Corpus Corpus (3 page)

"You have quite an impressive collection," Wiggins said as Janus directed him into a large Victorian era armchair that faced a life-size oil painting of Janus by the renowned portraitist Kevin Gordon. A small shelf beneath it held leather-bound copies of all the books Janus authored.

"When I'm dead and gone," Janus said, seating himself behind a massive desk that looked old enough to have been Roosevelt's, "all this goes to the Smithsonian."

"That's very generous and patriotic of you."

"Have you given any thought to what will become of your very impressive collection of Sherlockiana and your Nero Wolfe first editions?"

"Not a whit."

"You should do something about it. Life is short. My office will be happy to make all the arrangements for you."

"Maybe I'll take a leaf from the pharoahs of Egypt and have it all buried with me."

"I know several Sherlockians and a few Wolfe Pack members who would have you dug up and your grave looted in less than the proverbial New York minute "Janus said, reaching for a handsome cigar humidor. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Of course not. It's your house."

Janus opened the lid. "These are Cubans," he said, carefully looking for flaws. "They were smuggled in from London. Have one."

"Thanks, but being a Sherlockian, I'm a pipe man."

"The ever present briar. But Sherlock smoked cigars, too."

"With a cigar stuck in my mouth I'd look like the character Clemenza in
The Godfather
."

With the cigar lighted, Janus looked at it admiringly and said, "I'm at a loss for words to express how deeply honored I am to be this year's recipient of the Nero Wolfe Award."

"I assure you the honor is ours."

Janus puffed smoke and watched it drift away. "The way I've heard it, not every member of the committee felt that way."

"That's water under the bridge."

"Indeed so." He carefully laid the long cigar in a crystal ashtray. "But it was your nomination of me for the Wolfe award, and your persistence on my behalf, that has brought you and me to this moment. I know you have to be wondering why I've dragged you all the way up here on a Sunday morning. You have surely deduced that it was not simply to express my gratitude." "That's true."

"I did so because you are the only person whom I can trust, and this house is the only place I feel truly safe."

Wiggins gasped. "Good lord, Theo, whatever do you mean?"

Retrieving the cigar, Janus smiled. "I have every reason to believe there will soon be an attempt to kill me."

"An attempt to kill you? By whom?"

"I have no idea. I only know someone has already tried."

Wiggins struggled to his feet. "When? Where? How?"

"Last week. I was exercising my favorite horse. The shot was fired from a passing car. I actually heard the bullet zing past my right ear." He dug into a pocket, drew out a wad of gray metal, and held it between thumb and forefinger. "This is it. I found it in a tree trunk."

Wiggins returned to his chair. "Because I did not learn of this case of attempted murder in the press, you obviously did not report this to the police. Why not?"

"I'm working on the case in my own way."

"Excuse me, my friend, but to paraphrase a well-known legal maxim, a lawyer who hires himself as a detective has a fool for a client. You must go to the police now."

"With what? An uncorroborated story that would be trumpeted by the news media as a publicity stunt?"

"You have the bullet."

"I could have fired it into that tree myself. Besides, it is in no condition to be of value as evidence. You need the gun to make a ballistic match. To obtain the gun, you'd have to locate its owner. Meanwhile, I want you to keep the bullet and tell no one about this conversation. In the event I am murdered, you can take it to your police friends."

"Theo, you can't risk your life by playing detective!"

"If this individual is to be caught, he has to be given the chance to try again."

"What if he tries and succeeds?"

Janus chuckled. "I will die with the satisfaction of having disappointed cardiologists who persist in telling me I must have bypass surgery immediately and warning me that if I do not quit drinking and smoking cigars I'll die of a massive heart attack. Well, if I am murdered, I hope before I croak there'll be time for one more drink and a last oscuro cigar."

"Either you're early," declared Chief of Detectives Harvey Goldstein, "or I'm late."

He carried a weighty shopping bag in each fist.

Laying aside the thick Mancuso file, Detective Sgt. John Bogdanovic rose from a butter-soft leather chair and reached for the bags.

"My heart attack was over a year ago," Goldstein said as he stepped past his rangy, muscular aide. "I appreciate that I am well past fifty, as well as a tad thin of head hair, a little saggy in the midriff, and nearsighted, and I realize we're in the middle of a cold wave, but I really am perfectjy capable of toting my bags. The owner of Usual Suspects sends regards."

Bogdanovic retreated to the chair. "Has it occurred to you that you probably constitute Wiggins's entire margin of profit? How many books do you buy from him each week?"

The bags went on top of a desk. "Any amount expended in any mystery bookshop is damn well spent. There can never be too many places for a person to go to engage in the normal recreation of noble minds. In this instance, the detective is Nero Wolfe. By the way, you've been invited to the Black Orchid Banquet."

A puzzled frown creased Bogdanovic's lean face. "I had no idea you were into flowers."

Goldstein sighed impatiently. "The Black Orchid Banquet is the annual dinner given in honor of the central character in all the volumes in these bags. In addition to being the greatest detective in American crime fiction, Nero Wolfe was expert in the field of orchidaceae."

Bogdanovic's puzzlement twisted into grimace. "Oh, gawd. Is this another gang of grown-ups like the Baker Street Irregulars who pretend detectives in mystery stories were real?"

