Trio For Blunt Instruments (13 page)

'I wouldn't say that I will make sure of anything whatever.'

'Correction. That you will be concerned?'

He took air in, all the way, through his nose, and let it out through his mouth. 'Very well. I'll be concerned.' He glanced at the twelve pages on his desk. 'Will you bring Miss Pinelli to my room at five minutes to nine in the morning?'

'No. She doesn't get to her office until nine-thirty.'

'Then bring her to the plant rooms at nine-forty with the affidavit.' He looked at the wall clock. 'You can type it in the morning. You've had no sleep for forty hours. Go to bed.'

That was quite a compliment, and I was appreciating it as I mounted the stairs to my room. Except for a real emergency he will permit no interruptions from nine to eleven in the morning, when he is in the plant rooms, but he wasn't going to wait until he came down to the office to get the affidavit notarized. As I got into bed and turned the light off I was considering whether to ask for a raise now or wait till the end of the year, but before I made up my mind I didn't have a mind. It was gone.

I never did actually make up my mind about passing the buck to Sue. I was still on the fence after breakfast Thursday morning, when I dialed the number of Lila Pinelli, who adds maybe two bucks a week to the take of her secretarial service in a building on Eighth Avenue by doubling as a notary public. Doing the affidavits didn't commit me to anything; the question was, what then'So I asked her to come, and she came, and I took her up to the plant rooms. She was in a hurry to get back, but she had never seen the orchids, and no one alive could just breeze on by those benches, with everything from the neat little Oncidiums to the big show-offs like the Laeliocattleyas. So it was after ten o'clock when we came back down and I paid her and let her out, and I went to the office and put the document in the safe.

As I say, I never did actually make up my mind; it just happened. At ten minutes past eleven Wolfe, having come down at eleven as usual, was at his desk looking over the morning crop of mail, and I was at mine sorting the germination slips he had brought, when the doorbell rang. I stepped to the hall for a look, turned, and said, 'Cramer. I'll go hide in the cellar.'

'Confound it,' he growled. 'I wanted- Very well.'

'There's no law about answering doorbells.'

'No. We'll see.'

I went to the front, opened up, said good morning, and gave him room. He crossed the sill, took a folded paper from a pocket, and handed it to me. I unfolded it, and a glance was enough, but I read it through. 'At least my name's spelled right,' I said. I extended my hands, the wrists together. 'Okay, do it right. You never know.'

'You'd clown in the chair,' he said. 'I want to see Wolfe.' He marched down the hall and into the office. Very careless. I could have scooted on out and away, and for half a second I considered it, but I wouldn't have been there to see the look on his face when he found I was gone. When I entered the office he was lowering his fanny onto the red leather chair and putting his hat on the stand beside it. Also he was speaking. 'I have just handed Goodwin a warrant for his arrest,' he was saying, 'and this time he'd stay.'

I stood. 'It's an honor,' I said. 'Anyone can be banged by a bull or a dick. It takes me to be pinched by an inspector, and twice in one week.'

His eyes stayed at Wolfe. 'I came myself,' he said, 'because I want to tell you how it stands. A police officer with a warrant to serve is not only allowed to use his discretion, he's supposed to. I know damn well what Goodwin will do, he'll clam up, and a crowbar wouldn't pry him open. Give me that warrant, Goodwin.'

'It's mine. You've served it.'

'I have not. I just showed it to you.' He stretched an arm and took it. 'When I was here Tuesday night,' he told Wolfe, 'you were dumfounded by my fatuity. So you said in your fancy way. All you cared about was who picked that corn. I came myself to see how you feel now. Goodwin will talk if you tell him to. Do you want me to wait in the front room while you discuss it'Not all day, say ten minutes. I'm giving you a-'

He stopped to glare. Wolfe had pushed his chair back and was rising, and of course Cramer thought he was walking out. It wouldn't have been the first time. But Wolfe headed for the safe, not the hall. As he turned the handle and pulled the door open, there I was. If he had told me to bring it instead of going for it himself, I could have stalled while I made up my mind, even with Cramer there, but as I have said twice before I never did actually make up my mind. I merely went to my desk and sat. I owed Sue McLeod nothing. If either she or I was going to be cooped, there were two good reasons why it should be her: she had made the soup herself, and I wouldn't be much help in the joint affair if I was salted down. So I sat, and Wolfe got it from the safe, went and handed it to Cramer, and spoke. 'I suggest that you look at the affidavits first. The last two sheets.'

