Six

It was a little after two when I got back to the brownstone, which meant Wolfe was still in the dining room consuming flounder poached in white wine. I wasn’t about to interrupt him in mid-meal, but I wasn’t about to pass on Fritz’s flounder, either, so I marched directly to the kitchen.

“Archie, I kept a plate warm for you,” he said, popping up from the high stool where he was reading one of his German-language magazines.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” I told him, getting milk from the refrigerator and filling a glass. “Any calls while I was gone?”

“Mr. Cohen, at ten-fifteen — he sounded irritated, but he didn’t leave a message. And Mr. Horace Vinson, at ten-twenty-five. He wanted to know if we had received his check, and I told him we had.” Although Fritz did not know the amount of the check that had been delivered to our door that morning, he now had that cheerful “there’s-money-in-the-bank-again” lilt to his voice. He was dying to ask me how things were going, but he didn’t, and I didn’t volunteer anything. I was too busy concentrating on the plate of flounder that he had just set in front of me.

After polishing off two helpings plus a dish of papaya custard, I carried coffee into the office, where Wolfe had settled in with beer and a fresh book, Dreadnought, by Robert K. Massie.

“Have you eaten?” he asked peevishly.

“Yes, sir, and I gave it the usual number of stars — the maximum. Sorry you had to dine alone, but as you know, I had assignments. Would you like a report?”

Wolfe set down his book, closed his eyes, and nodded. With that fresh check in the bank, he was committed to working, or at least to listening, and he didn’t much like it. I had not been idly boasting when

I told Patricia Royce about my good memory. I’ve been known to give Wolfe verbatim accounts of conversations several hours long, so filling him in on my chats with the two women in Charles Childress’s life was a snap.

As I talked, he leaned back and got comfortable. When I finished, he didn’t move. Any stranger walking in would have sworn he was asleep, but I know better; Wolfe ingests reports like he does food — with deliberation. At last he opened his eyes. “You told me how they looked and what they’ said. Now, what is your impression of them?”

At some point long ago, Wolfe got it into his noggin that I have no peers when it comes to analyzing the opposite sex and getting them to spill their innermost thoughts to me. Through the years, I’ve done a number of things — intentional and otherwise — to dissuade him from this belief, but to no avail.

“Debra Mitchell is as hard as the diamonds in a scarf pin she was wearing,” I said. “Not the kind of woman who’d be likely to mourn the death of a fiancé for long, if at all. She didn’t seem the least bit broken up. Her mind was on other things, like getting a celebrity guest for the Entre Nous show. I had no business speaking for you. I can call and have her schedule you for next Tuesday and—”

“Archie! Stop prattling.”

“Yes, sir. Anyway, as easy on the eyes as she is, Debra Mitchell doesn’t do a thing for me, if you can believe that. I think Patricia Royce’s analysis of the lady is accurate: She’s overbearing and would try to control every area of a mate’s life, including the color of his toothbrush. Could she have knocked off Childress? Maybe, if she thought he was cheating on her. But if she did, the motivation wouldn’t be a bruised heart, it would be cold anger over losing what she considered to be a possession.

“As for the Royce person, that’s a mare of a different color. She’s more than a little squirrelly, but possibly that’s what comes from sitting in front of a computer screen all day dreaming up stories about Scotland and England in the eighteenth century.”

“You seem obsessed with animal imagery today. By squirrelly, may I assume you mean eccentric?”

“I guess that’s what I mean. I got the feeling talking to her that part of her was someplace else. Maybe that’s the way it is with fiction writers.”

Wolfe drained his glass and dabbed his lips with a handkerchief. “Did you sense she had a romantic attachment to Mr. Childress?”

“It’s close to fifty-fifty, with maybe a slight tilt toward the platonic side. But even if Patty Royce did have a thing for the guy, I can’t picture her as a killer. She’s the type who would get revenge some other way than through physical violence. Like maybe in her writing.”

