Some Buried Caesar (31 page)

Wolfe aimed a thumb at me. “Take Mr. Goodwin. It would be difficult for me to function effectively without him. He is irreplaceable. Yet his actions are largely governed by impulse and caprice, and that would of course incapacitate him for any important task if it were not that he has somewhere concealed in him—possibly in his brain, though I doubt it—a powerful and subtle governor. For instance, the sight of a pretty girl provokes in him an overwhelming reaction of appreciation and approval, and correlatively his acquisitive instinct, but he has never married. Why not? Because he knows that if he had a wife his reaction to pretty girls, now pure and frank and free, would not only be intolerably adulterated but would also be under surveillance and subject to restriction by authority. So the governor always stops him short of disaster, doubtless occasionally on the very brink. It works similarly with the majority of his impulses and whims, but now and then it fails to intervene in time, and he suffers mishap, as this evening when he was impelled to badger
me when a certain opportunity offered. It has already cost him—what time is it, Archie?”

I looked. “Eighteen minutes to nine.”

“Hey!” Pete leaped from his chair. “I gotta run! My mother—I gotta be home by a quarter to! See you tomorrow!”

He was on his way. By the time I was up and in the hall he had reached the front door and pulled it open, and was gone. I stepped to the threshold of the dining room and told Wolfe, “Damn it, I was hoping he would stay till midnight so you could finish. After that a billiard match will be pretty dull, but I might as well go.”

I went.

N
ext day, Wednesday, I was fairly busy. A hardware manufacturer from Youngstown, Ohio, had come to New York to try to locate a son who had cut his lines of communication, and had wired Wolfe to help, and we had Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, and Orrie Cather out scouting around. That kept me close to my desk and the phone, getting reports and relaying instructions.

A little after four in the afternoon Pete Drossos showed up and wanted to see Wolfe. His attitude indicated that while he was aware that I too had a license as a private detective and he had nothing serious against me, he preferred to deal with the boss. I explained that Nero Wolfe spent four hours every day—from nine to eleven in the morning and from four to six in the afternoon—up in the plant rooms on the roof, with his ten thousand orchids, bossing Theodore Horstmann instead of me, and that during those hours he was unavailable. Pete let me know that he thought that was a hell of a way for a private eye to spend his time, and I didn’t argue the point. By the time I finally got him eased out to the stoop and the door closed, I was ready to concede that
maybe my governor needed oiling. Pete was going to be a damn nuisance, no doubt of it. I should have choked my impulse to invite him in as a playmate for Wolfe. Whenever I catch myself talking me into chalking one up against me, it helps to take a drink, so I went to the kitchen for a glass of milk. As I returned to the office the phone was ringing—Orrie Cather making a report.

At the dinner table that evening neither Wolfe nor Fritz gave the slightest indication that starlings had ever come between them. As Wolfe took his second helping of the main dish, which was Danish pork pancake, he said distinctly, “Most satisfactory.” Since for him that was positively lavish, Fritz took it as offered, nodded with dignity, and murmured, “Certainly, sir.” So there were no sparks flying when we finished our coffee, and Wolfe was so agreeable that he said he would like to see me demonstrate Mosconi’s spectacular break shot I had told him about, if I cared to descend to the basement with him.

But I didn’t get to demonstrate. When the doorbell rang as we were leaving the dining room, I supposed of course it was Pete, but it wasn’t. The figure visible through the glass panel was fully twice as big as Pete, and much more familiar—Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Manhattan Homicide West. Wolfe went into the office, and I went to the front and opened the door.

“They went thataway,” I said, pointing.

“Nuts. I want to see Wolfe. And you.”

“This is me. Shoot.”

“And Wolfe.”

“He’s digesting pork. Hold it.” I slipped the chain bolt to hold the door to a two-inch crack, stepped to
the office, told Wolfe Stebbins wanted an audience, stood patiently while he made faces, was instructed to bring the caller in, and returned to the front and did so.

