Stop the Presses!

by Robert Goldsborough

  “To my surprise, you have selected an apt adjective for Mr. Clay, based on what we have learned about the man. However, Mr. Cohen has requested our help, and you will concede that we have gone to him for help and information numerous times through the years.”

  “We’ve been over this already—both our relationship with Lon and who’s ahead on balance.”

  Wolfe had heard enough from me. “Archie, call Mr. Cohen and tell him we will see Cameron Clay.”

  I know when I’ve lost a battle, so I dialed Lon’s number and got him on the second ring as Wolfe picked up his receiver. “Mr. Wolfe is prepared to meet your ace columnist,” I said. “Tell him to call here so we can set up a time.”

  “Hmm. I thought he might already have phoned you.”

  “Perhaps Mr. Clay has changed his mind about wishing to see me,” Wolfe said.

  “Could be, but I doubt it. I’ll mention it to him again.”

  Lon’s prodding of the columnist must have been effective, because a half hour later, the phone rang and I answered with “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

  “Yeah, this is … this is Cameron Clay,” came a raspy voice across the wire. “I would like to make an … an appointment with Nero Wolfe. Can you set that up?”

  “Yes, I can set up an appointment, Mr. Clay,” I said, turning to Wolfe for his reaction. He silently mouthed, Tonight, nine.

  “Would tonight at nine be convenient?” I asked our caller.

  “That … that’s short notice,” Clay said with a cough. “But … yeah, what the hell, why not, yeah. Here’s the location I got from Lon Cohen. Is it correct?” He read off our address.

  I told him he had it right, and that we would be expecting him at nine. He coughed again, muttered something like “I’ll be there,” and signed off.

  “Well, the great columnist will be gracing us with his presence,” I said. “But do not expect a glib conversationalist. The man seems to stumble over his words. Maybe he’s only articulate when he’s at the keyboard.”

  Wolfe grunted, which could have meant most anything, and I didn’t bother to question him. He already was grumpy at the prospect of having a visitor he considered to be less than admirable, but I had little sympathy for my boss at the moment. After all, this meeting was his idea, not mine.

  Chapter 5

  After a dinner of braised wild turkey, we were back in the office with coffee. I was catching up on the sports scores in the Gazette, while Wolfe had his nose buried in one of his current books, Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley. The doorbell rang, and I noted that my wristwatch read exactly nine o’clock.

  “Well, he gets positive marks for being on time,” I said, rising and walking down the hall to the front door.

  Viewed through the one-way glass, Cameron Clay did not offer much to look at: Rumpled would be my adjective of choice. He wore a battered trench coat, unbuttoned despite the biting winter wind, and his badly knotted woolen plaid tie was flapping in the gusts. His misshapen felt hat looked to be just off the racks of a thrift shop. And while he was by no means in Nero Wolfe’s league in the girth department, he had to be carrying no less than seventy-five extra pounds.

  “Come in out of the cold,” I said with a smile, swinging open the door.

  “Thanks,” he gruffed as he stepped in. “You’re Goodwin, huh?”

  “Guilty. Let me hang up your coat and hat, Mr. Clay.”

  “Cohen tells me that you’re a good egg. Surprised I’ve never had occasion to write about you and your boss. God knows that you both have had your share of publicity over the years.”

  “Just lucky, I guess,” I said as I led him down the hall to the office. He both wheezed and limped slightly.

  “Cameron Clay, Nero Wolfe,” I said, steering our guest to the red leather chair. Clay must have been prepped by Lon, because he did not hold out a paw to shake hands.

  “Mr. Clay, may I offer you something to drink?” Wolfe said. “I’m about to have beer.”

  “Beer sounds good, and just a bottle. I don’t need a glass,” he said, adjusting his bulk. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, but looking around, he saw no ashtray and put the pack away, frowning.

  After Fritz brought in the beer, two bottles and a chilled glass for Wolfe and a bottle for Clay, the columnist coughed and said, “I guess you know all about why I’m here, right?”

