Trouble at the Brownstone

Chapter 8

Wolfe heard my half of the conversation with Lon, which was enough for him to know the call’s substance. “All right, what is our next step?” I asked.

“Pending any information we receive from Mr. Cohen, I believe it would be helpful if you were to dwell in Theodore’s apartment for a period.”

“Me, live over on Tenth Avenue? And just how do you define a period?”

Those damned folds appeared on Wolfe’s face again. He was having too much fun moving me around like a chess piece. “Your length of stay, as I just stated, may depend upon what we learn from Mr. Cohen.”

“How can I function in the office if I’m bunking blocks from here?”

“I would expect you to be in the office during much of the working day. That would leave you enough time in your temporary abode to discover whether the place is as secretive as Orrie seems to believe.”

“It’s possible there are no openings in that place,” I told him.

“There doesn’t need to be any openings, Archie. You can go to the building superintendent, Mr. Bauer. Tell him you are Theodore’s cousin from out of town who has come to New York to help find him. You will ask if you can stay in his apartment for the time being.”

“And that I will also pay the rent in his absence, right?”

“Correct. It seems probable he will welcome you on those terms.”

“Any other instructions?”

“Meet as many of the building’s residents as you can without appearing overly inquisitive. Let us discover how perceptive Orrie is.”

To say I was unhappy with the assignment would be an understatement, but as I stated earlier, Theodore has for many years been very much a part of our family in the brownstone. This was no time for me to balk.

I went up to my room, packed a suitcase with the essentials for what I hoped would be a short stay, then went to the dining room for lunch, which was a mushroom and almond omelet. Because business is never discussed during meals, no words were exchanged about my imminent move up to Tenth Avenue. But once we went into the office with coffee, I turned to Wolfe.

“Okay, I’m ready to go. How much of each day do you want me to spend in that place?”

“Enough to interact with the building’s tenants and take their measure,” he said, setting down another of his current books, Closing the Ring, by Winston Churchill. “However, as I said, I expect you to be here for a portion of each day. Your raison d’être for residing on Tenth Avenue is to search for your relative, so it would not be unusual for you to be gone from that place for hours.”

Heaven forbid Wolfe would be without my services for any length of time. This way, he could have the best of both worlds: me in the brownstone available for myriad duties, and me on Tenth Avenue in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood to learn what I could about what manner of people live in a tired and less-than-luxurious five-story building.

After I finished typing letters Wolfe had dictated the previous day, I doctored one of the ersatz blank driver’s license forms we kept on hand for contingencies, said goodbye to the detective and Fritz, and set off on foot, suitcase in hand, for what was to become my new and, as I hoped, very temporary dwelling place.

The super’s apartment was the only residential unit on the first floor, its door at the back of the unadorned lobby. I pushed the buzzer.

After less than a minute, the door popped open, and a gaunt specimen answering to Orrie’s description squinted up at me. “Yeah?”

“Hello, are you the building superintendent?”

“That’s me, Erwin Bauer,” he said, jabbing a thumb at a concave chest covered by a soiled undershirt.

“Very nice to meet you. I am the cousin of one of your tenants, Ted Horstmann, who as you probably know is missing.”

“Yeah, yeah, so I heard,” he said, shaking his head as if in disbelief. “So sorry, so sorry. I can’t imagine what could have happened to him. I didn’t know him all that well, but he seemed like a very polite man, and rather quiet.”

“That’s him, all right. I have come in from out of town, and if you have no objection, I would like to stay in his apartment for a few days while I look for him. And I would of course pay the rent for as long as I stay.”

Bauer looked around, as if thinking my proposal over. Then he chewed on his upper lip. “Uh... yes, that would be all right. What is your name?”

“Art.”

He nodded. “And your last name?”

“Horstmann, of course.”

He broke into a smile and seemed relieved. “Yes, of course, Mr. Horstmann, of course. I will show you to your uncle’s apartment and give you a key.”

“Thank you. Does he owe you any money now? I’ll be happy to pay if he does, or even pay something in advance.”

“I believe that he is paid up, at least for the balance of this month.”

“When more rent is due, I trust you will inform me.”

“I will, yes, sir, I will.” I believe my eagerness to pay prevented the super from asking for identification. I could have provided him with a driver’s license listing me as Arthur Horstmann of Defiance, Ohio, but I was happy to leave it in my pocket.

“Do you have a lot of turnover here?” I asked Bauer.

“No, not really. Many of the tenants have been in the building for several years.” I found his answer interesting, contrasting it with what he had told Orrie, but I said nothing. I also found it intriguing that Bauer made no mention that anyone (Orrie) had been asking about the “missing” tenant.

The super handed me a key and we went up in the creaky elevator. He opened the door to 412 with his skeleton key and led the way in. “Mr. Horstmann seems to be very neat,” Bauer said, looking around and smiling. “That is good to see.”

“Yes, my uncle has always been very tidy,” I told him, playing the role of the loyal and concerned nephew who was in the unit for the first time. “I only hope that he will be found soon and can return here. He told me that he liked this apartment.”

“Where do you come from?” Bauer asked.

“Ohio,” I replied, which actually was true, if you were to go back a number of years. “Everyone back home is of course very worried about my uncle.”

