“Arnie,” he said, fastidiously wiping his finger with a green silk handkerchief, “where do you stand in regard to the opera?”
“A block away. Farther if I’m driving.” Actually I can take the music or leave it, galloping hippos and all, but I got pinched once sneaking a cashmere coat out of the cloakroom at the Met, and my mug was taped to every ticket booth in town. “Why do you ask?” I pictured him snagging a hat with horns and pigtails and waddling into the chorus.
“I’ve never given it much consideration myself. Goodwin hardly ever mentions the subject, so I must infer it presents no diversion to his employer.” Yeah, he talks like that. I went online so many times to translate what he was saying, the Internet stopped taking my calls. “However, one adjusts as necessary.”
I made my face discreet. He encouraged me to needle him, like you-know-who does you-know-who, but rubbing it in about his hopeless battles with botany and vittles would be doing the polka on thin ice. His pudgy kisser screwed tight and turned purple when he got sore; no sight to take to lunch.
“I’ll see what’s playing.” I sat down at my desk and turned on the monitor.
“That would be placing the conveyance in reverse order with the equine. Call my tailor.”
“You have a tailor?” He dresses good, give or take an untucked shirttail, in three-piece suits and a tie, after His Portliness, but I assumed he did all his shopping in the Cherubs’ section at Skinnerman’s. At the time of this narrative I hadn’t been with him long enough for him to split his britches and require a replacement.
“Certainly. I’m not a cowpuncher. Krekor Messassarian, spelled the way it sounds. He’s in the Brooklyn directory.”
Again to spare me the spectacle of that angry-Gerber face I refrained from pointing out that the Yellow Pages is a dandy place to look up somebody from 1993, and opened it. Messassarian wasn’t as hard to find as I’d thought; I slid my finger down the M column under Clothing and Alterations until I came to a name that ran smack into the margin.
I got him right away. The heavily accented voice walked me through the pronunciation of his name and agreed to come by that evening for dinner and a first fitting.
He turned out to be an Armenian of seventy or a hundred, with bloodhound features and spectacles as thick as glass ashtrays. The badge of his profession, a length of yellow tape measure, hung around his neck. He smelled like a canvas drop cloth that had been left out on the back porch for a year. Messassarian takes too long to write, so I’ll just call him Musty.
His head bent close to his blintz to see what he was eating. I couldn’t imagine how he handled a bitty thing like a needle. Lyon said he wanted a full-dress suit with all the trimmings: white tie, silk hat, and cape with a white satin lining. If the opera scheme didn’t pan out he could always put on the getup and argue Home Rule for Ireland with Queen Victoria. In the front room I helped out by taking Musty’s dog-eared memorandum book while he measured, and recorded the dimensions, which were fantastic. The circumference was the same as the height and the inseam was my collar size. A few dozen more bagels with a schmear and a case of cream sodas and Lyon could attend a fancy-dress party as Mr. Potato Head.
The old tailor made miserable noises as he went about his business. I guessed it was all the kneeling and squatting and stooping and squinting at numbers, or maybe it was his way of humming on the job; but Lyon, who knew him better, noticed it too, and inquired about his health.
“Fit as fiddles,” the other assured him, and that seemed to end the conversation on the subject. Then he stopped in the middle of measuring for armholes and said, “I am robbed.”
Lyon started, chins quivering. “I was under the impression my account was up to date.”
“Oh, not by you, Mr. Clod.” I swear that’s what he called him. I don’t doctor these reports the way I do the books. “Someone in my own shop is the culprit. He—or she—has made off with the rarest coin in my collection.”
That put the kibosh on that fitting. Aida and tomatoes and even the fancy dining, look out! When a mystery reared its big black question-mark-shaped head, everything else was window dressing. As I said, I’m not convinced science would thank Lyon for willing his brain to it, but the only time he didn’t seem like just a cheap knockoff was when he had a Gordian knot to sink his fat little fingers into. We adjourned to the office, where Musty sat in the big orange leather chair reserved for the guinea pig of the week while his host squirmed happily on the other side, gulping fizzy cream and burping a merry little tune.
