Nearly Nero

by Loren D. Estleman

  “When did these contests take place?” asked Lyon.

  “Last Sunday.”

  The fat water rat looked to me for confirmation. He’s convinced that shiftless types like me fritter away the Lord’s day casting their ill-gotten lots on such ephemera, and know all the results by heart. He’s right, but I confirmed them anyway just to shake up his low opinion. Like his role model, he keeps a backlog of newspapers in a cabinet, but unlike Archie Goodwin, I’m always getting them out of order, looking up lottery numbers and tracking old friends’ fortunes in the police columns. At length I found last Sunday’s sports section and turned to the box scores.

  “Check, including the one he says he picked right.” I didn’t add that I’d been way off on that one. It had cost Lyon his mother’s Limoges, but I hoped to get it out of hock after Saturday’s trifecta.

  “Who won the argument?” Lyon asked.

  “Du lieber Gott, who else? The con—Ach! The bookie. He’d written it down wrong when I placed the bet, but to whom can I complain, the Better Business Bureau?” Knicknacker thumped the floor with his stick.

  “You said your nephew accused you of forgetting who was on the other end of the conversation. Is that at all likely?”

  “If it were, I would indeed be guilty of losing my reason. Who could forget such an exchange?”

  “As you say, one whose grasp upon reality is tenuous. What were you saying when he overheard you?”

  “I was shouting that the man was mistaken, that one of the teams I’d chosen had won. I leave it to you to determine how Oscar could possibly have interpreted that to mean I assumed I was speaking to emergency services.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “He bounded into my office and seized me by the shoulders, as if he feared I might collapse. He told me to lie down until help came. I never realized he was so good an actor. I asked him what on earth he was talking about. That’s when he told me. I said, ‘Has everyone but me lost his mind?’ and thrust the receiver into his hand. When he confirmed who it was I’d been talking to, he appeared even more upset. That was when he suggested I was slipping.”

  Forgetfulness was contagious that day. Lyon started to shout for Gus, then remembered and asked me to bring him a cream soda. He offered refreshment to our guest, who shook his head. Recounting the details of the encounter with his nephew had brought color to his knobby cheeks.

  When I came back with the can, Knicknacker was answering another question.

  “Ich kann nicht. He has taken no legal measures that I am aware of. But it is only a matter of time. Why else would he fabricate such a monstrous story? I admit we have never been close; his late father and I were far apart in age, and I saw him little until he graduated from college with a business degree and came to me looking for an executive position. By the time I decided to slow down, he’d earned promotion to general manager. I suspect he’s afraid I’ll gamble away his inheritance if left to my own devices, ridiculous improbability that it is. The only other explanation is ruthless ambition on his part.”

  “What do you wish me to do?”

  “Prove to him his plan is doomed to fail, that my mind is sound and that all this play-acting is a waste of time.”

  Lyon shook his head carefully; the jiggling of his cheeks distracts him.

  “That’s work for a psychiatrist, and even his findings would be subject to interpretation in court.”

  “Discover, then, the source of his suspicion. He must have some reason to believe he can twist the law in his favor.”

  “That would require interviewing the other two witnesses to your telephone conversation. I’ve heard your side, and I know your nephew’s, so nothing can be gained by questioning him. What is the name of your bookie?”

  “He would be upset if I identified him for a stranger. His is not a legitimate enterprise.”

  “Mr. Woodbine is not unfamiliar with the betting world. I could instruct him to place some calls, but that would take time, and if you’re right about Oscar’s motives, give him opportunity to prepare a case against you. If he is to be dissuaded, we must act swiftly.”

  “I am sorry, but I cannot divulge the information.”

  Lyon squeaked; an exasperated little noise he sometimes makes that sounds like a mouse passing wind. “You have presented me with an impossible challenge, sir.”

  “You cannot help me?”

  “I did not say that; merely that the challenge is impossible. Come back tomorrow and I will answer that question.”

