Murder in E Minor

16

In fact, it was five minutes after six when I walked into the office, and Wolfe was already behind his desk. He scowled and set his book down, knowing that I wouldn’t let him get any reading done until I’d reported.

“Number one,” I said, “Remmers is arranging to have the trio here tomorrow afternoon. Because you didn’t give me a time, I said four. Number two, I’ve just been to see Lucinda the Hyphen, and her alibi for Wednesday night isn’t any better than Remmers’s. I assume you want it verbatim?”

Wolfe nodded and rang for beer.

“Okay, but before I start, a few observations about her,” I said, “since you trust my instincts when it comes to attractive women. And she is an attractive woman, for sure. It’s easy to see why Stevens went for her. I’m not ready to give any odds one way or the other on whether she did it, but she didn’t seem terribly unhappy. No black veils or anything like that. And she made it clear that she wouldn’t mind if we got to know each other better.”

“Indeed? Did you find out the extent of her friendship with Mr. Stevens?”

“You said to use intelligence guided by experience, didn’t you?” With that, I gave him the whole thing, word for word, although I was interrupted by two phone calls. The first was from Remmers, who reported that he had reached all three men, and they would come tomorrow at four, although he said they weren’t very enthusiastic about it, particularly Hirsch and Meyerhoff. About five minutes later, Saul called and said he and Fred were ready to report. I checked with Wolfe, who said they should come after dinner. Between the calls and Wolfe’s questions, it took well over an hour, so that when I was through, it was time to go into the dining room.

The shock of being back at work must have worn off, because I was beginning to appreciate Fritz again. His scallops were magnificent that night, and when Wolfe complimented him, his smile wrapped all the way around his face.

Saul and Fred timed it perfectly. We were just finishing our first cup of coffee in the office when the bell rang. I opened the door, helped them off with their coats, and told Saul that Lucinda had proposed to me. After they were settled in the office with coffee of their own, Saul cleared his throat and began.

“The building is fairly typical for the neighborhood,” he said. “Nine stories, brick. I talked my way in as a Buildings Department inspector making a periodic check. I’ve got a card that looks good, and it usually works.” I held back a smile and saw that Wolfe was doing the same; the left corner of his mouth was twitching.

“As to access,” Saul continued, “there’s the front door and the lobby, of course — Archie, you’ve seen those. In the lobby is one passenger elevator, automatic. Also, they have a service elevator and an interior fire stairway in the rear of the building. Both of them open on a small service lobby on the ground floor. That lobby” — Saul paused for a sip of coffee — “opens out onto a gangway that separates the building from the one next door. The only exit from the gangway is an iron gate seven feet high that fronts on Seventy-sixth Street to the left of the building as you face it. The gate has a panic bar on the inside, so anyone can get out by pushing it, but from the sidewalk, you can’t get in without a key. The doorman on duty told me he lets tradesmen in through that gate, but only after checking with tenants to make sure they’re expecting someone. He’s got a key to the gate attached to his belt by a chain, and when he goes off duty, he turns it over to the doorman or hallman on the next shift.”

“Is it possible to go from the gangway through to the next street?” Wolfe asked.

“Not without a ladder or wings. There’s a brick wall about ten feet high that separates the property from the building behind it. I’d scratch that possibility. As to staffing, this place isn’t as well covered as the big castles over on Park. There is a hallman on duty around the clock — that’s three of them in all, in eight-hour shifts. The one you mentioned, Tom Hubbard, works four to midnight weekdays. But the building has a doorman only from six in the morning to seven at night — two men each work six-and-a-half-hour shifts. If anyone needs a taxi at any other time, the hallman has to go out and flag it.”

“Anything else?” Wolfe asked.

“I’m afraid not,” Saul said apologetically. “As it was, I was stretching my inspector’s role. With what’s happened in that building, the super and everybody else there was jumpy. I had to try to make this seem like a routine check of the exits, the stairways, what-have-you. Luckily, there hadn’t been a real inspector around for a while.”

“Satisfactory,” Wolfe said. Saul Panzer can do no wrong as far as he’s concerned, and he knew Saul always feels bad if he doesn’t deliver what he thinks is one hundred and ten percent. Now it was Fred’s turn, and we all shifted our attention to him.

“Well,” he began in his deliberate way, “I followed your instructions, Mr. Wolfe. I didn’t try to see Hubbard at all, but I did walk along the block and talk to several doormen. These guys have to all know each other, but the first couple weren’t much help. One thought I was a reporter, and he wanted money before he’d tell me anything about Hubbard — I didn’t know if there was anything to tell, so I said no thanks. And another one clammed up when I finally admitted to him that I was a private cop. But then something happened that was sort of interesting.” Fred stopped, wrinkled his brow, and looked at Wolfe as if asking permission to go on. Wolfe dipped his head a fraction of an inch.

