Archie in the Crosshairs

Chapter 4

Saul Panzer is one of the handful of people Wolfe invites to dine with us in the old brownstone. Among the others are Orrie Cather, an operative we frequently use; Lon Cohen of the Gazette; the wealthy Long Island orchid-grower Lewis Hewitt; our physician and neighbor, Doc Vollmer; our lawyer, Nathaniel Parker; and on rare occasions, Inspector Cramer, who will put aside any animosities toward Wolfe and me for the pleasure of sampling the culinary miracles wrought by Fritz Brenner. Fred Durkin, another operative Wolfe employs almost as often as Saul, has had numerous meals in the house over the years also, but because he has committed such sins as putting vinegar on food before tasting it, he has been relegated to eating in the kitchen with Fritz.

At ten minutes to seven, the back doorbell rang, and I let our dinner guest into the kitchen. Saul Panzer would not impress you with his appearance. He stands about five foot seven and tips the scales at one hundred and forty pounds, give or take a few ounces. His long face is dominated by an oversize nose, and he always seems to be in need of a shave. His shoulders are stooped and his dust-colored hair usually needs combing, although on this night, he had it slicked down in deference to the occasion and had left his battered brown cap at home. He also had donned a suit, white shirt, and tie — another concession to the evening.

But you should not for a moment let Saul’s looks deceive you. He happens to be the best operative, freelance or otherwise, in New York’s five boroughs, and probably in the whole of the country. He is next to invisible when on a tail, and no one can match him at ferreting out clues. He commands double the rates of most freelancers but never lacks for business, although he will drop anything else he is doing if Nero Wolfe needs him for a job.

The two men have great respect for each other, and Wolfe has said numerous times that he trusts Saul “more than thought credible,” with which I concur. A bachelor, Saul lives on a spacious full floor of the building on East Thirty-Eighth Street that I referred to earlier. To keep him company, he has a grand piano; floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked with books he has read; museum-caliber art decorating the walls; and a well-stocked bar and wine cellar. His earnings over the years also have enabled him to buy three buildings in his old neighborhood in Brooklyn — buildings that each have shot up in value.

Stepping into the kitchen, Saul waved a “hello” to Fritz and gave me a “what’s-going-on-with-this-backdoor-stuff?” look. My response was a “you’ll-find-out-before-the-evening-is-over” grin.

Business talk is verboten at Wolfe’s dinner table, and that night would be no exception. The conversation ranged from the economic shortcomings of the Soviet system to a comparison of the construction methods of Egyptian and Aztec pyramids and the advantages of each. Saul had some opinions; I mostly nodded and chewed. After dinner, followed by a dessert of strawberries Romanoff, we repaired to the office for coffee and then drinks. Saul sat in the red leather chair with a snifter of cognac on the small table at his elbow, while Wolfe had beer and I sipped scotch.

“You, of course, wonder why you were asked to come via the passageway tonight,” Wolfe said.

“I do. Although I know something is up, because I cased the street before I went around the back way, and parked at one end of your block, there’s an unmarked car with a plainclothes man behind the wheel, trying without success to look inconspicuous. One of Cramer’s minions, no doubt.”

Wolfe raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware of that. Were you, Archie?”

“No, sir. Interesting.”

“All right, it is time you received the full picture.” For the next half hour, Wolfe proceeded to lay everything out, from the shots fired at me to the two threatening phone calls and our review of the case files.

“Lovin’ babe!” Saul said after Wolfe had finished. That’s the Panzer equivalent of swearing, and the strongest language I’ve ever heard him use.

“Indeed,” Wolfe said. “Do you have any thoughts?”

“It seems like somebody has waited an awfully long time before taking revenge on you. Any possibility that it’s someone other than the people connected to those five cases?”

“Of course it is possible,” Wolfe replied, “but those are the episodes that have generated the most intense animosity toward me by far.”

“I was at least peripherally involved in three... no, four of those cases, and I remember the anger,” Saul said. “What can I be doing?”

Wolfe’s mouth twitched. “I had hoped this would pique your interest. Can you make some inquiries — discreet ones, at least at first — about the living principals in those five files? We can bring on Fred, if you think it would help.”

“I’ll fly solo, at least for now,” Saul said, turning to me. “Are you hunkering down here?”

“Too damned much of the time,” I grumped. “I have snuck out — by the back way, of course — to take Lily Rowan to dinner and to transact some banking. Unfortunately, the latter activity has involved withdrawals lately, not deposits,” I added, looking at Wolfe.

“Any idea if your phantom caller knows about that passageway to Thirty-Fourth Street?”

“I’m not sure, but I doubt it.”