  I took Knicknacker’s hat from my desk and saw him to the front stoop. He leaned heavily on his stick, a defeated man, as he descended to the sidewalk. I kept watch in case he decided to collapse, and was rewarded for my good Samaritanship when an unmarked police cruiser parked at the curb growled its siren and an unwelcome head poked out the window on the passenger’s side. Captain Stoddard showed the old German his shield. They were too far away for eavesdropping, but when I saw the cop’s nasty little smile I knew he’d heard something he thought he could use. I ducked back inside as Knicknacker walked away, just in case Stoddard saw me and decided to arrest me for loitering or breathing the same air as an honest citizen.

  Lyon took the bad news with a shudder, then a sigh. “He has nothing for leverage. Knicknacker and I did not discuss payment.”

  “You’re forgetting he’s a two-trick pony these days,” I said. “He’ll go straight to Nero Wolfe with the news you’re using his act to drum up business, ignoring Lawyer Parker’s cease-and-desist letter. He’ll take you to court. Goodwin, probably, will just beat the stuffing out of me.”

  “That, at least, would be direct and honorable. These fisticuffs by proxy will be the death of our civilization. The fall of Rome and the rise of the legal profession were not simultaneous by coincidence. What is your opinion of our client’s state of mind?”

  “Sure, we might as well kill time while waiting for the process server. The old fellow’s almost as unlucky as me, but when it comes to marbles I’d say he’s got all he started out with. I guess it wouldn’t be the first time a bookie failed at taking dictation, but this one’s lucky he wasn’t doing business with Moe the Moose. Should I start calling around?”

  “Would it do any good?”

  “Probably not. The ones I know don’t hash over their relationships with other customers.”

  He swigged cream soda, giving himself a frothy mustache, and opened his belly drawer to drop the pull-tab inside among the others. Either he did that to keep track of his consumption, the way Wolfe counted beer bottle caps, or he was saving up to make a chainlink fence; which by now would reach clear around the block. “We have no choice, then, but to discover the answer in what Knicknacker told us.”

  “Lots of luck with that. How does an argument over a bet turn into a nine-one-one call?”

  He responded to that, after a beat, by plugging one ear with an index finger. That tore it for me. It was a gesture he saved for just as he was about to lift the cover off a serving tray and reveal the Hope Diamond, but this time he had to be bluffing.

  Unless our client had told him something I’d missed while I was out getting his can of carbonated diabetes. If Lyon was holding out on me, all the hot air he was always blowing about fair play in detective stories was as phony as his Nero Wolfe act.

  The doorbell rang. When I answered it, a squirt in a stiff new pair of overalls held up a flat plastic tray filled with miniature tomato plants. “Delivery for Claudius Lyon. He has to sign for it in person.”

  “Bull.” I put the door in his face.

  When he rang again I slid the chain on and peered out.

  “Where’d I go wrong?” he asked.

  “The costuming. Next time throw the overalls in a washer and then roll around in the dirt for a half-hour before you come calling. You must think I never stuck out my hand for the Irish Sweepstakes and brought it back holding a piece of paper that said The State of New York v. Arnie Woodbine.”

  “Hey, I just g
ot the job. I made the plant store just before it closed.”

  “Hand it off to someone else. Tell Nathaniel Parker that Lyon’s harder to serve than Howard Hughes.”

  “Hughes is dead.”

  “What’d I say?” I put the door back in his face.

  I returned to the office to tell Lyon the wheels of justice were grinding faster than usual, but he was still petting his brain with his finger.

  The more I went over what I’d heard in that office, the more sure I was that whatever Knicknacker had said that would explain the misunderstanding with his nephew had taken place outside my hearing, and the more sure I was of that, the madder I got. I’d a good mind to pull a Goodwin and threaten to quit, but he might take me up on it, and then where’d I be? In my parole cop’s office, trying to talk him out of sending me back up for lack of gainful employment.

  So I steamed for two hours, during which time I turned away a tall party in a FedEx uniform, a pamphlet pusher in a blue suit and horn-rim glasses, and a kid looking for a lost dog. The kid at least might have been legit, but if I saw the dog I’d probably have booted it in the keister. Lyon was still foraging when I put out my desk lamp and went up to bed.