  “Mr. Cohen has given us some background, but I would like to hear it in your own words.”

  Clay nodded, running a hand through thin, graying hair that probably never saw a comb. “As I’m sure you and Goodwin here are aware, I’ve made my share of enemies over the years, and frankly, I don’t give a good goddamn whether people like me or not, never have, never will.”

  “You must have been threatened in the past,” Wolfe said.

  “Hell, yes, I have,” Clay said, waving the comment away with a beefy hand. “But most of those were whiny mopes or the rantings of yahoos who were a few cards short of a full deck.”

  “But I gather you have taken these more recent threats seriously.”

  Clay shifted in his chair and coughed again. “Yeah, I have. Somebody sounds like they’re really serious this time.”

  “These warnings all have been delivered by telephone?”

  “Every one of them, some on my line in the office, some at home.”

  “Can you give us their essence?”

  Clay drank from his bottle and set it down, suppressing a belch. “I’m pretty sure it was the same voice every time, but I think it was disguised because it was sort of fuzzy, like the connection was bad, you know? Maybe the caller had something over mouthpiece, like they do in detective stories.”

  I wondered what detective stories Clay had been reading, but I held my tongue. I was the silent observer here.

  “Was the content of each call essentially the same?” Wolfe asked.

  “Pretty much, yeah. Let’s see … One time the voice—and I am assuming it’s always the same voice—said, ‘Time’s running out on you, and the countdown has begun.’ And another time it was, ‘Enjoy the spotlight now, because soon, very soon, it’s going to be turned off for good.’ And yet another time, the words were: ‘Good thing you’ve got no family to mourn you.’”

  “What makes you feel these calls should be taken seriously?”

  “I can tell you that in the past, people who complained to and about me, either through the mail or on the telephone, invariably mentioned a specific item or subject I had written about,” Clay said. “I would be accused of being a ‘cop hater’ or ‘anti-black’ because of something negative I wrote about the police or a person of color. These calls refer to nothing specific, and that has never happened to me before.”

  “Have you engaged the caller in conversation?”

  “I have tried to, but each time, I get hung up on before I can get a full sentence out.”

  “Has any attempt been made to trace these?”

  “Hell, that would be totally useless,” Clay said with a sneer. “None of the calls ever takes more than a minute, if even that. Also, at least twice I’ve heard street noise in the background, which means that the person is in a phone booth and would be long gone before anybody could get to the scene.”

  “Mr. Cohen mentioned that you are loath to involve the police.”

  “Damned right, that’s because they, uh, loathe me,” he said with a dry cackle, pleased with his wordplay. “If anything were to happen to me, the commissioner would declare a departmental holiday to celebrate. I’ve been pretty hard on some of the cops, as you know.”

  “I believe you are exaggerating the institutional animosity toward you,” Wolfe said.

  “Nah, I don’t think so. In any case, uh, I’m not about to go to them. Do you have some suggestions? I’m told you’re the best t
here is, and, uh, I’ve read plenty about you and your feats in the Gazette and all the other rags over the years.”

  Wolfe ignored the patronizing comment. “Do you live in a building that has security?”

  “Only what I’ve had put in myself. I’ve owned the same brownstone in Chelsea for—what?—fifteen, maybe, uh, sixteen years now, and I’m not about to give it up. In fact, from the outside it’s not all that different from the place you’ve got here, although somewhat smaller and not nearly as elaborate,” he said, looking around the office.

  “So anyone bent upon doing you harm would have very little trouble reaching you.”

  “Well for one thing, I’ve got this sophisticated alarm system wired throughout the place—God knows I paid plenty for it. For another, uh, I’m not out on the streets in Chelsea a lot. A cab picks me up every morning at ten at my place, and uh, takes me to the Gazette. Then at night, the same cabbie drives me to my door, usually around eight, unless I’m going out to cover something. When that’s the case, I work out the time and place to be picked up by the same cabbie. I’ve used him for years.”

