Archie in the Crosshairs

by Robert Goldsborough

  “Anyway,” Cramer continued, “Hutchinson said he met Marx about a year ago at an art gallery party someplace down in the Village.”

  “I had suspected as much. This was hardly surprising, given that Marx was a collector and young Hutchinson is an artist, albeit one said to possess mediocre abilities.”

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t know about that. Anyway, they got to talking, and Hutchinson confided that he had been in financial trouble ever since his former college classmate’s import-export scheme had gone bust and his father had cut him off from any further family money. That first conversation led to others, with Marx learning more each time about the Hutchinson clan, particularly Cordelia and all her money.” The inspector paused to drink from the beer Fritz had brought in and placed it on the small table next to him.

  “Eventually, the two of them, with Marx being the mastermind, hit on the blackmail scheme, but they needed an accomplice. Enter Marlene Peters. She and Doug had been carrying on quietly for some time after their supposed breakup, with her pushing him to make more money so they could get married.

  “Well, it seems that you know a lot of this already,” Cramer continued, “but Marlene persuaded her friend Cordelia to go to Italy, saying she would also be there. In fact, Marlene made sure to get there first, hooking up with Carlo Veronese and bringing him into the scheme. She had met this Veronese on a previous trip to Florence. By the way, that was one sweet stunt of yours, having Veronese step into the room at the key moment. That unnerved the hell out of everybody.” Wolfe dipped his chin in acknowledgment.

  “According to young Hutchinson during his babbling, Marlene got Veronese to agree to romance Cordelia and get pictures of them embracing in that park to make her fiancé back home jealous and get him to propose.”

  “Even though he—Lance Mercer by name—had already proposed to her,” I put in.

  “Yeah, I can’t decide which of them was slimier—young Hutchinson or Marlene,” Cramer said. “Veronese was slimy, too, of course, but at least he could fall back on the excuse, lame as it is, that he was doing this as a way to bring two young people together.”

  “So, how did Alan Marx get young Hutchinson to buy into the plan to kill me?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah, here is what—by the way, how are you?” the inspector asked, turning to me with a look of genuine concern, probably the first one he had ever thrown my way.

  “Healing nicely,” I said. “Thanks for asking.”

  “Good. Here is what Douglas Hutchinson told us this morning. He swore, for what it’s worth, that he had no idea murder was in the plans for the Central Park money drop. He claims he asked Marx what was in all this for him, and Marx told him he didn’t like Nero Wolfe—although he didn’t specify a reason—and was going to play a trick on him by making his assistant, Goodwin, be a party to the blackmailing.”

  “And what if we hadn’t gone along with all of this?” I asked.

  “I posed that question to young Hutchinson, and he told us he hadn’t thought about it,” Cramer said.

  “Rubbish,” Wolfe growled.

  “I agree,” Cramer said. “An awful lot of what this guy has been feeding us may well be rubbish. Including what happened later at Marx’s co-op. He says he was still stunned by what he saw in the park from his vantage just west of the drop-off point for the money. First McManus shoots Goodwin and then Marx plugs McManus in the back. And to top it off, the money gets spirited away—by Durkin, you said.”

  “Yes, Fred brought the money here—all of it,” Wolfe replied.

  “The two men screamed at each other briefly in the park,” Cramer continued, “but then they knew they had to get the hell out of there before squad cars came, which they did, going their separate ways.

  “Doug Hutchinson said he brooded all night and into the next day, and then the next night, he went to Alan Marx’s place and the two got into a shouting match all over again. Hutchinson says Marx swung the fireplace poker at him and they struggled over it, and somehow, Marx got hit hard, very hard, and fell on the floor, and Hutchinson panicked, running out and leaving by a back entrance and into a passageway behind the building.”

  “An implausible scenario,” Wolfe remarked.

  “Isn’t it?” Cramer said. “Unfortunately, there were no witnesses, so there is only Hutchinson’s version, which doesn’t make him look very good. If I were his lawyer, I’d go for a manslaughter plea.”

  “Assuming he pays any attention to his lawyer,” I said.

  “That’s his problem,” Cramer said with a snort, before taking another sip of beer and licking his lips. “You tipped off your pal at the Gazette,” he said to me.

  I nodded. “Old friends, old loyalties.”

  “Cohen and I talked this morning. I assume there will be an item in the afternoon edition,” he said. “It probably won’t have Hutchinson’s name in it, though. At least I didn’t give it to him.”

  “Neither did I, Inspector. I just suggested he call you, and said that there was a development in the Marx murder. And I told him Mr. Wolfe wanted his name left out of it.”