The Armenian, we found out, liked to fool around with obsolete hard currency when he wasn’t cutting out suits. He had, he flattered himself, one of the best collections in three counties, exhibited at shows, and two years ago had been named to the Numismatists Hall of Fame by Jingle, the magazine of the trade.
“I must confess,” he confessed, with another little groan, “to carelessness on occasion. Many is the time I’ve neglected to return a coin to its case after taking it out for examination or to show to a colleague, and have panicked upon this discovery until the item resurfaced among a jumble of lesser coins on my work table, or in the wrong case due to my affliction.” He tapped one of the portable aquariums he saw through. “I can do little about myopia, but I am struggling to eliminate my cavalier tendencies.”
“Phooey.” Try as he had, the little poseur had never been able to duplicate the Master’s pfui; each attempt peppered his blotter with spit, so he’d given it up as unsightly and unsanitary. “An orderly man is twice as likely as a slovenly one to make a catastrophic mistake. Overcompensation is the culprit. Please continue.”
The coin that had gone astray this time was a doozy: the only known surviving shekel minted in the first century b.c. by one Axolotl II—the Great, was the moniker historians had hung on him. He was a Persian king who had ordered it to be issued to commemorate some great victory or other over a province in China.
“In gold, natch,” I interjected, and bent over the PalmPilot I was recording the proceedings in to avoid the peeved-infant look I got from Lyon.
“Zinc, actually.” Musty kept his gaze on Lyon. “The material is not so important as the historical value. A most unusual design, no larger than a nickel, but pierced above and below and to each side of Axolotl’s embossed profile, representing the four directions of the compass: to the east, the wisdom of the Orient; to the north, the ferocity of the barbarian hordes; to the west, the might of imperial Rome; and to the south, the culture of ancient Greece. Legend says the king was going blind, and decreed the coin contain these tactile features that he might still appreciate its significance by touch. From this you may gather the reason for my interest.” Again he indicated his thick cheaters.
“Splendid. Our treasury is more concerned with befuddling potential counterfeiters than celebrating man’s accomplishments.”
“What’s this doodad worth?” I asked.
“Thousands. It’s the biggest investment I ever made.”
I placed a pensive emoticon beside this transcription. I had as good a chance of laying hands on this piece of Persian plunder as anyone, and I knew a fence who dealt in coins.
Musty groaned again. “It is the old story. When I saw the case was empty, I naturally assumed I’d blundered again and that it would resurface. I’d had it out recently while updating the catalog, so that appeared probable. Yet a number of thorough searches of the shop have failed to turn it up.”
“Have you consulted the police?” Lyon’s reedy tenor always climbs to a squeak when he refers to the authorities. They represent Captain Stoddard in his mind, and he’s even more afraid of that particular paid-up member of the barbarian hordes than I am; and I’m the expert on life in the cooler.
“I am torn as to whether I should. My people have been with me a long time, and I should not wish to subject them to the humiliation of questioning.”
I made a mental note (not an electronic one) to remember Krekor Messassarian. If my billet with Lyon ever blew up, I
couldn’t think of a better sheep to fleece.
Lyon excavated his diamond-and-platinum watch from its vest pocket and folds of fat; the best dip in the state could lose fingers trying to lift it if the pigeon moved wrong. I’d had my eye on it myself, but doubted I could fool him with a tin ringer. Anyway, he was a chicken you could pluck from here to Easy Street if you avoided flash.
“It’s late, and I have a morning appointment to show a prime specimen of eastern plum to an official with the Knickerbocker Tomato Council, which may name the species in my honor.” This was news to me, and therefore a bald-faced lie, as I was in charge of all communications into and out of the townhouse. Never underestimate the capacity of a little round speck in the firmament to pump himself up into a prize ass. “Please provide Mr. Woodbine with the particulars, including the names of all the members of your staff, and he will conduct a discreet inquiry in the morning.”
