The Father Hunt

Chapter 14

When I arrived at the headquarters of Homicide South on West Twentieth Street at a quarter to nine Tuesday morning, I was on the fence. I wanted the cartons to get to Cramer as soon as possible, but if he was there I didn’t want to deliver them to him myself, because as soon as he read the letter I would be stuck. He would hold me until the prints had been lifted and compared, and if they matched I would be held tighter and longer. So I was just as well pleased that he hadn’t come yet. Neither had Purley Stebbins, but I got a sergeant I knew named Berman. When he saw the six cartons, one big enough to hold a wastebasket, which was one of the items Saul had brought from 490 Lexington Avenue, he said he hoped it wasn’t all bombs and I said no, only one was, and the trick was to guess which. He put the letter in his pocket and promised to give it to Cramer as soon as he came.

It would be instructive to report how Saul got a big wastebasket out of that office building at ten o’clock at night, but it would take a page.

Home again, having had only orange juice before leaving, I ate breakfast, tried to find something in the Times that deserved attention, and expected. The trouble with expecting is that you always jump the gun. It could take anywhere from one to eight hours for them to get the prints lifted and compared, but as I went to the office to dust and tear pages from the desk calendars and put fresh water in the vase on Wolfe’s desk and open the mail, I was expecting the phone to ring any minute. You simply can’t help it, especially when you have no good reason to bet a dime either way on what you’re expecting. If the fingerprints didn’t match we were left with a Grade A mess and no way on earth of making a neat package of it to deliver to the client; if they did match we could take our pick of three or four different ways to play it and they all looked good. So I expected, and although I opened the mail and gave it a look before putting it under the chunk of jade on Wolfe’s desk, I had no clear idea what was in it. One thing, not in the mail, did get some real attention. Saul and I had decided that we almost certainly had enough without lifting the prints from the red leather chair. We had got bed sheets from the closet and draped them over it, and there it was, and it looked pretty silly. I removed the sheets, folded them, and put them back in the closet. What the hell, as Amy’s father would say, I was there on guard. Returning to the office, I looked at my watch for about the tenth time since breakfast, saw that it was 10:38, and decided it was time to consider it calmly and realistically. To begin with, if the prints didn’t match there was nothing to expect. Some detective second grade would phone in a day or two to tell me to come get the junk I had left there. If they did match the best guess was that Lieutenant Rowcliff or Sergeant Stebbins would phone around two or three o’clock and tell me they wanted me there quick. Or possibly—

The doorbell rang and I went to the hall and saw Cramer and Stebbins on the stoop.

Ordinarily the sight of a pair of cops wanting in doesn’t scatter my wits, but as I started for the front I had room in my skull for only one item: the beautiful fact that the prints had matched and Floyd Vance had murdered Elinor Denovo. I should have realized that their coming twenty minutes before eleven o’clock, when they knew Wolfe wouldn’t be available, showed that it would take handling. Before I opened up I should have put the chain bolt on, holding the door to a two-inch crack, since it would have taken a warrant to open it legally and they wouldn’t have one, and we could discuss the situation. But I was so glad to see them that I swung the door wide, and I was probably showing my teeth in a big grin of welcome. If so, it soon went. They came in fast, Stebbins’ shoulder jostling me as he passed, headed for the rear, and started up the stairs.

A cop inside the house is a very different problem from one outside. Once he’s inside legally, and I had opened the door, about all you can do is sit down and write a letter to the Supreme Court. Even if I could beat them to the plant rooms, and I couldn’t, since the elevator was up there, what good would it do? I went to the kitchen to tell Fritz what had happened and that I was going up to join the party, and then took my time mounting the three flights.

To go through those three rooms, the cool, the moderate, and the warm, down the aisles between the benches, without being stopped by a color or a shape that you didn’t know existed, your mind must be fully occupied with something else. That time mine was. In the middle room I could already hear a voice, and when I opened the door to the warm room I could name it. Cramer. I walked the aisle and opened the door to the potting room, and there they were. Wolfe, in a yellow smock, was on his stool at the big bench. Theodore was standing over by the pot racks. Stebbins was off to the right. Cramer, in the center of the room, had his felt hat off and in his hand, I don’t know why. Facing Wolfe, he was telling him, louder than necessary, “... and hold you as material witnesses until we get warrants and then, by God, you go to a cell. All right, talk or move.”

Wolfe stayed on the stool. His eyes came to me. “Any complaint, Archie?”

“Only their bad manners. Next time they’ll talk through a crack.”

His eyes moved. “Mr. Cramer. As I said, I will not talk business in this room. Not a word. If you’ll wait in my office I’ll be down at eleven o’clock. If you put hands on me, and Mr. Goodwin, and take us elsewhere, we’ll stand mute and communicate with our lawyer. When he comes we’ll confer with him privately, and the afternoon paper, the Gazette, and tomorrow morning’s papers, will publish the news that Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin have discovered the identity of the murderer of Elinor Denovo and have delivered satisfactory evidence to the police. Also, that in recognition of that public service they have been arrested and are behind bars, and their lawyer is arranging to secure their release on bail. Archie, here, please. This Miltonia charlesworthi germination card has conflicting entries. We’ll have to check it.”

