Archie in the Crosshairs

by Robert Goldsborough

  With that, he rose, tugged down the points on his vest, and strode out of the room to that other engagement, which I knew to be in the kitchen. We had not consumed all of the shrimp bordelaise Fritz served for dinner, and Wolfe would see to it that there were no leftovers.

  I refreshed Hutchinson’s drink, but Cordelia said no to a refill of the sherry. The father was much more forthcoming with supplying information than his daughter. She bridled when I asked her how to reach her friend Marlene Peters. “I really don’t see why you would need to talk to her,” she said plaintively.

  “Pumpkin, we need to trust Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Wolfe on this,” her father said softly, reaching over and squeezing her shoulder. “Didn’t you tell us a while back that Marlene’s back in town, and that you had lunch with her? After all, she is probably your best friend and would want what’s in your best interests. You will have to call her and give her a reason a detective needs to talk to her. It wouldn’t make any sense for me to telephone her.”

  Cordelia nodded, sighed, and pulled an address book out of her purse. She read off a phone number and an address on the Lower East Side, along with the number of the bookstore where Marlene worked. She even gave me the particulars on how to reach Lance Mercer, though more reluctantly. I tried to assuage her concern by stressing that I would make every effort to avoid talking to him.

  Hutchinson himself rattled off the information on Cordelia’s siblings, although when he came to the ne’er-do-well son, Doug, he tightened up noticeably. Apparently, the rift was still there.

  I thanked them both for their help and said Wolfe and I would keep them apprised as to our progress. As I escorted them to the front door, Hutchinson seemed bent on playing the role of the hail-fellow-well-met, perhaps to make up for his earlier behavior. Cordelia, on the other hand, seemed even more withdrawn than when they had arrived, which I ascribed to her fear that somehow our investigation would complicate her future with one Lance Mercer.

  After the pair rode away in the chauffeur-driven Lincoln that had been purring at our curb during their visit, I headed into the kitchen for a late evening snack. There were several possibilities, but sadly, shrimp bordelaise was not one of them.

  Chapter 17

  In case you are wondering, I had not forgotten about the caller who wanted to terminate me. Although I initially saw no apparent connection between Noah McManus and the Hutchinson project, I now had to question whether McManus, the Central Park gunman who came very close to finishing me off moments before his own death, could have been my nemesis all along. Or was he prepared to shoot anyone who delivered the briefcase full of money?

  I knew how to learn something more about the man, which is why I gave Saul Panzer an assignment. Saul is not only the best freelance private operative on the planet, he also has a wealth of connections—some of them persons of what might be termed “questionable repute.”

  “Can you find out for me if the late and unlamented Mr. McManus had any sort of accent?” I had asked him. “Maybe an Irish brogue or a Scottish burr or a Southern drawl?” Any of those speech patterns would have eliminated him as my vexer.

  Saul called me the next morning and quickly eliminated the petty hoodlum from consideration all right, but not in a way I expected. “Archie, I got hold of a joe who knew your man, seems they used to hang out in the same pool hall. He tells me McManus had the worst stutter he had ever seen, claimed the guy couldn’t spit out five words in a row or complete a single sentence without stammering.” So much for McManus being my telephone pal, so presumably “the voice,” as I had come to call him, was still at large.

  But at the moment, I had other concerns: setting up meetings with members of the Hutchinson family and with Marlene Peters.

  For no particular reason, my first call was to Cordelia’s eldest sibling, Annie, who worked as an advertising copywriter for one of the big agencies on Madison Avenue. The switchboard operator put me through to her, and she picked up on the first ring, answering in a sing-songy “Annie Hutchinson, writer par excellence, at your service.”

  “Very snappy,” I said, introducing myself.

  “Oh yes, my father warned me that you would be calling,” she said in a tone far less welcoming than her opening line. “Based on what he said, I really don’t think I can be of any help to you.”

  “Nonetheless, Miss Hutchinson, I would like to take a few minutes of your time.”

