Trouble at the Brownstone

Chapter 6

By the time I returned to the brownstone, Wolfe was upstairs indulging himself in the afternoon session with the orchids. When he came down at six and rang for beer, I looked up from typing some of his correspondence. “Want a report on my visit to the docks? Not much to tell.”

“It can wait until later, when the others arrive,” he said, signing the letters I had already typed and stacked on his desk blotter.

“How is Carl Willis working out in the plant rooms? Any improvement?” I asked.

“Still adequate,” Wolfe replied. “He follows orders, although he could hardly be termed a self-starter. He needs a great deal of direction.”

“You probably are intimidating to the poor fellow.”

“Me, intimidating?” Wolfe raised his eyebrows and assumed an expression of shocked innocence. I thought of several responses but passed on all of them. My mind already was focused on dinner, which was to be curried beef roll with celery and cantaloupe salad, followed by blueberry pie à la mode, and at that point, I was not about to point out my boss’s irascibilities to him.

All three of our regular operatives were prompt, arriving at the brownstone by eight forty-five. Like veteran cast members in a play, they all knew their places: Saul settled into the red leather chair at the end of Wolfe’s desk, while Fred and Orrie took the yellow chairs in front of the desk.

I played bartender, serving scotch on the rocks to Saul and Orrie and beer to Fred, who felt that by drinking what our host did, he honored him. I didn’t have the heart to tell him Wolfe did not care one way or the other. Even among longtime associates, Wolfe liked to make his entrance after everyone was seated. Besides, I knew where he was: in the kitchen with Fritz, planning — and probably arguing over — the lunches and dinners for the next several days.

At nine on the button, Wolfe walked in and sat, with Fritz trailing him with beer for him and Fred and chilled glasses on a tray. “Gentleman, thank you all for coming,” he said as he popped the cap off one of the bottles and poured. “Saul, what have you learned?”

“Not a lot, Mr. Wolfe,” Panzer said. “As instructed, I walked up to Sid, Harvey, and Chester as they were playing pinochle, and they wanted to know if I played bridge. I said I did, and they were glad to see me. I asked who was normally their fourth, and they mentioned Theodore — or rather, ‘Ted.’

“I casually asked where he was, and they said they didn’t know, that they were puzzled about his absence. I then told them I occasionally played in some pick-up bridge games in that general neighborhood, and I remembered meeting Ted at one of those games. I went on to describe Theodore, and they all told me that was him, all right.

“‘Seems like a pleasant fellow, well-mannered,’ I said, to which I got unanimous agreement. ‘The last couple times he played with us, though, he seemed to be distracted,’ Sid commented. ‘It was as if for some reason he was nervous around the longshoremen who hang out in McCready’s. I happen to think they’re a bunch of rough customers, but I have no idea what they might have against Ted.’

“They didn’t seem to bother us when we were playing,” Saul went on, “although they — at least the ones playing pool — made a few snide remarks to us as they passed by on their way to and from the bar.”

“Such as?” Wolfe posed.

“‘Why don’t you try a man’s game?’ and ‘What a damned waste of time!’ We all ignored them, of course, which took a lot of the wind out of their sails,” Saul said. “I brought up Theodore one more time during the evening, but none of the three had anything else to add except to hope that his absence didn’t mean something bad had happened to him. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come up with anything more.”

“You did as well as you possibly could,” said Wolfe, who has always felt that Saul can do no wrong. “What about you, Fred?”

Durkin, who is always uneasy around the boss, cleared his throat. “I sat at the bar for more than two hours, and I nursed my beers. Over that time, four... no, five guys sat next to me, on one side or the other, and they all seemed to be dockworkers.

“I mentioned that I hadn’t been in McCready’s recently, and I was surprised to see that a card game was going on in the back room. ‘Aw, I don’t know why Mac allows it,’ one on a barstool said, referring to the bartender, who I figure must be McCready himself. ‘If they just got rid of that damned card table, they’d have room for another pocket billiard table in there. There’s always a waiting list to shoot pool.’

“I asked if it was always the same guys who played bridge, and nobody seemed to know, or maybe it was the case that they just didn’t care. It was obvious that the regulars resented the card games.”

“Was there any rough stuff done against the card players, Fred?”

“I asked that question to a couple of the regulars myself, Archie, and they acted like they wouldn’t hurt a flea, let alone somebody playing bridge.”

“Perhaps it is a case of protesting too much,” Wolfe said, turning to me with a slight dip of the chin, a signal it now was my turn. I should mention that whenever we all gather to report, Wolfe prefers that Orrie Cather go last because he knows he likes to take his time once he has center stage.

