Nearly Nero

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Fortunately, I’m independently wealthy, and never need to.” He raised his voice. “Arnie, we’re going to the big island.”

  I screwed up my nose. “ ‘Book ’em, Danno.’ ”

  Well, the mountain came to Muhammad, the continents drifted apart, and twenty minutes later Lyon finished prying himself into a bilious green overcoat and a Tyrolean hat with a green feather in the band. (Wolfe prefers yellow; the little blob of cholesterol was bound to have an independent streak somewhere.) I’d swear he’d kept the coat unused since before I came under his roof, if I didn’t know for a fact he kept contributing to his girth like Methuselah kept having birthdays, and the damn thing fit.

  Sitting next to the captain in the front seat of his unmarked Winston Leviathan, Lyon kicking his feet in back, I watched the man behind the wheel scowling at all the decorated windows and bundled-up pedestrians lugging bright packages past decorated windows: He was by Scrooge out of the Grinch by way of the ACLU.

  The store was in Tribeca. A hand-lettered sign in red and green announced that the shop was closed for a Christmas party. A burly young employee with a beard buzzed us into a big hollowed-out, well-lit cube walled with books starting at the floor and reaching fifteen feet to the ceiling, with rolling ladders attached to metal rails. Green, red, gold, and silver streamers festooned the place and there was a punch bowl the size of a witch’s cauldron and the usual scattering of bottles, partially filled glasses, and abandoned soda-pop cans, along with trays of cookies shaped like Santas and snowmen and Christmas trees that looked like air fresheners, the requisite bowls of untouched nuts, and a basket half-filled with poppy seed buns. A trimmed tree lorded over all in glorious bad taste, in tune with the season.

  “Mr. Lyon?” greeted a compact man in an argyle sweater and slacks, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, white hair neatly brushed back, and a snowy, well-trimmed beard. I don’t know what I’d expected—a character in a ragged sweatshirt who smelled like old magazines, maybe. All I know about books is the odds at Pimlico. This guy resembled the German scientist who’s always explaining Godzilla. “By golly, you look like Archie Goodwin washed Wolfe in hot water and threw him in the dryer with the setting on Normal.”

  “Mr. Penzler, I presume.” Lyon’s response was cool, and he ignored the proprietor’s outstretched hand; I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t offended by the comparison, only to the way it was put. “What is this I am told about someone paying two hundred dollars for a movie edition of Fer-de-Lance?”

  “It’s ridiculous, I agree; but as a collector you must know that when a true first edition prices itself out of most people’s market, they turn to the next one down, and yet the next, increasing the value of each in its own order. When I opened this shop, I couldn’t give away movie tie-ins; ten years ago, I’d have been lucky to get twenty dollars for one in fine condition. As it was, I made this buyer a bargain, seeing as how he’s a loyal, longtime customer; I should add that it was inscribed by Lionel Stander, when he was appearing on Hart to Hart.”

  Lyon asked the customer’s name.

  “I’m sorry, but that’s confidential.”

  “At least he’s intelligent enough not to show himself a gull to the world. Have you another copy? I’d like to refresh my memory.”

  Penzler scaled a ladder without hesitating and came back with his prize. He’d committed his stock to memory.

  “This is a fair copy, with a closed tear in the jacket and a library stamp on the first page. Would you believe I expect to get sixty for it?”

  I looked at it over the boss’s suety shoulder. A black-and-white photo of a fat, distinguished-looking party and a taller, younger man with a face like a shaved gorilla’s, decorated the cover.

  Lyon tried to say, “Pfui!” Fortunately for the jacket, it was sealed in plastic; the amount of spraying involved, and the attempt to avoid it, distorted the exclamation so much even Nero Wolfe couldn’t have sued him successfully for copyright infringement. He wiped the book on his sleeve. “It’s no wonder Rex Stout, acting on Wolfe’s behalf, refused to allow any films to be made after the first two-picture contract ended. Edward Arnold was an acceptable Wolfe, but Lionel Stander bore as much resemblance to Archie Goodwin as—”

  “Woodbine,” Stoddard finished. “Give him the rest, Penzler, just as you gave it to me.”

