Yellow

By

Parhelion

If offered a choice, this is not the way I would have picked to die, by water.  I’d flirted with death before on slopes of dry, red rocks in my homeland’s mountainsides, drowning in carrion mud within hand-dug trenches, crouched in a dingy alley filled with rubbish and rubble, and confined behind iron bars hot from unrelenting sunlight.  But all of those deaths had meaning and purpose, and this death would be a failure.

I, Nero Wolfe, was being held over the side of a boat, above the Hudson River, by two criminals.  The gray water below was cold, lashed by rain.  Beneath us the decking shuddered with the rough beat of a feral engine.

“Now you going to talk?”  The more articulate ruffian shouted to be heard above the rain and the engine.

I didn’t bother to reply.  There was no reason to speak.  For one thing, I had little of the knowledge they wished to hear.  For another, my current silence bought the safety of my companion, Archie Goodwin.

“I told you we should’ve tried the hammer some more.”  The second thug’s voice screeched even as he shouted, yet another weight on my over-stretched nerves.

“Shaddup.  He’s a screamer, yellow.  Too much pain and that kind of guy’ll tell you anything.”  The man turned slightly to remonstrate with his comrade.  Abruptly I turned too and twisted free.  As I’d anticipated, freed, I fell.

My arms were bound to my sides with ropes.  It seemed a long way down to the water.

*****

The Vincent case sure started off innocently enough.  It was the next Monday after Labor Day in 1932 and I was lucky to be laboring at all, given how bad business was.  Even so, I usually didn’t like Mondays. 

This one, though, had just become enjoyable.  The tall, willowy blonde dressed only in a little Harlequin costume of black velvet and gold lamé, the ruffs of gilt lace around her wrists and neck linked together with loops of jet beads, had decided to stride up and down the Kirgahan carpet in Nero Wolfe’s office wringing her hands.  It was scenic as all get-out, but Wolfe’s head was tracking her back and forth as if she was a leopard who hadn't noticed the cage bars were gone.  He was waiting for the first tear or lip quiver so he could have me haul her out, but he wasn’t going to get what he wanted.  Miss Bobbie Cunningham had both dramatic control and a lot invested in her role as the sweet girl next door who went on the stage by mistake.  For the best effect, any second now she should turn–

She turned her wide blue eyes toward Wolfe.   “You’re a good man, a decent man,” she said in her smoky alto.  “You can help me.”

I raised my eyebrows.  Although the words were well-scripted for her role, Bobbie sure had delivered them at the wrong address.  To call anyone in that office good or decent was a big miscalculation.

But I can see Bobbie’s mistake deserves more of an explanation than my two-sentence review of her dramatic delivery.  Neither Nero Wolfe, genius detective, nor I, his faithful-to-my-paymaster sidekick, should ever be called good or decent with a straight face.  Over the years, the folks who buy my case reports seem to have gotten the wrong idea, probably because we’re the protagonists of so many published exploits. 

After all, look how dime novels made Billy the Kid and Jesse James into heroes, especially after Hollywood horned in on the act.  A while back we almost received the B-movie treatment ourselves until the studio representative I’d scheduled an appointment for handed Wolfe the proposed scenario.  Too bad Wolfe is literate.  It took him maybe ten seconds to spot the description that removed fifty pounds of fat from him and replaced it with a mature-but-pneumatic brunette.  His expression when he read that synopsis was well worth my being fired for three days.

Good or decent.  No, not really.  Not unless the public ignores everything I’ve ever told them.  For one thing, our body count is way too high.  The readers who buy my books can ignore the deaths.  That’s allowed both by custom and by my failure to emphasize the blood and mayhem.  The fact remains, I was a killer by eighteen and I’ve long suspected the same of Wolfe.  And what we do, we do for cash.  For another thing, by eighteen I’d also—well, I’m getting to that.

None of this concerned Miss Bobbie Cunningham right then.  Somehow she’d coaxed Marko Vukcic, Wolfe’s oldest friend from his native country, into requesting an emergency appointment for her.  She was taking full advantage of the favor.

“Miss Cunningham,” Wolfe said, “sit down, please.  I’m developing a crick in my neck.”

She considered him, and then went and sat in the red leather chair.  One fascinatingly long leg crossed over the other fascinatingly long leg.  Nothing interrupted the view above the ankle straps of the gold lamé pumps for a good, long distance.

Wolfe grunted, maybe in reaction to her show.  “For the sake of my concentration, before you start over your account in a calm and orderly fashion, I want you to answer a question.  What the devil are you doing in that ridiculous costume?”  His tone was placid, but he flicked his eyes towards me at the end of his question in a way that told me I was suspected of being involved.  No such luck.

Surprised, she glanced down and then smiled.  The expression was a little watery.  “I’m sorry.  The last couple of weeks before a new show opens I spend so much time in costume that it’s easy to forget what I’m wearing.  The costumers and director fuss and tweak and then fuss some more.”  Absently, she reached down and rearranged a string of beads.  “So when Marko telephoned that he’d gotten me an appointment, I didn’t even stop to think.  I threw on my overcoat and caught a cab, meaning to get here before you changed your mind.” She smiled a bit ruefully.  “See, I even knocked off my headdress in the taxi.”

“I see.”  Wolfe probably did see.  I sure did; Bobbie was presenting quite the view.  It was a great moment when I helped her off with that simple cloth overcoat in the front hall and she shook all those strings of beads back into place.  “Now, if you would, Miss Cunningham.  What brings you here today?”

“Murder.”  Good delivery:  she was wide-eyed and slightly impressed to be saying the word.  Wolfe only widened his own eyes a little, a sure sign he was exasperated.  But, given the performance she was putting on, I was willing to hear her out.

*****

Archie was enjoying Miss Cunningham’s display, which was foolish but tolerable for two reasons.  First, Miss Cunningham was indeed gifted in those charms that work towards the on-going refurbishment of our species.  Second, his eager interest in such conventional sensual pleasures is one of the very reasons I hired him.

I knew when I came to this country that I would be abandoning much of what had made me the man I was.  Some of that derelict baggage merely lightened my load.  I had grown weary of the privileged birth that had won me status and education in a homeland of impoverished valley farms and forest-stripped mountains.  I was more than willing to leave behind the dubious skills and activities that had earned me sufficient funds for acceptance under this country’s then-new and inflexible immigration laws.  But I had not fully comprehended how drastically relocating my public life would disrupt my private life.  I had no notion I’d end by embracing celibacy.

In my own birth-country, in my ancient world, I was normal enough, accounted a man among men.  A true man protected, dominated, and seized what he desired:  only limited significance was assigned to what he preferred.  Women young or old, men who had the souls of women, youthful, poorer men, all these tastes were acceptable to his fellows.  The target of a man’s lusts and needs mattered little as long as he yielded none of the mastery that was his birthright when he bared his loins.  It was a shock to immerse myself within a society where all men who lay down with other men, whether above or below, had a single identity with a thousand names, each of which meant monster. 

A few encounters in Manhattan with the men who followed the old ways, and the men around them who did not, were enough.  Immigrants who had arrived alone from Europe in search of money or a new life would often dally as I had in my homeland.  I also met old-fashioned natives who would leave behind their wives and sweethearts to dally with those either younger or more feminine than themselves, saying such partners were less guarded, more adventurous, and intended by nature to carry the entire taint of male with male sex.  But most others, especially those who had some education and no taste for men themselves, saw any such dalliance as merely a variant on a familiar corruption, a pollution all the worse for not parodying femininity, for seducing other men away from masculinity.  And all these groups, those of the old ways and those of the new, united in detesting the young Americans, more or less masculine, ambiguous, obscure, who seemed not to worry about their power as men but only about slaking their homosexual desires.

Certainly, I could hear the logical flaws in all this prattle.  But my homeland’s view of women was harsh, unconsidered, ground into me from my birth, and reinforced by the disastrous results of my foolish efforts to change my tastes in order to pass on my name of birth.  Logic and reason can only do so much against such momentum.  It was too late to change my preferences, but I would not be seen as feminine or some indistinct monster, either.  Such slander, my intransigent ego would not abide.

Also, I can now admit, I did not want to answer the questions about the details of my passions my observation of all this tumult raised.  On some level, I judged myself coward for such willed ignorance, no longer deserving of the capitulation from other males I still desired.  So I became chaste.

As the Freudians posited, it was laborious but not impossible to re-direct my libido into other channels.  A pampered sensuality will consent to slumber in confined circumstances.  I filled my eyes, my mouth, my nostrils, sated them with beauty, color and flavor.  I kept my mind busy with a thousand other diversions and warmed my cool heart with the companionship of a few loyal comrades who did not share my urges.  My ears and hands refused to entirely yield their preferences; I abandoned music and touch, and observed with satisfaction how deprivation turned to guarding discomfort.  I built my fortress of flesh.

Thus I was not a fool when I hired Archie Goodwin, merely taken by surprise.  The parade of young male clerks through my office had been both disturbing and perilous.  I thought Saul Panzer, the best of Manhattan’s private investigators, might be a safe assistant, but I had nothing to offer Saul that he desired more than his independence.  So I deliberately set out to find someone whose personality loitered in the borderlands between competency and annoyance. 

At eighteen, Archie evinced signs of talent, a personality as abrasive as it was efficient, and an appearance that was neither distractingly ugly nor to my particular taste.  I have never been fond of so-called corn-fed youth nor of strawberry-blond hair, while up-turned noses, as Archie has noted, disturb me.  Most importantly, Archie was unabashedly and urgently committed to pursuing women.  In fact, I first met him just after he had been balked of much-desired prey.  There was no reason for me to have anticipated my error, just as Archie did not guess his error that Monday in September.

“Murder,” Miss Cunningham said.  Archie’s eyes widened minutely in appreciation of her display.  As high-cut as the neckline of Miss Cunningham’s Harlequin costume was, Archie was probably disappointed she revealed no cleavage as she dramatically leaned forward to emphasize the word.  “I was at the Top Hat Club with a friend when I heard them talking about shooting him.  Not my friend, I mean.”  Long, graceful fingers came up to delicately straighten the ruffle around her neck.  “Mr. Vincent Nathan, rather.”

Inside me, something stirred.  Leaning back and closing my eyes, I felt my lips push in and out as facts shifted, like glass flakes within a kaleidoscope, into new patterns deep within my mind.

That tore Archie’s attention away from Miss Cunningham’s putative charms.  Opening my eyes, I caught his reaction.  He’d straightened slightly as he checked to see if I’d caught the significance of the name, Nathan.  I traded him look for look.  It’s true that I don’t have his detailed knowledge of the rougher denizens of Manhattan, but I am well able to correlate information.  From snippets of gossip and news in the Times and the Gazette, I knew that Vincent Nathan was the grey eminence behind a great deal of the organized crime in Manhattan.  Too, I had another source of information Archie did not.  These were murky waters indeed.

The tale that followed was confused and overdramatic, but I managed to comb out a few facts from the tangle.  Miss Cunningham had overheard three individuals planning to kill Mr. Nathan without details of place or date, but specifying the method as a “swim in the Hudson”.  The friend had supposedly heard none of this because the would-be murderers were in the booth behind Miss Cunningham, which also made obtaining good descriptions impossible.  And, of course, Miss Cunningham refused to reveal the name of the friend since he wasn’t, strictly speaking, involved.  At the end of this maddening discourse, the blue eyes grew large and liquid.  I suppressed an urge to grind my teeth.  “But I still fear for my life, Mr. Wolfe.  You have to help me, tell me what to do.”

Archie, probably not realizing he was doing so, shook his head minutely as I launched into my usual explanation of why it is effectively impossible to save potential victims from their murderers.  He has heard my reasoning many times and would even, if caught with his guard down, admit that he agrees with me.  But, having already seen what he did not see and knowing what he did not know, I finished my discourse with words that I believe surprised him.  “Usually I’d advise you to forget what you heard.  But you were accompanied, so I would judge your best course of action to be telephoning the police and telling them what you’ve told me.”

“No.”  The low voice momentarily lost its rich overtones before Miss Cunningham regained control.  “Not the police.  They’re dangerous.”

