Nero Wolfe 16 - Even in the Best Families (22 page)

Roeder shrugged. “I think it’s unimportant. Goodwin’s main purpose now is to get Rackham scared. We’ve got to have him scared good before we can expect him to go along with us. If he killed his wife—”

“He did, of course. Unquestionably.”

“Then he might be more afraid of Mrs. Frey than of you. We can see. If not, it will be simple for Goodwin to give him a new line.” Roeder looked at me. “It’s all open for you to Rackham now?”

“I guess so. He told me he wanted to see me every day, but that was day before yesterday. What are we scaring him for? To see him throw glasses?”

Zeck and Roeder exchanged glances. Zeck spoke to me. “I believe Roeder told you that he came here recently from the West Coast. He had a very successful operation there, a brilliant and profitable operation
which he devised. It has some novel features and requires precise timing and expert handling. With one improvement it could be enormously profitable here in New York, and that one improvement is the cooperation of a wealthy and well-placed man. Rackham is ideal for it. We intend to use him. If you help materially in lining him up, as I think you can, your share of the net will be five per cent. The net is expected to exceed half a million, and should be double that.”

I was frowning skeptically. “You mean if I help scare him into it.”

“Yes.”

“And help with the operation too?”

“No.”

“What have I got to scare him with?”

“His sense of guilt first. He escaped arrest and trial for the murder of his wife only because the police couldn’t get enough evidence for a case. He is under the constant threat of the discovery of additional evidence, which for a murderer is a severe strain. If he believes we have such evidence he will be open to persuasion.”

“Have we got it?”

Zeck damn near smiled. “I shouldn’t think it will be needed. If it is needed we’ll have it.”

“Then why drag him in on a complicated operation? He’s worth what, three million? Ask him for half of it, or even a third.”

“No. You have much to learn, Goodwin. People must not be deprived of hope. If we take a large share of Rackham’s fortune he will be convinced that we intend to wring him dry. People must be allowed to feel that if our demands are met the outlook is not
intolerable. A basic requirement for continued success in illicit enterprises is a sympathetic understanding of the limitations of the human nervous system. Getting Rackham’s help in Roeder’s operation will leave plenty of room for future requests.”

I was keeping my frown. “Which I may or may not have a hand in. Don’t think I’m playing hard to get, but this is quite a step to take. Using a threat of a murder rap to put the screws on a millionaire is a little too drastic without pretty good assurance that I get more than peanuts. You said five per cent of a probable half a million, but you’re used to talking big figures. Could I have that filled in a little?”

Roeder reached for a battered old leather brief case which he had brought in with him and deposited on the floor. Getting it on his lap, he had it opened when Zeck asked him, “What are you after, the estimates?”

“Yes, if you want them.”

“You may show them to him, but no names.” Zeck turned to me. “I think you may do, Goodwin. You’re brash, but that is a quality that may be made use of. You used it when you talked with Rackham. He must be led into this with tact or he may lose his head and force our hand, and all we want is his cooperation. His conviction for murder wouldn’t help us any; quite the contrary. Properly handled, he should be of value to us for years.”

The shark eyes left me. “What’s your opinion of Goodwin, Roeder? Can you work with him?”

Roeder had closed the brief case and kept it on his lap. “I can try,” he said, not enthusiastically. “The general level here is no higher than on the coast. But we can’t get started until we know whether we have
Rackham or not, and the approach through Goodwin does seem the best way. He’s so damned cocky I don’t know whether he’ll take direction.”

“Would you care to have my opinion of Roeder?” I inquired.

Zeck ignored it. “Goodwin,” he said, “this is the most invulnerable organization on earth. There are good men in it, but it all comes to me. I am the organization. I have no prejudices and no emotions. You will get what you deserve. If you deserve well, there is no limit to the support you will get, and none to the reward. If you deserve ill, there is no limit to that either. You understand that?”

“Sure.” His eyes were the hardest to meet in my memory. “Provided you understand that I don’t like you.”

“No one likes me. No one likes the authority of superior intellect. There was one man who matched me in intellect—the man you worked for, Nero Wolfe—but his will failed him. His vanity wouldn’t let him yield, and he cleared out.”

“He was a little handicapped,” I protested, “by his respect for law.”