“Actually, it started with a coincidence,” Fred said. “A doorman about six doors east of the murder building on the other side of the street is an Irishman — named Callaway. He’s a talkative guy, and I struck up a conversation with him, it wasn’t hard. Well, it turns out that our people come from the same county in Ireland, and possibly even the same town. Anyway, you’re not interested in that, I know, but it’s what got us started. Okay, after we’d been chewing for a while out in front of his building, I asked Callaway if this wasn’t the block where the big murder happened. He says yes, and I begin asking, just in conversation, you know, about the building and if he knew anybody who worked over there. He tells me he doesn’t think a lot of the way the place is run, that it’s not well maintained, that it’s got poor security, what with a doorman for only part of the time, while his building has one all night. It wasn’t hard to shift the conversation to this guy Hubbard, and Callaway says he knows him. What’s more, he says he hasn’t got much use for him. I asked why, and he said something like ‘I don’t respect a man who chases after prostitutes, even when he’s working.’

“I wanted to know what he meant, of course, and he told me that everybody along the block, all the doormen, knew about how Hubbard had a thing for hookers, particularly redheaded ones. I asked how he knew, and he said that sometimes the girls would hang around the building in the evening, trying to make a score with him.”

Wolfe made a face. “Do these women normally infest that neighborhood?”

Fred shifted in his chair. “Not really — at least as far as I know. Their usual territory is farther south, close to the big hotels. But I think a few work their way north sometimes.”

Saul sensed Fred’s discomfort and cut in. “Yeah, he’s right, Mr. Wolfe. The action is in midtown, but some of the streetwalkers do go up farther, particularly if they can get a regular customer. If the word got around about this character, it’s possible a few might drift by to see if they could develop some business.”

Wolfe scowled again. He had once described prostitution as an unimaginative vocation peopled by unhappy practitioners catering to unpleasant clients. When I asked how he knew, he glared at me and went right on talking. Whether you agree with Wolfe or not, New York has plenty of practitioners, particularly of the streetwalker variety. For anyone who spends much time outside, they seem easier to find than a taxi, and they come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages, including some pathetically young ones.

“I was sort of interested in the hooker angle,” Fred went on, “so I asked Callaway if by chance there’d been any of them around Stevens’s building the night of the murder. That made him a little suspicious; when he asked why I wanted to know, I told him I was a private cop working on another case in the neighborhood, and I said I had just wandered down this block out of curiosity to see the murder site. He seemed to buy that. He said that on Wednesday night there’d been a big party in his building, and he was so busy opening car doors and ushering people in that he didn’t notice what was going on down the block. He said the first he knew something had happened was when a police car parked in front of Stevens’s building later in the evening. Around eleven o’clock, he thought.”

As Fred went on, Wolfe seemed to lose interest. I could always tell; his eyes traveled around the room — to the bookshelves or the clock or the globe. By the time Fred had finished, he’d already rung for beer, and I took orders from the others. Fred had beer also, and when Saul asked for cognac, I decided that sounded good for me, too.

We resettled with our drinks, and Wolfe began asking Fred about the block: the relative position of Callaway’s building to the murder site, the width of the street, the size of the trees. He’s grasping, I thought, trying to show us he’s at work, but he really doesn’t know where the hell to go. I was ready to cut in when he stretched both arms out in front of him, palms down on the desk. It’s not a gesture he uses often, but the few times I’d seen it before, it preceded an order.

“Saul. Fred. You can say no to this if you want to. Indeed, I won’t blame you if you do; were our positions reversed, I would almost certainly refuse the assignment myself, out of both helplessness and distaste.” He inhaled and let the air back out slowly. “I want to know if a prostitute, redheaded or otherwise, called on Mr. Hubbard when he was at work Wednesday. And if so, I want her brought here.” He leaned back and took a sip of beer.

“Lovin’ babe,” Saul said just above a whisper. “There must be five thousand of ’em in New York.” He took a sip of cognac and turned to look at Fred, who was staring down into his beer glass. Then they looked at each other, and Saul turned to Wolfe. “I think we should get started right away,” he said. “I’ve got a few ideas on how we should proceed, and I’d like to talk them over with Fred.” They each took one last swallow and got up to leave. To be hospitable, I walked them to the front door and wished them luck. There was no joking this time, only handshakes.

Wolfe had just poured his second beer and was glowering at the foam when I plunked down at my desk. “Helplessness and distaste, huh? A cute little phrase, but you knew damn well that they wouldn’t turn you down, even on an insane go-around like this.”

“Archie, I won’t argue the merits of the assignment, but I’ve never known Saul or Fred to be intimidated by what you call long odds, and besides, the thorough hunter can ill afford to overlook any thicket, however dense.”

“So now we’ve gone from fishing to hunting, have we? Okay,” I said with a shrug, “you’re paying them, and for Saul alone, that’s a hundred-and-a-half a day now, plus expenses.”

Wolfe returned the shrug and opened a seed catalog. “Are the germination records current?”

That’s another of his conversation-ending lines, so I pulled out the records, which were in fact not current, and began working, but only after I’d treated myself to a cognac refill.