Over the years a routine had been established for seating Sergeant Stebbins in our office. When he came with Inspector Cramer, Cramer of course took the big red leather chair near the end of Wolfe’s desk, and Purley one of the yellow ones, which were smaller. When he came alone, I tried to herd him into the red leather chair but never made it. He always sidestepped and pulled up a yellow one. It wasn’t that he felt a sergeant shouldn’t sit where he had seen an inspector sit, not Purley. It may be he doesn’t like to face a window, or possibly he just doesn’t like red chairs. Some day I’ll ask him.

That day he got his meat and muscle, of which he has a full share, at rest on a yellow chair as usual, eyed Wolfe a moment, and then twisted his neck to confront me. “Yesterday you phoned me about a car—a dark gray fifty-two Cadillac, Connecticut license YY nine-four-three-two. Why?”

I raised my shoulders and let them drop. “I told you. We had information, not checked, that the car or its owner or driver might have been involved in something, or might be. I suggested a routine inquiry.”

“I know you did. Exactly what was your information and where did you get it?”

I shook my head. “You asked me that yesterday and I passed it. I still pass. Our informant doesn’t want to be annoyed.”

“Well, he’s going to be. Who was it and what did he tell you?”

“Nothing doing.” I turned a hand over. “You
know damn well this is just a bad habit you’ve got. If something has happened that makes you think I’ve got to tell you who and what, tell me what happened and let’s see if I agree with you. You know how reasonable I am.”

“Yeah, I sure do.” Purley set his jaw and then relaxed it. “At six-forty this afternoon, two hours ago, a car stopped for a red light at the corner of Thirty-fifth Street and Ninth Avenue. A boy with a rag went to it and started wiping a window. He finished that side and started for the other side, and as he was circling in front of the car it suddenly jumped forward and ran over him, and kept going fast, across the avenue and along Thirty-fifth Street. The boy died soon after the ambulance got him to the hospital. The driver was a man, alone in the car. With excitement like that people never see much, but two people, a woman and a boy, agree about the license number, Connecticut YY nine-four-three-two, and the boy says it was a dark gray Cadillac sedan. Well?”

“What was the boy’s name? The one that was killed.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“I don’t know. I’m asking.”

“His name was Drossos. Peter Drossos.”

I swallowed. “That’s just fine. The sonofabitch.”

“Who, the boy?”

“No.” I turned to Wolfe. “Do you tell it or do I?”

Wolfe had closed his eyes. He opened them to say, “You,” and closed them again.

I didn’t think it was necessary to tell Stebbins about the domestic crisis that had given me the impulse to take Pete in to Wolfe, but I gave him everything that was relevant, including Pete’s second visit
that afternoon. Though for once in his life he was satisfied that he was getting something straight in that office, he asked a lot of questions, and at the end he saw fit to contribute an unfriendly comment to the effect that worthy citizens like Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin might have been expected to show a little more interest in a woman with a gun in her ribs wanting a cop.

I wasn’t feeling jaunty, and that stung me. “Specimens like you,” I told him, “are not what has made this country great. The kid might have made it all up. He admitted he didn’t see the gun. Or the woman might have been pulling his leg. If I had told you yesterday who had told me what, you would have thought I was screwy to spend a dime on it for a phone call. And I did give you the license number. Did you check on it?”

“Yes. It was a floater. It was taken from a Plymouth that was stolen in Hartford two months ago.”

“No trace?”

“None so far. Now we’ll ask Connecticut to dig. I don’t know how many floater plates there are in New York this minute, but there are plenty.”

“How good a description have you got of the driver?”

“We’ve got four and no two alike. Three of them aren’t worth a damn and the other one may be—a man that had just come out of the drugstore and happened to notice the kid going to the car with his rag. He says the driver was a man about forty, dark brown suit, light complexion, regular features, felt hat pulled down nearly to his ears. He says he thinks he could identify him.” Purley got up. “I’ll be going. I’ll admit I’m disappointed. I fully expected either
I’d get a lead from you or I’d find you covering for a client.”

Wolfe opened his eyes, “I wish you luck, Mr. Stebbins. That boy ate at my table yesterday.”

“Yeah,” Purley growled, “that makes it bad. People have no business running over boys that ate at your table.”

On that sociable note he marched out, and I went to the hall with him. As I put my hand on the doorknob a figure rose to view outside, coming up the steps to the stoop, and when I pulled the door open there she was—a skinny little woman in a neat dark blue dress, no jacket and no hat, with puffed red eyes and her mouth pressed so tight there were no lips.