“Have you made arrangements to visit Messrs. Ott and Billings?”

“Nope, but it’s on the agenda to set up this afternoon. I assume you want me to chat with the Gazette’s very own Wilbur Hobbs, too, right?”

He made a face and poured more beer. “Yes, as abhorrent a task as that may be.”

“Well, he’s got to be talked to, right? And it might as well be by yours truly. Lon called earlier. I’ll set it up with him.”

Wolfe went back to his book as I punched out a familiar combination of numbers on my telephone. He answered after the first ring with his usual no-frills “Cohen.”

“Archie.”

“I recognize the name. You took enough time getting back to me. What’s happening?”

“Let’s see... the Mets won their third straight last night in Philly; Newark Airport was shut down for more than two hours because of the pea-soup fog — or maybe it’s.smog; the mayor has announced that—”

“Very funny, very bloody funny. You come to me and get information, I come to you and what do I get? Your version of snappy patter. Jay Leno you’re not. Let’s start over: What have you dug up about Childress’s death?”

“Interesting you should ask. Mr. Wolfe suggested I talk to Wilbur Hobbs. Can you set it up for me?”

“Who’s Wolfe’s client?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that question before.”

“And I’m still waiting for an answer,” Lon fired back sourly.

“Patience is a virtue. All I can say is, you’ll get an answer to that, and a lot more, too, before anybody else in the media does. It’s always worked out that way.”

Lon snorted. “I can’t make Hobbs talk to you, but I’ll tell him you’d like to see him.”

“Should I call him?”

“No, dammit. I think he’s in today; I’ll wander by his office and ask him to call you.” The line went dead before I could either thank Lon or send another zinger his way.

Next I located Franklin Ott in the white pages under the listing of “Ott Literary Agency,” on East Fifty-fourth. “I’m off to the wonderful world of books,” I told Wolfe as I rose and pointed myself at the door. He didn’t bother looking up from his own book.

Ott’s office was on the fourth floor of a narrow, drab building between Park and Lexington that had a Hungarian restaurant at street level. When I stepped off the automatic elevator, which was not much bigger than Wolfe’s and almost as noisy, I found myself facing a door, the top half of which had frosted glass with OTT LITERARY AGENCY LTD. painted on it in no-nonsense black capitals.

I opened the door into a small, yellow-walled reception room with three chairs and a low table that was strewn with magazines. “Yes, may I help you?” The voice came from the pleasant-looking, well-nourished face of somebody’s favorite aunt, who was peering through an opening that had a sliding plastic panel.

“Is Mr. Ott in?”

“He is on the phone, sir,” the aunt chirped. “May I ask your name?”

“Archie Goodwin. I work for Nero Wolfe.”

“Oh, yes — the famous detective.” She favored me with a benign smile. “Will Mr. Ott know why you are here?”

“Tell him it’s about Charles Childress.”

The smile dissolved, replaced by an expression of earnest concern. “Oh. Oh, yes, I see, yes. Just a moment, Mr. Goodwin. Please be seated.” She left her post and disappeared. Opting to remain on my feet after my experience with Patricia Royce’s chair, I pawed through dog-eared copies of The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, and something called The Writer. I was about to thumb the most recent SI, which had a picture of a blond golfer from Australia on the cover, when Aunt Sincere pulled open a door that led to the inner sanctum.

“Mr. Ott will see you now, Mr. Goodwin. This way, please.” Her smile had returned, which comforted me. I followed as she shuffled down a short corridor, past a doorway through which I saw an underfed young guy wearing green suspenders, black-rimmed glasses, and a frown, who was hunched over a battered desk staring bleakly at some sheets of paper spread on his blotter. The next doorway led to the corner office, which of course had to be Ott’s.

