Rex Stout: Too Many Clients

“You’ll eat it. The whole world knows I’m not a lackey, I’m a flunky, and the idea of Nero Wolfe plunging. Besides, this is the first time I’ve phoned you for a month. If someone called and imitated my voice it was probably the murderer, and if you had been smart enough to keep him on while you had the call traced you might have—”

“Okay. Start over. When can you give me something?”

“When I have something to give. I always do, don’t I? Pretend I didn’t know Yeager had been murdered until you told me. Where is the excavation on West Eighty-second Street?”

“Between Columbus and Amsterdam.”

“When was the body found?”

“Ten after seven. Fifty minutes ago. Under a tarp at the bottom of a hole dug by Con Edison. Boys climbed in to retrieve a ball that had rolled in.”

I took a second. “The body must have rolled in since five o’clock; that’s when Con Ed men usually quit if it’s not an emergency. Didn’t anyone see it roll in and pull the tarp over it?”

“How do I know? We got it only half an hour ago.”

“How sure is the identification?”

“Positive. One of the men we sent knew him. He phoned just five minutes ago.”

“How do you know he was murdered?”

“That’s not official yet, but there’s a hole in the side of his head that he didn’t make with his finger. Look, Archie. His file from the morgue was here on my desk when the flash came. Within an hour everybody here will know that I sent for it two hours in advance. I don’t mind being mysterious, but it could be a nuisance if this gets big. So I mention that I sent for the file because of a call from you, and someone who likes to do favors mentions it to someone at Homicide, and then?”

“Then I cooperate with the cops as usual. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Fine. It’ll be a pleasure to see you.”

I went out to the sidewalk, got into Al’s cab, and told him to roll around the corner to Mike. As he pulled away from the curb he said his instructions were to accept only a passenger who told him he needed a shave, and I told him all right, he needed a shave. There was no space at the curb on 67th Street near Mike, so we stopped alongside, and I got out and stood between the two cabs, at the open front windows.

“The party’s off,” I told them. “Circumstances beyond my control. I mentioned no figure to you because of unknown factors, such as how long it would take, but since you have only had to sit around a while, maybe twenty apiece would be enough. What do you think?”

Mike said, “Yeah,” and Al said, “Sure. What happened?”

I got out my wallet and took out six twenties. “So we’ll make it three times that,” I said, “because you are not dumb. I haven’t told you the name of the client, but I described him, and you know he was coming from around the corner on Sixty-eighth Street, and he was going to West Eighty-second Street. So when you read in the paper tomorrow about a man named Thomas G. Yeager who lived at Three-forty East Sixty-eighth Street, that his body was found at seven-ten this evening in a hole on West Eighty-second Street, with a hole in his head, you will wonder. When a man wonders about something, he likes to talk about it. So here’s sixty bucks apiece. What I want is a chance to satisfy my curiosity without being bothered by cops wanting to know why I arranged this setup. Why the hell did he go on his own instead of sticking to our program? I will add that he didn’t say or hint that he expected or feared any violence; he only wanted to find out if he was being tailed, and if so he wanted the tail pulled off and identified if possible. That’s what I told you and that’s how it was. I haven’t the faintest idea who killed him or why. You know all I know. I would just as soon have nobody else know it until I look around a little. You guys have known me — how long?”

“Five years,” Mike said.

“Eight years,” Al said. “How did you find out he got it? If his body was found only an hour ago—”

“When I rang his house I recognized the voice that answered, a Homicide sergeant, Purley Stebbins. When I went around the corner I recognized the driver of a PD car parked in front of Number Three-forty. When I phoned a newspaperman I know and asked for news I got it. I am saving nothing; you have it all. Here’s your sixty bucks.”

Al reached to get a corner of one twenty with a finger and a thumb and slipped it out. “This’ll do,” he said. “This is enough for my time, and keeping my lip buttoned is just personal. I’ll enjoy it. Every cop I see I can think, You bastard, what I know and you don’t.”

Mike, grinning, took his three twenties. “I’m different,” he said. “Just as apt as not I’d tell everybody in reach, including cops, but now I can’t because I’d have to give your forty bucks back. I may not be noble but I’m honest.” He put the bills in a pocket and extended a paw. “But we’d better shake on it just to be sure.”

We shook, and I got back into Al’s cab and told him to take me to the Gazette building.

If Lon Cohen had a title, I didn’t know what it was and I doubt if he did. Just his name was on the door of the little room on the twentieth floor, two doors down from the corner office of the publisher, and in that situation you would think he would be out of the dust stirred up by the daily whirlwind of a newspaper, but he always seemed to be up, not only on what had just happened but on what was just going to happen. We kept no account of how we stood on give and take over the years, but it pretty well evened up.

He was very dark — dark skin stretched tight over his neat little face, dark brown deep-set eyes, hair almost black, slicked back and up over his sloping dome. He was next to the best of the poker players I occasionally spent a night with, the best being Saul Panzer, whom you will meet later. When I entered the little room that Monday evening he was on the phone, and I took the chair at the end of his desk and sat and listened. It went on for minutes, and all he said was “No” nine times. When he hung up I said, “Just a yes man.”

“I have to make a call,” he said. “Here, pass the time.” He picked up a cardboard folder and handed it to me and returned to the phone.

It was the file on Thomas G. Yeager. Not bulky — a dozen or so newspaper clippings, four typewritten memos, tear sheets of an article in a trade journal, Plastics Today , and three photographs. Two of the photographs were studio jobs with his name typed at the bottom, and one was of a gathering in the Churchill ballroom, with a typed caption pasted on: “Thomas G. Yeager speaking at the banquet of the National Plastics Association, Churchill Hotel, New York City, October 19, 1958.” He was at the mike on the stage with his arm raised for a gesture. I read the memos and glanced through the clippings, and was looking over the article when Lon finished at the phone and turned.

“All right, give,” he demanded.

I closed the folder and put it on the desk. “I came,” I said, “to make a deal, but first you should know something. I have never seen Thomas G. Yeager or spoken with him or had any communication from him, and neither has Mr. Wolfe. I know absolutely nothing about him except what you told me on the phone and what I just read in that folder.”

Lon was smiling. “Okay for the record. Now just between you and me.”

“The same, believe it or not. But I heard something just before I phoned you at five o’clock that made me curious about him. For the time being I would prefer to keep what I heard to myself — for at least twenty-four hours and maybe longer. I expect to be busy and I don’t want to spend tomorrow at the DA’s office. So it’s not necessary for anyone to know that I rang you this afternoon to ask about Yeager.”