  “Very noble of you both, I am sure,” Cramer said, turning back to Wolfe. “I assume it was your sawbones down the block—what’s-his-name—Vollmer, who patched Goodwin up.”

  “Mr. Goodwin was tended to by a doctor in New Jersey,” Wolfe said with a straight face.

  “Which, of course, is outside of my jurisdiction,” Cramer remarked. “I get it. Well, if that’s your story, who am I to contradict you? You’ve done what you damn well please all the way through this whole messy business anyway. What’s one more nose-thumbing at the law?”

  “You have your murderers, sir,” Wolfe said.

  “One of whom is dead. Well, I had better go out and grab a copy of the Gazette to see how badly Cohen butchered my quotes,” the inspector said, rising slowly. “Thanks for the beer.”

  “There is a man who bears the burdens of the world on his shoulders,” I said, returning to the office after having seen Cramer out.

  “Or so he would have one believe,” Wolfe said. “Mr. Cramer is used to complaining when he is here, but this time he does not have a great deal to be unhappy about.”

  “I suppose not. And the Gazette piece will likely make him look good. Lon has a lot of respect, albeit grudging, for the inspector. Say, I would like to know more about Saul’s trip to Italy, unless that’s privileged information.”

  Wolfe’s cheeks creased again. At this rate, he would get a record for smiles on a single case. “I gave him a simple assignment: Fly to Italy, find Carlo Veronese, persuade him to come to New York, and return here with him by the fastest means possible.”

  “Nothing to it. Cramer is right that Carlo’s appearance here was a dandy stunt that knocked everyone for a loop. Those two left here last night before I had a chance to talk to them. Got an idea where Veronese is now?”

  “Saul was to check him into a hotel, the Churchill, I believe, for two nights. Mr. Veronese had wanted a chance to see something of New York, as he had never been here before. I approved the expense, which, along with their airfares, will be added to Parkhurst Hutchinson’s bill.”

  “As well it should,” I said. “He can pay us out of his petty cash account. I doubt if he is happy with the outcome, though.”

  “Surely not. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’”

  “Sounds like it could be Shakespeare.”

  “Henry IV, Part II,” Wolfe said.

  “Well, maybe that also applies to Parkhurst the First.”

  “Money has purchased many things for the kingly Mr. Hutchinson, but happiness does not appear to be one of them.”

  In case you are wondering, that very night I did tell Wolfe about Annie Hutchinson’s idea that he be the advertising face of Remmers Beer. “Unthinkable!” he exploded. When I handed him a sheet on which the amount he wou
ld have been paid was written, Wolfe was speechless.

  When he finally found his voice, he turned to me and said, “Archie, please call Annie Hutchinson and tell her she has lost control of her senses.”

  Needless to say, I never made that call.

  Chapter 28

  For the record, the Gazette and our friend Lon Cohen gave all the credit in the solving of the murders of McManus and Marx to Inspector Lionel T. Cramer of the New York Police Department’s Homicide Squad. Nero Wolfe’s name did not appear in the story, as we had requested. And if you are wondering, Parkhurst Hutchinson paid Wolfe’s bill without a peep, despite the considerable expense involved in bringing Carlo Veronese to New York.

  As of this writing, the case of the State of New York v. Douglas Hutchinson has yet to be resolved. The Hutchinson lawyers pressed for a manslaughter charge in the death of Alan Marx, but the New York County District Attorney is going for a first-degree murder charge, and there have been numerous continuances.

  The other day I had lunch with Tom Hutchinson, who insisted on reciprocating for my treating him at La Belle Touraine by buying me lunch there. “Archie, I just got a good promotion at work, and I’m seeing a really nice woman now,” he said with a smile over cocktails. “I want you to know that I really appreciate the way you and your boss handled things for our family during a rough period.”

  He went on to tell me that Cordelia and Lance Mercer had called off their engagement, although he was unsure as to whose idea it was. He said Cordelia had decided to go back to Europe to study Renaissance art at a school in some Italian town, the name of which I forget—it was not Florence. She planned to stay for at least two years, he said.

  He told me his sister Annie had found herself a new friend, an art director at a competing advertising agency, and he felt she was now happier than she had been in years.

  “I’m not sure what will come of it over time,” he said, “but I’ve met the guy, and he seems to be solid, which is more than I can say for some of the men she’s been with in the past.”

  I asked about Kathleen, whom I had driven up to Connecticut to see. “She’s about the same, Archie. If I were a violent man, I would have killed that bum she was married to, but”—he shrugged—“he’s really not worth the effort. She has been a wonderful mother to those little girls, but she has pretty much sacrificed any private life she has for them.

