The next morning, after devouring a breakfast of sausage, eggs, and pancakes with wild-thyme honey at my small table in the kitchen, I finished packing my overnight bag for the trip to Katonah and went to the office to tackle some housekeeping odds and ends. At nine-twenty, the doorbell rang. It was two men from the elevator outfit we’ve used through the years, one of whom, the tall bald one, I recognized. I ushered them in, and we hoofed it up to the fourth floor, where the car stood open and dark. While they surveyed it, I went into the plant rooms to confirm that Wolfe had walked up the two flights from his bedroom on the second floor. Sure enough, there he was, on his usual stool at the bench doing something with the stuff in a pot, while Theodore looked on, frowning. His frown predictably deepened when he saw me. “Just thought I’d let you know that the elevator grease monkeys are here. Things may get a little noisy,” I said. Wolfe glowered in my direction and turned back to the pot.
I went down to the office, where I balanced the checkbook and read those parts of the Times I hadn’t gotten to at breakfast. At ten-thirty-five, the tall bald repairman stuck his head in the door and delivered the bad news.
“Sorry, but you’ve got problems big-time.” He shook his head like an auto mechanic telling me that my car was on life-support systems. “I remember workin’ on this baby years ago, and it was ancient then. They quit making this model before I was born, and I’m sneaking up on retirement. Howie and me have just now been on the roof of the cab, in the shaft from top to bottom, checked the cables, the counterweights, the motor, the bearings, the bushings, the electrical system, the works. And I gotta tell you, the thing’s just plain dangerous the shape she’s in right now. I’m surprised the city inspectors didn’t whistle you on it the last time they was here. But I see by the certificate in the cab that they gave it a pass. Come on up — I’ll show you just how bad it is.” He — his name was Carl — and I walked up the three flights, where his partner Howie was packing up his tool box.
“See here?” Carl said, stepping into the elevator, crouching and playing his flashlight along the floor. “It’s rusted through in four or five places where the wall joins the floor. Thing’s ready to come to pieces. And the door” — he grabbed it and shook it — “is hanging on by its imagination. I’m surprised none of you had noticed how bad it is.”
“How long will it take and how much will it cost?” I asked.
“Depends. There’s so much wrong that we strongly recommend a new unit — including a cab. If the platform — the base of the cab, that is — was in better shape, maybe we could salvage it, but” — Carl shrugged — “that’s not the case, not by a long shot.
“I know it probably sounds drastic to you, but startin’ over’s actually cheaper than tryin’ to patch this old bus together, especially because a lot of the parts aren’t even made anymore. And the motor’s totally shot, too — totally. You may want to get a second estimate, but I think anybody else’ll find the same stuff wrong that we did. If you go the whole nine yards, and I really think you should, we can start, oh, probably next Monday, assuming everything is in stock. We can have the new setup operational in ten working days, twelve at most. And we won’t have to tear out any walls; the new cab can be assembled right in the shaft — after we dismantle the old one, of course, which is a big job. If you call our emergency number today with the go-ahead, I’m pretty sure that a crew can be here early next week.” He thrust a clipboard at me with a list of things needing fixing and the cost of each. The figure at the bottom made me glad that we currently had a client.
I told Carl that I would check with Wolfe and get a decision, probably later today. He gave a thumbs-up, and the three of us descended the stairs to the front hall, where we said good-bye and I let them out.
Wolfe can be a trouper when times are tough, I’ll give him that. It was only 11:04 when he strode into the office, and he wasn’t even breathing hard from the mind-boggling exertion of walking down three flights. He placed a raceme of Phalaenopsis in the vase on his blotter and dipped his head in my direction but did not say “Good morning,” since we already had seen each other earlier. I got up from my chair and walked to his desk, laying the estimate in front of him. He picked it up, pressed his lips together, and set it down. “Pfui. Exorbitant.”
“Pfui, indeed,” I agreed. “You’re the only one who ever uses the elevator. Didn’t it seem to you that the thing was getting pretty rickety?”
Wolfe shrugged away the question, ringing for beer.
“The work will take two weeks, maybe a little more, beginning early next week, or so the guy who was here thinks,” I went on. “Do you want me to get a second estimate?”
“Would it be appreciably different?”
“Probably not. This outfit has a top-flight reputation, the best in the city — or at least they did. The reason we called them originally, you may remember, was that I checked with a high roller Lon Cohen knows who’s in real estate, and he recommended them. But that was several years back, although we’ve used them for minor repairs three or four times since without any problems. I can do some calling around to see if they’re still well-thought-of.”
“No,” Wolfe responded, holding up a palm. “Proceed.” I did, and when I called them to give the go-ahead, the still-sleepy voice at the other end promised that a crew would be on the job Monday morning, “no later than eight-thirty.” I reminded Wolfe that I would be on my way to Indiana on Monday and asked if he’d like me to get either Saul Panzer or Fred Durkin to fill in for me at the desk, as has been the case sometimes when I’ve gone out of town. “How long will you be gone?” he asked.
“That is a question I should be tossing at you,” I said with a smile. “It all depends on what you expect me to accomplish while I’m there.”
“Your notebook,” he grumbled. “Instructions.”
Ten
The weekend in Katonah could not have been improved upon. The weather was better than any New Yorker had a right to expect in mid-Apriclass="underline" Sunny, light breezes, temperatures flirting with seventy. Lily and I rode two of her spirited Morgans for an hour or so Saturday afternoon, followed by a dip in the pool, and we dined down the road from her place at a just-opened restaurant in a two-hundred-year-old Tudor mansion. I had salmon en piperade and a few bites of her rack of lamb. Fritz would have given his blessing to both dishes. Sunday after brunch in the same restaurant, we rode some more, swam some more, and were back in town by six.
The memory of the weekend lingered pleasantly as I drove through the rain of a Monday morning in south-central Indiana, but I’m getting ahead of myself. My instructions from Wolfe on Saturday had been brief: Visit Childress’s aunts and anyone else in Mercer who could reveal anything about the man, both during his hometown years and after he went to New York. When I pressed for more direction, he gave me his “Use your intelligence guided by experience” line, which I have heard more times than I can begin to count.
After making plane and car-rental reservations, I had called Debra Mitchell to get the names of, Childress’s aunts, only one of whom — Melva Meeker — she had talked to on the telephone. “She wasn’t very communicative, to say the least,” Debra told me crisply. “My guess is that you’re wasting your time trying to phone her. And I’m sorry, but I don’t know the name of the other aunt.” I said thanks, not bothering to add that I was planning a face-to-face visit.