Robert Barnard: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 805 & 806, September/October 2008

I scowled at my typewriter, an IBM Selectric so sensitive it anticipates my mistakes and makes them for me. “Three years, two months, fifteen days, eleven minutes, and twenty-nine seconds.”

“How much do you estimate you’ve embezzled from me during that period?”

My fingers slipped. A Gordian knot of keys thudded against the card on the platen.

He looked up from his book with his Gerber-baby smile. “I am a genius, but not an absent-minded one. I call my bank from time to time and occasionally balance my checkbook. When you deposit the royalties from NASA on my father’s pressure-cooker gasket patent, you round down the amount and palm the rest. Absent a tedious study of the actual figures, I can arrive at a reasonable estimate by multiplying your time in my employ by the average sum pilfered. The product would support a modest harem.”

“Well, it was a lark while it flew,” I said finally. “Is it federal or local? I hear they put out a spread in the U.S. prisons. Anything beats mac-and-cheese Wednesday in Sing Sing.”

“There’s no need for bravado. I don’t intend to pursue charges. With whom would I replace you? There is only one Arnie Woodbine, and Archie Goodwin is permanently off the market. I must make the best of my knockoff. Dock yourself ten dollars a week until the account is even.”

“But that’ll take—”

“Six years, one month, twelve days, five hours, and thirty-two minutes. Consider it a long-term contract, which you’d be wise not to break.” He returned to his reading.

In case anything about the foregoing seems familiar — not counting the larceny — now is a good time to point out that “Claudius Lyon” is an invention. The man who uses the name has remodeled his life to conform to his hero’s, Nero Wolfe of Manhattan, who raises orchids, employs a world-class chef, and solves mysteries brought to him by baffled clients. Lyon’s own limitations have forced compromises: He grows tomatoes, eats kosher most of the time because that’s all his chef Gus knows how to cook, and depends upon me, the poor man’s Archie Goodwin (Wolfe’s legman and hectoring angel), for mundane errands.

He’s as fat as Wolfe but much shorter, and when he climbs into the big chair behind his desk he looks like Tweedledum with his legs swinging free. Not having any prior experience with geniuses, I don’t know if he is one, but he’s a damn clever little butterball who hasn’t forgotten a thing he’s learned from the thousands of whodunits he’s read. I’ve seen him take more than his share of pratfalls, but I’ve never seen him stumped.

Well, I had nothing better to do for the next six years, one month, etc., and I’d been to prison and found it not up to my standards, so I didn’t complain about the pay cut; instead I worked out an arrangement with Gus to buy generic lox and split the price difference. Lyon hasn’t Wolfe’s palate and wouldn’t know the gourmet brand from Karl’s Kut-Rate Kippers. It was a stingy little scam compared to the one I’d had going, even when I extended it to include gristly corned beef and day-old bagels, but it would do until something better came along. If you’re the type who can live life on the level without gnawing your nails down to the knuckle, congratulations, and keep it to yourself. Without a dash of pepper the stew’s just too flat.

The reason for all this chatter is, it explains how the principal resident of the townhouse at 700 Avenue J, Flatbush, put his chubby little gray cells to work on the problem of William Thew.

Gus’s main motivator in our conspiracy was the convenience of not having to take the crosstown bus to the snooty little market that sold the best kosher in the five boroughs; the cheap stuff was available on the corner, and it delivered. I happened to answer the doorbell the day the pushy delivery boy showed up lugging a paper sack bigger than he was. I had to part a bunch of celery to see his pinched little face under the obligatory backward baseball cap.

“Here, kid.” I traded him a buck for the sack.

“My name’s Jasper, not kid. Jasper Hull.”

“The hell you say. You got that from an eighty-six-year-old man’s obituary in the Daily News. ”

“It’s Jasper just the same. I want to see Lyon.”

“What’s the matter, I don’t tip big enough?”

“I got a case for him. He’s a detective, ain’t he? That’s what it says in the Yellow Pages.”

“It doesn’t either. I wrote the ad. It says he provides answers to questions.”

“If I got it that way I’d’ve took my tip and went. I seen all the fortunetellers I want to. They charge you up front and tell you a lot of bogus stuff that could mean anything.”

“ ‘Satisfaction guaranteed.’ The ad says that too.”

“Okay. Here.” He held up the buck I’d given him.

“What’s that for?”

“It’s a what-do-you-call-it, a retainer.”

I grinned. “Nice try, kid. Tell Captain Stoddard he’s in violation of the child labor laws.” I started to push the door shut, but damn if he didn’t insert his wiry little body into the space. It was either squash him or stop. I considered the point and decided against squashing. It’s hell on the finish.

I said, “You’d think Fraud would have enough to keep it busy in a town this size without setting traps for one little fat guy with schizophrenic tendencies, but a month doesn’t go by without the cop in charge trying to trick Lyon into accepting payment and busting him for practicing private investigation without a license. Recruiting a kid’s bad enough; a dollar’s an insult to his intelligence. A fiver’s plenty cute given the inflationary index. I’m surprised Stoddard didn’t knock out a front tooth and give you a scruffy mutt from the pound.”

“How good can he be if he don’t charge?”

“So good he doesn’t need your dirty buck.”

“A minute ago it was your dirty buck.” He stuck it in his jeans pocket. “I don’t like cops, either. They say they’re there to help, but all they do is write stuff down and shove it in a drawer. The detective agencies I tried won’t listen to nobody but an adult. I seen Lyon’s name in the listing, and when this order came in where I work, I thought I’d take another shot.”

“Shot at what?”

“Finding my father.”

“Wipe your feet, kid.” I opened the door wide.

Lyon squeaked bloody murder when I told him I’d parked a ten-year-old boy in the front room. To begin with, he doesn’t trust any creature his own size, and as for childhood, he thinks it’s a conspiracy to break valuable objects and make doorknobs sticky, which is a favorite phobia of his. He’d just come down from the plant room and hugged to his chest the specimen of the day in its fragile clay pot. “Get rid of him and spray Lysol on anything he might have touched. Children are the main carriers of most of the diseases on this planet.”

“Just this morning you were whining about having nothing to do. Now you want to shoo away work.”

“I’m not a missing-persons bureau. Why should I be made to suffer because some preadolescent was careless enough to misplace his sire?”

“You don’t know suffering. Try sitting around listening to you sigh and moan and cheat on crossword puzzles.”

“I never cheat. Whoever designs them needs a refresher course in basic vocabulary. ‘Impact’ as a verb. Phooey!”

“I’ll bring the kid in. You want me to put down papers?”

“Remain standing, and be prepared to hurl yourself between us the moment he starts to sneeze.”

Jasper Hull turned the big globe with a palm in passing; Lyon sucked in air through his nostrils. The kid stopped in front of the desk.

“You’re fat.”

“And you have no pubic hair. Please remove your cap. The room is heated sufficiently and the roof doesn’t leak.”