I gave my brief and essentially bland summary of having talked to Charlie King and said, “Sorry, but my cupboard is bare. If Charlie doesn’t know of trouble on the docks, it’s likely that nobody does.”

Wolfe nodded to Orrie, who leaned forward in his chair with a grin. “That place where Horstmann’s been living on Tenth Avenue may look peaceful and ordinary from the outside, but something funny’s going on in there, and I just can’t seem to figure it out.”

“Try, Orrie,” Wolfe urged.

“Yes, sir. Well, I talked to nine of the residents,” he said, pulling out his notebook and flipping some pages. “Almost all of them seemed... I don’t know, secretive.”

“That sounds like typical New Yorkers to me,” Saul put in. “Anybody who rings their doorbell makes them suspicious by nature.”

“Maybe so,” Orrie conceded, “but I made it clear right from start that I wasn’t selling anything. I was upfront and told them I was a friend of Mr. Horstmann in 412. I showed each of them his photo and said I hadn’t heard anything from him for days, which was very unusual, as we usually talked almost daily. Three people slammed the door in my face, four more said they had never seen or heard of Horstmann — even though one of those lived right next door to him. And the others just shook their heads and looked at me blankly. One of those two, an older woman, had a look of fright and kept shaking her head.”

“Maybe your appearance scared her,” I said.

“Very funny, Archie. I was wearing my best suit, and I went out of my way to be extremely polite. After I’d rung all the buzzers in the place and talked to — or tried to talk to — everyone who answered, I then went downstairs to the street-level apartment of the super, an underfed and mopey guy named Bauer, who also seemed like he didn’t want to say much when I asked him if he had any idea what might have happened to Theodore.

“‘You do know Mr. Horstmann, don’t you?’ I asked Bauer, and he said, word for word, ‘Yes, I met him, of course, and I’ve seen him a couple of other times, but it’s really hard to keep track of everyone here, because of all the turnover.’

“‘Why is that? Is it because people don’t like the conditions here?’ I shot back, and he became very defensive. ‘Oh no, this is a very well-run building, no rats, no burglaries, none of the tenants ever causing trouble,’ he told me, but he was really sweating, to the point where his shirt was showing stains under the arms.”

“Not a pretty picture,” Wolfe remarked sourly.

“No, sir. After that, I talked to people in the three businesses at street level in the building. None of them said they recognized Horstmann by his picture, although I was suspicious of the man in the dry cleaners, who gave one quick look at the photo and shook his head vigorously — a little too vigorously for my money. The two barbers in the shop claimed they had never seen Horstmann before, and it was the same with the guy behind the counter in the deli. I wouldn’t vouch for any of them one way or the other.

“Then I went across the street to a small grocery and showed the picture to the Italian owner, who just shrugged and said he’d never seen Horstmann. And he said more than that...” added Orrie, who loved to be dramatic. “‘That place over there,’ he told me, gesturing to the Elmont, ‘is bad, very bad, cattivo.’

“I asked what he meant, and he muttered, ‘Not nice people, not nice at all.’ When I pressed him, he clammed up like he had said too much. I would have kept at it, but just then two women entered, and the paisano got in one big hurry to wait on them so he could get away from me. I hung around for a few more minutes, but other shoppers kept coming in, so I figured I wasn’t going to squeeze any more out of him, especially the way he looked out of the corner of his eye at me like I was a plain-clothes cop ready to haul him in for an all-night grilling.”

“You, a plainclothes cop?” Saul said, trying to sound shocked.

“Hey, why not? I was almost on the force once, you know, and I would have been if wasn’t for that damned Lieutenant Rowcliff, who hates all private investigators and who blocked my application.”

The mention of George Rowcliff was enough to unite us. Saul rolled his eyes, Fred made a gagging sound, and Wolfe scowled, saying, “The man is a disgrace to the department. Be happy you got turned down, Orrie, or you might have ended up working under him.”

“That is a good point,” Orrie replied. “What do you think about what I just told you, Mr. Wolfe?”

“It suggests more work lies ahead for us, particularly in that building where Theodore had been residing.”

“Tell us what you want, sir,” Saul said. “I believe I can speak for all of us in saying that we are willing to put everything else aside to hunt for whoever attacked Theodore.”

“Yeah, I don’t think we even have to take a vote on that,” Fred added, looking around and seeing nods from Orrie and me.

“Just so. You will be hearing from me through Archie, almost surely as soon as tomorrow,” Wolfe said, rising and heading toward the elevator. His day in the office had ended.