but it wasn’t. The egg was cold, and a little runny, while the thick, waxy butter that covered the toast was flavored with mildew. The bacon was fatty, and undercooked. The servants bumped the door open loudly, and he could hear them talking in the kitchen. But no one noticed, and no one minded. Auden watched as Dean Liddell drank his coffee. “I should like a cup myself, Papa!” How he longed to say that! That would make them pay attention. But he didn’t, of course. He talked politely with his sisters, and when Mother said “You children may go now” he said “Yes, Mother” with the others, striving for correct enunciation, because he knew it was important and because he knew he didn’t always do it as well as he should.

Lessons were difficult. He strained to read even the simplest words. The large, black letters in his lessons book assumed strange and ambiguous shapes whenever he looked at them, and he would have to smooth them out in his head before he could read them. He wanted to reach out and hold them in place. How Miss Han-son would be stunned by the extent of his true knowledge! Yet it was all he could do to stammer along, and all he could do not to touch his face or twist his body in frustration.

Recitation was better, and singing better still. The words came easily, and he thought that Miss Hanson did not half appreciate how well he caught their rhythm. He sang confidently in his clear, little-girl voice, bright and penetrating. That was Alice’s doing, of course. He could not sing at all.

“Very good, Alice,” Miss Hanson said, “but not quite so loud. And maintain your posture more peaceably.”

“Yes, Miss Hanson,” he said, though it was difficult. His body was so small that it almost seemed there was nothing to control. He breathed deeply, as deeply as he could, and tried to relax.

Lunch came quickly afterwards. He was hungry, of course, but he could eat so little that it scarcely seemed worth bothering. He ate in small, careful bites. This was the way Alice would eat, of course, and therefore the way he would eat, now and for the rest of his life. He had never realized until now how uncivilized he had been, how shapeless and ungovernable, inhuman and unhealthy, so truly Caliban in his pride. “It shan’t happen again,” he thought, wiping his mouth gently with his napkin, and pleased to see that he left no trace upon it.

After lunch he and the other girls went upstairs for a nap. He heard a scratching at the door and there was Dinah herself. Instinctively he bent over to pick up the cat, who submitted gravely to the awkward ordeal. He brought her to his bed and laid her on the covers, stroking the cat’s soft fur. He had never cared for animals before. He stared at Dinah’s solemn face, gently rubbing her nose, and watched as she yawned, baring those milk-white, needle-like teeth. He should have written poems about cats, how they image our humanity.

The nap gave him great time to think. He came back to the real puzzle, the dis-appearance of Alice’s consciousness. Where was she? Certainly she wouldn’t take kindly to her girlhood being usurped by a morose nancy poet on the lam from the Twentieth Century! It was hardly the proper fate of a true English girl! He thought awhile and lay back against the pillow, luxuriating in the room’s perfect stillness, broken only by the faint ticking of the downstairs clock. Here there were no radios, no televisions, and no telephones. The Twentieth Century’s anarchic roar was gone, replaced by the thick, moist English air, which ruled all. Dinah curled against him, and he fell asleep.

When he awakened, things mattered less. He played easily with his sisters, ac-cepting Ina’s dominance without much complaint. It was so much simpler to do as she wished. Telling others what to do had once been his greatest pleasure, but of course he was getting beyond that now. Dinner was quite ordinary. Mother and Father were elsewhere, so they ate alone, with Ina in charge. The food was overcooked, and tepid, and the servants hurried them. Servants, Auden discovered, were not above giving a young lady a brief twist of the arm to move her along her way.

Bedtime was absurdly early. As he lay there in the darkness he felt a sudden resurgence of self. This remarkable adventure, and his rare knowledge, were gifts from God that should not go unused. In his previous life his wide knowledge had been no more than affectation and folly; here that folly would be redeemed. There was a great deal to do, which meant that he must plan. Surely a bit of concentration would bring his reading skills back to normal. He still did not know the precise year, but a glance at a paper would inform him. Then it would be a simple matter to calculate which eminent Victorians would be in the neighborhood of Oxford. Once that was done, the stage would be set for a series of intellectual encounters unlike any the world had known, entirely surreptitious of course—he would do nothing to provoke a scandal—but entirely unique as well. He owed Alice no less. His small heart heat fiercely in his small chest at the thought. Aroused, he crept softly from his bed and went to the window.

A round moon glowed through soft, low-lying mist, joined by a few prominent stars. The darkened shapes of trees and shrubbery huddled on the lawn. In the morning, after he had slept, they would be there again, bright and normal in the light. Brave, sleeping England! He would help waken her! He hoped for a bright sun in the morning. There was a slowness to the damp, a lack of hurry. He crept back to his bed and fell fast asleep.

He was awakened by knocking. It seemed incredible that his small body could demand, and absorb, so much sleep. He leapt from his bed once more, for the sheer pleasure of doing it.

“Alice,” a voice exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, immediately. He had misbehaved. To make up for it he washed and dressed with particular care. Today he studied his naked body in the mirror, which he had not had the nerve to do before. That was what he was: smooth and slim, incredibly small, not an ounce of excess. The simple, discreet curves of his young vagina, though holding the promise of three sons, somehow reassured him. Nothing complicated there; nothing to worry about.

He met Ina on the landing and gave her a slight jostle.

“I’ll tell Mother,” she said.

“No you won’t,” he said, skipping ahead, descending the stairs easily yet careful not to make any excessive noise. Edith lagged far behind, still so young that she had trouble with the steps.

On the first day everything had been so new he had not time to take it in. On the second day he could be more observant. A cautious glance at Father’s paper informed him that it was 1860. He would have guessed 1880. 1860! How little he had known! He felt positively prelapsarian. Industrialism was in its first, disconcerting vigor, and the Victorian sun, though well ascendant, was far from its zenith. Romantically, he had expected an atmosphere of fin de siècle, yet all around him was youth. The tallest man in Europe, standing on tip-toe, could not foresee the great clouds ahead, the war in the trenches, and two sons dead. Would that change? Could it? Would he be an agent?

He was determined to do better at lessons that morning, but found he could not. The neat, large letters in his lesson books continued to defy him. Only the recitation, and the singing, which was Alice’s doing, not his own, truly went well, and his deportment was not what it should have been. It was maddening, in a way, that he could not impose himself more forcefully on something as simple as the life of a young girl, scarcely emerged from infancy.

The harder he pushed the more he exhausted himself, for there was nothing to push against. Determined above all not to embarrass Alice, he could never find the one, fleeting opening he needed to exploit his hidden knowledge. As he climbed the stairs for bed that night, he realized he was no closer to mastering his situation than he had been the day before. But, as he brushed his hair that night and stared at the little girl staring back at him in the mirror, he could say to himself justly “I have not been unworthy of you so far.”

At breakfast the next morning he reminded Edith not to kick her chair, receiv-ing a sharp retort from Mother, for it was Sunday, and such reproofs were felt to be unchristian, at least in a child.

He had known, and he had not known, that it was Sunday. He had dressed appropriately, but until Mother had mentioned it, he had not been aware. Sunday was an adventure, and not a pleasant one. The comforting bosom of the Victorian Church was warm and heavy, and, to his mind at least, openly narcotic. Although, as a daughter of the Dean, he was treated with great respect, this gave him no satisfaction. He sat in the children’s choir, apart from Ina and Edith, on a bench of hard, polished wood, staring at his small, finely made shoes when he was not singing, while the service rolled on and on, a noisy, heavy carriage lumbering slowly down a hill that had no bottom. Then at last it was over, and yet they could not leave, for Father and Mother had to greet personally all the prominent members of the congregation. Worst of all, Auden had to urinate. How thoughtless he had been to let things get so out of control! This was his first real failure. The walk back to the house was truly unpleasant, but fortunately his discomfort went undetected.

As he lay down that evening his sense of failure was renewed. He had missed it all: the entire day had passed him right by, or rather passed right through him. The tedium of the service, which he had thought imprinted on his soul for all eternity, was no more than a blurred memory. As for the rest of the day, he had forgotten it completely. He resolved that, the next morning, he should appreciate things more closely.

But again he did not. He mastered only the externals. The arrangement of his dress, for example, improved, for he was always in sharp competition to draw even with Ina and stay well ahead of Edith, who was terribly sweet but sometimes unattractively precocious. He began to tire of struggling with reading, because recitation and singing came much more easily and made a better impression on others. He began to accustom himself to, to accept without thinking, the slow pace of Victorian life, a life of long preparations and slow journeys that led to brief events, and the long, slow days that lay between. The towering adults, sometimes smelling faintly of coal dust and horse manure, no longer intrigued him with their secret knowledge. Each night he resolved to do better, and each day he did not.

“Mr. Dodgson will be coming as well,” Mother said in passing at breakfast, while announcing a picnic for the following week. At last! The great dream, which seemed to have slipped entirely from his thoughts, suddenly broke the surface of his consciousness once more, complete in every detail. His mind swarmed with learning; the great poets of Europe waited in solemn order to be called forth for display. He could barely eat, so anxious was he for lessons.

“What’s wrong, Alice?” Mother asked, sensing the turmoil.

“Nothing,” he said, with utmost feigning, turning his little girl’s head upwards to confront her.

“Are you sure?” Mother asked.

“Oh, yes.”

“You mustn’t play with your food,” said Mother, announcing her retreat.

“Yes, Mother.”

Auden ate the rest of his breakfast with furious attention to manners, a bland expression on his face, eating neither too fast nor too slow. At lessons he strug-gled patiently with his letters, reading with what he felt sure was a more natural voice. During recitation he could hardly keep from laughing, thinking of what he might say to inspire, if not astonish, the simple Mr. Dodgson.

His concentration and effort scarcely slackened for the entire week. The morn-ing of the picnic he felt himself in a daze of nervousness, which he calmed as best he could by careful attention to routine. Blessed Victorian routine! he thought as he buttoned the myriad small buttons of his dress. Imagine a world with time enough for such buttons! He looked pridefully at his young fingers, the nails as perfect as he had found them. He had been good.

He conscientiously avoided staring at Mr. Dodgson, who was as gently and persistently attentive as he could have imagined. There was a remarkable gentleness about him, that emerged when he was alone with Alice like the sun from behind a cloud, and that would disappear just as quickly when Mother came by. The picnickers sat on a heavy blanket by the roots of a large oak and ate small sandwiches of deviled ham and lamb and drank lemonade. Alice watched as Mr. Dodgson took out a small, silver pocket knife and cut an apple in pieces for her, slicing it into sections and then removing both the peel and the core. After they each had eaten a slice of lemon cake Mr. Dodgson asked her if she would like to go for a row on the lake and she said yes.

The lake was small, its shore marked by a few willows. On one side there was a thick growth of rushes. Alice and Mr. Dodgson walked down to the water, where a pair of small boats were nosed into the shore. Alice got cautiously into one, worrying about her dress and her shoes, but the boat was quite clean and dry. Alice sat and watched as Mr. Dodgson pushed the boat forward and then climbed in as well. The boat wobbled a little, but not enough to frighten her. Once Mr. Dodgson was settled he took one of the oars, pushing against the shore so that the boat glided out into the water. Then he put the oars in the oarlocks and rowed out toward the center of the lake.

Mr. Dodgson talked as he rowed, asking Alice about her lessons and her sing-ing, and about her sisters, and about Dinah. When they were well out into the middle of the lake he drew the oars in through the oarlocks and let them rest on the gunwales, water dripping from the poised blades. The boat glided forward in silence from its own momentum. Alice looked out over the lake. The groups of willows on the shore made a frame through which she could view the others. She could see Mother, seated with Mrs. Matson and Mrs. James. Ina and Edith were gathering flowers with Mrs. James’ daughter Pamela. Beyond them the broad green meadow stretched for half a mile, leading up to a great house of soft gray stone, set on a hill in a cluster of tall green trees. The sun shone down almost directly upon them, so that Alice’s shadow made a small dark pool at her feet.

“It is a beautiful day, isn’t it, Alice?” said Mr. Dodgson, resting on the oars. “Don’t you wish today could last forever?”

Alice watched as an electric-blue darning needle hovered in the air and then descended to land on one of the oars. The faintest of breezes first stirred her hair and then ruffled the insect’s transparent wings.

“Why?” she asked.

©Copyright 2011 Alan Vanneman

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Body of a Woman

2011-03-28T18:41:00.000-07:00

I guess the thing I remember first about Mom was her smell. I guess you probably think that’s gross, but I don’t mean it that way. Mom was always pretty fat, and the last couple of years especially she was putting on more weight and slowing down. Fat people, when they get old, don’t always wash as much as they should. I guess they have trouble getting in the shower, or they don’t like to be naked, or they just don’t like having to take care of themselves. Anyway, they can just get kind of funky. And, as I say, you probably think I’m being gross, but I didn’t mind Mom being that way, most of the time, first because she usually wasn’t that bad and second because it was like that meant it was okay to be different, that I was safe, that I didn’t have to worry.

We lived in a little house in Baltimore near Johns Hopkins, with a nice yard. Mom was a librarian at Hopkins. She lived in Baltimore all her life, except when she went to college, at Wellesley, and when she lived in New York for a few years right after college, and also Paris. “New York is for the young,” she used to say. I was pretty used to going to New York, because we used to go there seven or eight times a year to see the galleries and concerts, with Uncle Ned. He’s my Mom’s brother. He used to be president of the Baltimore Symphony, and now he’s the chief fund-raiser for the Art Museum. “Neddie’s quite the man about town,” Mom used to say. Uncle Ned’s gay, although he thinks no one knows that, like you go over to his house and he’s having a meeting of his garden club and there’s all these guys with cashmere sweaters draped on their shoulders calling each other “darling” and you’re not supposed to know what’s going on. But that’s the way Uncle Ned is.

My dad I don’t know much about. I could know more if I wanted to, but I don’t. He left Mom when I was three. I guess it was kind of a limited marriage. He moved out to San Francisco, but he’s not gay. He married another woman. He came to visit me once a year for the first two years, but then he gave up, so I can barely remember him, but there are some pictures of him and Mom. He always did send us money. When Mom and I would sit out in the yard in the summer Mom would say “Your father still sends me flowers.” What she meant was that she used Dad’s money to pay for a gardener. She liked to work in the garden when she was younger, but she liked what she called “a real garden,” so by the time I was growing up she had a gardening service do most of the work. I like to look at gardens but I don’t like working in them. But we did have good gardens. Mom would plan the garden with me every winter, although she would be the one who would do all the work. She had maps of the backyard and the frontyard, and she would say “I love tea roses so much. Don’t you think we should add a dozen,” and I would say “Sure,” and she would say “I don’t think a dozen is too many, do you? It’s better to have too many than too few,” and I would say “Sure.” We would always plant nasturtiums because when I was little I liked them because I liked the word. I don’t think there’s another word like “nasturtium.” A lot of flowers have “um” names, like delphiniums and chrysanthemums, which are pretty good, but “nasturtium” is the best. It means “nose-twister,” because of the smell. “Wouldn’t gardens be different if we spoke Anglo-Saxon,” Mom used to say. “Nasturtiums would be nose-twisters, chrysanthemums would be goldflowers, anemones would be windflowers, and delphiniums would be dolphins.” Of course, delphiniums are also larkspurs.

Mom and Dad got married when they were old. Mom was thir¬ty-six and Dad was forty-three. That was right after her Dad died. I was born when Mom was thirty-eight, so they were only married five years. She was a lot older than the moms of the other kids I knew when I was growing up, but I never thought about it, because she was just Mom. I was used to that. It was the way things were. I never thought of it at all until I came back from college my freshman year. I went to Williams, which is where Uncle Ned went. It was a good school, but I’m afraid I wasn’t too distin¬guished a student. I like New England, I’ll say that, despite the cold. There’s something peaceful about the cold, if it isn’t too bitter. But when I came back for Christmas my freshman year Mom just seemed really old. Her hair seemed grayer, and she seemed fatter. Mom had these china-blue eyes, that were really bright, and they were the same, but she seemed nervous. Her smile wasn’t the same. I guess I was nervous too. I felt unstable when I got home, like I wasn’t safe. I didn’t like the house any more, and we have a nice house. I went for walks all the time. I went to the Enoch Pratt Free Library, which is this great old library in Baltimore, just about every day. I hated Christmas break because there were so many holidays, which meant the library was closed. That was a tough Christmas. Mom drank a lot, which always made me nervous anyway. I don’t know if you could call Mom an alco¬holic or not. She and her friends always drank, a lot. “Too young for Prohibi¬tion, too old for pot,” she used to say. Sometimes when I was young they would get pretty drunk and sing these old Temperance songs, like “drowning Demon Rum in a sea of faith.” Uncle Ned would play the piano and sing. Actually, I always liked that, although I never could sing. They would stand around the piano and Mom or somebody would put their arms around me.

I always liked that. That was fun. But sometimes she would get kind of drunk by herself and I would come downstairs and she couldn’t talk as clearly as she wanted to and she would get embarrassed. That would happen sometimes when I was a teenager. The first time it happened she put a lock on the liquor cabinet and gave the key to Uncle Ned, so she could only open it at parties. So then she could only drink beer and wine and sherry and port. Uncle Ned was a big port fan, so she used to keep bottles around for him. I think she really liked sherry, but she had these little glasses that she used, so that it would slow her down. But every once in a while she would get drunk again, and she would be embarrassed. That seemed to happen more the first Christmas I was back from Williams. I stayed home during the summers all through college. I think Mom got more of a grip on her drinking, but she started getting fatter. Also she was going to the doctor more, but she would never tell me about that. She always wanted to pretend things were fine, that it was like the good old days when I was young.

It was funny to see pictures of Mom and Uncle Ned when they were young. They lived in Paris for two years in the Fifties, and they have a lot of pictures. They traveled all over Europe in the old Daimler. That’s an English car, “the royal carriage of Britain.” Uncle Ned will always tell you that. He bought it from a duke, he always says. It was this big old convertible, the sort of car that is supposed to be driven by a chauffeur, but Uncle Ned had to drive it himself.

Uncle Ned would like to have a chauffeur, but then he didn’t, and he still doesn’t. He’d like to ride around in the back with everyone cheering him, but there are never as many people who want to cheer him as he would like. When the Baltimore Symphony would give its final performance each year he would come out and take a bow, and I don’t think he ever got the sort of applause he thought he should get. We used to sit in box seats near the stage, and I always thought the musicians looked irritated when Uncle Ned came out. Uncle Ned has a lot of friends, but he’s definitely good at rubbing people the wrong way, especially when he’s been drinking. “Now, now, Neddie. You’re talking too much,” Mom would say. Sometimes if we were at a restaurant and the waiter came around to pour Uncle Ned another glass she would put her hand over his glass and they would sort of puff out their faces at one another. Mom and Uncle Ned could be funny when they got into quarrels, almost like comedians, like they meant it but were also making fun of it at the same time. “I must play my role,” Uncle Ned would say. He’d say that when he was happy and when he was angry, or when he was depressed.

I have to say that Uncle Ned has a great house, although I like it better when he’s not there. I stayed there at first after Mom died, before I went back to Williams. I saw her for the last time over Christmas, but I didn’t know that was going to be it. I didn’t guess. I probably didn’t want to think about it. What could happen to Mom? Then she just died in the night, overnight. I got a call from Uncle Ned. “I’m so sorry, Robert. Margaret is dead. Your Mother is dead. I’m coming to get you. I’m at the airport now.”

I didn’t cry much at the funeral. You read about people being numb at funerals, and that’s what I was. I felt so dumb. I saw all these people that Mom knew and I would think “Oh, Mom will be glad to see her,” and then I would think, no, Mom won’t be glad to see her, because Mom’s dead. I couldn’t help it, but you still get mad at yourself.

Right after the funeral I stayed at Aunt Nancy’s house. I sort of rotated between her house and Uncle Ned’s. She and her husband Bill both work in Washington. She teaches French at George Washington University and Uncle Bill is a consultant. They have two daughters, Ann and Margaret. That’s my family, really, Mom, Uncle Ned, Aunt Nancy, and Ann and Margaret, or that was my family until Mom died. Bill wasn’t part of things very much. He always seemed to be busy. Uncle Ned has a friend with a very big house up in Cape Cod that we would all use for three weeks in June, but Bill wouldn’t come. “This is civilized,” Uncle Ned would say, when we got there and he was having a martini. Uncle Ned’s friend had a huge garden, and I think when Mom and Uncle Ned were young they used to sort of earn their keep as gardeners all summer, because they still worked in it a couple of hours each day, but still we were like guests. There was a cook there, and usually a couple of college kids working in the garden for the summer.

If you say you go to Cape Cod for the summer people won’t like you a lot, which I can understand. When we went there when I was a kid I just accepted it. I never saw a little kid worry about exploiting the peasants. But the people there can be obnoxious. Even when I was a kid that bothered me. The woman next to us, Mrs. Thompson, would always say about a place “it used to be nice, but lately it’s gotten so tacky.” Nothing was ever tacky from the start; it had just gotten that way lately. And of course nothing was ever nice any more, except her place and I guess our place, which of course wasn’t really ours. I guess Mrs. Thompson tolerated us, though; otherwise she wouldn’t have come over.

When I was about eight I asked Mom “Why does she say every¬thing has just gotten tacky? Isn’t there any place that started out tacky?” Mom laughed and said “I take it you don’t approve of cant.” And then she explained what cant was, and how you can speak that way but you can’t think that way. Of course, she got that from Dr. Johnson. I read Boswell’s Life of Johnson my freshman year. I think she was proud of me then, because she told Uncle Ned and Aunt Nancy about that. And sometimes we would talk about something being cant. Also, sometimes Mom would say “Neddie’s talking cant,” and that would be our joke.

Aunt Nancy was the sexy one in the family. Mom was always fat, and Uncle Ned was Uncle Ned. Aunt Nancy was younger than Mom, and more modern. “Nancy’s a Sixties girl,” Mom would say. I guess she smoked pot with her friends, but of course she never did with us. I sometimes wonder now why she came up to Cape Cod with us, because she didn’t have that much in common with Mom and Uncle Ned, it seemed to me. Mom and Uncle Ned seemed old-fashioned compared to her. Mom said once “She likes to get away from Bill.” I guess going off with us was the way to do it, because I don’t think Bill liked Mom and Uncle Ned. He never seemed to be around when we were. The few times I met him he was always busy, like he had to go somewhere. But I liked Aunt Nancy a lot. She was more in tune with things than Mom and Uncle Ned. “Nancy’s on the other side of the cultural divide,” Mom would say. Also I liked Ann and Margaret. Aunt Nancy was embarrassed about their names, like Ann Margaret. When people would make jokes about it she would get red. Ann and Margaret were both younger than me, two years and four years. They were my only “girl friends.” I was sort of nervous around them when they got to be teenagers. I wasn’t used to my cousins being sexy. In fact, sex is something I haven’t been very good at, not so far. “Bobbie’s so serious.” That’s what Ann and Margaret used to call me, and that’s what they used to say. When I was about sixteen they seemed to think I should be like Brandon on “Beverly Hills 90210” or something, like I should have a hot car. Well, I’m not like that. When they got older and would talk about boys I would get embarrassed. The worst time was at our house, not in Cape Cod.

This was two years ago, when I was twenty, and Ann was eighteen and Margaret was sixteen. Margaret was trying to impress this boy so she and Ann went to Victoria’s Secret to buy a bikini. I guess I was shocked that they would talk about going to Victoria’s Secret. Well, I know I was. I just sat there, and they kept on talking, and Mom and Aunt Nancy just seemed to think it was funny, and I was getting more and more upset. What made it worse was that I had been drinking. What I mean is that I had had a few sips of sangria, which is what we were drinking. You may think that I can drink because everyone in my family drinks, a lot, but I can’t. I don’t think it’s wrong to drink, it’s just that I don’t like to. Alcohol tastes awful to me, and I feel awful too, but this time I felt I had to, because Ann and Margaret were drinking too.

Anyway, what happened was that I felt I’ve just got to get out of here, so I stood up and I thought what I would do is just casually put my glass on the table and walk away but what happened was that I just sort of casually missed the table and so my glass just sort of smashed on the flagstones. Hurrah for the goddamned idiot! Mark Twain says that somewhere, and I say that to myself when I’m mad at myself, and I was mad then. When I bent down to pick up the glass I felt dizzy, like I was really drunk, even though I’d had maybe a third of a glass. I felt like I couldn’t control myself, like I was going to explode. I don’t think I was crying, not yet, but my eyes were getting filmy. I was afraid I was going to cut myself, but I didn’t. I got all the pieces I could see and then I just left. I could hear Mom calling me, but I acted like I didn’t hear her. I just went inside. I threw the glass in the trash and went upstairs to my room. Then I took off my clothes and went to bed, even though it was like eight o’clock and practically broad daylight out. I pulled the covers over my head. I just wanted to fall asleep and wake up in the morning and it would all be over with, like it hadn’t happened, like I hadn’t heard my cousins talking about bikinis and being sexy in front of my Mom. Then I started crying. After a while I could hear Mom coming up the stairs. That was one thing about Mom—you could always hear her coming. She couldn’t sneak up on you. Then she knocks on the door and she says “Robert, are you all right?” and I say “Sure.” I didn’t sound like I was crying. Then she says “Are you sure?” and I say “I’m fine.” So then she said “All right,” and she left.

I remember when I was about eleven I was sitting by myself in Uncle Ned’s library reading this story by James Thurber about a whippoorwill, and in the beginning one of the characters says “Two things I have found remarkable in life—the poetry of Keats and the body of a woman.” I shut the book after that. That made me really nervous, because I didn’t think you were supposed to talk about sex like that. You weren’t supposed to say that you liked looking at women’s bodies. I guess that’s why I got so upset when Ann and Margaret were talking about sexy bikinis. Anyway, I put the book back on the shelf and went for a walk. I had to get out of there. A couple of years later I saw this book in a bookstore by Kenneth Clark called “The Nude.” Well, I didn’t have enough nerve to buy it, but I went down to the Pratt and I found it on the shelves, and I would go up in one of the alcoves and read it. I didn’t check it out. Actually, it was a very good book, but I thought it was “impressive” that you could write a serious book about nudes. Clark talked about Rembrandt and his “beloved Hendrickje,” who was his mistress, and about this painting that he did of her, that was unique in Western art, “the naked body permeated with thought.” Later I thought that that was the kind of mistress I would have, but so far I haven’t.

I did have one girl friend in high school, but that was it. The first time I kissed her I hated it. Her mouth was like two rubber bands, and they tasted like rubber. I figured I tasted the same way. I couldn’t understand why people wanted to kiss. Later we made out some, but I never really liked it. She was a smart girl. Some of the things she would say would impress me, like I would think “I never would have thought of that.” But as far as sex goes, it didn’t go very well.

In my sophomore year at Williams I had love in the head. I read somewhere that D.H. Lawrence said that sometimes people have sex in the head. I had love in the head. I had read Anna Karenina, which of course is a great novel, and I thought that if I could fall in love and get married like Levin all my troubles would be over. Well, every six weeks I would fall in love, except the girl would never fall in love with me, so I wouldn’t get married. That lasted all the way into April. Then I broke up with about the sixth girl and I went for this long walk along a creek that I know about. It was just the beginning of Spring but it was a very nice day, and I was thinking about how you’re supposed to fall in love in the Spring, but it didn’t look like I was going to be doing that. And then I thought that I really hadn’t been in love with any of those girls—I just thought I was. I had love in the head.

Love in the head for me now is pretty much “Baywatch,” or sex in the head, really. I like Stephanie. I guess she’s supposed to be the serious one, because her hair is short and dark, and she’s flat-chested. C.J.’s pretty hard to take seriously. I think she’s pumped her breasts up too much. She looks like one of those Macy’s Day Parade balloons, like they should get some ropes to tie her down. It gets pretty windy on the beach, and I keep expecting her to blow away. But Stephanie’s pretty sexy, although I must admit I can’t stand to watch a whole episode. The plots are just too dumb. I could watch C.J. and Stephanie run down the beach in slow motion for an hour, but once they start talking, forget it. Actually, the whole show is ludicrous, but then that’s sex in the head.

A couple of weeks after I went for my walk by the creek at Williams I was in my room and I was feeling so lonely that I decided to masturbate. Usually I don’t decide to masturbate. I wake up and I do it, or something like that. But this time I did. I can’t remember now why I was so lonely, but I was. I was crying. It may sound like I cry a lot, but I don’t. This time and the time Ann and Margaret were talking about Victoria’s Secret are the only times I can remember at least since high school. But anyway I was lying on my back and I ejaculated so hard I came on my face, and I just started laughing, because it was like 1) I’m superman, and 2) this is how lonely I am. Then I wiped my face off and went to the bathroom to wash my face and I remember thinking that this was probably the biggest bang I’ll ever have in my life, and this is what I do with it.

But then that summer I met two girls, and even had sex with one of them, almost. That was Mary Ann. We worked in this office in Baltimore. Uncle Ned got me the job there, because he was friends with one of the owners. Mary Ann was a lot older than me, almost twenty-five, but we were both working as file clerks. She didn’t act like she was old at all. We didn’t have much to do, and we would talk a lot. Mary Ann wanted to be a writer, but she hadn’t written anything. She was getting married, and the more I got to know her the more sorry I felt for her, because I didn’t think she and her fiancé were going to be happy. He was completing work on his Ph.D., in economic modeling.

When he was finished he was set to start work for a firm on Wall Street for $97,000 a year, which made Mary Ann upset. “We’re the last of the hippies, sold for $97,000.” She said she was working on a master’s degree in sociology, but I don’t think she was doing much. Otherwise, why was she working as a file clerk. Even though she was a lot older than me I didn’t feel she was at all. Poor Mary Ann. She’d tell me about how she’d gone to a party with her fiancé and gotten really drunk. I think she was proud of getting really drunk, which I didn’t think was a good sign. After we’d known each other about a month we started making out. We were out in this little park, behind the building where we worked. We’d have lunch and talk. We were talking and talk¬ing, and our heads started getting closer together, and then she held my hand, and she said “You know, I really find you attractive,” and then we started kissing. This time it was nice. I felt I wasn’t so hopeless after all, because I could enjoy kissing. Mary Ann was pretty sexy. She wasn’t very busty, but she had nice legs, and a nice ass. She was pretty short, compared to me. I think she liked that. I don’t know how tall her fiancé was. We would make out for an hour at lunch. Sometimes when we went back to the office the elevator would be really crowded and we would stand in the back and I would feel her ass. Sometimes she wore this pantsuit that had loose pants, and I would stick my hand down inside, even inside her panties, and feel her cheeks. I couldn’t believe I was doing that, but I was. I thought I was hot. The first time I did it she said to me “I could have killed you for what you did on the elevator,” but then we’d do it again.

Sometimes we’d get on the elevator and no one else would be on it, so Mary Ann would hit the top button and we’d make out all the way to the top floor. She had this really short dress she used to wear sometimes, and I would run my hands under the dress and under her panties. Then once we were going past this old hotel that had closed, and they were having a sale on furnishings. You could go in and take a TV or a table out of a room and buy it. We went inside. The place was a mess, of course. We went up to the top floor and started making out. She was wearing pantyhose. I pulled them down, and pulled her panties down too. That was the first time I saw a woman’s vagina. She said “I can’t, I’m too nervous,” and then I was pressing myself against her and I came in my pants, which I felt was pretty stupid, but then Mary Ann said “Oh, I wish you had done it inside me,” and her voice was so beautiful. It was really the most beautiful sound I have ever heard in my life. And I thought that poor miserable Mary Ann had this beautiful thing inside her, this beautiful, rare remarkable thing, more beautiful than anything in the world. I was so surprised, because it was so strange. And then I was worrying about what I was going to do about myself and Mary Ann opens her purse and takes out some Kleenex and says “Oh, here,” like she was a Mom. It was like, when you’re out with a guy you don’t know if he’s going to sneeze or ejaculate, you just have to be prepared.

Mary Ann did get married, but of course it didn’t change anything. I felt sorry for her because I didn’t see how her marriage was going to last or how she was going to be happy living in New York. She kept saying she was going to hang out in the Village, but I didn’t think she would. I thought she and her husband would go to these fancy parties and she would get drunk and they would get divorced. She still wanted to make out after she got married but I wouldn’t. I guess I was noble enough not to make out with a married woman, but I would make out with an engaged woman. Anyway, that is what I did.

The other girl was a lot different. I only met her once, at this party Uncle Ned took me to, that one of his rich friends was having, Mr. Calloway. Ashley was only twenty-two, but she acted very elegant. At first I hated her, because she acted like she was the star of the party. But I guess she was. She was really pretty and had really short hair, sort of like Stephanie and sort of like the Twenties. She looked like she should be wearing a cloche hat, which is a kind of hat they wore back then. Uncle Ned has a lot of fashion books, about Coco Chanel and people like that, so I know about old fashion, though not as much about new fashion. Anyway, Ashley was a grad student at Yale, and she was studying with Harold Bloom, and she was talking about how charming he was, which is why I hated her. I hate it when people talk about something being charming, because what they really want is for you to think that they’re charming. Also I really don’t like Harold Bloom at all. Basically he’s full of shit.

I mean, that’s just my critique of the matter, but it happens to be true. He wrote this really stupid book about “J,” who’s one of the authors of the Pentateuch. His theory is that J was an aristocratic woman. My theory is that Harold Bloom wishes he were an aristocratic woman. He has this problem, that he writes like a girl. Well, I would say that, except that to allow that would be to lampoon the sex, as Dr. Johnson would say. Bloom wrote this book called The Canon, which you probably know about, about what you should read. I don’t think I need Harold Bloom to tell me what to read. Anyway, The Canon had just come out, so everyone was talking about it, so Ashley was pretty much the center of attention over dinner. When they were having dessert I just thought I would get away from there, so I went looking for the bathroom, and after I found it I also found the library. I guess it’s snobbish but I do like the sort of libraries that rich people have, and this one was very nice. There was an old edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in black limp leather. At the Williams library once I found a set of the works of the Marquis de Sade in limp leather, which seemed appropriate. The encyclopedia was the Eleventh Edition, which is sort of a famous edition. I read an article in the New Yorker about it once, how it was sexist and racist and imperialist. Well, I could take that with a grain of salt. Anyway, I started reading some of the articles, and I got into the one on gardening, which was really funny, because it was like instructions for your estate. Probably you couldn’t afford to buy the encyclopedia if you didn’t have an estate.

So I must have been reading the encyclopedia for about an hour or so when Ashley walked in. She said something about we were the only representatives of the younger generation, which made me feel uncomfortable, because I was only a sophomore and she was in grad school. Also I didn’t want to say anything about Harold Bloom. But then we started talking about the encyclopedia and then about George Eliot and then about Shakespeare and about Shakespearean characters as stage managers—like Prospero and Hamlet and Iago and the Duke in Measure for Measure. I had just seen that and I had sort of a theory that Shakespeare had a plot for Measure for Measure that wasn’t really valid dramatically, and his own instincts kept sabotaging his plot for him, the way the other characters would undercut what the Duke was trying to do. So she asked me “Then you don’t think the Duke is a Christ figure?” and I guess I made sort of a face and I said I didn’t care much for Christ figures. She laughed and her eyes really sparkled. I hated her when she was being charming, but right then she really was charming. I liked being around her. I could savor the scent of her in my nostrils. I always liked that in the Bible. I could always picture God up in heaven sniffing the sacrifice the Hebrews were making and saying “Mmmm. Smells good!”

Anyway, we talked some more, mostly about George Orwell, because I had just finished reading this four-volume set of his essays that Uncle Ned had given me for Christmas. That is one thing about Uncle Ned. When you ask for something for Christmas you get it. I liked Orwell a lot, especially when he was complaining about Catholics, whom he called “bloody R.C.s.” He didn’t like Americans either. When I told Ashley about reading all four volumes she knit her brows and said “I see. You’re very thorough,” like she was talking to herself. Then she asked me if I was going to “get my Ph.D.”