It was a long way from luxurious, but I am willing to concede that all those years in the brownstone have spoiled me. Except for two windows with closed blinds, the room was all bookshelves, to the ceiling. I’m used to being surrounded by bookshelves, but these were something else. They held a small-town library’s worth of volumes, but also sheaves of typing or computer paper, bound by rubber bands, which were jammed horizontally or vertically into every space not otherwise occupied. And the desk was groaning with more of the same.

“Goodwin, eh? Yeah, I know who you are. Have a seat,” Franklin Ott said absently, waving a hand toward three unmatched guest chairs while he studied something in a manila folder. Ott was thin all over — chest, shoulders, face, even his straw-colored hair, what little remained of it. I sat while he finished reading from the folder and tapping on the desk top with the eraser end of a gnawed yellow pencil. He shook his head, slapped the folder shut, and leaned back, cupping his hands behind his head.

“Let’s see how good I am,” he cracked with a lopsided grin. A bobbing Adam’s apple caused his polka-dotted bow tie to vibrate with every syllable. “Your boss, the famed Nero Wolfe, has been hired by somebody — I don’t know who but I can make an educated guess — to poke around into the death of Charles Childress, a death this certain somebody figures is murder, not suicide. Being the shrewd and thorough fellow that he is, Nero Wolfe knows, of course, that Childress had been on less-than-friendly terms with several people in this town, a certain literary agent among them. To steal a line from an ebullient former mayor of this great metropolis, ‘How am I doing?’ ”

“Not bad,” I said, nodding. “Anything more you want to add?”

Ott hooked his thumbs under his belt and shrugged. “No, it’s your turn to sound off. I’ve read a lot of mysteries, but I’ve never seen a live detective before. Do you come out of the hard-boiled school, or are you the urbane type?”

“Beats me, although I don’t recall that anybody’s ever called me urbane. Why don’t you take notes and tell me what you think when we’re finished? First off, how long were you Childress’s agent?”

Ott studied some of the bundled manuscripts on the opposite wall before replying. “Just about four years. He’d had somebody else, but he dropped her because he didn’t think she had enough good contacts in the publishing houses, which was true — I know the woman.”

“Were you glad to get him as a client?”

“Yeah, at the time, which doesn’t say a whole lot about my ability to read character. Charles had done a few so-so mysteries for a small publisher, although they didn’t make him much money. Horace Vinson at Monarch noticed him, though, and felt he had a lot of potential. This was not long after Darius Sawyer had died, and the shrewd Mr. Vinson wanted very badly to find a way to keep the Barnstable royalties pouring in.”

“I gather Sawyer’s books were big money-makers.”

Ott made a face and twitched his shoulders. “Yeah, they did all right, but at least part of Vinson’s strategy was that new Barnstable books would stimulate sales of the backlist, too. Backlist is the old books,” he explained. “Hell, there must be at least two dozen Barnstable books by Sawyer, maybe more, and Monarch has the rights to all of them. Makes good business sense.”

“So Childress hired you to strike a deal with Vinson, right?”

“That’s pretty much it. Charles said he’d heard good things about me, and he knew I had several authors at Monarch.”

“Was he happy with what you worked out originally?”

“Mr. Goodwin, Charles Childress was never very happy with anything or anyone, as I was to find out all too soon. He was a colossal pain in the ass at every step of the way, and if I had any brains at all, I would have dropped him right after I negotiated that first damn Barnstable contract. Now you, as a highly skilled interviewer, will no doubt ask me why I didn’t drop him. I’ll save you the effort. The answer is greed — pure, simple, unadulterated greed.”

“That hardly sets you apart from the rest of us.”

“I suppose not. I kept thinking there might be a film deal in the Childress stuff.”

“But there wasn’t?”