“Every man is handicapped by his own weaknesses. If you communicate with him give him my regards. I have great admiration for him.”

Zeck glanced at a clock on the wall and then at Roeder. “I’m keeping a caller waiting. Goodwin is under your direction, but he is on trial. Consult me as necessary within the routine.”

He must have had floor buttons for foot-signaling, for he touched nothing with his hands, but the door opened and the sentinel appeared.

Zeck said, “Put Goodwin on the B list, Schwartz.”

Roeder and I arose and headed for the door, him with his brief case under his arm.

Remembering how he had told me, tapping his chest, “I am a D, Archie,” I would have given a lot if I could have tapped my own bosom and announced, “I am a B, Mr. Wolfe.”

T
here was one chore Wolfe had given me which I haven’t mentioned, because I didn’t care to reveal the details—and still don’t. But the time will come when you will want to know where the gun at the bottom of the brief case came from, so I may as well say now that you aren’t going to know.

Since filing the number from a gun has been made obsolete by the progress of science, the process of getting one that can’t be traced has got more complicated and requires a little specialized knowledge. One has to be acquainted with the right people. I am. But there is no reason why you should be, so I won’t give their names and addresses. I couldn’t quite meet Wolfe’s specifications—the size and weight of a .22 and the punch of a .45—but I did pretty well: a Carson Snub Thirty, an ugly little devil, but straight and powerful. I tried it out one evening in the basement at Thirty-fifth Street. When I was through I collected the bullets and dumped them in the river. We were taking enough chances without adding another, however slim.

The next evening after our conference with Zeck, a Monday, Wolfe and I collaborated on the false bottom
for the brief case. We did the job at 1019. Since I was now a B and Roeder’s lieutenant on his big operation, and he was supposed to keep in touch with me, there was no reason why he shouldn’t come to Thirty-fifth Street for an evening visit, but when I suggested it he compressed his lips and scowled at me with such ferocity that I quickly changed the subject. We made the false bottom out of an old piece of leather that I picked up at a shoe hospital, and it wasn’t bad at all. Even if a sentinel removed all the papers for a close inspection, which wasn’t likely with the status Roeder had reached, there was little chance of his suspecting the bottom; yet if you knew just where and how to pry you could have the Carson out before you could say Jackie Robinson.

However, something had happened before that: my second talk with Barry Rackham. When I got home late Sunday night the phone-answering service reported that he had been trying to reach me, both at 1019 and at the office, and I gave him a ring and made a date for Monday at three o’clock.

Usually I am on the dot for an appointment, but that day an errand took less time than I had allowed, and it was only twelve to three when I left the Churchill tower elevator at Rackham’s floor and walked to his door. I was lifting my hand to push the button, when the door opened and I had to step back so a woman wouldn’t walk into me. When she saw me she stopped, and we both stared. It was Lina Darrow. Her fine eyes were as fine as ever.

“Well, hello,” I said appreciatively.

“You’re early, Goodwin,” Barry Rackham said. He was standing in the doorway.

Lina’s expression was not appreciative. It didn’t look like embarrassment, more like some kind of suspicion,
though I had no notion what she could suspect me of so spontaneously.

“How are you?” she asked, and then, to make it perfectly clear that she didn’t give a damn, went by me toward the elevator. Rackham moved aside, giving me enough space to enter, and I did so and kept going to the living room. In a moment I heard the door close, and in another moment he joined me.

“You’re early,” he repeated, not reproachfully.

He looked as if, during the seventy hours since I had last seen him, he had had at least seventy drinks. His face was mottled, his eyes were bloodshot, and his left cheek was twitching. Also his tie had a dot of egg yolk on it, and he needed a shave.

“A week ago Saturday,” I said, “I think it was, one of my men described a girl you were out with, and it sounded like Miss Darrow, but I wasn’t sure. I’m not leading up to something, I’m just gossiping.”

He wasn’t interested one way or the other. He asked what I would have to drink, and when I said nothing thank you he went to the bar and got himself a straight one, and then came and moved a chair around to sit facing me.

“Hell,” I said, “you look even more scared than you did the other day. And according to my men, either you’ve started sneaking out side doors or you’ve become a homebody. Who said boo?”

