Archie in the Crosshairs

Chapter 12

The predicted heavy rain failed to materialize, with only light showers falling throughout the day. As invariably happens when we are preparing for a critical moment, I found myself on edge, searching for anything that would keep me occupied. I polished three pairs of shoes — two of which did not need it — straightened the neckties in my closet, and dusted the top of my dust-free dresser. In the office, I went back over orchid germination records I had entered onto file cards the day before, thinking I might have made a rare mistake — I hadn’t. I looked at my watch several times each hour, always surprised at how slow its hands were moving. And for most of the day, I totally forgot that somewhere out in the vast reaches of the city there dwelled a man with the stated intent to kill me.

Wolfe, as usual in these situations, appeared totally unconcerned about the evening’s impending drama. At lunch, he held forth on why third parties have been unsuccessful in most American elections, particularly for president, and at dinner, he took the position that television was singularly responsible for lowering the median IQ of the American populace by between ten and twenty points. I mostly nodded and chewed, not fully appreciating the quality of Fritz’s three-star offerings.

Of course, it was somewhat easier for Wolfe to remain calm, given that while Saul, Fred, and I were tramping around in the semi-darkness of the Central Park wilderness, he would be back in the office with a beer and his latest book, or the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle, which he invariably finished.

The hours dragged on after dinner. Finally, at nine, I rose from my desk, stretched, took a drink of water from the glass on my desk, and went to the safe for the shoulder holster and the Marley .32. Wolfe looked up from his book as I strapped the holster and gun under my windbreaker. “I sincerely hope that will not be needed,” he said.

“So do I, but tonight I would feel undressed without it. I’m off.” I went out the back way with the attaché case full of dough and yet again retrieved the Heron from the garage, driving it to Saul’s place on Thirty-Eighth, where he and Fred were waiting in front. We headed north in the drizzle and in silence, the tension palpable.

I parked three blocks south of our destination and we split up. Pedestrian traffic was almost non-existent along Central Park West as I walked north on the east side of the street, all too conscious that I was toting more money than many New Yorkers earn in a lifetime. At Seventy-Seventh, I turned east and entered the park, darkened but for the weak light coming from a few streetlamps scattered around.

I made my way along an asphalt walking path toward the blue spruce, aware that Saul and Fred were somewhere nearby, which was comforting. I set the case down at the bottom of the spruce and surveyed the area, seeing and hearing nothing except the chirping of crickets and an occasional car horn. As we had agreed upon, I stepped back and began slowly walking away to the east. I had gotten no more than twenty yards from the tree when a voice from the west called out, “You!”

I turned back toward the sound as a shot and a spark of flame came from the direction of the tree. The pain seared me, and I’m sure I must have cried out. I’d been hit and fell to my knees and then, I think, onto my back. I waited for another shot that was sure to come. It did. I braced for the end, but felt nothing. At that moment, everything got fuzzy, and apparently shock set in. I remember hearing Saul shout, and then Fred. From there on, I was in no state to give a narrative, and almost everything I describe from this point until the next day has been supplied by others, including Saul, Fred, Wolfe, and Doc Vollmer. I am not in a position to quarrel with what they reported about my speech or my actions.

They rushed toward me and lifted me upright on wobbly legs. Fred was holding the attaché case, still closed. “The one who shot you, he’s a goner,” Saul said, motioning to a still, prone figure next to the tree. “Where are you hit?”

“Up there, I think — oh, God, yes.” I touched my left shoulder and winced, the dampness from the wound soaking through my windbreaker.

“We’ll get you to a hospital — fast,” Saul barked.

“No — home!” I said. “Doc Vollmer.” I think we three argued, maybe even shouted at one another. But I must have out-yelled Saul and Fred, because I vaguely remember lying on the backseat of the car, with Fred driving and Saul next to him, keeping watch over me. They pulled up in front of the brownstone. “Screw going in the back way,” Fred said. “Whoever was after you ain’t going to be doing any more shooting now, that’s for damned sure.”