Well, I didn’t know much then, but I did know I wasn’t interested in getting my Ph.D. Now that I’ve graduated I haven’t made much progress in deciding what I am going to get, but definitely I’m not going to get my Ph.D. Then I felt I had to ask her what she was doing, and she got very nervous all of a sudden. She was sort of puffing like a steam engine almost, and she talked about the feminization of suicide in 19th-Century continental literature, which fortunately I didn’t know anything about. I’m not much of a fan of feminism. I don’t think they suffer as much as they think they do. But you could tell that Ashley was something of a feminist, so I was tactful. Uncle Ned always liked to talk about being tactful, although when he was drunk he wasn’t always. I guess that didn’t count because everyone else would be drunk too, more or less.

After that Mr. Calloway came into the room with some other people and that sort of broke things up between Ashley and me. I didn’t really talk to her after that. I thought about calling her, but then I didn’t, even though she was only two years older than me. She was still like a professor, at least I thought so, even though I guess officially she was only a teaching assistant. Anyway, I didn’t know where her home was, and I didn’t feel like calling Yale. About a month after Mom died I got a letter from her, that just said “I was so sorry to hear of your loss. I have a special memory of our conversation in the library.” She had this little spidery writing, like she could hardly bear to touch the pen to the paper. Sometimes I take that letter out and look at it. It makes me feel grown-up. But it was postmarked London, so I guess I won’t be seeing Ashley any time soon.

After that summer I thought I’d be getting along better with girls when I went back to Williams, but I didn’t. I thought about Ashley a lot, but that was pretty much it. I did make a friend that year, Henry, who was this Jewish guy. After we got to know each other he told me he’d been avoiding me for two years because he heard me talking about “the Cape,” which I know wasn’t true, because I never talk about “the Cape.” I always say “Cape Cod,” and I don’t talk about Cape Cod that much anyway. He used to say “I like you, Masterson. You’re not a WASP-prick like all the other assholes around here.” He was like Woody Allen. He thought all WASPs were rich and went to prep school. What really sold Henry on me was that I hadn’t gone to prep school. I’m not really anti-prep school, but I’m glad I didn’t go. It’s better to be part of the mass. Henry didn’t know much about literature, but I liked him. He wasn’t a WASP-prick. I guess that was our common bond.

Henry was the only person I was looking forward to seeing when I got back to Williams. I guess I thought that at least that would be the same. But it wasn’t, because Henry was getting ready to get married, and also to go to med school. Senior year we hadn’t been as close as junior year, but I guess I was pretty dependent on him. When Mom died he was sorry for me, but of course since he hadn’t known Mom he wasn’t that upset. It wasn’t his life. I almost used to joke to myself that not only is my Mom dead but my best friend is getting married. I used to think it was funny that on TV shows they would have a character whose Mom was dead and another character would explain to him “In a way you’re mad at your Mom, because she deserted you,” and the other character would get mad, and then finally he would say “Yes, you’re right, I am mad at her,” and then of course he would feel better. But I guess the people who wrote those scripts had lost their Moms, because it’s true.

Mom used to say things like “What would I do without my boy” or just call me “my precious boy” that embarrassed me but I think that made me feel safe too, that no matter what happened I didn’t have to worry about losing her, but of course I did. That’s what I meant in the beginning about her smell, which probably a lot of people wouldn’t understand, because most people don’t know very much about the way people are. In the Fall when the garden was taken in for the winter Mom would always go around for her last inspection and she would pull out plants here and there and talk about what had bloomed well and what hadn’t, and we would sit for a while if it wasn’t too cold and she would say, “Well, we didn’t do too badly this year, did we, Robert?” and I would say “Not too bad.” And she would talk about how we needed more roses or something, but I always felt that what she really meant was that we didn’t do badly for the year, because the year was almost done, that there was nothing left but the holidays.

Before Mom died I had planned to live in Boston after graduation, and I guess I’ll do that still. I don’t want to go back to Baltimore. Right now I’m still at Williams, even though I’ve graduated. They’re letting me stay an extra two weeks. They were going to give me an extra month to take my exams, but I didn’t want it. I thought it was better just to get things over with. Now that everyone is gone, the campus is really peaceful. I walk a lot. Aunt Nancy said I should come stay with them, but I think I’ll stay north for a while.

I’m not sure what to do about the house. It’s mine now, or I guess it will be. It’s so strange, because I always thought I was poor. I don’t own a car. All I have are some books and CDs. But now I have a house and a car, and lots of insurance. I guess really I’m rich. At least I can pay off my loans right away, which is great. I haven’t decided what to do with the house. Uncle Ned is Mom’s executor, of course, and he says he’s going to find “an appropriate tenant.” Then I’ll get the rent, or most of it. I guess I could be a rentier, but I don’t want to do that. I can just put the money away. I think what I really need to do is get a real job, instead of just screwing around all the time, which is mostly what I do. I waste a lot of time. When I go to Boston I’m supposed to work on a computer network for non-profit corporations. Uncle Ned found it for me, of course. Last summer I had an internship in Balti¬more that he got for me. I guess they didn’t like me, because he was mad at me about it. When Uncle Ned gets mad he makes these cracks that don’t make any sense and then finally he gives you a lecture about the real world and how you have to know how to take care of yourself. Good old Uncle Ned.

What I really have to do is start my life over, I guess. “Robert Masterson, the Baltimore Years.” You can write “finis” on that. Life kind of sneaked up on me, I guess. The Baltimore Years were ending anyway, but they ended with a bang. Life kind of slammed the door, or death did. I remember when I was a kid I saw this Walt Disney movie about bears, about the Mother Bear and her two little cubs, and how when they got big enough the Mother Bear would give the sign for danger and the little bears would climb up a tree and wait for their Mother to give the “all clear” signal, except this time she didn’t give it, she just left, and finally the little bear cubs had to climb down from their tree on their own and just take care of themselves. I remember it scared me when I saw that, but now that’s what I have to do, climb down from my tree and take care of myself. What I would really like to do is find a girlfriend. When I think of all the sexy things I did with Mary Ann, I wonder how it was so easy. I haven’t kissed a girl in over a year, so I think I really need a girlfriend. I think I really do.

©Copyright 2010 Alan Vanneman

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Fame Will Tell Chapter 5

2011-03-10T10:23:00.000-08:00

I did sleep well, until about three thirty in the morning, when the phone started ringing.

“Yeah?”

“Archie, it’s Harry. Peter Rogers is dead.”

That was enough to wake me up.

“Just now?”

“Yes. He was in an alley just off 133rd Street, not too far from Lex-ington Avenue. Two guys stepped out of a black SUV with covered plates and shot him.”

“You had a man who saw it?”

“Yes. He called it in and made himself scarce.”

“I guess he doesn’t know why Rogers was in an alley at three thirty in the morning?”

“No. I guess he must have been desperate.”

“That’s a good guess. Thanks, Harry.”

“I can taste those short ribs already.”

Harry was laughing when he hung up but I wasn’t. There was no point in waking Wolfe. I got on my computer and typed a short note telling him what happened and put it in an envelope. I found a red magic marker and wrote “URGENT!” on the envelope and took it up to Wolfe’s room and slid it under the door. He wouldn’t enjoy bend-ing over to pick it up in the morning, but he could always use the exercise. When I went back to bed I tried to figure out how Rogers’ murder was going to break. I never got to know Pete, but I couldn’t think of anyone who would miss him. Phineas sure wouldn’t. A decent lawyer could probably get Jermaine off by convincing the jury that Rogers was good for it. Who was going to miss a two-bit pimp/drug dealer like old Pete? And Jermaine wasn’t going to have decent lawyers—she’d have the best. Which gave Phineas a bit of a motive for putting Pete down. But if we cleared Jermaine by implicating Phineas, would we get our fee? I decided I was thinking too much, so I rolled over and went to sleep.

Four hours later, the alarm went off. My head wasn’t any clearer, so I decided to give it a rest. I took a shower and dressed in a dark-blue suit with a fine claret stripe. It wasn’t quite mourning attire, but I felt Pete would have appreciated the gesture. Before going down for breakfast I checked the Internet. Everyone was screaming about the murder, of course, but they didn’t have anything that I hadn’t gotten from Harry. When I got to the kitchen I barely glanced at the papers. Their coverage was yesterday’s news already, and they didn’t know it. I drank the glass of fresh-squeezed and blended orange, pineapple, and banana juice that Fritz had ready for me and then settled down to a nice hot waffle with fresh strawberries and three pork and veal sausag-es. I finished my second cup of coffee and waited until five after nine before going into the office and calling Wolfe in the plant rooms.

“Good morning,” I said. “You got my note?”

“Yes. I apologize to you for the inconvenience of Mr. Caldwell’s message. He should have waited.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. Murder is always inconvenient.”

“A man’s slumber, like his digestion, should be sacred. Any inva-sion of these necessities should be avoided.”

“Yeah. Do you have any instructions?”

“I do. Get them here tomorrow morning. All of them. And the gen-tlemen and lady Mr. Martínez mentioned in our first interview.”

“Gentlemen and lady?”

“From the record companies. Both of them.”

“Let me get this straight. You want Phineas, Black PussyCat, Tanya Abbott, and the executives from Sony and Murder 1 here tomorrow morning at eleven?”

“Yes. And Miss Culbertson. And Mr. Caldwell. And Inspector Cramer.”

Having Tanya and Roberta in the same room together was not something I wanted at all, but that wasn’t an angle I could take with Wolfe.

“Suppose that’s impossible,” I tried.

“It shouldn’t be.”

If I had waited a split second I suppose I would have heard Wolfe hang up on me, but I didn’t, so he heard me hang up on him. Phineas could deliver everyone except Cramer and Harry and the guys from Murder 1, so I called him first. Naturally, he wanted to talk to Wolfe, but that wasn’t going to happen. He sputtered and snapped for about ten minutes before I finally got it through to him that if he wanted Jermaine to lose that ankle bracelet he needed to shut up and let Wolfe run things his way. At the end of the conversation we understood each other but we didn’t like each other. When I hung up the phone I sat back, feeling more than a little sweaty, which I hate, and feeling like I deserved the $6 million all for myself. But I still had two more phone calls to make. I called Harry, which was easier than shooting fish in a barrel. Harry would pay ten grand just to be in the same room with Black PussyCat, and here I was giving it to him for free. Then I called Cramer. We hadn’t seen each other in quite a while, but his mood hadn’t improved.

“Goodwin!” he snarled. “What the hell does Wolfe think he’s doing, sticking his oar in this?”

“Saving your hide,” I said. “Wolfe wants the execs from Murder 1 in his office at a quarter to eleven tomorrow morning. You and Purley can come too if you behave yourselves.”

I figured that would get a reaction, and it did. Cramer said a few things about both Wolfe and me that civil servants aren’t supposed to say in earshot of a taxpayer. I let him ramble for thirty seconds and then cut him off. I’d been harassed that morning long enough.

“Listen,” I said. “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Phineas Martínez. If you want this thing cleaned up, you’ll be here, with guests.”

“Martínez? Wolfe wants the whole gang?”

“He does. And what Mr. Wolfe wants, Mr. Wolfe gets. I’ll be ex-pecting you at a quarter of eleven. We want to have everyone comfort-able before Mr. Wolfe comes down.”

I couldn’t see Cramer’s face, but I didn’t have to. He didn’t even claim that he couldn’t get Mario and Harris, because he knew he could. It would cost Dykes nothing to turn up the heat on Murder 1.

Five minutes after Cramer hung up the phone rang. I answered it.

“Nero Wolfe’s office. Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“Hello, Mr. Goodwin. This is the district attorney’s office for the City of New York. Mr. Dykes would like to speak with Mr. Wolfe.”

“Mr. Wolfe isn’t available. Perhaps Mr. Dykes would like to speak with me.”

Mr. Dykes didn’t want to speak with me, of course, but he didn’t have any choice, so after a minute or two of back and forth he came on the line.

“Listen here, Goodwin,” he said, “who does Nero Wolfe think he is?”

“He thinks he’s Nero Wolfe,” I said, “and he also thinks he can solve the murders of Anita Watson and Peter Rogers.”

“I—this is absurd. I won’t have the police force of the City of New York used as a prop in one of his charades. Your boss is a money-grubbing publicity hound and, frankly, I’m sick of it and so is every-one else in the city. The people of New York will be protected by its own law-enforcement officers, not some obese orchid-fancier who’s afraid to cross the street!”

I laughed.

“How long did it take you to write that speech?” I asked.

“Put Wolfe on the line!” he demanded.

“I will not. If I did, he wouldn’t speak to you, and he’d fire me. Listen, Mr. Dykes. I kind of like you, most of the time, but not right now. You know damn well that however pig-headed you are, Wolfe has got you beat. You can’t beat him, so don’t take it out on me. Mr. Wolfe invited Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Stebbins to his little soiree as a matter of pure professional courtesy. If you want to forbid them to attend, Mr. Wolfe has no objection.”

I know I was pushing Dykes, more than a little, but he was pushing me. There was a pause, as he finally got up the nerve to tell me the real reason he called.

“Very well. I am informing you, and you may inform Mr. Wolfe, that I insist on attending this gathering.”

“I’ll have to ask him,” I said. “As you know, Mr. Wolfe is very old-fashioned, about everything, but particularly about the people who pass over his threshold.”

There was nothing I could have said to Dykes that would have made him madder.

“I demand to speak with Wolfe!” he practically shouted.

“Please stay on the line,” I said, sounding like an operator.

I buzzed Wolfe on the house phone.

“Sorry to disturb you,” I said, “although I think you asked for it. Dykes is on the line. He wants to talk to you, of course, but I told him he can’t. He also wants to come to the show. What shall I tell him?”

“How absurd,” Wolfe grunted. “Of course he wants to come, and of course I desire his presence. But honor forbids us to acknowledge the obvious. Inform him that I shall be delighted to have him as my guest.”

I switched lines.

“Mr. Dykes?” I said. “Mr. Wolfe will be delighted to have you as his guest.”

“Fine,” he snapped.

So that was done. I went into the kitchen, where Fritz was preparing a broth for poaching lamb tongues.

“We’re having a party tomorrow,” I told him. “Tomorrow morning. Lots of people, but no food.”

“Mr. Wolfe is going to solve the case, Archie?”

“Mr. Wolfe thinks so. But don’t order any truffles.”

“Now, Archie, I always have truffles.”

I went back into the office. One thing I have learned working for Wolfe is not to try to outthink him. If he thought he could tie this whole thing up and wrap a ribbon around it tomorrow morning, well, I would let him try. But I wasn’t going to waste any time wondering how he was going to do it. Thanks to Wolfe and Phineas and George Bush, I was denied even the possibility of female companionship, so I called Saul and arranged to meet him for dinner, followed by the Knicks at the Garden. If Wolfe had plans for me, fine, but it sounded like he didn’t.

I spent most of the morning working on something that had nothing to do with the case. Ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union Wolfe had been taking more and more interest in the Balkans. Once he dis-covered that there were websites based in the Balkans, he had me download material for him every week. There were about twenty sites that Wolfe found “interesting,” which was a lot to print out. It was all in Greek, or Russian, or Serbian, so it was over my head, but Wolfe was happy.

When he came down from the plant rooms I asked him if there was anything that needed doing, and he said no, which left me nothing to do but type up plant records and take care of a little correspondence. For lunch Fritz gave us lamb tongue salad, along with tomatoes stuffed with scrambled eggs and truffles, accompanied by lamb sausages and lamb kidneys. Wolfe filled me in on the grandeur and vanity of empire, and the role of nabobs in 18th century English parliamentary politics.

After lunch there was still nothing to do, which always makes me restless. I told Wolfe that I needed some fresh air and he agreed. Out-side it was cold and gray, so I caught a cab on Thirty-Fifth headed east. I’d lost money to both Harry and Fred shooting eight-ball so I figured I needed some practice. When I got to Eddie’s it was a little early for the regular crowd, but a couple of college boys had found their way in. I took them for seventy bucks and taught them a lesson in how old men play pool. By the time we finished it was half past six. I met Saul at Klein’s Deli on the Lower East Side, the one place in the city that still makes pastrami the way Saul likes it. We caught a cab up to the Garden. Since I had the cash I bet fifty on the Lakers. I liked the Knicks but Saul refuses to bet against a New York team, regardless. I won the bet, the first time I’d taken money from Saul in a year, so I told him that the next time the pastrami would be on me.

When I got back to the brownstone I looked on my desk for instructions from Wolfe, but there was nothing. I went into the kitchen and had a glass of milk and a slice of the apple tart that Fritz had given Wolfe for dinner. When I was finished I went to bed. The next day was going to be busy.

I woke up fifteen minutes before the alarm. Since we were having so many distinguished guests I figured I’d better look my best, so I went with a navy flannel from Barney’s. Not as fashionable as either black or dark gray, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I wore it with a tan, Sea Island cotton shirt and a red and gold tie Lily had picked up for me in Paris. When I came down for breakfast Fritz gave me a look.

“Those young women are coming,” he said.

“Yes, Fritz, but if everything goes the way we want it, they won’t be back.”

That seemed to calm his nerves. I glanced through the Times and the Gazette, and the Post, but they hadn’t gotten a whiff of what we were up to. Fritz gave me an anchovy omelet with roasted tomatoes and fresh sourdough bread, cut thick and toasted. I got into the office about nine and started checking things on the computer. At ten I quit to start getting ready for the show, setting out all of the yellow chairs. We had thirteen invited guests—not a good number—and I was bet-ting that some of them would be showing up with lawyers, which could get the total close to twenty. At first I wasn’t sure we had that many chairs, but bringing in all the ones from the front room, plus a couple from the second floor got us up to snuff.

I set our guests to arrive in shifts. Harry got there first, at ten fif-teen, to help with logistics. With Cramer and Purley in attendance, there weren’t going to be any bodyguards in the house at all. The Mur-der 1 contingent, Mario Frank and Harris Smith, warranted a serious pat-down before they made it to the office, and I wanted plenty of help with that from someone I could trust. Phineas and all the girls showed at ten-thirty, and all five were wearing shades. I was looking at three grand in designer sunglasses, easy. I told them no sunglasses in Mr. Wolfe’s house, something I’d be saying a lot in the next half hour. Phineas had a couple of lawyers in tow, naturally. Getting a gang that large settled took some time. Phineas wanted the big red chair but I had to save that for Dykes. We had soft drinks and bottled water for those who wanted it, but nothing fancy.

Denzel Scott and Harriet Wertheimer, the Sony folks, showed at ten thirty-five, both tall and WASPy, despite the names, and both with those year-round tans you just can’t get out of a bottle. They had their lawyers with them, and they were WASPy too. I figured that it wouldn’t do to discriminate, so I gave all four a pat-down. I thought Harriet might object, but she didn’t. Mario and Harris came five mi-nutes later, with their lawyers. I guess Brioni is the thing for hip-hop moguls, because that’s what they were wearing, but they didn’t quite wear them the way Phineas did. They weren’t big, but they definitely had some attitude, attitude that wouldn’t be helped by taking a pat-down from a white guy, but it was my house, so I wasn’t going to back off. I gave them both a good going over, while Harry watched.

There were a lot of hard looks when Harry and I brought them in to meet the rest of the guests, but I’ve seen a lot of people in that office who didn’t want to be there and didn’t care for the company they had to keep, and I wasn’t worried. But I did leave Harry there to keep an eye on things when the doorbell rang one more time, at ten forty-five precisely. I went to the door and found Purley, Cramer, and Dykes waiting for me. I’ve got to hand it to Dykes. A lot of big shots might have tried to play it cute by arriving fashionably late, but not New York’s DA. The invite said quarter of eleven, and here he was.

I led them back to the office and gave Dykes the red chair. I had fifteen minutes to handle last-minute drink orders. One minute after I passed out the last Perrier I heard the elevator doors open. Everybody else must have been listening too, because all of a sudden the room got quiet. Wolfe walked in, carrying a spike of Cympridium grandiflorum with a half-dozen large, pink blossoms. What happened next hadn’t been scripted by anyone.

“Oh, Mr. Wolfe,” said Adelle, leaping to her feet. “You do have the prettiest flowers!”

“Sit down, Adelle,” said Jermaine, grabbing her by the arm.

“I was just saying,” said Adelle, taking her place.

Wolfe bowed gently in Adelle’s direction.

“You are too kind, Miss,” he said. “Good morning to you all. I ap-preciate your courtesy at arriving promptly at this unusual gathering.”

He made his way to his desk, where he carefully placed the spike in the vase before taking his chair. As he did so I put a bottle of beer and a glass on his desk.

“Thank you, Archie,” he said. “Now, let us get to business. This is a matter of extreme urgency and moment, and the sooner it is resolved the better for all of us—all of us except one, I suppose. First, I would like to ask Mr. Goodwin to introduce me to the myriad whom I do not know by sight.”

I made the introductions, though I needed help with all the lawyers, with just a little tightness in my gut. That “all of us except one” crack implied that we had a murderer in our midst. I couldn’t help but put my money on the Murder 1 boys, but if they were guilty they weren’t embarrassed about it.

“Very well,” said Wolfe, when I was done. “Now, perhaps Mr. Dykes, as the senior government official present, would like to make a statement.”

“I would,” Dykes said. “This proceeding is highly unorthodox, and I can only say that the less said about what goes on here, the better. This is Mr. Wolfe’s show. If you don’t like it, get out.”

Judging from the look on Dykes’ face, there was a hell of a lot more that he wanted to say, but didn’t. I knew he wanted like hell to have this case settled, right now, but he also wanted like hell for Wolfe not to get the credit for it.

“Consider yourselves warned,” said Wolfe, looking around the room. He paused to drink from his glass of beer, licking the foam from his lips as he always did.

“I must say that I have never seen such an array of lawyers in my life,” he continued. “No one is here under legal compulsion, but it is also fair to say that none of you is here by choice. But, regardless of the reason why, you are all here in my home under my sufferance. What I have to say is likely to strike one or more of the attorneys here as offensive or actionable. Feel free to bring suit against me at your convenience, but do not interrupt me. If you do interrupt me, you and your clients will be required to leave.”

Wolfe looked around the room to see if anyone had the nerve to confront him. No one did.

“Now, at last, to begin,” he said. “We are confronted by, first, the murder of Anita Watson, and, second, the murder of her assumed ac-complice, Peter Rogers. Miss Jermaine Campbell has, most unwisely, in my opinion, been charged with the murder of Miss Watson.

“Why do I say that? When I first met Jermaine Campbell, she ar-gued passionately on behalf of Miss Watson. Was it likely that she would wantonly kill the woman whom she regarded as a second, even a first mother? No. And yet, daughters do murder their mothers from time to time, given sufficient provocation, and occasionally a mother will return the favor. My sympathy for Miss Campbell’s position is not a product merely of sentiment, nor of cupidity, though Mr. Cramer would doubt me.”

Cramer gave a snort at this point, but evidently he’d taken an oath of silence, because he didn’t rise to the bait.

“No,” Wolfe continued. “What convinced me of her innocence was her extraordinary behavior upon her arrest—insisting that she did not commit the crime and yet refusing any explanation of why she was there or what had occurred. She seemed, in my opinion, to be daring first Mr. Cramer here to arrest her and daring Mr. Dykes to indict her. Both complied with her wishes.

“Let us attempt to make sense of the very little Miss Campbell has told us. Let us suppose Miss Campbell arrived at Miss Watson’s hotel room—never mind why—and found her dead body. Why would she not alert the police? Surely, because she thought she knew who had committed the murder—and, surely, that person could only be one of her sisters, for there is no one else for whom she would run such a risk, other than a lover, and I had no evidence that such a person existed. Mr. Goodwin had informed me to the contrary, and his judgment in these matters is usually to be trusted.”

Wolfe paused to drink from his beer. I glanced at Maureen and Adelle, to see how they were taking it. Wolfe had Adelle mesmerized; she was staring at him the way people stare at a television. Maureen was nervous, plus she had the Rogers connection, so I put a marker down on her and shifted my attention back to Wolfe.

“My curiosity had already been drawn to Maureen Campbell,” Wolfe said, “for a variety of reasons. I conducted an interview with her hairdresser, Tanya Abbott, who is here today.”

Tanya didn’t seem to care much for her new-found notoriety. She opened her purse, I think to go for her shades, but I caught her eye and she backed down. Wolfe kept talking.

“When I interviewed Miss Abbott,” he said, “she communicated to me her suspicion that, several years ago, Maureen Campbell had in-itiated an intimate relationship with Peter Rogers.”

“That’s a disgusting lie, Mr. Wolfe,” snapped Phineas. “You’re going to retract that right now.”

“My terms, Mr. Martínez,” said Wolfe, waggling a finger, “apply to you as well, though you are my client. We can end this matter right now, if that is your preference, and Jermaine Campbell will remain under indictment for murder.”

Phineas’ eyes were just about popping out of his head, and I’m not sure that mine weren’t as well. The thought of Wolfe walking away from a $6 million fee, and poor beautiful Jermaine going to trial, and possibly to jail—well, I didn’t like that. Just looking at her made me want to do something—anything—for her. Fortunately for my in-stincts, and Wolfe’s pocketbook, Phineas backed off.

“Continue,” he said.

“Thank you, Mr. Martínez. I know that concession cost you a good deal. I believe you will thank me in the end. To continue. Maureen Campbell had initiated an intimate relationship with Peter Rogers, a relationship that naturally ended when Mr. Rogers entered prison. My statements, so far, are coincident with the truth, are they not, Miss Campbell?”

Wolfe looked at Maureen.

“I’m not saying anything, Mr. Wolfe,” she said. “Besides, you told me not to.”

“Very well. About six months ago, Mr. Rogers was released from jail. Coincidentally, Mr. Martínez began negotiations for a new con-tract for these three young ladies at about the same time. Many of you are far more familiar with the path of these negotiations than I. Ac-cording to the information provided to those of us on the outside, Mr. Martínez found himself torn between the greater financial resources and social respectability of the Sony Corporation and the aura of vi-olence and authenticity surrounding the corporation known as ‘Murder 1.’ Ultimately, he began to incline to the former when the process of negotiation was interrupted by the murder of Anita Watson and the subsequent arrest and indictment of Jermaine Campbell.”

Wolfe paused to take another drink of beer.

“This sequence of events can serve as the basis for a variety of theories. We know that Anita Watson had approached Mr. Martínez, asking, in effect, for a renegotiation of her agreement. And she ac-knowledged that she wished to share some of the money with Mr. Rogers. Whether she stated this as some sort of implied threat or mere-ly out of honesty, we do not know. I was hired to resolve this matter, which disappeared of its own accord with the murder of Miss Watson, followed, only a few days later, by the murder of Mr. Rogers.

“Possibly, Mr. Rogers killed Miss Watson in a private quarrel, and then was killed in another, as Mr. Martínez has argued, in effect re-solving the matter. Mr. Rogers’ death, of course, is unsolved, but the death of a minor hoodlum is hardly front-page news.

“Perhaps that was the case. But I remained skeptical. There were a number of questions that remained unresolved in my mind. Only a few hours after I accepted the case, Miss Watson called Mr. Goodwin. How did she know of our involvement? If Maureen Campbell had re-sumed her relationship with Mr. Rogers, as Miss Abbott suspected, then the answer is obvious. But even if that were true, why this re-markable set of coincidences? Mr. Goodwin receives a call from Miss Watson. From his account of their conversation, Miss Watson was in a state of anticipation and confidence, rather than fear or panic. Yet a few hours later she was dead. Mr. Goodwin arrived to find Jermaine Campbell already present, and shortly thereafter the police arrived. Surely, this was choreographed. But how, and why?

Wolfe looked at Jermaine.

“Miss Campbell, I ask you, why did you go to that hotel room?”

“You don’t have to answer,” said Phineas, quickly.

“I, I received a call,” she said.

“From Miss Watson?”

“No, it was a man. Someone I’d never heard before. But he said, he said, ‘your sister’s in trouble. She’s in Anita’s hotel room with Peter Rogers. You’d better go over there.’ Something like that.”

“You had been there before.”

“Yes. She called me, a couple of days earlier. She had my private cell.”

“What was her demeanor on that visit?”

“She was glad to see me, but there was a lot of tension. When I went there I thought it would be fun seeing her. Then I realized how much things had changed. And I realized that Anita couldn’t have liked those changes. She looked so poor! Those cheap, cheap clothes. I was surprised she could afford the cell phone she had. It was a nice one—probably titanium. I wish I had given her—I don’t know, five million dollars, or something. But I didn’t. I said it was all up to Phi-neas. I didn’t know how Peter fit into things. I was worried about Maureen. I was mad at Anita, for bringing him back in. We still liked each other, but when I left I think we both knew how much things had changed. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see her again, not until Phineas had reached an agreement with her.”

“But when you received the call you went.”

“Yes, even though I wasn’t sure. After that call, I had to. I called her—I had her cell—but she didn’t answer.”

“Because she was already dead.”

“I suppose. I didn’t know. I was afraid for Maureen. When I got there, well, I was sure Maureen had done it.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I saw her mints right there—the ones from England. She always has them. I put them in my purse. Besides, Anita had threatened to tell Phineas about Maureen and Peter. At least, that’s how I took it. She said all sorts of things might come out. I was disappointed in her. She was probably disappointed in me.”

“You didn’t think that Rogers might have committed the murder, or someone else?”

“No! I knew it wasn’t Peter, because Anita never would have told him where she was. She was afraid of him!”

“So you fired the second shot.”

“Yes.”

“Into the ceiling.”

“Yes.”

“That was another detail that always distressed me. The random element is present in all human affairs, and in murder more than most, but it is pleasant to have it resolved. You did this to manufacture evi-dence that would lead the police away from your sister?”

“Yes. I had seen that, on TV.”

“No doubt. And you also assumed that, since you weren’t guilty, ultimately, you wouldn’t be convicted.”

“Yes.”

“You should be flattered, Mr. Dykes, to meet a citizen with such faith in the infallibility of our legal system.”

“I’ll take your compliments with a grain of salt, Mr. Wolfe. Ms. Campbell tells an excellent story, but the indictment still stands.”

“We shall see how long you continue in that disposition.”

One of the lawyers from Murder 1 spoke up.

“I never thought I would say this, but isn’t it obvious that Mr. Wolfe is correct? Peter Rogers was the odd man out here. Anita Wat-son was likely to get a crumb or two, but he was getting nothing. He murdered Watson in a fit of frustration and then lured Ms. Campbell to Anita Watson’s hotel room to pin the murder on her, destroying what he could not have.”

“Destroying what he could not have,” repeated Wolfe. “That is well put. Mr. Jamison, I believe?”

Mr. Jamison nodded, looking a little embarrassed.

“That certainly comports with what we know, or are encouraged to know, of Mr. Rogers’ character. There is no doubt that he was a vio-lent man, and quite capable of at least intending the destruction you describe.”

“And now he himself has been murdered, which surprises no one,” said Phineas. “Case closed. Mr. Dykes, I demand that you drop the indictment.”

“I agree entirely,” said one of the suits from Sony. “This whole sit-uation is intolerable.”

“Nuts!” said Cramer. He had been sitting on it for a long time and now he couldn’t take it any more. “Nuts! I’ve seen more murders than anyone in this room, and the number of times the murderer himself was dead I could count on one hand.”

I’ve got to hand it to him. There was plenty of top-drawer legal tal-ent in that room, but a cop is a cop, and Cramer glared them all down.

“I must share Inspector Cramer’s skepticism,” said Wolfe. “Matters were prettily arranged. As I said, I could easily imagine Mr. Rogers intending such a scheme. But for him to improvise so brilliantly in such a short space of time—I confess I did entertain it as a possibility, a possibility that I was reluctant to discard. But I had too little substance to confirm it. I knew of Mr. Rogers almost entirely by report. He was corrupt and dangerous, everyone said, but what had he actually done? There was a lack of detail that disturbed me. How did Mr. Rogers learn of Miss Watson’s call to Mr. Goodwin? How did he obtain Miss Campbell’s cell phone number? Where had he been staying and to where did he abscond after killing Miss Watson? I attempted to locate him through the services of Mr. Caldwell, and even that took several days. When we did obtain that information I went so far as to surreptitiously inform the police and they took no action. And then I heard nothing until I learned that Mr. Rogers was dead.”

“So you phoned that in,” snapped Cramer. “We went to that ad-dress, but Rogers was gone, if he had ever been there, which I doubt.”

“Perhaps we were gulled,” said Wolfe.

Cramer gave him a hard look, but Wolfe didn’t back down.

“Mr. Cramer suspects my veracity, but I am telling the truth. How-ever, if Mr. Rogers is to be our culprit, we must answer the questions I have raised. We have been told by both Tanya Abbott and Jermaine Campbell that Maureen Campbell had been involved with Peter Rog-ers. Are those statements correct, Miss Campbell?”

Wolfe looked at Maureen.

“Was,” she said.

“Meaning that you were involved with him before he went to pris-on.”

She nodded. I kept one eye on Phineas, who wasn’t liking this too much, even though he’d had a little time to get used to it, and even though it was beginning to look like the indictment against Jermaine could get dropped.

“But had you resumed your relationship, as both your sister and Miss Abbott had assumed?”

Maureen dropped her eyes, and then looked up.

“Why do I have to say anything?” she demanded.

“Why, indeed? You have just learned, if you had not already guessed, that your sister has risked her freedom, if not her life, on your behalf.”

“But you know he did it, and he’s dead, so it’s over,” she said. “You say you have all these questions, but who cares? It’s over. It’s done.”

“Not entirely, for I have left out the most intriguing question of all. The murderer, when he made the call to your sister, was confident that you were not in her presence. Is it not a fact that you disappeared, per-haps an hour before your sister received that call? That you disap-peared, in fact, in a manner that would ultimately encourage her to be-lieve that you were implicated in the murder of Anita Watson?”

Maureen went back to staring at the floor.

“Maureen, you better answer him,” said Jermaine.

“Indeed, Miss Campbell, you should,” said Wolfe. “Tell us the truth. You were, in fact, not with Peter Rogers, were you?”

Maureen shook her head.

“No,” said Wolfe. “You were not. You were with Mario Frank.”

Everyone’s head turned. Mario glared at us.

“That’s a goddamn lie,” he said. “This is a travesty.”

“Your response is hardly unreasonable, Mr. Frank, under the cir-cumstances. But I fear that the nets will quickly gather. Your plan was ingenious in the extreme. By provoking such a profound scandal, you could ensure that the Sony Corporation would be forced to drop the Campbell sisters. You knew that Mr. Martínez detested you, but his own ambition, and his ambition for the group, would ultimately force him to come to terms with you. It was you who provided Anita Watson with the encouragement, and the funding, needed to draw her to New York. Once there, she was able to exploit Jermaine Campbell’s affection for her to obtain some information on the progress of Mr. Martínez’ negotiations with Sony. Unfortunately, such information failed to provide your organization with an advantage sufficient to overcome Mr. Martínez’ repugnance for you and your works.”

“This is the sheerest speculation,” interrupted one of the lawyers with Frank and Harris. “And it’s treading dangerously on slander.”

“That question is easily settled,” said Wolfe.

He turned to Maureen.

“You were intimate with Mr. Frank, were you not?” he asked.

She burst into tears.

“You’re making it up!” she said, sobbing. “It didn’t happen that way at all! Not at all!”

There are times when I’ve thought that Wolfe, given the choice of letting a murderer walk or dealing with a woman in tears, would let the killer go, but with $6 million on the line he didn’t hesitate to be tough on himself and on Maureen.

“I’m afraid that it did happen that way, Miss Campbell,” he said, focusing his entire attention on her. “Miss Abbott, when discussing your prior involvement with Mr. Rogers, remarked on the charm of irresponsibility. Mr. Rogers, if he had any charm at all, was a sordid and unprepossessing figure. Mr. Frank, on the other hand, as the mer-est witling could observe, is the entire opposite.

“It was, of course, inevitable that you would meet. Mr. Martínez could not prevent that. But he could, as he surely did, forbid you to see him socially. And so you were presented with the same challenge once more. It was shrewd of you to take advantage of Mr. Roger’s recent release from prison to induce both Miss Abbott and your sister Jermaine to believe that you had resumed your relationship with Mr. Rogers.”

“No,” said Maureen. “No.”

“You will have to do better than that, Miss Campbell.”

“No.”