Over the years I have made a large assortment of cracks about Inspector Cramer, but I admit he has his points. Having inspected the affidavits, he went through the twelve pages fast, and then he went back and started over and took his time. Altogether, more than half an hour; and not once did he ask a question or even look up. And when he finished, even then no questions. Lieutenant Rowcliff or Sergeant Purley Stebbins would have kept at us for an hour. Cramer merely gave each of us a five-second straight hard look, folded the document and put it in his inside breast pocket, rose and came to my desk, picked up the phone, and dialed. In a moment he spoke.

'Donovan'Inspector Cramer. Give me Sergeant Stebbins.' In another moment: 'Purley'Get Susan McLeod. Don't call her, get her. Go yourself. I'll be there in ten minutes and I want her there fast. Take a man along. If she balks, wrap her up and carry her.'

He cradled the phone, went to the stand and got his hat, and marched out.

OF ALL THE THOUSAND or more times I have felt like putting vinegar in Wolfe's beer, I believe the closest I ever came to doing it was that Thursday evening when the doorbell rang at a quarter past nine, and after a look at the front I told him that Carl Heydt, Max Maslow, and Peter Jay were on the stoop, and he said they were not to be admitted.

In the nine and a half hours that had passed since Cramer had used my phone to call Purley Stebbins I had let it lie. I couldn't expect Wolfe to start any fur flying until there was a reaction, or there wasn't, say by tomorrow noon, to what had happened to Sue. However, I had made a move on my own. When Wolfe had left the office at four o'clock to go up to the plant rooms, I had told him I would be out on an errand for an hour or so, and I had taken a walk, to Rusterman's, thinking I might pick up some little hint.

I didn't. First I went out back for a look at the platform and the alley, which might seem screwy, since two days and nights had passed and the city scientists had combed it, but you never know. I once got an idea just running my eye around a hotel room where a woman had spent a night six months earlier. But I got nothing from the platform or alley except a scraped ear from squeezing under the platform and out again, and after talking with Felix and Joe and some of the kitchen staff I crossed it off. No one had seen or heard anyone or anything until Zoltan had stepped out for a cigarette (no smoking is allowed in the kitchen) and had seen the station wagon and the body on the ground.

I would have let it ride that evening, no needling until tomorrow noon. When Lily Rowan phoned around seven o'clock and said Sue had phoned her from the DA's office that she was under arrest and had to have a lawyer and would Lily send her one, and Lily wanted me to come and tell her what was what, I would have gone if I hadn't wanted to be on hand if there was a development. But when the development came Wolfe told me not to let it in.

I straight-eyed him. 'You said you'd be concerned.'

'I am concerned.'

'Then here they are. You tossed her to the wolves to open them up, and here-'

'No. I did that to keep you out of jail. I am considering how to deal with the problem, and until I decide there is no point in seeing them. Tell them they'll hear from us.'

The doorbell rang again. 'Then I'll see them. In the front room.'

'No. Not in my house.' He went back to his book.

Either put vinegar in his beer or get the Marley.32 from my desk drawer and shoot him dead, but that would have to wait; they were on the stoop. I went and opened the door enough for me to slip through, did so, bumping into Carl Heydt, and pulled the door shut. 'Good evening,' I said. 'Mr. Wolfe is busy on an important matter and can't be disturbed. Do you want to disturb me instead?'

They all spoke at once. The general idea seemed to be that I would open the door and they would handle the disturbing.

'You don't seem to realize,' I told them, 'that you're up against a genius. So am I, only I'm used to it. You were damn fools to think he was bluffing. You might have known he would do exactly what he said.'

'Then he did?' Peter Jay. 'He did it?'

'We did. I share the glory. We did.'

'Glory hell.' Max Maslow. 'You know Sue didn't kill Ken Faber. He said so.'

'He said we were satisfied that she didn't. We still are. He also said that we doubt if she'll be convicted. He also said that our interest was to get me from under, and we had alternatives. We could either find out who killed Faber, for which we needed your help; or, if you refused to help, we could switch it to Sue. You refused, and we switched it, and I am in the clear, and here you are. Why'Why should he waste time on you now'He is busy on an important matter; he's reading a book entitled My Life in Court, by Louis Nizer. Why should he put it down for you?'