With one on each side, Fred and Saul got me up the steps to the front door, which was opened by a stunned Fritz. “Mon Dieu, Archie!”

I was later told that I was lying on the sofa in the office with Wolfe looking down at me, eyes wide. “Great hounds and Cerberus!” he roared. “What has happened? Saul? Fred?”

“Archie was hit as he walked away after he put the case down next to the tree,” Saul said. “We got the money back, and the one who shot him is dead.”

I was told that I looked up at the three of them, still dazed. “Okay,” I said to Wolfe, “I know you didn’t save my life, which means that one of these two guys did. Fred, did you save my bacon again?”

“Not me, Archie, although you know that I would have,” Fred said, flustered. “I... damn it, I never even had time to get my automatic out. Everything happened so fast.”

“So, Saul, it was you. Thank you. I owe you one.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Archie. Like Fred, I never fired, not once. I had my revolver ready, all right, but before I could pull the trigger, somebody else did, and the man who shot you caught it.”

“But who?”

“Good question,” Saul said. “But I think right now you should—” He was interrupted by Doc Vollmer, our neighbor and family doctor, who barged into the office. “I came as soon as I got your call, Mr. Wolfe,” he panted, carrying his medical bag. “You said it was an emergency, and...” He looked down at me. “Archie! You are the emergency?”

“He is indeed,” Wolfe barked. “He has been shot. And he needs immediate attention.”

“A bullet wound?” Vollmer said, running a hand over his long, lean jaw. “You know, of course, that I must report it, Mr. Wolfe.”

“It means nothing of the kind, Doctor,” Wolfe said. “This is strictly among those of us in this room.”

The lanky Vollmer drew himself up to his full height and puffed out his chest. “I am sorry, Mr. Wolfe, but it must be reported.”

“No, sir. I seem to remember that over the years, we — and I include Archie — have performed numerous favors for you, including that time when you had found out that you—”

“I remember all too well,” the doctor said stiffly, holding up a hand and shaking his head. “All right, where is the wound, Archie?”

“Left shoulder,” I said, trying without success to avoid groaning.

“I will need a nurse to help me. Call Carol Francis,” Vollmer said to Saul, giving him the number. “She should be home.”

“Now, it seems to me your room is the best place to operate,” he said to me. “Can you get yourself upstairs?”

“Damned right I can, Doc,” I told him. “It’s my shoulder, not a leg.”

“But you are clearly in pain.”

“Yeah, but I can make it. And I sense that you’re going to give me something for said pain — or at least I hope so.”

As I said earlier, I could give you a play-by-play of the next few hours, but it would be in the words of others, because I don’t remember a damned thing. Suffice it to say that Vollmer and his most attractive brunette nurse, Carol, somehow got me fixed up, and they later told me I was given painkillers that sent me on a trip into another world, one in which smiling barefoot maidens with flowing hair and flimsy, transparent gowns hovered over me and stroked my cheeks, feeding me apples and grapes and wine in goblets while playing soft music on golden harps. I recall almost nothing from the time I was shot until nine thirty the next morning, when Fritz knocked gently on my bedroom door and eased in carrying a breakfast tray.

“You do not look the least bit like how I expected a guardian angel to look, but what the hell, you’ll do until one comes along,” I said.

My feeble attempt at humor did nothing whatever to erase the look of concern on Fritz’s face. “Archie, I was so worried when they brought you in last night. Do you think you might be able to eat something?”

“I may have taken a bullet, as apparently happened to me, but it has no appreciable effect on my appetite that I can tell so far. And I like what I’m seeing, and smelling, on that tray. Bring it on.”

Never have pork sausage links, scrambled eggs, and cornbread muffins tasted as good as they did that morning, maybe because less than twelve hours earlier on the dank ground of Central Park, it looked like I might not live to see another day.

“Did I get any calls this morning?” I asked.

“None, Archie. I would have told you.”

