“I was hoping this wouldn’t come up,” Maureen replied in a subdued tone. “I withdrew five thousand dollars on our trip to the bank.”
“What!” It was Jurek. “We’re not broke, that’s just plain charity,” he said sharply to his wife.
“How dire is your situation?” Wolfe asked Sofia.
“Pretty bad,” she said, again in a soft voice.
“Because of your husband’s gambling?”
“Now wait a minute! We did not come in here so that you could air our dirty linen in public,” Jurek said, standing as if to leave.
“Sit down!” Cramer spat. “Nobody leaves until I say so.”
“Oh, so this really is your party, after all,” Hirsch said, “despite Wolfe’s claim that you and your sergeant are just here as observers. What a lot of hooey!”
“Perhaps Inspector Cramer misspoke,” Wolfe said in a conciliatory tone. “Mr. Jurek, you mentioned that among the items you brought back from the war is a Luger pistol.”
“Yes, and it’s a dandy,” he said, having calmed down a bit and being happy to talk about his military exploits. “I’ve thought about putting it in a glass case, along with the iron cross and the medals I took off the guy’s uniform. Kind of like trophies.”
“But you have never fired the weapon?” Wolfe asked.
“Hell no, although the bullets are still in it.”
“Mr. Carr was killed by a weapon that fired nine-millimeter shells, the caliber used in a Luger,” Wolfe said.
“I suppose there are lots of Lugers around,” Jurek said. “What are you trying to say?”
“I am simply making an observation, sir. Mrs. Jurek, did you ever have occasion to meet Mr. Carr?”
Sofia stiffened. “I... do not believe so.”
“But you knew who he was?”
“Oh yes, Stan had mentioned him to me.”
“Did they meet often?”
“I don’t know that.”
“And you are sure you have never met Mr. Carr?” Wolfe repeated his earlier question.
“I... I...” Sofia began to sniffle.
“Let me suggest this scenario, madam. You have indeed met Everett Carr. You felt the man was a bad influence upon your husband by encouraging his gambling on the horses, a habit that has wreaked havoc on your family’s finances.”
“Stop this!” Stan Jurek shouted. “I will not let—”
“Mr. Jurek, if you are unable to control yourself, I will ask Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Panzer to forcibly relocate you to the front room until I have concluded,” Wolfe said. Jurek had been hyperventilating, and after Wolfe’s threat, he slowly returned to normal breathing.
“To continue with my scenario, madam, you contrived to meet Mr. Carr — I will leave it to the police to determine how that was accomplished — and the two of you met in a passageway between buildings in Greenwich Village. You of course knew about your husband’s prized Luger, and you took it with you to the rendezvous.
“Your plan was to insist that Mr. Carr stop meeting your husband and abetting his gambling proclivities. You planned to threaten him with the Luger to underscore the seriousness of your demand. But—”
“Please!” This time, it was Sofia who interrupted. “Please, that is enough. You are right, you are right, I did have the gun in my hand, but I just wanted to use it to, to threaten him. But do you know what that man did? He laughed at me, and he grabbed for the gun. He said, ‘What is a tiny little lady like you doing with such a big, bad weapon? You are nothing but a silly goose.’ That is what he called me — a silly goose! We wrestled for the gun, and at that moment, I hated him even more than before. I tried to pull the gun back as he kept holding on to it, and it... it fired and fired. He fell...”
She broke down and started sobbing as her husband cradled her head in his lap. Tears rolled down his cheeks as well.
Wolfe, who can’t stand scenes like the one that was unfolding before him, got up and walked out of the office.
For the first several seconds after Wolfe departed, there was what I could only term stunned silence. The lone sounds were the muffled crying of Sofia Jurek and the muttering of her husband.
Finally, Inspector Cramer spoke. “Purley, call headquarters and ask them to bring a policewoman here — and right now!” Stebbins looked questioningly at me, and I nodded in the direction of my desk, a signal of tacit permission for him to use my phone. Despite the differences Purley and I have had over the years, and they have been doozies, sometimes our hostilities must be suspended. This was one of those times.
Lily came over to Maureen and put an arm on her shoulder, then whispered something in her ear. Miles Hirsch and Harley Everts rose, and, wearing a sneer, Hirsch looked around and said to Cramer, “Bet you thought you were going to get me tonight, didn’t you? Sorry I had to spoil your evening, copper.”
“Be smug while you still can,” the inspector retorted as the gambler walked out. “Your day will come.”
Stebbins finished his call and, shaking his head, he looked down at the Jureks, who were still clinging to each other. Eric Mason came over to Maureen, and the two of them repaired to the sofa and huddled in a conversation that I made no attempt to eavesdrop on.
Lily came and stood with me, saying, “I thought Mr. Wolfe was pretty hard on Sofia, didn’t you?”
“It was not fun to watch, for sure. But then, Sofia was pretty hard on Everett Carr as well,” I said.
“But she was trying to protect her husband.”
“I will grant you that, and I suppose that eventually it will be up to a jury to decide her fate. Now if you will excuse me, my dear. I must make a call to Lon Cohen at the Gazette, who may very well be expecting to hear from me. He will, of course, call Inspector Cramer and be able to scoop the competition when his early edition comes out around midday tomorrow. He will love the fact that it is now too late for the morning papers like the Times and Daily News to get anything into print tonight. And most important, Lon will be in Nero Wolfe’s debt, at least for a while.”
Chapter 26
The case against Sofia Jurek ended up generating lots of headlines and photographs. First for the murder itself, of course, but then for the trials — plural. For many of the courtroom reporters, Sofia became a tragic figure, one who had been driven to violence by forces beyond her control and who was seen by some to be an accidental murderess.
Gambling took center stage at her first trial, with some social reformers demanding that parimutuel horse racing be banned in New York State because of the harm it does to working families. For good or ill, that campaign got nowhere.
The district attorney’s office had first planned to charge Sofia with first-degree murder, but they decided premeditation would be too hard to prove, so they went to a second-degree charge. Sofia was represented by one of the best trial lawyers in the city. He was hired by Maureen Carr — despite the defendant having killed Maureen’s brother.
The courtroom drama garnered plenty of coverage, on the radio and in magazines as well as in print. However, the trial was aborted when a reporter from Lon Cohen’s Gazette discovered that one of the jurors was a recovering gambler — mainly on horse racing. A second trial is currently underway, and Lon has told me his reporters think this one could drag on for weeks, particularly with Sofia being portrayed as a martyr and a victim.
Inspector Cramer’s “Your day will come” threat to Miles Hirsch came to pass a little over a week ago when the gambler and horse breeder was charged with the doping of one of his own horses in a race at a track in Florida. Lon is certain that Hirsch will go to trial, which could result in his being permanently banned from horse racing, to say nothing of a possible prison sentence.