Death on Deadline (2 page)

To the mere reader, the task Bob Goldsborough faced—meeting scrupulously the demands Rex Stout’s meticulous formulation of Nero Wolfe’s world imposes—perhaps seems no great challenge. After all, with Wolfe’s routines and habits so clearly indicated, wouldn’t it be like traveling on a well-marked-out highway? Yes, as simple as writing a perfect Petrarchean sonnet, painstakingly adhering to the guidelines that govern that verse form. Simple? Try it sometime. Yet, Rex did it over and over again, never repeating himself, always carrying it off successfully. Infinite variations always attentive to the established framework of life within the brownstone. Now that is genius.

A Wolfe continuation that was only a patchwork of preexistent moments in the saga would be tiresome. Still, as in all the stories, enough familiar touches must be given to assure us that this Nero and this Archie are the real thing, not changelings. Fortunately, in forty years’ time
(Fer-de-Lance,
the first Nero Wolfe mystery, was published in 1934), Nero Wolfe was able to pile on a lot of habits and idiosyncrasies, so Goldsborough could partake freely of them in
Murder in E Minor
and its sequel,
Death on Deadline,
without the risk of repeating himself or taxing the patience of his readers.

Proper notice is given to Wolfe’s telltale nonverbal gestures—he nods the proper one-eighth of an inch to acknowledge a visitor; he raises his shoulder a quarter of an inch and lets it drop to register a significant reaction; he sucks in a bushel of air; he buries his face in a book; he glowers or scowls
(Death on Deadline
is a major scowling case); he traces circles on the arm of his chair with his right index finger; the folds of his cheeks occasionally betray a covert smile; and, when the essential moment arises, he engages in his ratiocinative lip drill. Not surprisingly, Wolfe is an astute judge of, as well as practitioner of, body language. In
Death on Deadline
he tells Archie: “All those things you refer to as body language … are integral to the interrogation process. Remove the opportunity to witness those reactions and you become a sailor without compass, stars, or sextant.”

Goldsborough does not ignore the Neronian verbal resources—the splendid rolling Johnsonian periodic phrases, the old familiar words,
witling, flummox, flummery,
and a new one,
bavardage.
Neronian epigrams, e.g. “Intuition is the partner of introspection,” and his splendid put-downs, e.g. “Archie … outrage is among your more churlish emotions,” assure us that Wolfe has lost none of his edge. And there is his scorn for those similes so dear to the
Black Mask
school. As narrator, Archie shoulders his burden fully—droll, witty, caustic when occasion requires it, amiably self-deprecating, simultaneously scornful (once again Wolfe has to be goaded when stalemated), and admiring in his relations with Wolfe, and ready, at appropriate moments, with apt remarks that show off his knowledge of baseball and poker. On at least one occasion he trades off a Mets game with Lily as a reward for sitting through an evening of culture.

The plant room schedule is adhered to, and the meal schedule. The meals are gourmet feasts. On one occasion Archie taxis home so as not to be denied oyster pie; on another, when he must be elsewhere at lunch time, he has Fritz reserve his portion of sweetbreads. Delectable new dishes are concocted, though why Archie, dining with Lily at Rusterman’s, settles for something as pedestrian as veal marsala is hard to fathom. Despite events of huge urgency, as usual business is not discussed at lunch time. In
Murder in E Minor,
Wolfe’s fee from one client is a year’s supply of his favorite beer. The gold bookmark is periodically seen. And, mystery of mysteries, clients and visitors, as usual, always find a place to park in front of the brownstone. All the regulars are in place—Lily, Fritz, Theodore, Saul, Fred, Cramer, Stebbins, Rowcliff, and even Geoffrey Hitchcock. In
Death on Deadline
Bill Gore is briefly acknowledged, though Rex dropped him because “apparently he bored me.” Goldsborough drops him, too. For the same reason, one supposes. But we may need him, now that Orrie is gone.