'I can't believe it, Archie.' Carl Heydt had hold of my arm. 'I can't believe you'd do a thing like this-to Sue-when you say she didn't-'

'You never can tell, Carl. There was that woman who went to the park every day to feed the pigeons, but she fed her husband arsenic. I have a suggestion. This is Mr. Wolfe's house and he doesn't want you in it, but if you guys have changed your minds, at least two of you, about helping to find out who killed Faber, I'm a licensed detective too and I could spare a couple of hours. We can sit here on the steps, or we can go somewhere-'

'And you can tell us,' Maslow said, 'what Sue told the cops that got them on you. I may believe that when I hear it.'

'You won't hear it from me. That's not the idea. You tell me things. I ask questions and you answer them. If I don't ask them, who will'I doubt if the cops or the DA will; they've got too good a line on Sue. I'll tell you this much, they know she was there Tuesday at the right time, and they know that she lied to them about what she was there for and what she saw. I can spare an hour or two.'

They exchanged glances, and they were not the glances of buddies with a common interest. They also exchanged words and found they agreed on one point: if one of them took me up they all would. Peter Jay said we could go to his place and they agreed on that too, and we descended to the sidewalk and headed east. At Eighth Avenue we flagged a taxi with room for four. It was ten minutes to ten when it rolled to the curb at a marquee on Park Avenue in the Seventies.

Jay's apartment, on the fifteenth floor, was quite a perch for a bachelor. The living room was high, wide, and handsome, and it would have been an appropriate spot for our talk, since it was there that Sue McLeod and Ken Faber had first met, but Jay took us on through to a room smaller but also handsome, with chairs and carpet of matching green, a desk, bookshelves, and a TV-player cabinet. He asked us what we would drink but got no orders, and we sat.

'All right, ask your questions,' Maslow said. The twisted smile.

He was blocking my view of Heydt, and I shifted my chair. 'I've changed my mind,' I said. 'I looked it over on the way, and I decided to take another tack. Sue told the police, and it was in her signed statement, that she and I had arranged to meet there at the alley at five o'clock, and she was late, she didn't get there until five-fifteen, and I wasn't there, so she left. She had to tell them she was there because she had been seen in front of the restaurant, just around the corner, by two of the staff, who know her.'

Their eyes were glued on me. 'So you weren't there at five-fifteen,' Jay said. 'The body was found at five-fifteen. So you had been and gone?'

'No. Sue also told the police that Faber had told her on Sunday that he had told me on Tuesday that she thought she was pregnant and he was responsible. He had told you that, all three of you. She said that was why she and I were going to meet there, to make Faber swallow his lies. So it's fair to say she set the cops on me, and it's no wonder they turned on the heat. The trouble-'

'Why not?' Maslow demanded. 'Why isn't it still on?'

'Don't interrupt. The trouble was, she lied. Not about what Faber had told her on Sunday he had told me on Tuesday; that was probably his lie, he probably had told her that, but it wasn't true; he had told me nothing on Tuesday. That's why your names in his notebook had checkmarks but mine didn't; he was going to feed us that to put the pressure on Sue, and he had fed it to you but not me. So that was his lie, not Sue's. Hers was about our arranging to meet there Tuesday afternoon to have it out with Faber. We hadn't. We hadn't arranged anything. She also-'

'So you say.' Peter Jay.

'Don't interrupt. She also lied about what she did when she got there at five-fifteen. She said she saw I wasn't there and left. Actually she went down the alley, saw Faber's body there on the ground with his skull smashed, panicked, and blew. The time thing-'

'So you say.' Peter Jay.

'Shut up. The time thing is only a matter of seconds. Sue says she got there at five-fifteen, and the record says that a man coming from the kitchen discovered the body at five-fifteen. Sue may be off half a minute, or the man may. Evidently she had just been and gone when the man came from the kitchen.'

'Look, pal.' Maslow had his head cocked and his eyes narrowed. 'Shut up'Go soak your head. Who's lying, Sue or you?'

I nodded. 'That's a fair question. Until noon today, a little before noon, they thought I was. Then they found out I wasn't. They didn't just guess again, they found out, and that's why they took her down and they're going to keep her. Which-'

'How did they find out?'

'Ask them. You can be sure it was good. They were liking it fine, having me on a hook, and they hated to see me flop off. It had to be good, and it was. Which brings me to the point. I think Sue's lie was part truth. I think she had arranged with someone to meet her there at five o'clock. She got there fifteen minutes late and he wasn't there, and she went down the alley and saw Faber dead, and what would she think'That's obvious. No wonder she panicked. She went home and looked it over. She couldn't deny she had been there because she had been seen. If she said she had gone there on her own to see Faber, alone, they wouldn't believe she hadn't gone in the alley, and they certainly would believe she had killed him. So she decided to tell the truth, part of it, that she had arranged to meet someone and she got there late and he wasn't there and she had left-leaving out that she had gone in the alley and seen the body. But since she thought that the man she had arranged to meet had killed Faber she couldn't name him; but they would insist on her naming him. So she decided to name me. It wasn't so dirty really; she thought I could prove I was somewhere else, having decided not to meet her. I couldn't, but she didn't know that.' I turned a palm up. 'So the point is, who had agreed to meet her there?'

