Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 805 & 806, September/October 2008

The Boy Who Cried Wolfe by Loren D. Estleman

© 2008 by Loren D. Estleman

Mystery without murder features in Loren D. Estleman’s Claudius Lyon series. Lyon’s first outing (EQMM June 2008) involved apparent fraud in the literary world; this time out he takes a case for a boy in search of his father. But Mr. Estleman has another side. His new hard-boiled thriller, Gas City, got starred reviews from PW, Booklist, and Kirkus, and Entertainment Weekly said: “He’s been called the heir to Chandler — and it’s easy to see why.”

The bomb dropped while I was card-indexing Claudius Lyon’s latest contribution to horticultural science, a hybrid tomato plant that comprised all the disadvantages of a beefsteak and none of the advantages of a roma, and Lyon, foundering up to his chins, as usual, behind his preposterously enormous desk, was pretending to read The Portable Schopenhauer. It was actually Carolyn Keene’s The Clue of the Dancing Puppet inside the drab dust jacket, and he’d read it twice before in my tenure.

“Arnie,” he said, “how long have you been working for me?”

I scowled at my typewriter, an IBM Selectric so sensitive it anticipates my mistakes and makes them for me. “Three years, two months, fifteen days, eleven minutes, and twenty-nine seconds.”

“How much do you estimate you’ve embezzled from me during that period?”

My fingers slipped. A Gordian knot of keys thudded against the card on the platen.

He looked up from his book with his Gerber-baby smile. “I am a genius, but not an absent-minded one. I call my bank from time to time and occasionally balance my checkbook. When you deposit the royalties from NASA on my father’s pressure-cooker gasket patent, you round down the amount and palm the rest. Absent a tedious study of the actual figures, I can arrive at a reasonable estimate by multiplying your time in my employ by the average sum pilfered. The product would support a modest harem.”

“Well, it was a lark while it flew,” I said finally. “Is it federal or local? I hear they put out a spread in the U.S. prisons. Anything beats mac-and-cheese Wednesday in Sing Sing.”

“There’s no need for bravado. I don’t intend to pursue charges. With whom would I replace you? There is only one Arnie Woodbine, and Archie Goodwin is permanently off the market. I must make the best of my knockoff. Dock yourself ten dollars a week until the account is even.”

“But that’ll take—”

“Six years, one month, twelve days, five hours, and thirty-two minutes. Consider it a long-term contract, which you’d be wise not to break.” He returned to his reading.

In case anything about the foregoing seems familiar — not counting the larceny — now is a good time to point out that “Claudius Lyon” is an invention. The man who uses the name has remodeled his life to conform to his hero’s, Nero Wolfe of Manhattan, who raises orchids, employs a world-class chef, and solves mysteries brought to him by baffled clients. Lyon’s own limitations have forced compromises: He grows tomatoes, eats kosher most of the time because that’s all his chef Gus knows how to cook, and depends upon me, the poor man’s Archie Goodwin (Wolfe’s legman and hectoring angel), for mundane errands.

He’s as fat as Wolfe but much shorter, and when he climbs into the big chair behind his desk he looks like Tweedledum with his legs swinging free. Not having any prior experience with geniuses, I don’t know if he is one, but he’s a damn clever little butterball who hasn’t forgotten a thing he’s learned from the thousands of whodunits he’s read. I’ve seen him take more than his share of pratfalls, but I’ve never seen him stumped.

Well, I had nothing better to do for the next six years, one month, etc., and I’d been to prison and found it not up to my standards, so I didn’t complain about the pay cut; instead I worked out an arrangement with Gus to buy generic lox and split the price difference. Lyon hasn’t Wolfe’s palate and wouldn’t know the gourmet brand from Karl’s Kut-Rate Kippers. It was a stingy little scam compared to the one I’d had going, even when I extended it to include gristly corned beef and day-old bagels, but it would do until something better came along. If you’re the type who can live life on the level without gnawing your nails down to the knuckle, congratulations, and keep it to yourself. Without a dash of pepper the stew’s just too flat.

The reason for all this chatter is, it explains how the principal resident of the townhouse at 700 Avenue J, Flatbush, put his chubby little gray cells to work on the problem of William Thew.

