The Last Coincidence

Twenty-One

On Monday morning, having had my more-or-less-standard breakfast of wheatcakes, sausage, eggs, juice, milk, and coffee, I was in the office a few minutes before nine bringing the orchid records up-to-date on the computer when the phone rang.

“Archie, I admit I’m slow, dammit, and it was only this morning that I made the connection, but the least you could have done was keep an old friend current on what was happening,” Lon Cohen fired off after I’d said hello.

“Hey, explain yourself, old-timer,” I answered.

“With pleasure. I was going back over our Sunday profile on Michael James, and it finally dawned on me that the Rowan who was his grandfather is the late father of a certain special friend of a certain licensed New York private investigator. That, coupled with your call to me the other day asking about Sparky Linville’s murder, made me realize that something’s probably going on that I should be looking into.”

“Could be.”

“Could be? What the hell kind of answer is that? Come on, Archie, how many times have you tapped me for information about cases you and Wolfe are working on?”

“And how many times have you and the Gazette gotten scoops on cases my eminent employer has blown the lid off, to slip in a phrase that we tough-talking detectives are supposed to use?”

“Okay, I concede that we’ve probably scratched each other’s backs more or less equally over time. But today is today, and there are deadlines to be met. Is Wolfe trying to find somebody other than Michael James to stick with the Linville murder?”

“That’s an interesting conjecture.”

Lon lowered his voice and spoke slowly, enunciating each word. “Archie, there will be times again — and you know it — when you are going to need me.” The boy’s nothing if not subtle.

“You’re right,” I responded. “I think you might for this afternoon’s edition like to suggest that unnamed sources have reported that Nero Wolfe has been looking into the case.”

“God, is that the best you can do?”

“Right now it is, although I promise you that if and when anything happens, you’ll be the first to know. You always have been in the past. Hell, a murder weapon hasn’t even been found yet, has it?”

“Not as far as we know, but the James kid has confessed. What makes Wolfe think he isn’t guilty?”

“Uh-uh. Nice try, friend, but for now you’ve got all I can give you.”

“You don’t make it any easier for me to do my job, Archie,” Lon said reproachfully, and I countered that I wasn’t aware I was on the Gazette payroll. With that, he used a word that Cramer also likes and hung up.

The doorbell rang as I cradled the phone. I walked down the hall, wondering what Cramer could possibly want this time, and was surprised to see our client through the one-way glass. “Come in,” I said brightly. “I must confess I wasn’t expecting you.”

Her face looked as if she’d either been crying or been up all night, or maybe both. “I... had to see you,” she said unevenly.

“Okay,” I told her when she’d sunk into the red leather chair and I was at my desk, “you have my undivided attention.”

“I killed him,” Noreen pronounced coldly. “It was me.”

“You killed Linville?”

“That’s right.” She was staring more or less in my direction, but without eye contact.

“Have you told the police?”

“No, I... thought you should know first. I feel terrible about... lying to you and Mr. Wolfe and all.”

“And you were going to let your brother take the fall?” I asked sharply.

“No-o-o, I wouldn’t have,” she said, the tears starting. “At first I thought he’d retract his confession, but he hasn’t. This is terrible!”

“It certainly is. All right, Noreen — how did you kill Linville?”

“You already know,” she wailed. “In that garage — with a metal thing, you know.”

“Tire iron?” I asked.

She nodded.

“How did you know where he kept his car?” I asked.

“I... He mentioned it one of the times we were out — he loved to talk about that car, he told me everything about it.”

“You’ve got a good memory. Did you have to wait a long time for him to come home that night?”

“More than two hours.”

“Did you wait inside the garage or in the street?”

“What difference does it make?” Noreen wailed.

“The police will want to know,” I told her. “They like their facts all neat and tidy. How many times did you hit him? Did he bleed a lot?”

“God, I don’t know, I don’t know!” She was so loud now that Fritz popped his head in to see if anyone was being throttled. I waved him away.

“Did he say anything as he was falling?” I pushed on, but I didn’t have to go any further. She had her head in her hands, racked with sobs. I handed her a handkerchief.

“Listen, Noreen,” I told her after the waterworks had subsided, “I’m not even going to give you a ‘Nice try’ for that ludicrous performance. Mr. Wolfe is having enough trouble without having to deal with such a stunt. If I were to repeat your story to him, he’d throw me out on my ear, and I wouldn’t blame him — to say nothing of what he’d do to you. I guess I can excuse this because you were doing it to save your brother, right?”

She nodded, still wiping an already badly smeared face. “You weren’t very nice, though.”

“If you’d gone to the police with that fairy tale, you’d have really gotten a taste of ‘not very nice.’ Now, Mr. Wolfe is going to be walking in here in less than ten minutes, and I think you’ll agree it’s a good idea if you’re gone then. That is, if you still want to be a client.”