“Your recantation must wait for another time. But there are so many threads. The hotel room directly above Miss Watson’s, the one that was so conveniently vacated after her arrival. It was there, surely, that the real murderer awaited. It was Mr. Frank who brought Miss Watson to New York, and installed her in the hotel. It was he who gave her the cell phone that so caught Miss Campbell’s eye. It would not be impossible, I should imagine, to adjust a cell phone so that all its calls, whether incoming or outgoing, would be transmitted to a second device? Particularly an individual such as Mr. Frank, with easy access to individuals skilled in all aspects of aural electronics? Such an arrangement would allow this individual, whoever he was, to monitor Miss Watson’s activities with remarkable ease. How else could the crime have been managed? Miss Watson’s call to Mr. Goodwin was surely intercepted. Whatever it was she intended to discuss with him, Mr. Frank must have concluded that the risk was too high. Your im-provisation, sir—the murder of Miss Watson, the dispatch of Miss Campbell to the scene, the summoning of the police—was remarkably bold. We must also credit the unfortunate Mr. Rogers with the wit to recognize himself as the ultimate pawn in all these matters. He ma-naged to elude you for some time, although I don’t suppose you even intended to kill him until several days after Miss Campbell’s indict-ment, and perhaps not even then. But in his desperation he might have become dangerous.”

“This is all very pretty, Mr. Wolfe,” said one of the lawyers, “pretty ridiculous. You haven’t a shred of evidence. Where are these magical telephones?”

“At the bottom of the East River, undoubtedly, like so many in-structive objects. But there are other threads as well, many of them. The hundred-dollar bills with which a certain Miss Jones was so la-vish—their serial numbers are on record, are they not? I mean, with the disbursing bank.”

“Yes,” said Dykes, quickly. “Show me a hundred-dollar bill, and I can tell you what it had for breakfast.”

“That should supply an incontrovertible link. And then there is Miss Jones’ paramour, Mr. Allen, to consider. He has been associated with the discharge of firearms in his prior career, has he not? All the bullets associated with the deaths of Miss Watson and Mr. Rogers should be examined and compared with those collected in earlier investigations involving Mr. Allen. As I say, I think it unlikely that the cell phones can be obtained, but I may be wrong. The great danger that a cunning criminal like Mr. Frank runs in assigning actual murders to underlings is their unreliability. It is not impossible that either Mr. Allen or Miss Jones kept the phone.”

“You’ve got nothing,” said Frank.

“On the contrary, Mr. Frank, on the contrary. Your goose is cooked. It is Mr. Smith who still retains some freedom of decision. You can shed some light on these matters, can you not, Mr. Smith? Or do you wish your empire to be pulled down and destroyed by the wanton cor-ruption of your associate?”

Smith hesitated one second too long to respond.

“Tell him, damn it! Tell him!” Frank snapped. His eyes were blaz-ing.

“Don’t say anything! Either of you!” interrupted one of the lawyers.

Wolfe permitted himself a chuckle.

“In a world run by lawyers, only lawyers would speak,” he said. “Mr. Smith will speak, in his own good time. He knows something, and he knows he knows it, and he knows that it will be impossible to conceal it. The disbursal of cash, perhaps? Mr. Allen was surely well paid for his endeavors, and a large withdrawal, however disguised, cannot long be hidden from a businessman of Mr. Smith’s acumen.”

Wolfe turned his attention to Ben Dykes.

“What about it, Mr. Dykes?” he asked. “In your considered opinion, would it be in Mr. Smith’s interest to cooperate.”

“It would,” said Dykes, turning to look at Smith. “You’re a very smart man, Mr. Smith. We can give you what you want, and we can take it away.”

“You,” said Frank quietly, pointing a finger at Wolfe.

“Forget it, Mario,” said Smith. “It’s over. Your game’s over.”

He suddenly looked tired and cautious, a businessman at the end of a long day, a businessman who has decided to cut his losses.

“This meeting is over,” said another one of the lawyers. He had to be speaking for Smith. “You have nothing, Mr. Wolfe.”

Wolfe settled back in his chair and laced his fingers over his belly. He took in a bushel of air and then let it out.

“On the contrary,” he said, “I have everything. And you have a full plate. Mr. Dykes and Mr. Cramer will keep you hopping. I feel confi-dent that from this point on I can leave matters in their hands. Would you agree, Mr. Dykes?”

Dykes looked weary as well. He had the collar—the real collar—for the hottest murder in Manhattan’s history, and he was hating every minute of it.

“Mario Frank,” he said, standing up, “you are under arrest, for the murder of Anita Watson. You have a lawyer and surely you know that you have the right to remain silent.”

“Shut the f*ck up,” snarled Frank.

Now it was Dykes’ turn to laugh.

“Not much of a defense,” he said.

“Purley, put the cuffs on him,” said Cramer.

I was ready to jump, and Harry was too, but Frank wasn’t quite that dumb. Cramer and Purley took Frank and Smith downtown, Frank in cuffs and Smith walking free, and their lawyers trailing behind. Dykes stayed put in the red chair.

“I can’t release you now,” he told Jermaine. “Not until we have a solid case on paper. But you can relax.”

“Mr. Dykes, this is an absurd imposition,” said Phineas. “Absurd!”

“I agree, Mr. Martínez, and the people of New York apologize. But we cannot override the letter of the law. Miss Campbell is hardly sub-ject to any real duress.”

“Only this damn bracelet,” she said. “I ought to wear this in our next tour.”

“I would advise against that,” said Dykes. “In any event, that bracelet belongs to the City of New York.”

“You’re going to see one just like it in our next damn video,” Jer-maine continued.

“I like that!” said Phineas, suddenly enthusiastic, and probably grinning for the first time in at least a week. “That would be terrific!”

“You know it will be!” said Jermaine. “Come here, Maureen. I’ve got to kiss somebody!”

That got all three of them weeping, hugging, and kissing. Tanya managed to work her way into the group too, which showed me that she really was the kind of woman who could stay one step ahead of Phineas. Phineas himself stepped up and shook Wolfe’s hand. I think it may have been the first time that Wolfe was actually grateful for a handshake. Anything to divert his attention from four weeping, hug-ging, kissing women in his office. I escorted the DA to the door, trying to make a little conversation, but Dykes wasn’t interested. He had his BlackBerry in his hand, punching in information that he didn’t want me to see. When I got back Roberta looked a little lonesome, standing there all by herself, so I went over to talk to her.

“I guess this sort of thing doesn’t happen too often at Bryn Mar,” I said.

“No,” she laughed. “Your boss is quite a performer.”

“He’s almost as good as he thinks he is,” I said.

“I see. What about you, Mr. Goodwin? How do you measure up to your own opinion?”

I told her I’d give her a chance to find out if she felt like coming with me to the Flamingo Room. She said yes, which was something I’d been wanting to hear.

While we were talking Phineas was chewing the fat with the Sony folks, Denzel and Harriet. Their conversation probably meant that that $250 million was pretty safe, give or take $5 or $10 million. Harry was talking to Tanya, which might have been the start of the sharpest hair salon in Harlem. Phineas and the Sony folks shook hands all around, and then went over to have a word with Wolfe. When they were fi-nished I accompanied Denzel and Harriet to the door, with their law-yers, and on the way back I ran into Jermaine’s lawyers, so I showed them out too. When I got back to the office the girls were gathered around Wolfe.

“You did it, Mr. Wolfe!” said Jermaine. “I knew you would the moment I walked in the door. I smelled the chitterlings.”

“Tripe á la mode de Caen,” said Wolfe.

“Whatever! I knew you knew! That’s why I talked. Because I knew you were going to invite us to lunch, and I knew you wouldn’t do that if you were sending Maureen to jail.”

Wolfe pretended that he wasn’t enjoying it.

“Archie,” he said, “perhaps you would like to show our guests the orchids. I must apologize in advance for the poor condition of my greenhouse. Repairs are imminent, but have not yet begun. And after-wards you may all join Mr. Goodwin and myself for tripe, if such is your pleasure.”

So that’s how Wolfe financed new greenhouses for the roof. They’re so nice I’ve seen Theodore smile twice in a month. The one thing I still can’t figure is whether Wolfe told Fritz to prepare tripe for nine because he’d cracked the case or because he hadn’t. Because it wasn’t until Jermaine talked that the dominoes started falling, and she wouldn’t have talked if she hadn’t smelled chitterlings. So did Wolfe know, or did he not know? I didn’t know, but I did know this: if Wolfe had guessed wrong, we’d have been eating tripe for a week.

Fame Will Tell Chapter 4

2011-03-10T10:21:00.002-08:00

Even after eight hours of sleep, I think I was still digesting steak when I went down for breakfast. I told Fritz I wasn’t in the mood for anything too heavy. He gave me a glass of juice made from fresh ba-nanas, guavas, and limes, which Mary must have made the night be-fore. I drank my juice and started skimming the papers, which were going wild with Jermaine, of course, but if they had anything I didn’t know I didn’t see it. Dykes was playing it tight, as he always does, and Cramer was saying nothing. The Mayor said that justice would prevail, which it would, of course, but that was going to cost Martínez $6 million, although nobody knew it yet but him.

When I finished my juice Fritz poured me another glass. A minute later he brought me what he called shirred eggs opera style. I don’t know how to shir an egg, and I don’t know what chicken livers have to do with the opera, but I do know that they go together well with a glass of banana-guava-lime. I took my coffee into the office and ran through my emails and my phone mails. I was deleting with both hands, something I’m pretty good at, but it still took me half an hour to get through them, mostly because there were a few from Wolfe’s orchid-fancier pals that I actually had to read. After listening to the first five words of fifty phone messages, I returned one of them, to Lon Cohen at the Gazette.

“Archie!” he exclaimed. “You returned my call!”

“I always return your calls, Lon.”

“Archie, if you have got anything on this, anything at all, the sky’s the limit. Just name it.”

“Nothing right now,” I said. “But sit tight, and I mean absolutely tight, and I’ll have an exclusive for you.”

“Archie! Wolfe is on this, isn’t he? What’s the angle?”

“I said sit tight, didn’t I? I’ve never heard you so excited.”

“That’s because I’ve never been so excited. Archie, this trial is going to get more ink than OJ, and it’s happening right here.”

Sometimes Lon can get a little fierce. But the people have the right to know, don’t they?

“I’ll call you, Lon. The first thing.”

“Call me any time,” he said. “And that means three AM on a Satur-day night. It means four AM on a Saturday night. I don’t care. Just call me.”

“You got it,” I said.

That took care of Lon. When I finished with him I actually had some real work to do, entering plant records. I finished them off in less than an hour and then spent twenty minutes scanning the Internet. Nei-ther Jermaine nor Peter Rogers had confessed, so we were still in busi-ness.

I thought that now would be a good time to try to catch up with Roberta, and this time she was picking up.

“Archie!” she said. “I was so surprised to get your call.”

“Well, now that we’re both on the same team, I thought we ought to get to know each other better.”

She laughed.

“Is that how you put it? You are old-fashioned.”

“Very.”

She laughed again.

“I’m afraid, Mr. Goodwin, that, even though you and Mr. Wolfe are working for Mr. Martínez, he isn’t too fond of you.”

“I would definitely like an opportunity to change that.”

The third time around it was more of a giggle than a laugh.

“I’m not sure that that would be proper. Anyway, I’m tied up com-pletely for the next two nights.”

“Then we better think about the two after that.”

“No! I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

It was my turn to laugh.

“I’ll call you,” I said.

“Archie! No!”

That made me laugh some more.

“I’ll call you,” I said one more time.

So that was that. I was in a good mood, but wouldn’t be able to do anything about it for another two nights. I went back to the Internet for another ten minutes. Wolfe came down at eleven, with two tall spikes of Oncidium flexuosum.

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

“After that dinner last night I should have hibernated.”

Wolfe grunted. I watched as he arranged the orchids in the vase on his desk. Wolfe has grown several thousand varieties of orchids in his time, so that I can’t say that he has a favorite, but he is partial to Onci-dium flexuosums, because he loves yellow. He once complimented me on a tie, saying it was “Oncidium flexuosum yellow.”

He seated his seventh of a ton behind the desk and rang for beer.

“Has Saul reported?”

“No.”

“And I assume that Mr. Caldwell has not as well?”

“He hasn’t called.”

“And your infernal machine? It is silent?”

“Infernal machine” is his way of saying “computer.” He knows how damn useful they are, but he pretends he hates them.

“Nothing’s broken,” I said. “You can still earn that $6 million, if you step lively.”

“Pfui. Let Mr. Martínez simmer for a day or two. He will be less grudging once he realizes that he can expect succor from no source other than myself.”

Apparently, the thought of poor Jermaine cooped up in a brown-stone on the Upper East Side, weighed down with an ankle bracelet, didn’t bother him as much as it did me. Fritz arrived with the beer, which was what Wolfe was really waiting for. He opened the bottle with the gold bottle opener and put the cap in the front drawer of his desk. Then he poured the beer into the glass until the foam rose within a quarter inch of the rim. He drank carefully and licked the foam from his lips. Then he picked up F.P. Lock and started reading. I put on my earphones and listened to Norah Jones while I went through the bio of Tanya Abbott that Phineas had supplied one more time, trying to fig-ure out why Wolfe liked her. I wasn’t getting anywhere when the phone rang.

“Archie, it’s me.”

It was Saul.

“What have you got?” I asked.

“It’s good, but expensive. I’ve been talking with a former boyfriend of Tanya’s, Jerry Martin. He says he quit her when he decided she was using him as an errand boy for a little business in high-end tchotchkes.”

“That’s what he said.”

“No, that’s what I said. He said ‘high-end shit.’”

“Okay, what exactly did he mean?”

“The kind of knick-knacks a superstar collects on the circuit, only lots of it—cases of Krystal champagne, jewelry, electronics, designer dresses, handbags, shoes—you name it. All from Maureen, apparently, or almost all of it. He said he was with her for eight months and she cleared over $400,000.”

“That’s a lot of tchotchkes.”

“Yeah. Well, he said he got tired of being a strong back with empty pockets, and an empty bed.”

“This guy sounds terrific.”

“He came up with that one on his own.”

“Anything else?”

“What I got cost me a grand. He said he’d give up the number of Tanya’s private cell for five more. He says it’s her business line and she hasn’t changed it. I’m not sure I believe that. Also, I didn’t know if Wolfe wanted it that badly or if you’ve already got it. I can get him the cash in an hour if you want it.”

“I’ll check.”

I turned to Wolfe.

“Saul,” I said. “He’s been talking with Tanya’s ex. She’s been run-ning a business under Phineas’ nose, selling superstar freebies on some sort of gray market. About $400,000 in eight months, according to the ex. For five grand we can have the number to her private cell. Do you want to talk to Tanya without going through Phineas?”

Wolfe grunted.

“How much has Saul paid this man so far?”

“Just a grand.”

“Under the circumstances, that sounds advisable. Even if Miss Ab-bott has discarded the number, which would have been prudent, the confidence of this individual appears worth maintaining.”

“It’s a go,” I told Saul.

“Did you know about this?” I asked Wolfe, after hanging up on Saul.

“I? Indeed not.”

So he was going to play it that way. I went on the Internet and checked through the twenty-five emails that had accumulated since I had checked last. There were two worth keeping, both from orchid growers. Otherwise, nothing. I ran a search on Maureen, not thinking I would find anything, but I couldn’t be sure. Anything that would help push that incipient smirk off Wolfe’s face was worth having.

For lunch Fritz treated us to pot au feu, lamb brain fritters, and ce-lery knob and beet salad, with mango sorbet accompanied by maca-damia nut shortbread for dessert. Wolfe started in on Burke’s notion of the British constitution with the soup and didn’t let up. Most of it was directed more at George Bush than me, and I didn’t object. How could I? Even 9/11 couldn’t make Republicans really feel sorry for New York. I know Wolfe wished that George could be there, but if he had been I don’t think he would have listened. But I bet he would have enjoyed the fritters. Lamb brains are getting harder and harder to find, and when Fritz gets his hands on some good ones he does them right.

Wolfe had enough to say about the British constitution, not to men-tion the limiting but intriguing parallels between the French Revolution and the reaction to it and modern times, that we barely got back in the office before two-thirty. I checked the phone mail and there was a message from Saul, giving us Tanya’s cell. We agreed that I would handle the call, with Wolfe listening in. I dialed her number and got a quick reaction.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Miss Abbott. This is Archie Goodwin. I work for Nero Wolfe. Is this a good time for you to talk?”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” she said. “I’ll call you right back.”

“I would appreciate that,” I said, quickly, “because, you know, Miss Abbott, Mr. Wolfe has been hired by Mr. Martínez to solve the murder of Anita Watson.”

“Really? Well, I will call you right back.”

Her phone clicked. I turned to Wolfe.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“An acute young woman,” he said, “but then that was already established. I doubt that she thinks she can elude us, but no doubt she wishes to be more sure of her ground.”

He glanced at the clock.

“If she calls back immediately, insist that she come here as soon as possible. Suggest that compliance will bring leniency.”

“Will it?”

“Quite possibly. Unless she herself is the murderer, of course.”

If Wolfe had more to say, he didn’t get a chance, because the phone rang. I picked it up, putting it on speaker as I did so.

“Mr. Goodwin?”

“Yes, this is Mr. Goodwin, Miss Abbott. Thanks for calling me back so quickly. As I just said, Mr. Wolfe has been hired to find the person who murdered Anita Watson. We’ve been talking with a gentleman named Jerry Martin, and your name came up.”

“I see.”

“Yes, and Mr. Wolfe feels that you might be able to shed some light on all of this. Naturally, in this sort of investigation we like to be as discreet as possible. For example, we don’t believe that Mr. Martínez needs to know about this.”

“Well, aren’t you a clever fellow, Mr. Goodwin! And I suppose Mr. Wolfe is pretty clever too.”

“He has that reputation.”

“Yes.”

“We were hoping that it might be possible for you to come by here this evening, say eight-thirty or nine.”

“That’s awfully early for me, Mr. Goodwin. What about ten-thirty?”

Wolfe nodded.

“That would be fine,” I said, and I gave her the address.

“She could be playing us,” I said after I hung up, “but she sounded straight.”

“It might be advisable to ascertain the state of Mr. Martin’s health just prior to her arrival,” said Wolfe. “You felt it appropriate to reveal our source?”

“Dropping Jerry’s name let her know we’ve got the goods on her. If she’s smart enough to con Phineas Martínez she’s smart enough to know that killing Jerry Martin would be the stupidest thing she could do.”

“Perhaps. But attributing rationality to even the most cunning crim-inal mind is always an unwarrantable assumption.”

“You think she’s good for it, don’t you?”

“On the contrary, I am a decided skeptic. But the possibility exists, and a murderer threatened with exposure will not be constrained by the bonds of common sense.”

“You want me to call Saul and see if he can keep an eye on Jerry?”

“I think that would be judicious.”

I called Saul, who told me he would have a good man on Jerry in fifteen minutes and would keep us posted. That seemed to satisfy Wolfe, because he rang for beer and picked up F. P. Locke. I was get-ting tired of sitting on my fanny, so I told Wolfe I was going for a walk. What I really felt like doing was visiting Jermaine. I could con-sole her for being under arrest, and also I could smell her perfume. I felt it was unfair that I was defending her but couldn’t be near her. Of course, Wolfe had said that I shouldn’t be alone with any of the three sisters, which I knew was an awfully good rule, but I couldn’t help wanting to break it. I was heading east on Thirty-Fifth Street into a pretty brisk wind. I had on a topcoat and hat, with my hands in my pockets, but it was a damn cold November that year and the sky was overcast—not good weather for walking. I took out my cell and called the security chief at the Hotel Pennsylvania. He wasn’t that happy to hear from me, but we both agreed that having a little chat might be worthwhile. I flagged a cab on Seventh and headed downtown.

I met my friend at a coffee shop a block from the hotel. He wasn’t any happier to see me than he was to hear me, so I picked up the tab for the coffee.

“They’re blaming me, Archie,” he said.

“You didn’t rent Anita Watson a room,” I said. “And you didn’t tell anyone where she was staying, did you?”

“You know it’s not like that,” he said. “If it happened on your watch, it’s your fault.”

“So what did happen?”

“She checked in a week before the murder. She paid with cash, which we don’t like, and said she didn’t want her presence at the hotel confirmed. If someone called and asked for Anita Watson, staff were to say that there was no one registered with that name. She said she was having trouble with an ex-boy friend.”

“Maybe she was right.”

“Maybe. She didn’t get any calls, and she didn’t make any. She had a cell.”

“Smart,” I said. “These days, everybody’s smart.”

“It’s the damn TV. I wish we could do half the stuff they say we can do.”

“Right. What did the cops talk to you about?”

He looked at me.

“Cramer called me. He said not to talk to you.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. I can tell you this: Wolfe says that Jer-maine is innocent. If he pulls it off, it’s going to be huge.”

“So I’m supposed to want in on it?”

“You’re a man of discretion. Use it.”

“Yeah. They asked a lot about Jermaine, of course, how she could have gotten in without anyone seeing her.”

“How did she get in?”

“In a cheap coat, a scarf, and cheap sunglasses. The coat made her look fat, and I guess she kept her head down. She didn’t ask anyone for information.”

“Did anyone see her come in?”

“No. The outfit was in the room.”

“The odds are at least a hundred to one that she got a call,” I said. “But unless Cramer is holding it back, she hasn’t said from whom.”

“It was a set-up, Archie. Anita Watson called you because someone told her to.”

“I’m not sure. There are too many pieces floating around. Me, Jer-maine, Anita, and whoever pulled the trigger. Maybe Anita’s call to me was on the level, and someone jumped on it. Someone like Peter Rogers.”

“You think he’s good for it?”

“Everyone says he’s bad. Anita trusted him, or least she had trusted him. She probably would have let him in. If she thought I might get cute, she might have wanted him there. Did the cops even ask about Rogers?”

“Yeah, but they kept it quiet. They had a photo that they showed around, but they didn’t use his name. Somebody else could have been in that room. But if the cops found anything to prove it, they kept it under their hat.”

“If they did, I can’t see Cramer charging Jermaine.”

He nodded.

“Anyway, no one on our staff spotted him, that I can tell. I mean, we aren’t Tiffany’s. We get lots of people, and lots of different kinds of people.”

“I’m not complaining, I’m just asking. Listen. What about the rooms next to Anita’s. And the ones above and below. Who stayed there? What I really mean is, did anyone disappear?”

“The room above hers was vacant. All the adjoining rooms were checked out. Everyone was identified and cleared.”

“The room above was vacant for the whole week?”

“Yes. It was cleared two days before Anita arrived. Three girls from Ohio said the air was bad. Something about the heating unit or the blower. There’s a work order on it.”

“Did the cops interview the girls?”

“No. They left three days before the murder.”

“Did that work order get executed?”

“Yes. It’s been occupied since yesterday.”

“But it was unoccupied the whole time Anita was there.”

“Yes.”

“Can you get me names and phone numbers of the girls from Ohio?”

“Is this important?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the girls will tell me.”

“OK, I’ll get it for you. I’ve got to get back. Let me know if you hear anything.”

I said I would, but I probably wouldn’t until I’d heard everything. I wasn’t expecting much from the girls but when I report back to Wolfe I like to have an answer to every question he could ask, and I didn’t have an answer to this one. I took a walk up Seventh. The wind had died down and the sun had come out, so I decided to spend a little shoe leather and hiked it back to the brownstone instead of taking a cab. My head was clearer but not any smarter than when I left. I took off my hat and coat and went into the kitchen to talk with Fritz. I sat on a stool and drank a glass of milk while I watched him prepare five pounds of lamb’s neck for pâté. It was nice lamb’s neck and Fritz was in a good mood.

“Did you get these with the brains?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said, slicing a carrot. “Such fine lamb! Mr. Harris is to be congratulated. Mr. Wolfe will be pleased. We have not had pâté d’ agneau in more than a year.”

Fritz always goes to Mr. Harris for lamb. I don’t know how he gets fresh lamb in November—fresh lamb that will meet Fritz’s standards—but he does. He will do slaughter to order for special clients, which isn’t cheap, but if you want lamb’s brains, he’s your man. Fritz put the carrot in a pot with the lamb’s neck and then sliced an onion and added that as well. He added thyme, and coriander, and fennel, and black peppercorns, and then poured in about three cups of olive oil. When he was done he put a lid on the pot and put it in the oven.

“Will those young women be coming back?” he asked, turning away from me.

“Probably not,” I said. “At least, not until Mr. Wolfe is ready to solve the case. He feels they’re a distraction.”

Fritz didn’t say anything to that. I went into the office and started deleting emails and phone messages. When Jermaine Campbell has been indicted for murder and it’s known that she was in Wolfe’s of-fice, reporters can’t resist calling every two hours. When it broke that Wolfe was on the case for real, they’d be calling every minute. Fortu-nately, Martínez was keeping a lid on it.

While I was deleting emails I got one, from the Hotel Pennsylvania. It gave names for three women, but only one phone number, in San-dusky. I called and got an answering machine. The second girl said her name was Mary Richards, which might have been a joke, but since the third girl was not named Rhoda Morgenstern, I took a chance and worked my way through three M. Richards before I found one who had been to the Hotel Pennsylvania.

“Hello, Ms. Richards,” I said, trying to sound efficient. “This is Ha-rold Roberts with the Hotel Pennsylvania. I’m just calling to find out how you felt about your stay in our hotel.”

“Well, it was fine,” she said, sounding a little cautious, as though they might have broken something, or thought they had.

“What about the heating unit?” I said. “I understand there was some problem with that, I mean, in the first room you had.”

“Well, that was what you said.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Unless I’m reading this wrong, someone in your suite complained about an odor.”

“An odor!” She laughed. “No, that wasn’t it. Someone at the desk said there might be a problem with carbon monoxide. That’s why they moved us. I think you got some bad information.”

“It certainly sounds like it,” I said. “I’m glad I called. We really need to keep better records. Well, how was the second room?”

“Fine. I mean, it was a room.”

“Of course. And the next time you’re in New York, we certainly hope you’ll join us at the Hotel Pennsylvania again.”

“Yeah, sure.”

From the way she said it, she must have figured me for a corporate drudge, but I didn’t care. The way they were telling it, the girls had been moved. And why would they lie?

I finished the rest of the emails and did a little dusting. I was wish-ing Roberta hadn’t been so specific about being busy for two days, but she had been, so I called Fred Durkin and asked if he was up for a little eight-ball later that evening, and he was. Fred was about as far from Bryn Mawr as you could get, but he was still good company.

Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at six.

“I talked with my friend at the Pennsylvania,” told him, once he got settled. “There’s no evidence that anyone was in that room with Anita other than Jermaine.”

“If there had been, I doubt that Mr. Dykes would have been so pre-sumptuous as to indict Miss Campbell.”

“Yeah. I think she rubbed him, and Cramer, the wrong way. She called their bluff and they were stuck with it.”

“And so was she.”

“Yeah. But my friend doesn’t know everything that goes on at the hotel, or if he does, he isn’t telling me.”

I filled Wolfe in on what Mary Richards had to say.

“Intriguing,” he said, when I was done. “You have turned up a crumb, Archie.”

“A crumb?” I said.

“A clue, if you prefer. A substantive.”

“Okay. If someone was in that room and he clipped a toenail, or blew his nose, the cops could finger him. I mean, if they had his DNA. Which they might, if he’d done time.”

Wolfe made a face. Having the cops solve the case for us wasn’t the way he liked to do things.

“Has the room been vacant the entire time?”

“No. Someone moved in yesterday.”

“Then DNA evidence, presuming that it were obtainable, would still not be conclusive.”

“Suppose it’s Peter Rogers’ toenail?”

Wolfe made another face.

“Inform Sergeant Stebbins,” he said.

Purley never likes to hear my voice, but he will take my calls, unless Cramer tells him not to. I put the phone on speaker and dialed.

“Sgt. Stebbins,” he answered.

“Purley,” I said, “have you got a minute?”

“No.”

He listened anyway and patched me through to Cramer, who wasn’t pleased.

“What is it?” he snapped.

I told him.

“So Wolfe wants us to do his legwork for him, is that it?”

“If you don’t cover that angle, it’s going to come up at trial.”

“Are you threatening me, Goodwin?”

“I’m not telling you anything you don’t know yourself.”

He knew I was right, of course, and that only made him madder. He made a suggestion about what I could do with my advice, and what Wolfe could do with his, and hung up.

“That man,” said Wolfe, coldly, “possesses honor, but not compe-tence. He staggers from one banality to the next.”

“He’ll check it out,” I said. “He’ll have to.”

“No doubt.”

“So what do we do?”

“Wait, for the time being.”

He rang for beer and picked up Mr. Lock. He couldn’t get enough of Burke. Ten minutes later we sat down to tomato bouillon, followed by duck with turnips, accompanied by artichokes stuffed with toma-toes. Duck with turnips is a dish that Wolfe likes to eat slowly, which meant that I heard even more than I might have expected about Burke and the American Revolution, and the plight of a patriot striving to do his duty to his country in the midst of an unjust and an unwise war. I think Wolfe was quoting, or else he was just beginning to talk like Burke. He made a lot of comparisons between Britain and the U.S. during the Vietnam War, saying that Senator Eugene McCarthy might have been a Burke without his moment, which led to a long discussion of what we would think of Burke if he had died before the French Revolution, or of Winston Churchill if he had died before the Second World War. I was thinking that none of this was helping us catch Anita Watson’s murderer, but it’s one of Wolfe’s rules never to discuss business over dinner, and rules are rules.

Fritz had bread pudding with apricot sauce for dessert, but I took a pass, figuring I needed at least two hours to win enough money from Fred to make the trip to Eddie’s worth my while. Eddie has a little basement place not too far from Times Square. It’s hard to find, which is something Eddie likes, for a variety of reasons. I’m not supposed to notice some of the things that go on there, but it’s the one place I know in Mid-Town where you won’t meet a tourist or, even worse, a college graduate. Fred was on a roll for the first hour, up by fifty, but I closed towards the end and finished down by a five-spot. I figured that wasn’t much to pay to get away from Edmund Burke for a couple of hours. I left around ten so I could get back to the office in time to prepare for Tanya. I flagged a cab and had just given the driver the brownstone’s address when my cell gave me a buzz. I took it out and answered.

“Archie Goodwin.”

“Archie, it’s me. I’ve got your boy spotted.”

“That’s good. Where is he?”

“Not too far from my old place. He’s laying low, and he’s got people looking for him.”

“Any line on that?”

“The kind of people you’d hire for a job. No line on who’s hiring.”

“Okay. Stay on him. I guess you just earned those short ribs.”

Harry chuckled.

“Tell Mr. Wolfe I’ll be around to collect. Say, does the name Mi-randa Jones mean anything to you?”

“No. Why?”

“Miranda’s sister sent her $90,000 in money orders from ten post offices around Harlem over the past few days. Paid for with brand-new C-notes. Miranda got the cash in Miami. She used to spend time with a feller named Gene Allen.”

“Sorry. I don’t know Miranda, and I don’t know Gene.”

“Well, I know him. He’s tried to take me out a couple of times over the years. I never could prove a damn thing, so I keep an eye out for him. He’s a free-lance son of a bitch, and he’d definitely pull the trig-ger if the price was right.”

“Is he looking for Rogers?”

“I haven’t heard that. I’ll ask around.”

“Sounds good.”

I clicked my cell shut and settled back. Peter Rogers was sticking and he was in a jam. It was a good bet that things had gone south for him, but how? I was guessing that he hadn’t killed Anita, that he and Anita had been the victim of a double-cross of some sort, but why was he staying in Harlem, especially with people looking for him? It was hard to see how he could still expect to make some cash out of this. Of course, he might have been hanging around to prevent someone from pinning the rap for Anita’s death on him, but he didn’t sound like he was in a position to do much threatening. I still hadn’t gotten it sorted out in my mind when I reached the brownstone. When I got in I found that Wolfe had finished with Lock and had started in on Burke and India, by someone named Frederick Whelan. So I wasn’t finished with Edmund.

“I got a call from Harry,” I said. “Peter Rogers is about a hundred blocks north of here, lying low, with men looking for him.”

“I am not surprised. Poor Mr. Rogers is learning how little honor there is among thieves. I wonder if he is capable of profiting from the lesson.”

“Yeah. Harry mentioned a couple of other names—Miranda Jones and Gene Allen. Gene is some sort of hit man that Harry doesn’t care for. Miranda’s his girl, or she was, and it looks like Gene just got paid for something. Miranda’s sister had $90,000 in fresh hundred-dollar bills.”

“Is there anything to link them to this matter?”

“Nothing so far. Harry would like to see Gene in the slammer.”

“Pfui. I seek culprits, not scapegoats.”

“Yeah. Should I call Purley about this one too?”

“Yes. Perhaps we can oblige Mr. Caldwell gratis in this matter.”

I called. Purley was about as excited to hear about Miranda Jones as he had been to hear about Mary Richards, but he did tell me that they’d put a man on it. I hung up and turned to Wolfe.

“Is there anything you want to go over before Tanya arrives?” I asked.

“No. I am content to trust to the moment.”

I sat at my desk and deleted a few emails. Wolfe was acting like he had something, but he was always so full of bluff—acting like he had something when he didn’t, acting like he was empty when he had the whole case right in the palm of his hand—that I didn’t even bother to try to read him. Trusting the moment looked pretty good to me too.

The doorbell rang. When I answered it, Tanya Abbott was looking pretty good too—what Lily likes to call sass and class—New York and LA. The belted full-length camelhair she was wearing couldn’t have come cheap.

“So nice to meet you at last, Mr. Goodwin,” she said, as though she meant it. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

She had a soft, elegant voice. I helped her off with the camelhair. The white silk double-breasted pant suit she had on underneath proba-bly wasn’t from Macy’s. The deep vee of the jacket showed nothing but warm brown skin, and up close it looked very, very warm. I was up to my eyeballs in beautiful young women and couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“I’ll take you to see Mr. Wolfe,” I said.

“Good evening, Miss Abbott,” said Wolfe, when we arrived. “You will forgive me if I remain seated.”

“Of course, Mr. Wolfe.”

Tanya sat in the big red chair in front of Wolfe’s desk as though she owned it, and crossed her legs gracefully. She gave Wolfe a big smile, then turned and gave me one too. I realized, as I should have before, that she was used to handling egos.

“Now, Mr. Wolfe, what can I do for you?”

There wasn’t anything in her manner to indicate that we had her in a pretty tight corner.

“You are Maureen Campbell’s hairdresser?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And is that all you do?”

Tanya laughed.

“I guess it doesn’t sound like much to you, Mr. Wolfe. Maybe I’m being presumptuous, but I don’t think you know very much about show business.”

“Perhaps not,” Wolfe conceded. “How long have you known that Miss Campbell and Peter Rogers were lovers?”

Tanya laughed. It was a good laugh, but not perfect.

“What a thing to say, Mr. Wolfe! What would make you think that?”

“A number of things. You were not present in this office several days ago, Miss Abbott, when Mr. Martínez and the three Campbell sisters came here to seek my assistance. During that discussion, the name of Mr. Rogers came up, as one would have expected. I was sur-prised at the vigor with which Miss Jermaine Campbell seized control of the conversation. I also observed a certain discomfort on the part of Maureen Campbell. She was the only one of the three to say nothing throughout the visit.”

“Maureen is the quiet one.”

“Perhaps. But, in my perception at least, it was her nervous inges-tion of water at the first mention of Mr. Rogers’ name that prompted Jermaine Campbell to wax so eloquent.”

“‘Wax so eloquent.’ You are rather eloquent yourself, Mr. Wolfe.”

“Thank you. I am fond of words. I strive always to treat them with respect. But to continue. This observation, trivial in itself, might have meant nothing. But now Miss Jermaine Campbell finds herself charged with murder, and I would say it was half her own doing.”

“Well, I know she’s innocent. It’s the police who are so damn stu-pid they can’t find the real criminal so they pin it on a black woman. They just want to get on TV. It’s like OJ all over again.”

