Fade to Black (The Nero Wolfe Mysteries Book 5)

by Robert Goldsborough

  Lake called in sick. Otherwise, the operation seemed fully staffed. I looked over a few shoulders, and in one case saw a storyboard for a commercial that a bearded art director named Berg assured me would “revolutionize the way dog food is marketed for the next decade.” To my knowledge, that commercial never made it to the air, for whatever reasons. Maybe the world isn’t ready for Dalmatians spouting Shakespeare, although the way Berg described it to me, it somehow made sense.

  The atmosphere in the agency was freewheeling, to say the least. Attire varied wildly—everything from ragged jeans and sweatshirts and tank tops to three-piece suits and pleated skirts. Same with the offices and work spaces. Decor was clearly an individual matter. Some walls were adorned with oils Lily would have been proud to hang in her apartment; others were painted in wild striped and swirl patterns or plastered with movie posters and bamboo screens and enlarged newspaper cartoons. And there was the artist whose cubicle had three parakeets in cages. When I asked Mills if the chirping wasn’t a distraction, the response was, “Hell no, he’s been living like that for years, at a half-dozen agencies. Wouldn’t have it any other way. Says it soothes him while he works.” I wondered what Wolfe’s reaction would be if I brought three parakeets home and let them soothe me in the office.

  By eleven-thirty, I felt I had got about all I was going to out of the M/L/R offices, and that included one-on-one conversations with Mills and Sara Ryman. Neither of those powwows shed much light, other than my confirming what I already suspected: that Sara indeed wasn’t overly fond of Boyd Lake. “He’s a brilliant copywriter,” she told me when I asked about his strengths, “but his people skills are terrible. I know this is going to sound like ethnic stereotyping, but to me, Boyd is a typical Englishman—witty and bright, yes, but sardonic, cold, abrupt with people to the point of rudeness. He’s a hard person to like.”

  “And you obviously don’t like him.”

  She drummed a pencil on her desk blotter and smiled tightly, taking a deep breath. “I respect his abilities—and most important, I’m glad he’s part of this agency. How’s that?”

  “Very diplomatic,” I said with a smile of my own, and not a tight one. I thanked her for her time and excused myself.

  Before leaving the agency, I dropped by to see Annie Burkett, whose own tiny office was downright conservative compared with most of the others, the only wall decoration being a framed photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge, shrouded in fog. I got a more detailed description of Swartz from her and confirmed that I would be in Toohey’s at eight, which brought a somber nod. “Just be yourself tonight,” I said in my warmest and most reassuring tone, but all that brought was a second unsmiling nod.

  I got back to the brownstone just before noon. “Top of the morning,” I said to Wolfe, who was entrenched at his desk with beer and book. “Anybody been looking for me?”

  He grunted a no, but I wasn’t about to let that slow me down, and I proceeded to relate the morning’s activities. He reluctantly set his book down and leaned back, eyes closed, as I gave him the fill-in. When I got to the part about Annie Burkett and Toohey’s bar, he grimaced and made a growling sound that I’ve never been able to imitate.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “I was using my intelligence, guided by experience, just as you have always instructed me to. Are you suggesting that I shouldn’t go tonight?”

  “No, confound it, you should go,” he said, lifting his shoulders a full half-inch and letting them drop. “I assume you will take a gun?”

  In Wolfe’s view, any venture beyond the walls of the brownstone, however brief, is extremely perilous, especially if it involves riding in a motorized vehicle. And to him, the peril increases geometrically if the trip may involve violence, although he always assumes I can handle all forms of combat short of nuclear missiles. I vowed that I would carry a firearm to Toohey’s and asked if he had instructions.

  “None for the moment, other than that you exercise good judgment.” I thanked him for that nugget of wisdom and we went into the dining room to tackle Fritz’s incomparable meatloaf while Wolfe speculated on what might have occurred had Churchill’s father been American and his mother British instead of the reverse.