Stebbins was just back of me as I addressed her. “Can I help you, madam?”

She squeezed words out. “Does Mr. Nero Wolfe live here?”

I told her yes.

“Do you think I could see him? I won’t be long. My name is Mrs. Anthea Drossos.”

She had been crying and looked as if she might resume any second, and a crying woman is one of the things Wolfe won’t even try to take. So I told her he was busy, and I was his confidential assistant, and wouldn’t she please tell me.

She raised her head to meet my eyes straight. “My boy Pete told me to see Mr. Nero Wolfe,” she said, “and I’ll just wait here till I can see him.” She propped herself against the railing of the stoop.

I backed up and shut the door. Stebbins was at my heels as I entered the office and spoke to Wolfe. “Mrs. Anthea Drossos wants to see you. She says her boy Pete told her to. I won’t do. She’ll camp on
the stoop all night if she has to. She might start crying in your presence. What do I do, take a mattress out to her?”

That opened his eyes all right. “Confound it. What can I do for the woman?”

“Nothing. Me too. But she won’t take it from me.”

“Then why the devil—pfui! Bring her in. That performance of yours yesterday—bring her in.”

I went and got her. When I ushered her in Purley was planted back in his chair. With my hand on her elbow because she didn’t seem any too sure of her footing, I steered her to the red leather number, which would have held three of her. She perched on the edge, with her black eyes—blacker, I suppose, because of the contrast with the inflamed lids—aimed at Wolfe.

Her voice was low and a little quavery, but determined. “Are you Mr. Nero Wolfe?”

He admitted it. She shifted the eyes to me, then to Stebbins, and back to Wolfe. “These gentlemen?” she asked.

“Mr. Goodwin, my assistant, and Mr. Stebbins, a policeman who is investigating the death of your son.”

She nodded. “I thought he looked like a cop. My boy Pete wouldn’t want me to tell this to a cop.”

From her tone and expression it seemed pretty plain that she didn’t intend to do anything her boy Pete wouldn’t have wanted her to do, and therefore we had a problem. With Purley’s deep suspicion that Wolfe, not to mention me, would rather be caught dead than with nothing up his sleeve, he sure wasn’t going to bow out. But without hesitation he arose, said, “I’ll go to the kitchen,” and headed for the door.
My surprise lasted half a second, until I realized where he was going. In the alcove at the rear end of the hall, across from the kitchen, there was a hole in the wall that partitioned the alcove from the office. On the office side the hole was covered with a trick picture, and from the alcove side, when you slid a panel, you could see and hear movements and sounds from the office. Purley knew all about it.

As Purley disappeared I thought it just as well to warn Wolfe. “The picture.”

“Certainly,” Wolfe said peevishly. He looked at Mrs. Drossos. “Well, madam?”

She was taking nothing for granted. She got up and went to the open door to look both ways in the hall, shut the door, and returned to her seat. “You know Pete got killed.”

“Yes, I know.”

“They told me, and I ran down to the street, and there he was. He was unconscious but he wasn’t dead. They let me ride in the ambulance with him. That was when he told me. He opened—”

She stopped. I was afraid it was going to bust, and so was she, but after sitting for half a minute without a muscle moving she had it licked and could go on. “He opened his eyes and saw me, and I put my head down to him. He said—I think I can tell you just what he said—he said, ‘Tell Nero Wolfe he got me. Don’t tell anybody but Nero Wolfe. Give him my money in the can.”’

She stopped and was rigid again. After a full minute of it Wolfe nudged her. “Yes, madam?”

She opened her bag, of black leather that had seen some wear but was good for more, fingered in it, extracted a small package wrapped in paper, and arose to put the package on Wolfe’s desk.

“There’s four dollars and thirty cents.” She stayed on her feet. “He made it himself, it’s his money that he kept in a tobacco can. That was the last thing he said, telling me to give you his money in the can; after that he was unconscious again, and he died before they could do anything at the hospital. I came away and came home to get his money and come and tell you. Now I’ll go back.” She turned, took a couple of steps, and turned again. “Did you understand what I told you?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Do you want me to do anything?”

“No, I think not. Archie?”