“I should hope not, though when the American system of celebrity and the American system of justice collide, it is almost always the lat-ter that is destroyed. Let me acquaint you with my reasoning on this matter, Miss Abbott. Miss Campbell found herself in an extremely compromising situation. One might have expected her to do everything she could to extricate herself. Instead, she did everything, short of a full confession, to implicate herself. She proclaimed her innocence but refused to provide any explanation of her actions whatsoever, essen-tially daring the police not to arrest her. Of course, she was arrested, and now she has been indicted. Her behavior could have been the re-sult of either panic or guilt, but I have been doubtful. From my brief conversation with Miss Campbell, I formed the opinion that she was a shrewd and resourceful woman, with something to hide. I wondered if that something might involve her sister Maureen.

“At first it was difficult to obtain information. I had the files that Mr. Martínez had provided, which, on the one hand were thorough, yet on the other had surely been ‘scrubbed,’ to use the expression currently in favor with those paid to deceive us—I refer to our so-called intelligence agencies—of any information that Mr. Martínez felt I ought not to know. I supplemented Mr. Martínez’s files with a variety of exuberantly tawdry publications that Mr. Goodwin was kind enough to obtain for me. I discovered, Miss Abbott, a surprising discontinuity. It seems that you are a genuine celebrity in your own right.”

Tanya laughed.

“Me! I don’t think so, Mr. Wolfe. Of course, there’s gossip con-nected with everyone involved with Black PussyCat. People like to go on about hair. You know that. Mr. Martínez is very careful about keep-ing the spotlight on his stars. He’s just doing his job.”

“Perhaps. But I must remark upon your rings, Miss Abbott. I pre-sume you are a collector.”

“Well, I do like jewelry.”

“Indeed. That stone in the ring you wear on the middle finger of your left hand is most distinctive. Egyptian, is it not?”

“Well, I’m glad I’m not trying to fool you, Mr. Wolfe, because it would be no good to try. I’m fond of ancient Egyptian pieces. I was able to buy this through a gentleman I know at the Cairo museum. It’s about four thousand years old. It’s not really that valuable, but I do love it.”

“Would you allow me to examine it more closely?”

“Sure, if you like.”

Tanya took off the ring and handed to Wolfe. The stone was large and black, with an engraving. Wolfe studied it through his magnifying glass.

“Onyx, Archie,” he said to me. “Not of great value, though very striking. The ankh, of course, is ubiquitous in Egyptian art. I cannot vouch for its antiquity.”

“Well, I can,” Tanya said. “I had it examined by seven experts. There’s a lot of fakes out there, Mr. Wolfe.”

“There are indeed, Miss Abbott. But without them I would be com-pelled either to forego my extravagant tastes or else support them through more arduous endeavor. So let us not condemn the baseness of our species out of hand.”

“Why are you interested in my ring, Mr. Wolfe?”

“An excellent question. Because I have seen it before—three times, in fact, in photographs supplied by Mr. Martínez, taken at various premieres and other events that feature Maureen Campbell and her sis-ters or Miss Campbell with Mr. Martínez. I believe I also observed your ring in two videos. Always your ring, but never yourself. I was able to obtain other photographs that allowed me to identify you as the wearer of the ring. And so it was clear to me that these photographs and videos had been cropped and edited to remove your image. As you are no doubt thoroughly aware, Mr. Martínez is a man who prefers to have things his way.”

“He’s a control freak.”

“As you wish. My review was not exhaustive, but I do not believe that the image of any other person was so scrupulously removed from the material submitted to me by Mr. Martínez. In my investigations, Miss Abbott, I am always particularly interested to know the things that other people do not wish me to know. And so, Miss Abbott, if you would be so kind, please tell me what Mr. Martínez does not want me to know about you.”

With that, Wolfe leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers over his stomach, and closed his eyes.

“Well, look at you,” Tanya laughed. “You’re just like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, aren’t you? But I don’t suppose you’ll turn into a butterfly, no matter how long I wait. Well, I will tell you, Mr. Wolfe, but not because I want to. To hear a secret, I want you to keep a secret. You know the one I mean.”

“I do not reveal secrets unnecessarily, Miss Abbott. I demand pri-vacy for myself and respect it in others. It would seem that it is almost as urgent for you that this mystery be resolved as it is for Mr. Martínez.”

“Then I guess I would be doing him a favor if I told you, wouldn’t I? Well, it isn’t that much of a mystery. Maureen does trust me. Being a hairdresser for a young woman can be a very intimate relationship, Mr. Wolfe. You would be surprised.”

“Everything about young women is a surprise to me, Miss Abbott. In such matters I am a perpetual tyro.”

She laughed.

“A tyro. I guess I’m not supposed to know what that is, and I don’t. Well, Mr. Tyro, it was my job, and it’s still my job, to keep an eye on Maureen and keep her out of trouble. You know, I don’t think you like Phineas very much, and there are times when I don’t like him either, but he is a very smart man. He doesn’t want to know everything Maureen does. It’s my job to see that, whatever she does, it won’t be serious. That isn’t easy. When Maureen was fifteen the girls would split a can of soup three ways for dinner. Now she’s twenty-three. She’s rich, she’s beautiful, she’s famous. There isn’t much a girl like that won’t try, especially when a man’s involved.”

“Peter Rogers.”

“Yes, Mr. Wolfe, Peter Rogers, a goddamn son of a bitch, if you want my opinion. A man like that is nothing but trouble, and that’s what a young girl wants. I mean, Maureen was the quiet one. Jermaine was the leader. Adelle was the baby. Maureen had to do something. I don’t which is worse, a man or drugs. I talked with Peter when it started. I told him I would let it happen if there were no drugs. I knew Phineas hated Peter, but that didn’t matter. I would let Maureen have her little game if there were no drugs. Peter wanted money, of course. A man like that always wants money. So I gave him some. And I kept some for myself. I was doing a job, Mr. Wolfe. A job that Phineas needed done, and that no one else could do. I was close to Maureen in a way that no one else can be. You don’t know how much a young woman needs her hairdresser.”

Tanya stopped and laughed.

“No,” she continued, “you don’t know. When a woman has a lover, when she has a secret lover, she has to have her hair perfect. She will worry about that hair, and worry about it. You just can’t get it right enough to please her. So I knew Maureen, and her moods. I knew eve-rything she was up to. I never said. She never had to know how much I knew, because she never had to ask for help. I was always ahead of her. Peter was a habit with her, her big secret, but after two years, she wasn’t the same girl any more. She was more than a girl. I could see that, too. She wasn’t ready to leave him. But she was ready for some-thing more, and Peter just didn’t have that much control over her. He didn’t give her money. She gave him money. She had all the money, all the everything. He was just a poor boy acting bad. She was starting to see that. She had all kinds of men wanting her. She’d done Peter. He was like an old doll she’d grown up with. She was getting ready to trade him in.”

Tanya paused.

“You can guess that Peter didn’t like that. But there wasn’t much he could do. Peter Rogers was small-time. The more he pushed, the more tired she got. She had bodyguards. She had money. There was nothing he could do.”

“Then her involvement with Mr. Rogers was at an end?”

“Yes. She didn’t need him, and he couldn’t get to her. And then he was dumb enough to get himself thrown in jail. I don’t know if Phi-neas planned it that way, but it worked out that way, which was just as good.”

“But, then, upon his release, Mr. Rogers apparently reacquainted himself with Ms. Watson and together they decided to reopen Ms. Watson’s agreement with Mr. Martínez.”

“Yes, I don’t know how that happened. Maybe Anita had gotten herself in trouble. I don’t know. Or maybe it was just the money. I’m sure Phineas cut her off without a penny. The figures they were throw-ing around—a hundred million, two hundred million. She used to drive all night to get the girls to a gig and make their breakfasts when they got there. I guess you don’t forget something like that.”

“I imagine not. But you never informed Mr. Martínez of the rela-tionship between Maureen Campbell and Mr. Rogers, even after it had ended?”

“No. Phineas had a real thing about Peter. I’m not sure he would have forgiven me for letting it happen. Phineas likes to think that he isn’t vindictive, but he is.”

“In any event, you would have a reluctance to do anything that would prompt Mr. Martínez to subject your activities to a greater scru-tiny than they have received in the past, would you not?”

“That’s not a nice way to put it, Mr. Wolfe.”

“Perhaps not. But with Mr. Martínez’s empire threatened with col-lapse, an empire that provides you with all your sustenance, some sa-crifices must be made. Would you agree?”

“Well, if telling Phineas, and the police, about Maureen and Peter means that she’ll be arrested, what’s the point? I mean, it may make the police look stupid, but is that all you want?”

“No, I do not. I must warn you, Ms. Abbott, that this clandestine relationship will almost undoubtedly be revealed, and its revelation, when it occurs, will surely prompt Mr. Martínez to regard you in a less favorable light. You must be prepared for that eventuality.”

Tanya smiled.

“I could have guessed that, Mr. Wolfe. I had a good time being Maureen’s big sister, but it’s time to move on. I should have my own business.”

“Of course.”

“I suppose Phineas is paying you a great deal of money for all this.”

“He will be, presuming that I resolve the matter in compliance with the terms of our agreement.”

“Yes. So I don’t suppose there’s anything that I could offer that would encourage you to keep my name out of all this? I mean, does Phineas have to know that I talked with you?”

Wolfe raised his shoulders a quarter of an inch and then let them drop.

“I do not consider myself compelled to inform Mr. Martínez of eve-rything I have done. If he asks me point blank I should hardly deny it. In any event, such a denial would do little but prompt suspicion. You know the cards you hold, and you are aware of those held by Mr. Martínez. I suggest you play them accordingly.”

Tanya rose from the chair.

“Thank you, Mr. Wolfe,” she said, extending a hand.

Wolfe rose as well. He was not one for standing or for shaking hands, but he had to stand up anyway if he was going to get to bed that night, and Tanya had put him on the spot. He shook her hand and I escorted her to the door. Her perfume was warm and spicy again. She looked straight ahead as she walked, but there was a mischievous glint in her eye. There was something about being so close to Tanya that was making me forget about Bryn Mawr.

“Maybe when this is all over we could get to know each other a lit-tle better,” I said. “Is the Flamingo too old-fashioned for you?”

“The Flamingo is but you aren’t,” she said, with a laugh. “We’ll see, Mr. Goodwin. I’m not sure Phineas will want me in New York when this is all over. Have you ever been to Vegas in the Spring?”

She turned around and kissed me, hard. A gentleman doesn’t like to be impolite and, anyway, as soon as our lips met I realized I was in the mood for a hard kiss. At the same time, I realized that, though it had never come up, of the fourteen thousand and one things Wolfe disap-proved of, one of the top ten had to be two consenting adults consent-ing in his front hallway. I consented pretty good for about a minute but then I had to put the brakes on.

“Sorry,” I said, “you’re not the only one with a tough boss.”

She backed off, not much, and her eyes were shining.

“You’re not bad for a white boy,” she said. “Keep in touch.”

I helped her with the camelhair and opened the door.

“Good night, Archie,” she said, giving me a big smile.

I watched her walk to her silver Audi Sportster and slip inside. Her lights flashed as she swung the car around and headed back to Mid-town. I walked back to the office. Wolfe was still on his feet, examin-ing the globe, running his finger along the San Andreas Fault.

“A very shrewd woman, Ms. Abbott,” he said, as I reappeared.

“Shrewd isn’t the half of it,” I said.

“No doubt. Perhaps it is unnecessary, but I extend my ban on asso-ciation to include her person.”

“Phineas was one stop ahead of you. You two are taking all the fun out of the detective business. Do we tell Phineas what we know, enough to get Maureen in here alone?”

“Confound it! If only that were desirable. No doubt, if he were without any choice, Mr. Martínez would prefer to sacrifice Maureen Campbell to preserve the career of her sister, but he would only do so with the greatest reluctance. This case contains a thousand fragments. It can only be assembled with a single gesture, and I am not in a posi-tion to make one. We must wait upon events.”

“Mr. Martínez won’t like that.”

“Perhaps not. But each passing day will make him more grateful for my services once they are rendered. Good night, Archie. I trust you will sleep well.”

Fame Will Tell Chapter 3

2011-03-10T10:21:00.001-08:00

Harry Caldwell is a black dick that Wolfe likes to use when busi-ness takes us north of 101st Street. We pay Harry $90 an hour, $10 less than Saul’s rate, which Harry thinks is unfair, but he never turns us down. Harry likes Wolfe’s style. He has a nice house on West 128th Street, with fewer books but more TVs, and more stereos. Harry doesn’t do orchids, but he does do girls. He’s a booking agent when he isn’t a detective, and he always seems to have a few would-be ac-tresses or models or singers living with him. Harry doesn’t have a chef yet but he does have a nice arrangement with the rib joint across the street. Like me, Harry likes to conduct as much of his business as possible on foot. He says that Wolfe has the right idea about eating but the wrong idea about walking. He says that walking is one of the two things that keeps a man young.

I told Fritz over breakfast that Harry was coming, but of course he already knew that, because he and Wolfe had spent an hour the night before going over the menu, which was not going to be vegetarian. Harry is one of the few guests that Fritz actually likes, because Harry loves food, and not quite in the same way that Wolfe or Fritz does. Harry loves the look of food, not just the taste of it. The sight of a first-rate steak will bring tears to his eyes. He spent several years work-ing in the kitchen at Charlie’s on 125th Street, and he knows something about meat. When I heard the menu Fritz and Wolfe had lined up, I held myself to three of Fritz’s raised-yeast flannel cakes. Fritz makes the batter the night before, so the cakes practically float off the pan. He serves them with a cognac-flavored apple compote and applewood-smoked bacon sliced extra thick.

I had plenty of reading material that morning, because the papers were fit to explode with news over Anita Watson’s murder, not to mention Jermaine’s continued incarceration. Even the Times gave the story half the front page, while the Post, the News, and the Gazette couldn’t write about anything else. Since I had been there, I didn’t learn much that I didn’t know already, except that two shots had been fired, the one that had taken out Anita and a second that went through the ceiling.

All three papers had a picture of me coming out of the cooler look-ing like something that had washed up on the Jersey marshes. I hadn’t shaved, my face was swollen, and my suit was a mess.

“Look at you, Archie,” said Fritz, pointing with his spatula. “They should not print such things.”

“Mr. Wolfe will be pleased,” I said. “We may be suing the police.”

“This is a big case, isn’t it, Archie? The tournedos Rossini. I had planned a nice coq en pâté, because I know that is your favorite, but Mr. Wolfe insisted on the change.”

I’m not sure why Fritz has decided that coq en pâté—which is a chicken in pastry—is my favorite dish, but he has. A tournedo Rossini, if that’s a word, is a thick slice of beef filet served with goose liver and truffles, and if Wolfe was serving them to Harry Caldwell, you can bet he felt he had that $6 million in the bag. And if I ever felt that Wolfe was biting off more than even he could chew, it was now.

“Don’t count your coqs just yet,” I told Fritz, taking a last mouthful of coffee. “I’ve been riding him about the greenhouse, and he thinks this case is going to buy him a new one.”

Fritz didn’t say anything, but I could tell his feelings were hurt. He doesn’t like to hear about Wolfe spending money “up there.” It’s a matter of priorities with him. No one ever ate an orchid, after all.

I took a fresh cup of coffee with me when I went into the office. After a night in the slammer I could have used some extra sack time, but instead I’d been playing pool with Harry. I drank the coffee and ran through my emails and then the Gazette online to see if anything had broken. It hadn’t. Cramer was playing it tough with Jermaine, not granting interviews, and Ben Dykes in the DA’s office was the same way. Since the news on the web was half an hour old I switched on CNN and got a glimpse of Mayor Bloomberg fighting his way through a crowd of reporters, looking like he’d rather be smoking a cigarette. Holding a beautiful young black woman, one of the hottest pop stars in the world, for murder in the media capital of the universe was worse than a three-pack a day habit.

I switched off the sound and listened to my voice mails. I’ve gener-ally built up an arrangement with reporters over the years. They know not to call me. When I’ve got news, I’ll call them. But all bets were off on this one. I skimmed through about sixty messages. I hate to waste time that way but every once in a while you’ll get a call out of nowhere that you want to take. This wasn’t one of those whiles, however. I took me a good hour and a half to work through the electronic slush pile that had accumulated while I spent one night in the cooler. When I was done I finally started in on plant records and I had a ways to go when I heard the whirr of Wolfe’s elevator.

“Good morning, Archie,” he said, as always. “I hope you slept well.”

“You better believe it,” I said. “There’s no window like one without bars.”

Wolfe nodded as he adjusted the double Pleione speciosa in the vase on his desk. When he was finished he seated himself behind his desk.

“It is many years since I have endured confinement,” he said. “At that time it was my most fervent hope that I would know no prison again except the grave, and I continue in that sentiment. I apologize to you that your services to me brought you to this.”

“Forget it. It comes with the territory. If I were afraid of a night in the jug Cramer would own me.”

“Your bravado is touching. Let us hope that we will be able to show the inspector that the arm of the law, though mighty, is not invulnera-ble. I trust that Mr. Caldwell was amenable to my invitation?”

“He was ready to start last night. You know he’d never pass up one of Fritz’s dinners, plus he’s already got it figured that you’re working on Anita’s murder. I asked him if he’d ever heard of Peter Rogers, and he said no but he made a few calls while we were playing eight-ball. I’m guessing he’ll have something for us tonight.”

“Satisfactory. If all goes well we shall reach an agreement with Mr. Martínez this afternoon.”

After that he seemed to feel that he’d done enough work for one day, because he picked up his biography of Edmund Burke and started turning pages. When I finished the plant records I took Mr. Martínez’s brief case out of the safe, where Wolfe had stowed it, and started doing a little reading myself. Mr. Martínez, I have to say, was a very thorough, and very cautious, man. He had long dossiers on both Peter Rogers and Anita Watson that some fancy PI firm in Los Angeles had put together. I wish I could say some unkind things about the job they had done, but I couldn’t. When I finished reading the dossiers I knew plenty. The only thing I didn’t know was whether Peter had killed Anita.

When I finished with dossiers I started in on a series of files that Martínez had put together on “Antigua Enterprises,” which is what he called his own outfit. Antigua Enterprises claimed that it offered “unique and comprehensive client services covering the entire range of the entertainment industry.” Whether that was true or not, I don’t know, but Antigua did own Black PussyCat’s contract, which was bet-ter than gold. There were glossies of all the girls, shots of Martínez shaking hands with famous people, and a DVD. I put all of that aside and concentrated on the personnel files. As I say, Mr. Martínez was very thorough, and very cautious. An act like Black PussyCat requires a lot of talented people to make it work—musicians, choreographers, makeup artists, sound and lighting technicians, just to name a few—the kind of people who like to work hard and play hard. I could tell that if you worked for Mr. Martínez you did a lot more of the former than the latter. He kept a sharp eye on his people, and he must have had a string of private dicks watching them. He had photos and bios on close to three dozen people, with all their peculiarities noted. I’ve spent a lot of time poking my nose into other people’s business, and I’ve gotten used to the fact that none of us behave ourselves all the time, but going through that bundle of bios still made me feel a little creepy. I was glad I didn’t work for Phineas.

“This guy doesn’t trust his help, does he?” I asked Wolfe, when I was finished.

He was drinking beer, of course. Landing a big case put him in a good mood, and if hadn’t landed this one he thought he had, so he was celebrating. When Wolfe was in a good mood, he celebrated by drinking beer. When he was in a bad one he cheered himself up by drinking beer. So either way you cut it, there was no way he could keep himself under ten bottles a day.

“There are few compulsions less attractive than the compulsion to view the compulsions of others,” he said. “It is the disorder that made J. Edgar Hoover so formidable.”

“You sound like you’d like to hang this one on Phineas himself.”

“I could conceive of Mr. Martínez ordering a murder, but not com-mitting one. Still, there is a strand in his makeup that, however calcu-lating, is relentlessly law-abiding. Pfui. The contemporary entertain-ment industry, as it likes to call itself, is the intersection of vanity and avarice, two qualities guaranteed to reveal the human psyche in its most lurid hues.”

“You would prefer the company of Mr. Burke.”

“No. I consume the advantages of modern times too voraciously to condemn them. I acknowledge the ideal yet embrace the reality. I pre-fer a New York that does not reek of horse urine and dung, however polluted its airwaves.”

At that point Fritz summoned us for lunch, oxtail soup and oyster croquettes, with a tomato salad and strawberries and pineapple for des-sert. I could tell that Wolfe was expecting the dinner with Harry to be quite a feed. He only ate ten croquettes, and he’s usually good for twenty. Wolfe gave me a break from Edmund Burke and talked about popular entertainment instead, which was close to talking about busi-ness, but he kept it general. He said it was only natural for adolescents to determine the content of popular culture because they had the de-sires of adulthood without knowledge of its limitations, and what did popular culture offer but the illusion of a world without limitations to desire? I guess he must have known more about Madonna than I thought he did, but I didn’t press it.

We were back in the office when Parker arrived with the contract. Wolfe took out his Mont Blanc and started going through it, which let me go back to CNN, which had half a dozen high-priced lawyers spin-ning theories about what Cramer was up to. My theory was that he had a wolf by the ears and was afraid to let go. If Cramer let her walk and she was innocent he was a goddamn fool for locking her up in the first place, and if he let her walk and she was guilty he was a goddamn fool for letting her go. He made his call and he was stuck with it. The hear-ing for bail was at three, which was sure to be the biggest media circus ever. On the one hand, I couldn’t imagine a judge tough enough to keep Jermaine Campbell in the slam, but on the other hand I couldn’t imagine a judge who would let a murderer walk. They give you a hun-dred and twenty grand a year and a black robe, and they let you hang yourself.

When Wolfe was done rewriting the contract Parker had a look at it and said Wolfe’s revisions were “elegant,” which was probably going to cost Wolfe another grand or two. But what’s a couple of thousand bucks when you’re making six million? Wolfe was already smelling the orchids, but I wasn’t so sure.

Parker had emailed me a copy of the contract before he arrived, so I made Wolfe’s changes and ran out copies for both of them. When they were satisfied I dialed Martínez on his cell.

“Mr. Martínez,” I said, “this is Archie Goodwin. I have Mr. Wolfe on the line.”

“Wolfe! What does he want?”

“I think he should explain that himself.”

“You’re goddamned right he should.”

“Mr. Martínez,” said Wolfe. “I fear our last conversation ended ra-ther abruptly.”

“Mr. Wolfe,” said Martínez. All of a sudden Wolfe was his favorite person in the world. “I presume that you have reconsidered your posi-tion.”

“I have changed it,” said Wolfe, dryly. “I have a new proposal for your consideration.”

“I’m very pressed for time right now, Mr. Wolfe, as you can im-agine. Can this wait?”

“I think it would be in your interest, and that of Miss Campbell, to resolve this matter as quickly as possible. In brief, I am proposing that you engage me to provide conclusive evidence as to the guilt of an in-dividual other than Miss Campbell for the killing of Anita Watson.”

“Do you have such evidence now?”

“I do not. However, I am confident that I can obtain it.”

There was a pause.

“How much is this going to cost me?”

“An excellent question. My terms are as follows: if, as a result of my efforts, all charges arising from the death of Anita Watson are dropped against Miss Jermaine Campbell, you will pay the sum of $6 million.”

I’ll give it to Martínez. He didn’t squawk at the price. But he didn’t fold, either.

“That’s a substantial sum, Mr. Wolfe. It’s quite possible that no charges will be filed against Jermaine.”

“In that case, you would have no need of my services.”

“No. But suppose the police identify the real murderer? Am I sup-posed to pay you $6 million?”

“You may trust to the competence of Mr. Cramer and his minions if you so desire, Mr. Martínez, though previously you did not speak highly of them. Miss Campbell will be arraigned in a few hours. I can transmit my proposed contract to your attorneys immediately, for you to consider at your leisure.”

“My leisure. You sound sure of yourself, Mr. Wolfe. That’s good business. You’re smart, but I’m not sure you’re worth it.”

“Then I suggest that you make up your mind soon. I suspect that the judge’s ruling this afternoon will provide a suitable inducement.”

There was another pause. It was probably my imagination, but I could have sworn that I heard Martínez grinding his teeth.

“I’ll get back to you, Mr. Wolfe. I appreciate your interest.”

“Thank you, Mr. Martínez,” said Wolfe. “I appreciate your courtesy. Please understand that the terms of the proposed contract that I am submitting to you are not negotiable. You are, of course, entirely free to reject the contract, but if you accept you must do so without emen-dation.”

“You can propose anything you like, Mr. Wolfe. How I respond is my business.”

“Very well. Please inform Miss Campbell of my concern for her comfort and safety.”

“I will do that. Goodbye, Mr. Wolfe.”

“Goodbye.”

I pushed the disconnect button on the speaker phone and turned to my computer.

“Are we ready to transmit?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Wolfe.

I sent the file in a special read-only format with a unique watermark so they couldn’t monkey with it and waited for a confirmation.

“They’ve got it,” I said. “Now all we can do is hope the judge doesn’t let her walk.”

“Whether Miss Campbell remains in confinement is immaterial. She will be charged, and Mr. Martínez will have no alternative but to seek my assistance.”

I didn’t know whom he was bluffing, me or Martínez, but I had to call him on it.

“You know who killed Anita Watson.”

“I do not. I have surmises. They are all trivial, all but one. Jermaine Campbell is innocent of the murder.”

I nodded. I was glad he was sure, because I wasn’t. I couldn’t be objective about Jermaine—no man could—but Wolfe had a better shot at it than I did.

I phoned the office of Martínez’s lawyers to make sure they got the contract and could handle the file. Wolfe went back to Edmund Burke and I went back to Martínez’s brief case. I took out the DVD and put it in my computer. What I saw was a serious ego trip—the life of Phi-neas Martínez as told by Phineas Martínez. Actually, he’d hired James Earl Jones to read the script, which gives you an idea of what Phineas thought of himself. There were shots of Phineas hanging with Beoncé, with Bill, with Arnold, with Quincy Jones, with Berry Gordy, with David Geffen, with Puff Daddy, and a couple of dozen other people that I guess I should have known, but didn’t. When I finished with that I checked in with CNN to see what was happening at the courthouse. I actually felt sorry for Cramer when I saw him working his way through the screaming mob that lined the steps. What he was doing I wouldn’t do for ten times his salary. The judge had banned cameras from the arraignment, which was reasonable enough, considering that if they had held it in Yankee Stadium they still wouldn’t have room for the crowd who wanted to get in.

I watched for about twenty minutes and then gave up. Watching blow-dried legal experts trying to fill dead air was not going to get Jermaine off the hook. Wolfe was convinced that she was innocent, but why? She’d been holding the gun when I came in. There was resi-due on her hand. Other than claiming that she was innocent, she had clammed up completely, refusing to say how she had known that Anita was at the Marriott or why she had come to Anita’s room. Asking my-self why Wolfe was so sure she hadn’t pulled the trigger was a waste of time. I needed to go back over the information Martínez had given us. I was half way through the bios when the phone rang.

“Nero Wolfe’s office. Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“This is Phineas Martínez. You may tell Mr. Wolfe that I’m ready to sign.”

“That’s excellent news, Mr. Martínez. Just to be sure of things, as I recall, Mr. Wolfe specified that you were to agree to the contract with-out emendation.”

“I am a man of my word, Mr. Goodwin.”

“Of course. But you will sign the contract that Mr. Wolfe submitted to you, without any change.”

There was a pause.

“Yes, Mr. Goodwin.”

“Very good. I’ll tell Mr. Wolfe immediately.”

“You do that.”

He hung up.

“Martínez,” I told Wolfe. “We’re in. He’s not happy about it, but we’re in.”

“How could he be? His star is accused of murder, and it will cost him $6 million to remove this onus from her career.”

“Yeah. Now that we’ve got a client, have you got any instruc-tions?”

“Yes. Contact Saul. Mr. Martínez and his enterprise arrived in New York two weeks ago, and it was at that time that the late Miss Watson approached him with her renewed demands for compensation. I wish Saul to obtain all the information he can on the activities of Tanya Ab-bott during that time. Under no circumstances is he to divulge his con-nection with either myself or Mr. Martínez.”

“Couldn’t I do that?”

“Of course you could, but not as well as Saul.”

I snorted.

“So what am I supposed to do, sit on my fanny?”

“I apologize, Archie. Although my statement may stand on its me-rits, I needlessly provoked your amour propre. Your recent incarcera-tion, linked as it was with that of Miss Campbell, has made your person too widely known for researches of such a delicate nature. In any case, Saul has a unique finesse for such matters.”

My amour propre was still provoked, but I was damned if I’d let him see it.

“You want a full tail?”

“At this time, no. If Saul’s suspicions are aroused, he should call and I will make a decision. Now you will excuse me. It is time for my plants.”

With that he rose and headed for the elevator. I started sorting through the pile of photos and papers on my desk, looking for Tanya. I recognized her name—she was Maureen’s hair dresser—but why Wolfe thought she was hot I couldn’t tell you.

Two hours later, I still couldn’t tell you. I spent an hour reading everything I could find on both Tanya and Maureen, and there was nothing. When I was finished I put a call through to Roberta Culbert-son, but all I got was her voice mail. I switched on CNN to catch up on the arraignment. Jermaine was out on bail, for a cool $5 million, with an ankle bracelet, confined to a townhouse on the Upper East Side that some record executive had been kind enough to lend her. Dykes had backed Cramer up all the way at the hearing and the judge had gone along. Dykes had said he wanted her held without bail, but I had to believe that was just hardball. Having Jermaine cooped up on the Upper East Side was a lot better publicity for the city than having her cooped up on Rykers.

I was happy that Jermaine was out, and I was even happier that we were working for her. About a quarter to six the doorbell rang. When I went to the door there was a messenger waiting, with a signed copy of the contract. I took it back to my desk and looked through it to make sure that it was a print copy of the file I sent. Fussy, I know, but com-puters make it so easy to alter things, and while Phineas may have been a man of his word, I had the hunch that you were better off if you made sure of exactly what it was he said.

“Phineas signed,” I told Wolfe when he came down from the orc-hids. “Without emendation. And Jermaine is out on bail.”

He went to the chair behind his desk and adjusted his seventh of a ton. When he was comfortable he leaned back and drew in about a bu-shel of air.

“Satisfactory,” he said, on the exhale. “Transmit a copy of the doc-ument to Mr. Parker for his immediate perusal. I intend to earn this fee, and I intend to receive it without dickering, deceit, or delay.”

“You do trust him, don’t you?”

“Mr. Martínez has gotten where he is where he is by getting others to pay him millions, not the reverse.”

I had the feeling that Wolfe had something more to say about Phi-neas, not likely to be complimentary, but the doorbell cut him off. I got erect.

“That will be Harry,” I said.

Wolfe grunted, and picked up F.P. Locke.

I went to the door. Harry likes to come a little early because he likes to see the meat he’s going to eat before it’s cooked. There’s something about the sight of a good, raw steak that makes him happy. It’s some-thing Fritz appreciates. “Mr. Caldwell understands food,” he told me once. I’ve been eating it all my life, but I guess I don’t understand it the way Harry does.

“Hey, Archie! Nice suit! You never do give the women a break, do you?”

That’s Harry. Big talker, and smooth talker. I took his 44 extra-long cashmere overcoat and hung it on the rack, along with his silk scarf.

“I try not to,” I said.

He laughed.

“Did you tell Fritz I’d be hungry?”

“I think he knows it.”

“I hope so.”

He inhaled deeply.

“Man, smells good already! A man could stay happy in this house just breathing!”

I took Harry around to the kitchen. He could meet Wolfe later. Right now he had filets to look at.

“Mr. Caldwell,” said Fritz, when we came in. “So good to see you. This is my assistant, Miss Mak.”

“Just gorgeous,” said Harry, giving Mary a big smile.

Mary turned and waved, very quickly. She was in front of the smaller range, working with a big skillet and a large saucepan.

“Mary is busy,” said Fritz, crisply. Having Harry and me in the kitchen with Mary wasn’t quite as bad as having me in there alone, but it was enough to make Fritz jumpy.

“Let’s see some meat,” said Harry.

Fritz smiled and took us over to the cutting board. He removed a large sheet of butcher’s paper with a flourish. There were five nice fi-lets and three porterhouse steaks. Each piece was at least two inches thick and two of the steaks weighed two pounds each. I always tell Fritz to keep mine at one pound. Meat that sweet shouldn’t be eaten just to fill you up.

“You get these from Weinstein’s?” Harry asked.

Fritz nodded.

“Mr. Weinstein has such a fine eye. With beef I trust him before I trust myself.”

Harry grinned.

“That’s the truth,” he said. “That’s the truth. That is just beautiful. Aged four months, I bet.”

“Of course.”

“That is just beautiful. I’d almost rather look at them than eat them. Almost! Well, I don’t want to be messing with a man when he’s in his kitchen. We’d better say hello to Mr. Wolfe. Mary, it was awful sweet meeting you.”

We went back out the hallway.

“That is sweet,” said Harry, “having a sweet gal like that cooking for you.”

I didn’t say anything. The best way for me to lose my job was to cause trouble with Fritz. Mary was sweet, all right, but she wasn’t quite that sweet.

We went into the office.

“Mr. Caldwell,” said Wolfe, looking up from his book. “I hope your visit to my kitchen reassured you.”

“Now, Mr. Wolfe, you know I didn’t need any reassurance. I love a good kitchen, and you’ve got the best.”

Wolfe smiled.

“The best is never an extravagance,” he said. “Perfection is never obtainable, but what pleasure can compare with its pursuit?”

“You’re telling me. That’s some fine-looking steak in there.”

“Indeed. Would you care for a drink, Mr. Caldwell?”

“Just a little bourbon would do me fine.”

I got Harry two fingers of Wild Turkey over some ice and a beer for Wolfe. He doesn’t like to bother Fritz when we’re getting close to din-ner time. I had a little Wild Turkey myself, just to be sociable, but I added water. I’m just not tough enough to drink it neat.

“Now, Mr. Wolfe,” said Harry, “Archie told me you’re looking for a fellow named Peter Rogers.”

“I am,” said Wolfe.

“Well, it turns out that Mr. Rogers is a very interesting fellow. As soon as I started asking about him, people started asking about me. Then I learn that this Peter Rogers had been hooked up with a woman named Anita Watson. All of a sudden I find out I’m working on the biggest, blackest murder in New York history. You know, Mr. Wolfe, I’m the kind of a guy who can take the rough with the smooth, and who doesn’t get too greedy. But I’m guessing that you’re working for this fellow Phineas Martínez. Is that a fact?”

“It is.”

“You must be charging him a tight price.”

“I’m charging him nothing unless I perform.”

“People talk, Mr. Wolfe, people talk. Now, Archie, here, is a very sharp detective, I must say, but he doesn’t travel too well. I mean, when he’s traveling north of 101st Street. So I wonder if I shouldn’t be talking to Mr. Martínez myself.”

“A plausible supposition, Mr. Caldwell.”

Harry grinned.

“A ‘supposition.’ That’s like a ‘supposin’, I guess.”

“It is indeed.”

“The problem is, I can’t eat a man’s steak and then walk out on him. And those steaks Fritz showed me, I don’t think I can turn them down. I’m letting my belly make up my mind for me, and that ain’t good business.”

“Perhaps I should provide a more continuing inducement to both. Agree to function as an independent contractor for this affair and I will extend a monthly invitation to dine with me for the next twelve months. I believe you have never enjoyed Fritz’s short ribs braised with beer and buckwheat honey. With Fritz’s coleslaw and French-fried onion rings?”

Harry didn’t just grin this time. He laughed.

“Short ribs fixed with beer and buckwheat honey! I guess you want to see a man eat himself to death.”

“Indeed not. I prefer you as an ally, not a victim.”

Harry laughed some more and finished his whiskey.

“I think you got yourself a deal, Mr. Wolfe. I’ll tell you what I know about Peter Rogers. He was in Harlem until Anita Watson was murdered, definitely, and he probably still is, but he’s made himself awful scarce. He knows some hard people. I figure if he is in the city, something’s keeping him here. He and Anita were looking for a sweet score, and now he figures he can get it on his own. Mr. Martínez would love to hang Anita’s murder on Peter, wouldn’t he?”

