The next morning, I telephoned the Good Government Group’s offices on Lexington Avenue and was informed by a youthful-sounding male that Laura Cordwell was in meetings and might very well be tied up all day.
“I believe she will want to see me,” I told him. “I am part of a team of investigators looking into the death of Mr. Pierce.”
“I will tell her, sir,” the man said, taking my name and number. Less than an hour later, the phone rang.
“Mr. Goodwin, this is Laura Cordwell of the Good Government Group. Charlie gave me your message, and I must say I have no idea who you are or who you represent. As you can appreciate, I already have had several conversations with police officers. And I found it interesting that your message did not specify what type of investigator you are.”
“A private one, Miss Cordwell, albeit duly licensed by the great state of New York. I work for Nero Wolfe. You may have heard of him.”
“I have,” she said after a pause. “Just what is it you hope to learn where the police have been unsuccessful, at least thus far?”
“I am not sure yet, and please understand that Mr. Wolfe and I are not in competition with the police department. However, there are situations in which we may have an advantage over law enforcement agencies.”
“Is that so? I should like to hear more about that so-called advantage you and your colleague have.”
“I would be glad to discuss the matter with you—in person, Miss Cordwell.”
“You are a persistent sort, aren’t you?” she said in a tone that I took to be both irritable and mildly curious.
“I have been called far worse. But I also know you are a person of intelligence, grace, and charm.”
“And where, pray tell, have you heard that, Mr. Goodwin? Your attempt to flatter me is sadly transparent.”
“Oh, I am sorry you think so. I was merely passing along an impression of you that I got from an acquaintance of mine named Lily Rowan.”
“Lily? She and I had the most interesting conversation a while back at a party. What a lady. I’m so glad I met her. She is … a friend of yours?”
“A very good friend, Miss Cordwell. If you have any reluctance to see me because of your concern about my character, my profession, or my social graces, please give Lily a call. I know her number. I am taking a risk, of course, because she may tell you things about me that I would rather not have known. For instance, I am unable to carry a tune, I have been known to yell too loudly at a Rangers game when they do something stupid, and I occasionally snore.”
“And who told you that?”
“I have no comment. Would you like Lily’s number? I have it memorized.”
“I am sure you do. I remember now that when she and I were talking, she mentioned a friend who she often went dancing with. Do you by any chance happen to be a good dancer, Mr. Goodwin?”
“Modesty forbids me from responding.”
“Of course it does. How silly of me for even bothering to ask. Can you be at our offices at three o’clock today?”
“I can. Should I bring flowers?”
“Not necessary. I trust you know where we are located.”
“I do. I will make sure my shoes are shined for the occasion and that I brush my teeth and my hair.”
“I should hope so.”
At 2:55 p.m., I entered a nondescript and aging office building on an equally nondescript block of Lexington and took the elevator to the fourth floor. To call the reception area of the Good Government Group shabby might be a bit harsh, but the room had seen better days and needed a fresh coat of paint—on the ceiling as well as the walls.
Behind a desk, a long-faced young man who could use some meat on his bones smiled and nodded at me, eyebrows raised. “I am here to see Miss Cordwell. My name is Goodwin,” I replied to his unspoken question.
“Yes, sir, it was me that you talked to earlier. She is expecting you. Her office is the second door on the right behind me. Go right in, I will tell her you are here,” he said, picking up his telephone.
I don’t like barging in on anyone, even when I am expected, so I rapped lightly on the drab door marked laura cordwell and heard “come in.”
The former beauty queen was seated behind an unadorned wood desk with a window behind her that looked out on a Chinese restaurant, a women’s shoe store, and a shop with a red neon sign that blinked the words adult books. It wasn’t the outside view that caught my eye but rather the former Miss Missouri, a brunette with high cheekbones, large blue eyes, and a dazzling smile.
“Mr. Goodwin, how nice to meet you,” she said, sounding genuine. She stood and held out a hand, which I took. Her grip was firm as she gestured me to a chair in front of her desk.
“Now, sir, you have finagled—and skillfully, I must admit—to have this meeting. Well, the floor is yours; please proceed. I am all ears, as they say.”
“All right, Miss—”
“Before you go any further, please call me Laura. We are not big on formality here.”
“Thank you. And I go by Archie. You said on the telephone that you have heard of my boss.”
“Nero Wolfe? Yes, of course. Although I am not a native New Yorker—I have been here only eight years, and that includes my time as a graduate student—I know that I have seen his name in the newspapers on several occasions. But not yours, I am afraid to say.”
“He is the brains of our operation and deserves all the credit. I’m just a guy running around behind the scenes trying to follow his orders.”
“And in this particular situation, just what are the orders you have been given, Mr. Archie Goodwin?” she asked, folding her arms over her chest.
“One, to learn about the workings of the Good Government Group, and two, to discover why someone would have a reason to shoot Lester Pierce.”