Gus’s main motivator in our conspiracy was the convenience of not having to take the crosstown bus to the snooty little market that sold the best kosher in the five boroughs; the cheap stuff was available on the corner, and it delivered. I happened to answer the doorbell the day the pushy delivery boy showed up lugging a paper sack bigger than he was. I had to part a bunch of celery to see his pinched little face under the obligatory backward baseball cap.

“Here, kid.” I traded him a buck for the sack.

“My name’s Jasper, not kid. Jasper Hull.”

“The hell you say. You got that from an eighty-six-year-old man’s obituary in the Daily News.”

“It’s Jasper just the same. I want to see Lyon.”

“What’s the matter, I don’t tip big enough?”

“I got a case for him. He’s a detective, ain’t he? That’s what it says in the Yellow Pages.”

“It doesn’t either. I wrote the ad. It says he provides answers to questions.”

“If I got it that way I’d’ve took my tip and went. I seen all the fortunetellers I want to. They charge you up front and tell you a lot of bogus stuff that could mean anything.”

“ ‘Satisfaction guaranteed.’ The ad says that too.”

“Okay. Here.” He held up the buck I’d given him.

“What’s that for?”

“It’s a what-do-you-call-it, a retainer.”

I grinned. “Nice try, kid. Tell Captain Stoddard he’s in violation of the child labor laws.” I started to push the door shut, but damn if he didn’t insert his wiry little body into the space. It was either squash him or stop. I considered the point and decided against squashing. It’s hell on the finish.

I said, “You’d think Fraud would have enough to keep it busy in a town this size without setting traps for one little fat guy with schizophrenic tendencies, but a month doesn’t go by without the cop in charge trying to trick Lyon into accepting payment and busting him for practicing private investigation without a license. Recruiting a kid’s bad enough; a dollar’s an insult to his intelligence. A fiver’s plenty cute given the inflationary index. I’m surprised Stoddard didn’t knock out a front tooth and give you a scruffy mutt from the pound.”

“How good can he be if he don’t charge?”

“So good he doesn’t need your dirty buck.”

“A minute ago it was your dirty buck.” He stuck it in his jeans pocket. “I don’t like cops, either. They say they’re there to help, but all they do is write stuff down and shove it in a drawer. The detective agencies I tried won’t listen to nobody but an adult. I seen Lyon’s name in the listing, and when this order came in where I work, I thought I’d take another shot.”

“Shot at what?”

“Finding my father.”

“Wipe your feet, kid.” I opened the door wide.

Lyon squeaked bloody murder when I told him I’d parked a ten-year-old boy in the front room. To begin with, he doesn’t trust any creature his own size, and as for childhood, he thinks it’s a conspiracy to break valuable objects and make doorknobs sticky, which is a favorite phobia of his. He’d just come down from the plant room and hugged to his chest the specimen of the day in its fragile clay pot. “Get rid of him and spray Lysol on anything he might have touched. Children are the main carriers of most of the diseases on this planet.”

“Just this morning you were whining about having nothing to do. Now you want to shoo away work.”

“I’m not a missing-persons bureau. Why should I be made to suffer because some preadolescent was careless enough to misplace his sire?”

“You don’t know suffering. Try sitting around listening to you sigh and moan and cheat on crossword puzzles.”

“I never cheat. Whoever designs them needs a refresher course in basic vocabulary. ‘Impact’ as a verb. Phooey!”

“I’ll bring the kid in. You want me to put down papers?”

“Remain standing, and be prepared to hurl yourself between us the moment he starts to sneeze.”

Jasper Hull turned the big globe with a palm in passing; Lyon sucked in air through his nostrils. The kid stopped in front of the desk.

“You’re fat.”

“And you have no pubic hair. Please remove your cap. The room is heated sufficiently and the roof doesn’t leak.”

He uncovered a shock of red hair and hopped up onto the orange leather chair. “My mother’s dead. I live with my aunt. She don’t know I’m here. She says if my father was worth looking for he wouldn’t have to be looked for.”

“She has a point, though the syntax is dubious logically. Why do you want to find him?”

“Aunt Jill’s okay, but I’m sick of living with girls. My father left before I was born. I’m not sure my mother even knew his name.” He lifted his chin.

“That’s unfortunate. Without a name or a description, there’s no place to start.”