  The bookstore owner explained that Stella, the captain’s niece, had placed herself in voluntary police custody after the theft was discovered. Penzler had closed the shop early for the party, and as he was too busy to deposit the $200 cash he’d just gotten for the book and reluctant to deprive any of his hard-working employees of party time by making them run the errand, he’d simply locked it in the top drawer of his desk. An hour or so later, he sent Stella into the office to bring back more refreshments. As the celebration was winding down, he returned to put the money in his wallet so it wouldn’t be left unattended overnight, and that was when he discovered it was missing.

  Lyon asked if she was searched.

  “NYPD searched the entire staff,” Stoddard said. “The money wasn’t on any of them; but anyone could have stashed it anywhere. I’ve asked the locals to toss the place, but with all these books to look through it’ll take days.”

  “May I see the scene of the crime?”

  Penzler smiled. “In all the years I’ve collected, sold, and written about mystery fiction, that’s the first time I’ve ever actually heard anyone use that phrase.”

  In the office, our host produced a key and unlocked the top drawer of a graceful-looking antique desk. Inside was the usual desk stuff. “It was on top of that pad: four fifties folded and loose. Don’t bother searching the drawer. I’ve had everything out of it several times.”

  Lyon pointed at a scattering of tiny brownish-black fragments. “Were those here when you put in the cash?”

  Penzler frowned. “I can’t say I noticed them.”

  I had a brainstorm. When you’ve been a crook all your life, it’s not hard to think like a detective. I licked a finger, touched it to one of the fragments, and put it on my tongue. “Poppy seeds,” I said. “Not very tasty ones. I saw a bowl of them in the shop. Whoever broke into the drawer must have been eating one at the time.”

  “Ha!” I know in print it looks like ordinary laughter, but what came out of Captain Stoddard’s mouth bore no resemblance to human mirth. “That proves she’s innocent. Stella’s allergic to gluten. She’d no sooner eat a poppy seed bun than gobble down poison.”

  Penzler cleared his throat embarrassedly. “I knew that, Captain. It’s why I bought them from the gluten-free section of the bakery.”

  What came out of the cop’s mouth next wouldn’t read like laughter even in print.

  Penzler said, “I don’t intend to press charges, or even dismiss Stella; this is the season for forgiving, after all. However, I do think I’m entitled to reimbursement.”

  “Meanwhile my niece’s reputation is destroyed.”

  Lyon stuck a finger in his ear and commenced to rotate. When it was his right ear, he was just after wax, but when it was his left, as now, he was stroking an idea to the surface of his brain, like a needle coaxing a splinter out of his thumb. So far it had never failed to amount to something just as satisfying. He asked Penzler if he had a magnifying glass.

  “I thought all you amateur dicks carried one,” Stoddard barked.

  Penzler opened another drawer and drew out a square lens in a black plastic frame with a handle. For some time, Lyon studied the inside of the drawer, then dropped to the floor.

  I knew it, I thought. The short fat nothing had blown an artery at last; all those greasy gefilte fish his chef, Gus, shoveled into him had taken their ichthyological revenge. But as I was stooping to test his tonnage and calculate the ability of my back to support it, he began crawling across the carpet on his knees and elbows, holding the glass in one hand. It was more physical activity than I’d seen him engaged in ever; the sawed-off porker went begging for a corona
ry just pushing the button to his private elevator.

  He applied the glass again when he reached the paneled wall behind the desk. While the rest of us goggled—Penzler with bemusement, Stoddard with rawboned contempt, and me wondering if I should give notice or just walk out in search of someone to work for who had a couple less bats in his belfry (provided he didn’t keep too weather an eye on the business accounts), he crept along like an obese inchworm, training the lens along the baseboard. At length he indicated triumph (I’d worked for him long enough to interpret all his chirps, squeals, and yelps the way a zoologist learns the language of monkeys), flattened himself on the floor, made a rooting motion I couldn’t identify because of the fat obstacle he made, and with a noise like a rusty hinge pushed himself back onto his knees and rested his buttocks on his heels, holding up some colored strands between thumb and forefinger. If he could grow a tomato as red as his face at that moment, he’d be Mr. December in the Vine.