“He would.”

“And a man with a rap sheet like Peter’s would make an awfully nice fall guy. So why’s he sticking?”

“Allow me to propose another supposition—that Mr. Rogers is guilty of the murder. If so, it is possible that someone can provide evi-dence of his guilt. Mr. Rogers may feel that he must remain close in order to ensure that this person does not do so. He finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. Violence might be dangerous, because it could draw attention away from Jermaine and towards himself. But, given both his nature and his circumstances, he will not adjure it entirely. And so he lingers.”

“That fits, especially if there’s money involved, and he can’t get his hands on it.”

Wolfe was about to say something more, when Fritz summoned us to dinner. We began with very young Guinea hens, served with cognac and black cherry sauce. Fritz makes the final touches at the table, carv-ing the hens and igniting them with the cognac in a chafing dish. Harry loved this.

“When I was a cook,” he said, “I had to bust my ass just to make food taste good. If I was lucky, I could make it look good too. But this is presentation! It takes a real chef to do this!”

Fritz was imperturbable, of course. A chef, when he’s presenting, acknowledges compliments impersonally. To actually appear gratified or pleased would be too personal—unprofessional. But I was sure he was pleased. Fritz only really listens to people who know food. Harry doesn’t know cuisine, but he does know food.

Then we got down to business. I won’t say that Harry was in a hur-ry to get to the steak, but he didn’t eat that Guinea hen so much as he inhaled it. “Sweet, sweet, sweet,” was all he said when it was going down.

With the Guinea hens gone, it was time for the tornedoes Rossini.

“What’s that on the top?” asked Harry.

“Goose liver and truffles,” said Fritz.

“If you say so.”

I guess Harry didn’t mind, because he ate that first filet almost as fast as he ate the Guinea hen.

“Best tornado I ever et,” he said. “Never ate goose liver before, at least, not on purpose, but Fritz can make me eat anything, and make me like it.”

With the first tornedo down, Harry was ready to talk a little, mostly about real estate.

“Never thought I’d see the day,” he said, “white folks moving into Harlem. Hell, we’ll let them in, but they’re going to pay for it. White folks beat dope dealers any day.”

Harry was rehabbing a couple of brownstones on 120th and 2nd.

“I hate to say it, but real estate beats just about anything. When you’re a private dick you got to worry if some damn fool is going to blow your head off. Now all I got to worry about is rats and rain. Where’s the man who can build a perfect roof? That’s what I want, one you can just slap on a building and it won’t leak. You got yourself a roof, you got yourself a house. Just get rid of the damn rats, and you’re in business. White folks hate rats. I’ve never seen a rat I couldn’t whip, but white folks can’t handle them.”

Wolfe could have talked a little about roofs and rehab himself, but he kept his mouth shut. If he started in on that, one thing would lead to another, and pretty soon Harry would start asking why he should be running around Harlem looking for a thug like Peter Rogers for $90 an hour while Wolfe was being paid $6 million to sit on his fanny and read about Edmund Burke. So we talked about patterns of residence and the diminishing significance of race.

“Money beats race, that’s for sure,” said Harry. “I never thought I’d live to see the day. Didn’t think there would be such a day. Didn’t even imagine it. But it’s coming. My man Clinton did that. Changed the subject entirely. Black and white’s going. Everything’s all mixed together now, if you’ve got the cash. Not even cash. A man with a roll is a damn hick, a city hick. Plastic’s the thing—plastic and an uptown rep. Harlem’s getting uptown. The folks that are getting left behind don’t like it. I understand, but I ain’t going to be one of them.”

After we finished off the tornedoes it was time for a change of pace, although I don’t think that lobster Albert would qualify as “cleansing the palate.” Harry knew enough not to call it “surf and turf.” He just said “sweet.” Eating lobster in the shell got Wolfe started on the physiology of the arthropods, and the architecture of life, which I’d heard him talk about more than once. Shellfish would do that to him—lobsters, crabs, even oysters—it didn’t matter. Harry just listened.

We’d already eaten more than most people eat in a day, but when Fritz and Mary brought out the steaks, with potatoes noisette and roasted vegetables, it seemed like we were just getting started. We fi-nished with coffee and cognac. Fritz offered us fruit and cheese but he didn’t have any takers. It was close to ten when we made it back to the office. Wolfe was a little antsy about putting a full-time tail on Rogers the minute we found him, which convinced me that Wolfe really didn’t know who had killed Anita. If Rogers was sticking, Wolfe figured, he must have a good reason, and he wouldn’t leave absent a “precipitous development”—which I figured meant another body. I was set to hang this on Rogers, but I figured everyone else was too, and that made me wonder. I knew bad things about the guy, but I’d never met him, so how did I know he was guilty? Eating a big dinner, even with Harry Caldwell, wasn’t doing much to catch Anita’s killer or get Jermaine off the hook. I went to bed that night thinking that I would be getting up early in the morning.

Fame Will Tell Chapter 2

2011-03-10T10:19:00.000-08:00

I nodded, but felt that I could wait until after lunch before heading over to the Upper East Side to look at a bunch of books. Since Wolfe was all locked up in Lord North’s cabinet, I decided to pay Fritz a vis-it, but then remembered that it was a Wednesday, and I wasn’t al-lowed in the kitchen after eleven. I have seen a lot of changes in my life, but undoubtedly the biggest is the fact that Fritz now thinks it’s okay for a woman to be in the kitchen—even in his kitchen. He has an assistant, Mary Mak, who’s studying to be a chef. She comes in Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from about eleven in the morning to ten at night, which Fritz considers short hours. As I say, Fritz has accepted the fact that a woman can be in a kitchen, but he hasn’t accepted the idea that I can be in his kitchen when Mary is there. It just makes him too nervous. With nothing better to do, I went online and did a little more checking on Black PussyCat and Phineas Martínez. I liked Mr. Martínez, but he was definitely a player, and I wasn’t interested in being played. The world of hip-hop wasn’t exactly my turf, or Wolfe’s either, and I didn’t want to show up trying to put people in jail until I was sure I knew who belonged there.

I didn’t learn a lot before lunchtime. Fritz and Mary gave us veal chops en papillotes—two for me and four for Wolfe—along with aspa-ragus and French bread from the bakery that Mary’s sister owns. Wolfe wasn’t excited about Fritz’s idea of putting in a brick oven for the bread, and the bakery is only about twenty-five minutes away. We get the loaves right out of the oven, so there isn’t much to complain about.

For dessert we had strawberry-rhubarb pie with French vanilla ice cream, which always puts Wolfe in a good mood. You didn’t hear it from me, but I think Mary’s crust can beat Fritz’s. Wolfe clearly pre-ferred talking about Burke’s notion of civilization and the diffusion of authority to trying to figure out if we could put Peter Rogers in jail, so it wasn’t until almost two before I left to visit Mr. Harz. On the way back I stopped off at a magazine stand and picked up half a dozen slicks entirely devoted to Black PussyCat. I didn’t get back to the of-fice until about four-thirty. I was cleaning out my emails when the phone rang.

“Nero Wolfe’s office. Archie Goodwin speaking.”

“Hello, Mr. Goodwin. This is Anita Watson.”

Someday I’ll stop thinking that I’m ready for everything, because I wasn’t ready for Anita Watson, not ready for her to call me like that and not ready for her to speak in such a clear, intelligent voice.

“Hello, Ms. Watson,” I said. “You are well informed.”

She laughed.

“I try to keep up.”

“Mr. Wolfe is in the plant rooms right now.”

“I know he is.”

“But I will be glad to have him call you sometime after six.”

“That might be too late, Mr. Goodwin. I’d like to see you right now.”

“What’s a couple of hours? There’s a lot of money at stake.”

“You’re right about that. But I have to tell you, Mr. Goodwin, that time is of the essence. I’m sure Phineas has been telling you all sorts of bad things about me, but I can be very reasonable when it’s in my interest to do so. But, as I say, time is of the essence.”

She was pushing, and I didn’t like it. I doubted if Wolfe wanted to see Anita right away, not unless he had to, and I didn’t want to see her either, not with her setting the schedule. So I played for time.

“You could come here if you like,” I said. “I’m guessing you know the address. And Mr. Wolfe will be down at six.”

“That might be too late, Mr. Goodwin,” she said. “I’d rather that you came here.”

Either she was very good or she really was sitting on something that she thought was about to blow.

“Well, let’s consider that,” I said. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Martínez has been saying some things about you that weren’t compli-mentary. He doesn’t seem to be too fond of Peter Rogers either.”

“I’m not surprised. Peter Rogers is not involved in this matter. I’ll tell you what, Mr. Goodwin. I’m staying at the Hotel Pennsylvania. I’m sure you know where that is.”

“Of course.”

“Good. We can meet in the lobby. As you enter, if you go past the check-in clerks, there’s a pair of chairs to your right, and then a long sofa, up against a window. I’ll be sitting on that sofa, wearing black slacks and a black blouse. You’ll have a full view of the lobby as we’re sitting on the sofa. You won’t be afraid to talk to an old black woman under those circumstances, will you?”

I wasn’t loving it, but it would have to do.

“I’ll be there,” I said. “By the way, what’s your room number, in case there’s a hang-up?”

“There won’t be a hang-up,” she said. “Maybe you just want to know if I’m really staying at the hotel. But that doesn’t matter. Just be here in half an hour.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

I hung up and then dialed the Hotel Pennsylvania. The phone num-ber, in case you don’t know, is Pennsylvania 6-5000. Some time in the dark ages the Pennsylvania used to be a fancy place, but today it’s about mass rather than class—it’s one of the biggest and busiest hotels in the world and it’s for tourists who don’t want to spend much but want to be right downtown and right across the street from Penn Sta-tion and Madison Square Garden. The head of security there is a re-tired police captain who is one of the few cops I know who likes me, mainly because he was about to arrest the mayor’s brother in law a few years back until I called him to say that Wolfe had just fingered the real murderer. People were leaning on him so hard he felt that he had to bend the other way.

“Jerry,” I said, “it’s Archie. I’m meeting a woman named Anita Watson at your place in half an hour. Has she got a room?”

“Hold on,” he told me. I could hear muffled voices and then he was back.

“There’s an Anita Watson in 736,” he told me.

“Anyone with her?”

“She took a single. If there’s anyone else we don’t know about it. She checked in a week ago.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Would it be asking too much to have someone cruise the lobby in twenty-five minutes to give me a heads-up? Anita Watson is a middle-aged black woman. She says she’ll be wearing black slacks and a black blouse. That’s all I’ve got except that she sounds smart. I’d like to know if she has anyone watching her back.”

“Not a problem. Give me a call five minutes before you show.”

I hung up and dialed the number for the plant rooms on the roof. Theodore answered and transferred to Wolfe.

“Hi, it’s me,” I said. “I got a call from Anita Watson. She says she’s staying at the Pennsylvania and she wants to meet me in the lobby in half an hour. Do I go?”

“Confound it. This is far too abrupt. What is your assessment?”

“She sounds smart. I don’t like it, but it’s too good to pass up.”

“Agreed. Exercise caution in your approach and do not accompany her anywhere. Suggest that she would benefit financially by meeting with me. In any event, do not dally. We have the tripe for dinner.”

Wolfe knows that tripe à la mode de Caen isn’t my favorite dish. He just hates the thought of anyone missing a meal. I assured him I wouldn’t be late. Then I hung up and went over to the safe. I’d never heard of anyone being plugged in the Pennsylvania, but, as I say, I don’t like to be rushed. I didn’t know what kind of game Anita was playing, but I had the feeling that it was a good one. She was probably a step ahead of me, and in cases like that it’s better to be prepared for the worst.

I took off my jacket and put the shoulder holster on. It’s compli-cated, but I didn’t want to walk into the place with a rod sticking out of my belt. I owed it to Jerry to keep things respectable. When I had it fitting right I called Fritz on the phone to tell him that I was going out. I was feeling just a little bit antsy, and told him not to let anyone in and not to go out himself until I got back. There was a possibility that Anita just wanted me out of the house and I didn’t feel like being played for a sucker.

When I walked out the front door of the brownstone I looked east and west and saw nothing. I walked one block east and caught a cab and told the driver to step on it, which was fine until I got within two blocks of the hotel. Traffic was backed up solid so I paid the driver and finished the trip on foot. I called Jerry at five after five and he said there was and had been no one in the lobby fitting Anita’s de-scription and that there was no one who looked “suspicious.” I asked him what “suspicious” meant and he said “not a tourist.” I was a little worried that Anita hadn’t shown, but I figured that with the Marley tucked under my left armpit I could handle a roomful of tourists.

I went through one of the big revolving doors on the Seventh Ave-nue side. Whatever you want to say about the Hotel Pennsylvania, it’s big. The lobby was swarming with people. I made my way through it and found the sofa that Anita had mentioned, but there was no one sitting on it. I went over and sat down. I waited a good twenty minutes and then called Wolfe.

“Hi, it’s me.”

He grunted.

“I’m at the hotel, waiting for Anita, but she hasn’t shown. It crossed my mind that this might have been a gag to get me out of the house, and now I’m a little spooked.”

“A reasonable supposition, but so far unsubstantiated,” he said. “Our assailants, if there are such, have yet to present themselves.”

“Yeah. Well, don’t take any pizzas until I get back. I’ve got Anita’s room number, so I think I’ll pay her a visit. I don’t know what’s up, but she sounded like she wanted to see me. She sure wasn’t telling me all she knew.”

“You are armed, are you not?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Do not press matters, Archie. Miss Watson is in no position to command us. Invite her here after dinner, if feasible. If she is not willing to cooperate, that is her loss, not ours.”

“I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“Very well.”

I clicked the cell shut and sat tight for another ten minutes. Either I was being stood up or something was wrong. I got erect and headed for the elevators. I rode up with a crowd of kids in matching corduroy jackets from the Kansas City All-Star Marching Band, but fortunately they got off at five, and I had the elevator to myself when I got off at seven. I found 736 and knocked, but got no answer. I knocked pretty hard and called Anita’s name a couple of times, but there was nothing.

I had reached the sticking point. So far I hadn’t done anything that Jerry wouldn’t have approved of. Now I was ready to cross the line. I took out a very interesting piece of plastic that Saul Panzer had given me, which would operate just about any electronic hotel lock in the city. One swipe and I was in, but when I looked around the room, I wished I hadn’t opened the door.

I had caught up with Anita, and it wasn’t pretty. She was lying on the floor with a bullet hole in her forehead. That was bad, but what was worse was that Jermaine was standing over her, holding a gun.

“Put that down,” I said.

She stared at me. She was wound awfully tight, and I didn’t know which way she was going to go.

“Put it down,” I repeated.

She nodded, but she wouldn’t let go of the damn gun. She was spooked but good.

“Jermaine,” I said, “I’m asking you. Put the gun down. Whatever has happened has happened. It’s over. Put down the gun.”

She put it down.

“I didn’t do it,” she said, shaking. “How could it happen?”

“I know you didn’t,” I said. I was reaching for her when all of a sudden we had company.

“Hands up!” they shouted. “Now! Both of you!”

They were cops. I wasn’t glad to see them, but at least they were cops.

“I’m Archie Goodwin,” I said.

“Congratulations,” said the one who was manhandling me. “Shut the f*ck up.”

He slammed me up against the wall. I know cops like to take charge at a crime scene, particularly when there’s a stiff on the floor, but this was pushing it.

“I’ve got a piece,” I said, loud. “I’ve got a license.”

That got me an elbow in the kidney. It almost shut me up, but not quite.

“This is Jermaine Campbell, lead singer with the group Black Pus-syCat,” I said. “You may want to give Inspector Cramer a call.”

“I guess I forgot to tell you to shut up,” the cop told me. “Shut up.”

He slapped my head against the wall. I couldn’t see, but I was hop-ing that they weren’t treating Jermaine the same way.

I spent the next twenty minutes spread-eagled against the wall. No one was in a hurry to ask me questions. They took Jermaine out. As she was going I yelled at her to call Phineas, which got me another headslap. After Jermaine left I was almost getting lonesome when I heard Cramer’s voice behind me.

“Goodwin!”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Of course, it would be you.”

“Do you want to hear my story or not?”

“Take him downtown.”

“I’d like to talk to Mr. Wolfe.”

“Not now. Take him downtown.”

“I know you’re mad. I know you hate celebrities.”

“Shut up. What I hate is finding Archie Goodwin at a crime scene.”

“You don’t want to lock up Jermaine Campbell and you know it.”

“Take him downtown.”

He was repeating himself, which meant that he didn’t know what the hell to do. He didn’t want to lock up Jermaine, but he didn’t want to let her walk, either. I was guessing that he was going to keep both of us overnight, to show that he didn’t play favorites, and sort things out in the morning, when he would have a preliminary report from the crime lab. They took me downtown and took my fingerprints, which they’ve done a dozen times before, and gave me a paraffin test. They took a DNA sample and my clothes. Thanks to TV the public loves forensic evidence, and the media loves to give it to them, so Cramer has to be ready. Around midnight they put me in an orange jump suit and tossed me in the tank with a dozen winos and crackheads, none of whom recognized me. I found enough space to lie down and figured I needed sleep more than anything else. I’d been out for a couple of hours when I felt someone poking me in the ribs. I jumped up quickly.

“Someone to see you,” a cop told me.

They handcuffed me and walked me to a little room. Nate Parker was sitting there, not looking happy.

“You’re keeping late hours,” I told him.

“I’ve never seen a lockdown like this, Archie,” he told me. “I can’t get you out until they question you, and they say they can’t question you until Inspector Cramer gets in, which won’t be until nine.”

“Cramer’s flipped,” I told him. “He thinks he’s going to crack this case in one day. He thinks he’s going to find blood on my socks or cordite residue in my eyebrows. Where’s Jermaine?”

“Jermaine who?”

“Jermaine Campbell. She was at the crime scene.”

“They won’t tell me anything. I had to threaten a suit to get in here. What happened to your face?”

“They slammed me around a little.”

“I want you examined by a doctor.”

“I guess that’s good. My guess is, at this point Cramer’s immune to anything but threats. Be obnoxious.”

“If that’s what it takes to defend my client’s rights, yes.”

I was tired, and angry. Cramer was angry, and he was kicking me like a dog.

“They can’t keep this up, Archie.”

“I know. I’ll be out of here by dinner time, but it’s a long time to dinner time.”

It was. I told Parker that he would need to check with Wolfe in the morning about our client. I wanted to say more but I had the feeling that the cops might be listening in. There’s attorney-client privilege and all that, but it wasn’t our room. There was also the fact that I couldn’t be sure that Jermaine wasn’t guilty. I didn’t want to believe that—in fact, given the way she had talked about Anita, it was hard to believe that she could have pulled that trigger, but triggers can be awfully easy to pull.

Parker told me he’d be back at nine in the morning, with a writ for my release. Cramer wouldn’t like that.

“I’ll see you at nine,” I said.

I didn’t want to go back to the tank, but I needed my sleep. They woke me at eight for breakfast. I asked for my clothes back and they told me to stuff it. At nine I went into another little room and waited for half an hour before Cramer came in.

“What’s the DNA tell you?” I asked.

“Shut up,” he said. “I’ll ask the questions.”

He asked a lot of them, and I answered them. There was a lot I would have preferred not to say, like what I knew about relations be-tween Anita and Jermaine, but I couldn’t pretend that the group’s past history wasn’t relevant. Cramer seemed to know everything already, so I didn’t feel too bad about giving it all up, but it’s just bad for busi-ness. You help a cop and he comes to expect it. He kept after me for close to three hours. Catching me at a crime scene made him want to charge me with something—anything, really—but he knew I was clean. It was Jermaine that was making him crazy. He didn’t want to let her walk, but he didn’t want to keep her either, unless she con-fessed, and it was clear that she hadn’t done that. I was the only dog he had to kick, and now he had to let me go.

I went back to the tank for another two hours, while they pretended they had lost my papers. Finally they took me to another room, where they gave me my clothes. They were a mess, stained with chemicals and seams ripped open. I guess they thought I was carrying a shiv or maybe a signed confession. The one thing that I was worried about, my little piece of plastic, I found in my wallet. They hadn’t thought to check it out, and I was damned glad of that, because there might have been hell to pay if they had.

Parker was waiting for me when I came out. He shook his head.

“Archie, I have never seen you look so wretched.”

“It’s okay. Have you heard anything about Jermaine?”

We walked outside and ran into a mob of reporters. At that moment I was probably the most filmed, taped, and photographed man on the planet. The crowd was shrieking questions at us as we fought our way through, but Nate and I were saying nothing, not even “no comment.” What was the point?

Fortunately, Parker’s car, a dark-gray Lexus, was waiting for us at the curb. I slid in the back seat. It was the first time in eighteen hours that I’d been comfortable.

“I have not heard anything about Miss Campbell,” he told me, once the door was shut. “Her lawyers were very abrupt,”

“They get paid to be, I’m sure.”

“Yes. They haven’t gotten her out and I don’t think they will for another day or two at the earliest. Perhaps not at all.”

“She was in the room with Anita, with the gun in her hand,” I said.

“I see. Inspector Cramer was most difficult to deal with.”

“He’s upset. Cops like to control things when they’re upset.”

“Nevertheless, I would like to have you examined. Do you mind if we go to a doctor’s office first?”

“No. It can’t hurt to have the leverage. May I borrow your cell?”

I dialed the office.

“Yes.”

“Yes, it’s me. I’m out.”

“Mr. Parker has informed me of your mistreatment, Archie. There will be recompense.”

“He’s exaggerating. All I need is a shower, a shave, and a hot meal.”

“You are serious?”

“Yeah. One of the cops banged me around a little. When they’ve got a corpse and a guy with a gun they get a little carried away.”

“Indeed. The entire affair has propelled Inspector Cramer’s bump-tious inefficiency to new heights. I fear for his sanity.”

I chuckled.

“You are amused.”

“Cramer would rather run the marathon in a top coat and galoshes than deal with a celebrity murder case. And now he’s got the biggest one ever. Every tab in the world is going to be sitting on this one. By the way, have you heard from Phineas?”

“More than once. He is, of course, both more demanding and more obsequious than ever.”

“Yeah. Does he want us to get Jermaine off?”

“That was the gist of our conversations. I informed him that I would reserve judgment pending your release. Have you formed any conclusions?”

“Conclusions, no. I don’t believe that Jermaine is or was a cold-blooded killer. Can I imagine her showing up to talk with Anita and taking a gun along for protection? Yes. Can I imagine that gun going off? I can. I saw fear in her eyes, not anger. But I can’t tell you I know she’s innocent.”

“According to the press, she maintains her innocence but refuses to provide any description or explanation of her actions. Pfui. The thought of willfully entering this maelstrom almost gives one sympathy for Inspector Cramer.”

I chuckled again.

“At least you’ll be getting a better paycheck.”

“I shall be. Mr. Martínez has offered $1 million as a retainer, with a $1 million bonus if Miss Campbell is found innocent of all charges.”

“We can do better than that. I think you need to talk with Mr. Park-er to draw up a real contract.”

Nate raised his eyebrows when I mentioned his name.

“I’m suggesting that Mr. Wolfe consult with you on a contract with Black PussyCat’s management to identify the murderer of Anita Wat-son.”

Parker smiled.

“That could get complicated.”

“Don’t worry. It’s all for the orchids.”

I went back to Wolfe.

“We’re making a stop at a doctor’s office first. Parker has me lined up with someone who’s a pro when it comes to police brutality. I fig-ure it can’t hurt to have something to hang over Cramer’s head. He won’t be happy to learn you’re on the case.”

“He has, of course, already leaped to that conclusion. His is a mind that seeks information only to affirm its prejudices.”

The Lexus, which had been heading north while we talked, slowed and pulled over.

“I guess we’re at the doctor’s office,” I told Wolfe. “I’ll give you the details later.”

Wolfe grunted. I clicked the cell and handed it back to Parker. The last thing I felt like getting right now was a physical, but leaning on Cramer wasn’t a bad idea. He could huff and puff all he pleased, but a police brutality suit wasn’t something he could ignore. The doc poked me for half an hour and then we were finished. I told Parker I could get home on my own but he seemed to think it was his job to hang around, so we rode back in his Lexus. I admit that as soon as I hit that soft back seat I went out. I’d been running on an adrenaline high ever since I opened that door and saw Jermaine standing there with the gun and now I suddenly had a deficit. I don’t know how long I was out but when Parker touched my shoulder we were parked in front of the brownstone.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. “That cat nap was all I needed.”

As I got out of the car I glanced at my watch. It was after four. Wolfe would be up in the plant rooms. I let myself in quietly and went upstairs for a shower, a shave and a new set of clothes. The old ones I tossed in the trash. I went downstairs and into the kitchen. Fritz was working on filet of sole Véronique for dinner and I didn’t want to spoil my appetite, but I did want to slow it down. A snack of pâté and some of Mary’s sister’s bread with a glass of milk would do me fine, but Fritz insisted on fixing me a plate of carpaccio instead. Fritz cuts his carpaccio from Kobe top loin. He won’t freeze it, but Mary has talked him into using a slicer. He puts it on a bed of radiccio, sprinkled with olive oil and aged Parmesan, with white asparagus and a roasted onion on the side. That and a pot of Fritz’s coffee and a slice of left-over strawberry-rhubarb pie were almost enough to forget about what had happened to my suit.

I was going through my emails when Wolfe came down. Instead of walking straight to his desk as he always does he walked in front of mine and stared at my face.

“No serious damage, I hope?” he said.

“No. Cops get excited when they see a corpse.”

“No doubt. Mr. Parker assures me that your injuries are actionable. But that would be your decision.”

“I don’t like to whine, but any finger we have to stick in Cramer’s eye is fine by me. But I don’t think we can use the threat of a lawsuit to spring Jermaine.”

“Of course not,” he said, walking to his desk. “We will not inform Mr. Martínez of this matter. He fancies himself a grand strategist, and the fewer pieces we allow him the less he will be tempted to dominate the board.”

“What is our strategy?”

He ignored my question for a moment as he took the time to get his seventh of a ton settled in the one chair that was actually built to hold it. When he was comfortable he rang for beer, leaned back, and laced his fingers on his belly.

“Tell me what happened at the hotel,” he said.

I gave it to him, what there was to give. He asked about the corpse, about the room, and about Jermaine. I gave him what I had, which wasn’t much.

When I was finished, he rang Fritz for another beer and laced his fingers around his belly again. I expected him to speak, but he didn’t. Instead, his lips started working, in and out. He kept it up for a few minutes. Of course, while I’d been in the can he’d had a full day to go through whatever it was that Phineas had in his briefcase, but, still, he hadn’t spoken with anyone or even reached a decision whether to take the case, whatever that was.

Fritz arrived with the beer, but even that couldn’t catch Wolfe’s at-tention. Fritz put the bottle and the glass on Wolfe’s desk and left. Thirty seconds later, Wolfe unlaced his fingers and put his hands to good use, opening the bottle with the gold-plated opener a client had given him and pouring 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.

“I will accept the case, Archie, but only on my own terms. I am a detective, who identifies the guilty, not an advocate who guards their interests. Mr. Martínez will doubtless insist that I bend my efforts to achieve Miss Campbell’s freedom. But, as you have suggested, it is quite within the realm of possibility that Miss Campbell is the culprit rather than the victim.”

“He isn’t going to pay you $2 million to get Jermaine the needle.”

“Perhaps he will pay $1 million for me to accept the case and $5 million more for the young lady’s complete and entire exoneration.”

“Even for you, that’s pushing it. Suppose you investigate and finger her? You won’t collect a dime, no matter what the contract says.”

“Perhaps not. But if perchance the facts are in our favor I will rid myself of that clattering disaster that resides above my head without encumbrance.”

“I thought you had been looking at Phineas’s briefcase. You’ve been looking at architectural plans.”

“I have been considering my interests, as Mr. Martínez has been considering his. I confess that I have been the victim of inertia in car-ing for my orchids. The nineteenth century has its charms, but the twenty-first has its advantages.”

After dinner Mr. Parker stopped by to talk with Wolfe about draw-ing up a contract for Phineas to sign. Wolfe spent fifteen minutes ex-plaining what he wanted. Parker took half an hour explaining why that wouldn’t fly. Wolfe said that it was his way or nothing, and that Martínez would take it. If Nate had had a moustache, he probably would have chewed its corners. But he didn’t, so he told Wolfe he would draw up a contract and have it ready tomorrow afternoon.

“I have $500,000 in hand. If my efforts tend to imperil rather than exonerate Miss Campbell, I will not be unduly tenacious in the pursuit of the remaining $500,000. However, if full payment is earned, you must make swift and complete payment a certainty.”

Parker smiled, to the extent that a lawyer can.

“Martínez is likely to spend $500,000 vetting this contract. Six mil-lion is serious money, even for a supergroup. He won’t be in a hurry.”

Wolfe smiled too.

“He will be if Miss Campbell is not released. If Mr. Cramer remains obdurate, as I suspect he will, Mr. Martínez will have little choice but to come to terms. When you draft the agreement, err on the side of directness.”

After Parker left I had a few questions for Wolfe, such as how the hell he was so sure that Cramer wouldn’t let Jermaine walk, with a $25 million bail and two ankle bracelets, and how the hell he was so sure that Martínez would decide that the best thing he could do for his star was to turn Wolfe loose on whoever had killed Anita. I had looked into Jermaine’s eyes as she held the gun, and I wanted to give her every benefit of the doubt, but the more I thought about it the more I thought it was close to even money that she had pulled the trigger, one way or another.

Those were the big questions I had, and there were two dozen oth-ers I might have asked, but Wolfe wasn’t talking. He had his head stuffed inside of F. P. Lock and he wasn’t going to come up for air.

“I have a question for you,” I said.

“Archie, is it too much to expect that you should gather from my demeanor that I do not intend to discuss this matter with you for the remainder of the evening? At the present time I have no client, and while I have no client my time is my own.”

“Yeah. I was just thinking about Harry Caldwell.”

“What about him?”

“Harry likes to play pool and he likes to eat. I could call him up and set up a game tonight and invite him for dinner tomorrow.”

Wolfe frowned. When he’s being clever he doesn’t like me to come up with an idea he has to agree with.

“That would be, perhaps, judicious.”

“In other words, yes.”

“I choose my words with care, Archie. There is no need to alter them.”

“Yeah. The way Harry eats steak, you wouldn’t bring him here un-less you were sure that Martínez is going to bite, and how do you know that?”

Wolfe smiled.

“You wrong me, Archie, not once but twice. Mr. Caldwell’s palate, though simple—defiantly so, one would have to concede—is without artifice. I do not demean myself by having him at my table. And I base my optimism on no recondite knowledge. Your suggestion is a good one. Please act on it.”

So the ball was back in my court. I called Harry and Wolfe went back to his book. Three hours later, I was out fifty bucks. Harry was in a good mood, and I was ready for bed.

Fame Will Tell Chapter 1

2011-03-10T10:07:00.000-08:00

“Only two body guards. No guns. No one inside the office. No dark glasses. No one taller than five eleven. No one larger than a hundred and seventy-five pounds.”

“Are you serious?”

“Those are Mr. Wolfe’s rules. If you don’t like them, you don’t see him.”

As a matter of fact, the last two are my own. I don’t like muscle, and I especially don’t like muscle that’s bigger than me.

“I’ll have to check with Mr. Thomas.”

“No. You don’t have to check with Mr. Thomas. You decide now. In or out. If you’re in, you and your two men can come this afternoon at four-thirty and I will show you how it is. Then you will come to-morrow at ten-thirty and you can have a search. The young ladies will arrive at eleven fifteen. But your men will remain in the hall at all times. And if you show up this afternoon or tomorrow with guns or with glasses, the deal is off.”

“Damn!”

“Damn is right.”

“Listen, do you want this or don’t you?”

“It’s Mr. Wolfe’s house, and Mr. Wolfe’s rules. He might like this job, and he might not. But he doesn’t need it. And I can tell you right now that if he hears a cell phone the deal is off, no matter what.”

“Damn!”

“Damn is right.”

“But the girls want Mr. Wolfe.”

“Fine. Then be here at four-thirty. Three guys, no guns, no glasses.”

“We’ll be there. You tell Mr. Wolfe he drives one hard bargain.”

“I don’t have to tell him. He knows it.”

I hung up the phone and sat back in my chair, grinning. Phineas Martínez didn’t know how lucky he was. Six months ago Wolfe would have had my scalpin fact, he would have taken it himself, with one of Fritz’s filleting knivesfor even suggesting that he accept a singing group as a client. But these were not normal times. A pair of structural engineers had told him that the orchid greenhouses on the roof of the brownstone on 35th Street were corroded beyond repair and would have to be replaced. The first architect Wolfe hired quoted him a price of $5 million as a minimum. Wolfe fired him, of course, and hired another one, who quoted him a price of $7 million, just for openers. He found a third who said he could keep it under $6 million if Wolfe wouldn’t mind using space heaters during the winter. So Wolfe went back to the first one, and by the time he and Theodore got done apply-ing the finishing touches to the blueprints, with structural reinforce-ments and a new roof for the brownstone itself, plus separate tropic, subtropic, and high-altitude greenhouses, the final estimate was com-ing in at just under $6.2 million.

That was a lot of money, even for orchids, and it didn’t do much for Wolfe’s mood. Any bank would have been glad to lend him the money with the brownstone as collateral, but Wolfe wasn’t excited about adding mortgage payments to his expenses. He’d gotten used to working one week a month and having truffles for breakfast every morning and he wasn’t in a hurry to go back to having them every other day, like a normal human being.

I heard the elevator hum and slid the DVD under an orchid cata-logue.

“Good morning, Archie. Did you sleep well?”

“Sure. Is the glass holding up?”

Wolfe arranged the Cymbidium in the orchid vase on his desk as if he hadn’t heard me. Panes had been falling at the rate of one a week and the last one had missed Theodore by less than five yards. That’s not what I would call a near miss, but then Theodore isn’t what I would call a risk-taker. The next day Wolfe had ten men on the roof putting six-inch plastic shipping tape on every pane, but that didn’t satisfy Theodore. He told Wolfe that if they started falling any closer he’d be giving notice, and Wolfe knew he meant it.

“The glass is holding up, Archie,” said Wolfe, once he had the blossoms draped the way he wanted them. “I paid $80,000 for this house when I purchased it. You will forgive me if I do not race to spend eighty times that sum for repairs.”

He sat in the one chair in the world that actually suits him and picked up the morning mail. I ignored him, entering Theodore’s plant records on the computer.

“Mr. Applebaum’s check has not arrived?” he asked.

Applebaum was a stockbroker who owed us $100,000 for two days’ work back in April. Wolfe had kept him out of jail, which you might think would have made him grateful but it hadn’t.

“I spoke with his secretary this morning. They wired the money at 9:57.”

Wolfe grunted.

“By the way,” I said, “Black PussyCat will be here tomorrow at eleven fifteen.”

Wolfe stared.

“You know, the group.”

Wolfe kept staring. His right forefinger was tracing little circles on his desk.

“They want to hire you,” I explained.

“By ‘group’ you mean a claque of willfully offensive and self-indulgent young people,” he said.

“You know who they are. Three hot black chicks from Alabama whose booty is always on duty. I’ve got their latest DVD.”

Wolfe shuddered. Anything digital gives him the creeps.

“You will inform them that I am not available,” he said, pretending to concentrate on the mail.

“Sure. And we can watch Theodore leave, either feet first or under his own steam. Frankly, I’d prefer the former, but what difference does it make? You’ll never replace him. Getting Theodore out of this place is like pulling a hermit crab out of its shell, but you’ve managed to do it. Those plant rooms are a museum piece. I haven’t said a kind word about Theodore since the Mets beat Boston, but he could be making three times as much money, with a half dozen first-rate people under him, working for a commercial outfit. If you want, get rid of the orchids. But don’t think you can pay for new plant rooms working a week a month for two-bit stockbrokers. Black PussyCat grossed $10 million their first year, $37 million their second, and $75 million their third. They’re negotiating a new multi-media contract proposal with Murder 1 Records for more than $250 million. You probably know this already since you read everything but you pretend you don’t. But if you want to keep growing orchids I think you better hear them out. And, by the way, the girls specifically requested your services.”