I picked up my fountain pen from its place on my desk.  “I know this particular name to be safe.”  Deliberately, I stared until I was sure Miss Cunningham comprehended my full meaning.  Slowly, reluctantly, the chin nodded, causing all the many strings of jet to slide across the lamé and velvet.  Archie was still surprised enough that no reaction to the subtle movement flickered behind his grey eyes. 

Then he collected himself and started to stand, to come and pass my note. But I waved him back with an admonishing forefinger.  I pointed at my would-be client.  “Come here.”  Miss Cunningham arose from the red leather chair, a sustained if lissome procedure, and approached my desk.  As I handed across the slip of paper, I held it tight until the long fingers had closed, and then said, without releasing my note, “Your real name isn’t Bobbie.”

Miss Cunningham blinked and then slowly gave me a smile of a sort that I rarely receive from women.  I sensed, rather than saw, Archie’s grin.  “Why, no, Mr. Wolfe, it isn’t.  But I do hope to convince you, you can call me by that name.”  She took my slip of paper and tucked it beneath a wrist ruff.  “I’d already heard so much about you, and that lovely yellow shirt caught my attention.  I’m quite fond of yellow.”

I cleared my throat.  “You should be more concerned with dialing the telephone number, Miss Cunningham.”

“Bobbie, Mr. Wolfe.  Please feel free to call me Bobbie.”  She gave me a look that I returned, if with much less warmth. 

“Good day, Miss Cunningham.”

My wariness must have been overt.  Archie snorted in a way that indicated barely suppressed amusement.  “If you’ll come this way, Miss Cunningham?”

I’ve never asked him what they discussed while he lingered in the front hall.  Sufficient to recount that, when he returned after shutting the door behind Miss Cunningham, he sat back down in his chair with leisurely grace and swiveled towards me.  “I must say, there’s a sight I haven’t seen every day.  A red-hot number putting the moves on Nero Wolfe.”

Really, his levity was too much to tolerate after the strain of that appointment.  “Archie.  Your slang is ridiculous and your assumption mistaken.”  A rash statement on my part; there were good reasons not to point out his error.

“No, sir.  I’m forced to remind you that I’m the regional expert on this sort of predator.  She was stalking, definitely stalking.  Give her a call, offer her dinner and some orchids, and who knows what might ensue?  Well, I do, at least.”  I picked up my book and tried to ignore him, the sensible option.  But he continued, “I couldn’t mistake that hungry look in those big, luscious eyes.  She must really like her men nice and fat, excuse me, gargantuan—”

“Shut up.”  He probably just wanted to go out to see a moving picture.

“But I can’t have you thinking I might be in error—”

“You weren’t mistaken about Miss Cunningham’s intentions,” I could have left it there but my ego— “you were mistaken in your address.  Miss Bobbie Cunningham wasn’t a her, but a him.”

I’ve often seen Archie mask his surprise, but rarely have I seen him so visibly flummoxed.

*****

I spent a few seconds air-conditioning my tongue before hauling up my jaw.  At least I managed to swallow the “Huh?”  Anyhow, it probably would have come out sounding weak, and I’d shown my hand enough as it was.  Small chance of persuading Wolfe I’d known all along.  Not that I’d want him to think that, given how I’d been—hastily, I asked, “What gave you the tip-off?’

Wolfe grunted the one that means he’d love not to answer but would.  Then his hands sketched gestures across his own wrists, neck, and neckline.  “The costume diverted attention from problematical areas.  Also—”

He shut up after also, which was a mistake because my mind was finally back in play.  I was still off my game, though, because my mouth was back in play, too.  “Marko Vukcic sent her over.  Do you think he knows?”

“Perhaps.  It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t matter?”  I was incredulous.  Wolfe’s finger, now resting on his chair arm, started to trace a small circle, and his voice, when he spoke, was a mutter.  He may just have been irritated by my rhetorical question, but I doubt that.

“No, it does not matter.  For a number of reasons, including certain mores of my homeland about which I feel no need to enlighten you, it does not matter.  However, and more importantly, it doesn’t matter because Miss Cunningham has now left and will not enter my house again.”  The look in his eyes as he reached again for his copy of Franz Boas’s Anthropology and Modern Life made it absolutely clear that, if I wanted to be working for him tomorrow, I would drop this subject immediately.  Since that next Friday was a payday and I had a pleasant, if expensive, weekend scheduled to follow, I did.

Of course, Wolfe had no such lever to use on fate.  When I checked my Gazette the next morning at breakfast, the headline below the fold in the right-hand corner was “Notorious Female Impersonator Murdered.”

I produced a word that made Fritz straighten up from checking my next griddlecake and ask with concern, “Archie?”

“Did he get his copy of the Gazette this morning?”  Now, that was a question wasted.  Wolfe always had the Gazette to keep the Times company over his breakfast.

“Yes, along with his oeufs beurre.  Is there trouble?”

“Not trouble, annoyance.  Don’t be surprised if he gripes about the amount of parsley on the tomato halves today, but don’t take it to heart, either.”

Fritz pursed his lips.  “It is that woman.  I knew she was trouble when she asked for a sherry so early in the afternoon and then did not drink.”

Hitting my head against the breakfast table wouldn’t help.  “You’re right, it was that woman.  I should have thrown her out the minute she left her tipple sitting there.”

The sarcasm earned me a reproachful look.  “You are disturbed.”

“Sorry, Fritz.  Even if I’m not disturbed now, we all soon will be.  Our next visitor’s not going to be fun.”

“Ah.”  He took this in.  “A pity.”  Shaking his head, but not explaining exactly what the pity was, Fritz went back to the griddle.  I stopped him after my next serving.  Somewhere I’d lost my appetite.

You’d think that the lack of outside interruptions before Wolfe came down from the plant rooms would have been a relief, but it wasn’t.  Because of the delay, I’d have given three to one odds on who I’d see when the doorbell finally rang at half-past eleven and I went to check the curtained window in the front door.  I was right.

“Inspector Cramer,” I told Wolfe.

I could see he was tempted to circle the wagons, but he didn’t even try.  Genius at work, I suppose.  “Confound it.”  His tone was flatter than usual on the words.  Taking a deep breath, he let out a small gale of air.  “Let him in.”

Looking back, I’d have to term the way Cramer was chewing on his cigar meditative.  “Goodwin.”  From his greeting as he handed me his hat, he wasn’t pretending we were all pals, but Wolfe and I weren’t in dutch yet, either.

He got into the office, took a long look at Wolfe, and then parked himself in the red leather chair.  Cramer’s usually one of the few men who can seem comfortable seated there, but he acted uneasy that day.  After shuffling his feet for a while, he took out and pretended to consult his notebook before saying, “Okay, Wolfe, I want it all.”

“I assume you’re referring to the murder reported in the Gazette this morning.”

Cramer’s big, round face didn’t even flush with annoyance.  “Yeah, that’s the one.  Do I need to tell you we traced - his - movements?”

“No.”  Wolfe turned very slightly towards me, his fingers laced across his vest. “Archie?”

Wolfe and I weren’t the only ones distracted in that room, and I can say it with authority, because when I got Wolfe’s signal Cramer missed it, and he’s no mean observer.  Wolfe let me recite, and Cramer record, yesterday’s conversation until Wolfe’s offer of a safe policeman.  Then Wolfe nodded minutely and I turned an unnecessary page.  Since I wasn’t exactly pleased by the omission I was making, I jumped forward to Bobbie’s earnest advances to Wolfe.  His lips tightened, but he knew better than to interrupt me.  I finished with a flourish.

Cramer looked up from his small, neat handwriting.  “Is that all?”

“No.”  Wolfe’s voice was brusque.

“So?”  The familiar foot-dragging was obviously settling Cramer’s breakfast.  He scowled and seemed to ease back a little in the red leather chair.  “Come on, Wolfe, let’s have the rest.”

“After he had escorted Miss Cunningham out, I merely explained to Mr. Goodwin why I doubted the given name was accurate.”

“His name wasn’t inaccurate, Wolfe, just misspelled.”  Cramer snorted.  “Cripes, how I love this city.”  When the Inspector makes that particular sentence sound ironic, his temper’s at the boiling point.  That’s probably why I let him get away with the next crack.  “Not a story you usually hear after one of your flirtations, Goodwin.  Something new to have fun with.”

Wolfe had already given up Marko Vukcic’s name without a murmur.  There was danger in the air, even if I didn’t know the source.  I shook my head.  “No flirting.  Vincent Nathan’s name was too inhibiting for that.”

“I just bet it was.”  Cramer put away his notebook.  “Okay, I’ll want a copy of your notes sent over to Homicide West.  In fact I want your real notes although I know better than to ask.”

“You gain in wisdom daily, Inspector.”  Wolfe’s voice was dry.

Cramer snorted, took out his cigar, and examined it while saying, “Don’t bother, Wolfe.  Not even you can add to the joys of this case.”  He plugged the cigar back in and got up without using his arms on the chair.  He knows the maneuver annoys Wolfe, who can’t do it himself.  I got up to follow the Inspector into the hall, fetched his hat, and handed it to him.  He took it, glared around like Cunningham was still present, got halfway through another, rougher crack about my love life, and then decided to shake his head at me instead.  I traded him my best shocked Boy Scout look, and he flushed a little before he left.  In some ways, Cramer’s a terrible prude.

That last volley made me feel better when I went back into the office, but not much.  “Well, sir, you managed to make Cramer miss your telling him that you’re withholding information, but your maneuver wouldn’t count in court for a second.”

Wolfe’s eyes were narrowed to slits.  “I warned Miss Cunningham of the dangers.”

“Sure.”  That gave away what was eating him.  “But you’re still worried you personally dropped the brick on Bobbie’s – pardon me, Robert’s – head.  Fine.  If you’re not sending me to cross-examine your supposedly safe policeman, do you want me to call Saul?”

The eyes shifted minutely.  “I telephoned him over breakfast this morning.”

That admission was as close to an apology as I’d get.  “Then do you want me to stall off sending Cramer my notes?”

“No.  Type two copies, ending a page in each at the point where I suggested a route of approach to the police by Miss Cunningham, and don’t include the subsequent conversation about first names.  Don’t sign your transcripts, either.  Instead complete them, beginning on a fresh page, and leave those final pages, signed, in the safe.”

I got the excuse Wolfe was setting up for me shorting my notes, but the way he kept naming yesterday’s visitor was getting on my nerves.  “Do you want me to phone Marko Vukcic?  I’m sure he’ll be delighted to have the cops on his doorstep without warning, asking him questions about some she-male.”

“Marko is quite capable of explaining his actions at whatever length he considers necessary.”  Wolfe was now sitting bolt upright, but he kept his tone even as he said, “When Saul calls, it will be your opportunity to go and deliver your transcripts.”

And here was my punishment for getting in one dig too many.  I was being dealt out.

*****

Saul Panzer’s voice was soft and husky, but his words were clear.  “You were right, Mr. Wolfe.  Sergeant Brady called in with a family emergency today.  He was around his division all last evening, though.”

My hand tightened on the receiver.  I hadn’t really expected that Brady would be the assassin.  That would have made my task too simple, even if then crafting a discreet method of assuring Brady paid for his treachery would be a chore complex enough for the most elaborate of tastes.  I replied, “Find him, Saul.  That’s my sole instruction since it’s not a job I have to tell you how to do.”

“Sure.  Can I have Archie for—?”

“No.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line.  Then, “Brady’s that dangerous?”

“I doubt it.  Rather, the situation is uniquely sensitive, as you will discover.”  Literally true:  Saul Panzer would undoubtedly uncover the exact nature of my difficulties.  However the tattered remnants of my honor were at stake.  I would need to risk all on his fidelity and discretion.  Such a wager was what Archie would term a sure thing.  “Don’t call upon Fred, Orrie, or Johnny either.  I know I hobble you, but do what you can.”

“Okay.  I’ll report in again sometime during the evening.”  Without another word, Saul hung up.   He is indeed a pearl without price.

