“I asked if it was always the same guys who played bridge, and nobody seemed to know, or maybe it was the case that they just didn’t care. It was obvious that the regulars resented the card games.”
“Was there any rough stuff done against the card players, Fred?”
“I asked that question to a couple of the regulars myself, Archie, and they acted like they wouldn’t hurt a flea, let alone somebody playing bridge.”
“Perhaps it is a case of protesting too much,” Wolfe said, turning to me with a slight dip of the chin, a signal it now was my turn. I should mention that whenever we all gather to report, Wolfe prefers that Orrie Cather go last because he knows he likes to take his time once he has center stage.
I gave my brief and essentially bland summary of having talked to Charlie King and said, “Sorry, but my cupboard is bare. If Charlie doesn’t know of trouble on the docks, it’s likely that nobody does.”
Wolfe nodded to Orrie, who leaned forward in his chair with a grin. “That place where Horstmann’s been living on Tenth Avenue may look peaceful and ordinary from the outside, but something funny’s going on in there, and I just can’t seem to figure it out.”
“Try, Orrie,” Wolfe urged.
“Yes, sir. Well, I talked to nine of the residents,” he said, pulling out his notebook and flipping some pages. “Almost all of them seemed... I don’t know, secretive.”
“That sounds like typical New Yorkers to me,” Saul put in. “Anybody who rings their doorbell makes them suspicious by nature.”
“Maybe so,” Orrie conceded, “but I made it clear right from start that I wasn’t selling anything. I was upfront and told them I was a friend of Mr. Horstmann in 412. I showed each of them his photo and said I hadn’t heard anything from him for days, which was very unusual, as we usually talked almost daily. Three people slammed the door in my face, four more said they had never seen or heard of Horstmann — even though one of those lived right next door to him. And the others just shook their heads and looked at me blankly. One of those two, an older woman, had a look of fright and kept shaking her head.”
“Maybe your appearance scared her,” I said.
“Very funny, Archie. I was wearing my best suit, and I went out of my way to be extremely polite. After I’d rung all the buzzers in the place and talked to — or tried to talk to — everyone who answered, I then went downstairs to the street-level apartment of the super, an underfed and mopey guy named Bauer, who also seemed like he didn’t want to say much when I asked him if he had any idea what might have happened to Theodore.
“‘You do know Mr. Horstmann, don’t you?’ I asked Bauer, and he said, word for word, ‘Yes, I met him, of course, and I’ve seen him a couple of other times, but it’s really hard to keep track of everyone here, because of all the turnover.’
“‘Why is that? Is it because people don’t like the conditions here?’ I shot back, and he became very defensive. ‘Oh no, this is a very well-run building, no rats, no burglaries, none of the tenants ever causing trouble,’ he told me, but he was really sweating, to the point where his shirt was showing stains under the arms.”
“Not a pretty picture,” Wolfe remarked sourly.
“No, sir. After that, I talked to people in the three businesses at street level in the building. None of them said they recognized Horstmann by his picture, although I was suspicious of the man in the dry cleaners, who gave one quick look at the photo and shook his head vigorously — a little too vigorously for my money. The two barbers in the shop claimed they had never seen Horstmann before, and it was the same with the guy behind the counter in the deli. I wouldn’t vouch for any of them one way or the other.
“Then I went across the street to a small grocery and showed the picture to the Italian owner, who just shrugged and said he’d never seen Horstmann. And he said more than that...” added Orrie, who loved to be dramatic. “‘That place over there,’ he told me, gesturing to the Elmont, ‘is bad, very bad, cattivo.’
“I asked what he meant, and he muttered, ‘Not nice people, not nice at all.’ When I pressed him, he clammed up like he had said too much. I would have kept at it, but just then two women entered, and the paisano got in one big hurry to wait on them so he could get away from me. I hung around for a few more minutes, but other shoppers kept coming in, so I figured I wasn’t going to squeeze any more out of him, especially the way he looked out of the corner of his eye at me like I was a plain-clothes cop ready to haul him in for an all-night grilling.”
“You, a plainclothes cop?” Saul said, trying to sound shocked.
“Hey, why not? I was almost on the force once, you know, and I would have been if wasn’t for that damned Lieutenant Rowcliff, who hates all private investigators and who blocked my application.”
The mention of George Rowcliff was enough to unite us. Saul rolled his eyes, Fred made a gagging sound, and Wolfe scowled, saying, “The man is a disgrace to the department. Be happy you got turned down, Orrie, or you might have ended up working under him.”
“That is a good point,” Orrie replied. “What do you think about what I just told you, Mr. Wolfe?”
“It suggests more work lies ahead for us, particularly in that building where Theodore had been residing.”
“Tell us what you want, sir,” Saul said. “I believe I can speak for all of us in saying that we are willing to put everything else aside to hunt for whoever attacked Theodore.”
“Yeah, I don’t think we even have to take a vote on that,” Fred added, looking around and seeing nods from Orrie and me.
“Just so. You will be hearing from me through Archie, almost surely as soon as tomorrow,” Wolfe said, rising and heading toward the elevator. His day in the office had ended.
Chapter 7
After breakfast the next day, I sat in the office with coffee, slitting open the morning mail, stacking it on Wolfe’s desk blotter, and filing the orchid germination records that our new man in the plant rooms, Willis, had left on my desk while I was in the kitchen devouring Fritz’s wheat cakes, sausage, and eggs. Willis may not be as good with the orchids as Theodore, but his handwriting is a damn sight better.
Just as I rose to get a java refill in the kitchen, the phone rang, and I was greeted by the voice of Lon Cohen of the New York Gazette. “I fondly remember the good old days,” he said with what was meant to be a heart-rending sigh.
“Meaning what, oh, ink-stained wretch?”
“Meaning that I never hear from you anymore, other than at our weekly poker games, from which I invariably walk away with more shekels than you do.”
“Where is all this gibberish leading?”
“Gibberish, is it? I’m just thinking back to the good old days when you would phone me if you had something newsworthy.”
“I don’t believe I’m aware of anything newsworthy at present, my noble scrivener.”
“You don’t consider the orchid-tender to a world-famous detective lingering in a coma in a hospital to be newsworthy?”
“You seem to have eyes and ears everywhere.”
“Damn right,” said Cohen, who has no title I’m aware of at America’s fifth-largest newspaper, although he has the ear of the publisher and, based on what I have seen and heard, he issues orders to the Gazette’s editor and also has a big part in deciding what each day’s headline story will be.
“Okay, so your intrepid snoops have found out about Theodore Horstmann. So what?”