He hopped down from his chair and circled the desk to offer a puffy little hand. This was the supreme tribute, as in imitation of his personal deity he seldom made physical contact with others of his genus. Musty’s reaction was transparent and unappreciative; it was like kneading dough. Lyon entered his private elevator, whose gears hawked and spat and started pulling him up hand over hand to his bedroom.
I spent a quarter-hour wheedling the names and known history of the people who worked for him out of the sap—the old tailor, I mean; it doesn’t do to tip one’s mitt in front of a pumpkin ripe for the thumping—at the end of which he fingered his tape measure, adjusted the bicycle that straddled his nose, and said, “You will be discreet? People think tailors are relics nowadays. The men’s store at Skinnerman’s offers better benefits and doesn’t care whether a seam is stitched by hand or fused with glue. I wouldn’t know how to replace them if they’re offended enough to resign.”
“Trust me, Mus—Mr. Messassarian,” I said. Hadn’t I sold a venture capitalist his own boat, with his bottle of Asti Spumante still chilling in the refrigerator? “They’ll think I’m there to tell ’em they won the New York Lottery.”
He went out the front door with a puzzled expression on his long, weary face. Sometimes I lay it on as thick as a $50 steak. Lyon is such an easy mark I’m in danger of losing my fine edge. A man needs a challenge if he’s going to hold his own on the pro circuit.
Bright and early the next morning I was in the Brooklyn garment district, which looks a lot like the Manhattan original of times gone by, with workers pushing carts of suits, coats, and dresses hanging from rails across the street any old where in the block, and displays of irregulars in front of cut-rate shops and gaggles of colorful characters pretending to chew the fat on the corners while waiting for something to fall off the back of a truck. (I started to look for my cousin Mickey in the group, then remembered he still had six months left on his year-and-a-day.) Very early Runyon. Messassarian & Sons operated out of a walkup with an open flight of stairs with advertisements stenciled on the risers offering alterations and merchandise. From the age of the layout I figured Krekor Messassarian was one of the original sons.
The room took up an entire floor, with bolts of material on pipe racks and a cutting table the size of an indoor swimming pool littered with paper patterns and pieces of fabric and big shears and thousands of straight pins glittering under strong overhead lights. There was a unisex changing booth behind a curtain and a platform in front of a three-way mirror where the customer du jour could stand and keep an eye on what the tailors were doing with his inseam.
“Just routine,” Musty said, introducing me to his staff. “For the insurance. Just routine.” If I was the one who’d copped the coin I’d have been diving for the fire escape the third time he said it was just routine. They all gave me the fisheye and went about their work while the boss showed me the locked cabinet where he kept his collection with a little shelf built under it for spreading it out and examining it under a strong glass. There were loose coins on the shelf he said were no great shakes, mixed up with needles and other gear that had wandered away from the work area. The cabinet lock was a Taft. I could have picked it with a noodle.
He had a picture of the missing piece. The Persian king was a weak-chinned jasper with a hoop in his ear. He looked like a female impersonator.
I’d Googled him. He’d gone to war with Rome and lost, the northern barbarians had kicked his butt, and he’d managed to get the Chinese province to sue for peace because the emperor was too busy fighting off the Mongols to give him any time. He spent half his life as a hostage held for tribute and choked to death on a fig. The way I saw it, “Axolotl the Adequate” suited him better. But his coin was worth, well, a king’s ransom, so he was my favorite historical figure after Willie Sutton.
Messassarian had three people on staff: a nephew named Norman Pears, shaped like his surname, who at middle age looked a little less like a bloodhound than his uncle, but he had thirty years to catch up; Constance Ayers, his bookkeeper, who wouldn’t do any harm to an evening gown and a good set of highlights, but whose mannish suit and mousy brown bun took her down to a seven; and Aurelius Gaglan, a master tailor, who was nearly as old as his employer but dressed better, a walking advertisement for the concern in a fawn flannel suit shaped to his narrow frame, with a fine head of black hair with white sidewalls.