“He’s a tall, skinny redhead and his name’s William Thew.”

I was taking notes, poised as ordered to throw myself into the bacterial breach if necessary. “That’s T-H-E-W?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t spell it out.”

Lyon said, “You stated he left before you were born. When did you meet?”

“The day my mother died, in Brooklyn General Hospital.”

Kids are natural reporters; it’s only when they grow up that they learn to digress and embellish. His mother had been hit by a truck in a crosswalk near their apartment six months ago and died a few days later without regaining consciousness. That day, Jasper and his aunt got off the hospital elevator just as the man he’d described was leaving his mother’s room. The man, who was about thirty, was wearing a heavy overcoat over faded jeans and was obviously not a hospital employee. Asked if he’d come to visit the patient, he’d said yes. When the aunt asked who he was, he’d hesitated, turned toward a window in the corridor, then turned back and said, “William Thew.”

“How do you know my sister?”

“We, uh, went to school together.”

“Is she awake?”

“No.”

“It was very kind of you to come. Where can I contact you in case her condition changes?”

He gave her a phone number, then looked at his watch and said he had to get back to work. The elevator was open, and as he stepped inside, Jasper spoke up. “What kind of work?”

“I’m an artist.” The doors slid shut and he descended.

“Did you have any contact after that?” Lyon asked.

“No. After Mom died, Aunt Jill tried the number, but it was phony. We looked for him at the funeral. He didn’t show.”

“How did he know your mother was in the hospital?”

“The accident was in the paper. He must’ve read about it.”

“Did either of you ask at the nurses’ station if he’d stopped there to find out what room she was in?”

“My aunt did, but you know what those places are like, nurses coming and going all the time. Nobody remembered him.”

“What makes you think he’s your father?”

“Well, we both have red hair.”

“Ten percent of the population does.”

“I just know, okay?”

“Not okay. Mr. Woodbine informed you I’m not a fortuneteller, and I don’t believe you are one either.”

“Aunt Jill thinks I’m nuts, too. Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper.”

Lyon looked at me. I got a sheet of stationery out of my desk and a Cross pen and gave them to the kid. He folded the paper into a stiff square, stuck his tongue out the corner of his mouth, and scribbled, stopping a couple of times to look up at Lyon. He handed back the sheet, blank side up. I passed it to Lyon, who glanced at it and gave it back to me. I grinned. In a few strokes the kid had captured his basketball-shaped head and that sourpuss expression he wears when he thinks he’s being poker-faced. Jasper Hull had a future as a cartoonist.

“He said he’s an artist,” Jasper said. “My mother couldn’t draw a straight line and neither can my aunt. Where’d I get it if not from him?”

“Young man, Shakespeare’s father was once fined for maintaining a dungheap in his front yard. His son wrote Hamlet. Gus!”

The kid jumped, but I was used to that bellow. The major-domo in the rusty cutaway coat hobbled in with a cream soda and left as Lyon pried off the cap, swigged, and burped. Then he started digging in his ear with a finger. That caught me off guard. I hadn’t thought the conversation had provided anything to bother waking up his cortex over.

He withdrew the finger. “Do you remember the number of your mother’s room at Brooklyn General?”

“Six-oh-eight, why?”

“You came here seeking the services of a detective, not lessons in the practice of the craft. Please leave a number where you can be reached with Mr. Woodbine.”

“Yeah, I bet he calls.”

I showed him out and went back to the office, where Lyon was studying the sketch. “The tough little nut stole my pen,” I said, “but that’s all right. He sure can draw.”

“Caricature is the lowest form of humor. Dispose of it.”

I put it in my breast pocket. I hoped I could find a frame the right size.

“I want you to take the digital camera and photograph the view from all the windows between room six-oh-eight and the elevator in Brooklyn General,” he said. “Shoot every angle.”

“They’ll think I’m a terrorist.”

“Phooey. ‘Hospital security’ is a contradiction in terms. If he hadn’t the ill fortune to encounter Jasper Hull and his aunt, William Thew would have been in and out like a ghost.”

“Why ill fortune; child support?”

“Don’t put the horse before the cart.”

“I think you’re supposed to.”