  “Mr. Stoddard, I think the experts in your laboratory will find little difficulty tracing these samples back to the United States Treasury.”

  “Treasury!” We all said it at once.

  “I could be wrong. The new bills are so more colorful than the old that I may be mistaking Christmas confetti for currency. However, I doubt it. Your culprit is a female, hair brownish gray, weighing a few grams at most, measuring perhaps two and one-half inches from nose to tail, and she has accomplices. A mate, for one, and what is doubtless a squirming brood.” He thumped the baseboard, calling our attention to a hole the size of a half-dollar.

  “A mouse!” Stoddard’s tone was disbelieving, but then he’d have demanded a paternity test in the manger in Bethlehem.

  “You mean she’s shredded my money to build a nest for her young?” Penzler’s tone was wounded; even someone as esoteric (I’m pretty sure of the word; I Googled it) as a bookseller is still a merchant, and a dollar destroyed is a heart broken.

  “I lost the jacket off a nice copy of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock to a rodent with a family, cutting the book to a fraction of its value. New York is an old city, and no matter how many times it rebuilds itself or how clean the neighborhood and its residents, the creatures’ bloodlines stretch back to Peter Stuyvesant.”

  “I didn’t know the little bastards could pick locks,” I said.

  “The Greene was in a chest of drawers, and although it wasn’t locked, all they need is a gap in the joints the size of a pencil to gain access. The chest wasn’t nearly as old as this fine desk, but time is patient. It will unfasten what is fast and loosen what is snug, no matter how long it takes.”

  Penzler strode over, helped him grunting to his feet, and stared at the shredded remains of four half-century plants. He gave them to Stoddard, who produced a glassine bag from an overcoat pocket and sealed them inside. “I’ll send forensics to scoop out the rest. If you’re lucky, Penzler, you may wind up with enough for Treasury to replace the pieces with whole bills.”

  A weight even heavier than Lyon’s seemed to lift itself from the shoulders of the bookseller, who apologized to the captain. “Stella has a raise and a bonus coming, and a public apology in front of the staff.”

  “Just be sure of yourself next time. Locked rooms and locked drawers. Pfui!”

  Lyon was still sputtering at Stoddard’s correct pronunciation of the word when Otto Penzler opened the glazed door of a bookcase that matched the desk and handed him something: A book, its jacket sealed in stiff plastic, with a frightened-looking adolescent girl painted on the cover and the title Secret of the Old Clock.

  “Ha!” Stoddard bellowed again, nastier than before. “Claudius Lyon, I arrest you for practicing investigation without a license, for profit.” The ungrateful SOB took a pair of handcuffs from another pocket.

  “Told you it was a trap!” I said.

  I expected another high-pitched noise from Lyon, or at least pallor. Instead, he held the book out to the arresting officer. “You’ll need evidence.”

  Stoddard snatched it from his hand as if he thought he was getting ready to throw the evidence out a window.

  “Please examine the flyleaf.”

  Grinding his teeth, the captain snapped open the cover. Instead of Lyon’s, it was his face that faded to a mild shade of mauve. Craning my neck to see past his shoulder, I recognized the leafy tomato plant printed on the bookplate:

  Ex libris

  Claudius Lyon

  700 Avenue J

  Flatbush, NY

  “In addition to being a bookseller and a scholar, Mr. Penzler operates a number of small presses, one of which produces facsimile copies of great mystery first editions, which he offers at popular prices. When he called to say he’d heard I possessed a first of the inaugural Nancy Drew mystery and asking to borrow it so he could reproduce it, I sent it over by special messenger.”

  “It came out beautifully,” Penzler said. “You’ll receive a copy of the first one off the press, inscribed by the publisher. It’s the least I can do, since you wouldn’t accept remuneration.”

  “I’ll buy it. I wouldn’t want to risk Mr. Stoddard’s disapproval.”

  The captain thrust the book back into Lyon’s hands and stamped out, leaving us without our ride. Penzler lifted the telephone receiver off his desk and called for a taxi.

  I said, “Wait a minute. What about the poppy seeds?”

  Claudius Lyon blinked at me. “Not seeds,” he said. “Mouse droppings.”

  I had our cab stop at a drugstore on the way back and gargled with Listerine all the way home.