Ott curled his narrow lower lip. “No, and I should have realized it, but hope springs eternal. Not much of Darius Sawyer’s stuff ever got picked up by the movies or TV through the years, and I learned that wasn’t about to change. There’s not a whole lot of Hollywood interest in an eccentric Pennsylvania bachelor geezer who lives in a farmhouse and goes around spouting Ben Franklin proverbs and drinking iced tea on his way to solving murders. The homespun approach may have worked on Murder, She Wrote, but nobody — and I mean nobody — on the Left Coast had the slightest interest in turning the Barnstable stuff into a TV show or a mini-series or a movie. Lord knows, I’ve spent enough time trying to make something happen. And all I got for my efforts from Charles was a lot of bitching that I just didn’t know the right people out there.”

I nodded in sympathy. “Sounds like he was a real sweetheart to deal with.”

Ott snorted. “You don’t know the half of it. Things between us just kept getting worse. Charles never thought his first contract was big enough — that was for just one book, because Vinson wanted to see how well Charles could handle a Barnstable story before committing to more. I got him a better overall deal on the second contract, which was for two books, but he still wasn’t happy. And several months ago, when we began negotiations on another two-book Barnstable contract, Charles insisted that I ask for about eighty percent more than the previous deal. I damn near spilled a cup of coffee into my lap When he came up with that. It was an insane proposal, and I told him so. You know what he said to me? ‘You’re supposed to have so much goddamn clout with people like Vinson and Monarch. Well, prove it.’

“What could I do?” Ott complained. “I told Vinson our asking price over lunch one day, and he looked at me like I’d lost my reason. Of course he knew damn well Childress was pushing me, and he also liked Charles, although I’ll never know why. Well, we — Vinson and I — must have hashed things over for close to two hours, and the most I could get out of him was a bump of about fifteen percent over the previous contract, which I felt was fair, although I didn’t tell him that.”

“How did Childress react to the offer?”

“Hah! How do you think? Charles started screaming at me, right here in this office. The son of a bitch said I was worthless, and that he’d find himself a new agent, somebody who knew what he was doing. I told him to go ahead — that I didn’t need the grief, which was true. Hell, I’ve got plenty of writers, and losing Childress wasn’t about to break me. What really teed me off was that Charles couldn’t stand his editor, Keith Billings, and I was the one who put pressure on Vinson to sack the guy, or at least take him off Charles’s books, which he did.”

“Is Billings a poor editor?”

“I’d say so, yeah. He’s arrogant, although that hardly makes him an oddity in our business. But he’s also arbitrary and heavy-handed. He does way too much rewriting — not very skillfully, I might add. And he thinks all authors are totally incapable of taking a detached look at their own work. Well, dammit, I got him off Charles’s back, and some thanks I received for the effort.” He gave a stack of manuscripts on his desk a vicious shove.

“Then came that article of Childress’s in Book Business, right?”

“Yeah. It shouldn’t have surprised me, knowing what kind of a jerk he could be, but I’ve got to admit it was a jolt. Have you read it?”

I said I hadn’t, and he went on, his thin face reddening. “He didn’t mention me by name, but he didn’t have to. Everybody between the Village and the north end of Central Park knew who he was talking about when he wrote that, quote, ‘Too many of today’s agents are basically lazy, uninspired, and reactive.’ He went on to say some more, too, none of it much fun to read, at least for me.”

“Did you talk to Childress after the piece ran?”

“I did not,” Ott snapped. “But I did call Vinson, and I blew, I mean I really blew. I’ve always had a good relationship with Horace, but that day I took my anger out on him, in spades. Hell, I told him I was going to sue both him and Childress.”

“Were you serious?” I asked.

He gave me a semi-smile. “I guess I was at the time. I thought the piece was going to really kill my business. But you know, almost every reaction I got was sympathetic. In the next couple of days, I’ll bet seven or eight people called me, including three of my writers, and they all said Charles was an ass, or words to that effect. And obviously I’m not angry anymore, especially after what’s happened. But I do have to call Vinson and apologize for what I said to him.”

“Did you lose any writers because of the article?”