  I spent the balance of the afternoon immersed in general bookkeeping, including an overhaul of the orchid germination records, which Wolfe had been on my case about for the last two weeks. I had to skip dinner because of my appointment, but Fritz, as ever concerned about my nutrition, promised to set a portion of the shish-kebab aside for me, and I thanked him profusely. Having visited Toohey’s once before—with Saul Panzer, who had been keeping watch on a commodities trader who drank there—I knew the dress was eclectic, and I didn’t want to stand out. I decided on my light brown herringbone sportcoat, dark brown slacks, and a white shirt with a red-and-white striped tie that Lily says makes me look rakish. As I recalled from my previous visit, Toohey’s is loaded with rakes.

  Saying good-bye to Wolfe, who was of course at his desk reading and getting ready to consume shish-kebab, I walked out the front door at seven-twenty-five to find that snow had begun falling. I went east all the way to Seventh Avenue before I found a cab. The driver, who sounded exactly like ex-Mayor Koch and said he was an NYU sociology graduate, wanted to talk about the sorry state of the New York public schools. He didn’t get a lot except “yeahs” and “nos” out of me, but that didn’t stop him.

  Toohey’s is on Bleecker just off MacDougal, in an old building that looks seedy from the second floor up. But the owner of the bar, presumably somebody named Toohey, had given the storefront a facelift—new brickwork, picture windows, oak double doors with old-fashioned handles and leaded windows, and one of those wooden country-inn-style signs hanging out over the sidewalk proclaiming this as “Toohey’s Public House, Est. 1973.” I paid the driver, who was still loudly making a point about the school system, and saw through the big windows that the place was beginning to fill up.

  The interior looked the same as when I’d been there with Saul four years earlier: An island bar was just inside the front door to the left, with booths along the wall on the right and two more seating areas in the rear, each with booths. The nice thing was that from a stool on the far left side of the bar, I could see all the booths both in the main room and the two back seating areas and still remain inconspicuous. And the cut of the herringbone sportcoat was such that nobody could tell I was wearing a shoulder holster that had a Marley dozing in it.

  Annie Burkett hadn’t arrived yet, and there was only one man sitting alone in a booth, but he didn’t come anywhere near matching her description of Swartz. I settled back with a Scotch-and-water and waited. At two minutes to eight, she walked in and peered briefly into the darkness at the bar, but if she was trying to find me, it was no good: I was well shielded by the guy on my right, who looked as if he could have played middle linebacker for the Jets sometime in the not-very-recent past.

  She slid into a booth and gave a drink order to a waitress, looking nervously toward the door every few seconds. Each time it swung open, she tensed, but nobody joined her. She nursed her draft beer for twenty minutes, and I coaxed my Scotch right along with her, finally draining it and asking the bartender for a glass of water. I gave myself until eight-thirty. When the big hand of my watch finally covered the six, I walked over to the booth where Annie had been fidgeting.

  “Hi. Seems like you’ve been stood up,” I said.

  “Oh, you are here,” she said with a sigh that my vanity told me indicated relief. Then she crumpled a cocktail napkin. “I don’t get it. I was positive he’d be here.”

  “You have his phone number?”

  She flushed. “I think it’s in the book.”

  “Fine. Let’s use the pay phone, then, and find out why he got shy all of a sudden. I’ll treat.” I handed her a quarter. The phone book listed an Andrew Swartz on Charlton, which Annie said was his street. She dialed and after almost a half-minute turned to me with raised eyebrows. “No answer. He
must have changed his mind, or else he had to work late.”

  “Looks that way. But as long as we’re in the neighborhood, let’s stop by his place. Hell, Charlton’s only about a five-minute walk from here, and the night air will do us good after all this wanton debauchery.”

  Annie gave me a quizzical look. “Why do that, Mr. Goodwin? We already know he’s not home.”

  “One, I answer to Archie, and two, maybe he’ll have gotten home by the time we arrive there. Come on.”

  She let me help her on with her coat, but she clearly wasn’t enamored of the idea of pursuing Swartz. “Look,” I told her after I’d settled both checks and we were out on the sidewalk, “you don’t want to end the evening still in suspense about what he wanted to see you about, do you? When I was growing up, my Aunt Clara always told me all women were imbued—and that’s the word she used—with boundless curiosity, although I suppose now that would be seen as a sexist remark, right?”