This was one of the rare afternoons when the orchids offered me no succor.  Their massed and glorious array seemed to mock all my strategies.  For the moment, my shield-wall of splendor raised against a more essential and piercing beauty seemed thin and frail.  What good my substitute harem now, I wondered, as Theodore, my gardener, complained incessantly of the small woes that are usually my woes as well.  I did not return downstairs early, but it was an effort.  And when I did return to the office, I was forced to make my own telephone calls.

Archie was also in a difficult mood when he returned from Homicide.  Seemingly, some of the comments by the detectives about his powers of perception had been less than flattering.  As well, Miss Cunningham proved to be renowned within the nightclub circuit Archie frequented.  Such performances were quite popular with the general public and, as she had amply demonstrated the day before she died, Miss Cunningham was gifted in her art.  Archie disliked discovering the vacant lot of willed ignorance upon his near-comprehensive mental map of this city.

“He had a stage name, Mademoiselle Roberta.”  Archie’s tone was eloquent enough to carry his commentary without elaboration.  “I guess Robert liked having extra names.”

“Yes, it can be agreeable to change an old appellation for one more appropriate to a new way of life.”  My words were drier than I intended. 

Archie gave me a swift glance under raised brows, distracted from his temper.  I ignored him, grunted.  “If it proves necessary upon hearing Saul’s report, you will need to discover something of Miss Cunningham’s background, habits, and comrades.  Start now with your sources at the Gazette.”

He turned back to his telephone.  I wonder if Archie knows about the muscle that tenses slightly beneath his right ear when he is upset.  I didn’t set out to obtain that knowledge myself, but five years of close proximity had lessoned me in details I would otherwise have avoided.

Saul did not find Sergeant Brady at his house.  A trip to Yonkers ascertained that the Sergeant was not with the mother who he’d claimed was desperately ill.  After mastering myself, I used the information I had obtained from my telephone calls and suggested to Saul certain establishments in which he might try to discover where Brady had gone to earth, with the caveat that my knowledge was often second-hand and occasionally dated.  I had no idea if Saul could pass within such portals to seek what I needed him to find, but I would need to trust in his skills as I trusted his discretion.

After I’d finished giving him my list, he said, “This’ll be interesting, kind of a stretch.”  Then he added, “Thanks, Mr. Wolfe.”  He was not thanking me for the opportunity to exercise his unique talents amidst challenging surroundings, but rather for my faith.  I was amazed by how I felt upon hearing those three simple words of affectionate gratitude.  My internal levies were eroding rapidly; I was coming to comprehend the folk warning against looking back for fear of what might be pursuing.

I was reminded of that folk saying again the next morning as Archie reported on his own efforts to uncover information.  His grey eyes, when I said my good morning, were a touch bleary.  And he paused a half-hour later to stretch at some length before saying, with a grin, “Those hounds from the Gazette can sure lap up the booze.  You’ll find out how much when you look over the expense figures.”

Given the mood he had been in, I didn’t doubt he had overspent, but that was to be expected.  “Report.”

Most of what Archie had learned would not later prove to be relevant, but I noted as he talked the small signs of his unease.  Something unexpected about Miss Cunningham disturbed him deeply.  Perhaps it was her mid-west small-town upbringing and successful determination to excel in Manhattan, a story much like his own, a subtle challenge to his triumphant progress into manhood.  Or perhaps it was some detail that escaped me.  In any case, he said, “No surprises about the low company at the Top Hat.  A lot of the boys who market bootleg like to loiter there.”

“Indeed, as do the various elements of what I take to have been Miss Cunningham’s former audiences.  Bohemian and criminal circles are traditionally intimately intertwined.”

“So say the guys at the Gazette, if without your fancy phrasing.  I was unaware of how popular the pansy circuit is amongst certain gun-toting crowds.”

“There are large and illegal profits to be made from any vice.”

“That’s part of it, yes, sir.”  Archie’s voice was sardonic, his grin wry.  He was already attempting to digest a social cuisine I could see caused him acute discomfort.  I was relieved to observe how quickly the process was taking place this particular time.  I’d been through such struggles with him before, over other peoples and behaviors alien to the small-town life of Ohio, and expected to do so again.  As I had often discovered, the universe is determined in its efforts not to conform to our preconceptions, and one is forced to pick with care which prejudices one can afford.

“I have a list of the places in New York he worked at.”

I grunted.  Lists annoy me.  “Let me see.”

He came over and passed the list to me, then hesitated, waiting, while I looked it over.  When I was done, I took a deep breath and released it.  “Miss Cunningham obviously lied during her interview here, and those informed by the Sergeant – Police Sergeant Morris Brady, Archie – may not have gotten the details of her dissimulations.  Was any evidence of interrogation noted on the corpse?”

“Only a single shot to the chest, according to the newshounds.  They’d have been all over a little detail like torture, just like they’ll know all about his visit here, sooner or later.”  Archie grimaced.  “Even if it had been the kind of torture they couldn’t write about in their papers, they’d know.”

“Then we must assume that her murderer has as little or as much knowledge as we do.  Saul is on the track of Sergeant Brady, but we shall also need to find Miss Cunningham’s escort that evening of her murder.  It would normally be futile to attempt matching the efforts of the police, but certain avenues of information are open to us that are blockaded against them.  First, however, I shall need to speak with Marko.  Telephone him and request that he join us here at dinner tonight.”

Archie paused.  He knew what it signified, that I did not call Marko myself.  Then, to my surprise, he placed one hand palm down, flat on my desk.  “I doubt he would have sent Cunningham over if he knew the mess he’d mix you up in, especially considering the threat to your privacy.  Vukcic never spills your secrets.”

I felt my eyes narrow, and Archie assumed an expression of insouciance.  “Not that it’s any of my business, sir.  After all, he’s your oldest and best friend.”  He hoisted one hip up on the corner of my desk and swung a leg, seemingly waiting for me to return his list, actually attempting to divert my ire towards a more familiar target.

Once again, I felt the barriers inside me weaken.  There was nothing attractive about insolence, I reminded my inner self sharply.  And Archie was his own man, strong, not one who needed anything from me in exchange for some prospective yielding.

Deep within, I heard no answer. 

Without a word I handed Archie his paper.  He took it and stood up, his usual coolly amiable expression now faintly troubled.  Then he shrugged and returned to his own desk to telephone Marko.

I did not spend time conferring with Fritz over the dinner menu that morning even though Marko would be joining us.  My skin was practically rippling across my shoulders with unease, abraded by affection.  Fritz’s gentle, unassuming warmth would have been like salt on an open wound.  Given my history of blood and betrayals, I fear the bonds that grow between men that pitiless time then tears apart with fastidious pain.  I wanted, as I had so often done before, to take to my bed until my dread receded.  I wish I had.  The rest of the week would have gone better.

*****

This next bit’s the rough part of my account, rougher even than what happened a few days later.  On Wednesday afternoon Wolfe’s devotion to perfect grooming did us dirt.  Crisis or no crisis, he had to have his hair trimmed.

Once a month, every month, he leaves the brownstone, bundled up as if he were about to visit Boston, for the journey to his barber.  Back then he never varied the regular time of his appointment, a big mistake as it turned out.  For once, he should have paid attention to his stated disgust towards all precipitation and stayed indoors when it started to rain around noon, but he was too busy sulking about something else.  So instead, we were stopped at the brand new signal down on Thirtieth when the first car pulled out into the intersection in front of us and the second car cut over behind us.  I was out the driver’s door fast but not fast enough.  The guy in the overcoat, who’d swung down from the passenger door of the truck stopped next to us, said genially, “Slow down, buster.”

I slowed.  Not that I had any real inclination to listen to him, but the .45 cuddled in his right hand was a lot more persuasive than he was.  Within thirty seconds he and a guy from each of the two cars were in Wolfe’s sedan, the other vehicles had moved, and we were on our way before the passers-by had noticed anything was wrong.  The heist was as neat as it was professional.

For a miracle, Wolfe didn’t say a word when the gunman got into the back seat next to him.  As I got back in, I saw him glare furiously, and then switched the glare towards where he thought it was most needed, the back of the neck of the character now driving.  He was wasting his time.  Our new driver was smooth, for which I was glad.  Otherwise the knifeman who had me sandwiched up against the driver might have done even more damage to my suit than he did.  For some reason, our three hijackers didn’t seem to trust me and they had the weaponry to assert their attitude.

Wolfe and I have each gotten into a lot of trouble down through the years, but that nab was the first time we’d gotten into trouble together.  I was worse than irritated to find how much it gummed up my mental works.  The constant urge to crane around and make sure that the gunman wasn’t prodding with his cap pistol at Wolfe was almost irresistible. Combined with my need to juggle Wolfe’s bulk into any planning, that impulse was making my brain move as slow as molasses.  I can’t speak for Wolfe, but the one good glimpse I caught of him before being jabbed myself showed he was rubbing his chin with his forefinger, a sure sign he was boiling.  I think being in a car without my driving handicapped him, too.  Enough to say, we made it all the way to our destination without any death-defying escapes.

I’d tried talking once only to be greeted with a cozy, if accented, “Shaddup,” so we made the ride down to the docks on the Lower West Side in silence.  The only breaks in the quiet were the tuneless whistling of our driver – “Minnie the Moocher”, off-key – and a small noise I couldn’t help producing when the guy with a knife took exception to my twisting around to check on Wolfe and overdid the reproachful poke.  When we unloaded at our dock, Wolfe spotted the recent alteration to my tailoring and made his own noise.  His fellow passenger then proved he had a vocabulary of at least six words by saying, “Get going,” and showing his piece again.

Given the look in Wolfe’s eyes when he saw our next mode of transportation, I probably would have done something desperate on the gangplank if the pilot who met us on the pier hadn’t asked, “Mr.  Nathan’s?” his voice pitched loud to carry over the noise of the rain and the roughly idling engine of his small steamboat.

“Shaddup,” said our host again.  Still only six words, but at least I now knew I had until the New Jersey shore to come up with a plan.  Given the three characters who’d pulled off our boost, I’d been thinking we were going to precede Nathan in swimming the Hudson River, not cross it to meet him at his social club in Hoboken.

Me, they used handcuffs on when they got us below deck and shut into the small and smelly cabin, but their second pair of cuffs wouldn’t fit Wolfe’s fat wrists.  So they looped a rope around one of his arms and belly, and left one arm free, at which he narrowed his eyes a little.  I hoped he was getting genius notions.  Then, with a stuttering roar that made Wolfe perceptibly flinch, we cast off and chugged out into the Hudson.

Our former gunman and current host had handed his pistol off to the also former chauffeur and was studying the two of us thoughtfully, especially Wolfe.  When we pulled away from the shelter of the docks and the tow of the Hudson hit us, Wolfe flinched again, and the gunman nodded slowly as if he’d decided something.  Then he proved he had at least a P.S. level vocabulary.

“Mr. Nathan,” the accent was noticeable but smooth, “he thinks you held back some information from that dead finnochio when you talked to the cops, and so do I.  Mr. Nathan would like to hear what else you have to say, and so would I.  The only thing is, I’m here and you are too, but Mr. Nathan’s not here yet.  He doesn’t know anything, and this river’s real private.  So I think maybe you better start talking right now.”

“You are mistaken.”  Wolfe said flatly.  “If you have access to the police reports, which you obviously do, you know what we know.”

“I don’t think so.”  Our host’s tone had gone from genial to considering.  “Jerry?  What do we have here for our guests?”

What they had was a toolbox.  That was why they’d left one of Wolfe’s arms loose.

Many years later, I practiced a little tendon-straining technique called the criss-cross on a mug who’d upset me by using pliers on Fred Durkin.  He upset me so much because I don’t like mugs, I don’t like torture, and I especially don’t like them both with the addition of pliers.  The combination reminded me of mugs torturing with hammers.  They started in on Wolfe with a hammer that day.

It was bad.  One good thwack and he screamed, and a little extra effort with the screwdriver and a rat-tail file had him spilling everything that had happened in the office and during the past two days.  What made it worse was the tiny twitch of his eyelids I noticed each time before he screamed.  I realized that he knew what was going to happen every step of the way and was using that knowledge to play to his audience.  He was holding something back.  But if he made a single misstep, what they would do to him was a thing I wasn’t sure I could bear seeing.  Not that I could discuss the matter with anyone.  They’d gagged me before they started.

