It was well after midnight when he went to the elevator and I went to get the sheets and blankets and pillow for my second night on the couch.
Chapter 8
There were more than a hundred Odells in the phone books of the five boroughs, but no Frank. That established, I sat at my desk at half past nine Friday morning and considered recourses. It wasn’t the kind of problem to discuss with Wolfe, and anyway he wasn’t available. Saul Panzer had come at nine o’clock on the dot, and instead of going up to the plant rooms Wolfe had come down, put on his heavy overcoat and broad-brimmed beaver hat, and followed Saul out to the curb to climb into the Heron sedan. Of course he knew that the heater, if turned on full, could make the inside of the Heron like an oven, but he took the heavy coat because he distrusted all machines more complicated than a wheelbarrow. He would have been expecting to be stranded at some wild and lonely spot in the Long Island jungle even if I had been driving.
It took will power to fasten my mind on the Frank Odell caper, which was merely a stab in the dark blindfolded, ordered by Wolfe only because he preferred the second of the three alternatives. Where my mind wanted to be was on Long Island. In all my experience of Wolfe’s arrangements of circumstances I had never known him to concoct anything as tricky as the program he was going to rope Lewis Hewitt in for, and I should have been there. Genius is fine for the ignition spark, but to get there someone has to see that the radiator doesn’t leak and no tire is flat. I would have insisted on going if it hadn’t been for Saul Panzer. Wolfe had said that Saul would sit in, and he is the one man I would turn any problem over to if I broke a leg.
I forced my mind onto Frank Odell. The obvious thing was to ring the New York State Parole Division and ask if they had him listed. But of course not on our phone. If the FBI knew that we were spending time and money on Odell after what Quayle had said about him, they would know it wasn’t just prudence, that we thought there was actually a chance that he was involved, and that wouldn’t do. I decided to play it absolutely safe. If some G-man reads this and thinks I’m overrating his outfit, he isn’t inside far enough to know all the family secrets. I’m not inside at all, but I’ve been around a lot.
After going to the kitchen to tell Fritz I was leaving and to the hall for my coat and hat, I let myself out, walked to Tenth Avenue and on to the garage, got permission from Tom Halloran to use the phone, dialed the Gazette number, and got Lon Cohen. He was discreet. He didn’t ask me how we were making out with Mrs. Bruner and the FBI. He did ask if I knew where he could get a bottle of brandy.
“I might send you one someday,” I said, “if you earn it. You can start now. About two years ago a man named Frank Odell was sent up for fraud. If he behaved himself and got a reduction he may be out and on the parole list. I’ve gone in for social work and I want to find him, quick, and rehabilitate him. You can get me, the sooner the better, at this number.” I gave it to him. “I’m keeping my social work secret, so please don’t mention it.”
He said an hour should do it, and I went out to the floor to give motor vehicles a look. Wolfe buys a new one every year, thinking that reduces the risk of a collapse, which it doesn’t, and he leaves the choice to me. I have been tempted to get a Rolls, but it would be a shame to ditch it after only a year. That day there was nothing on the floor I would have traded the Heron for. Tom and I were discussing the dashboard of a 1965 Lincoln when the phone rang and I went. It was Lon, and he had it. Frank Odell had been released in August and would be on parole until the end of February. He lived at 2553 Lamont Avenue, Bronx, and he had a job at a branch of the Driscoll Renting Agency at 4618 Grand Concourse. Lon said that a good way to start rehabilitating him would be to get him in a poker game, and I said I thought craps would be better.
I decided to take the subway instead of a taxi, not to save the client money, but because I thought it was about time to do something about tails. There had been two days and nights since the FBI had presumably got interested in us, and twenty-five hours since they had asked Perazzo to take our licenses, and I still had seen no sign that I had company. Of course I had dodged or hadn’t looked. I now decided to look, but not while walking. I waited until I was at the Grand Central subway station and had boarded an uptown express.
If you think you have a tail on a subway train and want to spot him you keep moving while the train is under way, and at each station you stand close enough to a door so that you might get off. At a rush hour it’s difficult, but it was ten-thirty in the morning and we were going uptown. I had him by the time we made the third stop — or rather, them. There were two. One was a chunky specimen, barely tall enough to meet the specifications, with big brown eyes that he didn’t know how to handle, and the other was the Gregory Peck type except for his curly little ears. The game, just for the hell of it, was to spot them without their knowing I had, and when I got off at the 170th Street station I was pretty sure I had won it. Out on the sidewalk again, I ignored them.
Tailing on New York streets, if you know you have it and want to shake it and aren’t a birdbrain, is a joke. There are a thousand dodges, and the tailee merely picks the one that fits the time and place. There on Tremont Avenue I moseyed along, glancing occasionally at my wristwatch and at the numbers on doors, until I saw an empty taxi coming. When it was thirty yards away I scooted between parked cars, flagged it, hopped in, told the hackie as I pulled the door shut, “Step on it,” and saw Gregory Peck stare at me as we went by. The other one was across the street. We did seven blocks before a red light stopped us, so that was that. I admit I had kept an eye on the rear. I gave the driver the Grand Concourse address, and the light changed, and we rolled.
Some realty agency branch offices are upstairs, but that one was the ground floor of an apartment building, of course one of the buildings it serviced. I entered. It was small, two desks and a table and a filing cabinet. A beautiful young lady with enough black hair for a Beatle was at the nearest desk, and when she smiled at me and asked if she could help me I had to take a breath to keep my head from swimming. They should stay home during business hours. I told her I would like to see Mr. Odell, and she turned her beautiful head and nodded to the rear.
He was at the other desk. I had waited to see him before deciding on the approach, and one look was enough. Some men, after a hitch in the jug, even a short one, have got a permanent wilt, but not him. In size he was a peanut, but an elegant peanut. Fair-skinned and fair-headed, he was more than fair-dressed. His pinstripe gray suit had set him, or somebody, back at least two Cs.
He left his chair to come, said he was Frank Odell, and offered a hand. It would have been simpler if he had had a room to himself; possibly she didn’t know she was cooped up with a jailbird. I said I was Archie Goodwin, got out my case, and handed him a card. He gave it a good look, stuck it in his pocket, and said, “My goodness, I should have recognized you. From your picture in the paper.”
My picture hadn’t been in the paper for fourteen months, and he had been behind bars, but I didn’t make an issue of it. “I’m beginning to show my years,” I told him. “Can you give me a few minutes? Nero Wolfe has taken on a little job involving a man named Morris Althaus and he thinks you might be able to furnish some information.”
He didn’t bat an eye. No wilt. He merely said, “That’s the man that was murdered.”
“Right. Of course the police have been around about that. Routine. This is just a private investigation on a side issue.”
“If you mean the police have been here, they haven’t. We might as well sit down.” He moved to his desk, and I followed and took a chair at its end. “What’s the side issue?” he asked.