Death Of A Dude

Nero Wolfe 44 - Death of A Dude

I began it “NW” and signed it “AG” not to be different, but from habit. Nearly all of my written communications to Nero Wolfe over the years had been on a sheet of a memo pad, for Fritz to take up to his room on his breakfast tray, or put by me on his desk when he was upstairs in bed and I had returned from an evening errand. They had all begun “NW” and ended “AG” so this did too, though it wasn’t scribbled. It was typed on an Underwood on a table in a corner of the big room in Lily Rowan’s cabin in a corner of her ranch, and it was in the airmail envelope I poked through the slot in the post office in Timberburg, the county seat, that Saturday morning-on a letterhead that had Bar JR Ranch, Lame Horse, Montana in big type across the top. Not as elegant as the one with her New York penthouse address. Below, it said:

Friday 8:13pm

August 2, 1968

NW:

It’s a real mess here and I’m stuck. I didn’t go into details on the phone Monday because someone at the exchange might be cooperating with the sheriff or the county attorney (in New York he would be district attorney), or there might even be a tap on Miss Rowan’s line. Modern science certainly gets around.

Since you never forget anything or anybody you remember Harvey Greve, who once told you there in the office that he had bought a lot of livestock, horses and cattle and calves, for Roger Dunning, which helped do for Dunning. I believe I have mentioned that he has been running Miss Rowan’s ranch for the last four years, and he still is-or was until six days ago, last Saturday, when he was charged with murder and parked in the cooler-namely the county jail. A dude named Philip Brodell had been shot in the back and then in the front while he was picking huckleberries. As I have told you, these mountain huckleberries are different. This time I’ll try to bring you some.

Miss Rowan and I have decided that Harvey didn’t do it, and I’m stuck. If it had been plain and simple that he did it I would have been back there to keep your desk dusted when I was supposed to, day before yesterday. Miss Rowan has hired a lawyer from Helena with a reputation that stretches from the Continental Divide to the Little Missouri, and it would be his problem. But I suspect he doesn’t see it as we do. His head’s on it, but I don’t think his heart’s in it. Mine is, and one will get you fifty that Harvey’s clean. So you see how it is, I’ve got a job. Even if I had no obligation to Miss Rowan as her guest and an old friend, I’ve known Harvey Greve too long and too well to bow out and leave him in a squeeze.

Of course from July 31, day before yesterday, I’m on leave of absence without pay. I hope to be back soon, but as it stands now I have no suggestions for a replacement for Harvey in the jug, and it looks like-excuse it, as if-there’ll have to be one with good credentials. If you want to have Saul or Orrie at my desk, my strictly personal things are up in my room, so all my secrets are safe. Television here is often a bust, and I have got to be back in time for the World Series. Give Theodore my regards and tell Fritz my first thought every morning is him-the breakfast in his kitchen I’m missing. In these parts the two favourite nicknames for pancakes are torture disks and gut plasters. AG

When he got it, probably Monday, he would lean back and glare at my chair for a good ten minutes.

As I left the post office I took a look at my shopping list. The population of Timberburg was only 7463, but it was the biggest batch between Helena and Great Falls, and its customers covered a lot of territory-from the Fishtail River, where the hills graduated into mountains, east to where the range got so flat you could see a coyote two miles off. So in about an hour I got everything on my list, with four stops on the main drag and two on side streets. The items:

Big Six Mix pipe tobacco for Mel Fox. With Harvey in the coop he was too busy at the ranch to go shopping.

Fly swatters for Pete Ingalls. He never raised his foot to the stirrup without one dangling from his saddle horn, for horseflies.

Typewriter ribbon for the Underwood.

Tube of toothpaste and a belt, for me personally. My best belt had got chewed by a porcupine when I-but that’s a long story.

A magnifying glass and a notebook that would go in my hip pockety for me professionally. On a job in New York I never go on an errand without those two articles, and I was on a job now. Probably I wouldn’t have any use for them, but a habit is a habit. Psychology.

My last stop was the public library, to consult a book that probably wouldn’t be there, but it was-Who’s Who in America. Not the latest, 1968-1969, but the 1966-67 was good enough. There was no entry for Philip Brodell, and there never would be since he was now a corpse, but his father, Edward Ellis Brodell, had about a third of a column. I knew he was still alive, having exchanged some words with him a week ago, when he had come to gather facts and raise some hell and get his son’s body to take home. Born in St. Louis in 1907, he had done all right and was now the owner and publisher of the St. Louis Star-Bulletin. Who’s Who had no information about who was going to kill his son.