In addition to the necessary touches, there are some pleasantly surprising ones, quite acceptable though post-Stoutian. On one occasion Wolfe, with evident approval, quotes Dorothy Sayers. He watches
The History of the Jewish People
on Public Television. He reads some excellent new books, Zdzislaw Najder’s
Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle
and J. Bernard Cohen’s
Revolution in Science,
but shudders at a mention of
People
magazine. He shudders also when he hears that an evangelical minister wants to add the
Gazette
to his Christian network. At one point he flabbergasts us when he declares: “The monumental misadventures of my life, and I’m chagrined to say there have been a number, all have centered on women.” For amplification we must await further books in the series. Similarly we are left to wonder whether Wolfe ruminates on cases when he is in the plant rooms. He says he doesn’t. Archie thinks otherwise. We do learn, at a mealtime conversation, that he thinks Tocqueville’s
Democracy in America
the greatest book ever written on America by a foreigner, and that he favors abolishing the constitutional amendment limiting the President to two terms, thus, by merest chance, taking sides with Ronald Reagan, surely something that does not happen too often.

In
Death on Deadline
Saul Panzer is given plenty to do and performs up to standard. Lon Cohen also has a strong role, as well he might, since the
Gazette
itself provides the story line, a powerful plot that surely would have appealed to Rex Stout. Goldsborough’s use of a rare Archie Goodwin “Foreword” to underscore the esteem in which Wolfe holds both Cohen and the
Gazette
is well justified. As a professional journalist, Goldsborough knows how to handle this material for maximum impact. Certainly, in using it he has played an ace. If readers don’t take to the resumed saga after reading
Death on Deadline,
the fault is not his. It couldn’t be done better. BG, we might say, follows AG as naturally as the night the day, and he gives us a night resplendent with shooting stars.

Timidity never has been a hallmark of the Nero Wolfe novels. Each, in its own way, broke new ground.

Even as he entertained us, Rex Stout attacked a wide spectrum of social evils. And so it is here, Wolfe’s target being a celebrated czar of the tabloids. Goldsborough spices this challenge with several characteristic Stoutian surprises. Cramer, in an episode reminiscent of the milk carton scene in
The Doorbell Rang,
visits the plant room to deliver to Wolfe a vital bit of information. Wolfe is nonplussed when the newspaper overlord tries to buy him off with an offer to put him on the payroll as a columnist syndicated worldwide. Wolfe places a sensational, full-page advertisement in
The New York Times
and threatens to submit a second one. Fritz gets to announce one of the major developments in the case. Archie is observed wearing a digital watch!

A few things in
Death on Deadline
might have been handled differently. For example, in both Goldsborough novels an attractive ex-wife shows up midway through the book. Should it happen in the next book, I for one shall want an explanation for this hangup. Goldsborough’s villain, Ian MacLaren, is namesake of the amiable author of the inoffensive
Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush.
Was this intentional irony or did Goldsborough simply forget? Rex Stout loathed the word
grimace,
used three times here. But how was Bob Goldsborough to know that? I know it only because Rex once chided me for using it. On one occasion Archie said he had never seen Cramer light a cigar. He did see him light one, in
The Rubber Band.
In the opening stages of his interview with Harriet Haverhill, the
Gazette’s
principal stockholder, Wolfe seems a touch too deferential. But then, Harriet is a true Southern lady, so probably she merits this unusual notice. There’s a scene, too, in which Archie, in the line of duty, gets roughed up. Wolfe could have shown more solicitude on that occasion than he does. I see nothing else to complain about.

One can fondle the same phrases and mannerisms just so many times. Bob Goldsborough realizes that. He confronts honestly and openly the limitations and protocols which Rex Stout set for Nero Wolfe’s world, yet he sees to it that Wolfe and Archie achieve freedom and self-expression within those limitations. We hope that he will continue to be circumspectly innovative. The knowledge he shows of Rex Stout’s intentions and methods would, in an earlier era, have caused him to be burned as a warlock. Yet we are confident that he will continue to enlighten us. Surely we want to know what Wolfe thinks of Maggie Thatcher, Bishop Tutu, and the Liberty Weekend. And maybe Archie’s opinion of Roger Clemens. As it is, his handling of his commitment thus far revives an interest in metempsychosis which I haven’t acknowledged since I left India forty years ago. As curator of Rex Stout’s papers I thought I had been through them thoroughly. If it weren’t for references that clearly relate to the present day, I would suspect that
Death on Deadline
was an overlooked Stout manuscript. Goldsborough is about the age now that Rex Stout was when he created Wolfe and Archie. Rex wrote about them for the next forty years. I wish Bob the same period of tenure. I have only one reservation. What if Bob is recruited into the evangelical movement? Or joins the Hare Krishnas? Or accepts an offer from Rupert Murdoch to do a daily column syndicated worldwide? Would he try to enlist Wolfe and Archie to serve these new masters? I’m not really worried. Neither Wolfe nor Archie lends himself to easy manipulation. They would tell Bob where to get off.

