Рекс Стаут - Please Pass the Guilt

“No.” Wolfe made it positive. “Tell nobody anything. May I see that notebook?”

“Certainly.” He took it from his pocket and got up to hand it over. It was loose-leaf with little rings. Wolfe gave several pages a look and stopped at one.

“Did you write this that day? Monday?”

“No. I wrote it the next day, Tuesday evening, after the — after what happened. But that’s exactly what he said. I can swear to it.”

“You may have to.” Wolfe handed the notebook back to him. “I can’t tell you how I’ll proceed, Mr. Copes, because I don’t know. If I need you, I’ll know where to find you.” He leaned back, his head against the chair back, and shut his eyes. I honestly don’t know if he realizes that that’s no way to end a conversation. I do.

Saul and Fred and Orrie and I are still discussing what Wolfe said that Friday morning — or rather, what we didn’t say.

They came at ten o’clock and I played it back for them twice — the tape of the talk with Dennis Copes — and we considered two angles: one, Was it straight or had he hatched it to get Meer? and two, If it was straight, how were we going to wrap it up? By eleven o’clock, when Wolfe came down from the plant rooms, we hadn’t got very far with either one. He told us good morning, put a raceme of Dendrobium chrysotoxum in the vase on his desk, sat and sent his eyes around, and asked, “Have you a program?”

“Sure,” I said. “Just what you’re expecting, ask you for instructions.”

“One thing,” Saul said. “He comes first. How good is it?”

“Obviously. On that he said one thing that was strikingly suggestive. Have you considered it?”

We looked at one another. “Well,” Saul said, “that line about him being just a guy who happened to hear something. We agree that that sounds good. If he’s faking it that’s very good. A wonderful line.”

Wolfe shook his head. “I mean something quite different. One specific thing he said that suggests a possible answer to all questions. You haven’t considered it?”

“We considered everything,” I said. “What specific thing?”

He shook his head again. “Not now. Even if it means what it may mean, we must first decide about him. The detail which — as he said — we have to consider: if he didn’t learn about the LSD as he says he did, then how? Of course you have discussed that. And?”

“And nothing,” Orrie said. “We’ve talked with a lot of people these two weeks, and not the slightest hint of the LSD angle from anyone. You told us to keep that good and tight and we did.”

I said, “The only mention of it we have heard has been from Mrs. Odell and Falk, and he got it from her. Possibly he also got it from his cousin who is an assistant DA, but he didn’t say so. Apparently it is tight. Abbott evidently thinks Odell had a bomb in his pocket, not LSD.”

Wolfe nodded. “We’ll have to explore the possibilities. Orrie. You will try again with the CAN personnel, this time on the one question, could his knowledge of the LSD have come through anyone there? He need not have learned it a month or even a week ago; even yesterday would do. Take care not to divulge it yourself. Fred. Forget the Palestinians. You are on speaking terms with members of the police force. A dozen?”

“Only two in Homicide,” Fred said.

“That may be enough. Knowledge of the LSD may not be limited to the Homicide men. The first to arrive at the scene may have found it. You need not take pains to reserve our knowledge of it; Mr. Cramer knows that we know about it. Does one of them know Mr. Copes or anyone connected with him? — Saul. You will try the other possible source, Mrs. Odell and Miss Haber. I doubt if Mrs. Odell has mentioned it to anyone whatever, but Miss Haber procured the LSD for her, and Mr. Copes would have needed to know only that to make a plausible conjecture. Does Mr. Copes know anyone she knows and might have told? Probably you should try from his end, not hers, but that’s for you to decide. Have enough cash with you. If there is any urgent need for help, Archie will be here.”

Wolfe’s eyes went to Fred, to Orrie, and back to Saul. “We want this, messieurs. If you find another probable source for Mr. Copes’s knowledge of the LSD, it will be more than satisfactory. Ironically, it will probably get him sixty-five thousand dollars for supplying the required information. I wish you luck.”

As Saul stood he said, “I have a question. Might it help if we knew what he said that was strikingly suggestive? Could it hurt?”

“Yes, it could hurt. It could divert your interest. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. My tendency to strut. Display, like diffidence, is commendable only when it avails. Ignore it.”

Just fine. What else could they do? Not to mention me. So when they were gone, I ignored it. I sat and ignored it while he glanced through the little stack of mail I had put on his desk, and when he looked up I asked, “Do I do anything while I am being here?”

“Yes,” he said. “This is Friday.”

“Right.”

“I would like to see Miss Lugos and Mr. Meer, not together. And not today. It’s possible that today or this evening we’ll get something. Miss Lugos at eleven o’clock tomorrow and Mr. Meer at three?”

“It’s a June weekend and it may take pressure. I’m not objecting, I’m just asking. I would enjoy pressing somebody. Anybody.”

“So would I.”

I got at the phone and dialed.

That afternoon Orrie and I had a two-piece argument, first on the phone and then face-to-face. Around three o’clock he called to say he would be working the whole weekend because he was taking a female CAN researcher to Atlantic City. I asked if he wished to leave a message for Jill, his wife, in case she called, and he said she was in Tokyo, which was plausible since she was an airline hostess. I said he would be paid to six P.M. Friday, and he said he would come and discuss it. He came a little after four, knowing that Wolfe would be up in the plant rooms, and said it would be a working weekend and he should also get twenty cents a mile for the use of his car; he might get something useful from her and he was certainly going to try. I said okay, eight hours Saturday and eight Sunday, he couldn’t expect to be paid for the time he spent in bed, and he said bed was the best place to get really confidential, and I had to agree. But not eight dollars an hour for fifty-two hours, and not the hotel bill. He said Mrs. Odell had a billion, and I said not more than a hundred million even with inflation, and we should leave her something for groceries. We finally settled on a lump sum to cover everything, $364.00, which was seven dollars an hour. I may as well mention now that the client got exactly nothing for that little expense item.

By eleven o’clock Saturday morning, when Helen Lugos came, Fred had also drawn a blank. He had talked with five city employees he knew, one of them a sergeant in Homicide, and none of them had had any contact with Dennis Copes or had any information about him. He doubted if any of them knew about the LSD, but of course they might be keeping the lid on. He was proceeding.

Saul had collected a bag of facts about Copes — where and how he lived, his habits, his friends, his background, his personal finances — but nothing that gave us any pointers, so they wouldn’t give you any either, and I’ll skip them. He had found no connection whatever with Mrs. Odell or Charlotte Haber, but was preparing an approach to Charlotte’s kid brother, since there had been a hint that it was on account of him that she had known how to get the LSD.

Helen Lugos not only wasn’t late this time, she was ten minutes early, so she was stuck with a mere agent again until Wolfe came down from the plant rooms. She wanted to know what was so urgent that she had to change her weekend plans, and I explained that I only obeyed orders.