I’m not prone to nightmares but I’m still visited every now and then in my sleep by the joy of trying to force some distracting commentary past an oily rag while Wolfe screams and sobs out his dramatic monologue for a first-rate set of critics.  It was during one of the intermissions for reflection that Wolfe pulled off his greatest scene, by turning his sobbing heaves for breath into the initial heaves of throwing up.  Not loving the idea of strangling on my own vomit, I tried to fight down the complementary nausea aroused by Wolfe’s illness, the taste of oil, and the sight of his blood sprinkling as he twitched.  I fought it back, that is, until I noticed the small, signaling waggle of a slightly maimed forefinger.  Then I bent over and let go.

Later Wolfe told me he knew from what they were doing that we were intended to reach Mr. Nathan alive and relatively intact although he doubted we would leave that way, given what he’d figured.  I’ve never asked where he got the background to judge that kind of situation.  But he must have been right because the three men had us up onto our feet and on deck before I could succeed in strangling myself or Wolfe could add accents to the new color scheme of the cabin.  I took a deep gasp of cold, rain-sodden air as the rag was yanked out of my mouth.

By the time my head had stopped spinning and I’d choked back the first serious wave of sick, our host and the knifeman had Wolfe hanging over the other side, waiting to see what would empty out of him, either physically or verbally.  Our host reached over to wrap the tail of the rope around Wolfe’s free arm.  Then he levered Wolfe farther out through the gap in the railings and shook him once or twice over the river, keeping time with the engine.  Had Wolfe played up his fear of moving machinery, too?  I don’t know, but I do know that he caught them by surprise when he twisted free and dropped over the side.

I wasn’t caught off-guard but my chaperone was.  He half-turned towards the commotion and that’s when I used my knee on his rear, to slam him away before I launched myself from my own side to join Wolfe in the river.  Dirty, cold, and possibly fatal the Hudson may have been, but it sure beat watching Wolfe be tortured.

*****

My half-deliberate heaves had oxygenated my blood.  I turned and then stiffened as I fell, arms tight-clenched to my sides, letting my shoes break the surface and my momentum drive me deep underwater before I beat my legs frantically, trying to porpoise away from the props of the steamboat.  The fact that I can recount this tale shows that I succeeded.

Eighty times or so in my youth, I crossed the Adriatic, and learned then all the skills I called upon that Wednesday.  Our captors’ steamboat was striking upstream, and the ebbing tidal current, driven hard by the wind, carried me quickly past the stern, still submerged.  As I had hoped, I had been suspended over the windward side of the boat, part of the instinctive behavior of a captor who would enjoy and employ seeing my vomit flying back into my own face.  But my position also meant that Archie, when he leapt free – I had to trust he could leap free – would have the current’s assistance in avoiding the props.  Now I had to find him, his hands bound as they were.  I knew he could swim.  I did not know how well, or for how long.

For my part, I am a good swimmer and, as Archie enjoys pointing out, fat.  Here fat was life, as my buoyancy and my insulation worked against my pain and my bindings to allow me to reemerge.  It seemed like an eternity but it must have been seconds before I spotted the figure ahead of me, only faintly flailing against the current.  Even as I watched, he sank below the surface.

I calculated my line to where he should be.  Breathing deep, tucking my knees up against my chest and turning my head down, I used the thrust of my straightening legs to force me back beneath the surface.  I could barely see in that cold, dark murk but I seemed to sense him below me, an urgent projection of his trajectory by that part of my mind forever beyond my reach.  I thrashed hard, searching, only to collide full-on with him.  In some combination of urge and intelligence, he feebly scissored his legs around my hips.  I exhaled, felt the bubbles of my breath surge away from me, and followed their direction upwards, into the dim twilight, the air, and the rain.

One harsh gasp and a look at Archie.  He clung to me with his legs, obviously half-stunned, bleeding sluggishly from a gash on his forehead.  He must have struck something as he jumped.  No time for imagining the disasters that might have been; I listened instead for the irregular noise of an engine approaching, and heard—nothing.  Or rather, I heard the rain, the waves, my own half-suppressed, ragged breathing, my pulse thundering in my ears, and the sounds of other boats and ships, but not the rising, uneven beat of our captors’ steamboat running us down.

“Stalled?” Archie managed to get out softly.  Then he burrowed his head against me, not an intimacy but an instinct of the hunted.  My hair is dark and was matted with grease from a bulkhead I’d been pressed against at one point during that too-long afternoon.  His hair is fair and might have glinted in such light as was available in rainy, dim, near-darkness.  Faces, too, can be pale.  It was with trepidation that I raised mine and looked about as we lifted and fell, clutched in the grip of a tidal river sweeping us towards the sea.

“No, interference,” I half-muttered with grim satisfaction while working with my bad arm against the rope as I tread water.  Pain would have to wait.  Our captors had come about too abruptly and cut across the path of another vessel, the sailors of which seemed disinclined either to disengage or be intimidated.  Very faintly, I heard a noise of what might be cursing carried by the wind to us across the swells.  My one arm came free from its loops.  Ignoring its shrieking protest, I wrapped it around Archie.  He loosened his legs.  I pulled his torso tight against mine, combining our warmth against the inevitable exhaustion.  “Can you remove your shoes?”

“With the laces soaked, not a chance in hell. How about the rest of that rope?”

“A token gesture at confinement, but we must move now.”  Again, cautiously, I treaded harder, lifted my face, and surveyed our surroundings.  To my satisfaction, we were hard by the West Manhattan shore.  As I had induced, they must have been circling while they worked on me.  Idiots.  Grimly, I rolled us onto our sides and once again began to porpoise, working slowly with the current to increase our distance from our captors.  Archie caught my rhythm and began to add his efforts to my own.

Somewhere he found energy to waste in commentary.  “My boss, the bull walrus.”  Then he spat out river water.  I didn’t have to tell him to shut up.  I could tell that to my own traitor heart, instead, as it warmed within me at his words.

We still should have died that day, but we had seized luck’s forelock and held hard.  The watermen in the boat transporting vegetables who plucked us from the river were willing to ignore our battered state, the handcuffs, and my by-then trailing rope.  Archie claims, I imagine with accuracy, that they assumed we were bootleggers caught up in some trade dispute.  In any case, the dire condition of the economy made them amiable to accepting both our thanks and most of the sodden bills from our wallets without further inquiries. 

The engineer produced a formidable set of metal sheers, and a minute or two later Archie could separate his arms.  The youngest man produced blankets, which I promised to return to them later after cleaning.  The eldest surveyed our injuries, offered a vile flask of some sort of distilled alcohol, and warned me, with morbid satisfaction, about infection.  I didn’t need the warning, but I accepted his offer nonetheless.  Then they dropped us at a landing in Hell’s Kitchen, and Archie found us a taxi.  I believe the driver must have remonstrated, but Archie somehow persuaded him.  He can be quite formidable when he wishes.

*****

Wolfe didn’t say a word, not even to protest the driving, on the trip back to Thirty-Fifth Street.  I don’t think he could have.  He just sat there, silently oozing river water, ruining the seats of the hack.  The blanket concealed the worst of the damage, but I knew it wasn’t good.

After they got an eyeful of us, Fritz went quiet and Vukcic went loud.  Vukcic had arrived two hours previously for dinner and found us missing.  Only our arrival prevented an invasion of the brownstone by the cops.  But it was Vukcic who half-carried Wolfe into the elevator, and Vukcic who stripped Wolfe’s clothes off before shoving him first into a bathtub and then between his black silk sheets.  I got all this from Fritz later because I’d made the mistake of taking the stairs to my own bedroom on that floor while Fritz was busy calling Doc Vollmer, which did it for me.  I sagged in the hallway.  Later I surfaced long enough to realize that I was flat on my back and someone was prodding at my wounds in a way I didn’t like.  When I tried to protest, the voices bickering over my head ignored me and the black pulled me under again.  At least this time the dark currents carrying me away were warm.

When I woke up, it was because the morning light was in my eyes.  That was strange.  My bedroom has a northern exposure and it was still September.  I hurt, had bandages but no clothes on, and someone had soaped my sheets.  Somewhere by my left ear something was breathing.  I turned my head in that direction and the gash above my right eyebrow pounded like crazy, so I froze.  I would have frozen in any case.  From a distance of about fourteen inches away, I was staring at the battered, bewhiskered, and sleeping face of Nero Wolfe.

“Good morning.”  The words came from my right but I was disinclined to turn back quickly.  I took my time, already knowing who was speaking.  A quiet lion is still a lion.  When I got my head directed towards the chair pulled up beside the bed, I was looking at the huge and beaming visage of Marko Vukcic.

I didn’t bother asking where I was because that was obvious.  Why I was where I was would have been a more pertinent question, but I settled on, “How is he?”

“The doctor says there’ll be no permanent damage if infection does not set in.  I told the man not to fuss.  Nero has survived much worse injuries in more dire situations.”  Vukcic gave his great tangle of hair a rueful shake.  “But look here.  How are you, young Archie?”

“Dry.  Queasy.”  Both true.

Vukcic clucked.  From him, it sounded regal.  “You swallowed some of that foul water, and got it into your cuts as well.  Also, as is to be expected, you were exhausted and badly chilled.  You were both chilled.  I bedded the two of you down together for the shared heat.  It’s an old physic of our homeland.”

“Now I’m hot.”

Darned if he didn’t feel my forehead.  “Yes, you need water and sustenance.  I’ll check with Fritz on how the soup proceeds.”

The minute he was out the door, I sat up and threw the bedclothes back hard, meaning to make a break for it.  My body decided it hated me for this, so I paused to look over at Wolfe while my stomach settled, just to make sure Vukcic wasn’t being unduly reassuring.  I don’t know why I thought Vukcic would have slid Wolfe into the usual ten yards of yellow silk pajamas.  He hadn’t, of course.  The only thing that could have been more disconcerting than what I was seeing was Wolfe glaring at me while I saw it, which he was.

I cleared my throat.  “There’s soup coming.”

He didn’t bother with good morning, or even bah.  “Give me back my sheet.”

“This wasn’t my idea.”

“I heard.  Marko’s theory was sound, even if tested with overabundant enthusiasm.  The sheet, Archie.”

Sitting forward, I yanked too abruptly and the gash on my forehead gave me another token of its appreciation, all the worse because Wolfe had to be hurting ten times as bad as I was and, for once, he wasn’t complaining.  On the other hand, he wasn’t moving, either.  So I settled for tugging the sheet up slowly over his vast terrain, feeling like I was draping the model for a studio portrait of The Hippo Maja. 

As I settled the sheet around his shoulders, I noticed a bright sheen to the brown eyes I didn’t like.  I leaned closer.  He wasn’t sweating, but I seemed to feel the heat radiating off of him.  “Do you have a fever coming on?”

“I believe so, yes.”

Not what I wanted to hear.  “Damn it, why the hell did you keep all their attention to yourself?  I could have taken some of the strain.”

“That was exactly what I feared, their turning their efforts towards you.”

“So you let me watch, instead.  Thanks a lot.”

His injured arm burrowed out from under the sheet, even more of a mess in the daylight now that it was stitched, finger-splinted, bandaged, and daubed with antiseptics.  “You are both too strong and too young for torture, Archie.  You would have held until you broke, not bowed.”

I’d opened my mouth, about to tell him exactly where he could put my strength, when he finished reaching up with the now-bandaged hand, pulled my head down, and kissed me. 

It wasn’t like I could have knocked his hand away.  And I didn’t really want to.

That joining of lips wasn’t something I’d have done with a relative.  It was the genuine article, and I contributed my share.  We were at it long enough that I felt stickiness on my neck when I yanked away from him.  It was his blood, seeping through one of the wrappings on a skin-stripped finger.  I cussed at him.  He pulled me back and kissed me again.