  He woke me on the house phone the next morning. I reported to his bedroom and found him sitting up in his Olympic-sized canopy bed in green silk pajamas, munching Ding Dongs from the emergency stash in his nightstand. He had on the angry-infant scowl he wore when Gus wasn’t around to schmear his bagels and deliver them on a tray. “Call Knicknacker and arrange for his presence after I come down from the plant room.”

  “You pulled it out of your ear finally? When?”

  “I wasn’t looking at the clock, but I can tell you when the first glimmer came.”

  “Sure. When I wasn’t there to see it myself.”

  “Phooey. It was something you said. What the devil was all that bell-ringing about last night?”

  “Hobbits with summonses. What do you mean, something I said?”

  He poked a whole chocolate hockey puck into his mouth, ignoring me. Marooned in that huge bed wearing that bilious sleep suit from the Husky section of FAO Schwartz, he looked like a chubby leprechaun with the sniffles. “Do you suppose Gus would be upset if I ordered hasenpfeffer from Knicknacker’s restaurant chain?”

  “I wouldn’t risk it. He might tear up the bill, and Stoddard would consider that a form of payment.”

  He changed the subject again. “Make a note to call Parker when this business is finished. Surely a man who represents Nero Wolfe understands the sanctity of a man’s home.”

  “Why don’t you call Wolfe himself?”

  His expression told me that any such direct contact would cause the universe to fold in on itself. “No, no, no. Call Parker.”

  The doorbell rang while Lyon was up fussing with his vines, too early for our client. On my way to answer it I selected a Louisville Slugger from the umbrella stand, strictly to discourage any more paperhangers; a golem like Stoddard would have bitten it in two and performed a colonoscopy on me with the pieces. But the man on the stoop looked too respectable for a sneak and too Homo sapiens for the captain, in an oyster-colored suit and a tie to match. He was clean-shaven, in his twenties, but I saw a family resemblance in the bony planes of his face.

  “Oscar Knicknacker, I presume?” I lowered the bat.

  “Are you Lyon?” He used his chin for a pointer just like Heinrich, but the effect was different without the wiry tuft of hair.

  “Hang on while I take six inches off my legs and put ten around my belly. Until then the name is Woodbine.”

  “Take me to him.”

  I asked if he knew anything about gardening.

  “Gardening? Certainly not. I’m in the restaurant business.”

  “Then no can do. Apart from me, Mr. Lyon only lets plant people into his plant room. So far, none has asked for an invitation. Come back in an hour and I’ll see if I can get you an appointment.” I started to close the door.

  He stuck a foot inside the threshold. “I demand to see him. My uncle told me he hired him to interfere with my concerns for his health. His condition will deteriorate without treatment.”

  “So will this one.” I lifted the bat, brought it down with great determination on his instep, and shut the door while he was howling and hopping around holding the foot.

  I went up to the greenhouse. Lyon, wearing a black rubber apron, neoprene gauntlets, black goggles, and a facemask, was spraying a display of green orbs with an old-fashioned pump gun; he was convinced that some rock-climbing strain of bug had penetrated Brooklyn and scaled his townhouse to the roof, but the only thing there resembling an insect was the master of the house in his HAZMAT getup. Of course, it was all just an excuse to buy more plant stuff and take up the prescribed four hours daily with a strain of fauna that required nothing much more than sun and solitude. The owner of the local gardening shop had put his daughter through medical school entirely on Lyon’s tab. And they say I take unfair advantage of his fruitcakery.

  He stopped spraying long enough to hear my report, delivered through a handkerchief, then laid down a fresh noxious yellow cloud. “If the nephew comes back, show him into the office. He might as well hear what I have to say.”

  “I fetched him a pretty good clout on a gunboat. He might have a lawyer with him. They’re coming in swarms now. If I were you I’d carry that bug bomb with me everywhere I went.”

