Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

But the following morning at breakfast, a dejected Wretched Breen was wondering if the vaunted Celery had at last begun to go to seed. Following a call from headquarters to the Breen apartment, he told his son softly, “About that aftershave lotion of yours...”

“The cologne? What about it? From Koeln, right?”

“Aftershave, Cel. From Frankfurt.”

“Well, it’s a good thing Carlos Nacionale didn’t realize that. He might not have left us any message at all. Did you find out who gave it to him?”

The inspector sipped coffee and sighed. “Yeah. Velvet picked it up for him, a couple of weeks ago.”

“Velvet? That’s quite a blow, Dad,” Celery said solemnly. “I liked that young woman. I even hoped that, someday, perhaps, maybe... Ah well, that’s all part of the detective game, I suppose. It’s happened before, and no doubt it’ll happen again, as long as sleuths are born with hearts. And Celery Breen, whatever his detractors may say of him, does have a heart. Yes, well, I’ll muddle through somehow, I expect. Don’t try to console me. I’ll be all right. Have you got the murderous little minx in custody?”

“Celery. Son. Carlos Nacionale’s aftershave was not — repeat, not — poisoned.”

“It wasn’t? But how else could the fatal toxin have been administered?”

“Think back, Cel. Remember all that blood around the body?”

“Yes? What of it?”

“Nacionale was stabbed, son. His throat was slit wide open.”

“That was a lousy shaving cut, Dad!”

“Probably—”

“No, definitely!”

“I meant Doc Probably. He—”

“He has a steady hand with a postmortem knife, but no imagination, Dad.”

“Son, listen, I know you’re no garden-variety sleuth. But even you are bound to be wrong sometimes, and I’m afraid that this is one of those times.”

Celery stalked furiously out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Moments later, though, the door swung back open to re-admit him. “Okay,” he said, “then who killed Nacionale? Tell me that.”

“I don’t know who killed him, son. Not yet. I’m going down to headquarters. Want to come along?”

“No! The answer’s in those dice, Dad, and I’m not leaving this room until I figure it out.”

“Okay, son, you sit here and vegetate if you want to,” said the birdlike inspector, “but I’ll just keep pecking away until I come up with the truth.”

And, his feathers ruffled, he hopped out the door.

Celery pounded his forehead to stimulate thought. He thought of the dismal failures of his salad days, of the brilliant successes of his recent past, and, most of all, of the body, the blood, and the dice, the dice, the dice...

The phone was ringing when Wretched Breen let himself into his office. “Yeah?... Oh jeez, I forgot all about him. Is he still down there?... Yeah, bring him on up.”

Moments later, a two-headed shadow appeared at the frosted glass door to Inspector Breen’s office. The door swung open to reveal the beefy frame of Sergeant Thomas Veal, handcuffed at the wrist to a nervous little man with beady, reptilian eyes.

“Mr. Luigi Calamare,” the sergeant announced.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my old friend Luigi the Snake,” the inspector greeted them. “Shoo him in, Thomas, and help him find a chair.”

“What’s the big idea, Inspectuh?” the little man hissed. “I been here all night, this lunk won’t let me call my lawyuh, and I din’ even do nothin’.”

“We hear otherwise,” the old inspector snapped. “We got a tip you knocked over the Second National Bank on Lexington the night before last, sometime around midnight.”

“That’s a lie! I wasn’t nowheres near no bank that night. I was playin’ pokuh ovuh on Nint’ Avenoo with some of the boys. You can ast them, they’ll tell yuh.”

“Sure they will, Luigi. They always do, don’t they?”

“It’s the troot, Inspectuh, I swear it. Hell, you can ast your kid if yuh don’t believe me!”

“Celery? Was he there?”

“Yeah, sure, up to the time that dame started screamin’, anyways. He dropped a bundle, too. That kid’s no card-playuh, Inspectuh.”

Wretched Breen lifted himself from his chair and began to pace the floor, thoughtfully stroking the day-old stubble on his chin. Silence reigned.

“Where was it you were playing?” he asked at last.

“The Hotel Madrid. Room 530.”

“And what time did you get there?”

“Eight-thirty, maybe nine uh’clock. I don’ remembuh exackly.”

“Do you remember what time you left?”

“Afta one, Inspectuh. I swear to you I—”

“Did you leave the game at all during the course of the evening?”

“Just once, to grab a fresh pack uh cigarettes. It’s the troot, Inspectuh. Just ast the boys, they’ll back me up.”

“How long were you out of the room when you went for cigarettes?”

“A coupla minutes — ten, maybe, fifteen tops. I couldn’a got all the way ovuh to Lexington, if that’s what yuh thinkin’.”

“You certainly couldn’t have.” The inspector scowled. “But you could have gotten somewhere closer to hand. Take him back downstairs and book him, Thomas.”

“For robbery?” Veal frowned. “But you just said—”

“Not for robbery. For murder.”

When the inspector broke down the unlocked door to his son’s bedroom an hour later, he found Celery still lost in reverie.

“I have to talk to you, son.”

“The dice, Dad. The dice...”

“It’s all over, Cel. The Nacionale case is closed. We’ve got the killer.”

“You do? Who was it?”

“Luigi Calamare.”

“Luigi? But that’s impossible! I was with him when Nacionale was killed.”

“No, you weren’t. Calamare left your card game to get a pack of cigarettes, remember? At least, that’s where he said he was going. But actually he had an unopened pack in his pocket all the time, and when he left Room 530 he simply ducked down the hall to 521, slit Nacionale’s throat, and then returned to the game.”

“But why, Dad? It doesn’t make sense!”

“Nacionale had evidence of Calamare’s involvement in the rackets, evidence that would have sent your pal Luigi to prison for a long, long time if we’d gotten a look at it.”

“Luigi was a gangster?” said Celery incredulously.

“I’m afraid so, son. And Carlos Nacionale was blackmailing him. But Calamare wanted out from under, so he set up a meeting with Nacionale for the night before last, arranged a poker game as an alibi — with you as an unimpeachable witness — then killed Nacionale and stole back the incriminating evidence.”

“And the dice, then? You mean they had nothing to do with it, after all?”

“They had everything to do with it, Cel. Two dice, each with a single spot showing, right? Well, son, thanks to those beady little eyes of his, Luigi Calamare has a cute nickname among his underworld pals. Snake Eyes, they call him, and that’s what Carlos Nacionale was trying to tell us when he died: Snake Eyes killed him.”

“You’re sure about all this?”

“Positive. When I told Calamare about Nacionale’s dying message, he spilled the whole story.”

“Well, congratulations, Dad,” Celery said with ill-concealed disappointment. “You solved the case without a bit of help from me. From now on, I guess you’ll have to take old Celery’s advice with a grain of salt, eh?”

The inspector hesitated for a moment, then licked his lips and went on. “Calamare told us something else, son. He said you lost an awful lot of money in that card game the other night, but that you paid it all back bright and early the next morning.”

“That — that’s right,” Celery said nervously.