  “Well, it is fairly sexist,” she said, arching an eyebrow nicely. “But if you swear your aunt said it … ”

  “Hope to die,” I told her, raising my right hand in the oath-taking position.

  She laughed, letting me see both dimples. “All right, maybe I am just slightly curious. Lead the way, sir—make that Archie.”

  The sky was clear now, the snow flurries having stopped, and there was no wind. It was one of those fine midwinter nights when the New York air smells truly fresh and clean. She hooked her arm in mine, and I like to think we looked as natural together as the other couples we passed on the lively sidewalks of Greenwich Village.

  Andy Swartz’s building was a trim four-story brick job that looked as if it had undergone a facelift in the last few years. Trees had been planted in front, and the tiny front yard had been completely bricked. We walked up six steps to the door and went into the small entrance hall, which had eight mailboxes. “A. Swartz” occupied Apartment l-Rear. I rang the buzzer, getting no reply. I tried it again with the same result.

  “All right,” I said to Annie. “It’s time for you to go home. Where do you live?”

  She looked at me through narrowed hazel eyes. “Why?”

  “Where do you live?”

  “About a mile from here, over in SoHo. Again, why?”

  “Let’s find you a cab,” I told her, starting out the door.

  “Wait a minute,” she said sharply, grabbing my arm. “What are you going to do? What about Andy?”

  “What I’m going to do could get a person in trouble. That’s fine for me, but you didn’t sign up for hazardous duty.”

  “Now that sounds suspiciously sexist,” Annie said, frowning, hands on hips.

  “I guess it does at that,” I said with a grin. “I retract the statement. And I’ll even let you pay your own cab fare home.”

  “Listen, I am not going home until you tell me what this hazardous stuff is all about.” Annie was full-fledged angry now, and she planted both booted feet in the hall as if she meant to stay.

  “All right, I’ll tell you, but only because you’re a client of ours, by virtue of being employed by Mills/Lake/Ryman. I am going to pay Mr. Swartz’s apartment a visit. Call me the suspicious type, but—”

  Annie looked at me incredulously, brushing a hair away from her face with a mittened hand. “That’s breaking in,” she said, shifting her voice to a loud whisper. “Which is—”

  “Which is illegal,” I interrupted her back, keeping my own voice low as a couple passed us. “And which is why you should leave. I get paid to do things like this, you don’t.”

  “Stupid things, you mean!” she shout-whispered. “Why do you want to get in there, anyway? Andy’ll probably be home soon. I’ll bet he got stuck working late at the agency.”

  “Sure, and he didn’t bother to let you know, even though just yesterday he was awfully damn anxious to see you.”

  Annie’s expression had changed from anger to concern. The angry color drained from her cheeks. “Please … I’d really like to stay with you,” she said, her hand squeezing my forearm.

  I took a deep breath and watched the steam from my breath waft over her left shoulder. “Okay, consider yourself an accessory,” I told her. “You’ll probably get probation when they lock me up. From now on, no talking, got it? And keep your mittens on.” She nodded.

  The first part came easy—the hall door wasn’t even locked; it rubbed against the threshold and didn’t close all the way. So much for security in one rehabbed building. The first floor hallway was wallpapered in a blue flowery pattern and the lighting was good—better than I would have liked. We tiptoed past the door of Apartment l-F, the F apparently for “front,” and on down the hall to the rear, where the only other door had to be Swartz’s. Sure enough, there was l-R in brass on it.

  It had only one lock, no deadbolt. Apparently the tenants of One-nineteen Charlton were either trusting souls or not very street-smart. The lock looked to be no match for my little pocket kit of tools. Annie watched wide-eyed as I went to work on the cheap Basgall, conquering it in less than forty-five seconds. I put my gloves back on and eased the door open, feeling for a light switch, which I found on the second swipe.