  WOLFE IN CHIC CLOTHING

  “An orderly man is twice as likely as a slovenly one to make a catastrophic mistake.”

  I saw it coming the minute the little boob took Too Many Cooks down from the shelf. I just didn’t know what lunatic form it would take this time.

  He kept all his first-edition Nero Wolfes, bound for him in green cloth—his favorite color—within easy reach because he never made a move without consulting the Gospel According to Archie Goodwin. He’d cracked that nut 10,000 times, but always managed to pick out something fresh to nibble on.

  If you’re familiar with the series, you know Wolfe is a fat eccentric genius who solves baffling mysteries (usually of the murder sort) when he isn’t busy growing orchids or eating ritzy food prepared by his chef, Fritz Brenner. Claudius Lyon—who wasn’t born with that name, but picked it up because it’s Nero Wolfe inside-out, more or less—is just as fat, and eccentric enough for both of them, but as to genius; well, there’s a fine line between it and goofy. He’s also a good foot shorter, a fact he failed to consider when he bought his Wolfe-ish townhouse in Brooklyn and filled it with furniture built to his idol’s scale. As a result, the big green leather chair behind the Uruguayan fruitwood desk swallows him up when he sits in it and his teeny feet swing six inches short of the floor.

  Nevertheless he sits in it four hours every weekday, two of them in the morning and two in the late afternoon, because that’s what Wolfe does. The rest of the day he spends with his tomatoes in the plant room on the roof and feeding his fat face with brisket and gefilte cooked by Gus, who is reputed to be the finest kosher chef in the five boroughs; reputed by Gus, anyway. I can barely stomach the stuff myself, and sometimes have to cut and run to Bubba’s House of Pork for a break, but it’s better than what they feed you in Sing Sing, and it’s part of my salary.

  Lyon isn’t nearly as busy a detective as Wolfe, which is swell by me on account of the royalties he gets from an invention of his dead father’s pays the bills. He doesn’t charge for his services anyway. He can’t, without a private investigator’s license and with Captain Stoddard champing at the bit to bust him the minute a dollar appears in his chubby little fist for a feat of detection. Stoddard’s the meanest man in the Brooklyn branch of the NYPD, which is an institution that never recruited anyone on the basis of genteel good manners.

  Me, I’m only here because my name is Arnie Woodbine. I type ten errors a minute and t
he best deduction I ever made put me in the joint for the second time, but when you say the name fast it sounds kind of like Archie Goodwin, who takes notes and does the heavy lifting for Wolfe and writes about his boss’s exploits for suety little bookworms like Lyon to read.

  Too Many Cooks takes the fat Manhattan genius on a rare train trip to a chefs’ convention, which of course leads to murder or Goodwin wouldn’t have bothered to publish the account. Wolfe never leaves his brownstone on business, but will do so for recreation, especially if it has anything to do with orchids or the opportunity to increase his belt size.

  This time the story gave Lyon the bright idea that he needed to do the same. How could anyone take his loony masquerade seriously if he didn’t do everything his role model did, straight down the line?

  Don’t let anyone tell you being cuckoo doesn’t have a rationale of its own.

  The catch—one of several—was growing orchids is beyond his abilities, and there are no tomato-growing shows because they could be as boring as his shift in the plant room, which he uses to sneak a few chapters of Trixie Belden and the Bobbsey Twins. Any schmo with the IQ of a TV weather girl can turn a tomato seed into a tomato; it’ll do it all by itself if you let it alone. As for preparing food for dining, Lyon can’t make a sandwich. Those things stumped him for a while. He sat dandling his sausage-shaped legs under the big desk, pouting like an overfed baby making up its mind where to throw its bowl of strained kale. Which bothered me, because without a client or a whodunit to distract him I couldn’t risk adding a zero to my paycheck with him there in the room.

  This went on for an hour after he put down the book. I went out for the mail, and when I came back with his copies of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Shoots & Sprouts (“Ketchup vs. Catsup: The Controversy Escalates”), I found him foraging deep in one ear with a chunky forefinger. That gesture was his version of Wolfe pushing his lips in and out to indicate he was close to untying a knotty problem after much deliberation.