That time he broke away first, blinking, and then scowling.  I’d lost my words, so he got his out before I did.  “It seems Marko is not the only one who regresses to old folkways after a crisis.”

“In case it’s escaped your attention, we’re in Manhattan now, not Montenegro.  Don’t move.  Vukcic will be back soon.  I have to get up and go wash my face.  In my own bathroom.  Sir.”

Heading down the hall I almost ran into Vukcic.  His eyes widened when he caught sight of me, and he started to comment.  “My young friend—”

I interrupted.  “Thanks for the help, but I’m going back to bed now.  My own bed.”  If I staggered a bit as I continued on my way, I’d like to think it was with dignity.

*****

“There’s a smear of blood on him, Nero.”

“He has gone to wash.”

“He’s returned to his own bedroom.”

I frowned at Marko.  “Did he fall en route?  He wasn’t entirely steady as he left.”

“No, I listened at his door to make sure, and heard no noise other than some cursing in English.  This is the most impoverished language for—”

“I’m sure Archie will do very well, then.  Fritz can bring him food.”

Marko folded his arms and shook his head.  “Nero, you damned, great faker.  I remember Budapest in 1913, even if you’ve pretended to forget since you’ve taken to acting like some white-robed papist.”  He reached up to push the hair out of his eyes with his fingers.  “Almost, I could find it in me to approve.  But he’s too old, too American.”

Even I could tell my tone was frigid when I asked, “Do you see any additional signs of damage on me from his reaction?  Nothing irrevocable, or even significant, occurred, I assure you.”

He laughed, incredulous.  “Oh, come, Nero.  I would agree if we were in Budva or Niksic.  At home, men do not run around panicking like women at the smallest sign of affection between a chieftain and his man.  But in this country you’re his boss, and all such incidents are taken as offenses against honor.  And that reaction’s your choice since you’ve decided to live as the biggest Yankee-Doodle of them all.”  He shrugged.  “Go tell your heart.  It, at least, is still a tsgorna.”

My arm hurt.  “Marko, let me remind you that I am severely injured.  I shall undoubtedly incur an infection and may suffer for weeks.  Is there, or is there not, soup?”

“Germiny à épinards; I know you prefer sorrel, but you’ve lost blood.  Very well, I’m sorry.  You will manage, or not, as you always do.”

As might have been anticipated of collaboration between Marko and Fritz, the soup was more than satisfactory.  I consumed it and the sweetbreads, and felt my mind begin to settle.  “Marko, we must speak.”

He nodded.  “I’ve been waiting for you to ask.   Poor Bobbie.”

“I’d assumed you knew.”

He threw back his head and laughed.  “Oh, yes.  Bobbie played fair.”

“I’d also assumed you didn’t know what brought Miss Cunningham here on Tuesday.”

“No.  If I had, I would have warned Bobbie it was futile.  I know your laziness and remember your ideas about murder.”

“Very well, then.  Tell me how you met.”

It was five months previously, at Marko’s restaurant, Rusterman’s, of course.  Not resting content on using his creation as a source of pride and income, Marko also utilized the social opportunities it provided to him.  Beautiful women always fascinated him.  He’d noticed Miss Cunningham dining in the company of a man he knew to be a casual dallier and felt free to seek her further acquaintance.  Amused, once she was free, she’d acquiesced.  Even after discovering his error, Marko felt no need to reject Miss Cunningham’s company out of hand.  As he himself noted, being a Montenegrin he wasn’t as fretful about his masculinity as middle-class Americans so often were, as all American men would grow to be in the decades that followed.

When he’d finished his account, he’d left out one salient fact.  “Marko, I need the name of Miss Cunningham’s original escort.”

He hesitated minutely and said, “He’s a faithful customer.  Must he be involved?”

“Yes.”  His protest made me certain I already knew the name in question.

Marko nodded gloomily.  “Vincent Nathan, of course.  They were dining in one of the private alcoves.”

It was entirely typical of him to approach someone formerly under the patronage of a so-called crime boss.  He’d been precipitate pursuing his passions even as a youth.  Someday such rash behavior would be the death of him. 

“Listen, Nero.  Do you pursue this for the sake of your honor?”

“Yes.”

“Well, mine is involved, too.  When Bobbie called me, I could’ve offered my protection instead of just your time.  I knew the matter was serious, whatever it was, but I was busy elsewhere and didn’t want complications.  I’ll hire you to find Bobbie’s murderer.”

I snorted.  “Marko, if my honor is involved, why do you think I’d be willing to take your money?”

He merely grinned at me with the knowing presumption of decades of friendship.  “Fifty-fifty?”

“Oh, very well.”  I knew he was suffering less under the lash of the current depression than most.  Rusterman’s was one of the few tolerable eateries of Manhattan, known to high society as such, and a good meal is a relatively inexpensive way for the wealthy to pretend to themselves and others that their wealth is just as magnificent as it once was.

“I’ll tell Archie when next I see him, so he can send me a bill.”  He gave me a minatory stare.  “If I see him again.”

“Bah.”  But my stomach twisted with unease.  Or perhaps it was merely the river water.

*****

I might have quit immediately if my day in bed hadn’t turned out so rotten.  But I was up and down like a kangaroo, saying one last farewell to the Hudson River.  It gave me plenty of time to realize that you don’t get off the gravy train when it’s steaming through a desert being chased by a war party of Cheyenne.  Even Saul Panzer had to look twice for work in the brave new world of apple-sellers outside the brownstone.  Sure, given half a chance, I’d be fine, but having to go up against both the depression and Vincent Nathan’s crew at the same time was a fight I didn’t need.  I’d wait for this case to be over before I made tracks. 

My decision seemed to take some pressure off.  By evening I’d fallen into an exhausted slumber that lasted all night, and when I woke up the next morning I only felt three days dead.  I skipped my morning exercises, though.

Downstairs, Fritz looked haggard but he brightened when he saw me.  “Good morning, Archie.  Are you feeling better?”

“I’m deceased, but one of your apricot omelets might persuade me to come back.  I don’t want to swallow any orange juice until it has some company.”

“Of course.”  He bustled about, but paused to give me an expectant look.  I returned a cheerful smile, and a faint frown marred his brow.

To give myself the credit due, I outlasted the omelet, the orange juice, four slices of bacon, half a cup of coffee, and three reproachful looks before I broke down.  “How is he?”

Fritz just shook his head.  I felt my first real sense of unease.  Fritz is a fusser and it’s not good when he stops.

“Is he having a relapse?”  All sorts of things I couldn’t predict would send Wolfe to bed with the sulks every now and then, where he would eat onion soup and brood over God knows what for days.  But even I had to admit that being tortured justified a relapse.

“No, he is ill.  He was not with the orchids yesterday and will not be with them today.”

That caught me by surprise.  To understand, you have to know that, for all his eternal conviction he’s going to die from each and every paper-cut, Wolfe has a constitution like a mule’s.  In all the years I’d known him, he’d never gotten sick.  Even when he was stabbed by Inez Padilla during the Billings case, he was propped up in a chair in the greenhouse on the roof, complaining, the very next day.  So I’d somehow assumed he’d shaken off the muck that passes for water in the Hudson just like I had.  Of course, I hadn’t been trimmed, sanded, and whittled on, either.  “Are his wounds infected?  What did Doc Vollmer say?”

“He says,” Fritz obviously pondered regurgitating a bunch of medical jargon, and settled for an eloquent shrug, “time will tell.”

I took another look at Fritz, a proper one this time.  “So when’s the last time you had a decent amount of sleep?”

That earned me another shrug, this time an unconcerned one.  Enough was enough.  On the outs with Wolfe I might be, but Fritz hadn’t done anything worse than put spinach in my chicken soup yesterday morning.  It took about half-an-hour’s worth of levering and winching to get him moved up to his bedroom on the roof for a good, long nap, with me promising to look in on Wolfe during the duration.  Wolfe would probably be asleep anyhow.

He wasn’t, but he was feverish.  I’d meant to take my look and go, but instead I ended up parked next to his extra-large bed in the same chair Marko had occupied two days ago. 

Wolfe was an odd patient.  Unlike most folks with a fever, he never talked, not even to mutter, so I didn’t learn any secrets.  Not that I probably would have; he speaks about eight languages, of which I know exactly one.  But eavesdropping could have been fun.

Instead I checked his wounds and then watched him lie there, alternately sleeping and waking.  When he was awake, sometimes he was off in some world of his own and sometimes he’d stare at the ceiling.  The only other things he’d do were drink the glasses of water I poured for him and stare at me.  That was disconcerting, and I was glad he only chose me as a target twice.  I don’t count the third time because I think he was actually glaring; I’d had to use his bedroom phone to cancel my weekend social appointment.  It’s not good manners, bringing tailing hoods along to an assignation on Long Island, even in the professional circles I move in.

“This case is playing hell with my social life,” I said softly, mostly to myself.  His eyes had closed and I thought he’d drifted off again.  “She’d been shying in the corral for months, and I’d finally got her interested in going through the gate.  I could have used that ride, too.”

He opened his eyes and gave me the second long stare of the afternoon.

Around half past five, his fever finally broke.  Most folks would have dozed off then.  Not Nero Wolfe: normal behavior might have imperiled his standing in the obnoxiousness rankings.  Sweating like he’d been sipping Tabasco sauce, he drank a glass of water, cleared his throat, and said, “Saul will be calling again this evening at seven to report.”  His voice was weak; he scowled and drank some more water.

“Doc Vollmer will be visiting you right around that time.”

“Tell Saul I said to report to you.  Everything.  Now listen carefully, for he may be in danger.”  And he told me what Vukcic had told him.  After that, he demanded the bathroom and then solitude.  I was more than happy to give him what he wanted.

Vollmer actually made it over to the brownstone before seven, so Saul had just telephoned when Vollmer went by on his way out.  I told Saul, “Wait a minute,” and then asked the doc, who’d paused in the doorway to the office, “How’s Wolfe doing?”

“Better.  By the end of my visit he was fussing about something called Vanda.  Is that a flower or a sauce?”

“An orchid, probably one of the mauve ones.  He’ll be fine, then?”

Vollmer pursed his lips.  “He will be if his wounds don’t decide to go bad.  Make sure he’s taking his medicine and that the dressings are changed three times a day.  And no disturbances, and certainly no exposure to exotic plant materials.  I swear, the man thinks he’s immortal.”  He checked his repeater.  “I’m going.  I have stitches to remove elsewhere.”  At this reminder, his gaze swung up to me and his eyes narrowed behind his spectacles.

“No exotic plant materials near my forehead or side, got it.”  I waved the receiver at him as he left, and then said, “Sorry, Saul.  Did you hear any of that?”

“Not much.  Fritz told me you found some new playmates, day before last.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”  I gave him the edited-for-the-movieplay version of our adventures.   “So I need some names.  You’ve been sniffing around Nathan for Wolfe.”

His pause seemed, to my experienced ear, thoughtful.  “I’m assuming you won’t go off half-cocked on this.”

“Nah.  I need time to come up with something special. Maybe I’ll just turn Wolfe loose on them and loiter around to shove any survivors back into the ring.”  Saul could take that comment however he wanted to.

Apparently he wanted to take it as funny.  He chuckled softly. “Okay.  I’m ninety-five percent sure who we’re talking about here.”  That made his identifications certain, as far as I was concerned.  “Your man with a knife sounds like Tom Riley.  Charlie Necco probably drove, and Steven Mastonni—”   His second chuckle wasn’t particularly nice.  “I’ll help you figure something out for Mr. Mastonni, the tool-using animal.”

“My pal.”

“Off working-hours, sure.  I’m working here, right?”

“You tell me.  Wolfe says you’re to report everything.”

“Which is not much if you’ve already seen the papers this morning.  Did you?”

“No.  Spill it, Saul.”

“They found Brady over in New Jersey, dead from garroting, in highly unfortunate surroundings.  For which reason the cops are being quieter about the murder than you’d expect, but they’re still pretty livid.”

My forehead hurt.  Fair enough:  I’d started to rub it before I thought.  “Well, that saves us one job.  Will the police know you’ve been asking questions about the sergeant?”