“Pre-Industrial Age semantics. He hoards personal data as if it were gold, and I am an intellectual Jesse James. When he ran into them he wandered down my stagecoach road.”

I got the camera out of the safe. “I’ll hang on to a shot just to get one of you in the saddle. Tabloids’ll eat it up.”

I didn’t ask what was back of the assignment; he’d just have given me the speech about cadging lessons in the practice of the craft. I picked a quiet time during visiting hours and took thirty shots. There was just the one window in the corridor between 608 and the elevator, so it didn’t take long, and I finished just before an orderly got off on that floor pushing his squeaky cart. I boarded the elevator with the camera tucked under my coat and found a one-hour place on Utica.

Ansel Adams wouldn’t have gotten up to look at my portfolio: cars in the parking lot, a brick hardware building with some old advertising on it, an ancient tenement coming down, a new high-rise going up, and an enterprising vendor selling flowers from a sidewalk stand, a bane to the competition in the gift shop downstairs. But Lyon gave each print the close attention of a Renaissance expert studying a cache of Rembrandt drawings. Some he slid to one side after thirty seconds of scrutiny, others he bent over at his desk with a heavy brass-handled magnifying glass the size of a hand mirror in his fist. He kept returning to one in particular, then sat back and laid aside the glass.

“Tell me what you think.”

I looked at it. It was one of the shots in which the old hardware building featured prominently. “Great composition. I owe it all to a guy I met doing a year and a day for taking pictures of naked ladies in a tanning parlor.”

“The composition is hideous, but I didn’t send you out on behalf of Architectural Digest. The focus is good. The leaves having fallen from the trees this time of year gave you a better perspective on the billboard than would have been possible six months ago, when Jasper Hull and his aunt visited his mother in the hospital.”

It was painted directly on the brick wall of the hardware store, possibly with the very product it advertised.

“ ‘It Covers the World,’ ” I read. “And sure enough, there it is dumping out of a bucket all over Terra Firma, one coat. I bet Sherwin-Williams has been using that slogan for a hundred years.”

Lyon waited for more, then sighed, drew a Sharpie from a squat Toby mug of Napoleon on his desk, and spent another minute bent over the picture. When he sat back, I saw that Jasper Hull had nothing on Claudius Lyon in the department of freehand art. He’d sketched in a close approximation of bunches of maple leaves on the naked tree branches that had stood between the camera and its subject.

But it wasn’t his technique that drew a long low whistle from me; much to the annoyance of Lyon, who when he condescends to purse his lips and blow, manages only a dry whoosh. His expression curdled further. “Indeed. Have we any friendly contacts on the police force?”

“Stoddard’s as friendly as it gets, and you know where he’d admire to put his size thirteen.”

I’m not without resources, however, and got a buddy on the staff of The Habitual Handicapper to call in a couple of markers in Records and Information. When he checked in, Lyon eavesdropped on the extension. “Encouraging,” he said when we hung up; which, coming from him, is a rave. “Please telephone young Mr. Hull and arrange an appointment.”

“Mr. Woodbine, I take it? I’m Jillian Hull.”

Next to a full pardon from the governor, it was the nicest surprise I could have hoped to find on the doorstep. She was on the bright side of thirty, a honey of a honey blonde with her hair pinned back loosely behind cute little ears and blue eyes as big as coat buttons. She came up to my shoulder and I could’ve lifted her in one hand, but I didn’t chance it. She wasn’t smiling.

Neither was Jasper, slumped next to her with his fists in his pockets. “She was there when you called. She made me tell.”

“My nephew’s been through a traumatic time, Mr. Woodbine. Humoring him is one thing, taking advantage of his fantasies in a season of mourning quite another. It may even be criminal.”

I leered; Goodwin grins, but my mouth don’t work that way. The suit she wore fit her too well here and there to back up her pique. “Pardon my not responding, but it wouldn’t be hospitable to make you go through it all again for Lyon. He’s the criminal in charge. I’m just the henchman.”

“Take me to him, please.”

It being a few minutes short of evening business hours, I trotted upstairs and gave him the news in the plant room. He was up to his elbows in sheep manure, but it wasn’t enough of a distraction to keep him from blushing. Nero Wolfe only distrusts the female sex; Claudius Lyon is terrified of it. “Tell her she isn’t invited and turn her out.”

