Рекс Стаут: The Father Hunt

It happens once or twice a week. Lily Rowan and I, returning from a show or party or hockey game, leave the elevator and approach the door of her penthouse on top of the apartment building on Sixty-third Street between Madison and Park, and there is the key question. Mine is, Do I stay back and let her do it? Hers is, Does she stay back and let me do it? We have never discussed it, and it is always handled the same way. When she gets out her key as we leave the elevator she gives me a smile which means, “Yes, you have one, but it’s my door,” and I smile back and follow her to it. It is understood that mine is for situations that seldom arise.

That Thursday afternoon in August we had been to Shea Stadium to watch the Mets clobber the Giants, which they had done, 8 to 3, and it was only twenty past five when she used her key. Inside, she called out to Mimi, the maid, that she was home, and went to the bathroom, and I went to the bar in a corner of the oversized living room, with its 19-by-34 Kashan rug, for gin and ice and tonic and glasses. By the time I got out to the terrace with the tray she was there, at a table under the awning, studying the scorecard I had kept.

“Yes, sir,” she said as I put the tray down, “Harrelson got three hits and batted in two runs. If he was here I’d hug him. Good.”

“Then I’m glad he’s not here.” I gave her her drink and sat. “If you hugged that kid good you’d crack a rib.”

A voice came. “I’m going, Miss Rowan.”

Our heads turned. The young woman in the doorway to the living room was a newcomer to the penthouse. I had seen her only twice, and she was easy to look at, with just enough round places, just round enough, properly spotted on her five-foot-four getup, and her warm dark skin just right for her quick brown eyes. Her dark-brown hair was bunched at the back. Her name was Amy Denovo and she had got a diploma from Smith in June. Lily had hired her ten days ago, at a hundred a week, to help her find and arrange material for a book a man was going to write about Lily’s father, who had made a pile building sewers and other items and had left her enough boodle to keep a dozen penthouses.

She answered a couple of questions Lily asked, and left, and we talked baseball, concentrating on what the Mets had, if anything, besides Tommy Davis and Bud Harrelson and Tom Seaver, and what they might have if we lived long enough. We dawdled with the drinks, and at six o’clock I got up to go, leaving Lily plenty of time to change for a dinner she had been hooked for, where people were going to abolish ghettos by making speeches. I had a date, later, where I intended to abolish the welfare of some friends of mine by drawing another ace or maybe jack.

But down in the lobby I was intercepted. Albert, the doorman, was moving to open the door for me when a voice spoke my name and I turned, and Amy Denovo left a chair and was coming. She gave me a nice little smile and said, “Could you give me a few minutes to ask you something?”

I said, “Sure, shoot,” and she glanced at Albert, and he took the hint and went outside. I said we might as well sit and we went to a bench at the wall, but the door opened again and a man and woman entered, crossed to the elevator, and stood.

Amy Denovo said, “It is rather public, isn’t it? I said a few minutes, but I suppose... it might be more than just a few. If you could? And I... it’s very personal... I mean personal to me.”

I hadn’t noticed the dimples before. They are always more taking on a dark skin than on a light skin. “You’re twenty-two,” I said.

She nodded.

“Then maybe one minute will do it. Don’t marry him now, you’re too young to know. Wait a year at least, and—”

“Oh, it isn’t that! It’s very personal.”

“Don’t think marriage isn’t personal. It’s too damn personal, that’s the trouble. If you mean a few hours, not a few minutes, I’m sorry; I have an eight o’clock date, but there’s a place around the corner that sells drinks and makes good egg-and-anchovy sandwiches. If you like anchovies.”

“I do.”

The door opened and two women entered and headed for the elevator. That was not the place to discuss very personal matters.

She was all right to walk with, no leading or lagging and no silly step-stretching. At that time of day in August there was plenty of room in the back at The Cooler, and we got the corner table where Lily and I had often had a snack. When the waitress had taken our order and left, I asked if she wanted to put off being personal until we had something inside.

She shook her head. “I might as well...” She let it hang ten seconds and then blurted, “I want you to find my father.”

I raised a brow. “Have you lost him?”

“No. I haven’t lost him... because I never had him.” She said it fast, as if someone was trying to stop her. “I decided I had to tell somebody — that was a month ago — and then I got this job with Miss Rowan and I found out that she knows you, and I met you, and of course I know about you and Nero Wolfe. But I don’t want Nero Wolfe to do it, I want you to.”

There were no dimples, and the quick brown eyes were fastened on me.

“That won’t work,” I told her. “I’m on full time with Mr. Wolfe, twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week when they’re needed, and I don’t take jobs on my own. But I have a loose hour” — I looked at my watch — “and twenty minutes, and if you want a suggestion I might possibly have one. No charge.”

“But I need more than a suggestion.”

“You’re not in a position to judge. You’re too involved.”

“I’m involved all right.” The eyes stayed at me. “I couldn’t tell this to anybody but you. Not anybody. When I met you last week, the first time, I felt it then, I knew it, that you were the one man in the world that I could trust to do it. I never had that feeling about a man before — or woman either.”

“That’s just dandy,” I said, “but save the soap. Did you say you never had your father?”

Her eyes darted away as the waitress came with the drinks and sandwiches. When we had been served and were alone again she tried to smile. “That wasn’t just figurative.” She kept her voice low and I needed my good ears. “I meant that literally. I never had a father. I don’t know who he was. Is. I don’t know what my name is, what it should be. Nobody knows about it — nobody. Now you know. I don’t think Denovo was my mother’s real name. I don’t think she was ever married. Do you know what Denovo means? Two Latin words, de novo ?”

“Something about new. A nova is a new star.”

“It means ‘anew.’ ‘Afresh.’ She started anew, afresh, she started over, and she took the name Denovo. I wish I knew for sure.”

“Have you asked her?”

“No. I wanted to, I was going to, and now I can’t. She’s dead.”

“When did she die?”

“In May. Just two weeks before I graduated. By a car. A hit-and-run driver.”

“Did they get him?”

“No. They haven’t found him. They are still looking; they say they are.”

“What about relatives? A sister, a brother...”

“There aren’t any.”

“There must be. Everyone has relatives.”

“No. None. Of course there might be some under her real name.”

“Have you got any? Cousins, uncles, aunts...”

“No.”

It was getting messy. Or rather, it was getting too damn pure and simple. I knew people who liked to think of themselves as loners, but Amy Denovo really was one; with her it wasn’t just thinking. I suggested that we might try the sandwiches, and she agreed and took one, and took a bite. Naturally, when I am eating with someone, male or female, for the first time, I notice the details of his or her performance, since it tells a lot about the person, but that time I didn’t because the way she took a bite, or chewed, or swallowed, or licked her lips, had no bearing on the fix she was in. I did observe that there was nothing wrong with her appetite, and she proved that she liked the egg-and-anchovy combo by taking her full share. She asked if it was on Nero Wolfe’s list of favorites, and I said no, he would probably sneer at it. When the platter was empty she said she hadn’t thought it would make her hungry, telling someone the secret she had kept bottled up so long, but it had. She gave me a little smile, the dimples coming, and said, “We don’t really know ourselves, do we?”