Nothing I had to say interested him. “I said I wanted to see you every day,” he stated. His voice was hoarse.

“I know, but I’ve been busy. Among other things, I spent an hour yesterday afternoon with Arnold Zeck.”

That did interest him. “I think you’re a goddam liar, Goodwin.”

“Then I must have dreamed it. Driving into the garage, and being frisked, and the little vestibule, and fourteen steps down, and the two sentinels, and the soundproof door five inches thick, and the pinkish gray walls and chairs and rugs, and him sitting there drilling holes in things, including me, with his eyes, and—”

“When was this? Yesterday?”

“Yeah. I was driven up, but now I know how to get there myself. I haven’t got the password yet, but wait.”

With an unsteady hand he put his glass down on a little table. “I told you before, Goodwin, I did not kill my wife.”

“Sure, that’s out of the way.”

“How did it happen? Your going to see him.”

“He sent Max Christy for me.”

“That son of a bitch.” Suddenly his mottled face got redder and he yelled at me, “Well, go on! What did he say?”

“He said I may have a big career ahead of me.”

“What did he say about me?”

I shook my head. “I’ll tell you, Rackham. I think it’s about time I let my better judgment in on this. I had never seen Zeck before, and he made quite an impression on me.” I reached to my breast pocket. “Here’s your six thousand dollars. I hate to let go of it, but—”

“Put that back in your pocket.”

“No, really I—”

“Put it back.” He wasn’t yelling now. “I don’t blame you for being impressed by Zeck—God knows you’re not the first. But you’re wrong if you think he can’t ever miss and I’m all done. There’s one thing you ought to realize: I can’t throw in my hand on this
one; I’ve got to play it out, and I’m going to. You’ve got me hooked, because I can’t play it without you since you were there that night. All right, name it. How much?”

I put the six grand on the little table. “My real worry,” I said, “is not Zeck. He is nothing to sneer at and he does make a strong impression, but I have been impressed before and got over it. What called my better judgment in was the New York statutes relating to accessories to murder. Apparently Zeck has got evidence that will convict you. If you—”

“He has not. That’s a lie.”

“He seems to think he has. If you want to take dough from a murderer for helping him beat the rap you must be admitted to the bar, and I haven’t been. So with my sincere regret at my inability to assist you in your difficulty, there’s your dough.”

“I’m not a murderer, Goodwin.”

“I didn’t mean an actual murderer. I meant a man against whom evidence has been produced in court to convince a jury. He and his accessory get it just the same.”

Rackham’s bloodshot eyes were straight and steady at me. “I’m not asking you to help me beat a rap. I’m asking you not to help frame me—and to help me keep Zeck from framing me.”

“I know,” I said sympathetically. “That’s the way you tell it, but not him. I don’t intend to get caught in a backwash. I came here chiefly to return your money and to tell you that it’s got beyond the point where I name a figure and you pay it and then we’re all hunky-dory, but I do have a suggestion to make if you care to hear it—strictly on my own.”

Rackham started doing calisthenics. His hands, resting on his thighs, tightened into fists and then
opened again, and repeated it several times. It made me impatient watching him, because it seemed so inadequate to the situation. By now the picture was pretty clear, and I thought that a guy who had had enough initiative to venture into the woods at night to stalk his wife, armed only with a steak knife, when she had her Doberman pinscher with her, should now, finding himself backed into a corner, respond with something more forceful than sitting there doing and undoing his fists.

He spoke. “Look, Goodwin, I’m not myself. I know damn well I’m not. It’s been nearly five months now. The first week it wasn’t so bad—there was the excitement, all of us suspected and being questioned; if they had arrested me then I wouldn’t have skipped a pulse beat. I would have met it fair and square and fought it out. But as it stretched out it got tougher. I had broken off with Zeck without thinking it through—the way it looked then, I ought to get clean and keep clean, especially after the hearings in Washington, those first ones, and after the New York District Attorney took a hand. But what happened, every time the phone rang or the doorbell, it hit me in the stomach. It was murder. If they came and took me or sent for me and kept me, I could be damn sure it had been fixed so they thought it would stick. A man can stand that for a day or a week, or a month perhaps, but with me it went on and on, and by God, I’ve had about all I can take.”