  “So then, your job necessitates your attending numerous functions around the city, such as theater openings, receptions, and other activities?” Wolfe asked.

  “Yeah, although not nearly as much as in years past,” Clay said between coughs. “I now have the best legman who’s ever worked for me, Larry McNeil. He goes to a lot of places I used to, including crime scenes and trials and City Council meetings. He’s a damned good reporter, and since he’s been with me, he has developed a whole new batch of sources. I just don’t get out as much as I used to.”

  Wolfe drank beer and set his glass down. “Mr. Cohen mentioned five people who you feel are particularly antagonistic toward you.”

  “Antagonistic—a good word, has a lot of punch, I like it,” Clay said, clapping his hands. “Yeah, Lon pinned me down to name what I like to call ‘the big five.’ Oh, there’s lots of others who would like nothing better than to read my obituary, but this handful are in a league by themselves.”

  “Tell us about them,” Wolfe said.

  Clay held up his empty bottle, peering at it, and Wolfe looked at me. I got the message and went to the kitchen for another beer for our guest. When I returned to the office, he was just starting in. “… so I really let the dirty cop have it in print. The bastard had been beating confessions out of suspects, guilty or otherwise, for years.”

  Wolfe turned to me as I placed a fresh beer on the small table next to the red leather chair. “Archie, Mr. Clay has just begun to tell me about the policeman who was sent to prison for abusing suspects.”

  “Captain ‘Iron Mike’ Tobin,” I said.

  “Precisely. I am sorry to interrupt, please continue,” Wolfe said.

  “Tobin detests me, hates my guts,” Clay said. “But that’s okay, I hate his guts, too, and anything I wrote that helped put him away gives me a warm feeling. My only regret is that he got such a short sentence, but then, the judge in the case didn’t want to alienate the police, so he went soft on the bastard.”

  “Mr. Tobin was released from prison a few months ago,” Wolfe said. “Do you feel it is a coincidence that soon after his release you began getting these telephone threats?”

  “The timing isn’t lost on me,” Clay said. “I can’t say that the voice I heard in the calls is his because of its, uh, muffled nature. But hell, he could be getting someone else to do the telephoning. He’s got all sorts of cop friends who probably hate me as much as he does.”

  “Would you place him at the top of your list of bugbears?”

  Clay shrugged. “Hell, maybe. Of the five names I trotted out for Cohen, Tobin’s the only one who I helped send to stir. Several of the others on that list should be behind bars as well, but the fact they’re still at large is through no fault of mine.”

  “Let us now talk about those others, sir,” Wolfe said. “Where would you like to start?”

  “How about that super shyster Roswell Stokes, who Shakespeare must have had in mind when he wrote, ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’”

  “Henry VI, Part II,” Wolfe said. “Do you think Mr. Stokes merits such punishment?”

  Clay sniffed. “Oh, maybe not, but he does deserve to be disbarred, as I’ve written more than once. The man is a disgrace to his profession, and I’m not by a long shot the only one who feels that way. He’s been reprimanded by the bar association more than once, and several judges have come down hard on him for his courtroom antics. One even declared a mistrial because of his performance.”

  “Is his behavior worse than that of other defense attorneys?” Wolfe asked.

  “No question, there are other frustrated thespians in the legal world who love to perform, but Stokes is far worse than any of those others.”

  “Has he threatened you?”

  Clay laughed—at least I think it was a laugh, although it came out sounding more like someone stifling a sneeze. “If you want to call it threats, yeah. He’s taken a few shots at me, but damned ineffectual ones, like ‘this city has one too many columnists’ and other equally bland comments. Anticipating your next question, he’s never sued me, he’s afraid to. If we ever got into court, I would unload on him, bringing up every time he’s been reprimanded or had a case thrown out because of his cheap theatrics.”