“She’d take Jasper with her. He’s a minor, she’s his guardian. You’d be giving up your curtain-closer.”

He forgot himself and rubbed his nose, leaving a stain. The whole world was going to stink now. “Seat her on the sofa, out of my direct line of sight.”

“She already took the orange chair.”

“Sweet Mr. Moto! They have the rest of the world; why must they lay siege to my one little corner?”

The doorbell rang. I went downstairs and took a slant through the window by the door. The angular figure perched on the stoop sent me bounding back up to the plant room. “It’s Captain Stoddard.”

Lyon, disinfecting himself at the sink, didn’t blush this time; he whitened a shade. Authority of any kind always took the wind out of him. Me, too, but my reasons are well known. Maybe his old man had caught him filching candy when he was little and had a cop friend put him in the clink to teach him a lesson. They say that’s how Hitchcock got started. “Word must have reached him of our inquiries,” he squeaked. “Don’t answer!”

“He’ll just come back madder.”

The ringing stopped and the banging started. Lyon bobbed his head, washing his hands furiously. “I suppose we must let him sit in, for the sake of the door.”

“Got you, Woodbine,” greeted Stoddard when I opened up. “Lyon too. Using police services for private business.”

“Business involves statements and receipts and scratches in a ledger. This is a hobby. And police records are public property.”

I’d cribbed the speech from Lyon. There was more to it, but a steel fist shot out of a coat sleeve and took up the slack in my windpipe. I squeaked — plagiarizing again from the boss.

I never found out how far he intended to take it, because Jillian and Jasper Hull came out of the office to see what all the noise was about. When Stoddard saw them his eyes returned to their sockets and he let go.

When I finished coughing I made introductions and told everyone what he needed to know to that point. We went into the office, where the captain commandeered the orange chair, leaving two of the smaller green ones for the other guests.

Promptly on the hour, the building shook from the elevator rattling in the shaft, but the effect of the maestro’s big entrance was spoiled when it got stuck between the second and first floors. This had happened before, and there was only one way to jar it back into operation. He was loath to do it with an audience. However, after a moment of mulling, the thudding began; pictures danced on the walls, and anyone with half an imagination could picture the chunky little passenger jumping up and down in the car. Finally the mechanism kicked back in with a dry chuckle and the cage settled to ground level. Lyon emerged, vest, lapels, and pocket handkerchief in perfect alignment, but his face as red as the fruit of the Lycopersicum esculentum in the pot he held in both hands.

Jasper stifled a snort as the host made his dignified waddle to his chair; it was the first time I’d seen the little squirt behave like a normal child.

When he was seated, Lyon nodded to each visitor, making eye contact with none. “Thank you for coming. The presence of Ms. Hull and Mr. Stoddard is an unexpected pleasure, however uninvited.”

The two thus named started to talk at the same time. Stoddard found his manners in some cluttered corner and shut his mouth. Jillian Hull said, “I’m glad the police are here. It will make it easier to prefer charges against you for swindling a minor.”

“Mr. Stoddard investigates fraud, which as he can tell you requires an exchange of money. I’m sure young Master Hull will confirm that I’ve declined compensation of any kind.”

Stoddard thumped the arm of his chair with a horned palm. “You don’t have to, as long as you can get the police to do your work for free.”

Lyon swallowed, stifling a squeak. “Hardly free. I pay confiscatory taxes that contribute in no small measure to your department’s budget. The information I obtained there is community property, and was connected only indirectly to my investigation. I conducted it merely to confirm my suspicions. Mr. Woodbine?”

I got up from my desk and handed Jasper the fax we’d received that day from Brooklyn P.D.

“Is that the man you met in the hospital last spring?” Lyon asked.

The boy started bouncing in his seat; there was hope for him yet. “That’s him! That’s my father!” He gave it to his aunt, who looked up from it and nodded. “It looks like a mug shot,” she said.

“It is. The man’s name is Randolph Otto. Currently he’s in the New York State Penitentiary in Ossining, serving a sentence of ten to fifteen years for burglary. It’s his second offense.”

“His name’s William Thew.” Jasper was sullen again.