"The Wolfe Pack is similar to that Sherlockian group," said Goldstein as he lifted a dozen paperbacks and a handful of hardcover books from bags to desktop, "only Wolfies aren't quite as serious about Nero as the BSI boys are regarding Sherlock."

Bogdanovic snorted. "Boys is right."

Goldstein's smile was tolerant. "As chairman of the steering committee, Wiggins has done me the honor of asking me to make one of the toasts that will precede the presentation of the coveted Nero Wolfe Award to Theodore Janus."

Bogdanovic lurched up. "Janus? These Wolfe people are going to honor the mob's number one mouthpiece?"

"In addition to being the country's most famous criminal defense lawyer, Janus is author of a Nero Wolfe encyclopedia," Goldstein said, holding up a ponderous paperback. "This is it. An astonishing feat of scholarship!"

Bogdanovic crossed the large office to a window with a view of the flat sprawl of Brooklyn beyond the East River. He stood with hands in the pockets of tan slacks, drawing back a brown jacket to reveal a tan shoulder holster holding a black Glock automatic pistol. In Goldstein's years as a sergeant the departmental weapon had been Smith and Wesson's .38-caliber snub-nose police special revolver. Clipped to the tan belt around the young detective's trim waist was a gray beeper. The left pocket of the coat contained a cell phone no larger than a billfold. Just down the corridor in his immaculate office Bogdanovic had the latest computer technology. Its bewildering array of related equipment linked him to cyberspace-traveling law enforcers against whom criminals had an even bleaker prospect of getting away with it than their kind in the alarmingly increasingly distant and uncomplicated time of Goldstein's youth.

Recognizing a stance that was invariably prelude to a John Bogdanovic remonstrance, he sighed. "All right, Sergeant. What's really eating you?"

Bogdanovic spoke without taming. "I do not think the chief of detectives should be socializing with a guy who is linked to organized crime. Especially with this Mancuso thing going on."

"Because Janus defends mobsters doesn't make him one."

"There's another reason I'm against you taking part in this banquet," Bogdanovic said, wheeling around. "I don't think you should be hobnobbing with the shyster who got Morgan Griffith off with a slap on the wrist."

"Twenty-five to life without parole is a slap on the wrist?"

The lanky detective returned to his chair and flung himself into it dejectedly. "Griffith should've got the death penalty."

Both men fell silent as their thoughts turned back two years to the murder that had introduced them to a remarkable detective by the name of Arlene Flynn.

Goldstein smiled. "Bogdanovic and Flynn! You two were great together! She shouldn't be wasting all that talent in the sticks. Working for me she could earn twice what she gets with the Stone County district attorney's squad. And she'd be more challenged."

"There are people for whom money isn't all that important. And a lot of people don't share your view that New York is top of the ladder in all things, including the crime department."

After a pensive moment Goldstein muttered, "Ridiculous!"

"I'll bet that if you asked Arlene she'd agree with me that it's not going to look right if you give Janus this silly award."

"In the first place, it's not a silly award. Secondly, I am not the person who'll give him the award. I'm delivering a toast to Lily Rowan. In the Wolfe novels she is a girlfriend of Nero Wolfe's assistant, Archie Goodwin. At the banquet Lily is being represented by someone who is an expert on Wolfe. She will be the one presenting the award to Janus."

"Well she can do it without me. Wiggins can count me out."

"Not so fast with regrets, John-boy. The woman in question happens to your favorite prosecutor from the other coast."

"Maggie Dane? She is going to be there?"

Goldstein drummed stubby fingers atop the stack of books. 'Johnny, I've never seen such a look of surprise on your mug."

"I don't get it," Bogdanovic said, rising again. "How can she give an award to the guy who used every dirty legal trick there was to beat her in that travesty they had the nerve to call a murder trial out there in La La Land?"

"They go back a long way. Before she became a prosecutor in "Because Janus defends mobsters doesn't make him one."

"There's another reason I'm against you taking part in this banquet," Bogdanovic said, wheeling around. "I don't think you should be hobnobbing with the shyster who got Morgan Griffith off with a slap on the wrist."

"Twenty-five to life without parole is a slap on the wrist?"

The lanky detective returned to his chair and flung himself into it dejectedly. "Griffith should've got the death penalty."

Both men fell silent as their thoughts turned back two years to the murder that had introduced them to a remarkable detective by the name of Arlene Flynn.

Goldstein smiled. "Bogdanovic and Flynn! You two were great together! She shouldn't be wasting all that talent in the sticks. Working for me she could earn twice what she gets with the Stone County district attorney's squad. And she'd be more challenged."

"There are people for whom money isn't all that important. And a lot of people don't share your view that New York is top of the ladder in all things, including the crime department."

After a pensive moment Goldstein muttered, "Ridiculous!"

"I'll bet that if you asked Arlene she'd agree with me that it's not going to look right if you give Janus this silly award."

"In the first place, it's not a silly award. Secondly, I am not the person who'll give him the award. I'm delivering a toast to Lily Rowan. In the Wolfe novels she is a girlfriend of Nero Wolfe's assistant, Archie Goodwin. At the banquet Lily is being represented by someone who is an expert on Wolfe. She will be the one presenting the award to Janus."

"Well she can do it without me. Wiggins can count me out."

"Not so fast with regrets, John-boy. The woman in question happens to your favorite prosecutor from the other coast."

"Maggie Dane? She is going to be there?"