Wolfe snorted. It might have started out as a grunt, but it finished as a snort.

“Archie, I have maintained this house as an oasis of civilization for close to thirty years. I shall not open the gates to barbarism.”

He pushed the button on his desk that lets Fritz know he’s ready for beer.

“They’ll be here tomorrow at 11:15,” I said. “Their security will be here at 4:30 this afternoon to case the joint. They know the rules.”

“Indeed. And if you must litter your speech with banalities, why not confine yourself to the current half-century?”

Fritz arrived just in time to cool things off. I won’t say that Wolfe grabbed the bottle but he was definitely glad to see it. He opened the bottle and put the cap in the front drawer of his desk. Since he had gotten the bad news about the plant rooms his consumption was up to thirteen bottles a day, which was bad luck. He knew damn well we needed a serious client, but he didn’t want to hear it from me.

I watched him pour the beer until the foam rose within a quarter inch of the rim of the glass.

“If you think my language is bad, wait until you hear Jermaine, Maureen, and Adelle,” I told him. “I think you need to catch their act. I don’t want to spring them on you cold.”

I got erect and went around the room, either dimming the lights or dousing them. I pushed the button that lowered the screen in front of the bookcase and loaded the disc into the DVD player. Most people who hate digital don’t have a $30,000, custom-installed projection sys-tem in their office, but that’s Wolfe. When I said he read everything I meant it. A year ago he wrote out a shopping list for me, and now we watch Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo twice a week with our apple pie and cognac.

The disc featured the girls in action at Madison Square Garden. Like any decent supergroup, they arrived by space ship, the ship blow-ing off huge rings of exploding golden sparks as it descended. The 20,000 kids in the audience were going wild and the 10,000 watt sound system wasn’t exactly quiet. When the ship landed, three golden robots emerged, disassembling themselves to reveal Black PussyCat in the flesh.

And what flesh. Jermaine, Maureen, and Adelle Campbell made me feel older than Alan Greenspan, but still I had to admit they were mag-nificent, those beautiful, ebony bodies, blacker than black, in skin-tight silver bikinis that left five percent to the imagination and gave away the rest. If I were fifteen I would have been dead.

“What are they doing?” asked Wolfe.

“If you know one tenthno, make that one ten-thousandthof what you say you know about human nature, you know damn well what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it.”

“You made your point. At least turn off that infernal noise.”

“I wanted you to get the full ambiance.”

“Turn it off, Archie.”

I did turn off the sound, but not before the girls started chanting “f*ck you like a motherf*cker, baby.” The only word Wolfe hates more than “motherf*cker” is “ambiance.”

“Sorry about that,” I said.

“If I expected to be shielded from all the horrors of modern life I should require an army rather than one man. That is not even music, is it?”

“I don’t know what it is, but it makes fifteen-year-old boys spend their allowance.”

“The females are as addled as the males. The audience forms an acute sociological commentary on the sexual phantasms of our era. Human beings will do anything with their desire other than embrace it directly.”

“Yeah. Do you want me to kill the picture too?”

“No. And I must listen to the sound as well. But at half-volume on-ly, please.”

I didn’t say anything. The one thing you never do with Wolfe is gloat. While he sat back and watched the sexual phantasms of our era I got to work on Theodore’s plant records. A half hour of Black Pussy-Cat goes a long way with me, even at half volume, so I put on the ear-phones and listened to Diana Krall instead.

I have to hand it to Wolfe. He sat through “Bootilicious,” “Down on My Baby,” “Coming Attraction,” “Hard Enuff To Hurt,” “2 Black 2 Care,” “Bitch Pack,” “Dreamin’ n’ Screamin’,” “You Ain’t Good Enuff,” and “On My Own” without flinching, which is not bad for a man who called the Spice Girls “Hell-spawn.” At about quarter past twelve he rapped his beer bottle twice on the desk.

“Had enough?” I asked.

“I had more than enough an hour ago. Is blasphemy the product of boredom or its source?”

“You’ve got me on that one. But it does sell tickets.”

Wolfe traced a circle on his desk with his forefinger.

“The forms of the Ewig-Weibliche are infinite,” he said.

“The what?”

“Das Ewig-Weibliche—the Eternal Feminine. Awakened by her charms, we glimpse the divine, or so Goethe would have it. You know the thing well enough, if not the word.”

I knew Wolfe was being cute, but I didn’t know why, so I let it ride.

“Will you see them?” I demanded.

“Confound it. I will see them, Archie. But I make no promises.”

He rang for another beer and settled back with F. P. Lock’s biogra-phy of Edmund Burke and didn’t move until Fritz summoned us for lunch—beet and endive salad with chervil, tarragon, and chives, roast tomatoes, and roast Scotch grouse on toast masked with cream sauce. I made the mistake once of telling Wolfe that I thought grouse were gamy, so he doesn’t feel guilty about having three for my one. While we ate he filled me in on Burke’s theories of the Sublime and the Beautiful, and whether he exaggerated the role of the irrational. When I said I thought the Beautiful was rational, he agreed, but then asked how I could explain the attraction I felt for Lily Rowan, which I thought was a bit of a cheap shot. He brought up das Ewig-Weibliche again and then he quoted French, which I didn’t care for either. I was trying to think up something about orchids, but I was afraid he might take it personally, so I kept my mouth shut.

Afterwards we went out to the office for a little pesto and beer. Three grouse don’t really fill Wolfe up, but if he ate four he’d have to give me two, and at $75 a pop I suppose he feels he has to be conserv-ative. Fritz makes the pesto with Canestrato cheese mixed with ancho-vies, pig liver, black walnuts, chives, sweet basil, garlic, and olive oil, and I didn’t really miss that second grouse at all.

When Wolfe was half-way through his second beer I decided to tackle him.

“What would Burke have to say about Black PussyCat?”

He nodded.

“A reasonable question. I have always felt that Hell must be very beautiful, or it would not be so well-populated. I have no doubt that Burke would agree. It is a rare privilege to touch beauty without being burned, a privilege earned only by the discipline of reason.”

“So you think these girls are Hell-spawn?”

Wolfe’s cheeks pulled away from the corners of his mouth, which meant that I had amused him.

“An interesting surmise, Archie. You do know how to observe. But it would be absurd to condemn others of my species more harshly than myself. To criticize these young ladies for harvesting the bounty of their charms would be like criticizing a flower for opening itself to the sun. The profit motive is more recent than photosynthesis, but no less hardy, and no more to be condemned. Now you will excuse me. Burke’s critique of Lord North’s first Cabinet is most gripping.”

I took that as an invitation to skedaddle. I hadn’t been outside all day and I didn’t want my legs to get rusty, so I hiked across Manhat-tan and back again. I can’t walk south any more because it makes me angry, and I don’t like to be angry when I can’t do anything about it.

I got back just as Wolfe was going up to the plant rooms. I finished off the last of Theodore’s records and then went on the Internet to pick up a little more background on Black PussyCat. I discovered that I wasn’t as up to date on the music scene as I thought I was. Murder 1 Records was widely assumed to have had the inside track in signing Black PussyCat to its first “real” contract, but in the last month it had come a cropper. Murder 1 was almost entirely the brainchild of Mario Frank and Harris Smith. Mario was the guts and Harris was the brains of the company with the baddest street rep in the country, operating out of shiny new studios in Brooklyn, or “Crooklyn,” as they liked to call it. They’d been in New York for ten years and had had numerous run-ins with the law, but they kept making money so fast no one seemed to care, or not until Harris set out to bring Murder 1 public, which meant that he had to deal with the New York Stock Exchange. There were, it appeared, people on the Stock Exchange who were not happy about sharing the same ticker tape with a pair of bad-assed rap-pers, which had led to the DA’s office taking a look at Murder 1’s ac-counting practices.

According to what I read, Mario wanted to bag taking the company public. He’d opened a monster club in Harlem, with a built-in, state of the art recording studio, which was like his own little kingdom, and he rarely left the penthouse suite. But Harris, who was only worth about $350 million, was determined to be a billionaire before he was forty, and taking the company public was the only way he could get there. From what I read, Phineas Martínez loved Murder 1’s rep, but he hated “controversy,” and had started talking with a couple of people at Sony, Denzel Scott and Harriet Wertheimer, who were supposed to know how to handle a supergroup.

This was all very interesting to know, and I was glad I knew it when Mr. Martínez showed up at 4:30 on the dot, with his assistant Roberta Culbertson and a couple of more or less presentable goons in tow, Maurice and Thomas. I explained to Maurice and Thomas that while they were inside Mr. Wolfe’s house they would be taking orders from me, which was not something they wanted to hear, but they said “Yes, Mr. Goodwin” without gagging, and that was what I wanted to hear. Then I took them through the first floor of the house, and I showed them the office and explained to them that the entrances from the kitchen and the front room would both be locked and I would have the only key. I showed them the basement and we went out the back way and had a look at the alley.

I suppose it would be rude if I said that Mr. Martínez looked like a respectable pimp, but that is what he looked like. He was short, and dark-complected, and very dapper in his dress. The charcoal, three-button Brioni he was sporting must have set him back four grand and some change. He spoke perfect English and had just a light scent of expensive cologne to go with his monogrammed, white- and lavender-striped shirt. He was very smooth with everyone and knew how to round off all the edges. When you met him, you realized that this was a man who could take three beautiful black girls through a swimming pool of sharks without leaving a drop of blood in the water. And I had to wonder just what kind of trouble they were in that Mr. Martínez couldn’t handle.

While we were out in the alley Mr. Martínez got a call from the girls that had to be attended to, which gave me an opportunity to speak with Roberta. She was a good-looking kid with thick black hair that caught the sunlight in a thousand ways. She was recovering from a bad case of Long Island lockjaw but I didn’t hold it against her.

“What brought you into hip-hop?” I asked.

“I don’t talk the talk, do I?” she laughed. “I had to do something to get out of Bryn Mawr.”

“I suppose so. What is it the girls want to talk about with Mr. Wolfe?”

“Oh, I’m just an assistant. The girls speak for themselves.”

“I see. Do you have any questions?”

“I’m sure you know that we don’t want a word of this to get to the press.”

“We get paid to keep our mouths shut.”

“I know. But everyone has someone they like to tell secrets to. When I got into this business I thought I’d be dining out on my stories. But everybody hates me because I do nothing but keep my mouth shut. It’s not like Sex and the City.”

“Neither is the detective business. But you must get a good ride.”

“I do get a good ride, but it’s not my plane.”

I was ready to follow up on that thought when Mr. Martínez clicked his cell shut and joined us.

“Everything is set,” he said. “Thank you, Mr. Goodwin, for your professionalism. We will arrive tomorrow at ten-thirty. We would like to have a car in the alley.”

“Sure. It’s a public thoroughfare. But nothing big or black. We don’t want to scare the neighbors.”

“Of course. The girls will arrive at eleven-fifteen, as you said.”

I nodded.

“You said the girls wanted Mr. Wolfe,” I said. “You saw the office. Mr. Wolfe is a lot like his office. He’s old-fashioned. He doesn’t like obscenities. He doesn’t like attitude, and he certainly doesn’t like skin. I mean, he’s the opposite of hip-hop. I don’t deny that I get a kick out of the thought of Wolfe chewing the fat with Black PussyCat, but if the girls really want to hire him, they need to remember who they’re dealing with.”

Mr. Martínez grinned.

“Black PussyCat can work any audience, Mr. Goodwin,” he said. “But thanks for the heads up. I think we’re going to enjoy doing busi-ness together.”

We shook hands. I shook hands with Roberta as well. She had a nice grip for a Bryn Mawr kid, and I wondered if she might be inter-ested in a visit to the Flamingo.

The next day Maurice and Thomas showed up right on time, which I appreciate. I took them inside and gave them each a frisking, which they certainly didn’t appreciate, but business is business. Then we went around to the back and I said hello to Jerry and Frank. They were in a dark-gray Camry, respectable but not intimidating. We went back through the house and said hello to Fritz, who had a casserole of tripe in the oven for dinner and was starting in on lunch—broiled deviled chicken, mushrooms on croûtes, and cold asparagus. Then I took the boys through the hall and deposited them in the front room, explaining to them that Mr. Wolfe didn’t like to see strange men loitering in his hallway. Once they heard him enter the office, they could take up their positions.

I was at my desk at ten of eleven, filling Wolfe’s Mont Blanc, just in case he wanted to take any notes. He wouldn’t, of course, but he likes to be ready. As for ballpoints, forget it. Wolfe pretends he doesn’t know they exist.

I heard the elevator at eleven. Wolfe had a particularly large spray of Paphiopedilum when he came in, which I took as a good sign. He would never admit it, but on rare occasions Wolfe will select an orchid to please his guests rather than himself, and there was nothing subtle about the hybrid he’d picked.

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

“I always sleep well when we’re expecting a major client,” I said.

“That remains to be seen. I know that you find the prospect of this encounter entertaining, but I do not conduct my affairs with your amusement in mind. I am not repelled by the outré, provided that it is sufficiently lucrative, but neither do I embrace it wantonly.”

“Sure. I know you’re taking this job because of the orchids.”

“I am consenting to this interview because you would pester me en-dlessly if I did not. The likelihood that these young ladies are in a pickle that would suit my talents without besmirching my honor is slender.”

“I’m just happy to see that you’re willing to change with the times.”

I grinned, which irritated Wolfe, of course, so he began to sort through the mail. At eleven-fifteen the doorbell rang. I got erect with-out hurrying and went to the door. I could see the girls through the one-way mirror. They were dressed in matching cargo-style jump suits made of peach-colored silk, and the way the silk clung to their long, graceful bodies just about defined bootilicious. Mr. Martínez had switched from charcoal to flat black and had put on a tie, which was a nice touch. Roberta was in black as well, with her hair up and pearl earrings. You can take the girl out of Bryn Mawr, I guess, but you can’t take the Bryn Mawr out of the girl.

I ushered them in quickly, because celebrities don’t care to stand out in the open. They had a pair of large gents in basic black with them, and I waited to make sure that the guards retreated to the pair of shiny black Chevy suburbans parked on the street. Wolfe hasn’t seen his front yard, if you can call it that, in more than a year, but he doesn’t like people loitering there.

Mr. Martínez shook hands with me in the hallway and made intro-ductions all around. I was just a bit nervous: whether it was DNA or plastic surgery, the girls all had the drop-dead killer good looks of su-permodels, but all supermodels look alike, so how was I to tell the dif-ference, and if I got the names wrong, wouldn’t that sound like I thought all blacks looked alike? I had told myself that Jermaine was the darkest and Maureen was the lightest, but up close a man gets daz-zled. I was closer to feeling fifteen than I had felt in a long time, and I wanted to get things moving.

“It’s a pleasure to have you here,” I said. “Mr. Wolfe is right down the hall.”

I ushered them in, making one last stab at skin color. I had Jermaine pegged but I could go either way with Maureen and Adelle. Fortunate-ly, one had a silver necklace and the other had a gold one.

Once we were all in, I expected Wolfe to ask them to forgive him for not standing, but he did stand. I guess he figured that four women outweighed him—not by a lot, but enough.

“Welcome, ladies, and Mr. Martínez. I am Nero Wolfe. You have met my assistant, Mr. Goodwin.”

“Now, this is a white man’s room, isn’t it?” said the one with the silver necklace.

“It is indeed, young lady,” said Wolfe. “I apologize neither for the pigment of my skin nor the contours of my intellect.”

“You’re going to have to excuse our little sister, Mr. Wolfe,” said Jermaine. “Adelle doesn’t know how to behave around grown-ups.”

“I’m just saying,” said Adele. “Look at all those books! Did you read them all?”

“Not all of them, but the large majority,” said Wolfe.

“Huh! So I guess that’s why you’re so smart.”

“You shall be the judge of my acuity. Please, all of you be seated.”

“Can I look at your flowers?”

“Of course.”

If Adelle minded being told she didn’t know how to behave around grown-ups, she sure didn’t show it. She ran up to Wolfe’s desk and started staring at the orchids. But she didn’t touch, which was a big point in her favor.

“Now look at you!” she said, talking to the flower. “Aren’t you the prettiest thing! What’s your name?”

“Adelle,” said Jermaine. “We’re here on business.”

“I know we are. I just want to know this flower’s name.”

“It is an orchid,” said Wolfe, briskly. “It is a hybrid of the genus Paphiopedilum.”

Adelle giggled.

“Mr. Wolfe is a world-famous grower of orchids,” said Mr. Martínez.

Wolfe raised his shoulders a fourth of an inch in recognition.

“Successful, perhaps, though hardly world-famous. The commercial enterprises of today have far outstripped the mere hobbyist.”

“You are too modest, Mr. Wolfe. “I understand that you have created more than a dozen hybrids that are available commercially.”

“A hobbyist only. My grower certainly deserves a majority of the credit, and Mr. Goodwin almost as much as myself. But let us turn to the matter at hand. You have a difficulty, and desire my assistance.”

Jermaine laughed.

“First there’s one thing you have to tell me, Mr. Wolfe. Are you cooking chitterlings?”

“If by ‘chitterlings’ you mean tripe, the answer is yes. Tripe á la mode de Caen is one of my favorite dishes.”

“Okay, a white man who eats chitterlings. I guess that’s a good sign. Phineas can tell you about our problem.”

Mr. Martínez had taken the red leather chair across from Wolfe’s desk. Jermaine had taken the other leather chair, by the globe, and was watching everything with her bright, black eyes. I didn’t dare look at them, because I knew that once I did, I’d never stop. I’ve been around show people before, but I’d never seen a woman with this kind of energy. Maureen sat in the yellow chair nearest to Jermaine, looking a little nervous and taking sips from a bottle of Evian. She had a little box of mints on her knee, and every once in a while she’d take one and crunch it in her teeth. Adelle was still being a little girl, sitting on the floor and running her fingers through the pile of the Shirvan. Roberta had taken the yellow chair closest to me, which I took as a good sign. It also gave me the chance to admire the line of her jaw without being noticed.

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with the girls’ career,” Mr. Martínez began.

“Mr. Goodwin has acquainted me with their remarkable monetary success over the past several years.”

“Black PussyCat is more than a successful group, Mr. Wolfe. These girls are quite capable of surpassing the achievements of the Spice Girls and equaling the international position of such groups as U-2 and the Rolling Stones.”

“Indeed. And what might I do to assist in such an extraordinary en-deavor?”

Mr. Martínez paused and smiled.

“That is the future, of course,” he said. “But there is also the past. I have been the group’s manager for five years. Prior to that time, they were managed by a woman known as Anita Watson.”

“Don’t talk about her like that, Phineas,” said Jermaine.

“I talk about her like that because it has been established that Anita Watson is not her real name.”

“Anita taught us everything, Mr. Wolfe,” said Jermaine, her eyes blazing. “We were just three poor church girls when we met her, sing-ing in the choir. She took us in!”

“As a matter of fact, Anita recruited the girls in a talent contest in Muscle Shoals, a contest that in the past often ended badly for the winners,” said Phineas, coolly.

“But not for us.”

“No. I do not mean to belittle what she accomplished. In two years’ time she had the girls performing in some of the best local venues in the South.”

“And she never stole a dime from us.”

“Perhaps not. But she supplemented her income by dealing exten-sively in cocaine, a failing, Mr. Wolfe, that is too common in my line of work.”

“And she spent it on us.”

“A portion at least. In any event, when Anita went to prison, I pur-chased the girls’ contract, which at that time consisted largely of debts, with no recording contract, and no prospect of one. But I realized the girls’ talent. I arranged for cosmetic surgery, dance lessons, vocal training, everything. I obtained a recording contract and brought them to Los Angeles. You understand, Mr. Wolfe, that in our business, im-age is everything.”

“I have seen their image. What libel could mar such an intentionally scabrous veneer?”

Mr. Martínez smiled again.

“Do the girls look scabrous to you?”

“Perhaps not,” Wolfe conceded.

“No. Black PussyCat stands for self-confidence and self-respect. Anita was released from prison six months ago. She has unfortunately contacted a former lover of hers, Peter Rogers, who has extensive criminal connections here in New York. They are in the city, claiming fraud in the sale of the original contract and demanding twenty-five percent of the arrangement I am negotiating with Sony. They say they wish to keep the matter a complete secret, but once I open the door to blackmail there will be no closing it. Black PussyCat is entirely free from any criminal associations and I am determined to keep it that way. Black PussyCat does not romanticize violence or exploitation. Black PussyCat is about freedom and human dignity.”

“Yes!” exclaimed Jermaine, and the way she said it, you had to be-lieve that she believed it. “Mr. Wolfe, Anita helped us when we needed it, and we want to help her. We want to pay her back for all she did for us, but we can’t help her when she’s hooked up with Peter Rogers. He’s a son of a bitch.”

“No doubt,” said Wolfe. “But I gather that convincing Miss Watson of that fact will take some doing. I should think that you, Miss Camp-bell, would have far more credibility with her than I.”

“I do not want the girls dealing with this directly, not at all,” said Mr. Martínez, sharply. “Anita has allied herself with dangerous people.”

“You say you are negotiating with Sony,” I interrupted. “Is that a done deal? I mean, is Murder 1 out of it.”

“Sony is a leading candidate, but the matter is far from closed,” said Martínez, smoothly. “I’m not going to limit myself. The details, I may say, are irrelevant to this discussion.”

“You must forgive my assistant’s intrusion, Mr. Martínez,” said Wolfe. “But Mr. Goodwin and myself are absolute strangers to the world you describe. I doubt if I sully your industry or your profession by suggesting that adjusting to the presence of a criminal element has long been an issue.”

“There are innumerable fixers and adjusters in our industry, none of whom can keep their mouths shut and all of whom have sticky fingers. We come to you, Mr. Wolfe, for your unique reputation for getting results and keeping secrets. No one’s going to do a ‘Behind the Music’ on these girls.”

What Wolfe knew about MTV you could put in a gnat’s hat, but he grunted affirmatively anyway.

“You have complimented both my orchids and my character, Mr. Martínez. You must know that I have a third weakness as well. How-ever unromantic it may be, my probity comes with a price, and it is a large one. Tell me precisely what it is you wish me to do and I will tell you if I will engage to do it.”

Mr. Martínez opened his briefcase.

“In the first place, I want you to put Peter Rogers in jail for a long time,” he said, handing Wolfe a photograph. “Unless we get rid of him, there can be no guarantee that Anita will not renew her claims, one way or another.”

“Indeed. Are there any outstanding warrants against him?”

“No. But he is a career criminal. He has twice been convicted of narcotics violations in California and has spent more than eight years in prison. He is a very unscrupulous and very persuasive man, and he is working here as a pimp.”

Wolfe turned to me and held up the photograph.

“Archie, do you know this man?”

“No. I don’t know all the pimps in New York City.”

“Of course not. Mr. Martínez, Mr. Goodwin and I are not in the business of manufacturing evidence. From what you have told me, Mr. Rogers may very well be embedded in the criminal milieu, but extract-ing him from it is likely to require the sort of eavesdropping, harass-ment, and plea-bargaining techniques that are the unique province of the New York City Police Department.”

“I have information here that should help you,” said Mr. Martínez, lifting up his briefcase and placing it on his lap. “I also have a cashier’s check for $500,000. That should help as well. I want Peter Rogers in jail, and I want Anita Watson out of my hair. There’s plenty in here that will help. You may as well take the whole thing.”

With that, Martínez hoisted the open briefcase onto Wolfe’s desk.

“Not yet,” said Wolfe. “As phrased, you ask the unethical, and per-haps the impossible. I catch criminals on occasion, when it suits my financial advantage to do so, but I do not invent them. You offer no evidence that Mr. Rogers has committed a crime—at least, not one for which he has not been punished—and yet you wish him in jail. I must decline.”

“I overshot my mark,” said Martínez. “Let me rephrase my terms. I want Anita Watson to sign an agreement renouncing all her claims against Black PussyCat, severally and individually, in return for pay-ments of $50,000 a year adjusted for inflation, which will lapse if she takes any actions that have or could have a tendency to injure the repu-tation or income of Black PussyCat or any of its principals or em-ployees.”

“That is a more reasonable proposition,” said Wolfe, “although dangerously open-ended. I have only heard your side of the story. I may say, Mr. Martínez, that although I have only known you a brief time, I have already formed a high opinion of your abilities.”

“Thank you,” said Phineas, politely.

“And yet we are all deplorably blind in assessing those things that are nearest our hearts. Perhaps Miss Watson is entirely justified in making her claims. I am not ashamed to bluff, or even to bully, in an indifferent cause, but what if Miss Watson proves to be what perhaps she is, a woman of intelligence and resolve, who will not be bluffed and bullied when a king’s ransom is at stake? You wish to purchase, surely, not my best efforts but a certain result, and with the informa-tion in my possession I have no reason to believe that Miss Watson’s acquiescence in your terms may reasonably be achieved.”

It may have been my imagination, but Phineas may have gulped—not audibly—and Phineas was not the gulping kind.

“There are plenty of firms—large ones—who would not be so fas-tidious,” he said.

“Then perhaps you should consult them.”

That wasn’t the answer Phineas wanted.

“I gave up cigarettes five years ago, Mr. Wolfe,” he said, after a pause, “and I have never wanted one until now.”

“I am sorry.”

“Yes. Let me revise my offer. In exchange for the $500,000, ex-amine the contents of this briefcase at your leisure, ask me any ques-tions you have, obtain any other information you feel is necessary, and in a week’s time give me your conclusions on the best way of proceed-ing to achieve the goal I stated previously. After having done so, you may or may not wish to undertake the pursuit of that goal.”

Wolfe smiled.

“Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but extravagant remuneration is surely a close second,” he said. “Your terms are ge-nerous indeed, Mr. Martínez, and I agree to them. Archie, would you be so kind as to take Mr. Martínez’ briefcase?”

I hoisted it from Wolfe’s desk to mine. It must have weighed twen-ty pounds. I opened it and on the top was a large envelope with fancy script that said “Mr. Nero Wolfe.” I opened it and there was the pret-tiest thing I’d seen in three months—a cashier’s check from Chase Manhattan for $500,000 made out to Nero Wolfe. They use such nice paper on the large denominations.

“It looks good,” I said.

Mr. Martínez laughed.

“Excellent,” he said. “Then we’re in business, Mr. Wolfe.”

“We are indeed, for the next week.”

Wolfe was playing it coy, all right, and I thought he was doing a good job, but it wasn’t good enough. I didn’t guess what was going to happen next and I’m sure Wolfe didn’t either. Adelle leaped to her feet, ran around Wolfe’s desk, and kissed him.

“You just nail that motherf***ker, Mr. Wolfe, that’s all!”

“Yes, yes, indeed,” muttered Wolfe. “Archie, please assist Miss Campbell to her seat.”

So he knew their names—their last name, at least. I can’t say I wasn’t enjoying the sight of Nero Wolfe with a phat black chick hang-ing on him, but Wolfe doesn’t pay me to laugh at him, so I got beside Adelle as quickly as I could.

“Mr. Wolfe appreciates the emotion,” I said, putting my arm around her. “But he’s not much for lovin’ at this hour of the morning.”

“I just wanted to say thank you,” she said, smiling up at me.

She was lithe and graceful and half my age. Fortunately, Mr. Martínez and Jermaine knew what to do. They took her off my hands and sat her down.

“Don’t be too mad at my baby sister, Mr. Wolfe,” said Jermaine. “She just gets carried away.”

“Naturally. But let us return to the business at hand. I make no guarantees. I shall review the material you provided. If I have inqui-ries, Mr. Martínez, I shall direct them to you. I hope to justify the con-fidence you have reposed in me.”

“We know you will, Mr. Wolfe,” said Jermaine, rising to her feet. “And you too, Archie.”

The smile she fired at me almost took my head off. I suddenly rea-lized I was on my feet without really knowing how I got there. I was leading the girls out and all of a sudden Adelle and Maureen had their arms around me. There was no doubt that they were very, very good. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Roberta and she was smiling. I tried to make myself care but eventually I gave up. Finally I got them out the door and shut it, and locked it, and put on the chain. I watched through the one-way glass until the Suburbans took off and then I walked back to the office.

“They’ve got a hell of an act,” I told Wolfe.

Wolfe waggled a finger.

“Sit down,” he said. “Archie, under no circumstances are you ever to allow yourself to be alone with any of those women. That is not a witticism or a jest. It is an order.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, “as long as it doesn’t include Roberta.”

“That is reasonable, I suppose,” he grunted. “I presume you have already secured her confidence?”

That was Wolfe. Not only does he think that I can make any woman dance on the palm of my hand, he thinks I go out of my way to do it.

“I have not secured her confidence, as you put it. I enjoy her com-pany and I hope that she would enjoy mine. If anybody has a 24/7 job she does, but I’m hoping that she might be able to squeeze in a few hours at the Flamingo.”

“Let us hope that her schedule does not conflict with Miss Ro-wan’s.”

Ever since November 2000 Lily has been spending half her time in Washington, saving us from the Republicans. Wolfe never gets tired of giving me the needle on this one.

“Miss Rowan knows, as you do not, how I can keep my private and professional lives separate, and the difference between companionship and something more.”

“Indeed. I never deny you your gifts, Archie. Now I must peruse this mass of material Mr. Martínez has assembled. Perhaps you could also obtain some supplemental information from the popular press.”

“Sure. How many tons would you like?”

“A judicious sample, not an inundation. What do you think of Mr. Martínez’ claim that Mr. Rogers is a professional criminal?”

“The odds look awfully good to me. But he doesn’t sound like the sort who could handle a high-class squeeze like this one.”

“Perhaps confinement has encouraged him to expand his horizons if not his character. Another question: What is ‘Murder 1?’”

I gave Wolfe as much as I knew on the background of the negotia-tions. He listened with his eyes shut, his chin rested on one fist. When I was done he asked a few more questions about Frank and Smith.

“Mr. Martínez is not telling us all he could,” he said. “But then, there is no reason why he should. I will examine the contents of his briefcase with some care. By the way, I understand from today’s mail that Mr. Harz has secured the edition of Mr. Burke’s collected writings that I had requested. Perhaps you will have time today to visit his es-tablishment and examine the volumes?”

An Invitation to a Shooting Party Chapter 7

2011-03-09T07:32:00.001-08:00

The next several hours were kind of a blur. I had another talk with the local sheriff, who probably would have been happier climbing mountains in the Himalayas or counting penguins at the South Pole. I had just solved his case for him, or Wolfe had, but he wasn’t very grateful.

I had to go down to his office to make a statement, which was fine with me, really, because I appreciated a break from life at Winterborne Manor. The Cavendishes had hated me before, but now I had de-stroyed their lives, or at least turned them upside down. When I fi-nished giving my statement the sheriff wanted to know if I would mind too much being fingerprinted and photographed. Well, I did mind, but in a way I felt I owed him for making such a mess of his routine, and anyway I figured that the next time I would be in his jurisdiction would be never. When I got back to the house I went straight to my room and took a shower and changed clothes. I wasn’t bloody, not so that you could notice, but I had been agitated.

I was tying the knot on my tie when I heard a knock on the door. It was Ginnie.

“May I come in, Mr. Goodwin?” she asked.

“Of course.”

Say what you like about the bedrooms in Winterborne Manor, they’re large. She took the chair by the fireplace and I took the sofa.

“Mr. Wolfe and I will be out of here tonight,” I said. “He hates traveling at night even more than in the daylight, but I’ll move him.”

“Yes, that would be best.”

She paused, and ran her fingers through her hair, though it didn’t need it.

“It’s very hard for me to thank you, Mr. Goodwin. I don’t like you very much.”

“I can understand that.”

“Yes. But, you see, I always knew that Harry was dangerous. It was one of the things I liked about him. It can be a very exciting quality in a man.

“I didn’t know everything that Mr. Wolfe said, although of course I knew that Tony had something on Harry. I should have guessed what it was, but I didn’t. Tony and Gabby were both so damned greedy. Harry should have killed Tony, I suppose, but then Harry was greedy too. I was just finding that out. And then Hetty hated him so much. I couldn’t let her have her way. All her life she had her way, and all of my life too. Harry was the one thing I had that made her mad, and I loved that!”

Her eyes flashed.

“So, you see, I couldn’t give him up. I couldn’t admit to Hetty that I made a mistake. I thought, with all of us here, we could bring her to terms. That wasn’t a good idea, of course. I should have known that there would be danger, that it would come to no good.”

“You didn’t pull that trigger.”

“No, I didn’t. Poor Harry! He was so entirely full of himself. He deserved to die, didn’t he?”

“I suppose he did. Anyway, I couldn’t let him kill my boss.”

“No. I suppose I’m not much of a wife.”

“You’re more of a wife than a murderer deserves.”

“Perhaps. In a very awful way, I am very much in your debt, Mr. Goodwin. I am in your debt in a way that makes me ashamed of my-self.”

I shrugged.

“There isn’t a lot I can say that would make a difference,” I said. “But, again, you didn’t pull that trigger.”

She nodded.

“Would you like to do me a favor?” I asked.

She laughed.

“Well, I certainly ought to, shouldn’t I? Yes, what is it? To pay your bill?”

“No. I suppose Mr. Bradford is taking care of that. But I think you should send Donna to school.”

“Donna? Oh, my God, yes! Poor Donna! She’s had enough of this place, hasn’t she? Yes, of course.”

She laughed some more, without hysteria this time.

“You like her, don’t you, Mr. Goodwin?”

I didn’t answer that.

“I have to see Mr. Wolfe,” I said.

We left my room together. Ginnie disappeared down the hallway, leaving me to descend the staircase alone. I asked a servant where Mr. Wolfe was and he directed me out to the verandah, which was a sur-prise. I tried to think of the last time that Wolfe sat out in the open air when he didn’t have to and gave up. I found him drinking beer and eating bread and cheese, which Donna sliced for him.

“Archie,” he said, “you have returned from your ordeal.”

“Yes.”

“Please join us. I have been attempting to convince Miss Atterbury that the works of Gibbon will not please her. She intends to be con-trary, but I doubt if her defiance will carry her past the reign of Julian the Apostate.”

“You’ll see,” said Donna.

“Thank you,” said Wolfe, as she handed him another slice of bread and cheese. “Miss Atterbury, I would appreciate it if you would allow me a private conversation with Mr. Goodwin.”

“Of course.”

Donna rose and looked at me.

“You were wonderful, Archie,” she said, blushing.

I nodded. She left, and I sat down.

Wolfe drank his beer and licked the foam from his upper lip.

“Nothing,” he said, “so provokes the romantic sensibility in a young woman as the shedding of blood.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“You saved my life, Archie. I thank you.”

I cut myself some cheese.

“You certainly set yourself up for it, riding him that way. What was the point of pulling that stunt in the gun room, of all places?”

“I underestimated Mr. Cavendish severely. He exceeded my expec-tations both in his finesse and in his derangement. It was only right that I should call down the consequences of my folly upon my own head.”

“Sure. But if you had the Mauser, or Cramer did, why not let Cra-mer handle it with the sheriff? Bradford still would have paid you your fee.”

“No doubt. But I did not have the Mauser. Sir Archibald remained obdurate.”

“You didn’t have the Mauser.”

“No. The weapon was a gift to Mr. Cavendish, given to him for his exploits in Nairobi, more than ten years ago. The ceremonies were de-scribed in some detail by a columnist for the Nairobi Times. Mr. Ca-vendish, I am sure, never knew of such an article, or else it did not occur to him that Mrs. Winterbourne’s minions could possibly have obtained a copy. But they did, and Mr. Bradford faithfully conveyed it to me. Possession of the Mauser certainly would have doomed Mr. Cavendish, and I certainly intended to provoke him into defiance and even flight. I anticipated in him a capacity for violence but not the ap-petite for it that he displayed. I had the distinct feeling that he would not leave that room without committing an outrage. Fortunately, you proved worthy of the burden I had so rashly placed upon you.”

“I spoke with Ginnie before I came down here,” I said.

“Indeed.”