  I don’t know what registered first, the sound of Annie gasping behind me or the sight of the figure eight feet away on the living-room carpet. He was sprawled with his head on one outstretched arm, and the dark curly hair was matted, as if he’d been out in the rain. His eyes were open. On closer inspection, I could see that the matting had been caused by blood—a lot of it, much of which had soaked into the beige carpet. As I knelt and confirmed that the man on the floor was history, I looked over my shoulder at Annie. She was leaning against the doorframe, her face ashen. The thought crossed my mind that any second, as soon as Swartz’s death had time to sink in, she was going to start screaming. Which was the last thing yours truly needed at the moment.

  “One, are you okay, and two, is this Swartz?” I demanded. She nodded, numbly.

  “He’s … ?” Her mouth stopped working.

  “Believe it,” I said quietly, turning back to the late tenant of the apartment and placing my fingertips on his neck to confirm what I’d said, although it was hardly necessary. There was no warmth in the body. The right side of his skull above the forehead was pretty well pushed in, probably by the eight-inch-high abstract metal sculpture on a marble base that was lying on the floor a few feet from him.

  “Annie,” I said, noting she hadn’t taken her gloves off, “you can leave and hope nobody saw you come in. I’ve got to make some calls—one to the police. Now—”

  “I’ll stay,” she said woodenly.

  “Not necessary. I’m used to taking the heat for things like finding my way into domiciles using questionable means, but you’re not, and—”

  “I said I’ll stay!”

  I couldn’t tell for sure if she was in shock, but I wasn’t about to argue with her and rouse the neighbors; they’d know what happened soon enough. I rose and told her to walk out to the front stoop and get some air before coming back in. She nodded, swallowed, and went down the empty hall, looking back uncertainly. I smiled and nodded, attempting an “everything-is-okay” expression, which of course was absurd.

  I had damn little time. After she left I gave the body a quick going-over and went to the phone, still wearing gloves myself. The first call was answered on the second ring.

  “Me,” I said. “I’m in Swartz’s apartment. He didn’t show in the bar; then we called him and there was no answer, so Annie and I came here, and I sweet-talked the lock. We found him on the floor, as dead as the Herald-Trib. Skull dented, lots of blood. Looks like he’s been here several hours. Instructions?”

  Wolfe took one of his bushel-sized breaths, then cleared his throat. “Have you talked to the police?” His tone was grim.

  “Not yet. I thought you might have some sage thoughts at this point.”

  “Pfui. It’s too late for sagacity, assuming you would recognize it were it proffere
d to you. You must of course summon them.”

  “Believe it or not, that was next on my list of chores. You realize it will mean long hours of questioning and missed meals for yours truly.”

  “I do,” Wolfe said. I swear he almost sounded sympathetic.

  EIGHT

  ANNIE HADN’T COME BACK yet, so I tried to put what little time I had alone in the apartment to use. The place was nicely furnished in Scandinavian modern, and other than the body and the sculpture, nothing seemed to be out of place. Ditto the bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom, all of which were unusually neat for being a bachelor’s quarters.

  I knelt and patted down Swartz, who was wearing gray slacks and a blue button-down oxford-cloth dress shirt, open at the collar. His glasses were in a case in his shirt pocket and his billfold was in the left rear pants pocket. It had the standard identification, including driver’s license, three credit cards, and a picture of a couple who probably were his parents, plus seventy-nine dollars in cash and two lottery tickets. The watch on his left wrist was a Rolex—or one of those Asian knockoffs that can fool damn near everybody, me included. But then, I’ve never been on intimate terms with a Rolex.

  The sculpture on the floor appeared to have dried blood on it. The thing was some kind of award—a small gold plaque on the base read AMERICUS SHOW 1987, 1ST PRIZE—SOAPS AND DETERGENTS, ANDREW SWARTZ, COLMAR & CONN. I played Sherlock Holmes and crawled around on the carpet in a four-foot radius of the body, but if there were any clues, they eluded my sub-Sherlockian senses.

  Annie walked back in as I was dialing Homicide, my handkerchief wrapped around my hand. I smiled at her and got a sober nod in return; she still looked shaky and didn’t hesitate to sit when I motioned her to a white sofa that was well removed from Swartz’s corpse.