And Be a Villain (18 page)

“It wouldn’t be. That was what you phoned for?”

“Yes. I thought I’d have that much satisfaction at least, since there was no risk in it.”

“You might have saved your nickel.” Wolfe grimaced. “Dr. Michaels, I’m going to ask you a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“I don’t want to, but though the question is intrusive it is also important. And it will do no good to ask it unless I can be assured of a completely candid reply or a refusal to answer at all. You would be capable of a fairly good job of evasion if you were moved to try, and I don’t want that. Will you give me either candor or silence?”

Michaels smiled. “Silence is so awkward. I’ll give you a straight answer or I’ll say ‘no comment.’”

“Good. How much substance was there in the hints in those letters about your conduct?”

The doctor looked at him, considered, and finally nodded his head. “It’s intrusive, all right, but I’ll take your word for it that it’s important. You want a full answer?”

“As full as possible.”

“Then it must be confidential.”

“It will be.”

“I accept that. I don’t ask for your solemn word of honor. There was not even a shadow of substance. I have never, with any patient, even approached the boundaries of professional decorum. But I’m not like you; I have a deep and intense need for the companionship of a woman. I suppose that’s why I married so early—and so disastrously. Possibly her money attracted me too, though I would vigorously deny it; there are bad streaks in me. Anyway, I do have the companionship of a woman, but not the one I married. She has never been my patient. When she needs medical advice she goes to some other doctor. No doctor should assume responsibility for the health of one he loves or one he hates.”

“This companionship you enjoy—it could not have been the stimulus for the hints in the letters?”

“I don’t see how. All the letters spoke of women patients—in the plural, and patients.”

“Giving their names?”

“No, no names.”

Wolfe nodded with satisfaction. “That would have taken too much research for a wholesale operation, and it wasn’t necessary.” He came forward in his chair to reach for the push button. “I am greatly obliged to you, Dr. Michaels. This has been highly distasteful for you, and you have been most indulgent. I don’t need to prolong it, and I won’t. I foresee no necessity to give the police your name, and I’ll even engage not to do so, though heaven only knows what my informant will do. Now we’ll have some beer. We didn’t get it settled about the pointed arches in the Tulun mosque.”

“If you don’t mind,” the guest said, “I’ve been wondering if it would be seemly to tip this brandy bottle again.”

So he stayed with the brandy while Wolfe had beer. I excused myself and went out for a breath of air, for while they were perfectly welcome to do some more settling about the pointed arches in the Tulun mosque, as far as I was concerned it had been attended to long ago.

It was past eleven when I returned, and soon afterward Michaels arose to go. He was far from being pickled, but he was much more relaxed and rosy than he had been when I let him in. Wolfe was so mellow that he even stood up to say good-by, and I didn’t see his usual flicker of hesitation when Michaels extended a hand. He doesn’t care about shaking hands indiscriminately.

Michaels said impulsively, “I want to ask you something.”

“Then do so.”

“I want to consult you professionally—your profession. I need help. I want to pay for it.”

“You will, sir, if it’s worth anything.”

“It will be, I’m sure. I want to know, if you are being shadowed, if a man is following you, how many ways are there of eluding him, and what are they, and how are they executed?”

“Good heavens.” Wolfe shuddered. “How long has this been going on?”

“For months.”

“Well.—Archie?”

“Sure,” I said. “Glad to.”

“I don’t want to impose on you,” Michaels lied. He did. “It’s late.”

“That’s okay. Sit down.”

I really didn’t mind, having met his wife.

T
HAT, I THOUGHT to myself as I was brushing my hair Thursday morning, covered some ground. That was a real step forward.

Then, as I dropped the brush into the drawer, I asked aloud, “Yeah? Toward what?”

In a murder case you expect to spend at least half your time barking up wrong trees. Sometimes that gets you irritated, but what the hell, if you belong in the detective business at all you just skip it and take another look. That wasn’t the trouble with this one. We hadn’t gone dashing around investigating a funny sound only to learn it was just a cat on a fence. Far from it. We had left all that to the cops. Every move we had made had been strictly pertinent. Our two chief discoveries—the tape on the bottle of coffee and the way the circulation department of
What to Expect
operated—were unquestionably essential parts of the picture of the death of Cyril Orchard, which was what we were working on.