  “For your information, Mr. Goodwin, I am terribly busy.”

  “Too busy for lunch?”

  “In this business, at least in my department, lunch is a foreign concept. You’ve probably heard that old newspaper term ‘a deadline every minute.’”

  “I have.”

  “Well, it’s the same here. The closest we get to a lunch break in this department is to send one of the mailroom kids down to the Automat to bring back ham sandwiches or something equally unappetizing. It’s the account guys who enjoy those three-martini expense-account lunches you hear so much about.”

  “Life should be treating you better,” I told her.

  “From your lips to God’s ears. If you have a question or two about my youngest sister, whom I hardly know, fire away. I have two minutes, no more.”

  “Sorry, Miss Hutchinson, but I prefer face-to-face conversations. How about a drink after work?”

  That led to a pause at the other end. “All right, why not? I know enough about your boss to realize that you are legit, or at least as legit as a private eye can be. That’s what you’re called, right, a private eye?”

  “In some circles, yes. Name the joint, and I will buy.”

  “Right on one count, wrong on the other,” Annie Hutchinson said. “The joint, as you call it—I assume that’s private-eye lingo—is Gerald’s Public House, on Second Avenue near Fifty-Fourth, and I will buy. Six o’clock okay? That’s the very earliest I can make it without getting dirty looks from a roomful of overworked colleagues.”

  I said six was fine, and we rang off. Next, I called Tom, the older brother, who I had learned worked as an accountant for a firm on Lexington. “Oh yeah, I’ve been expecting to hear from you. My father said my kid sister is in some sort of trouble and he’s hired you and what’s-his-name, that famous shamus?”

  “Nero Wolfe. I would—”

  “Before you go any further, Mr. Goodwin, I must tell you I hardly know Cordelia, even though we are currently living under the same roof over on Sutton Place. Until very recently, I was living elsewhere, and she was traveling in Europe. I really don’t see how I can help you.”

  “I’d really like to talk to you nonetheless,” I said. “How about lunch today, on me?”

  He laughed. “You just hit my weak spot, Mr. Goodwin. I never say no to a free lunch. You have any place in mind?”

  “I thought I would leave that to you. I am as flexible as a circus contortionist.”

  Another laugh. “Since you asked, I’m rather fond of La Belle Touraine, on East Fifty-First. I must warn you that it’s somewhat pricey.”

  “Sounds good to me. I will make a reservation for noon, okay?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll be the tall guy with horn-rimmed glasses and a buzz haircut.”

  I had not been to La Belle Touraine, although I certainly knew its reputation as one of the most highly rated dining spots in town, at least in the eyes of the newspapers’ food critics. After telling Fritz I would not be home for lunch, I hoofed it north to Fifty-First. Like so many New York restaurants, this one didn’t look like all that much from the outside, but I had learned long ago not to judge a book by its cover, so to speak.

  Inside, the set-up was like many in Midtown: a long and narrow dining room, three steps down from the entrance area, which had a small bar with a half dozen stools, all occupied. Just after I gave the tuxedoed maître d’ at the podium my name and reminded him of my earlier call, a tall specimen with horn-rimmed glasses a
nd a blondish buzz cut walked in, looking around and grinning at no one in particular. I introduced myself and we shook hands.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Goodwin,” he said, still grinning. “You can just tell by the aromas that this is one fine place, can’t you?”

  I agreed as we were shown to a table well toward the back, as I had specified when I made the booking. Hutchinson looked around and nodded his approval. “Yes, sir, I do love this restaurant, Mr. Goodwin.”

  “Glad to hear it. But please call me Archie.”

  “Fair enough, if you call me Tom. Now, as I said on the phone, I really don’t think I can be of much help to you, Archie, although I must say that I’m curious as to just what’s going on with Cordelia.”

  “First, how about a cocktail?”