Bauer nodded, wearing a somber expression. “Very sad, very sad.” He looked up at me and shook his head, indicating he had nothing more to say. I thanked him and said I would settle in and begin the search for “Uncle Ted.” He backed out into the hall, bowing as if playing the role of a servant. The act was not convincing.

The apartment looked as it did on my earlier visit — hardly a surprise. I unpacked quickly and put my clothes in drawers and on hangers and my shaving kit in the bathroom, in case Bauer or anyone else might decide to snoop around.

I left my new “home” and walked down rather than taking the elevator, in hopes of running into other residents in the halls. At the second-floor landing, I did indeed meet a heavy-set man of about sixty, who also was headed downstairs. “Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?” I said. The response was a muttered “yeh,” and not a word more. So much for one not-so-friendly neighbor.

I stepped outside and took stock. I did not want to spoil Wolfe by returning to the brownstone after such a brief time away, so I crossed to the other side of Tenth Avenue and asked myself what Saul Panzer would do in this situation. He has the ability to blend in with his surroundings, which I then tried to do by easing into a narrow gangway between two buildings, all but out-of-sight to passersby. I stayed there for twenty-two minutes by my watch, and in that time, six people entered Theodore’s building and five came out.

They all were men and all were white, and not one of them looked to be under forty. This was a nondescript bunch, neither tall nor short, thin nor fat, and not particularly welldressed, mostly wearing open-collared shirts, no suits and ties. If they had one trait uniting them, it was a grim expression, which I found to be strange. One would think that on such a sunny and breezy summer day, a few of these faces would have been graced with a smile. Of those who left the building, one came across the street, dodging taxis and bicycle messengers in the process, and entered the Italian grocery store that Orrie had mentioned in his report. He emerged ten minutes later with a bulging sack that had a long loaf of bread sticking out of it. It reminded me of similar bread I had seen pedestrians and bicyclists carrying when Lily and I had been in Paris the previous summer.

One man who ventured forth from the Elmont quickly spun around, turning his back to a squad car, which, with sirens blaring, was tearing by. I also noticed that another tenant walked directly across the street and into McCready’s, hardly surprising as it was the nearest bar to the apartment building. After a few more minutes, I decided I was wasting my time as a watchman and went into McCready’s myself.

The bar was lightly patronized, with only a few stools occupied, and the back room was free both of card players and pool sharks. I ordered a scotch and water from a young bartender and noticed that the man I had seen crossing the street from Theodore’s building was in an earnest and whispering but facially expressive conversation with the older barkeep, whom I assumed to be McCready. They huddled for several minutes with their foreheads almost touching before the bartender patted the other man on the shoulder in a paternal gesture, and I watched as he walked out wearing a sad expression.

I tried without success to strike up a conversation with a burly man two stools away, but he was more interested in watching the Yankees run up a big score on the Philadelphia Athletics. Figuring that my afternoon had been a waste of time, I walked south to the brownstone.

By the time I got back, Wolfe was upstairs with the orchids. As I got settled at my desk in the office, Fritz entered. “You just missed a call from Mr. Cohen, Archie. He would like you to telephone him.”

Lon picked up on the first ring and barked his name into the mouthpiece. I responded in like manner, but not as loud.

“Well, Mr. Ace Detective, so far it seems like you may be on the proverbial wild goose chase, based on early returns from the provinces,” Cohen said. “First off, we haven’t got much on that Tenth Avenue building, which happens to be called the Elmont. The last time it made any kind of news in our pages was almost six years ago, when a short piece reported that the place was cited for what the building department termed ‘unsanitary conditions.’”

“Meaning rats?”

“Our piece didn’t say, although that’s often the case. Anyway, the management company, which is based over in Jersey City, promised to address the problem. A note in the Elmont morgue file from one of our reporters noted that the building was given a thumbs-up by the department three months later, so either they cleaned things up or bribed somebody, which is always a possibility.

“As for the docks,” Lon went on, “we haven’t had much at all lately. A couple of fights among longshoremen and a stowaway from Austria who was found on a freighter that came in from Rotterdam. That’s the sum of it over the last couple of years.”

“And what about that bar, McCready’s?” I asked.

“Nothing much there, either. The place has had a few minor brawls, of course, but that hardly makes it unique among the saloons in our fair metropolis.”

“I gather a guy named McCready runs the bar.”

“Yeah, Liam McCready, who our reporter said came over from Ireland early on during the war, even before we got into it. He had inherited the place after the death of an uncle, who had operated it since the repeal of Prohibition. The nephew is now an American citizen. McCready was quoted as being the owner in a piece we ran involving a fight in the bar about two years back. He said, ‘I was terribly sorry that a little disagreement got out of hand, and I promise I will prevent anything like this from ever happening in the future.’”

“Sounds like an upstanding gentleman.”

“So it would seem,” Lon said. “In any case, that’s the last time the joint has made it into print in the Gazette. That’s all we have for you. You got anything for me?”

“Nothing, and we still don’t know who attacked Theodore — or why.”

“But once you’ve made a discovery, I am sure that I will be the first to hear, right?”

“You know me, Lon.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said, signing off.