John J. McAleer

Mount Independence

7 August 1986

N
ERO WOLFE DOESN’T HAVE A
lot of friends—by choice. But he’s plenty loyal to the ones he has. And one of those friends is not an individual but an institution—the New York
Gazette,
which, usually in the person of Lon Cohen, has helped us a lot through the years, as you may know. Not that the relationship has been one-sided, mind you: Wolfe has done more than a few favors for the paper, too. But the point is, he cares deeply about the
Gazette
and its well-being. This may help to explain why he was willing to take the following case without either a client or a fee (although he eventually got both). I mention this because I don’t want to make him seem more eccentric than he is.

—
ARCHIE GOODWIN

I
’VE DONE MY SHARE OF
grousing over the years about Nero Wolfe’s obsession with routine: his insistence on lunch promptly at one-fifteen and dinner at seven-fifteen, not to mention the sacred hours of nine to eleven in the mornings and four to six in the afternoons in the plant rooms up on the roof playing with his orchids. Almost nothing will get him to vary that schedule, although one day a few years back, when I was needling him about it, he put down his book, glowered at me, and sucked in a bushel of air, letting it out slowly.

“All right, Archie,” he said. “Today is Thursday; I will show my flexibility by forgoing my appointment in the plant rooms if in turn you will call Saul and inform him you are unable to play poker tonight.”

He had me, of course, and I backed off. For more years than I’m going to admit to here, I have played in a poker game every Thursday night at Saul Panzer’s apartment on East Thirty-eighth near Lexington with Saul, Lon Cohen, Fred Durkin, and one or two others—the cast varies. I think I’ve missed once in the last five years, and that was because of a virus that knocked me so low that Lily Rowan, so she said later, was going to send over a priest to administer last rites.

Saul Panzer, in case you’re new to these precincts, is a free-lance operative Wolfe uses frequently, but just saying that doesn’t do him justice. Saul isn’t much to look at, what with the stooped shoulders and the permanently wrinkled suits and the usually unshaven face that’s about two-thirds nose. But don’t be fooled by that or by his size, which makes him look like an aging and only slightly overweight jockey. When you buy Saul Panzer’s time—and he doesn’t come cheap—you’re buying the best eyes and legs in Manhattan and probably in the country. He could tail a cheetah from the Battery to the Bronx during the evening rush hour without losing sight of it, or he could worm his way into the vault at that bank down in Atlanta and get back out again with the secret formula for Coca-Cola. And I mean the old—make that
classic
—formula.

You’re probably wondering why I’m going on about Saul and his Thursday-night poker game. I could say it’s because this is one of the best parts of my week, which is true, although the real reason is that this story had its beginnings there. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It was a Thursday in early May, one of New York’s first bona fide spring days. Five of us sat around the big table in Saul’s dining room. On my left was Lon Cohen, who has an office next door to the publisher of the
Gazette
and doesn’t have a title I’m aware of, but who knows more about what makes New York tick than the city council and the police department combined. Next to him was Fred Durkin, thick and balding and a little slow, but A-one when it comes to toughness and loyalty, another free-lance operative Wolfe has used regularly through the years. On Fred’s left was Saul, and between Saul and me was Bill Gore, yet another free-lance we use on occasions.

The game had been going for about an hour and a half. As usual, Saul had the biggest stack of chips, and I was up a little, with Fred and Bill more or less even. Lon, consistently the best player after Saul, hadn’t won a hand, and it was easy to see why. He’d folded at least three times with what I’m sure were the winning cards, and once he stayed in the game with a pair of jacks against Fred’s obvious straight. He was off his game and playing badly, and when we cashed in a little after midnight he was the only loser. “Tough night, Lon,” Fred said as he slipped his profits into his wallet and left humming. For him, it was probably the first winning night in months.