“She told me that she knew Cavendish was a dangerous man. That was what she liked about him, one of the things. Eventually, she rea-lized that she’d made a mistake, but she wouldn’t back off, because of Hetty.”

Wolfe looked out over the garden.

“Mrs. Winterborne,” he said, “could have lived another five years, even ten, with nothing to live for but to meddle obsessively in the lives of the young. She died, so it would seem, surrounded by the things she loved. One could almost sympathize with Mr. Cavendish. But it was not his life to take.”

We left that afternoon. I tried to get away without getting kissed by Donna, but she was too quick for me. I made her work for it, holding my head up, but she put her hand on my shoulder and jumped. Two days after we got back to the city I deposited a check drawn to Hetty’s estate for $50,000, and Fritz gave us truffled pheasant for dinner. I haven’t been in touch with Donna, but we do have a date, on May 17, 1941. That’s her twenty-first birthday, and we’re meeting for drinks under the clock at the Biltmore.

An Invitation to a Shooting Party Chapter 6

2011-03-09T07:31:00.001-08:00

Wolfe called me to his bedroom at eight the next morning for in-structions. He was sitting upright in bed in his yellow pajamas and his yellow bathrobe, with a breakfast tray on his lap. His hair was tousled and his cheeks were unshaven, but his eyes had focus. I couldn’t tell you what he’d had for breakfast, because he’d cleaned his plates—all four of them.

“The butter here is very good,” he told me.

“You can thank Alice Maven for that,” I said. “She runs the show around here. I haven’t figured out whose side she’s on yet. Maybe she figures she’ll have to live with whoever comes out on top, so she’s just playing it down the middle.”

“Such rationality is as rare as it is welcome, particularly in a wom-an.”

“You’d say that about anyone who gave you a square meal in your hour of distress and danger.”

“The brain without the stomach feeds upon itself and dies. You have informed Mrs. Cavendish and her relatives of my arrival and my purpose?”

“Yes. Ginnie will see you, maybe, but I doubt if the Brits will. Ac-cording to Donna, they’re about ready to pull up stakes. She’s done a little eavesdropping. Bradford wanted the sheriff to tell them that they’re all suspects, but apparently he doesn’t have the nerve.”

“I am hardly surprised. ‘Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes between the pass and fell incensed points of mighty opposites.”

“Yeah. So what do we do about it?

“I am curious to see this gunroom that you described with such en-thusiasm. I shall arrive there around nine. Perhaps if Mr. Bradford and Mrs. Cavendish could arrive by ten? She, of course, may be accompa-nied by others if they wish. But that would give me the opportunity to schedule interviews with as many people as possible.”

“You sound like you expect to be here a while. The butter must be good.”

“We shall see, Archie. You have your weapon with you?”

“The Marley. No. But I can get it.”

“Do so. But concealment is essential. No one must know that you have it. Now you will excuse me, for I must dress.”

So he was set to pull something, but he wasn’t going to say what. I went to my room and spent a good fifteen minutes making sure the shoulder rig didn’t show. When I was finished I went downstairs and told a servant to inform Mr. Bradford and Mrs. Cavendish of Wolfe’s invitation. Then I went out to the verandah where I found Donna hav-ing breakfast.

“Is Mr. Wolfe ready to talk about Hamlet?” she asked.

“Not yet, but he’s getting there. He was quoting this morning. And he likes the butter here. But he’s got to meet with Ginnie and Bradford first.”

“Can I meet him?”

“I suppose. He’s going to be in the gun room around nine. But you’re going to have to wait until we get things settled before you talk about Hamlet.”

“Who does he suspect?”

“He never says.”

“Does he know what a mobled queen is?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

While we were eating Ginnie and Cavendish came by. Now that we were putting our cards on the table, I suppose they thought it was proper to face me down.

“Mr. Goodwin,” she said. “I understand your employer wishes to have a word with us.”

“Yes.”

“We will be there, though I will not promise that we will be punc-tual.”

“We don’t mind waiting.”

She drew in her breath, as though she were about to say something she might regret, and then thought better of it.

“Don’t be too hard on Mr. Goodwin, dear,” said Harry. “He can’t help his boss.”

He smiled at me as though I would have made a decent gillie if I hadn’t gone to the big city. I had shot a deer, after all, so I wasn’t all bad.

“She’s cool,” said Donna, after they left.

“Takes after her great grandmother,” I said.

She made a face.

“Who do I take after?”

“I don’t know, but I do know that I like you the best.”

“Maybe. If I were Ginnie, I wouldn’t like you either.”

“I guess not.”

“What is Mr. Wolfe going to ask them?

“You never know. At this point, he may be fishing, or he may have something up his sleeve. But I don’t think he wants to talk about Ham-let.”

She didn’t like that. We waited until five after nine to go to the gun room. When we got there, Wolfe was sitting on a big red leather sofa with a shotgun across his lap. Alice Maven was standing beside him, giving him a few pointers. Mr. Bradford was seated across from them in a wing chair, rising from his seat and nodded as we entered.

“Archie,” Wolfe said. “And you must be Miss Atterbury. You will forgive me if I do not rise. Mr. Bradford shames me with his courtesy. I am not fully recovered from my journey. Mrs. Maven was just ac-quainting me with the special charms of this formidable weapon. It is astonishing what gilded embroidery the aristocracy will not lavish upon the implements of their leisure. As though the purpose of life were to shoot a bird rather than eat one.”

You didn’t have to guess where Wolfe came down on that one. He handed the shotgun back to Alice.

“Mr. Wolfe,” said Donna, brightly, “I want to know all about what you have to say about Hamlet!”

Wolfe raised his shoulders a quarter of an inch and then let them drop.

“Mr. Goodwin warned me of your enthusiasm. I wish I could deliv-er a bon mot worthy of both the occasion and the subject, but I fear I cannot. Legions of genius have grappled with his character, and yet he eludes them. Is he a courtier, a king, a scoundrel, a child, a poet, or a madman? Shakespeare, I believe, emptied his genius rather than em-ployed it in creating his character. How else to explain the astounding incongruities? And yet, what wonders his genius contained! Old age may descant whatever wisdom it pleases to lessen Hamlet, but the young will forever be his champion. You admire him, no doubt?”

“I do! Poor Hamlet!”

“You see? When you are as old, and as fat, as I am, you will think differently.”

“Well, I’ll never be that fat!”

Donna reddened and laughed at the same time.

“That was awfully rude, wasn’t it? I’m sorry!”

“I used the word, which certainly gives you license to repeat it. And yet I find that I carry not an ounce of surplus. One must balance one’s temperament as one can. Ah, Mrs. Cavendish, is it not?”

Ginnie walked into the room, looking even cooler than before. And she had the whole gang with her, all except Harry. Gerry and Diane took the sofa by the windows, while Tony and Gabby each took a chair along the wall facing the fireplace. They all looked a little beat, particularly Tony and Gabby, but three days of talking with lawyers will do that to you. Ginnie, I have to say, was bearing up better than the rest, and she was carrying most of the strain. She stood directly before Wolfe and looked him straight in the eye. Was he going to stand or wasn’t he? Wolfe didn’t budge. Since Winterborne Manor wasn’t officially her house, she wasn’t officially his hostess. At least, that was the line he gave me later.

“Mrs. Cavendish,” he said. “I am Nero Wolfe, as you know. The situation in which we find ourselves is intensely disagreeable to us both. You, I know, do not wish me beneath this roof. I assure you that I and Mr. Goodwin wish we were gone as passionately as you do. And it is my intention to achieve that state of affairs as quickly as possible.”

“My quarrel is with Mr. Bradford, Mr. Wolfe,” she said.

“Indeed. But I believe I can settle that quarrel, and resolve the dis-pute that has pre-empted the distribution of property under your great grandmother’s will, though not without a significant degree of friction and unpleasantness.”

That widened her eyes. She shot a glance at Bradford. If he knew anything, he was sitting on it, but good. She turned her eyes back to Wolfe and smiled.

“Well,” she said. “I suppose I should sit for that.”

“Thank you.”

Ginnie took a seat on the couch by the fireplace, directly opposite Wolfe. I was still on my feet, standing by the fireplace, which let me keep an eye on the whole crowd.

“Archie,” said Wolfe, “please sit down.”

I took the chair next to him. He had himself twisted slightly in the corner of the couch, which gave him a pretty good view of everyone. It wasn’t the way he liked it, at the brownstone, but it would have to do.

“As you all probably know,” he began, “or have at least surmised, the late Mrs. Winterborne came to me, demanding that I prove that the marriage of Mr. Cavendish to her great granddaughter Virginia was null and void, on the grounds that Mr. Cavendish had contracted an earlier marriage, still valid, while living in Argentina. I declined. As I am certain you all know, Mrs. Winterborne disliked intensely the slightest resistance to her will. I confess, not without a modicum of shame, that I at last consented, not to undertake the task that she origi-nally laid before me, but to determine its feasibility. In addition, my assistant Mr. Goodwin would come here, under a false name, in further assistance of this arrangement.”

Wolfe paused for a second. I guessed that he was thinking about the trouble that eating five pounds of deer sausage could get you into. He glanced around the room and continued.

“Mrs. Winterborne, of course, was confident that, having planted the hook, she would soon land the fish. For my part, I was determined to escape with both my honor and my fee intact, for I fear I am both vain and covetous. But both stratagems were soon surpassed by events, most notably, the death of Mrs. Winterborne, as discovered by Mr. Goodwin.

“Before Mrs. Winterbourne’s death, I had already read widely in the vast amount of information that her minions had collected on Mr. Cavendish’s life. After I learned of the terms of her will from Mr. Bradford, I increased my efforts. I had little more to show for my ef-forts than a cloud of surmise, but perhaps what I learn from you today may provide some clarity.”

As he said this, Henry Cavendish walked into the room.

“My, what a gathering. You are certainly Nero Wolfe.”

“I am.”

“I congratulate you, Mr. Wolfe. Getting my relatives and Mr. Brad-ford in the same room is no small feat.”

“You must join us, Mr. Cavendish. The matters we discuss concern you urgently.”

“I have heard quite enough talk over the past couple of days. The old lady may be dead, and Mr. Bradford may fancy himself the mas-ter, but I am still a guest and have a mind for a little shooting. You do not hunt, Mr. Wolfe?”

“For profit only, not pleasure. And I confine myself to my own spe-cies.”

Cavendish went to the open gun rack and took out a fourteen gauge.

“A pity,” he said, looking at the gun more than us. “You know, Mr. Wolfe, the happiest hours of my life I have spent with a gun in my hand.”

“This elegant room speaks to the joys of bloodshed. But I do ask that you join us. What I have to say concerns you, and, though much of what I have to say is awkward, I dislike talking behind a man’s back, particularly when the matter is so grave.”

“Well, when you put the matter like that, I feel obliged to listen, at least for awhile.”

“I shall try to be as brief as possible.”

Cavendish sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the fire-place from Wolfe, with the shotgun across his legs. He crossed his left leg over his right and his foot was twitching, just a little.

“I appreciate your indulgence,” said Wolfe.

He glanced all around the room, drew in a bushel of air, and then let it out again.

“Now, to begin,” he said. “As I said before, it was Mrs. Winter-bourne’s purpose, from the day Miss Winterbourne’s engagement to Mr. Cavendish was announced to first prevent, and then annul that marriage. She failed. It is often remarked that it is impossible to prove a negative. That is almost true. However, in her efforts to prove that Mr. Cavendish had married in Argentina, I believe that Mrs. Winter-borne established a negative. She proved, entirely contrary to her in-tentions, that Henry Cavendish did not marry in Argentina. Mr. Bradford, I salute you. Your indefatigable efforts led you to every pa-rish within that country, and to every priest or other official empo-wered to perform the rituals of matrimony. We know, indisputably, who was married in the nation of Argentina from November 3, 1931, through March 7, 1934, when he departed. And so we know, indisput-ably, that Henry Cavendish was not among that number.”

“I told the old fool that, a hundred times,” said Ginnie.

“No doubt,” said Wolfe. “However, I fear I am not finished. You see, there was much more to the story.”

Wolfe took in another bushel of air. He had them, and now he was going to milk them.

“When Henry Cavendish arrived in Buenos Aires, he received a great deal of attention and, as the son of an earl, traveled in the highest social circles. I confess that I had little idea of the prestige of the Brit-ish aristocracy in Argentina until I read the news clippings that Mr. Bradford so assiduously acquired. For some foolish reason I assumed that the nations to the south were not so ridden with the vice of snob-bery as prevails in this great democracy. But I was soon disabused of my innocence. It is not too much to say that I know everyone who is anyone in Buenos Aires, at least as reported by La Prensa and La Na-ción, not to mention Le Petit Journal, which I find has an extraordi-nary charm.

“Mr. Cavendish arrived in Argentina in November of 1931 and de-parted in March of 1934. For the first year of his stay, until February of 1933, to be precise, I find no mention of his supposed cousin, Sr. Rodriguez, whatsoever.”

“You call me an imposter, sir?” snapped Tony.

“Indeed not, if by imposter you mean that I deny that you are a blood relative of Mr. Cavendish, for it is indisputable that you are, though you are hardly a first cousin. But it appears that you spent the first twenty-five years of your life on a large ranch, far distant from Buenos Aires, a city that you had visited only once or twice in your life before 1932.”

“It is no crime to be from the pampas.”

“Indeed not, nor is it one to be poor, but you were assuredly both, until all at once you were seen, frequently, in society, and identified as the cousin of an English earl. And in October of 1933 your married Señorita Gabriela Honoria Isabella Calderone, described in Le Petit Journal as a society beauty who possesses everything except wealth. How did such a match occur? For the first time, I found myself con-fronted with a question worth investigating.”

Wolfe paused and drank from his beer. I watched Gabby’s face. Being called poor but beautiful didn’t seem to please her much. She was staring at Wolfe. They all were. What he knew, how much he knew, they didn’t know. But he had found a string to pull, and now he was pulling it.

“It is always remarkable,” he said, “to observe the power of money, in this case, Hetty Winterbourne’s. As I say, my curiosity was aroused. I called Mr. Bradford, who dispatched cables to both London and Bu-enos Aires. That money exchanged hands there can be no doubt. But in the end, I had my solution. In May of 1927, a mere three months after his twenty-first birthday, Henry Cavendish departed from his family’s home in London to travel to Nairobi, where he lived for three years. What precisely he did there I know not, for Mrs. Winterbourne’s curiosity did not carry that far. But I learned from the inquiries that Mr. Bradford made on my behalf that two months before Henry Cavendish left England, another Cavendish, a Janet Cavendish, left England, traveling to Argentina, where, for all intents and purposes, she disappeared. There is no reason to suppose her dead, but very little reason to suppose her alive.”

Wolfe looked around the room.

“As most of you well know, Janet Cavendish is, or was, Henry Ca-vendish’s true wife. They were married in a Roman Catholic ceremony. To further complicate matters, she was pregnant at the time of her departure from England.”

Wolfe paused again. He had all his ducks in a row, and he was knocking them off one by one.

“It was this circumstance that baffled poor Mrs. Winterborne. She had rumors and surmises of all sorts regarding a Mrs. Cavendish in Argentina, rumors that were in fact true. The wedding, however, had not occurred there. And it was knowledge of this wedding that al-lowed Mr. Rodriguez to achieve his sudden rise to social eminence. But such things cost money, money that he obtained from Henry Cavendish. Mr. Cavendish, at last, did what so many Englishmen have done before him. He married an American.

“But that, alas, did not entirely solve matters. The tedious and re-lentless Mrs. Winterborne simply would not give up. There were al-ways more lawyers, more court orders, and more challenges. Mr. Cavendish was patient, but at last his patience snapped.

“You contrived it very well, sir,” said Wolfe, looking directly at Cavendish. “How quickly did you discover the prominence that gave you a clear shot at Mrs. Winterborne as she sat in her chair? The third day, perhaps? Or the fifth? I understand that that was the day that you decided to dispense with your rifle and take up a shotgun along with the other hunters.

“You sent your rifles to England, as you said, and none were found here. But I suspect that you secreted one, on the prominence itself. It was a long shot, after all, of close to 500 yards. You needed a clear day with no wind. Perhaps you practiced, shooting at a plate one morning, which would account for the fragment of China that Mr. Goodwin discovered. Mrs. Winterborne, fortunately, would present an absolutely stationary target, but even then, some patience was necessary. You could afford to miss wide, I suppose. A single bullet fired at such range could go unnoticed if it passed overhead. But you needed a precise shot.”

If Wolfe had hit a nerve with Cavendish, he wasn’t showing it.

“Did you really come all this way to amuse us with your fairy tales, Mr. Wolfe? I should think Hetty could have gotten a more entertaining fellow than you for her money.”

Wolfe grunted.

“What I have told you is a mixture of deduction and surmise,” he said, “yet one that, I am confident, comes very near the truth. “But if you mean that I have said little that would hold up in a court of law, I agree entirely. And I would not even mention these conjectures had I not received far more substantial evidence before leaving my home and traveling here. For if you knew my character you would know that I do not travel on a surmise.

“Mr. Goodwin informed me of the extravagant arrangement that was contrived to allow you and your brother access to the diplomatic pouch of the British Consulate in New York. By the merest coinci-dence, I am acquainted with Sir Archibald Willoughby, who is, of course, the head of the consulate here. I asked Sir Archibald if he would examine the contents of the pouches that were received on the days immediately following Mrs. Winterbourne’s death. I pointed out that neither Lord Harrington nor his brother were members of the Brit-ish Foreign Service. This distinction appeared to hold little weight for him, and he refused. When I persisted, he suggested that I might obtain satisfaction if my request was supported by someone in authority. With some trepidation, I consulted Chief Inspector Cramer of the New York Police Department. Mr. Cramer, I must say, took little pleasure in providing me with assistance, but ultimately he acted, and yesterday I had my answer.

“The pouch contained a rifle, a most excellent rifle, made by the firm of Holland & Holland, a .30 caliber bolt-action Mauser, with a Monte Carlo stock, which surely means more to you than it does to me, and equipped with Zeiss telescopic sight of remarkable quality, sighted to 500 yards. The barrel carries a finely crafted inscription. Mr. Cramer, though not as well acquainted with the poets as he might be, conveyed to me the gist ‘Arma virumque cano,” the well-known opening phrase from Virgil’s epic. Are you familiar with such a weapon, Mr. Cavendish?”

“Well, that’s enough of that, now, isn’t it?” said Cavendish, rising to his feet.

I rose to my feet as well, but not before Henry had broken the shot-gun, slipped in two shells, clicked the barrel back in place and pointed it at my gut. He was just too fast for me. I wanted to go for the Marley but the odds against me were way too high. As long as he didn’t know I had it, I had a chance.

“Sit down, Mr. Goodwin,” he told me. “You’re a good man with a gun. Too good, really. I hope to avoid killing you, but I would enjoy doing so.”

“For God’s sake, Harry,” said Ginnie. “This is absurd. We can re-fute Mr. Wolfe’s nonsense in court.”

“To be subjected to the justice of the local boors? I think not. Cana-da, provincial as it is, has more appreciation for rank. The authorities there will handle the case with more understanding.”

“You intend to slaughter us all?” said Wolfe. “I assure you, sir, you shall be some time digging my grave.”

“No one needs to die, Mr. Wolfe, although I believe I shall require a hostage. Donna here should arouse sufficient sympathy.”

“Harry, please!” said Ginnie. “This is impossible! You can’t do it!”

“I should not argue with your husband, Mrs. Cavendish,” said Wolfe. “He appears to have abandoned himself to his iniquity. He shall be brought to justice soon enough.”

Cavendish swung the barrel of the shotgun until it was pointing di-rectly at Wolfe’s face.

“You are a damned meddler, Mr. Wolfe,” he said. “I could have paid your price. I could have settled it.”

Wolfe glared back at him. They seemed to be the only two men in the room.

“My cupidity, though pronounced,” he said, “would not induce me to bargain with a common criminal such as yourself. Your guilt has deranged you, and soon it will destroy you.”

I could see Henry’s right forefinger tightening on one of the shot-gun’s two triggers. Whether he would have pulled it I’ll never know, because I slid forward from the chair and dropped to one knee. The Marley was in my hand. He was turning towards me but it was too late. I put three bullets in his rib cage under his left armpit before he got around with the shotgun. His knees were bent, and he tried to straighten them. It was the last thing he ever did. He fell towards me in slow motion, and I took the barrel of the shotgun with my left hand, placing the muzzle over my shoulder, so that it would miss me if it went off. When his fingers fell from the gun, I pulled it up and away from him.

There was quite a bit of shouting and crying, and a little screaming, but I couldn’t hear much of it. I was standing over Harry, my heart beating.

An Invitation to a Shooting Party Chapter 5

2011-03-09T07:30:00.001-08:00

In the morning I had breakfast with Hetty on the verandah. Donna wasn’t in sight, and I didn’t ask what had happened to her. Gabbie and Ginnie stopped by, and I learned that the ladies had decided that they had shot enough pheasants—they’d bagged more than twenty the day before—and would be hunting deer instead. Seven deer hunters sounded like a bit of a crowd, and since I had already scored an eight-point, I decided to bow out. I was, after all, supposed to be here on a job, even though no one seemed to be buying that story. I was also thinking that if Donna could pick locks, I could too. This was Hetty’s house, after all, so it would hardly even qualify as breaking and enter-ing.

After the gang set off for the shoot I had one of the servants take me down to the kitchen to make sure that my deer would reach Wolfe in good shape. Going below stairs in Winterborne Manor is a bit like visiting the catacombs. We went to the game room, where three car-casses were hanging from the ceiling. Mine was the one that was short a leg. Other than that, it looked fine. Bernard was a very good man with a knife, as I knew he would be. There’s a lot more to skinning and dressing a deer than a rabbit, but the principles are the same.

The carcass wouldn’t be leaving until tomorrow, but the liver had already left. Hetty’s chef assured me that they had a special hamper, one they had been using for more than thirty years, to ensure that the liver would remain chilled, but not frozen, throughout the trip.

With that out of the way, I decided that it was time to do a little snooping. I had a healthy respect for Donna’s inquisitiveness, and she probably would have found a few things I would have missed, but there were a few things that I would find that she would miss. But after a good three hours, I had to admit that I was licked. Ginnie had a locked desk that I spent twenty minutes on, because I didn’t want to leave any scratches. When I got inside I opened one of the large draw-ers and found a smooth metal case that weighed about forty pounds. The lid had three dials on it and the name “Wissen” etched in fine script. Swiss watchmakers put these together for special clients who have papers they don’t want disturbed. There was no way I was getting in that little box with anything less subtle than a sledgehammer, and that wouldn’t quite do. So Ginnie was hiding something, which didn’t surprise me, but what? If she didn’t trust her lawyers—and obviously she didn’t—it had to be good.

Over the next three days I went through everyone’s room, and didn’t learn a damn thing. Sometimes, people with secrets are good at hiding them. After three days of snooping I was more than ready to start living like a man of leisure again. I spent another day hunting with Bernard, but never got close enough to a deer to get off a shot. I walked back to the overlook and saw Henry, Davis, and Hetty all sound asleep under the tent. A group of servants, sitting on the grass about twenty paces behind the tent, rose as I appeared, but I waved them off. I walked under the tent and waited politely for about ten minutes, but it was clear that it would take more than politeness to wake them. I went and stood in front of Hetty and it was then that I saw that she wasn’t sleeping. As peaceful as she looked from the back, there was a broad stain of blood that had soaked over her belly. Her mouth had fallen open and her eyes were glassy. I felt her pulse, both her wrist and her neck. Nothing. Her dress was stiff with dried blood. Hetty Winterborne was dead, and she’d been that way for hours.

I wakened Henry, which wasn’t an easy job—sherry and sunshine had taken their toll on him—and gave him the bad news. He stared at me, unbelieving.

“She can’t be,” he said. “She can’t be.”

“She is. I can’t tell for sure, but I think she’s been shot.”

“No. We’ve been here all the time. I didn’t hear a thing.”

“You’ve been asleep. Where’s Dr. Jameson?”

“Why, I’m not sure. He—oh, he went to see Charles. You know, he’s never well.”

“Then I think you better call Alice. And we better find Dr. Jame-son.”

Henry talked to the servants, who had figured out that something was wrong. Ronnie started off in his pony cart to find Alice and Dr. Jameson, but that was going to take some time. I wanted to get back to the house to call Wolfe, but that was going to take some time too. I couldn’t leave until Alice or the doctor showed up, which gave me a little time to some detecting. I wasn’t going to undress Hetty, so I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like she’d taken a slug in her belly. She couldn’t have been shot from close range. Henry and Davis might not have noticed, but surely the servants would have heard it. But a long-range shot would have gone unnoticed. Guns were popping all the time at Winterborne Manor. But who had a rifle that day?

I stood in front of Hetty and looked out over the valley. She wasn’t facing the river, but the mountains to the left. She looked like she had slid down in her chair after she’d taken the bullet, so it would be hard to determine the exact trajectory of the round, but I didn’t think whoever shot her fired from below. It was at least a hundred yards to the first slopes of the mountains. Getting a clear shot from the slopes was possible if you picked your spot carefully, but most of the area was covered with dense undergrowth. Far up the mountain there was a rocky outcropping, at least five hundred yards away.

I looked at Hetty again. A spent round, fired from the top of the mountain, or even the other side, could have reached her. It would have been falling with little more than the force of gravity. Would a bullet traveling that distance even penetrate her flesh? And what were the odds of that happening? Slim to none, I decided. Whoever had put that bullet in Hetty had done so on purpose, and they’d done it from the outcropping.

Word of Hetty’s death had begun to spread among the hundreds of people who worked for her. A crowd was gathering, through they re-mained at a respectful distance. At last Alice Maven appeared, riding on a horse. She dismounted and approached me.

“She’s really dead,” she said to me.

“Yes,” I said. “We need to have her examined.”

“I notified Robert. He’s on his way.”

Robert was on his way, but it still took a good half an hour for him to reach us. We could have put Hetty in her carriage and taken her back to the house, but I wanted witnesses. Alice and Dr. Jameson were the two people I could trust in that house to tell what they saw.

“You found her just like this?” he asked me, when he arrived.

“Yes. No one has touched her since I’ve been here.”

“The other two were asleep, I understand.”

“Yes.”

He kept looking back and forth, from Hetty to me, as though he didn’t quite trust me. Well, I was a stranger. And Hetty was dead. And I had found her.

He bent closely over Hetty, holding her head between his hands.

“We’d better get her in the carriage,” he said. “Do you mind?”

I didn’t. I’d never carried a client’s corpse before, but there’s a first time for everything. And poor old Hetty wasn’t much of a burden.

Once we got her in the carriage I went to speak with Alice.

“I’m not Mrs. Winterbourne’s personal attorney,” I told her. “I think we need to contact Mr. Bradford as soon as possible.”

“I notified his office,” she told me. “We should be hearing from him shortly.”

That was good. I also wanted to say that we should notify the she-riff as well, but I didn’t want the idea to come from me.

“You know, it does appear that Mrs. Winterborne was shot,” I said.

“We need Robert to determine that,” she said, sharply.

“I know,” I said. “As I said, I am not Mrs. Winterbourne’s personal attorney, but there is an enormous amount of money at stake here, and anything that is in the slightest degree suspicious needs to be taken care of in advance.”

“What do you find suspicious?” she demanded.

“If Mrs. Winterborne was shot, and I think she was, I find that sus-picious,” I said. “Unless you want to believe that Charles or Henry stabbed her, which I do not.”

“That’s absurd. You know yourself that all hunting is being done with shotguns. If Mrs. Winterborne was shot, which perhaps she was, it was a stray round from a poacher. We’ll know more when Robert has examined her.”

“I would like to have a look at the gun room,” I told her.

“You may certainly do so.”

So that was that. I got in the carriage with Dr. Jameson while Alice rode ahead. I didn’t think it was likely that Alice Maven had plugged her employer of some twenty odd years, but I was beginning to won-der.

Once the carriage was underway I tried to strike up a conversation with the doctor, but he wasn’t talking. He’d been watching my little talk with Alice, and I suspect that it made him more suspicious of me than he had been before. An outsider, causing trouble? We can’t have that. The more I pushed him, the tighter he clammed. Finally, I gave up. With Hetty gone, I didn’t count. I was just an observer, an ob-server who needed to keep his mouth shut. So I shut it. I sat and stared as we passed through the fine gardens, along smooth gravel paths. Everything I was seeing belonged to Ginnie now. Maybe the whole show was over. You can’t have a job without a client, and our client was dead. We’d be damned lucky to get a penny out of Ginnie, even if she didn’t find out what Hetty had put us up to. But I didn’t like it. I had a feeling in my gut that if we walked, someone would be getting away with murder, and I didn’t like it. I needed to hear Dr. Jameson tell me that Hetty had been shot, and then I needed to talk to Wolfe.

There was a crowd waiting for us at the house—everyone had been back from the hunt and had gotten the news. Donna stared at me with a drawn, bewildered face. I knew she would be looking for me, but I wanted to get a look at the rest of them—the Cavendish gang. I can hardly blame them for not looking too down. Hetty was eighty-seven and she’d been nothing but trouble for them. The one to watch out for was Ginnie. She wasn’t Ginnie any more, after all. She was Mrs. Ca-vendish now, and if she’d ordered me off “her” property I’m not sure what I would have done. Fortunately, she didn’t. They were playing it smooth, and so was I. We all stood around and talked for twenty mi-nutes about how terrible it was. People asked me a lot of questions and I answered them. I listened closely to what the others said—where they were, and how they got the news—but I didn’t ask anyone any-thing. I wasn’t going to put anyone on the spot, not yet.

As soon as the conversation hit a real lull I murmured something about needing to get cleaned up. As I did so I managed to get a min-ute with Donna.

“Is there a safe phone I can use?” I asked.

She looked startled, then excited.

“Of course!” she said, keeping her voice low. “Is this important?”

“It could be. Give me a few minutes, and then come inside. I’ll be in the gun room.”

I went inside and down the corridor to the gun room. Edwards was there, replacing several of the shotguns.

“Such terrible news, sir,” he said, as I entered.

“Yes, terrible.”

I watched as he replaced the guns. There was only one missing—the fourteen-gauge Purdy that I’d been using.

“There’s just my Purdy missing,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“It should be up soon. I don’t suppose anyone used a rifle today.”

“Oh, no. The forest is simply too dense for that sort of shooting, even for Englishmen.”

He said that last sentence with just a bit of a smile.

“Of course.”

I wandered over to the cases containing rifles, but there wasn’t much point in checking them. It would be awfully hard to get a rifle out of that room without Edwards knowing about it, and I couldn’t imagine him lying on behalf of the Cavendishes, not even Ginnie.

“Very good,” I said, and walked out.

Donna was coming down the hall. She beckoned, and I followed.

“I was talking with Edwards,” I said.

“I heard you. What about?”

“Hetty was shot,” I said, “but not by a rifle that came from that room.”

She grabbed my hand.

“Are you sure?” she demanded.

“Ninety-nine percent,” I said. “I have to talk to Mr. Wolfe, and I can’t be worried that a Cavendish will be listening to me.”

She led me up the stairs and down a hallway away from my own room. We turned down a second hallway and came to a closed door. She knocked cautiously. There was no answer.

“It’s okay,” she said, opening her purse and taking out a couple of straightened bobby pins. She had the door opened in ten seconds.

“You can talk here,” she said, opening the door to what had to be the smallest rooms in the house. “This is a little office that Hetty uses. That’s a direct line that isn’t connected to any other phone in the house.”

She pointed to a modern desk phone.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You’re just going to stand here until I leave?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“All right. You can find your own way back.”

She left. I picked up the phone and dialed the operator. Considering my location, the connection was almost decent. She put me through to the brownstone. Since it was almost seven, I figured the phone would ring about seven times before Fritz picked it up in the kitchen, but I was wrong. Half-way through the first ring I heard Wolfe’s voice.

“Yes.”

“You’re in the office.”

“Yes, eating onion soup and absorbing the contents of a codicil to Mrs. Winterbourne’s will.”

“Then you know that she’s dead.”

“Yes. Mr. Bradford called to inform me. He was informed, more than an hour ago, by a Miss Maven. Mr. Bradford was in Philadelphia when he received the call. He sent the codicil to me by special mes-senger. It empowers Mr. Bradford to employ me to investigate the cir-cumstances of Mrs. Winterbourne’s death if they appear to be at all suspicious.”

“Would you call a slug in the gut suspicious?”

“I would. Mr. Bradford was not so forthright.”

“I don’t know what Alice Maven told him. I found her body. I sup-pose it’s possible that she was stabbed, somehow, but right now I’d say it’s a thousand to one that she was shot. Her doctor is examining her. Maybe I should talk to Mr. Bradford.”

“That is likely to be impossible. He informed me that he was setting off at once to obtain a court order authorizing him as executor of Mrs. Winterbourne’s estate to assume the duties and privileges of ownership of Winterborne Manor until the estate is settled.”

“Mr. Bradford is active.”

“He is indeed. I gather he has acquired some animus towards the Cavendish family.”

“He’s going to acquire more when he learns that Hetty has been murdered.”

“You are sure it will come to that?”

“Close enough. There are poachers on the estate. You hear guns popping. But the odds that a round is going to catch someone in the gut are close to none. I think you better prepare for an excursion.”

“That is absurd.”

“I don’t think so. I am not leaving this crowd for a second. When Bradford shows up, the fur is going to fly, and I will be watching. Did Bradford mention anything about a fee?”

“He did. Mrs. Winterborne was quite willing to spend money when it suited her interest to do so. Do you suppose she anticipated this event?”

“The last time I talked to her, she wasn’t afraid. She was mad. She wasn’t frightened of anything, as far as I could tell, but she was suspi-cious as hell.”

I waited for Wolfe to say “Confound it,” which is what he usually says when he knows he has to work, but this time he didn’t say any-thing. The thought of traveling to the wilds of Pennsylvania, plus the thought of doing it without me, had shut him up tight.

“Look on the bright side,” I told him. “If this goes through, I won’t be riding you about money until January 1936.”

“You find this amusing. I do not. I shall await Mr. Bradford’s call.”

That was the way we left it. The next six hours were like a footrace through molasses. Dr. Jameson didn’t get through with Hetty until close to eight o’clock. It took me twenty minutes to get him to admit that Hetty’s stomach had contained a thirty caliber slug, one that didn’t belong there. We sat down to dinner at eight-thirty, everyone staring at Hetty’s empty chair, and no one saying a damn thing except “It must have been poachers.”

Bradford showed up at nine, and the fur did fly. He had a court or-der for Ginnie, which she sure didn’t appreciate. When he handed it to her she said she was getting her lawyers up from Allentown and Brad-ford said no she wasn’t. Everyone who was at Winterborne Manor could stay, but no one could arrive without his permission, and he wasn’t giving it. He had half a dozen papers signed by Hetty with him, which showed that both she and he had been thinking about this a lot. If Ginnie wanted to talk to her lawyers in Allentown, she was the one who would have to move.

You can imagine how that went over. Bradford had an assistant with him, a young attorney named Harrison Yates, who left to talk a local attorney about summoning the county coroner and the sheriff to declare Hetty’s death to be possible manslaughter or even murder. That put the Cavendishes on the spot. Manslaughter meant hanging it on a poacher, but murder might mean hanging it on them. I can’t say that we got matters settled, but there was an armed truce of sorts estab-lished by midnight.

It got worse in the morning. The sheriff showed up, and I don’t think I ever saw an unhappier man. Poking his nose into rich people’s business was not what he got paid to do. What made it worse for him was that there was no one to take orders from. Bradford had a fist full of papers saying he was the boss, but he was from out of town. The odds were very good that eventually Ginnie and Harry would be run-ning things, but that hadn’t happened yet.

The coroner didn’t show until about eleven. There was a lot of back and forth, and a lot of just plain silence, because country folks don’t like to do anything in a hurry, unpleasant things in particular, but final-ly Bradford got the ruling he wanted: Hetty’s death was “suspicious,” and would be investigated. An hour later Ginnie showed up, back from Allentown, with her own court order, but it was too late. The wheels of justice were in motion, but just barely.

