When Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven, I decided to say nothing about Lon’s request. The ball was in his court. He wished me a good morning, rang for beer, and perused that morning’s New York Times for the next twenty minutes as I entered orchid germination records on file cards.
I was determined not to break the silence, and it turned out that I didn’t have to.
“Archie, please get Mr. Cohen on the telephone.”
I dialed a number I knew by heart and stayed on the line. Wolfe picked up his receiver, and Lon answered on the first ring.
“Mr. Cohen, this is Nero Wolfe. I will see your Mr. Clay, but with this caveat: I do not possess the resources to prevent one individual from doing violence to another. If Mr. Clay truly fears for his life, I can suggest precautions he can take to minimize the danger to him, but I can do little else. He must understand that.”
“That’s all he can ask for, Mr. Wolfe. I will pass your message along to him, and I assume he will call you.”
“How are you going to stand having that man in the house?” I asked after we had hung up.
“We have had far worse, as you are aware.”
“Agreed, but those were situations where we had a case and a client, with the promise of a payment. Here we have nothing, zilch.”
“Archie, I applaud your concern regarding our finances,” Wolfe said, leaning back and interlacing his hands over his middle mound. “It is admirable, and I commend you. I agree that we have ‘zilch,’ to use your colorful term, but we also have a long and fruitful relationship with Mr. Cohen.”
“But you said yourself when he was here that if anything, the balance is tipped slightly in our favor.”
“I prefer to keep it that way. I would always rather have someone in my debt than the reverse.”
“Even if it means putting up with a sleaze like Cameron Clay?”
“Zilch? Sleaze? Your vocabulary has taken flights of fancy. You must introduce me to your dictionary.”
“All right, mock me if it gives you satisfaction, but you have been known to use many words that are unfamiliar to most of the rest of us poor mortals.”
Wolfe rang for beer and swiveled to face me. “Call Saul and find out if he has the time to do some research on Mr. Clay—his family, habits, anything else he is able to unearth.”
Saul Panzer is an operative, but that tag hardly does him justice. He is the best freelance detective on this or any other continent, which is why Wolfe uses him so often and trusts him “further than might be thought credible.” He is better at tailing someone than any breed of bloodhound, and he can find out more about an individual than the best spy in the pay of any government in the world.
At 5' 7" and 140 pounds, Saul isn’t much to look at, but you underestimate him at your peril. He has more business than he can handle, but he has been known to interrupt a case he’s working on at the drop of a hat to give Nero Wolfe a hand. I dialed his number and got Coral, the woman who currently runs the answering service Saul uses.
“Aye, Mr. Goodwin, I recognize your voice,” she said in her pleasant Scottish burr. “May I have Mr. Panzer ring you when he is able? I know that he will check in with me soon.”
I answered in the affirmative and hung up, turning to my copy of the Gazette’s early edition. It was time to tackle a task I had been avoiding: reading Cameron Clay’s column.
As I noted earlier, I am not a regular reader of Clay’s work, but I considered this “homework,” so I flipped to page three, where the column occupied its usual position at the top of the page, under elaborate Old English type proclaiming “Stop the Presses!” along with a woodcut of what appeared to be an antique printing press. The column carried no other headline, but rather started right in with bold-faced items:
NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY: What Yankee outfielder has been seen on numerous occasions of late at the Stork Club and the 21 Club with a lady (if that’s the right word) who most definitely is not his long-time missus? Guess you could call her a pinch-hitter, eh? Stay tuned for updates. … WHEELS UP: Hizzoner the Mayor has become something of a jet-setter this winter. He tells us trips to Florida, Arizona, and California have been essential to persuade companies headquartered in those states to relocate to Our Town. Does he ever fly to those places in July and August? And does he ever fly to Minnesota or Maine? Just asking. … BROADWAY BOMB: Word is that a certain musical that recently opened here with a star-studded cast, hysterical hype, and stratospheric ticket prices is on the brink of closing. Nobody associated with this dud is talking, but if we were you, we’d avoid making advance bookings. … VILLAGE VIPERS: Seems that a number of bars, restaurants, and other establishments in Greenwich Village have been getting visits from city inspectors looking for electrical and other code violations. We’re told that for certain “considerations” from the merchants, these inspectors suddenly lose interest and disappear. … “CERTAIN PEOPLE” NEED NOT APPLY: What hoity-toity Park Avenue co-op tower has quietly decided to ensure that its residents are racially and ethnically “pure”? Word is that one well-known entertainer was turned away when he tried to purchase an available unit because he was deemed “not suitable” by the board. City officials we reached claim to know nothing about this nasty bit of intolerance.
There was more, but I stopped reading at that point, having digested all I could handle in one sitting. To give Clay his due, however, today’s column, like many of his others, was not entirely scandal-mongering. He did point out injustices and questionable practices, and I recalled that a few years ago, he was given an award by a neighborhood association for crusading to successfully get a park purged of the drug dealers who gathered there after dark.
As I put the paper aside, the phone rang. “Reporting as requested,” Saul said, and I motioned to Wolfe to pick up his receiver.