Ott stared at the pencil in his hand. He seemed to be wondering how it got there. “Can’t say for sure,” he replied unconvincingly. “Agents are always gaining and losing clients, and we don’t always know the reason. Hell, I got two new ones just last week — one of them a young woman you’re going to hear plenty about in the next few years, believe me. Sorry I can’t tell you what she’s working on, but she’s a winner, and just three months out of college.”

“Uh-huh. How good a writer was Childress?”

“Not as good as he liked to think. Oh, he was what I would call workmanlike, and he did a decent job — not perfect, but decent — of adopting Sawyer’s characters and style. His dialogue was actually quite good, very lively, but his plots occasionally were a problem, although I always felt Keith Billings made too big a deal out of that. He — Keith — is full of himself.”

“Childress blasted Billings in that article, too, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, not by name, but like with me, everybody knew exactly who he was crucifying.”

“Do you think Childress killed himself?”

Ott pitched forward abruptly and rested his elbows on the desk, cupping his chin in his hands. “It wouldn’t surprise me. In the few years I’d known him, he must have had at least three or four really bad depressions that I was aware of. He broke down and bawled once right here in this office — for no apparent reason. It would have broken your heart to see it. He was telling me about an idea he had for a new detective, a character he wanted to develop, and in the middle of a sentence, he just covered his face with his hands and started sobbing.”

“Did he ever do anything with that new detective?”

“Not that I know of, but that was only a few months ago.”

“Had he been in one of his depressions lately?”

Ott threw up his hands and shook his head. “I hadn’t seen him since we had our set-to and he fired me or I quit, however you want to term it. That was over a month ago. But as I said earlier, he was really upset about the money he’d been offered for the two new Barnstable books, the one giving him the fifteen-percent increase. I understand that he accepted it, though, sans agent.

“Also, he was terribly thin-skinned about criticism. All in all, he’d gotten some fairly decent reviews on all three of his Barnstable mysteries, although as you probably know, the stuff Wilbur Hobbs had written in the Gazette bedeviled him. Then there were the Barnstable faithful — the people who’d been religiously reading the books since Sawyer started the series more than forty years ago. A lot of them are ferocious about detail. In fact, there are clubs of Barnstable fans in cities all over the country. They call themselves PROBE, but I forget exactly what the acronym stands for. Something with ‘Barnstable Enthusiasts’ in the title, I think. By and large, they applauded him and were glad that Barnstable was back. But they also caught him in all sorts of minor errors, things like the color of the pickup truck Barnstable drove or the kind of rug he had in his living room. Charles got a number of those letters, and this irked him when it should have pleased him that these folks, all of whom were polite, took the time to write.”

“Hardly worth shooting yourself over,” I observed.

“Agreed. But Charles was wound tight. I warned him before his first Barnstable book came out that every word he wrote would be scrutinized with a magnifying glass. I also said I thought it was a small price to pay for getting to continue a character so many people loved. But you know, I don’t think he ever fully appreciated the opportunity he was getting. To Charles, it was basically a way to raise his visibility fast — and to make money. I don’t think he ever looked beyond the next hill.”

“Did he have many close friends?”

“Not that I knew of,” Ott replied. “I’m sure you’re aware he was engaged — to a young woman at one of the TV networks. In public relations, I think. I never met her. Then there was a writer he was friendly with, named Patricia Royce.”

“I’ve heard of her,” I said. “What was their relationship?”

“I have no idea. Mr. Goodwin, I rarely if ever socialize with my writers. No particular reason, except that my wife and I aren’t big for the cocktail-party circuit or the Hamptons. Oh, I do go to some literary functions, but only because it’s de rigueur in this business. And in fact, I did meet Patricia Royce once, at some book party, I forget where. She recognized my name, said she knew I was Charles’s agent.”

“But you’ve never worked for her?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t ask me to when we met. And I’ve never taken on anyone in that genre — the romantic historical novel — although I did read one of her books sometime back, and I was impressed; her characters are nicely drawn and her plots are particularly solid and well-constructed. But I don’t even know who represents her.”