  “I shouldn’t during lunch, but what the hell, it’s not every day I break bread here. I’ll have a vodka martini.” I made an exception to my rule of avoiding alcohol at lunch and ordered a scotch and water to be sociable.

  After the drinks were delivered and we had studied our menus, Tom Hutchinson leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “Cordelia isn’t pregnant, is she?”

  “Not as far as I know,” I told him truthfully.

  “I’m glad to hear that, although I would have been damned surprised to learn she was.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Again, I will preface this by repeating that even though she’s my sister, I really don’t know her that well,” Tom said after we had ordered our food. “Bear in mind that she’s—what?—fourteen or fifteen years younger than I am. What I do know of her, and these last few weeks under the same roof have reinforced it, is that she tends to act awfully, well, I guess prudish, although there may be a better word to describe her. I’m not a words guy, I’m a numbers guy, so I don’t have a big vocabulary.”

  “Like you, I don’t know Cordelia very well,” I said, “but having met her, I see where she certainly comes off as being somewhat prissy.”

  “Prissy, yeah, that’s a good word. So, if she’s not pregnant, what’s the problem, and what do you think that I can tell you?” he asked amiably. “I’m hardly an expert on women. You probably know at least something about my own track record.”

  “I know you are divorced, that’s about all.”

  “I’ll say I’m divorced, Archie, and it was ugly, damned ugly,” he said, finishing his drink. “She claimed I was cheating on her, which wasn’t true, not one single word of it. She was the one playing around, and it was with a so-and-so who I thought was an old friend of mine from all the way back in college. Anyway, she got a girlfriend of hers to claim I had been messing around with her. I will not bore you with all the grim details, except to say that she got her divorce, and I am well rid of the woman. Unfortunately, I’m also rid of a large chunk of my inheritance, which she got in the settlement. I may be a Hutchinson, but I am by no means a rich one, and at least for now, I’m actually back living with my parents. The one piece of good news about our split is that we had no children. Anyway, back to Cordelia. You’re paying for my lunch, and you ought to get something for it.”

  “Cordelia is being blackmailed, and it apparently has something to do with a trip she took to Italy. Do you know anything about that?”

  “I really don’t, Archie. She was away about the same time that I was going through the final nasty stages of the divorce. I do know that beginning a couple of weeks ago, she has seemed very preoccupied.”

  “I understand she’s got a serious boyfriend.”

  “Lance Mercer? Yes, I suppose you can say they’re serious, although as far as I can tell, they haven’t been seeing that much of each other lately, for whatever reason. I’ve only met him once. I try not to hang around the folks’ place—it’s embarrassing enough to live there, if only temporarily—and from what I’ve seen, he seems to be a lot like Cordelia. What was that word you used—prissy?”

  “I don’t generally hear it applied to a man,” I said.

  “Well, that’s probably not the right word, then. Maybe stiff is better. But my parents both seem to like him; he comes from what they say is ‘good stock.’ And heaven knows the kid is rich, or will be. Between them, he and Cordelia should never have any money problems, don’t you think?”

  This time it was I who laughed. “No, it sounds like they’ll be all right.”

  “This sole meunière is terrific,” Tom said. “I had it here once before, and it’s just as good this time. I hope your fish is top-drawer, too.”

  “It’s fine, just fine.” I was having the parmesan-crusted broiled scallops, and they were almost as good as Fritz’s, which is saying something.

  “I’d like to ask you a question, Archie.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Like I told you before, I don’t hang around the Sutton Place quarters all that much, by design, but I’ve heard just enough at the old homestead to wonder if that shooting in Central Park the other night was somehow tied to this blackmail business you’re talking about.”

  “I’m interested in what you have heard.”

  “Overheard is more like it, and before you ask, I am definitely not a snoop hanging around keyholes and half-open doors.”

  I laughed again. I was getting to like the guy. “So noted,” I said. “Go on, I’m all ears.”