Noreen nodded again, and I allowed her two minutes to whip out her compact and repair her face. She was so chagrined she didn’t say another word, and I managed to hustle her out the front door at ten-fifty-seven.

Four minutes later, the groaning of the elevator told me Wolfe was descending from his two-hour séance with the orchids.

I got the usual morning greeting from him as he detoured around the corner of the desk, placed a raceme of Oncidium schilleriana in the vase on the blotter, and lowered himself into his favorite chair. “Before you start in on the mail, most of which is junk or just a cut above it, I have a report and a question,” I said.

He gave me his standard raised-eyebrows look, and I went on. “First off, our client just left here. She dropped by to tell me she had killed Linville.”

“Twaddle,” Wolfe snorted, ringing for beer.

“Of course it’s twaddle. I gave her a short — and mild — sample of police interrogation and sent her packing.”

“A sophomoric attempt to shield a sibling. I would have expected better from her,” Wolfe said peevishly.

“Agreed. Anyway, on to the question. I’m curious as to why you didn’t deign to meet with Mr. Pamsett when he stopped in last night. The poor lug spent two hours in the front room with our wonderful selection of magazines before I got home and talked to him.”

“He had no appointment,” Wolfe sniffed, starting in on the mail.

“Right, but we are working on a case, or so I’ve been led to believe. Now, I admit I’m a pretty damn good interrogator, but I also concede that you, being, as we all know, a genius, will often unearth information or form observations that elude me. Such might have been the case had you made the effort to see Mr. Pamsett.”

Wolfe looked up from his mail with an expression that conveyed irritation. “Since I did not, I will be forced to rely upon your admittedly limited skills. Report.”

I gave him a verbatim of our conversation, during which he kept his eyes closed. “Do you believe Mrs. James was with him in his apartment, as they both have stated?” Wolfe asked when I finished.

“I do. Her I could suspect of lying, but probably not Pamsett. He strikes me as the type who’s a lousy liar — old school tie and all that. I’d give seven-to-two he’s telling it straight. But say they were together until even midnight. What does that prove? Either of them could have easily gotten over to Linville’s garage on East Seventy-seventh Street in time to use that tire iron on him. As you recall from Cramer and all the newspaper stories, he was killed after midnight.”

“How would either of them know where he kept his car?” Wolfe posed.

I shrugged. “Even Michael James presumably didn’t know. By his own admission, if one chooses to believe it, he was hanging around outside the apartment and just happened to see Linville pulling into the garage. After all, it’s only a few doors from his building. But if that’s a feasible explanation for Michael James, it also becomes feasible for Pamsett or Megan.”

“Among others,” Wolfe said.

“Yeah, interesting, isn’t it? On the night Linville cashes in, Doyle James, who lives much of the time over in Jersey, just happens to be in New York. And to add whipped cream to the sundae, this man-about-town has no alibi for that night, at least not for the time of death. Where’s Noreen? Out walking till after twelve, no witnesses. Where’s Polly Mars? At home, alone, no witnesses. Where’s Rojek? At home, alone, no witnesses. Even that stooge Halliburton says he was home alone by that time. In fact, if I hadn’t gotten home by a quarter past twelve and been let in by Fritz, even I wouldn’t have an alibi. And then...”

I stopped talking because Wolfe couldn’t hear me. He was leaning back with his eyes closed and his lips pushing out and in, out and in. When he’s like that, there’s no reaching him. Even he can’t explain what happens to him during these times. But I’m convinced that if Fritz were to carry in a steaming plate of grilled starlings, which may well be his favorite dish, and wave it under his nose at a time like this, Wolfe wouldn’t awaken. As I always do during these occurrences, I sat silently at my desk and timed the lip exercise. Fourteen minutes had passed when Wolfe blinked awake and sat up straight.

“Archie, does our car have a tire iron?”

“Sure, they all do, of one kind or another.”

“What does ours look like?”

“Beats me. I’ve never had to use it.”

“Get it, and bring it to me. Now.”

“Okay,” I said, wondering if this time Wolfe’s cylinders had misfired during his trance. I got up, left the office as Wolfe was ringing for beer, and went out the front door, heading for the garage on Tenth Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth where we’ve always kept our cars. At the garage, I said “Hi” to Bill Curran, who runs the place, and told him I wanted something from the Mercedes.

“Sure, Arch, it’s in the usual spot,” he said, going back to waxing his own car, a green Jaguar that he babies as if it were his only child, although I know for a fact he has three kids at home. Our Mercedes was indeed in its usual spot, toward the back of the garage on the street level, between a Bentley and another Jaguar. I opened the trunk with my key and found the fabric pouch of tools, which looked as if it had never been touched. I checked to make sure there was a tire iron inside and took the whole pouch with me, waving again to Bill as I left.