With all my purchases in the big paper bag I had requested for the fly swatters, I wasn’t much encumbered when I entered the Continental Caf9'at a quarter past noon, sent my eyes around, spotted an attractive female in an olive-green shirt and dark green slacks at a table in the rear, and headed for her. When I got there and pulled a chair back she said, “Either you’re pretty fast or you didn’t finish your list.”

“Got everything.” I sat and put the bag on the floor. “I may not be fast but I’m lucky.” I tipped my head at her martini glass. “Carson’s?”

“No. They haven’t got any. You can’t tell me gins are all alike. There’s split-pea soup.”

That was good news because his split-pea soup was the one dish the Continental cook had a right to be proud of. A waitress came and took our order for two double bowls of soup, plenty of crackers, one milk, and one coffee, and while we were waiting for it I fished in the bag for the belt and the magnifying glass to show Lily that Timberburg was as good as New York when you needed things.

The soup was up to expectations. When our bowls were nearly empty and the crackers low I said, “I not only finished up my list, I dug up some facts. At the library in Who’s Who. Philip Brodell’s father’s father’s name was Amos. His father is a member of three clubs, and his father’s wife’s maiden name was Mitchell. That’s a break. Real progress.”

“Congratulations.” She took a cracker. “Let’s go and tell Jessup. You’re the doctor, but how could Who’s Who possibly have helped?”

“It couldn’t. But when you’re up a stump you always try things that can’t help and about once a year one does.” I swallowed the last spoonful of soup. “I’ve got to say something.”

“Good. Like?”

“Like it is. Look, Lily. I’m a good investigator with a lot of experience. But this is the sixth day since Harvey was charged and I have got nowhere. Not a glimmer of a lead. I may be only half as smart as I think I am, but also I’m handicapped. I don’t belong here. I’m a dude. I’m all right for things like packing in or fishing or a game of pinochle or even a dance at the hall, but this is murder, and I’m a dude. Hell, I’ve been out here a lot, and I’ve known Mel Fox for years, and even he has gone cagey on me. They all have. I’m a goddam dude. There must be private detectives in Helena, and there may be a good one. A native. Dawson would know.”

She put her coffee cup down. “You’re suggesting that I hire a native to help you.”

“Not to help me. If he’s any good he wouldn’t help me. He would just go to work.”

“Oh.” Her blue eyes widened and fastened on me. “You’re checking out.”

“I am not. In the letter I just mailed to Mr Wolfe I said I hoped to be back for the World Series. I’m staying and making motions, but damn it, I’m handicapped. I’m only suggesting that maybe you should ask Dawson.”

“Escamillo.” Her eyes had relaxed and were smiling. “Now really. Aren’t you the second-best detective in the world?”

“Oh, sure. In my world, but this isn’t it. Even Dawson, haven’t you noticed'You’ve paid him a ten-grand retainer, but how does he take me'You must have noticed.”

She nodded. “It’s one of the milder forms of xenophobia. You’re a dude, and I’m a dudine.”

“You own a ranch. That’s different.”

“Well.” She picked up her coffee cup, looked in it, decided it was too cool, and put it down. “It’s too bad Harvey can’t be bailed out, but Mel can handle it-for a while. How much time have we got?”

“Until Harvey’s tried and convicted, apparently two or three months, from what Jessup says.”

“And it’s two months to the World Series. You know, Archie, what I think of you personally has nothing to do with this. Not only are you a better detective than any native would be, but also you know darned well Harvey didn’t shoot a man in the back. But after a week or two of nosing around, the native would probably think he did. Dawson does. Admit I’m right.”

“You’re always right sometimes.”

“Then may I have some hot coffee?” My milk glass was empty, so I had coffee too. When we had finished it and I had paid the check, we left, and as we made our way through the clutter of tables and chairs about twenty pairs of eyes followed us, and about twenty other pairs pretended not to. Monroe County was pretty worked up about the murder of Philip Brodell. Its basic attitude to dudes was no help in bringing on the brotherhood of man, but after all, they brought a lot of dough to Montana and left it there, and shooting them when they were picking huckleberries was not to be encouraged. So the eyes at Lily and me weren’t very friendly; it was her ranch boss that had pulled the trigger. So it looked to them.