Heydt said, 'That took a lot of cutting and fitting, Archie.'

'You were going to ask questions,' Maslow said. 'Ask one we can answer.'

'I'll settle for that one,' I said. 'Say it was one of you, which of course I am saying. I don't expect him to answer it. If Sue stands pat and doesn't name him and it gets to where he has to choose between letting her go to trial and unloading, he might come across, but not here and now. But I do expect the other two to consider it. Put it another way: if Sue decided to jump on Faber for the lies he was spreading around and to ask one of you to help, which one would she pick'Or still another: which one of you would be most likely to decide to jump Faber and ask Sue to join in'I like the first one better because it was probably her idea.' I looked at Heydt. 'What about it, Carl'Just a plain answer to a plain question. Which one would she pick'You?'

'No. Maslow.'

'Why?'

'He's articulate and he's tough. I'm not tough, and Sue knows it.'

'How about Jay?'

'My God, no. I hope not. She must know that nobody can depend on him for anything that takes guts.'

Jay left his chair, and his hands were fists as he moved. Guts or not, he certainly believed in making contact. Thinking that Heydt probably wasn't as well educated as Maslow, I got up and blocked Jay off, and darned if he didn't swing at me, or start to. I got his arm and whirled him and shoved, and he stumbled but managed to stay on his feet. As he turned, Maslow spoke.

'Hold it, Pete. I have an idea. There's no love lost among us three, but we all feel the same about this Goodwin. He's a persona non grata if I ever saw one.' He got up. 'Let's bounce him. Not just a nudge, the bum's rush. Care to help, Carl?'

Heydt shook his head. 'No, thanks. I'll watch.'

'Okay. It'll be simpler if you just relax, Goodwin.'

I couldn't turn and go, leaving my rear open. 'I hope you won't tickle,' I said, backing up a step.

'Come in behind, Pete,' Maslow said, and started, slow, his elbows out a little and his open hands extended and up some. Since he had been so neat with the kidney punch he probably knew a few tricks, maybe the armpit or the apple, and with Jay on my back I would have been a setup, so I doubled up and whirled, came up bumping Jay, and gave him the edge of my hand, as sharp as I could make it, on the side of his neck, the tendon below the ear. It got exactly the right spot and so much for him, but Maslow had my left wrist and was getting his shoulder in for the lock, and in another tenth of a second I would have been meat. The only way to go was down, and I went, sliding off his shoulder and bending my elbow into his belly, and he made a mistake. Having lost the lock, he reached for my other wrist. That opened him up, and I rolled into him, brought my right arm around, and had his neck with a knee in his back.

'Do you want to hear it crack?' I asked him, which was bad manners, since he couldn't answer. I loosened my arm a little. 'I admit I was lucky. If Jay had been sideways you would have had me.' I looked at Jay, who was on a chair, rubbing his neck. 'If you want to play games you ought to take lessons. Maslow would be a good teacher.' I unwound my arm and got erect. 'Don't bother to see me out,' I said and headed for the front.

I was still breathing a little fast when I emerged to the sidewalk, having straightened my tie and run my comb through my hair in the elevator. My watch said twenty past ten. Also in the elevator I had decided to make a phone call, so I walked to Madison Avenue, found a booth, and dialed one of the numbers I knew best. Miss Lily Rowan was in and would be pleased to have me come and tell her things, and I walked the twelve blocks to the number on 63rd Street where her penthouse occupies the roof.

Since it wasn't one of Wolfe's cases with a client involved, but a joint affair, and since it was Lily who had started Sue on her way at my request, I gave her the whole picture. Her chief reactions were a) that she didn't blame Sue and I had no right to, I should feel flattered; b) that I had to somehow get Sue out of it without involving whoever had removed such a louse as Kenneth Faber from circulation; and c) that if I did have to involve him she hoped to heaven it wasn't Carl Heydt because there was no one else around who could make clothes that were fit to wear, especially suits. She had sent a lawyer to Sue, Bernard Ross, and he had seen her and had phoned an hour before I came to report that she was being held without bail and he would decide in the morning whether to apply for a writ.