Back in the office, Wolfe was well along on his first bottle of beer of the day. “Here’s the tool kit,” I told him, knowing he wouldn’t recognize one if it fell on him. “And here’s the tire iron.” I pulled it out and handed it across the desk. “By the way, I talked to Lon this morning, and he has heard nothing about the finding of a murder weapon, so Cramer apparently has kept it under wraps.”

Wolfe took the iron in both hands, turning it and scrutinizing it. “Is this similar to the one Mr. Stebbins showed you?”

“Looks identical,” I said. “L-shaped, and the same length.”

“Satisfactory,” Wolfe said. “Call Miss James and inform her that I have completed my investigation. Tell her I would like her to be here tonight, at nine o’clock. Also, I want Michael, Doyle, and Megan James present, as well as Mr. Pamsett, Mr. Rojek, and Miss Mars. And Miss Rowan too.”

“As you ordain,” I said. “Care to fill your faithful lapdog in on what this is all about?”

“After the calls have been made,” Wolfe said, sliding the tire iron into a desk drawer and picking up his book.

I got all of them, and they agreed to come, but not without a struggle. Noreen was easy, though; she was excited that something apparently had gotten resolved, and although she tried to ask me questions, I could tell her — honestly, this time — that I was as much in the dark as she. While I had her on the line, she asked, or maybe told, both her mother and her brother to come along. I could hear muffled grumbling in the background from a voice that sounded like Megan’s, and then the Dragon Lady herself was on the line. “What is all this about a meeting?” she shrilled. “Haven’t we indulged you and Wolfe enough?” I told her, in my most diplomatic tone, that it wasn’t a matter of indulging me or Wolfe, but of acceding to her own daughter’s wishes, which seemed to take most of the wind out of her sails. I got Lily next, and she was full of questions, but I deflected them and she said she’d of course make it.

It took me several calls and messages and callbacks to get the others, and it was after lunch when I finished. I reached Rojek at his Wall Street office; he grumbled but said he’d come when I said Noreen wanted him there. I had to get Polly Mars through her answering service. When she called back, she insisted that she had a night assignment, which I told her to drop. She did, not without some grousing about permanently lost income. Pamsett claimed a previous engagement too, but I pressed him, saying everybody else would be present, and he gave in. Doyle James was the hardest to locate, but by mid-afternoon he had checked in and said we could count on him.

At two-thirty-three I turned to Wolfe. “Okay, they’ll all be here. Now what?”

“Get Mr. Cramer on the line.”

I had expected that order, of course. As often happens when I call Cramer, the flunky who answered the phone wasn’t cooperative and started grilling me about what Wolfe wanted. “I think the inspector will want to take this call,” I said curtly. “Mr. Wolfe has information on a pending case.”

“You can give it to me,” the flunky said.

“Good-bye, pal,” I told him, as both Wolfe and I cradled our receivers. “I’ve got a sawbuck says Cramer’ll call in less than ten minutes,” I said to Wolfe, whose face was set in a scowl.

“That was the correct handling of the situation,” he said grudgingly. “I won’t take the wager.”

Three minutes and seventeen seconds later, the phone rang, and we lifted our instruments simultaneously. “Wolfe!” Cramer bellowed. “What’s going on?”

“Sir, you need to instruct your servitors as to the proper telephone etiquette,” Wolfe replied.

“That’s not why you called.”

“Correct. My client, Miss James, will be here tonight at nine o’clock, as will her mother, father, and brother, in addition to three other persons: Edward Pamsett, Douglas Rojek, and Polly Mars. I will be making a significant announcement concerning Barton Linville’s death, and you also might wish to be present.”

“Wolfe, given the circumstances, to say nothing of the families involved, I don’t have a lot of patience on this one. If you’ve got something to say about the Linville murder, tell me now.” Cramer was still bellowing.

“No, sir. You know that won’t work.”

“All right, then I’ll come right over and you can tell me all about it.”

“No again. If you come, you will be refused admittance and the offer to attend tonight’s gathering will be withdrawn.”

There was exhaling on the other end that sounded as if it had the force to blow over a bookcase. “All right, nine o’clock?” I could tell Cramer was struggling to keep himself under control.

“Correct. Sergeant Stebbins or some other associate also will be welcome.”

Cramer grumbled something that sounded like he’d bring Stebbins, and slammed down the phone.

“All right,” I said to Wolfe. “Now, give me a fill-in.” He did, and I have to admit I hadn’t seen it, although I probably should have. He sketched out the evening and told me to reach Saul and Fred. “We could get by with only one of them,” Wolfe said, “but both would be preferable.”

My luck held. Saul had just come in from a job and Fred was at home and of course happy to get the call to action. Less than an hour later they were seated in the office, Fred with beer, which he drinks to please Wolfe, and Saul with Scotch, which he drinks to please himself. Wolfe gave them a quick fill-in on their roles, then excused himself and moved rapidly out of the office, a rare occurrence. At that, he was four minutes late for his afternoon appointment with the orchids.