As I ate, Fritz fussed around in the room like a mother hen, sneaking looks at me every so often, maybe to make sure I was still breathing. When he finally took the tray away, I was left with a steaming mug of coffee and a note in an envelope addressed to me. It was from Vollmer, who had surprisingly good handwriting for a doctor. It read:

So our grim-faced old sawbones had a sense of humor after all, I thought as I folded the note and returned it to the envelope. I touched my shoulder and found it had indeed been tightly wrapped, and that if I were to take a shower, I would have to cover the dressing with something that was more or less waterproof. Fritz helped there, coming up with a plastic raincoat that we cut up so a sleeve would cover my arm. I then managed to shower, shave, and get myself dressed.

I made my way down to the office at ten forty, which meant Wolfe was still up in the plant rooms, playing with his posies. On my desk, I found a bullet and a note:

The man is all heart, I thought. Fritz came into the office and seemed surprised to see me at my desk. “Archie, should you be up? Is this wise?”

“Our good doctor does not seem to feel I am on death’s doorstep, so I might as well behave like someone who has a future. The breakfast you served me was wonderful, as was the coffee, of course. May I have another cup?”

He nodded and left the office as I perused the day’s copy of the Times, which was on Wolfe’s desk along with the morning mail. The pages held no mention of last night’s episode in Central Park — probably because it occurred too late to make the home-delivered edition.

I was working on a steaming cup of Fritz’s java when Wolfe walked in, placed a raceme of yellow orchids in the vase on his desk, sat, and rang for beer. He dipped his chin in my direction, his version of a greeting, although, unlike his behavior most mornings, he looked long and hard at me, which I took as an expression of concern.

“If you are about to ask me if I slept well, as you usually do, I will answer with a resounding yes, although that may well be because I apparently ingested — to use Doc Vollmer’s word — something that sent me straight to dreamland.”

“Drugs,” Wolfe said, pronouncing the word as if it were odious.

“Yeah, I agree. I don’t like to take anything I can’t spell or pronounce unless it’s prepared by Fritz. But at least I’m not hurting like I must have last night, although my memory of recent events is, shall we say, less than reliable.”

“Has Miss Hutchinson telephoned this morning?” Wolfe asked.

“No. Fritz would have mentioned it.”

He was silent for several seconds, then reached for the Times. “Nothing in there about last night,” I said. “I already looked.”

Wolfe opened the first of two beers Fritz brought in, pouring it into a glass. “Call Mr. Cohen.”

“Just what I was thinking.” I got Lon on the first ring as Wolfe picked up his receiver.

“What now, Archie? Or are you just lonesome for my voice?”

“I always like to hear your mellifluous voice, oh great scribe and chronicler of Gotham.”

“Of course you like to hear me — who wouldn’t? I’m one helluvan interesting guy. Now what’s on your mind? We have a paper to deliver to our news-hungry readers, as you may recall.”

“I am interested in learning about a little episode that transpired in Central Park last night.”

“Is that right, Mister Private Detective? Now, just how in Hades do you know about that?”

“Believe it or not, you are not my only pipeline into the goings-on in the City That Never Sleeps.”

“If that’s the case, why not ask one of your other pipelines about last night?” Lon snapped.

“Oh, come on. After all we’ve been through together.”

“Being in this business, Archie, I am curious by nature — but then, I think you know that.”

“Let’s say that I do, for purposes of moving the conversation along.”

“Good. And just why would I be curious about your interest in what you refer to as ‘a little episode’ in Central Park?”

“Chalk it up to my also being curious by nature.”

“Nice try, Archie,” Lon said, “but it won’t wash. Does this by chance have anything to do with Cordelia Hutchinson?” I looked at Wolfe, who dipped his chin. Another of his nods.

“It might,” I said.

“So! Now we are getting somewhere. Do I sense a scoop?”

“I have no idea — at least not yet. You still haven’t told me anything about what happened in the park.”