“Not in the places I’ve been asking them, no.  I’ve been using a description, not a name, a real vivid one that doesn’t bring harness bull to mind.”

“You’re out making friends in the swish clubs.”  The words must have sounded flatter than I expected.

“That’s right, Archie.”  Saul was flat right back.  “Also in the Life Cafeteria, the Oak Room at the Plaza, and over on Forty-Second Street between Fifth and Eighth.  What did you expect?  Bobby Cunningham didn’t wear show costumes twenty-four hours a day, and Brady liked his friends male, accommodating, and affluent.  I go where the evidence leads me.”

“Right.”  It was a nice duck and weave on Saul’s part, but Wolfe hadn’t edited.  Saul had been visiting the places Wolfe sent him.  “Wolfe wants you to check if there were any social links between Cunningham and Vincent Nathan’s boys.  But watch out for Nathan himself.” 

I filled him in on Marko’s little bombshell, and Saul whistled, soft and low, before he said, “Cunningham probably linked up with Nathan through a couple of the clubs I’ve been in.  What the hell was Bobby up to, though, talking with Wolfe about Nathan getting dropped?”

“You tell me.”

“Maybe after I’ve picked over a few more places tonight, I will.”

“Good luck.  I’m stuck indoors right now, making sure the prince of whales takes his medicine and keeps away from exotic plant material.  I’m supposed to be taking care, too.  Maybe I should keep away from him.”

There was a short pause, but Saul seemed to think he’d better let my words go by without comment.  Instead he said, “I’ll call you around twelve-thirty tomorrow, since I’ll probably need to sleep in after tonight.”

“Fine.  I’ll be here.”

For some reason that made him snort, but he hung up without saying anything else.

I put the receiver down and scowled at it.  Sure, Wolfe had never showed any signs of depravity before his burst of enthusiasm yesterday morning, but he’d somehow learned about those pansy places Saul was visiting.  A couple of them weren’t on the list the Gazette boys had given me.  Like the Plaza.  What the hell?  I’d been to the Oak Room myself.

I’d kissed Wolfe back, too, when he kissed me.  Maybe it was just the fever.

But he’d obviously hung around the fairies, even if he wasn’t one himself.  Or was he?  My head still hurt.  Wolfe was old enough to know better.  Picking pansies as a middle-aged man wasn’t the same as spending afternoons fumbling around in the hayloft with your best buddy and his uncle’s collection of French postcards.  Or was it?

To hell with thinking.  An aspirin, unlike brooding, would do my head some good.  I got up and went upstairs to act on my better impulses.  But, of course, I brooded instead.

*****

When Archie came in to torment me around nine, he was frowning, which was entirely predictable.  I considered feigning sleep and then rejected the idea.  His skills as an observer were still improving.  He might be able to discern that I was acting, and his reactions would be intolerable.

He recounted his conversation with Saul and then, without another word, went to get the necessary supplies and began the tedious process of changing my dressings.  His grey eyes were as cold as the waters of the Hudson had been two days before.  When he had exposed my ring finger and was daubing antiseptic on it he said, no longer meeting my gaze, “Fritz likes them soft and sweet, and Saul likes them tall and tough.  What do you like, sir?”

I grunted, only partially with the pain.  Even I could tell my voice was sour when I said, “You, for one.”

He paled very slightly but his expression was still shuttered.  “That’s what I thought.”

“Don’t give yourself airs.  I have no doubt that the attraction is an unfortunate side-effect of your proximity during my attempt to accord to the differing social ethos of my adopted country.”

There was a moment’s pause, and then exasperation galloped across his face, shattering the cool distance like so much porcelain.  “Why don’t you just say you’ve given up sex, so I get on your nerves?”

“I thought that’s what I did say, Archie.”  I would call my tone reasonable.  He, in the past, has described that particular tone as a teeth-gratingly-sweet whine.

For a moment he went still.  Then he took a deep breath, and said, “Stop twitching.” 

The area around where my fingernail should have been was particularly problematical.  I didn’t twitch.  I grunted, repeatedly, instead.

While he was rewrapping the finger, he took a deep breath, released it, and said, “Fine, I admit I don’t get it.”

The last time he’d been forced into that admission we’d been discussing formal metaphysics over lobster Newburgh and the conversation had been hopeless.  However, the occasion before that had concerned opera, and he’d later confessed to actually enjoying the performance of Le Nozze di Figaro that his then-current female companion dragged him off to.  Hope is the most persistent of weeds.  I asked him, “Why do you refuse to keep company with any woman over the age of forty or so?  Older women are occasionally as attractive as those who are younger, often better groomed, frequently more skilled at the arts of Venus, and usually more amiable and easier of access.”

“Once past forty they’re just lumps—” It was always interesting to watch when the man overtook the youth.  For a moment his eyes flicked up keenly from my hand to my face.  “You’re talking about Mrs. Williamson.  I don’t know what happened there.”

“Yes.  Some exceptions to normal, socially approved tastes are inexplicable.  Nature enjoys her jokes.”  He’d brought out another bottle, shifting my attention.  “Archie, is that mercurochrome?  I don’t like mercurochrome.”

“What a surprise.  Would you prefer for me to hand you the telephone so you can call and inform Doc Vollmer of your preferences in medicine?  I can dial, too, since your hand is presently otherwise occupied.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. How little he resembled the young men of Wien or Budapest, grave, cultured, soft-spoken.  How little he reminded me of the companions of my youth with their laughing pride and their roaring hearts.  Rather, he was as the war had left the few survivors of those lost cadres, barricaded like a gold refinery, fire hidden behind barbed wire.  I sighed.  Archie may still not have gotten it – whatever “it” was to him – but now I understood my own impulses.  Now, to my misfortune, I knew what delusion had me in its claws.

“Buck up, sir.  Red is a nice color.  It goes with your skin, much better than yellow does.”

“Stop talking twaddle.  Are the wounds inflamed?”

“The wounds are a god-damned mess.”  He looked at me full-on.  “You’d do it again, wouldn’t you?”

I shuddered.  “Not ever.  Not if I can help it.  Actually being driven by that maniac, knowing what he’s capable of—no.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.  I’ll arrange to chauffeur the next time you’re off to be tortured.  Or I can call you a cab.”  He hesitated.  “If I’m still around, that is.  But I won’t leave until this case is over.”

It took me a moment to recognize the tone in his voice, I heard it so rarely.  He was glum.  That recognition allowed me to keep my own voice even when I said, “As you wish.”

There was silence until he asked, “Do you want me to help out Saul?”

“Not if you’re going to assault, insult, or badger those you meet to any degree that departs from your normal behavior.”

His gaze was bleak.  “I think I can manage to act like I completed the five dollar correspondence course on detection, yes, sir.”

“Then there are a few venues that might be more accessible to you than to him.  I’ll give you more locations in the morning, and the two of you can divide responsibilities as you see fit.”

He only nodded, and silence fell again until he finished and left.  I dearly would have liked to warn him to be careful, but all my cautions would have been wasted in any case.

The next day dragged like chains across my bedroom floor.  I couldn’t find a comfortable position in which to read with one hand, and Fritz had not had a chance, amidst the tumult, to visit the greengrocer and butcher.  I attempted to sleep, but I was too restless.

Whatever Archie said, I had felt his response when I kissed him.  I knew I could, with some effort, use certain matters between us, feelings that should remain unspoken, to drag him down from his platform of unconsidered masculinity.  I knew what I both wanted and dreaded.  I knew what both society and Archie would think if such an event came to pass.  My fears and desires gnawed at me like twin eagles savaging a Prometheus who’d brought back only darkness from heaven, unappeased by my intent to refrain.  So I was awake around seven when the telephone rang.  I narrowed my eyes, wanting to leave the contraption for Fritz, but some internal prompting led me to get out of bed and lift the receiver myself.

“Who is this?”

The voice on the other end was low, with a slight growl.  “Nero Wolfe?  Vincent Nathan.  Two of your men are here at the Club Ten Sixteen with me, and I’d like you to join us for a drink and some small-talk.”

Bleak as the possibilities his words conjured were, I was prepared.  My past entanglements of the heart had always led to disaster.  There was no reason for my just-recognized snarl to be any different, and I had included that possibility in my planning.  “Yes, I think the time for our chat has come, Mr. Nathan.”

“Do you know the place where we’re meeting?”

“I do.  However, I shall need about forty-five minutes to get there.”  The Club Ten Sixteen had been on Archie’s list of the venues at which Miss Cunningham had performed.

“Fine.”  He let out a noise too flat to be called a chuckle.  “Nice to be dealing with someone I don’t have to warn against calling the cops.  I’ll be seeing you, Mr. Wolfe.”  With that, he hung up.

Twenty necessary minutes were spent on my grooming and garb; Mr. Nathan was particular and respected the appearance of particularity.  Nothing would be served by appearing in his presence unkempt and unshorn.  Then I took the elevator down to the first floor.  The stairs would have been faster, but I needed to conserve my strength.

Alerted by the noise, Fritz met me in the hall, his eyes alarmed.

“Fritz.  Both Archie and Saul are in some peril.  I shall need you to drive me to Greenwich Village.”

Fritz shook his head.  “Is it a good idea?  I am a terrible driver.”

“You are, but needs must when the devil drives.”  I felt my lips flatten at the unintentional pun. My control was slipping when I needed it firm.

Fritz, however, merely nodded before going to fetch the keys to the sedan.  I donned my coat and homburg, and then paused to call after him, “There is one more item I want you to fetch, as well.”

*****

I was tapped on the shoulder, and a guy about Saul’s age but with the deadest eyes I’d ever seen said, “Mr.  Nathan wants to meet you.”

The two remaining fellows I’d been gossiping with in Bryant Park, the ones who hadn’t drifted off after I finished my questions and mentioned my Very Good Friend, disappeared like dew at noon.  I made my face judicious.  “I’m sorry, but Mr. Nathan’s already proved he’s a rough date, and I’m fond of my skin where it is.  No, thank you.”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand.  Let me explain.”  His expression didn’t budge an inch and his eyes were dead, but my skin crawled.  He was the first character I’d met besides Wolfe who could crack the whip with his voice alone.  “He understands that you might be reluctant to meet with him after the rash behavior of some of his subordinates, and gives you his word of honor that both you and your associate Mr. Panzer will leave this meeting no worse off than you went into it.”

Somewhere over in Hell’s Kitchen, Saul Panzer was getting, or had gotten, or would get the same message, so that was that.  If I was going to start questioning Vincent Nathan’s word of honor, I might just as well have my Worthington .38 for dinner, and not with a béchamel sauce, either.  It wasn’t that I had much faith in Nathan’s honor, merely in his ability to get fatally annoyed with anyone who questioned it out loud.  Sighing, I reached for my hat and coat on the park bench beside me.

I had a chance on the ride over to reflect that I was beginning to understand why Wolfe avoided racketeers in favor of business criminals and amateur murderers.  It’s hard to talk your way out of a situation with someone whose instinct is to start solving problems with a gun and go on from there.

When we got to our destination, a place in Greenwich called The Club Ten Sixteen, my escort brought me in and over to one of the tables by the front.  There, not to my surprise, sat Vincent Nathan.

Most days Nathan held court at Max’s Deli over on Broadway.  Sometimes he rested his pins at his social club in Hackensack, and every so often he’d park in some less savory establishment in which he had an interest.  But, wherever he was, his daily behavior was unvarying and widely known.  He’d sit quietly at a mostly empty table, back to the wall, with a pile of books and ledgers in front of him, working.  Once in a while his employees would bring business associates to visit him, and occasionally he’d wave over some patron or other over for a little socialization.  In the course of the day he’d consume one or two meals, mostly red meat.  Around seven, a companion might or might not appear for visits to respectable hot spots habituated by café society.  By midnight he’d be home in bed, tucked up neatly next to his wife.  It was, by gangland standards of the day, a dull schedule.  But he’d survived in power for over five years by keeping to it, something of a record in Manhattan.