So it was a step forward. Fine. When you have taken a step forward, the next thing on the program is another step in the same direction. And that was the pebble in the griddle cake I broke a tooth on that morning. Bathing and dressing and eating breakfast, I went over the situation from every angle and viewpoint, and I had to admit this: if Wolfe had called me up to his room and asked for a suggestion on how I should spend the day, I would have been tongue-tied.

What I’m doing, if you’re following me, is to justify what I did do. When he did call me up to his room, and wished me a good morning, and asked how I had slept, and told me to phone Inspector Cramer and invite him to pay us a visit at eleven o’clock, all I said was:

“Yes, sir.”

There was another phone call which I had decided to make on my own. Since it involved a violation of a law Wolfe had passed I didn’t want to make it from the office, so when I went out for a stroll to the bank to deposit a check from a former client who was paying in installments, I patronized a booth. When I got Lon Cohen I told him I wanted to ask him something that had no connection with the detective business, but was strictly private. I said I had been offered a job at a figure ten times what he was worth, and fully half what I was, and, while I had no intention of leaving Wolfe, I was curious. Had he ever heard of a guy named Arnold Zeck, and what about him?

“Nothing for you,” Lon said.

“What do you mean, nothing for me?”

“I mean you don’t want a Sunday feature, you want the lowdown, and I haven’t got it. Zeck is a question mark. I’ve heard that he owns twenty Assemblymen and six district leaders, and I’ve also heard that he is merely a dried fish. There’s a rumor that if you print something about him that he resents your body is washed ashore at Montauk Point, mangled by sharks, but you know how the boys talk. One little detail—this is between us?”

“Forever.”

“There’s not a word on him in our morgue. I had occasion to look once, several years ago—when he gave his yacht to the Navy. Not a thing, which is peculiar for a guy that gives away yachts and owns the highest hill in Westchester. What’s the job?”

“Skip it. I wouldn’t consider it. I thought he still had his yacht.”

I decided to let it lay. If the time should come when Wolfe had to sneak outdoors and look for a place to hide, I didn’t want it blamed on me.

Cramer arrived shortly after eleven. He wasn’t jovial, and neither was I. When he came, as I had known him to, to tear Wolfe to pieces, or at least to threaten to haul him downtown or send a squad with a paper signed by a judge, he had fire in his eyes and springs in his calves. This time he was so forlorn he even let me hang up his hat and coat for him. But as he entered the office I saw him squaring his shoulders. He was so used to going into that room to be belligerent that it was automatic. He growled a greeting, sat, and demanded:

“What have you got this time?”

Wolfe, lips compressed, regarded him a moment and then pointed a finger at him. “You know, Mr. Cramer, I begin to suspect I’m a jackass. Three weeks ago yesterday, when I read in the paper of Mr. Orchard’s death, I should have guessed immediately why people paid him ten dollars a week. I don’t mean merely the general idea of blackmail; that was an obvious possibility; I mean the whole operation, the way it was done.”

“Why, have you guessed it now?”

“No. I’ve had it described to me.”

“By whom?”

“It doesn’t matter. An innocent victim. Would you like to have me describe it to you?”

“Sure. Or the other way around.”

Wolfe frowned. “What? You know about it?”

“Yeah, I know about it. I do now.” Cramer wasn’t doing any bragging. He stayed glum. “Understand I’m saying nothing against the New York Police Department. It’s the best on earth. But it’s a large organization, and you can’t expect everyone to know what everybody else did or is doing. My part of it is Homicide. Well. In September nineteen forty-six, nineteen months ago, a citizen lodged a complaint with a precinct detective sergeant. People had received anonymous letters about him, and he had got a phone call from a man that if he subscribed to a thing called
Track Almanac
for one year there would be no more letters. He said the stuff in the letters was lies, and he wasn’t going to be swindled, and he wanted justice. Because it looked as if it might be a real job the sergeant consulted his captain. They went together to the
Track Almanac
office, found Orchard there, and jumped him. He denied it, said it must have been someone trying to queer him. The citizen listened to Orchard’s voice, both direct and on the phone, and said it hadn’t been his voice on the phone, it must have been a confederate. But no lead to a confederate could be found. Nothing could be found. Orchard stood pat. He refused to let them see his subscription list, on the ground that he didn’t want his customers pestered, which was within his rights in the absence of a charge. The citizen’s lawyer wouldn’t let him swear a warrant. There were no more anonymous letters.”

