The woman knows me too well. I picked up the telephone and dialed one of the numbers I know by heart. “Cohen! I’m on deadline!” the voice at the other end barked.
“You don’t have to shout into the phone,” I responded. “My hearing is just fine, thank you.”
“All right, Archie,” Lon Cohen snapped, his voice lowering several decibels. “What is it you need this time?”
“That’s a fine way to respond to a call, especially a call from someone who helped fatten your wallet at poker last Thursday night.”
“I can’t help it, Archie, if you insist on raising with two pairs when it should have been obvious that I clearly had three of a kind.”
“Hope springs eternal. Now, are you really on deadline, or is that just a way to discourage bothersome callers?”
“Obviously, it didn’t work with you. To what do I owe this intrusion, Shamus?”
“I’m looking for information.”
“Of course, you are. What’s in it for me?”
“A bit early to tell. I want to know what you might have in your reference room about a man named Everett Carr.”
“Is this something Nero Wolfe’s working on?”
“Not at the moment, but...”
“Playing cagey, eh?”
“Me, cagey? Never,” I told Lon. “However, if we learn anything you have on Mr. Carr that might be helpful to us, it might also lead to something helpful to you and your esteemed publication.”
A bit of background here on Lon Cohen, for those of you who are new to these narratives. He toils for the New York Gazette and does not have a title I’m aware of, but his office on the twentieth floor of the Gazette building is just down the hall from the publisher, and Lon plays a major role in deciding what stories end up on page one of the fourth-largest newspaper in America. Over the years, he has been a great help to Nero Wolfe and me with information, but we have returned the favor by throwing at least a score of scoops to Lon and the Gazette.
“Okay, I will play along with you — for a while, at least,” Lon said. “I’ll have the boys downstairs pull the clips on this guy Carr, assuming we have any, and you can drop by and look at them. But remember who your friends are if it turns out there’s a story here.”
“I never forget who my friends are,” I said, hanging up before he could mount a retort.
A half hour later, I hoofed it north to the Gazette’s offices near the Chrysler Building, going straight to the reference room, or the “morgue” in newspaper terminology, which adjoins the city room, the paper’s nerve center. “Hi, Mr. Goodwin, I have been expecting you. Haven’t seen you in quite a while.”
“It has been a long time, Bernie. Lon Cohen must have told you I was coming.”
“That he did, Mr. G., and I’ve got the file that he told me you wanted to look at. ’Fraid there isn’t a whole lot in it, though,” he said, handing me a small manila envelope and steering me to a small desk. The Gazette does not allow its clippings to leave the building, no exceptions.
The Everett Carr file was indeed thin, with only two entries, each of them between three and five years old.
Police closed down a handbook on Eleventh Avenue at 54th Street last night. The operator, Charles Spencer, 59, of 217 W. 83rd St., was booked on a charge of running an illegal gaming facility. The only other person on the premises at the time was Everett Carr, who gave his age as 44 and was released.
Edna Frederickson, 49, of 229 E. 77th St., was struck by a Yellow cab at 43rd St. and Seventh Ave. yesterday afternoon and taken by ambulance to Bellevue Hospital, where her injuries were described as minor. A witness, Everett Carr, who declined to supply his address, said Mrs. Frederickson crossed 43rd St. when the “walk” sign was lighted, and that the taxi struck her in the crosswalk. The cabbie, Ed Watts, was cited for reckless driving.
So much for learning about Everett Carr from the Gazette’s clips, but I was ready with a Plan B. “Bernie, do you mind if I page through your telephone directories?”
“Hey, I know what a good friend you are to Mr. Cohen, so, sure, be my guest.”
The Gazette, probably like most other daily papers, keeps a batch of phone directories for the communities in its circulation area and beyond. Bernie led me to the shelves where theirs are stored.
We keep Manhattan and Brooklyn directories at the brownstone, but as long as I was here... I tackled the fat Manhattan book first, and you may or may not be interested to learn that there are 157 Carrs listed, none of whom was an Everett or simply an E. Carr. On to Brooklyn, also a lot of Carrs, but no luck. Ditto with Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, Yonkers, the New Jersey cities just across the Hudson, and the counties of Westchester and Nassau. I mention this as a response to all those who have said to me, “Being a detective must be so exciting.”
I left the Gazette and went back to the brownstone, where we would be having spareribs in Fritz’s special sauce for lunch. When I got home, it was still fifteen minutes before Wolfe’s descent from the plant rooms, so I called Lily and filled her in.
“No luck on trying to locate Everett Carr, although the sparse information on him in the Gazette’s files, along with Maureen’s sighting of him on Fifth Avenue a while back, tends to suggest that he lives somewhere in this town and has been in a bookie joint.”
“I will telephone Sofia, on the off chance she might know something about him,” Lily said. “The subject did not come up when we were with her.”
“It’s better than anything that I can think of at the moment. You know where to reach me.”
After a lunch at which Wolfe expounded on the reasons third-party candidates are unable to win presidential elections, I went for a walk to stretch my legs. As I passed a drugstore on Ninth Avenue, I had an inspiration, if you could so term it. I went inside, stepped into a pay telephone booth with my nickel, and dialed the number of the aforementioned Saul Panzer, the best freelance operative in North America and maybe beyond.
“Hi, Archie,” he said. “The only time I’ve seen you lately is at our weekly poker games. Things slow these days for you and Nero Wolfe?”
“We haven’t had much business lately, but we frankly haven’t needed it after all the cases last month.”
“Yeah, that was one busy time for you, me, Fred, and Orrie. And, of course, Wolfe.” Saul was speaking about Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather, who with Saul are the freelance detectives Wolfe most often uses.
“I’ve got a question for you, one that won’t bring you any money.”
“Fire away,” Saul said. “I’m not always mercenary, especially with a friend.”
“Here’s the situation: I’m working on something for Lily Rowan, and we’re trying to find someone who may not want to be found.”
“Happens a lot. Tell me about this individual.”
“He’s in his mid-to-late forties, probably single, and said to be careless with money.”
“Alcoholic?”
“We’re not sure.”
“Would you call him poverty-stricken?” Saul asked.
“I really don’t think so, no.”
“That would tend to rule out flophouses. Off the top, I would suggest looking into that big YMCA on Thirty-Fourth near Ninth Avenue. It’s said to be the largest Y in the country. You probably know the building I’m talking about; it must be about fifteen stories high.”
“Yeah, I’ve been by it, but never inside. What kind of men live there?”