I’d seen photos, but I wasn’t ready for the intensity of the guy himself.  His suit was expensive but well-chosen, and he was good-looking in a way the pictures didn’t convey.  But it was his eyes that dominated his face, even in competition with the scars where he’d been raked with a bottle back in the mid-twenties before I got to town.  The eyes were deep-set, dark brown, and the expression in them gave the impression he could peel you like a banana.

He considered me.  “Mr. Goodwin.  Sit down, please.”  The eyes shifted to my escort.  “Thanks, Arnie.  Blow.”

Arnie blew.  I sat where I’d been told, across from him, two seats in from the pillar with all the coat-hooks where my overcoat was now hanging.  Not that access to my coat would have done me any good.  I’d been patted down before we’d come in.

Nathan indicated the ledger he’d been writing in.  “This might take a minute or two.  Order some food if you want.”

“No, thanks.  I’ll take a drink, though.”

He stared vaguely into space for a moment as if considering the tariff question, and a waiter was suddenly standing next to him practically quivering in eagerness to serve.  I ordered whiskey and water, heavy on the water, and settled back to nurse my drink at some length while I was ignored in favor of debits and credits.  The wait gave me a chance to look around.

Before ten, dinner crowds run quiet because they haven’t been at the booze for long. Even so, the crowd wasn’t what I’d expected.  For one thing, I saw quite a few women.  For another, the patrons were a fairly mixed bunch, not the characters I’d expected, the ones you read about in the papers and saw imitated at nightclubs and in burlesque.  But as I watched, trying to pick out all the bodyguards, I realized a lot of the male patrons were more interested in each other than the females.  One big, battered number circulating between tables, a character I’d pegged as a former boxer, matched a cigarette for a smooth guy about my age who should have been serving customers at Bloomingdale’s or clerking in a Wall Street law firm.  It made me wonder what other details I’d been missing when I’d been out on the town, dining and dancing with my female acquaintances.

“George is one tough wolf, but he’s too nice to those guys who try and hide what they really are, the queers.  That makes him a good manager for this club, though.”  Nathan’s tone was conversational.  Seemingly he was done with his figures, so he’d taken to contemplating me while I was looking elsewhere. 

“Wolf?”  I regretted the question even as I asked it, but the term had got to me.

Shifting his gaze out towards the crowd, he totaled some mental column before he said, “A real man who goes with the ones who can’t help wanting it, punks or sissies.   A tough guy who enjoys what that sort can do for you every now and then.”  He turned the deliberation back onto me and added, “You’re fairly tough yourself to still be hanging around Wolfe, even if he always did like them old.”

“I work for him.”

“Yeah, I know that.  He never was partial to redheads, either.  I think it’s unlucky in that hick country he came from.”

I let my eyebrows raise just a touch. “I’m not a redhead.  And Nero Wolfe keeps his fat mitts to himself.”  My response wasn’t too smart but I was barely keeping the lid on my kettle, as hot as I now was.

Nathan allowed himself to look weary.  For just a second, he faintly resembled some of the particularly special customers.  “Too smart for the whores, too good to chase chicken, too high and mighty to make a dirty buck.  Why am I not surprised he’s wearing a chastity belt?  Next thing you know, he’ll be wearing a badge.”  This time I let his remarks slide by, which was smart because he went on, “After that he’d fit right in with some of the traffic cops.”

That was where Brady had begun, directing traffic at 43^rd and 5^th.  Now that information was flowing, I could make myself sound neutral when I said, “Wolfe’s too fat for that.”

“I heard he’s gained some weight since I saw him last.”  He shrugged.  “We’ll see.”

That made my skin crawl, and I might have said something stupid if Saul hadn’t shown up just then in bad company.

They shoved Saul into a seat well away from Nathan, and Riley sat down next to him, blocking the way to our host.  Charlie Necco was going to sit next to his boss but a short, bleak glance made him swerve towards the next chair over.  Mastonni took a good look at me.  I don’t know what he saw, but he selected the seat next to the pillar, which pinned me in, and sneered.  Feeling my hands clench, I forced them to flatten out onto the tabletop, away from his neck.

Nathan looked thoughtfully up from a book he’d been idly leafing through during the fuss to examine my neighbor.  “Nero Wolfe did me a big favor once,” he said, tone noncommittal.  “When I say I want to talk to someone, I want to talk to him, not hear he’s had a little accident.”

The cute phrasing got me going again.  “Some little accident.” 

Saul gave me a look, but Nathan said, “Yeah, some little accident.  I like boys who follow instructions.”  He stuck a forefinger up in the air, and the same waiter came hurrying over with a phone.  Before he dialed, he asked, “You want a drink, Mr. Panzer?”

“No thanks, Mr. Nathan.”  Saul’s manners were better than mine in those days.

And then Nathan dialed the brownstone.

I never doubted Wolfe would come for us, not for a second, and it was one of the longer forty-five minutes of my life while we waited for him to show.  Saul and Nathan discussed horse racing, the three goons shifted and fidgeted, and I tried to come up with ways I could kill my new neighbor, the torturer, without anyone noticing.  Oh, and I took my chance for more pointless brooding about Wolfe, me, and the wonders of fairyland, too.

When Wolfe finally arrived, he looked dapper, he looked weary, he looked petulant, and he dominated that club floor as he stomped across it like the fat lady opening up for the first time in Carmen.  Nathan paused at the end of his sentence, the exotic patrons all glanced around to see what was happening, and Saul Panzer, very faintly, smiled.  My heart leapt up and then thudded as if I’d seen his lips pushing in and out, as if I’d heard him say, his brown eyes hinting at some buried warmth, “Satisfactory, Archie.”

Crap.  That tore it.

*****

Mr. Nathan stood up when he saw me.  I could tell that the other men around the table were surprised.  I was not.  As I had thought when I saw his photographs in the Gazette, and as had been confirmed when I heard his voice on the telephone, Vincent Nathan and I had met in Hell’s Kitchen back in 1924, soon after I’d come to this country.  He was younger then, but the same dark beauty still lurked behind the scars that now marked his maturity and power.  I nodded and said, “Mr. Nathan.”

“Mr. Wolfe.  Thanks for coming down to the Village.  I know you don’t travel much these days.”  He waved a hand at the large chair set next to his at the table.  “Sit down, please.  Charlie, scoot over.”  Charlie, who would be seated on my left, was the ruffian who had driven my automobile on Wednesday.  He moved his own chair slightly away from mine.

I took the last empty chair without comment.  It was comfortable enough.  Without delaying, I began to speak.  I had no desire to eat or drink in this company and wanted to preempt any offer of hospitality.  “I’ve come for Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Panzer since they have succeeded in their twin tasks, to establish the links I needed proof of, and to arrange this meeting.”  My eyes moved to Archie, who shrugged almost imperceptibly, and on to Saul, who nodded equally minutely towards my former torturer on the steamboat, now seated next to Archie.

“As you know, your one-time acquaintance, Miss Cunningham, was recently killed by a single bullet to the chest, a suggestively direct methodology.  What I doubt you knew until today, and possibly not until now, is that she had sought my advice before her death.

“I shall not bother you with the minutiae of her tale; it was, in any case, merely the bundle of trash that protects the smuggled valuate.  Instead I shall say that she came to warn me of a plot against your life, one that I believe she somehow learned of from the man who had taken over as her protector when your interest shifted elsewhere.”

“Marko Vukcic?”  Mr. Nathan’s words were polite, but I was under no illusions.  Marko’s life hung in the balance of my account.

“No.  Perhaps Miss Cunningham cultivated hopes that depended upon remaining in proximity to you, or perhaps she merely was interested in advancing her career.  In either case, Marko’s tastes have always been—quite conventional.  No, Miss Cunningham’s new protector was a man of your own world.  As such, he was your rival, and, as such, he plotted against you.  I never learned his name from her.”  I sensed, rather than saw, the relaxation further down the table.  The fool:  he trusted too much in his talents at a task where he was ultimately an amateur.  “Miss Cunningham was now trapped.  If she tried to flee or to disengage from her protector, her possession of perilous knowledge would become obvious.  But, for some reason, she did not think that you would believe her if she approached you directly.  Perhaps she sensed your disregard for one who yields.  If so, that was unwise on your part.  I cannot say for sure.

“Nonetheless, although your own loyalties had moved on, it seems Miss Cunningham’s remained engaged.  She tried to think of someone other than yourself who might hear and act upon her news.  For obvious reasons, the police were excluded from her options.”

Mr. Nathan nodded, eyes shadowed.

“However, you must have spoken of me in some context, perhaps when one of my cases was resolved and publicized.  That was hinted at by Miss Cunningham’s stating in my office on Tuesday that she’d ‘heard so much about me’.  Very few persons who move in café or bohemian circles, excluding those who have met Mr. Goodwin, even know my name.  The few who do generally learned of me by reading about my exploits in the newspapers, not by having heard about me, an all-together more intimate phrase.”

I took a deep breath and then released it.  “I regret not having offered her more assistance than the name of a policeman who was also a wolf, a man who had grown corrupt since our last meeting.  Miss Cunningham was trapped in a hopeless situation, but spent a great deal of her remaining strength trying to help someone upon whom the jaws had yet to close.  She assumed, correctly, that, if she was murdered, her efforts would at least assure that her murder would cause her warning about your peril to be reported to the police.  That information, in turn, should have reached you.  However, to her misfortune, the story of her interview with me arrived in your circles early, and by a route she did not anticipate.” 

It is a joy to work with competent men.  The minds of those I cared about had leapt ahead during my monologue and they were both prepared when I said, “Your employee and would-be successor, who had already succeeded you as Miss Cunningham’s lover, had learned from Sergeant Brady the unsurprising fact that the man he named finnochio – faggot - had chosen you over him, Steven Manstonni.”

Smooth as the pistol started out of Manstonni’s holster, Archie was smoother still.  As Saul struck up Tom Riley’s arm, and Riley’s gun fired into the ceiling, Archie swung his locked-together fists and smashed Manstonni’s head into a wooden pillar.

Mr. Nathan’s own pistol was out and he shot Tom Riley next to Saul.  Then, as if he and Archie had spent their entire enforced time together planning the maneuver, he shifted and shot again, just as Archie’s second blow changed Mr. Nathan’s point of aim from Steven Manstonni’s shoulder to his face.  Once more Mr. Nathan’s pistol swung, but I had managed to take care of my neighbor, Charlie Necco, myself.  It is an advantage to be matched against a man who thinks you a coward.

Mr. Nathan set down his pistol on the table, ignoring the shouts and chaos around us, and said, eyebrows hiked, “That’s a real sharp knife.  I’ll have to talk to the kitchen about sending out the good stuff to the patrons with their steaks.”  I noticed, peripherally, a waiter start away towards the kitchen.

It wasn’t as good a knife as all that, of course.  I knew better than to bring a knife I might lose, one good enough to trace, to such a rendezvous.

Saul picked up Mr. Nathan’s gun, and Archie asked, “Time to call the cops?”

Both Mr. Nathan and I nodded assent, but the two of them looked only to me.

The bullet from Miss Cunningham’s body matched the gun in Manstonni’s hand.  He must have retained it so as to kill Mr. Nathan with the same weapon with which he’d killed Miss Cunningham, a not-very-charming folk custom from his own old country.  Inspector Cramer was upset by the deaths, but could hardly complain about Mr. Nathan’s and my much-witnessed, earnestly-attested-to self-defense.  As well, Mr. Cramer had another interest in the matter.

He and I had stepped aside from the chaos.  The Inspector had lit his cigar and was taking deep puffs, a sure sign of his internal conflict, so I wasn’t surprised when he said, “Charlie Neck, the bum sitting next to you, had a garrote in his pocket.”

I nodded.  “The pathologist will most likely find that it is the same one used to strangle Sergeant Morris Brady.”

“Yeah.  And that was your knife stuck in Charlie.”

“A steak knife.”  I did not lie, but merely implied.  “Mr. Nathan had ordered a porterhouse, which was opportune.”