“Good morning, Saul,” he said. “Are you available for an assignment?”
“At your service, as usual.”
“I am interested in what you can find out about Cameron Clay, his habits, his foibles, his family.”
“Ah, the columnist who fashions himself as ‘Mr. New York.’ When do you need information?”
“Whenever it is convenient for you. Do not discommode yourself.” In Wolfe’s eyes, Saul Panzer can do no wrong.
“I’ll have something later today,” Saul said.
“Only if it does not disrupt your schedule,” Wolfe said, hanging up. I stayed on the line long enough to tell Saul that, heaven forbid, we certainly did not want to do any disrupting of his precious schedule. The answer I got was a snort, then a click, followed by the dial tone.
I wasn’t so sure we would hear from Saul that day, but as has so often been the case, I underestimated him. The call came at four thirty. “Okay, Archie, I’ve got some dope on the self-important columnist. When do you want me to unload it?”
“Can you be here at six?”
Saul said he could, which I told Wolfe when he came down from the plant rooms. “Good,” he said as he rang for beer.
The doorbell announced Saul’s arrival as Wolfe settled into his desk chair. “Apparently, you were not discommoded,” I said as Saul stepped in and hung his hat and coat on the hall rack.
“Being around Mr. Wolfe all these years has certainly improved your vocabulary—that is, if you even know what the words you like to throw around mean,” Saul said as he ambled down the hall to Wolfe’s office. I tried to mount a comeback, but Saul was already settling into the red leather chair.
“Something to drink?” Wolfe asked.
“I’d like a scotch on the rocks, if it doesn’t discommode Archie too much,” he said.
The creases in Wolfe’s cheeks deepened as I went to the kitchen for ice and then got Saul his drink from the serving cart against the office wall.
He took a sip and nodded his approval of the single malt. “I’ve got some stuff on Clay, althoug
h I’m sorry it isn’t more complete.”
Wolfe nodded, the signal for Saul to continue.
If Saul wondered why Wolfe had solicited him rather than Lon Cohen for information about Clay, he did not question it. Although Wolfe had said nothing to me, I knew the reason: He felt Lon might be too close to the subject, and he knew Saul had sources outside the staff of the Gazette.
“I don’t know why you need to know about Cameron Clay, and I am not about to ask,” Saul said. “For starters, I can tell you this: It is not hard to find people around town who have an opinion about the columnist, and most of these opinions are less than flattering. This despite the fact that Stop the Presses! is almost surely the single most read feature in any New York newspaper.”
“It is not necessary for one to like the messenger to absorb the message he delivers,” Wolfe said.
“I suppose not. So it’s probable that a lot of people read his column despite what they think of him,” Saul replied. “From what I’ve learned, he gets plenty of mail at the Gazette, and it’s pretty evenly split between pro and con. But once, a few years back, the editors decided to keep the column out of the paper for several days to test the reaction. And did they ever get one. There were hundreds of calls and letters wondering where Stop the Presses! was. Needless to say, it got reinstated, and Clay himself got a raise out of it.”
“Papers have pulled the same stunt with comic strips,” I added.
“Probably with similar results,” Saul said. “Anyway, here’s what I’ve come up with about Clay. I’m afraid it may not be that helpful, although I’m unsure as to what you hope to learn.”
“As Archie likes to say, we are all ears,” Wolfe said, finishing the beer in his pilsner glass.
“Okay, here goes. He’s sixty-eight and has had his Gazette column for seventeen years. Going back to the beginning, he grew up in Maryland, where his father was a foreman at the big Bethlehem Steel plant in Sparrow’s Point near Baltimore and his mother was a seamstress who took in work at home. He graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Maryland, became a cub reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and later became a police reporter there. There didn’t seem to be any other opportunities for him to grow at the paper, so he took a job as a criminal courts reporter at the Baltimore Sun. He broke a couple of big stories, and after much pushing and nagging on his part, he was given a twice-weekly column. Within a few weeks, he told the editors he deserved a daily column, but he was turned down—more than once.
“Frustrated, he decided his future was in New York, nothing less would do. He began peppering a half-dozen of Manhattan’s dailies with clippings and applications. After months of futility, an editor at the Gazette hired him as a general assignment reporter. Clay first made his name at the paper with a piece exposing a crooked landlord who owned a number of tenements and was bribing city inspectors to overlook code violations in his sub-par buildings. He followed up with several other exposés of shady and illegal business practices and outright scams, and as he had done in Baltimore, he began lobbying for a column, although it took him years to get it. He’s always been personally aggressive—bordering on the obnoxious—according to my contacts.”
“Bordering? The obnoxious part sure comes through in his columns,” I said.
“No question,” Saul said. “Clay doesn’t want to win any popularity contests, quite the contrary. Given what I’ve learned from a couple of people who know him, he seems to relish riling people up and bringing attacks upon himself.”
“The Gazette is willing to put up with attacks on Mr. Clay because of his high readership,” Wolfe stated.