  “I feel like I’m some sort of traitor to the family, in a way, by talking like this, Archie. Here’s what happened: I was parked in the library at home reading the evening paper one night this week, and I heard Cordelia sobbing to our father in the next room, which is his study, even though the door was shut. I gathered from those parts of the conversation I could hear that he was urging her to tell him what had been bothering her. From the fragments I picked up, she didn’t sound terribly coherent, but one thing I did hear was your first name.”

  “Don’t get any ideas, Tom. I have no romantic interest in your youngest sister, attractive as she is.”

  “Oh, no, no,” he said, putting up a hand. “What she said seemed to do with your having been shot, silly as that sounds.”

  “You probably heard it wrong,” I told him.

  “Oh. I suppose I did. I was only getting every other word or so, and part of me was trying to listen and part of me wasn’t, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do. Can you think of anything else that might help Mr. Wolfe and me regarding this blackmail business?”

  “Not really. I just can’t imagine Cordelia doing anything that would open her up to something like that. If I were to guess, I would say that she’s still a virgin.”

  “Being a virgin doesn’t necessarily protect her from a blackmailer,” I said. “Especially if that blackmailer is threatening to spread lies about her.”

  Tom nodded thoughtfully. “I think I see where you’re going, Archie. The blackmailer, whoever he is, would find some way of smearing Cordelia’s name to Lance Mercer unless …”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless she coughed up some dough. And as you may already know, Cordelia is surely the richest of all of us siblings. You already know where a lot of my money flew off to, and as you might be aware, my younger brother, Doug, has frittered away his estate as well—on some sort of half-baked business venture cooked up by a none-too-bright college classmate. There’s one thing Doug and I have in common: an old college ‘friend’ who turns out to be no friend at all. At least I’ve got a job, although it doesn’t compensate for what I lost in the divorce settlement. All Doug has to support himself nowadays is his artwork, which I have been told by artistic types is mediocre at best and a throwback to an earlier style.”

  “Not a pretty picture, no pun intended,” I said.

  “My sister Kathleen, who also went through a not-very-pleasant divorce recently, ended up on the short end of a settlement with her louse of a bond-trader husband, who, it turns out, wasn’t very good at his job. We H
utchinsons don’t tend to do very well either with marriage or with holding on to our money, do we? Have you talked to Kathleen yet?” Tom asked.

  “No, although she’s on my list.”

  “I think you will find her a very embittered woman. She has custody of the two kids—darned nice kids by the way, two little girls—and she’s still holding on to her beautiful picture-book house up in Connecticut, but some day she may have to give that up and move into something smaller, although I hope not.”

  “Are you fond of your sister?”

  “Very much,” he said. “In fact, I like all my sisters a great deal. Annie is more cynical than Kathleen—see, I do know a few big words—but at heart she’s a really nice person, and underneath that tough pose, very sensitive. I just wish she would find herself a man who deserves her. I hope you get a chance to meet her.”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said as we rose to leave the restaurant, “we are having drinks tonight.”

  “You’ll find her a most interesting person. Thanks a lot for lunch, Archie,” Tom Hutchinson said as he pumped my hand on the bustling sidewalk outside La Belle Touraine. “I’m afraid I have not been all that much help to you, or to my kid sister, for that matter. I just hope that whatever kind of jam Cordelia is in, you and your boss can find a way to get her out of it.”

  I promised him we would give it our best efforts and headed back to the brownstone.

  Chapter 18

  Back home, I told Fritz that on top of missing lunch, I would not be around for dinner either. He gave me one of those looks that made it clear he was disappointed in me for skipping two of his meals in a row.

  “Duty calls,” I told him, “and believe me, I would much rather be here tonight savoring your wonderful planked porterhouse steak instead of where I will be. Can you try to save me some?”

  That mollified Fritz, who allowed himself a smile. “I am glad you are working, Archie,” he said, “but please do not strain yourself. You are not totally healed. I can tell by the way you carry yourself sometimes.”