“Beautiful,” Wolfe murmured.

“What the hell is so beautiful?”

“Excuse me. And?”

“And nothing. The captain is now retired, living on a farm in Rhode Island. The sergeant is still a sergeant, as he should be, since apparently he doesn’t read the papers. He’s up in a Bronx precinct, specializing in kids that throw stones at trains. Just day before yesterday the name Orchard reminded him of something! So I’ve got that. I’ve put men onto the other Orchard subscribers that we know about, except the one that was just a sucker—plenty of men to cover anybody at all close to them, to ask about anonymous letters. There have been no results on Savarese or Madeline Fraser, but we’ve uncovered it on the Leconne woman, the one that runs a beauty parlor. It was the same routine—the letters and the phone call, and she fell for it. She says the letters were lies, and it looks like they were, but she paid up to get them stopped, and she pushed us off, and you too, because she didn’t want a stink.”

Cramer made a gesture. “Does that describe it?”

“Perfectly,” Wolfe granted.

“Okay. You called me, and I came because I swear to God I don’t see what it gets me. It was you who got brilliant and made it that the poison was for the Fraser woman, not Orchard. Now that looks crazy, but what don’t? If it was for Orchard after all, who and why in that bunch? And what about Beula Poole? Were she and Orchard teaming it? Or was she horning in on his list? By God, I never saw anything like it! Have you been giving me a runaround? I want to know!”

Cramer pulled a cigar from his pocket and got his teeth closed on it.

Wolfe shook his head. “Not I,” he declared. “I’m a little dizzy myself. Your description was sketchy, and it might help to fill it in. Are you in a hurry?”

“Hell no.”

“Then look at this. It is important, if we are to see clearly the connection of the two events, to know exactly what the roles of Mr. Orchard and Miss Poole were. Let us say that I am an ingenious and ruthless man, and I decide to make some money by blackmailing wholesale, with little or no risk to myself.”

“Orchard got poisoned,” Cramer growled, “and she got shot.”

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed, “but I didn’t. I either know people I can use or I know how to find them. I am a patient and resourceful man. I supply Orchard with funds to begin publication of
Track Almanac
. I have lists prepared, with the greatest care, of persons with ample incomes from a business or profession or job that would make them sensitive to my attack. Then I start operating. The phone calls are made neither by Orchard nor by me. Of course, Orchard, who is in an exposed position, has never met me, doesn’t know who I am, and probably isn’t even aware that I exist. Indeed, of those engaged in the operation, very few know that I exist, possibly only one.”

Wolfe rubbed his palms together. “All this is passably clever. I am taking from my victims only a small fraction of their income, and I am not threatening them with exposure of a fearful secret. Even if I knew their secrets, which I don’t, I would prefer not to use them in the anonymous letters; that would not merely harass them, it would fill them with terror, and I don’t want terror, I only want money. Therefore, while my lists are carefully compiled, no great amount of research is required, just enough to get only the kind of people who would be least likely to put up a fight, either by going to the police or by any other method. Even should one resort to the police, what will happen? You have already answered that, Mr. Cramer, by telling what did happen.”

“That sergeant was dumb as hell,” Cramer grumbled.

“Oh, no. There was the captain too. Take an hour sometime to consider what you would have done and see where you come out. What if one or two more citizens had made the same complaint? Mr. Orchard would have insisted that he was being persecuted by an enemy. In the extreme case of an avalanche of complaints, most improbable, or of an exposure by an exceptionally capable policeman, what then? Mr. Orchard would be done for, but I wouldn’t. Even if he wanted to squeal, he couldn’t, not on me, for he doesn’t know me.”

“He has been getting money to you,” Cramer objected.