  Oscar came limping back without benefit of counsel. When I opened the door, he drew back, but when I showed him my empty palms he let me escort him, limping, to Lyon’s brain box. I steered him away from the orange chair and into one of the green ones. “Refreshment? Coffee? Juice? Bengay?”

  He was arranging his mouth into a suitably tart reply when another visitor arrived. The old German had changed into a gray suit, as military in appearance as the blue, but when he handed me his hat I saw his hair was uncombed and he gave the stick a good workout on the way to the office. If this kind of thing kept up, it would be crutches all around.

  He stopped when he saw his nephew. “I won’t share a room with this ungrateful little—”

  “Uncle!” Oscar struggled to rise.

  “Don’t call me that. As far as I am concerned we are strangers.”

  “Opposite corners, pugs.” I shoved the orange chair against the back of Heinrich’s legs, folding him into it.

  That took the starch out of him. He looked up pathetically. “I hope Lyon has good news.”

  “Me too. I can tell you he doesn’t have any wax left in his right ear.”

  The dance card was full when the doorbell went off again, so I had my anti-process-server device in hand when I answered it. But I’d have preferred one of the pests to the tall, rangy beast of prey that stood there. “Get rid of that baseball bat before I shove it down your throat.”

  My idea had been more original, but I said, “Yes, Captain,” and got rid of it.

  “I followed your client here. You know I like to sit in on these little klatches of yours, just to make sure Lyon hasn’t gone professional.”

  I didn’t show him in, but only because he loped on ahead with me skulking at his heels. Some cops you can banter with and slide by. This one could take the starch out of a rice paddy.

  I was at my desk, enjoying the uncomfortable silence, when the elevator shuddered down the shaft and the host came in, carrying the tomato du jour, and set the pot on his desk. He’d changed out of the Ghostbusters gear into a suit from the Portly Dwarf in Queens, but he trailed a strong scent of malathion. He blanched when he saw Stoddard, looking more volatile than usual in one of the green chairs; he considered the orange one his by right of conquest, but even he wasn’t mean enough to dump an old man out of it; not, anyway, after he’d had his first gallon of coffee.

  “You can flush the introductions,” he said. “I just met the youngster, and Heiny and I are old friends from last night. Go ahead and hang yourself. Our mutual friend in Manhattan will be interested in
hearing the details of your latest knockoff.”

  Lyon said, “I prefer the term hommage”; but his voice squeaked as he hopped up onto his big swivel.

  “Gentlemen—” He cleared his throat, without altering the loose fan-belt effect. I took pity on him and fetched him a cream soda to soak away the parch. He drank off half and burped discreetly into a green handkerchief, then blew his nose. In a stronger voice: “To recap: Mr. Knicknacker the elder has accused Mr. Knicknacker the younger of scheming to wrest hold of his inheritance by having his uncle declared legally incompetent. The incident—”

  “That’s not true!” Oscar pointed his chin. “He suffers memory lapses. He needs supervision for his own safety.”

  “Lapses, plural? I was told there was only one such in question.”

  “I observed one only, yes, but the severity of it suggests the probability of others.”

  “One swallow does not make a summer. Your uncle explained that you overheard a telephone conversation he was having with the man who accepts his wagers on sporting contests, in the midst of which your uncle said something that led you to believe he’d forgotten to whom he was speaking. Is that correct as you remember the incident?”

  “Yes. He seemed suddenly to think that he was talking to an emergency operator. Naturally, I assumed he was having some kind of episode, but when I expressed alarm—”

  “Glee, you mean.”

  “Mr. Knicknacker.” Lyon stilled the old man with a finger, saw he was still holding the handkerchief, and stuffed it back into his pocket.

  “I was concerned,” Oscar continued, “and became even more so when it developed that he hadn’t been addressing who he thought he was. At that point he became extremely agitated, accusing me of conspiring against him. The doctor I turned to for advice informed me that paranoia is a common symptom of dementia. I want Uncle Heinrich to see this doctor. I have no designs on his money.”

  “That is good, because you will not get it, before my death or after.” Heinrich seemed about to say more, but at a glare from Lyon gripped the knob of his stick in sullen silence.