I went and took the card and scowled at it.

Cramer was in a box. My taking him the contents of those cartons and the letter, if the prints matched, certainly made us material witnesses, but if he herded us downtown and we performed as programmed by Wolfe, and we would, he would have to plug his ears for the horse laughs. If he and Stebbins waited there to go down to the office with us there was nowhere to sit, and standing around waiting may be all right for a sergeant but not for an inspector.

Stebbins muttered, apparently to himself, “God, I’d love to knock him off that stool.” He looked at Cramer. “We take ’em down and lock ’em up and kick ’em out before the lawyer comes.”

Actually Cramer is not a fool, not at all. Stebbins must have sold him the bright idea of coming before eleven and invading the plant rooms. He jerked his head and a hand toward the door, an order, and the sergeant obeyed. He stepped to the door and opened it, and when Cramer was through he followed him, leaving the door wide open. Theodore went and shut it, and Wolfe looked at the electric clock which controlled the temperature and some of the ventilation. It was six minutes to eleven.

I asked, “Is this card really off?”

“No. Stay here.” He turned to Theodore. “Those Odontoglossum pyramus aren’t ready for sevens. Put them in sixes. Do you agree?”

“No,” Theodore said. “A little extra room won’t hurt them any.”

I didn’t listen to that argument, which took ten minutes; I was concentrating on what Cramer and Stebbins would find when they went through our desks, and congratulating myself for having undraped the red leather chair. I had to stay, of course, not only because Wolfe had told me to; if I had followed them down they would have started in on me and I might overdo it, the way I felt.

They would probably be expecting us to come down together in the elevator, so when Wolfe left the stool and unbuttoned the smock I said I would take the stairs and went. Since all three flights are carpeted, noise was no problem, and they didn’t even know I was there, in the office doorway, until I spoke. Stebbins was seated at my desk, with two drawers open, and Cramer was over by the cabinets but with none of them open because they had locks.

I said, “I hadn’t opened the safe yet. Sorry.”

Cramer about-faced and narrowed his eyes at me. Stebbins merely took more papers from a drawer and started leafing through them. A cop inside the house. The sound came of the elevator descending, and it stopped, and as Wolfe came I stepped into the office. He entered, halted, shot a glance at Cramer, glared at Stebbins, who went right on with papers, and said, “Get Mr. Parker. I’ll take it in the kitchen.”

“What did you expect?” Cramer demanded. “Knock it off, Purley. Goodwin wants his chair. Come on, move!”

Stebbins tossed papers on my desk, a mess, got to his feet in no hurry, and went to get one of the yellow chairs. He likes to be with his back to a wall. By the time he had the chair where he wanted it. Cramer was in the red leather chair and Wolfe, at his desk, had a drawer open to see if it was in order. He made a face and turned to Cramer. “The briefer we make this the better. You want to know who made those fingerprints.”

“You’re damned right I do. And I want—”

“I know what you want, but something I want comes first. I will not have that man” — he aimed a straight finger at Stebbins — “in my house. Ransacking my office? Pfui. I would like to exclude you too, but someone even less tolerable would probably replace you. Archie. On a letterhead, Mr. Vance’s name and both addresses and telephone numbers. One carbon.”

It took longer than usual to get paper and carbon in the typewriter on account of the mess Stebbins had made. As I typed Cramer said something, saw that Wolfe wasn’t listening and didn’t intend to, and shut his trap. As I rolled the paper out Wolfe said, “One to each,” and I went and handed Cramer the original and Stebbins the carbon, and Wolfe told Cramer, “Get him out of here.”

You have to admit that he knows when he can get away with what. In any ordinary circumstances he wouldn’t have tried telling Cramer to get Stebbins out of there, but I had just given him the name and address of a man who had left his cigar case in a hit-and-run car.

Cramer said to Wolfe, “Floyd Vance. Was it his prints on that stuff you sent me?”

Wolfe said, “Yes. He made most of them last evening, in my presence, and Mr. Goodwin’s, sitting in that chair.”

Cramer turned to Stebbins and said, “Get him and take him in.”

Stebbins got up and went.

So that man was out of there. As he turned into the hall Wolfe said, “You have been scampering around on a hot day and would presumably like something to drink, but you have forfeited your right to civilities. We’ve given you the name of a man you’ve been seeking for more than three months. What else do you want?”

The air conditioning had dried the sweat on Cramer’s forehead and taken some of the red from his face. “I want plenty,” he said. “I want one good reason why you and Goodwin shouldn’t be charged with withholding information of a crime and obstructing justice. I want to know how long you have known that this Floyd Vance was the driver of that hit-and-run car, and how you spotted him. I want to know if he’s the father you said you were looking for, and if so, and Elinor Denovo was the mother, I want to know why he killed her.”

“That will take a lot of talking, Mr. Cramer.”

“It sure will. Even for you. Go right ahead.”