“Why do I have this feeling that you already know at least something about what I am going to say? Well, here goes: Last night about ten or so, shots were fired in the park near the intersection of Central Park West and Seventy-Seventh Street. A passerby who was walking his dog on the sidewalk along Seventy-Seventh told police — and later our reporter — that he had heard what he thought was a gunshot, and then a second one, just to his north in the park. He was pretty rattled, and he said he couldn’t see into park that well, given the lighting, but he thought there had been several people moving around, and he could make out at least two figures who were on the ground.”

“Interesting.”

“Isn’t it? The police reported that by the time patrol cars got to the scene — three of them, in fact, along with an ambulance — there was only one guy lying there, and he was quite dead. Shot in the back, and the bullet ruptured his pump. Death was instantaneous.”

“Do they know who he was?”

“Yeah, an old friend of the police, so to speak. Noah McManus, a minor-league thug with a record as long as a loan shark’s memory. Over the years, he’s gotten nailed for armed robbery, burglary, petty larceny, assault with a deadly weapon, and a number of short cons, including — believe it or not — the old shell game, which I thought had become obsolete long ago. One cop who our reporter talked to said McManus was the most inept lawbreaker he had ever seen.”

“Well, some old enemy must have finally caught up with him, whatever the reason,” I said.

“Could be. McManus seems to have gotten a shot off himself. A Smith & Wesson .38 Special was found beside his body, with one chamber empty. His prints were on the revolver, which the cops said had been fired recently.”

“And you said he was plugged in the back. Odd,” I pointed out.

“That’s got New York’s Finest puzzled, too,” Lon said. “If it had been some sort of two-man shootout, wouldn’t McManus have caught the bullet in his chest?”

“My point exactly. Anything else?”

“I’m itching to know why you’re so curious about this, Archie. Not to mention how you even knew about it in the first place.”

I looked over at Wolfe and grinned. “Some day, perhaps, that itch can get itself scratched. Are you going to be playing this big?”

“Are you kidding? Damned right we are. If you recall, some months back, two joggers were mugged in Central Park on separate occasions, and a middle-aged couple from Michigan got held up and robbed here — all three occurrences during the same week. Then the mayor blew a gasket, called a press conference, and ordered the police to step up patrols in the park. ‘This is our great city’s crown jewel, and we will not have it tarnished as long as I am privileged to hold this office,’ he said.”

“Which means for you...?”

“Which means we’re throwing everything we’ve got at this. For one thing, the timing is perfect for us as an afternoon paper. The story broke too late for the Times, the Daily News, and those other morning rags. The Gazette that lands on your doorstep shortly will have an eight-column banner reading VIOLENCE AND DEATH IN OUR ‘CROWN JEWEL’! We’ve got the eyewitness account of the dog walker, an interview with our distraught mayor who promises ‘immediate action,’ and a history of assaults in the park. Oh, and an editorial headlined ‘Violence runs amok in a great city.’”

“Mark me down as impressed,” I told Lon.

“As well you should be. And by the way, your old pal Inspector Cramer and his thickheaded boss, Commissioner Humbert, were not available for comment.”

“You are stretching the definition of pal, but I am not at all surprised that both of them are holed up. This will make news across the country.”

“And we’re there with the first report, which will get picked up by the wire services and distributed before they’re able to do their own stories. Now, do you have anything to tell me, anything at all?”

“Sorry, I am of no help.”

“Why do I have this feeling that you’re holding out on me?”

“Chalk it up to what I call your ‘newshound’s complex,’” I said. “You guys are so suspicious by nature that you wouldn’t believe your dear old grandmother if she told you she loved you.”

“My dear old grandmother is long in her grave. Anyway, Archie old pal, being around guys like you for so long has made me leery of taking anything, or anyone, at face value.”

“I am truly cut to the quick,” I said, trying to sound hurt. “After all we’ve done for you over these many years, it’s enough to make me cry.”

“That’ll be the day,” Lon shot back. “Now if you will excuse me, or even if you won’t, we have a paper to put out.”