“Can you suggest anyone who might want to kill Childress?”

“With that personality of his, anybody who ever came within half a mile of him. No — scratch that last comment,” Ott said sharply, twisting in his chair. “It was gratuitous, and I had no business coming out with it. Mr. Goodwin, let’s just say Charles was an egotistical, moderately talented, immoderately unpleasant young man. I’d be a hypocrite if I told you his death deeply saddened me. But I didn’t rejoice when I heard about it, either. Do I think he was murdered? Oh... probably not. Based on what I had seen of him over the last four years or so — and I hope that this doesn’t sound callous — suicide seems consistent with his overall behavior. The man was a nut case. Sorry, but there it is.”

“Did you know that he kept a gun in his apartment?”

“No, but I can’t say I’m surprised. I was only in his place once, several months back, while I was still his agent and we were on relatively good terms. I belong to a small club down on Gramercy Park, and I’d been having lunch there with a friend. Because I was nearby, I stopped by to see Charles after lunch and dropped off copies of the German edition of one of his Barnstable books which had just come in. He was all wrought up about one of the apartments in his building having been burgled or vandalized, or both, and he told me he was going to buy a ‘piece’ — that’s the word he used, ‘piece.’ Ever the crime writer.”

“Do you know if he had drawn up a will?”

Ott spread his arms. “I have no idea, but I really doubt it. Charles was weird about money. On the one hand, he seemed obsessed with making it as fast as he could. On the other, he didn’t seem to care about what happened to it once he got it. Possessions didn’t seem to be a high priority with him. And his apartment — well, as I said, I was only there once, but the furnishings looked like they came from a resale shop.”

I nodded, then paused a beat. “Mr. Ott, where were you a week ago Tuesday from, say, late morning to late afternoon?”

“That was really quite well done.” He nodded and smiled. “I wondered how long you’d wait to spring it. You did a damn nice job of pulling information out of me before you got to the part that figured to make the atmosphere tense, and which might cause me to ask you to leave. Except that I won’t do that. Your question is legitimate.”

He opened a drawer and pulled out his date book. “Let’s see, on Tuesday, I was at my barber’s at ten-thirty, meaning I probably left him at eleven or a little past. You can check with him. Wallace Berkeley on Forty-sixth Street. Then let’s see, I took a cab down to Gramercy Park, where I was having lunch with one of my writers at that club I mentioned. I got there early and walked around the park, which always makes me think of London. It relaxes me.”

“How long did you walk?”

“Probably half an hour or more. Not much of an alibi, is it?”

“Certainly not if nobody can vouch for you. As you said yourself, Gramercy Park isn’t all that far from Childress’s place.”

“You’re nothing if not direct, Mr. Goodwin.” Ott wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t frowning, either.

“Direct is my middle name. One more question,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “Any idea what this key opens?”

Ott took it between his thumb and forefinger and frowned. “You know, it looks like it might be to my apartment.” He pulled out his key ring and took one off, holding it up next to the key I had produced.

“Nope, not the same, see?” he said, giving me an up-close look at both of them.

I nodded as he handed me the key. “I’ve taken a lot of your time,” I told him, getting up.

“Wait,” he said, looking stern and holding up a hand like a traffic cop. “Do you keep a bottle of rye in your lower right-hand desk drawer?”

That stopped me. “No. But I always know where to find some.”

“Not the same thing. No rye in your desk, no hard-boiled tag. Sorry to be the one to break it to you, Mr. Goodwin, but you are terminally urbane.”

“A bitter pill,” I admitted, donning my most somber expression. “I suppose I can’t change your mind with my Bogart impression and my British trench coat?”

Ott actually cracked a smile. “It’s far too late for that. You are what you are.”

I tried to think of something hard-boiled to say, other than “Same to you, fella.” Nothing came to mind, so I gave him my most urbane smile and sauntered out.