Wolfe adjusted his bulk in the chair. “First, withholding information. Last Thursday Mr. Goodwin gave you our word that if we got anything you might be able to use we would pass it on to you before we made any use of it ourselves. We got those fingerprints late last evening and delivered them to you early this morning, and we have made no use of them and don’t intend to. I have no other information that you might be able to use, in my judgment.”

“To hell with your judgment. If you think you can decide—”

“If you please. You told me to talk. As I told you, my client was, and is, a young woman who hired me to find her father. We found one likely prospect but investigation conclusively eliminated him. We found another, but he too was eliminated. I was inclined to return the retainer and withdraw, and persisted only because I am what I call tenacious and Mr. Goodwin calls pigheaded. Do you recognize the name Raymond Thorne?”

“Raymond Thorne? No.”

“Doubtless some of your staff would. Elinor Denovo spent most of her adult life working for him. Raymond Thorne Productions. Television. He came at my request last Thursday evening and answered questions for more than four hours, and one of the many things I learned was that a man named Floyd Vance had tried many times last May to see Elinor Denovo, and she had refused to see him. His last attempt to see her was on the twenty-second of May, only four days before she died. If you had questioned the receptionist at Raymond Thorne Productions with sufficient perseverance you might have solved that case long ago. We made long and laborious inquiries about Floyd Vance and discovered that he had known Elinor Denovo in nineteen forty-four, when she was Carlotta Vaughn, and had seen her frequently for several months. It was possible that he was the father I was trying to find, and we tackled him. He is a self-styled public-relations counselor — one of the various modern activities that are an insult to the dignity of man. Mr. Goodwin got him here last evening. Preparations had been made. His attempts to see Elinor Denovo shortly before her death prompted the surmise that he had killed her, and, knowing that you had fingerprints, Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Panzer made proper arrangements. That was fortunate, but not for me, for you. Without that you would probably never had found him. And here you come—”

“I’m supposed to pin a medal on you?”

“I don’t like medals. The fingerprints didn’t help me any. He denied that he had fathered a child by Carlotta Vaughn. He could have been lying, certainly, but I was helpless. And am. Even if he is the man I’m looking for there is no conceivable way to establish it. Can you suggest one?”

“I handle homicides, not paternity suits.”

“So you do. Now, with those fingerprints, you can handle this one. You said you want to know why he killed her. So do I. I haven’t the slightest notion. I have told you everything I know about him. I have seen him only once, here last evening, and I asked him no questions pertaining to Elinor Denovo’s death. I asked him nothing about his attempts to see her in May. Now, of course, you will, because you have a motive, and it’s possible that you will uncover one that will have a bearing on my problem. If you do, and if you can share it with me without hazard to your case, I’ll try to erase from memory this morning’s outrageous performance. It won’t be easy — especially the sight of that creature at Mr. Goodwin’s desk, deranging his and my belongings, while you stood and applauded.”

“I did not applaud. Your usual exaggeration.”

“You permitted.”

“Oh, skip it. A cop gets habits like everybody else. He was looking for information, not evidence. Even if he had found Goodwin’s signed confession that he had killed Elinor Denovo it wouldn’t have been admissible evidence; ask the Supreme Court.” Cramer looked at his watch and then at me. “How long has he been gone?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes,” I told him. “When you get up don’t put your hand on the right chair arm. It has four Floyd Vance prints on it.”

“Thanks for telling me.” He put both palms on the right chair arm and twisted around as he got to his feet. He faced Wolfe. “I want to be there when he brings him in. I admit you sound good, but you nearly always do sound good. I’m buying nothing, at least not until I see this Floyd Vance. If it goes one way you may hear from me, and if it goes another way you will hear from me. Have I ever thanked you for anything?”

“No.”

“And I’m not thanking you now. Not yet.” He turned and went. I stayed put.

Wolfe opened his desk drawer to take another look, and I attacked the mess Stebbins had made. Vandalism. There was no danger that he had taken anything important because no classified items were ever left in an unlocked drawer, and after getting things in order and back where they belonged I decided that he had taken nothing, except possibly a few of my calling cards. That suggested the question, if it’s illegal for a private detective to impersonate a cop why isn’t it illegal for a cop to impersonate a private detective? I would ask Wolfe. He had shut the drawer and was leaning back, looking thoughtful but not concentrated. When I turned to him he nodded and said, “Phalaenopsis Aphrodite sanderiana.”

I said, “If this is a quiz: rose, brown, purple, and yellow.”

“We’ll send some to that Dorothy Sebor, and I’ll go up and get them now. I intended to bring them down but those intruders came. Also I brought none for my desk.” He pushed his chair back.

“Instructions?”

“No. There is nothing you can do.”

“Saul is standing by. So are Fred and Orrie.”

“Release them. There is nothing. Our next step is obvious, but it must wait until Mr. Cramer learns his motive. If he learns his motive. He should, with a thousand trained men.”

After the sound came of the elevator starting up I sat and looked it over from every angle. It was nice to know the next step was obvious, but it would have been even nicer to know what it was.