“I can be of some help with the first of those tasks you have been given, but I am afraid I will be of less help to you on the second.”
“Fair enough. Tell me about the organizational structure of Three-G. Or is it sacrilege to refer to it in that way?”
She laughed. It was a nice laugh. “No, not at all. This place is anything but stuffy, I assure you. We do important work, Archie, but I think it is fair to say that we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Back to my question,” I said with a smile.
“Of course, I had not forgotten. As I am sure you know, our organization was the brainchild of Lester Pierce, who had been appalled at the growing and unchecked power of the local crime syndicate. He had long felt that neither the police nor the press was doing as much as they could to combat the spread of organized crime in New York.”
“His position is hard to quarrel with, but how successful has the Good Government Group really been?”
“For one thing, under Lester’s leadership these last several years, we have met with the top editors of every one of the city’s daily newspapers and urged them to step up their coverage of the mob and demand that the police put the squeeze on the syndicate. Several of the papers, particularly the Times, News, and Gazette, have run strong editorials urging the police to get tougher on the syndicate. And although I have no way of proving it, I believe these editorials were a direct result of the meetings we had with the editors and publishers. We also have on numerous occasions sat down with the police commissioner and several of his top officers.”
“How would you say those meetings went?”
Laura raised her shoulders and let them drop slowly. “Mixed, at best. All of us—Lester, Roland Marchbank, and me—felt that Commissioner O’Hara was being patronizing to us, as if we were naive and childlike and needed to be lectured. He would say things like ‘You have no idea how difficult it is to make charges against these people stick.’ Then he would suggest in an indirect way that even when the police did make arrests of syndicate figur
es, the district attorney’s office would be unable to deliver convictions.”
“Do you think O’Hara is in league with the syndicate?”
“Oh no, no, Archie. I did not for a moment mean to suggest that,” she said, leaning forward in her chair. “I have no reason whatever to doubt the commissioner’s honesty.”
“How do you feel about the other top cops?”
“I think Inspector Cramer is probably the best of the bunch, although I understand that he is on some sort of administrative leave right now, and I have no idea what that’s about. He has always seemed to take our concerns seriously.”
“What about George Rowcliff?”
She stiffened and fixed me with a firm, unblinking gaze. “I am trying to decide how trustworthy you are.”
“Meaning you believe I might take anything you tell me and run to the police or the press with it?”
“No … I don’t mean that,” she said in a voice just above a whisper, her face coloring. “It’s just that I don’t want to have things I say used against me.”
“Well, I am not sure how I can reassure you about my discretion. For starters, you could ask Lily Rowan. Many times I’ve been involved in a case, and she has asked me about details—simply because she’s curious by nature—and I have clammed up. Beyond that, I can only say I have been a private investigator in this town for years, and if I had been a blabbermouth, I would have been shipped back to the hills of southern Ohio long ago.”
That brought the trace of a smile. “For some reason, I believe you. Could it be your native charm?”
“Once again, I refer you to Miss Rowan.”
She laughed. “All right, let us say you have won your point. None of us here have been the least bit impressed with Captain Rowcliff. Off the record, I think he likes to hear himself talk.”
“On or off the record, I second that opinion. And if you think I am not a fan of the gentleman, you should hear what my boss has to say about him.”
“That doesn’t sound very discreet of you, Archie.”
“Nero Wolfe would not object to my saying it. And now if you don’t mind, I would like to shift gears away from the police.”
“Shift away.”
“You said earlier that you didn’t feel you would be of much help on the subject of who shot Mr. Pierce. You can think of no possible killers?”
“I suppose the standard answer would be the crime syndicate, but that does not seem likely to me. For one thing, Three-G has not put them out of business, as hard as we have tried. For another, what would be the mob’s advantage in killing Lester? Someone else would take his place here, and as I see it, his murder would have accomplished nothing.”
“A valid point. You mentioned Roland Marchbank a few minutes ago. What is his role here?”
“Roland is assistant executive director. As such, he served as Lester’s right-hand man.”
“Will he take over the top spot now?”
“That has not yet been decided,” she said, spacing her words.
“Who does the deciding?”
“I’m sure you know who Weldon Dunagan is.”
“The grocery store magnate.”
“Oh, come on, Archie, you know more than that about him, unless I have badly overrated you.”
“Okay, you have smoked me out; I will start over. He is the individual who has essentially bankrolled this outfit.”
“Bravo, Mr. G.!” She clapped her hands. “Without him, we would be nothing. He has detested the crime syndicate for years, and Three-G is his way of trying to do something about it. He wanted to set us up in luxurious quarters, but Lester felt that would send a bad message to the public, so we have what you see here.” She spread her arms. “Actually, these offices are more than adequate, so there’s nothing to complain about.