Saul nodded. “Absolutely, and other papers in town have tried to lure him away. A friend of mine at the Daily News told me—off the record, of course—that they once tried to sign Clay to a fat contract, but the Gazette raised his salary to keep him. Since then, the News has tried three different columnists as competition to him, but none of them has had Clay’s sources or his flamboyant writing style.”
“Is that what you call it … flamboyant?” I asked.
“That’s what my Daily News friend calls it,” Saul said. “I’ve also learned that a lot of people around town are afraid of Clay because he can be mean and vindictive. For instance, if a competing columnist runs an exclusive item about some local celebrity getting divorced or a high-visibility executive switching jobs, Clay finds out who the source of the item was, perhaps a press agent, and tells that individual that ‘no item I get from you will ever run in this column again.’ That can be damaging to anyone trying to get information about a client into print because Clay’s column is a so-called ‘must read’ when compared to any column in any competing paper.”
“A journalistic reign of terror,” Wolfe observed.
“Yeah, although from what I also hear,” Saul said, “Clay has begun to lose some of his old feistiness, which may be because of his health. It seems he doesn’t take good care of himself, never has, and it’s begun to catch up with him. He’s overweight, and he’s both a heavy smoker and a heavy drinker. Somebody I know who has seen him at various functions around town tells me he doesn’t look good: pasty-faced, slow-moving, somewhat lethargic.”
“The wages of sin,” Wolfe said.
“True. And his personal life hasn’t exactly been smooth-sailing, with three short-lived marriages, three divorces.”
“One of them to that Spanish opera singer,” I put in.
“That was the third wife,” Saul said. “The first was a college classmate at Maryland and a cheerleader for the football team. They were married for about two years, but it was a bad fit for both of them from the start, and she ended up marrying a former football star at the school.
“Wife number two was a coworker of his on the staff of the Baltimore Sun. This union was even shorter than the first, a year and a half. The woman, who was one of the paper’s best reporters, was named a foreign correspondent not long after they were married, and she got assigned to Paris. She wanted Clay to move there with her and he said no. They had a transatlantic marriage for a short while, but Clay said to hell with it and divorced her. Or maybe she initiated the proceedings.
“Then there was that Spanish opera singer you mentioned, Archie, and that also did not last long. They constantly fought and she, like the second wife, was out of the country much of the time. But that probably didn’t matter, as they both had such independent personalities that they were always at each other’s throats when they were together.”
“Clearly, he isn’t cut out to be the marrying kind,” I said, stating the obvious.
“And Clay’s been very open about that in print,” Saul replied, reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a sheet of paper, smoothing it on his lap. “Here’s something he wrote in his column some years back that I came across: ‘I’ve been married three times: to a cheerleader who never outgrew being “Sally Coed”; to a reporter who expected me to follow her around the world; and to an opera singer whose favorite person in the whole world is herself. Three strikes and I’ve quit the marrying game. If anyone out there ever learns that I’m thinking about getting hitched again, please call me immediately and do everything you can to talk me out of it. If there is an organization called “Husbands Anonymous,” I want to join.’ ”
“At least he finally learned something about himself,” I commented.
“That he did,” Saul agreed, turning toward Wolfe. “One other thing: Apparently, Clay has no close friends, none at all. My sources seem to think that’s by choice, that he just doesn’t like getting close to people. I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got. Sorry I couldn’t come up with something more substantial.”
“On the contrary, your performance is admirable, especially in so short a time,” Wolfe said, handing him a check. “I salute you on your resources. And at some point, Archie and I will share with you the reason for our interest in Cameron Clay. Ho
wever, now is not the moment.”
That was good enough for Saul, who rose to leave, saying he had a date with some pasteboards. “You know, I do have other poker games besides our Thursday night session,” he told me.
I was aware that he did, and I told him I felt only pity for those poor saps who would be up against him tonight. “At least leave them enough for cab fare home,” I said.
Chapter 4
“The man is a wonder, isn’t he?” I said to Wolfe after Saul had departed.
“Indeed. He goes about his work quietly and efficiently, but he never is satisfied with his performance. He always feels he can do better.”
“I don’t know how he could have learned any more than he did about Cameron Clay given the short time he had the assignment. By the way, so that I can keep our records straight, what amount did you fill in on that blank check I gave you that was made out to Saul?”
“One hundred fifty,” Wolfe said. “Do you take issue with the figure?”
“Not in the least. What’s next, Boss?”
He hates it when I call him that, but he ignored the jibe. “Confound it, I suppose we shall have to see Mr. Clay.”
“Why? He is hardly the kind of man you—or I—have any use at all for. As we both are aware, one of my roles in this job is to goad you into working, but here I am talking you out of a case. But then, it really isn’t a case, is it? We have no client, no potential fee, no nothing. Zilch, to use that word again. What is to be gained by seeing Clay? Given the kind of person we know him to be, he will only rile you up.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And you as well, Archie?”
I threw up my hands. “Yeah, I admit it, me as well. Look, I like and admire Lon Cohen as much as you do. He’s a straight shooter and a damned good newspaperman, but how much do we really owe him regarding that irascible columnist of his? Or am I using irascible incorrectly? I know how you love to correct my usage.”
Stop the Presses! Page 3