  “From what you say, it would seem you have nothing to fear from Mr. Stokes,” Wolfe observed.

  “Not so fast, Mr. Detective. I forgot to mention that Stokes’s client list is dominated by mobsters, most of them with names you would instantly recognize. The mouthpiece would never try to get rid of me himself, he’d hire one of his syndicate pals to do the job for him.”

  “Have you had any indication that this is likely?”

  “Only that on occasion of late, I’ve seen a nondescript sedan driving slowly by my place, and always the same car, at least as near as I can tell.”

  “Have you noted make, model, or the license plate?” I asked.

  “No, the car always comes after dark, and my eyes aren’t all that good anymore.”

  “Do you make a habit of looking out at the street from your residence?” Wolfe asked.

  “I do sound sort of, uh, paranoid, don’t I?” Clay said with another one of those dry-as-dust laughs. “Guess I must be getting a little jumpy in my old age.”

  “And you have absolutely no desire to ask the police to patrol your block?”

  Clay waved the suggestion away. “We’ve already been over that. The day I go to the cops for help is the day I … Ah, forget it.”

  I could tell Wolfe was sore about Clay’s “Mr. Detective” remark, but surprising to me, he held his anger in and pushed on. “So … are there others you feel are possible sources of those telephone threats?”

  The columnist nodded, reaching reflexively for the cigarettes in his pocket, then remembering where he was. “As I know Cohen has told you, I’ve been especially tough on Kerwin Andrews, the self-styled ‘developer supreme.’”

  “He also mentioned that Mr. Andrews has sued you.”

  That brought another of those hoarse laughs. “He did, twice! And he lost both times. Hell, he was an idiot to bring me into court. The Gazette’s attorney made mincemeat out of him. It was obvious during the trial that Andrews’s own lawyer, the poor bastard, didn’t even want to be there. He knew the case was weak. And the second trial was even more pathetic than the first.”

  “Has Mr. Andrews verbally threatened you?”

  “He’s called me a disgrace to journalism and so on, if that’s, uh, a verbal threat.”

  “Do you have reason to fear physical harm from him?”

  “Probably not from him directly, but like Stokes, he’s got mob ties. For all I know, that sedan that cruises along my block may be there because of him.”

  “Then the
re is that councilman you have excoriated in print.”

  “Ah yes, Millard Beardsley, the ‘Mayor of Harlem,’ according to his self-fawning press releases. The Bloodsucker of Harlem would be a more apt title for him, though, the way he puts the financial squeeze on any constituent who needs favors, such as a building permit or a blind eye to plumbing or electrical code violations. He’s rumored to be the richest member of the council, although that’s hard to prove because so much of his wealth has gone unreported. One thing that can be proven, though, is that he has the worst attendance record on the council.”

  “Your relationship is one of mutual distaste.”

  “That’s one way of putting it. Whenever I take a shot at him in my column, which is pretty damned often, he cranks out a press release branding me as a bigot.”

  “How do you publicly react to that accusation?” Wolfe asked.

  “I ignore it, of course, because it simply is not true. And I’m not the only one Beardsley has charged with being anti-Negro. He says the same thing about everyone who dares to criticize him. It’s become a knee-jerk reflex on his part, and it’s effective because it puts his critics on the defensive. Not me, of course, because I have got enough friends among his own people who will defend me. In print, I’ve attacked racial injustice for years.”

  “But that did not stop the councilman from organizing a march to the Gazette building,” Wolfe said.

  “Hah! What a farce. That was one bedraggled band he put together, with their handmade signs filled with spelling mistakes. I think he was hoping hundreds would join the march, but he was lucky if there were twenty-five there.”

  “I understand Mr. Beardsley is reputed to have ties with members of the underworld.”

  “Reputed, huh? That’s putting it delicately,” Clay snorted. “Of course he’s got mob ties, has had them for years. They work with him to shake down merchants in the community.”