At the parking lot behind the caf9'I put my bag in the back of Lily’s station wagon, among the items she had had on her list, before I got in behind the wheel. She was sitting straight so her back wouldn’t touch the seat back, which the slanting August sun had been trying to fry. My side was okay. I backed out from the slot. On a list of the differences between Lily and me it would be near the top that I park so I won’t have to back out when I leave and she doesn’t.

It was only two short blocks to the Presto gas station, where I turned in and stopped at the pump. The gauge said half full and the gas in the tank at the ranch cost nine cents less per gallon, but I wanted Lily to have a look at a person named Gilbert Haight who might be there. He was-a lanky loose-limbed kid whose long neck helped to make up his six feet-but he was wiping the windshield of another car, and Lily had to twist around to get focused on him as I told the other attendant to fill it up with Special. But when the other car rolled off, the kid stood looking at us for half a minute and then walked over to my open window and said, “Nice morning.”

Actually he didn’t say, “Nice morning”; he said, “Nice mahrnin’.” But I’m not going to try to give you the native lingo, at least not often. I only want to report what happened, and that would complicate it too much and slow me down.

I agreed that it was a nice mahrnin’, to be polite, though it was more than an hour past noon, and he said, “My dad told me not to talk to you.”

I nodded. “Yeah, he would.” His dad was Morley Haight, the county sheriff. “He has practically told me not to talk to anybody, but I can’t break the habit, and anyway it’s how I make a living.”

“Uhuh. Fuzz.”

Television and radio certainly spread words around. “Not me,” I said. “Your dad is fuzz, but I’m private. If I asked you how you spent the day Thursday a week ago, you could say it was none of my business. When your father asked me I told him.”

“So I heard.” His eyes went to Lily and came back to me. “You’ve been asking around about me. I’d just as soon save you some trouble.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“I didn’t kill that skunk.”

“Good. That’s what I wanted to know. That narrows it down.”

“It’s a insult. Look at it.” He ignored his colleague, who had filled my order and was there behind his elbow. “The first shot, from behind, got his shoulder and turned him around. The second shot, from in front, got him in the throat and broke his neck and killed him. Look at that. It’s a insult. I have never used more than one cartridge for a deer. Ask anybody. I can take a popgun and slice off the head of a snake at thirty yards. I can do it every time. My dad told me not to talk to you, but I wanted you to know that.”

He turned and went, toward a car that was stopping at the other pump. His colleague took a step and said, “Two-sixty-three,” and I reached for my wallet.

When we were under way again, heading northeast, I asked Lily, “Well?”

“I pass,” she said. “I wanted to have a look at him, that’s all right, but you told me once that it’s stupid to suppose looking at a man will help you decide if he’s a murderer. I don’t want to be stupid and I pass. But what he said'That it’s an insult?”

“Oh, that.” I bore right at a fork. “He can shoot all right. Three people have told me so. And any damn fool knows that if you’re going to plug a man, not just hurt him, kill him, you don’t go for his shoulder. Or his neck either. But he may also be sharp. He might have figured it that everybody knew he was a good shot, so he made it look as if he wasn’t. He had had plenty of time to think it over.”

She considered that for a couple of miles and then asked, “Are you sure he knew that Brodell had-that he was the father of her baby?”

“Hell, everybody in Lame Horse knew it. And beyond. Of course they also knew that Gil Haight was set on her. Last Tuesday-no, Wednesday-he told a man that he still wanted to marry her and was going to.”

“That’s love for you. The sharp right is just ahead.”

I said I knew it.

The twenty-four miles from Timberburg to Lame Horse was all blacktop except for two short stretches-one where it dived down into a deep gully and up again, and one where winters pushed so much rock through and around that they had quit trying to keep it surfaced. For the first few miles out of Timberburg there were some trees and bushes, then broken range for the rest of the way.

The population of Lame Horse was 160, give or take a dozen. The blacktop stopped right in front of Vawter’s General Store, but the road went on, curving left a little ahead. Having been to Timberburg, we needed nothing at Vawter’s, so we didn’t stop. From there it was 2.8 miles to the turnoff to Lily’s ranch, and another 300 yards to the turnoff to her cabin. In that three miles you climbed nearly 2000 feet. To get to the ranch buildings you crossed a bridge over Berry Creek, but from there the creek took a swing to make a big loop, and the cabin was in the loop, only a few hundred yards inside the ranch boundary. To get to the ranch buildings on foot from the cabin you had to cross the creek, either by the bridge or, much shorter, by fording just outside the cabin. In August there was a spot where it could be done by stone-stepping. A better name for it would be boulder-bouncing.