Musty had given me the lowdown on them all the night before. He’d hesitated a bit over Miss Ayers, and when I pressed him he’d admitted she had money troubles, something to do with a deadbeat ex-husband who had left her with his old clothes and bills to pay.
“I have no reason to suspect her, however,” the old man had added quickly. “She’s been with me for years, and her accounts always balance to the penny. If she were tempted, she could have robbed me blind, without risking so blatant a theft.”
But I know a little something about temptation and opportunity, so I saved her for dessert. I set up my interrogation in Musty’s office, a pebbled-glass cubicle in a corner out of earshot of the others if we kept our voices low. From behind a desk heaped with books of bound fabric samples, I started with Norman Pears.
“I don’t care a jot for Uncle Krekor’s little bits of metal.” He slumped in the visitor’s chair with his knees open and his little pot belly nesting between his thighs. “For one thing I’m not into collecting anything, and for another, I’m set to inherit when he shoves off. The business isn’t much, but if you’re any sort of detective you can tell he’s never spent a dime more on it or himself than he had to. A careful man could live comfortably for the rest of his life on what he’s put away.”
Musty had told me Pears was in his will; he was his only flesh and blood. “Maybe you couldn’t wait. Does not collecting anything include debts?”
“You mean is there a shylock or a bookie in my closet? If there is, you’ll find him—if you’re any sort of detective.”
That was the second time around for that dig. I didn’t like the creep, but then I don’t have much in common with anyone who doesn’t have a shylock or a bookie in his closet. What’d he do for fun, rearrange the gabardine and wait for Uncle Krekor to shove off?
“Okey-doke,” I said. “Shoo in Mr. Gaglan.”
The tailor was a gentleman, which meant he kept his opinion of my fused-not-stitched seams between himself and the expression on his face. This one collected suits, but since he got the material at cost and did his own fittings they weren’t really an extravagance. He was a widower who lived in a furnished room and said he made more money working in the shop then he needed. I wanted even more for him to be guilty than Pears based on that. What’s need got to do with dough, I ask you?
Miss Ayers couldn’t afford to collect anything. She was so high-strung I wanted to marry her myself just so I could have the pleasure of leaving her with my old clothes and bills to pay.
“I’m the most honest person in the world! I’m so honest I think everyone else is honest, too, which is why I’m in this fix.”
“What fix is that?”
“If you’re so sore about it, you shouldn’t have shared them with him.”
She jumped up and left, making a noise like a cat on helium.
“It’s her,” I told Lyon. “When I sat her down I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, but she managed to talk me into it. If she takes the stand in her defense the judge will tack on twenty years for something they were trying next door.”
He was pouting again. Entering the tomato room without knocking, I’d caught him peeking at the ending of The Haunted Mill when he should have been fertilizing the yellow Hibernians. “You’ve already implicated Norman Pears and Aurelius Gaglan. You’re no Archie Goodwin.”
“I’m glad you admit it. It’s the first step to coming clean and saying you’re not Nero Wolfe.”
“Stop being nonsensical. I’m merely pointing out that you can’t make the same dismal case against three people.”
“Maybe they’re all in it together.”
“Preposterous.”
“What about Murder on the Orient Express? You made me stay home from the dog races to finish that one.”
“You’re confusing the issue even further, mixing up fiction with reality.”
That one caught me in the breadbasket. It was like the setup for every punch line ever written, and all winners. I didn’t know which one to pick.
He took off his apron. It said chefs do it three times a day. I’d picked it out deliberately: It was the last time he’d made me do his damn shopping. “Office hours approach. When we get there, be good enough to provide me with a complete description of the establishment.”
I took the stairs and beat him; the elevator is as reliable as Lyon is a horticulturist. He heard my report, guzzling cream soda and kicking his feet, then looked at the picture Musty had given me of the coin. He put it down and massaged his brain through his ear. Then he told me to get the tailor on the horn. I listened on the extension, entered some names and numbers into my smartphone, and punched in the first before he could give me my marching orders. That annoyed him more than my outracing the elevator, because he hated not being ahead of everyone else no matter what.
Nearly Nero Page 9