“And before we go any further, Archie, I need to say that although our success in combating the syndicate has been negligible, we have done better in other areas, specifically local government. Our investigations have identified graft in some city departments and have led to arrests and indictments. I could get specific if you like.”
“Not necessary, and congratulations. Does Mr. Dunagan take an active role here?”
“Not exactly,” Laura said. “Oh, on rare occasions, he sits in on one of our meetings, but his attitude essentially is that you hire good people and leave them alone to do their jobs. Even when he does come here, he says very little during our meetings.”
“I gather he does not have a high opinion of our fair city’s police.”
“You gather correctly. And for some reason, he has been particularly critical of Inspector Cramer of Homicide.”
“Interesting. Do you have any idea why?”
“I haven’t a clue,” she said. “But on a couple of occasions when he was here, he made disparaging remarks of a general nature about the inspector. Nothing specific.”
Long ago, I learned that when interviewing an individual, it was always best to save the toughest questions for last. That moment had now come.
“How would you describe the morale here when Mr. Pierce was in charge?”
Laura blinked as if surprised. “Well, fine, absolutely fine, why would it be otherwise?”
“Beats me. I’m just a detective trying to detect. Did everyone here get along well with everyone else?”
She seemed to tighten up and paused a beat before responding. “Oh, there were the occasional differences of opinion among us, but nothing that I would term major.”
“I gather Mr. Marchbank was considered to be the second in command.”
“He definitely was the second in command,” she snapped.
“So will he replace Lester Pierce as the executive director of Three-G?”
“As I told you before, that has not yet been announced, but I can only assume he will.” Laura’s tone was decidedly cooler than earlier.
“Do you feel you should get the job?”
“Really, I find that question to be impertinent.”
“What is so impertinent about it? You clearly are a talented individual, and I can only assume you have a certain amount of ambition, which is by no means a bad thing.” My comment seemed to calm the waters, at least for the moment.
“Of course I do have some goals,” she said, shifting in her chair. “Everyone possessed of self-respect does. Do I think I would make a good executive director? Yes, but then, so would Roland.”
“Diplomatically put. Did Mr. Pierce ever suggest to you that he would like you to succeed him?”
Now the tension had returned, as I figured it would. “I’m curious as to why you would think Lester should want me to take over in his stead.”
“As I understand it, there had been some speculation that he had his eye on the governor’s mansion, and if that was the case, he would naturally be planning for Three-G’s future.”
“That governor business was nothing more than a rumor, at least as far as I know,” she said, “probably circulated by one of the newspapers. Lester certainly never mentioned to me any political ambitions he had, or to anyone else here in my presence.”
“The press has been known to start rumors, all right, it’s one of the things they do best. How would you describe your relationship with Mr. Pierce?” I asked in the most innocent tone I could muster.
Laura glowered at me, and she had one dandy glower. “You have been leading up to that since you walked in here, haven’t you?”
“What I have been doing is trying to learn from you as much as possible about the operations and personalities here. I assume you want the killer of Lester Pierce caught as badly as Nero Wolfe and I do.”
“I am sure that you know very well—very damned well—that there have been rumors about Lester and me. I had no comment about these rumors when asked about them by the police, and I certainly have no co
mment about them to you. Now if you will please excuse me, I have given you more than enough of my time, and as you can see, I have a pile of paperwork staring at me.”
She turned to some paperwork on her desk, head down. I had been dismissed, much as Weldon Dunagan had dismissed me. At this rate, I could get a complex.
Chapter 13
“I failed miserably in my attempt to enrapture the comely Laura Cordwell,” I told Wolfe on my return to the brownstone.
He dog-eared a page in his book and set it down. “Report.”
I unloaded my verbatim report of our conversation as he sat back, eyes closed. When I had finished, he blinked once and said, “She appears to be in the throes of remorse over her amatory adventures.”
“Maybe, but throes or not, and amatory or not, she strikes me as one very smart and very calculating number. Could she have had Pierce dispatched? Possibly, although I will lay odds against it. And before you ask if my opinion is in any way swayed by her beauty—and she is beautiful—the answer is no. As attractive as she is, she did nothing to stimulate my—what do you term it?—amatory senses, and I’m not sure I can tell you why. Anyway, I see this venture as an exercise in failure.”
“Not necessarily,” Wolfe said. “You surely have learned more about the woman and her motivations than you think. Did you detect any remorse on her part over Mr. Pierce’s death?”
“I did not, although she may be one of those people who are able to hide their grief well.”
“Perhaps, although I am inclined to subscribe to your description of Miss Cordwell as calculating.”
“No question about it. Now I suppose you want me to tackle Roland Marchbank, right?”
“That already has been taken care of,” Wolfe said dismissively.
“So you’re pulling that old stunt again, eh?” Over the years, the man who signs my checks has developed the habit of giving assignments to others without bothering to inform me. He claims he does so because he does not want me to become distracted from other tasks I have been given.
The Battered Badge Page 7