Saul nodded. “Because this rocky old island of ours is lacking in alleys, most people mistakenly think the only way in and out of a building is through the street entrance.”

“The paucity of alleyways in this city can be traced to an egregious decision made generations ago by so-called municipal planners,” Wolfe put in. “These men felt alleys would take up valuable space that could better be used for structures. The consequences of that act are all too apparent to anyone traversing New York’s streets: refuse piled high on the sidewalks in front of commercial establishments and residences, and garbage and delivery trucks parked and double-parked in front of these same buildings, impeding vehicular and pedestrian traffic.”

I was tempted to point out that because Wolfe rarely leaves the brownstone, he has little exposure to — and little reason to complain about — such unpleasant conditions as garbage and deliveries stacked up on so many Midtown sidewalks, but I was not about to debate the issue. Besides, our dinner guest had more to say about back entrances in Manhattan, and Wolfe loves to hear him talk.

“Over the years, I have come to discover all sorts of narrow passageways between buildings that lead away from presumably undetected rear exits,” Saul said.

“Handy for burglars to know,” I remarked.

“You can say that again, Archie. Case in point: A dozen or so years back, I got hired by a rag trade nabob who owned a duplex in a six-story building in the Village — a dandy setup. His wife’s jewels — a haul worth close to a half million — had been pilfered from an upstairs bedroom, or at least the most valuable ones had, the diamonds and rubies. The cops were stumped. There were doormen on duty around the clock, and they said they never admitted any strangers to the building, which I believed. However, the place had a rear exit that opened on a narrow, winding passage between two buildings that ended at MacDougal Street.

“The lock on the rear exit to the duplex was intact, which means it had been picked,” Saul continued. “That smelled like Eddie ‘Light Fingers’ Cornelius, who could work wonders with locks and who also was known for his skill at lifting expensive baubles. To make a long story short, I ran Eddie to ground before he could fence the stuff and gave him a choice: give me the diamonds and rubies or get turned over to the law.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Eddie coughed up the gems, you didn’t tell the cops, and you returned the ice to its owner like the noble fellow you are.”

“Bingo! But there’s more to the story that will interest both of you. I also got Eddie to give me a dandy fold-out map he had, although he didn’t like it one bit. He had put this map together himself, or so he claimed, and he did a good job. It covered Manhattan, river to river and from the Village on the south to Ninetieth Street on the north. It showed dozens of passageways between buildings that he had inked in. Very helpful for anyone wanting access to the rear of a structure.”

“Like maybe a jewel thief,” I observed. Saul grinned and took another sip of cognac.

“Most interesting,” Wolfe said. “But it begs a question.”

“The answer is no,” Saul replied.

I spun around in my chair. “What question? What did I miss here?”

Wolfe made a sound like a chuckle. “I wondered whether that map showed our own path from the back door to Thirty-Fourth Street, and Saul told me what I wanted to hear.”

“Hell, I could have told you so,” I said, trying to recover from being flummoxed. “Like it or not, we are not exactly in a high-rent district here. Nowhere near in a league with Park Avenue or the Upper East Side, or even certain parts of Greenwich Village. This Eddie character apparently knows where the pickings are best.”

“I will give him that,” Saul said. “He’s one slimy character, but he’s also damned shrewd.”

“Do we really care that our own back exit isn’t on his map?” I posed.

Saul nodded. “I think you should care and be thankful, Archie. Guys like Eddie, who are smart enough to come up with a map like he did, also know how valuable it can be to others who want to, shall we say, stay out of sight as much as possible. I’m under no illusion that the map I have is Eddie’s only copy. I would not be surprised to learn that he’s made copies of it and peddled them at a nice price to all sorts of people who prefer not to be seen on the streets.”

“I agree with your assumption,” Wolfe said, draining the last of his second post-dinner beer.

“Thank you, sir, and thank you also for the superb dinner,” Saul said. “Please convey my thanks to Fritz for another memorable gastronomic experience. Do you prefer that I leave the way I came?”

“I do. For now, let us maintain the fiction that we are an armed camp, letting no one in or out. We must remain vigilant. As Winston Churchill once said, ‘We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.’”

After Saul left and I bolted the back door, I poured myself a glass of milk in the kitchen and returned to the office, dropping into my desk chair. “Do you feel safer knowing that an unmarked car occupied by one of New York’s Finest sits at the end of the block, presumably protecting us from the forces of evil?” I asked.

Wolfe’s reply was a scowl.

“I feel the same way,” I told him. “But I will sleep well regardless. I have no doubt that our fortifications will keep the barbarians at bay.”

That earned me another scowl, which I returned with a grin as I rose to go upstairs to bed. It had been a long day.