With Bradford in charge, for the time being anyway, I could call Wolfe from Hetty’s little office without having to skulk around. I waited until after lunch because what I had to say to him was some-thing he wasn’t going to want to hear. Of course, he would accuse me of ruining his digestion, but that wasn’t quite as bad as ruining his meal.

“Yes?”

“It’s me. The sheriff and the coroner were here. Hetty’s death has been officially declared suspicious.”

“Confound it.”

“You’ll like it out here. It’s ten degrees cooler than in town. We’re having freshly shot quail for lunch.”

“You will inform Mr. Bradford that I will conduct my investigation in New York.”

“That won’t work, and you know it. Did I tell you? Hetty’s chef used to work at the Ritz, thirty years ago. I won’t say the quail Riche-lieu here are better than Fritz’s, but they’re awfully good.”

Wolfe didn’t say anything to that. I suspected that he was drawing little circles on the desk with his pinky, but I couldn’t be sure.

“Listen,” I said. “We’ll call Hetty’s in-town chauffeur. He’ll pick you up and drive you to Penn Station. We’ll book you a first-class compartment to Princeton Junction. The estate chauffeur will meet you there. You won’t even have to ride the local to Princeton. If it was good enough for Hetty, it will be good enough for you.”

“No,” he said, flatly. “I decline to expose myself to the buffets of chance in such an extravagant manner. You will be, as you have been, my eyes and ears. I have reviewed once more both your reports and the entirety of the material previously submitted to me by Mr. Bradford. You will continue your reports. In the final extremity it should be possible to induce the various Cavendishes to come here.”

There were a number of things I could have said to that, none of which Wolfe would have appreciated.

“I’ll have to let Mr. Bradford talk to you,” I said. “You know, you could lose this case if you keep this up. You aren’t the only private detective in New York.”

“I accept employment under certain conditions. I bent a rule in this matter and I regret it. If I bend another I shall regret it more.”

So that was how we left it. And that left me in a house full of people who more or less wished that I was dead. The only person I could talk to was Donna, who kept wanting to talk to me about Ham-let, and I wasn’t biting. But when I discovered that Winterborne Ma-nor had a billiards room, and when I discovered that Donna was the only one who would play with me, we worked out a deal after dinner: shoot pool for two hours and not talk about Hamlet, and then read Hamlet for an hour. I was Hamlet and she was Ophelia. Frankly, I never could see what she saw in him. When he wasn’t tripping over his own two feet he was yelling at her. But Donna seemed to love it. Then we did Ophelia’s mad scenes and I had to read everyone else’s part. When we got Ophelia dead Donna wanted to go back and do it again, with her being Hamlet and me being Ophelia. I told her that would have to wait for another day and we left it at that. I went up to my room and wrote my letter to Wolfe, who was still sitting tight.

The next day I decided that, what the hell, I would go hunting. By the time I got up the Cavendishes had all decamped to Philadelphia, where they were lining up some serious legal talent to get control of Hetty’s estate away from Mr. Bradford. Bradford had sent the kid Yates to the state capitol in Harrisburg the day before to talk to the governor, who had gone to law school with Bradford.

Bernard gave me all the company I needed. It was a beautiful day for hunting. We found fresh scat after an hour and trailed a nice buck for two, but in the end he scented us and bolted for good. Towards the end of the day we caught up with a doe, but she was young and I didn’t feel like shooting her. I decided that I would tell Wolfe that if he would come out and save me from the Cavendishes and Donna I would shoot a deer for him and let him have the liver.

That night I shot more pool with Donna—two hours of pool for half an hour of Hamlet, with me reading Ophelia. There’s an awful lot of “how now’s” and “go to’s” in Shakespeare. But Donna loved it.

The next day the Cavendishes were back from Philly. They had a court order but so did Bradford, so they went back to Philly to fight it out. I tried to talk to Bradford before he left but he was a busy man and an angry one. Apparently, the fact that I worked for Wolfe wasn’t improving his temper. I waited until eleven-thirty and called Wolfe.

“Yes?”

“Yes. It’s me. If you get off your high horse and get out here I promise I will shoot a deer for you.”

“A shrewd inducement. However, I decline.”

“Listen, the Cavendishes and Bradford are in Philly, fighting this thing out. I’m not a lawyer, and Bradford is, but I don’t see how he can keep Hetty’s estate out of Ginnie’s hands unless he can prove that she put that slug in Hetty’s gut, and the odds are a million to one that she didn’t.”

“Perhaps. But I have much to tend to here. The thrips have become increasingly troublesome, and it would be unwise to leave Theodore to cope with them unassisted. The Paphiopedila are particularly suscept-ible.”

After lunch the sheriff arrived. I was a little surprised to learn that he had tests run on the bullet that had killed Hetty. It was a .30 caliber, and he had a warrant for every .30 caliber in the place. The way he went at it, I figured he must have gotten a call from the governor. Of course, with all the Cavendishes in Philadelphia, he had a clear shot. Alice Maven showed him around. Where she was coming down in all of this I didn’t know.

The sheriff took seven rifles from the gun room, each one a beauty. He searched the rooms of all the guests, including mine, but came up empty. When he was done I spent the rest of the afternoon hunting quail. I flushed three nice coveys and came back with fourteen birds. After dinner I shot pool again with Donna. She was a long way from a hustler but she was improving, to the point where I could let her win a game without feeling embarrassed.

“You let me win,” she said.

“I probably did, but only because you sank that last shot.”

She smiled.

“I should let you off, but I still want to read Shakespeare.”

“No more Hamlet,” I said.

So we switched to Macbeth. I was Macbeth, and Donna was every-one else. She loved being the three weird sisters.

The next day the house was still empty of Cavendishes. They must have really been raising hell in Philadelphia. I was just deciding to do a little more deer hunting when a servant informed me that I had a phone call. It was Wolfe.

“Archie,” he said. “You will take the train to New York today, ar-riving at the Pennsylvania Station at five o’clock. Mrs. Winterbourne’s chauffeur will be waiting for you at the 8th Avenue entrance. You will proceed here. The chauffeur will wait. At six-thirty we shall depart for the Pennsylvania Station. We shall travel by first-class compartment to Princeton Junction, where we shall again be met by Mrs. Winter-bourne’s chauffeur. We shall travel thence to Winterborne Manor.”

“Just me? You don’t want a police escort?”

“In my hour of distress and danger, Mr. Goodwin, I will not be sub-ject to your adolescent persiflage.”

Wolfe hadn’t addressed me as “Mr. Goodwin” in five years. He called me that for the first six months, but after the first “very satisfac-tory” it became “Archie.” Now he was laying down a marker. “Mr. Goodwin” meant I had to button it but good.

“I’ll be there,” I said. “What would you like for dinner?”

“I shall be incapable of appreciating a true meal when I arrive. In-stead, I shall require onion soup and good French bread. And good butter.”

“Of course. Anything else?”

“You are armed?”

“Yes.”

“Very good.”

He hung up without waiting for a reply. I was sore because if I hadn’t made that crack about needing a police escort I could have got-ten more out of him, like how much cash Bradford was offering him to make the trip and why he felt I needed a gun. I informed Alice that Mr. Wolfe would be arriving and made a few suggestions about what a guest who weighed in at a seventh of a ton would require. Fortunately, Hetty’s late brother had been almost as chubby as Wolfe, and his old bedroom was still available. I checked it out, and it seemed sturdy enough. Bobby Winterborne even had his own elevator, so that made it just about perfect.

Naturally, Wolfe was still up in the plant rooms when I arrived, tak-ing one last whack at the thrips, so I chatted with Fritz until he came down, dressed in his gaiters and cloak and carrying his walking stick. I was about to tell him that we were headed for the Poconos, not the Alps, but then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be funny, so I clammed.

“The luggage is in the car,” I told him.

He wasn’t in the mood for conversation. He never is when he tra-vels. Once we actually got in the car, his pulse rate practically doubled. Sitting in the back of a Heron town car, particularly Hetty’s, is as close as you can get to being in a parlor on wheels, but Wolfe wasn’t buying it. He isn’t a fan of Penn Station either, and the first-class compartment we had must not have been first-class enough, because he made circles with his little finger all the way. I spent most of the trip telling him things he already knew if he’d been reading my letters, and I knew he had. He didn’t complain, but he didn’t listen, either.

He didn’t calm down a bit when we reached Princeton Junction and transferred to Hetty’s other town car. I made a few remarks about the country air, but he wasn’t biting. The only air that Wolfe likes is the air that’s inside his house on Thirty-Fifth Street. In fact, he didn’t say a damn thing until he got his feet on Winterborne Manor’s graveled drive.

“Extraordinary,” he muttered, staring up at the mansion above him.

“I told you it was big,” I said.

We took the elevator up to his room. I unpacked for him while he sat, leaning back in the big leather arm chair that Bobby had left by the window. At first I thought he was thinking, but I could see that the lips weren’t moving in and out. He wasn’t thinking, he was recovering.

I was almost done when he rose and inspected the bookcase by the bed.

“These books have been recently placed here,” he said.

“That was probably Donna,” I said. “I told her about your favorite reading. She’s probably going to want to talk to you about Hamlet.”

“Indeed.”

He took a book off the shelf.

“The Bury Edition,” he said to himself. “Excellent. Archie. You have brought me here, safely, and I thank you. Now I require onion soup and solitude.”

And so that’s how we left it. Donna was waiting down the hall but I told her that Mr. Wolfe was in no mood to discuss Hamlet.

An Invitation to a Shooting Party Chapter 4

2011-03-09T07:29:00.001-08:00

I got up early, almost to punish myself, and sat down at the type-writer. An hour later, I had knocked out an account of most of what had happened to me. I should have done it the night before, but I was too drunk to type, and trying just would have made me mad. When I was finished I showered, shaved, and dressed and got downstairs around nine-thirty. I came across a servant carrying a large red bag, either the same one I had seen the day before or one just like it, but this morning it was stuffed.

“Are you taking that to the chauffeur?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” he replied.

“It’s heavy this morning, isn’t it?”

“It is, sir. I don’t know what they send. Or what they don’t.”

“I have a letter that needs to be mailed. Could the chauffeur do that for me?”

“Of course, sir.”

I handed him the letter. If he mailed it at the Princeton station, Wolfe should have it tomorrow or the next day at the latest. I thanked him and then got directions to the breakfast room. Donna was sitting by herself, nursing a cup of coffee.

“Did you enjoy drinking with the aristocracy?”

“Not really. I’m not much for the hard stuff.”

“We could have breakfast outside if you like.”

“Fine.”

Sitting outside on the verandah, if that’s what you call it, and work-ing on a half grapefruit, I finally got to see the gardens that Alice Ma-ven liked to talk about so much. They were something, and I could see her, striding off in the distance and giving a couple of men with rakes and a wheelbarrow instructions. The summer flowers were gone, but there were masses of golden chrysanthemums that were just beginning to catch the morning light, and, descending beyond them, stone walls and walks lined with box hedges, beeches, and oaks.

“This must be hell for you, living here,” I said.

“It is awful, isn’t it? Hetty’s punishing me for something, but I don’t know what. I’m like a bone she won in a fight long ago. She doesn’t want me any more, but she won’t give me up, either.”

She picked up a silver coffee pot.

“Would you like some?”

She poured a cup.

“What about sugar and cream?”

“Sugar only. Three lumps,” I said.

She added the sugar, stirred, and handed me the cup. I drank half of it and sat back in my chair.

“My mother was born in a sod house,” I said. “In Nebraska. She lived there until she was sixteen. She married my father because he told her they would live in a frame house with windows. He took her back East, to Ohio. We lived in a two-story frame house with a furnace in the basement and a tin roof. She left Nebraska when she was six-teen, and she’s never been back.”

“I guess I should get married.”

“That’s one way out.”

“But you’re a man. You didn’t have to. You can do anything you want.”

“Except play baseball.”

“That’s what you wanted?”

I nodded.

“When I was a boy I would play every day in the summer until it was too dark to see. I played in a semi-pro league starting when I was fifteen. I wanted to quit high school to play but my parents wouldn’t let me. When I was eighteen I tried out for a minor league team. I could run, and field, and throw, and hit a fast ball. But I couldn’t hit the curve. I’ve never wanted anything as much as I wanted to hit that damn curve.”

I finished my coffee.

“But I couldn’t. So I went to college instead. I knew I didn’t be-long there. My mom solved her problems traveling east, so I thought that might work for me. And I guess it did.”

“The paper said you killed two men in a warehouse.”

“Yes.”

“When you were eighteen.”

“They had guns too. I told them to stop. When you’re guarding a warehouse at night and someone points a gun at you and cocks the trigger you either back down or you don’t. I didn’t.”

“I could never kill anyone, I’m sure. Not like that. Are you a hunt-er?”

“I used to shoot rabbits. Sometimes in the winter we used to eat rabbit seven nights a week.”

“What does Nero Wolfe do?”

“He reads, he eats, and he raises orchids—when he isn’t detecting.”

“How does detect?”

“Sometimes by talking, sometimes by listening. I don’t miss much, but he doesn’t miss anything.”

“What does he read?”

“Right now he’s reading C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation of Re-membrance of Things Past.”

“All right. What is Remembrance of Things Past?”

“It’s a novel by a Frenchman, Marcel Proust. Mr. Wolfe likes it. I’ve never read it, but then I don’t read much of anything but the Gazette and the Times. Mr. Wolfe doesn’t think Mr. Moncrieff understands the French subjunctive.”

“What are Mr. Wolf’s favorite books?”

“Mr. Wolfe says that a man who’s read the essays of Montaigne, the plays of Shakespeare, and the history of Gibbon knows half of what is worth knowing. I guess that would apply to a woman as well.”

“What’s the history of Gibbon?”

“Edward Gibbon. He wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Mr. Wolfe reads it in January and February to keep his spirits up.”

“Have you read it?”

“No. As I say, I’m not much of a reader.”

“A man of action. But you have seen Shakespeare.”

“Some. I saw Katherine Cornell in Romeo and Juliet.”

“And how was that?”

“I liked Katherine Hepburn better, in The Warrior’s Husband. Bet-ter legs.”

“Here comes Hetty, to send me to my lessons.”

One thing I liked about Hetty was that she couldn’t sneak up on you. She always wore black, which stood out against the red brick and the white woodwork, and this morning she was leaning on Davis’ arm. Whether she was pleased to see me I couldn’t say, but she clearly wasn’t pleased to see Donna.

“Run along, young lady,” she told her. “You mustn’t be dawdling.”

Again Donna rose and left, and again she didn’t look happy about it.

“Now, Mr. Goodwin,” Hetty said, as she settled herself. “I’m sorry we have not yet had a chance to talk alone. What did you learn last night?”

“That Brits can hold their liquor.”

“Yes, of course. But what else?”

“I think they think I’m not Tom Harris. Or else they think Tom Harris is someone who needs to be watched. Ginnie told them I was family. I’m not sure why she did that.”

“You’re presentable, Mr. Goodwin. I wouldn’t have brought you here if you weren’t. You know how far a young man can go.”

She paused, as if she were tired. She leaned back in her chair and breathed patiently.

“I am an old woman, Mr. Goodwin,” she said. “Have you ever seen vultures gather? They are gathering, from three continents. Ginnie’s the worst. The others want a piece, but she wants it all. And I have no one else I can give it to!”

“What about Donna?”

“Donna! You have known her less than a day and already she has smitten you.”

I laughed.

“You’re making me glad I don’t have any money, Mrs. Winter-borne,” I told her. “You and Mr. Wolfe made a deal, and I will uphold our end. But as I’m sure Mr. Wolfe told you, I am his agent and assis-tant, not yours.”

“Very well. Tell me what you’re going to do.”

“I guess I’m going deer hunting. I can’t very well hang around here by myself. This evening I’d like to go into town where I can make a phone call.”

“That’s absurd. You can make a phone call here.”

“Not with privacy. What I have to say is for Mr. Wolfe’s ear only, not for yours or your guests.”

There was a flicker of irritation in her eyes. I decided I wasn’t going to tell her that her servants couldn’t keep a secret, or at least didn’t.

“Would you like some coffee?” I asked.

She didn’t. I was about to say more when Henry and Tony ap-peared, looking a little red-faced, which was understandable, consider-ing the amount of brandy they’d put away the night before.

“Good morning, Mrs. Winterborne,” Henry said. “Tommie, you’re looking well. Splendid weather, isn’t it? We were just going round to the gun room. Please join us.”

We took our leave of Hetty and ambled back through the house.

“You brought your own rifles, I suppose?” said Henry.

“I’m afraid not. I expected to be working.”

“Oh, bad show. Well, there’s no point in wasting your time sighting a gun anyhow. The growth is so thick here, both Tony and Gerry and using shotguns all week, and I’ve switched too. Haven’t had a long shot since we’ve been here. The bucks know we’re here and stick to cover. We’re sending all the rifles back to England tomorrow. It’s a waste of time keeping them.”

We reached the gun room. I couldn’t help staring. At age twelve this room would have been heaven—more than heaven—to me. It was a big room, with a carved stone fireplace, and leather sofas and chairs arranged in a rectangle around it. But that wasn’t what caught my eye. It was the guns. The walls were lined with glass cases, filled with liter-ally dozens of shotguns and rifles.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” asked Henry. “Say what you like about Het-ty, her mister knew guns, and Hetty keeps them right.”

“Beautiful weapons,” said Tony. “Beautiful.”

Henry opened one of the cabinets with a key.

“Take your pick,” he said. “Some of them go back a century, but the newer ones are over here.”

I took down a fourteen-gauge that probably cost more than the tin-roof frame house I grew up in. It felt perfect in my hands.

“A bit light for deer, don’t you think?” said Tony.

“I want to kill my buck, not butcher him,” I said. “At close range, you shouldn’t miss.”

Henry chuckled.

“You have the air of a marksman, Tommie,” he said. “I sensed it from the first. Tony, we’ll have to look sharp to keep Mr. Harris away from our champagne. Now, we’d better get over to the stables.”

“I’ll be in Mrs. Winterbourne’s carriage,” I said. “There are a num-ber of things we need to discuss.”

“That’s no good,” said Tony. “Our hostess keeps a fine stable.”

Henry passed my shotgun off to a servant and we went back to the verandah. By this time Gerry had arrived, with all the ladies in tow. After a round of bacon and eggs, they all took off for the stable, leav-ing me with Hetty. The effort of keeping her eye on so many guests at once seemed to have exhausted her, so we sat in silence until her car-riage arrived—an antique that must have been half as old as she was, drawn by four good-looking horses. The old codger who was holding the reins dismounted and helped her in. I joined her, and we rode si-lently through the grounds. We passed half a dozen people—raking gravel, clipping hedges, or tending flower beds—and they all stopped and turned and bowed as we passed. I never felt so creepy, but Hetty didn’t bat an eye. After all, she’d been doing this for eighty-seven years.

We rode in the carriage for close to an hour, slow and uphill, until we came to Hetty’s favorite spot, a high mountain meadow sown with flowers, mountains along one side but overlooking a broad valley, with the Delaware River in the distance. A big white tent with no sides pro-tected a half a dozen chairs from the sun. A dozen servants were there ahead of us, being supervised by Alice Maven. When I got out, Henry was waiting for me.

“Bernard here is your gillie,” Henry told me, pointing to a spry little man who looked like he’d spent his life outdoors. “Bernard knows these mountains better than I know Rio.”

As I walked over the grass, something white and gleaming caught my eye. I picked it up.

“You’ve found something, Mr. Harris?” Hetty demanded.

“Nothing really. Looks like a broken piece of porcelain,” I said.

“I remember dropping a plate last week,” said Henry. “We’ll give you the mountain on the left today, Tom. We each take one, to keep from shooting one another.”

As he spoke there was a popping sound.

“Did someone start early?” I asked.

“No,” said Hetty. “Damned poachers! They get worse every year! Alice! Alice! This is intolerable! I want to talk to the governor!”

I left Hetty to rant and said hello to Bernard, who handed me the fourteen gauge I’d chosen in the gun room. He had another gun strapped across his back and several bags of shells. I followed him down the side of one mountain and up another. Bernard knew the deer trails and it didn’t take him long to find some fresh scat. I can remem-ber winters when I hunted for rabbit as a boy, putting food on the table for the three of us, until the last light faded from the snow. Deer hunting in Pennsylvania in late summer is a lot different, but there’s still that same sense of peace and excitement. At first I was worried that Bernard would take me for a tenderfoot, but I forgot about that. I forgot about Henry and Ginnie and Tony and Gabbie and Hetty and Donna. I even forgot about Wolfe. I was that teenage boy again, with his finger on the safety, out alone and ready to do justice in an untamed world.

To smell like a deer, to hear like a deer, to know like a deer. These are things I’d never thought of before, but I was thinking about them now. Rabbits, rabbits were easy, if you knew how. Rabbits have a lot of little ways that an outsider would never know, but when push comes to shove, rabbits figure they can always outbreed you. They’re quick enough, and small enough, and you’ll never get them all. Deer are large and careful. I’d never seen a live deer, but I thought about those wet, sensitive noses, like a dog’s, and those large ears, listening for the thud and crackle of clumsy feet.

After about two hours, Bernard tapped me on the shoulder and pointed silently. Far in the distance, I could see two tiny brown shapes. Above the head of one there was the faintest cloud of brown—his an-tlers. They weren’t our target, of course. Bernard was just letting me know that there were deer here in the forest, and not to lose heart.

We went up half-way up one mountain and began to circle it. The wind was shifting, and we needed to keep it in front of us. As we started up again, I felt another tap on my shoulder. Bernard pointed up the mountain. I couldn’t see anything, but I knew he could. I followed his lead, and he led me in a careful path. I knew there was a deer. There had to be.

We kept maneuvering, and at last I saw the soft brown in the dark green. Bernard led me in a wide circle around the mountain. I would have gone straight for the deer, and spooked him in a minute. Forty-five minutes of careful walking put us above the deer, but still walking into the wind. As we began our descent I suddenly saw horns and a head, not twenty yards away. We were on top of him. The shotgun butt flew to my shoulder, and I fired. The deer’s head twisted as though he were trying to shake off a fly, and he went down.

The buckshot caught him in the neck, just beneath his head. He was an eight-point, not the twelve-point, but he was mine.

“Mr. Harris,” Bernard told me, “you walk like a hunter, and you shoot like one too.”

I stood over the kill, feeling happy. Everything was quieter and noisier than before at the same time. I stared at the deer’s head. One of the shot had taken out his left eye. Other than that, the shot had made a clean pattern. I hadn’t made the deer ugly, and I was glad that Hetty had such good guns.

What happened next I wouldn’t have believed unless I had seen it with my own eyes. Bernard took out a hunting horn and blew on it. The sweet, mellow sound echoed across the mountain. A few seconds later, I heard another, and then, very far off, a third.

“Two fellows will be coming with a mule,” he told me. “It should take an hour. You can wait here and I’ll take you back, Mr. Harris, or you can strike out on your own. If you go down to that stream and fol-low her back up, you’ll come to the trail that takes you straight to the overlook.”

I looked down and saw a gleam of water where the sun caught it. In an hour or two, that gleam would be gone.

“I’ll take a chance,” I told him. “You’re a first-rate guide, Bernard. One of those haunches is yours.”

“Thank you, indeed, Mr. Harris. I never turn down a haunch.”

He blew a second time on his horn. I took my bearings, and a com-pass, and started off. Just as I reached the stream I heard a couple of shots. I had forgotten all about the other hunters, about everything. I was coming back to it now, like a diver returning to the surface. I was returning to Hetty and Ginnie and Harry and Tony. I wanted some time to talk to Ginnie, to find out why she was so friendly. And I wanted to talk to Wolfe. I wasn’t at all sure that we could break this case the way Hetty wanted, but I felt there was a case, something moving underground.

I reached the overlook at little after five. Hetty was sitting under an awning, with both Henry and Davis to keep her company, along with half a dozen servants, and Dr. Jameson, whom I hadn’t met before. He was an old coot with a red face, who looked like he’d had his share of port in his time. Apparently, taking care of the Winterbournes could wear you down.

“Mr. Goodwin,” Hetty said, “did you get a shot?”

“More than a shot,” I said, “an eight point. Bernard says they’ll bring it back by mule.”

“How splendid. You shoot deer and seduce young girls. There is no end to your talents.”

“I thought I had been seduced.”

“Donna will be at her studies,” said Hetty, sharply. Apparently, I was a bad influence.

“Yes. I would like to go into town to make my phone call.”

“Mr. Goodwin doubts the integrity of my hospitality. Ronnie, take Mr. Goodwin to the house and give him the keys to the Buick. There is a tavern in Bucksville that will accommodate you, I believe.”

Ronnie was a fifteen-year-old kid who seemed happy enough to es-cape from Hetty’s presence. He led me to a pony cart, just about the most ridiculous vehicle I’d ever set foot in. But after five hours of walking up and down mountains, I wasn’t complaining. As we rode back through the estate grounds, I wondered what it must be like growing up on a place like this, with Hetty Winterborne as your lord and master. Hetty was like the weather to these people. When she roared, they just put their heads down and shivered. Was it worse than growing up in a sod house? I wondered.

The pony cart took the jolts harder than Hetty’s carriage, but it was quicker. Ronnie didn’t mind popping the whip now and again, just to see the pony jump. We arrived at the big house in not much more than an hour. Ronnie tracked down the chauffeur, who tracked down the keys to the Buick, which was just a bit younger than Ronnie, but it ran well enough to get me to Bucksville, about five miles away. The tavern was an old stone place that was still lit by gas, but they did have a telephone. It was after six when I called, so Wolfe would be down from the plant rooms.

“Yes?”

I’ve never been able to get him to answer a call properly.

“Hi. It’s me. I have to tell you, this gang is quite a gang. I almost feel sorry for Hetty.”

“Then you have met the Cavendishes and their Argentine rela-tions?”

“I have. I think they’re on to me. I figured they wouldn’t give Tom Harris the time of day, because the poor guy has to work for a living, but Ginnie told them I’m family, so all of a sudden I’m a pal. Harry and Gerry and Tony all tried to get me drunk last night.”

“Did they succeed?”

“Yes, but not so that I talked. But they didn’t either. Ginnie—she told me to call her that, by the way, so don’t be offended—brought along some lawyers too, but Hetty won’t let them stay at the mansion.”

“Indeed. I could imagine that Mrs. Winterborne is striving to ex-tract some concession from her great grand-daughter, but since her real intent, as she expressed it to us, is to overturn the marriage, I can’t im-agine what it could be.”

“I get the impression that Ginnie would like to do a little extracting of her own. These Brits are hanging on her. As they see it, she’s got the key to the vault.”

“No doubt. The English aristocracy is equally striking for both its insolence and its insolvency. And one may include arrogance and in-competence as well.”

In the past, Wolfe had said a few sharp things to me about British policy in the Balkans and towards Montenegro in particular, but hear-ing him go on like this made me realize that I hadn’t heard the half of it.

“So you don’t trust them either. The thing is, it’s not a crime to be a jerk in this country. They’ve got a game, but I don’t know what it is, and I don’t even know if we should give a damn. I came here thinking our best bet is to take the three thousand and quit while we’re ahead. Maybe that’s still the case, but then again, maybe not. By the way, I shot a deer today.”

“Congratulations. Do you, do you intend to consume it yourself?”

“I doubt it. We’ve got plenty of deer. Also pheasant and quail.”

I’m sure I could hear him groan. I’ll admit it was unnecessary. Fritz’s beef cheeks are first rate, but they aren’t pheasant, and they aren’t fresh venison.

“The, ah, the deer carcass. Perhaps it would be possible for Mrs. Winterborne to provide transport? She could deduct from her fee.”

“Perhaps. Hetty has a regular delivery system set up from here to New York. I did promise a haunch to Bernard. He was my guide. There’s a man who knows about deer. I’ll talk to him.”

“It must be hung properly, but Fritz could do that if necessary. And perhaps the liver. I confess a particular fondness for the liver. That should be dispatched immediately.”

“Sure. I’ll see to it. Any other organs?”

“None. By the way, Archie. Are you armed?”

“Did I bring the Marley? Yes.”

“A reasonable precaution.”

“Do you really think someone in this gang is up for murder?”

“You have sensed desperation beneath the surface, and I believe your intuition is correct. According to Mr. Bradford, he has, in the last few months, received discreet but persistent inquiries as to the whe-reabouts of Lord Harrington, suggesting extreme financial difficulties. Mr. Bradford felt it was not his place, absent instructions from Mrs. Winterborne, to comply.”

“That’s a puzzle. You’d think she’d want to cause trouble. Gerry’s been shooting bears in Alaska with his brother and his cousin.”

“You are on a first-name basis with a peer.”

“I am, thanks to Ginnie. If we can break this case in her favor, I vote to do so. I’ll admit that I wanted this case, but I’d rather shoot a man than call him ‘my lord.’”

Wolfe chuckled.

“What do you want me to tell Hetty?” I asked.

That one he didn’t find so funny.

“Confound it,” he said. “I have Mr. Bradford’s permission to share with her the concern of Lord Harrington’s creditors with his wherea-bouts. If she presses you, say that I have found nothing to confirm her suspicion that her great grand-daughter’s husband is a bigamist.”

“That may cost you a liver.”

“I have sacrificed my palate to my conscience before, Archie. More than once.”

“Okay. When I get out of this place I’ll bring you a pheasant or two. I’d better get back to keep an eye on things.”

Once I got back to the house I discovered that bagging an eight-point can do wonders for your popularity when you’re out in the coun-try. None of the three English gents had had a kill, but the ladies pro-vided us with plenty of pheasant. Getting that deer moved me up a spot at the dinner table, and I noticed that Donna moved down a notch. Hetty must have decided that I was a bad influence.

After dinner, the fellows seemed even more determined to get me drunk than the night before, but I held my ground, claiming an upset stomach. I was still a little tight when I headed up the stairs, wonder-ing whether three thousand in the bank was worth three weeks of brandy poisoning. Of course, I had asked for it, so I couldn’t really complain.

When I opened the door to my room I got a bit of a shock. Hetty was waiting for me.

“You’ve kept me waiting long enough,” she snapped, when I en-tered. “You aren’t too drunk to talk sense are you?”

“I’m not drunk at all,” I said.

“Very well. I had to talk to you immediately because this evening Ginnie told me that she will institute proceedings to overturn and li-quidate her trust fund unless I agree to turn over a number of impor-tant properties to her immediately.”

“And you don’t want her to do that.”

“I do not. I do not want to see myself held up to ridicule as a grasp-ing old fool. And I do not want to see the family holdings broken up in this manner.”

“Have you talked with Mr. Bradford? Could she overturn the trust?”

“Of course she could, if she wanted to accept losses.”

“According to Mr. Wolfe, Lord Harrington has creditors who would dearly love to know where he is.”

“I am not surprised. She wants to pay off that English gang so that they will love her, but of course they won’t. They’ll squeeze and squeeze, until she has nothing, and then they will drop her. What did Mr. Wolfe say about the evidence?”

“He said there was no evidence—nothing that could affect Ginnie’s marriage.”

Hetty’s eyes flashed, and she made a sound. I guess “tchach” is as close as I can come. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a word or not. She rose unsteadily to her feet.

“If Ginnie goes through with this, there’s going to be a fight,” she said. “It costs money to get money. I’ll teach her that, if I have to. I don’t want to, but I will. I will not be bullied, even at the cost of a scandal. If Ginnie wants a scandal, she shall have one. Time is on my side. That gang needs money now, and I don’t.”

I could have pointed out to Hetty that, at age 87, time wasn’t on her side, but she wasn’t paying me to do that. Still, I decided to push it, just a little.

“Sooner or later, Ginnie’s going to get it all,” I said.

“You mean when I’m dead,” she said. “Yes, and I will be dead soon, won’t I? And I can’t give Winterborne Manor to anyone but Ginnie. That’s why I hired you. Congratulations on your deer, Mr. Goodwin.”

With that she walked out of my room, trembling with every step. She was so damn fragile and so damn angry. I wanted to knock some sense into her, but if there was one thing Hetty didn’t take, it was ad-vice.

When she gone I shut the door and started shucking my monkey suit—first the jacket and vest, and then the tie. I was just starting in on the cuff links when I heard a voice.

“Mr. Goodwin!”

I looked around. There was nobody.

“I’m outside!” said the voice. Then I saw a young, feminine hand appear under the frame of the open window beside my bed and shove it upward.

“I’m sorry to be so dramatic, but I had to see you, and Hetty won’t let me.”

It was Donna.

“How the hell!”

“It’s quite safe. There’s a little balcony.”

“Donna, you can’t come in here.”

“Then you have to come outside, because I have to talk to you.”

I pushed the window all the way open and looked out. There was a little balcony, but it was damn little, a fake balcony with a waist-high stone railing. Donna was perched on top. It scared me just to look at her.

“Do you want to come out?” she asked.

“How did you get here?”

“When I first came to live here I explored everything. I climbed all over these roofs. I used to live here. I can still do it.”

“You’re afraid of horses but not of this.”

“Yes, I am.”

I couldn’t stand to look at her perched on that railing. But since I had killed three men I couldn’t admit that.

“Let’s go up on the roof,” I said.

I watched as she turned and climbed up the side of the wall. I was almost double her weight, but those stones looked solid. I decided that whoever built this place knew what he was doing, and followed her. Once I was up on the roof itself I was more nervous. There was a full moon right over head, which gave me enough light to see what I was doing, but those old slates weren’t designed to be walked on, and I had had plenty of champagne and a couple of brandies. Somehow, I made it. Donna led me to a massive brick chimney that must have been twelve feet high.

“Isn’t this great?” she exclaimed. “Look at those arches.”

“It’s great all right.”

“It’s great to be able to show it to someone. In the winter, when the trees are bare, you can see the sun rise and set. And at night you can see the moon on the snow. May I have a cigarette?”

“No. I don’t smoke, and I don’t like women who do. They taste like tobacco.”

The moon was hitting her full in the face, and I could see her blush.

“Why are we up here?” I asked.

“Because, I didn’t trust you at first, but now I do, and there are things I want to tell you.”

“Why do you trust me?”

“Because you told me about your mother.”

She paused, and picked at her skirt.

“There are things I do when people aren’t around,” she said. “I sneak into people’s rooms. It’s easy. The locks here are a hundred years old. It’s so quiet in someone else’s room.”

“Have you found anything?”

“Well, no. But I could.”

“Would you like to do me a favor?”

“Yes.”

“Then stop sneaking into other people’s rooms. I don’t think it’s a good idea with this crowd.”

“All right. But there’s something else. I heard Gabriela and Ginnie arguing, very cold. I knew Ginnie could be hard, like Hetty, when she wanted to be, but this was different. This was life and death. And Ga-briela was just as fierce. I’ve never heard people talk like that before.”

“Do you remember exactly what they said?”

“It was almost in code, like they’d been through it before, and I’m sure they had. I remember Gabriela saying ‘I didn’t like what you said, Ginnie. You had best take it back. You know we are serious.’ And Ginnie said ‘In my own house I speak as I please. If I were your guest I would be better behaved.’”

“That’s it?”

“Yes, that’s it! I said they weren’t specific.”

“When was this?”

“Before you came here. I heard them whispering after dinner. Hetty was pretending not to listen, but Ginnie knew she was, so she said ‘We’ll discuss it later’ and gave Gabriela’s hand a squeeze, except that she squeezed it really tight. I could see Gabriela wince. So when Hetty sent me away I went outside Ginnie’s window. I opened it a little so I could hear, but I couldn’t hear too much. They kept their voices down. They said what I told you, and then they must have walked away from the window. I couldn’t hear anything. I waited and waited, and finally the lights went out, and that was that. I’ve been watching both of them ever since, but there’s nothing to see. They don’t look angry, or anything.”

“Is that it?”

“Yes, that’s it, unless you want to know where Davis keeps his Scotch. Are you glad you came?”

“Yes. It was worth the trip. Are you sure you can get back?”

“I’ll be fine.”

I was a lot more worried about myself than I was about her, but I knew she’d appreciate being asked. Climbing back down was harder on the nerves than going up—it usually is—but I made it smoothly enough.