  “As far as my folks,” he went on, “they have not been the same since what has happened with Doug, and I doubt if they ever will be. My mother has turned in on herself, never goes out anymore, and does not want to see anyone—not that she ever was that social a person. And my father has pretty much lost interest in the railroad that he helped make into a national powerhouse. He just doesn’t seem to care anymore, and he says that he’s going to resign the chairmanship and leave the board at the end of the year.”

  When I queried him about Marlene Peters, Tom shook his head. “I don’t know what has become of her, and I don’t care. But I can tell you this: When the police were talking about charging Marlene as an accessory in the blackmailing, Cordelia stepped in, claiming they were good friends and she—Cordelia—said it was all just a big misunderstanding. I was very proud of her, but I had to wonder how things would have turned out had their roles been reversed. Some friend to my sister Miss Marlene Peters turned out to be!”

  I told Tom I was sorry about the family’s misfortunes but happy for him and his sister Annie. After lunch, we shook hands out on the sun-drenched sidewalk in front of the restaurant and went our separate ways. I turned to look at his back as he headed in the other direction, noting a bounce in his step I had not seen before.

  As for myself, I got the last of my bandages off this week. Doc Vollmer’s comely nurse, Carol Francis, came over to the brownstone, unwrapped me yet again, studied my healed wound, and pronounced me fit.

  “Try to behave yourself from now on,” she cautioned. I promised I would and we embraced—like brother and sister.

  Last night, Lily Rowan and I went dancing at the Flamingo Club, but hardly like brother and sister. “You seem to be much more relaxed tonight, Escamillo,” she said as she pressed her cheek against mine.

  “Really? I thought I was always relaxed.”

  “Not the last time we went dancing, a couple of weeks ago,” she told me. “You seemed all tensed up, like your shoulder was bothering you, although I didn’t say anything about it and you didn’t mention it.”

  “Oh, yeah, I do remember. That was because I had pulled a muscle doing my morning exercises a while back.”

  “Well, please try to be more careful in the future, will you? I have always said that exercising can be dangerous to one’s health.”

  Author Notes

  This story is set in the middle of the twentieth century, during the Truman Administration and the Korean War.

  Some comments about persons and places referred to in the narrative:

  Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals, whom Archie watches in awe when he attends a game between the Cardinals and the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, has been a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame since 1969, and was arguably baseball’s premier player in the Mid-Century era, having played in twenty-four All-Star games and four World Series, and having won seven National League batting championships. His lifetime batting average of .331 places him in the top thirty all-time players.

  The Merritt Parkway, which Archie uses on his drive to Connecticut to visit Kathleen Willis, is an historic, limited-access road built between 1934 and 1940, and in part because of its tree-lined and billboard-free setting, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It runs from the New York–Connecticut border thirty-seven miles east, spanning the width of Fairfield County.

  Westport, Connecticut, where Kathleen Willis lives, is a coastal town forty-seven miles northeast of New York City, and has long been one of the wealthiest communities in the United States.

  Work on the United Nations Building, which Archie passes on a walk around Manhattan, began in 1948 and was still under construction at the time of this story. The core complex was completed in 1952.

  The fictional Mason’s Book Nook, where Archie meets Marlene Peters, is located in what is now known as Manhattan’s East Village, as is Miss Peters’ apartment, but because that term for the neighborhood did not exist in the 1950s, I refer to the area simply as the Lower East Side.

  La Belle Touraine restaurant in Manhattan, where Archie has lunch with Tom Hutchinson, is fictional also, although its interior layout is loosely based on the designs of several Midtown restaurants where I have eaten over the years.

  Gerald’s Public House in Midtown Manhattan, where Archie has drinks and dinner with Annie Hutchinson, is fictional as well, but is loosely based on a couple of New York pubs I have visited.

  As with my previous Wolfe novels, my heartfelt thanks go to Barbara Stout and Rebecca Stout Bradbury for their continued support and encouragement.

  My warm thanks and appreciation also go to my agent, Martha Kaplan; to Otto Penzler and Rob Hart of Mysterious Press; and to Nina Lassam and Hannah Dudley, along with others on the team at Open Road Integrated Media. You have all given wise counsel that has helped to smooth our rough spots at various points along the way.

  And most of all, my thanks and love to my wife, Janet, to whom this book is dedicated and who has always been a steadying influence on both my work and my life.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses
, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Robert Goldsborough

  Cover design by Neil Alexander Heacox

  978-1-4976-9016-5

  Published in 2015 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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