“The name doesn’t appear among his recorded aliases. I hardly expected it to.” Lyon scowled at the plant on his desk and pinched a leaf, squashing a bug. He wiped his hand and returned the hanky to his pocket. “When you met, it was May, a particularly pleasant month this year. I suspected the man was there for no legitimate purpose when you told me he was wearing a heavy overcoat. In warm weather, bulky coats are useful for one thing only: concealing stolen items. Armed with that supposition, I turned to the police to determine whether they had investigated a complaint of plundering at Brooklyn General during that time. The news that a suspect had been arrested and convicted was a bonus. I congratulate your brother officers, Mr. Stoddard.”

The captain said something inappropriate with a lady and child in the room, or for that matter my Uncle Butt. I’d have made an example of him if my throat weren’t still sore.

“The late Ms. Hull — Jasper’s mother — had nothing of value in her room,” Lyon continued; “otherwise, I’m sure Jasper would have noted that something was missing and included that fact when he reported the events of that day to me. Mr. Otto left her room empty-handed.”

Jillian said, “I’d brought home her personal effects the day before. She wasn’t expected to recover, and I’ve heard stories about watches and purses disappearing from hospital rooms.” She didn’t elaborate. Apparently she hated to interrupt his story, however briefly.

“A footpad, surprised in the midst of his pillaging, will say anything to deflect suspicion long enough for him to make his escape. Unfortunately, Ms. Hull assisted him unwarily by asking if he was there to visit her sister. He seized upon that, and when she asked his name, he gave her the first thing that suggested itself.”

Jasper hadn’t given up yet. “That don’t make sense! He could’ve said Tom Smith or John Jones. How do you come up with William Thew out of nowhere?”

“You don’t. When you said he’d looked out the window before identifying himself, I decided to send Mr. Woodbine to Brooklyn General to photograph the view through the window.”

I was still standing. He opened his top drawer and handed me two of the pictures I’d taken. I gave one to Jasper. It was one of the shots of the advertisement painted on the wall of the brick hardware building. The legend read:

A picture accompanied it, showing a can of paint spilling its contents onto the globe.

“I don’t get it.” The boy passed the photo to his aunt, who looked at it, then at Lyon with her eyebrows lifted.

Lyon said, “The conditions were somewhat different from when Randolph Otto looked out on the same scene. It was spring, as I said, and tree leaves obscured parts of the sign. I’ve created an amateur artist’s rendition of the scene as it would have appeared to him. Arnie?” The fat little exhibitionist was excited, I could tell; he only forgot to address me formally in company when he could barely contain himself.

I handed Jasper the picture Lyon had doctored with his Sharpie, blacking out the portions that would have been covered by leaves:

The boy looked up, his pinched little face pale. “He said he was an artist!”

“Inspiration from the same source. An artist uses paint. He wasn’t your father. At the time you were born, he’d been in prison in New Jersey for more than a year. That was his first offense.”

Stoddard snatched the photo from Jillian, flung it to the floor, hurled himself at Lyon’s desk, and brought him up to date on his opinion of word puzzles and Lyon. He laid a blazing trail to the exit, leaving Lyon white and shaken. Jasper wasn’t any more pleased, but his aunt restrained him from kicking a chair and thanked Lyon for putting an end to the business. She was a pretty good sport. I wondered how she felt about semi-reformed felons.

He handed her an envelope from his drawer. It bore his letterhead and a name addressed in his childlike hand.

“It isn’t sealed,” she said.

“I wouldn’t presume. As the boy’s guardian you’d naturally want to know what it contained before you delivered it.”

She left, resting a hand on one of Jasper’s hunched shoulders. Lyon and I spent the rest of the evening quietly, he reading the Hardy Boys in an E. Phillips Oppenheim dust jacket, I making marks in The Habitual Handicapper. I didn’t tell him I’d caught a glimpse of the name he’d scribbled on the envelope, and when I found out later it belonged to the director of an art scholarship program at Brooklyn College, I didn’t tell him that. The program had been endowed by an anonymous benefactor. Nothing about it sounds the least bit typical of his role model. I figure I’ll needle him with it when I frame and hang Jasper’s caricature of him.

Which I may not for a while. Today at lunch, Claudius Lyon leaned on his elbow and held up a tired-looking lox drooping on the end of his fork.

“Arnie,” he said, “how long have you been working for me?”