“Uh-huh.  So I understand.”  Mr. Cramer took another draw on his cigar and then said, his hard blue eyes slightly narrowed, “You know, Wolfe, there are a lot of questions about this little incident that beg for answers.  Too darn bad for three dead cop-killers that I don’t feel like asking them.”  Removing the cigar, he dropped it on the floor and ground it under his heel.  “Enjoy your recuperation,” he said, snorted, and walked away.

Next morning’s newspapers would proclaim their shock at the deaths of the racketeers who had actually descended to attacking a respectable businessman and his famous guest over some perceived slight.  The Club Ten Sixteen would discreetly close soon after, though, and its clientele would drift away to others of the many clubs and restaurants that flourished before both repeal and reforming paranoia took their toll.

As for my household, Archie drove us back to the brownstone, which was a relief to Fritz.  Fritz truly was a terrible driver.  The bill Marko had to pay was minimal, but Saul was glad of the extra money none the less.  Marko also sent me some excellent fresh black truffles, several bundles of hothouse asparagus, and a bushel of blue-point oysters for “the sake of my renewed vigor”.  At times his sense of humor is deplorable.

The case had one other repercussion, although that would not become obvious for many years to come.  As we had waited for the police to arrive, Mr. Nathan said, “You seem to have done better picking your boys than I did, Wolfe.”  Archie, catching the gaze upon him, turned and briefly bared his teeth in something too lupine to be called a grin.

“As I recall opining when we last met, the prince should yield some sovereignty if his men will thus gain strength.”

“I’ll remember that next time.”

“You would do well not to.  A strong underling in your field of endeavor is merely a deadly enemy waiting to hatch.”

Nathan shrugged.  He should have listened.  More than a decade later I would be forced to struggle with Mr. Nathan’s final protégée, long after Nathan himself had taken his last swim in the Hudson.  Again, Mr. Nathan had selected a man who shared his tastes and my own, but this time he’d also chosen for intelligence.  He’d chosen too well.  His final protégée’s name was Arnold Zeck.

*****

Late that evening, I pinned Wolfe with a gaze.  It wasn’t hard; he was already holding still while having his bandages changed.  “You deliberately let Saul and I be scooped up, so you could have your interview with Nathan without his boys getting to you first.  And then you made Vincent Nathan your triggerman.”

“Yes.  Mine was merely a calculated risk since I thought I’d recognized an old associate in Mr. Nathan, which would mean I knew the capabilities of all involved.  Still, the risk remained.”

I tried for a stern look, but the grin fought past it.  “I’m glad you were paying attention when I said I’d rather take some of the strain than watch, but I’d still like to hear first, the next time I play bait.”

“You know my opinions on—”

“Yes, sir, according to you my face is about as subtle as Eddie Cantor’s.  We need to talk that one over, but later.”  This last finger was tricky, dabbing around the splint, so I tried to keep my touch gentle. “There’s something more important I want to say.”  He grunted, not from pain. “I’m not leaving.  Not this time, at least.”

“Are you sure you still have a choice in the matter?”

“I’ll let that one go by,” I said generously, “because you’re injured and are possibly still a touch feverish.  Given what you’ve been saying about the bank account recently, I won’t put you to the strain of paying the two men you’d need to do my job.  I heard Johnny Keems flunked out of the shorthand course he was taking so he could sneak into my chair.  He spent too much time staring at his own reflection in the windows.”

“I knew there was some reason I situated your desk facing a wall.  Perhaps I should hang a mirror above it to reduce the number of distractions when I’m trying to read.”  That was the pressure of the last dressing being tied off taking its toll.  He usually did better.  The pain was putting him off his game.

He sat sulking while I cleaned up.  I wasn’t surprised that the first words out of his mouth were a murmured, “I could use a bite to eat.”  The second were a little less predictable; say, two-to-one odds against.  “Are there any reassurances you need, any questions you have, if you are determined to stay?”

I gave him a good, long stare.  Wolfe was gently flexing the bad hand and arm, still looking petulant.  The only reason he didn’t look out-and-out surly was because he’d had a bath to get the blood off and had let me give him a shave.  That’d turned him from a vision capable of giving your granny nightmares back into his familiar, fat self. 

As is often the case, my mouth decided before my brain got done sorting through the possibilities.  “Well, sir, would you happen to own any French postcards?”

What can I say?  He’d been one hell of a kisser.

*****

I closed my eyes for a moment.  There are undoubtedly individuals more difficult than Archie in the grip of a notion, but I avoid them.  So even I could tell you that the expression I turned upon him was baleful.  “What obscure mental process are you trying to convey now?  Or is this some new form of bedeviling me?”

Obviously considering my words, he sat back down on my bed, placed one ankle on the opposite knee, and began untying his shoelace.  “The last time in Chillicothe, our excuse was some postcards fresh over from Paris, France.  The naked girls were great, if not as good as what we got up to.”  He switched ankles.  “I was getting way too old for that kind of game, but the distaff pickings were lean around my aunt’s farm in the summers.”  He paused, his eyes distant, his hands on his tie.  “One more reason I came to New York.”  Then he grinned.  “Do wolves have French postcards, too?”

“Of course, I’ve seen—don’t be intentionally obtuse.  And stop that.”

He paused in unbuttoning his shirt, an interested expression on his face.  “That’s exactly the response I got from Prudence Wilkins.  Do you remember her, sir?  She was the girl with the emerald ear-clips in the Durham case, the one that you called—”

In spite of all my resolutions, it was necessary to do something to shut him up.  So I did.

*****

Wolfe was going to defer to his injuries and stick to pleasant, but decorous, hand-jobs for two.  He’s lazy and likes to play it safe.  I, on the other hand, wanted the whole package, the main event, the act everyone was so afraid of.  If anyone could do the job, I figured he could.

And I was right, too.  Given his bad wing, some maneuvering was needed, but practicalities are easier when you both agree about where you’re going and why.  While I love the coaxing and the drawn-out, sweet choreography of being with a woman, there’s a lot to be said for the blunt intent and the skilled, swift passion of a man, especially when that man’s Nero Wolfe.  When he wanted to explore me, he told me so, and his hand was as graceful and ruthless as it is with the orchids.  And when he needed me to work myself, he told me that too, and his command gave the task an edgy pleasure it had never had before.   And when he finally mounted me and rode me hard, he told me a lot of things that were nobody’s business who wasn’t one of the two men in his bed that night.  I spent damn hard for a first-timer who’d be hurting the next day.  But it was the warmth of the man who’d taken me in, nagged, protected, and cherished me for years that made me swear with pleasure when he spent, in his turn, deep inside me.

*****

Afterwards, when I would have rested content, Archie had merely begun to fight.  He returned from his turn in my bathroom to conduct an extensive and enthusiastic review of our activities, with commentary.  This he concluded with, “So.  Do you want to give it a try?”

I gave him a look through narrowed eyes.  “Archie, such is not the custom.  The older man takes no delight in submitting to his companion.”

“How do you know if you’ve never tried?”  He sat up and crossed his legs on my sheets, unconcerned with his nakedness while engaged in the joy of contention.  “After all, I’d never tried, and I liked it just fine.” He slapped one muscled thigh in emphasis.

“I have, as you put it, tried, years ago when I was young.  Yes, it was enjoyable.  But I’m no longer young.”

Archie grinned.  “Well, I am.”  Slowly he uncoiled from where he sat, the grin gradually supplanted by an intense, speculative look in his eyes.  “I’d bet the logistics are easier, if you’re both lying on your sides, with a man than with a woman.  Let’s see.  We can put some pillows under your bad arm and then—”

“Cease badgering me.”  With a grunt, I sat upright.  “After twenty years of varied experience across four continents, I do understand the physical intricacies of what you propose.” 

I suppose it was inevitable.  Like any alley tom taken in off the street, he has no proper notion of his place in the household and a compulsive need to mark his territory.  I dislike cats and avoid them, but I seem to be somehow stuck with Archie.

Pfui.  If I was also now going to be stuck with the ridiculous American notions of how a man comports himself with another man, I might as well reap some benefits.  Sighing, I reached for a pillow.

*****

Funny, you would have thought the occasional night-time diversions would have made more of a dent in my hide down through the years than they did.  The one time we discussed matters, many years later, Wolfe told me that they accelerated the inevitable process of maturation, but I told him he was taking too much credit.  He folded up his cheeks at me and politely agreed that I was probably correct.  “Time, in any case, would have collected his erosive toll.  You were already beginning to show signs of sophistication mastering bumptiousness.”

He couldn’t fool me.  I’d been typing up a case report for a client on a Sunday, and he’d decided he’d rather annoy me by dissecting my life than be annoyed by the sound of my typewriter keys while he was trying to analyze the statistics in the Kinsey report. 

“Would those symptoms be anything like the signs of meaning mastering long-windedness, sir?”  He’d been cutting down his word count per sentence over the past decade or so, which was like Niagara Falls deciding to be a little less damp, but still welcome.  “Not to mention the signs of common sense mastering your old habit of sulking in bed for days.”

Wolfe refused to be prodded.  “Yes.  To use a scientific metaphor, each action eventually affects the agent that acts.”  The speculative look in his dark eyes wasn’t a mystery to me any more, and I grinned.  Wolfe continued, “But I am also pleased the after-effects of our entanglement were minimal because I admit to having worried that you might be disturbed by the violent disruption of your self-perception.  Having twice undergone the process myself, I know it is not pleasant.  I should have had more faith in your sense of expediency.”

“I’m not a church-goer.  And you’ve told me yourself, at length, why the psychoanalysts are full of it when it comes to this homosexual stuff.  I sure don’t see any reason why I should give any weight to a bunch of customs from someone else’s Old Country.”  I shrugged.  “Since nobody has a good explanation of why I did what I did, I’ll make up my own.  How about, I’m whimsical?”

“I’d certainly believe impulsive, Archie.”

“Then we’ll split the difference.  I’m eccentric, just like you.”

Wolfe nodded minutely.  “I believe you’ve indeed said all that is needed.  Very satisfactory.”  He reached for the Kinsey report again and I, for once feeling in charity with him, decided to leave off typing and balance the checkbook instead.

After all, Wolfe was right.  What else is there to say about the fact I occasionally cavort with a male hippo, anyhow?  You might as well try to explain Wolfe’s liking for orchids, or food, or the color yellow, as justify what we’re doing.  Sure, I know a lady reader from Ann Arbor who, if she were to read about my nighttime detours and not faint, would probably write me again with an explanation as romantic as her screed about Wolfe loving yellow because yellow is the color of the sun, the glorious sun, the sun that gifts us all with strength and life.

Nuts.  I don’t need any delicate fancies to add to all the moronic horror stories about fags.  If I want Wolfe, that’s my own private choice, a grown man’s choice, all mine.  I’ve done it, I do it, and I’ll keep doing it with him as long as I want.  I’ve learned.  Nobody else’s fears are going to make me yellow.

*****

Archie doesn’t agonize because he takes pleasure beneath me, above me, his limbs entangled with my own.  He sees no reason why he should walk with less confidence.  He never worries that women will no longer turn when he enters a room.  The accounts he now writes of our cases, the ones that so loudly proclaim his masculine prowess and independence to the world, entertain him as much as they sustain him.  If he is wary, not contemplating his deeds, discreet in his writings, he is also unashamed.  I don’t tell him so, but I model myself after him.

Someday some scientist may laboriously map out the tangled bank of the human heart and loins, but I don’t expect to see that day myself.  In the meantime I shall do what all men do, live beneath the heat of the public gaze by day and within the cool of my private domain by night.  It would be good to tell the truth – I esteem the truth – but such testament is not required.  Sufficient to say, I can tell such truths as I need, whether in words or in other ways, to the one man who wishes to hear them. 

When he tires, for a time, of creating once more the tough, the seductive, the self-sufficient legend, Archie Goodwin, I am there.  In my arms, he can give way.  As well, with me, he can enjoy the intoxications of a different myth.

Of course love is utter nonsense, but it is heady nonsense.  That, I have learned.  And one last lesson I have learned, as well.  Silence does not always result from cowardice, from a fear of being judged nonsensical, less than a true man.  Sometimes silence holds the only words that can adequately express repletion.

 

 

This one’s for Dusk, who had a notion.

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