Рекс Стаут - Please Pass the Guilt

The small room upstairs at Rusterman’s had many memories for me, back to the days when Marko Vukcic was still alive and making it the best restaurant in New York, with frequent meals with his old friend Nero Wolfe helping to keep it the best. It was still better than good, as Lon Cohen remarked that evening after his third spoonful of Germiny à l’Oseille, and again after his second bite of Chateaubriand and his first sip of the claret.

With about his fourth sip he said, “I’d be enjoying this more — or less, I don’t know which — if I knew the price. Of course you want something, or Nero Wolfe does. What?”

I swallowed meat. “Not Nero Wolfe. Me. He doesn’t know about it and I don’t want him to. I need some facts. I spent two hours this morning reading everything two great newspapers have printed about the murder of Peter J. Odell and I still don’t know enough for my personal satisfaction. I thought a chat with you might be helpful.”

He squinted at me. “How straight is that? That Wolfe doesn’t know you’re feeding me.”

“As straight as from a ten to an ace.”

His eyes aimed about a foot above my head, as they often did when he was deciding whether to call or raise, stayed there while I buttered a bite of roll, and leveled down to mine. “Well, well,” he said. “You could just put an ad in the Gazette . Of course with a box number since Wolfe mustn’t know you’re drumming.”

Just looking at Lon you would never guess, from his neat little face and his slick black hair, how sharp he is. But people who know him know, including the publisher of the Gazette , which is why he has a room to himself two doors down the hall from the publisher’s room.

I shook my head. “The kind of people I want to reach don’t read Gazette ads. To be perfectly frank, I’m going stale and I need exercise. There must be plenty about that crowd that isn’t fit to print. This room isn’t bugged and neither am I. Have Cramer and the DA got a lead that they’re saving?”

“No.” He forked peas. “Almost certainly not. Of course the hitch is that they don’t know who the bomb was intended for.” He put the peas where he wanted them. “Probably no one does but the guy who planted it. It’s reasonable to suppose it was meant for Browning, but after all it was Odell who got it. A fact is a fact. Did Browning plant it for Odell? He did have a motive.”

“Good enough?”

“Apparently. Of course you know that Abbott is retiring the last of August and the board of directors was going to decide on his successor at a meeting scheduled for five o’clock that afternoon, and it would be either Browning or Odell. Odell certainly didn’t plant the bomb for Browning and then open the drawer himself, but did Browning plant it and somehow get Odell to open it?”

I sipped claret. “Of course your best men are on it, or have been. What do they think?”

“They’ve quit thinking. All they have is guesses. Landry’s guess is that Mrs. Browning put the bomb there for Helen Lugos, her husband’s secretary, knowing, or thinking she knew, that Helen checked the bourbon supply every morning.”

“Did she? Check the bourbon supply every morning?”

“I don’t know and I doubt if Cramer does. Helen isn’t speaking to reporters and it is said that she isn’t wasting any words with the law. Also I don’t know for sure that Helen and Browning were bedding, but Landry thinks he does. Ask Inspector Cramer, he may know. Another guess, Gahagan’s, is that Odell was setting the bomb for Browning and fumbled it. He has been trying for a week to trace where and how Odell got the bomb. Perlman’s guess is that Abbott did it because he thought they were going to pick Browning for the new president and he was for Odell. He has three theories on why Odell went to Browning’s room and opened the drawer, none of them much good. Damiano’s guess is that Helen Lugos did it, to get Browning, but he is no better than Perlman on why Odell horned in.”

“Why would Helen want to get Browning?”

“Sex.”

“That’s not responsive.”

“Certainly it’s responsive. When sex comes in by the window, logic leaves by the door. When two people collaborate sexually, either one is capable of doing anything and nobody can be sure he knows why he did it. I think Damiano’s guess is based on something a man named Meer, Kenneth Meer, told him. Meer is Browning’s chief of staff. Damiano got him talking the day after it happened — they had been choir boys together at St. Andrew’s — and Meer said that anyone who wanted to know how it happened should concentrate on Helen Lugos. Of course Damiano kept at him then, but Meer backed off. And as I said, Helen isn’t doing any talking.”

“Has Damiano told Inspector Cramer what Meer said?”

“Of course not. He didn’t even tell us until a couple of days ago. He was hoping to earn a medal.”

“Does anybody guess that Meer did it?”

“No one at the Gazette does. Naturally he has been considered, everybody has, but even for a wild guess you’ve got to have a motive. Meer certainly wouldn’t have wanted to get Browning; if Browning is made president, Meer will be right up near the top. And how could he have got Odell to go to Browning’s room and open that drawer? Of course guesses are a dime a dozen. If the bomb was intended for Browning, there are at least a dozen possible candidates. For instance, Madeline Odell, now the widow Odell. She had been expecting her husband to be the CAN president ever since she married him, twenty years ago, and it looked as if Browning was going to get it instead. Or Theodore Falk, the Wall Street Falk, old friend of the Odells and a member of the CAN board of directors. Of course he didn’t do it himself, but millionaires don’t have to do things themselves. Or Sylvia Venner. You know?”

I nodded. “‘The Big Town.’”

“Right. She had that program for two years and Browning bounced her. Now she does chores, and she hates Browning’s guts. I could name more. Of course if the bomb was intended for Odell, there are candidates for that too, but for them there’s the problem of getting Odell to enter that room and open that drawer.”

I swallowed my last bite of Chateaubriand and pushed the button for Pierre. “You said Odell’s wife had been expecting him to be president ever since she married him. Had she been doing anything about it?”

“Plenty. She inherited a big block of CAN stock from her father, Carl Hartig, along with a lot of oil wells and miscellaneous items, and she’s been on the board of directors for ten years. She would probably have given half of her seventy or eighty million to have Browning removed from competition, but if she had known that bomb was in that drawer she would have made damn sure that her husband wouldn’t go near that room that day. That’s why she’s not my guess — or anybody else’s as far as I know.”

“Seventy or eighty million ?”

“At least that. She’s really loaded.”

“Huh. What kind of sauce do you want on your soufflé? Brandy ginger or mocha rum?”

“Mocha rum sounds better.”

Pierre had come and was removing empty dishes. I told him what we would have and waited until he was gone to resume with Lon. You never know. Abbott or Browning or Madeline Odell might be one of Pierre’s pet customers.

When, at a quarter to eight, out on the sidewalk, we decided to walk the eleven blocks to Saul Panzer’s instead of scouting for a taxi, I had collected around a hundred more facts and guesses, but it would be a waste of paper and ink to list them for you since none of them was any help to my program. Also I will not report on the course of events at the poker table, except to say that having a complicated operation on my mind was no help to my wallet. I lost sixty-eight bucks.