Might as Well Be Dead (2 page)

X904 TIMES.

“I ran that in five New York papers.” He returned the clipping to the wallet and the wallet to the pocket. “Thirty times altogether. Money wasted. I don’t mind spending money, but I hate to waste it.”

Wolfe grunted. “You might waste it on me—or on Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Panzer. Your son may have changed his name on arrival in New York—indeed, that seems likely, since neither the police nor the advertisements have found any trace of him. Do you know if he took luggage with him when he left Omaha?”

“Yes, he took all his clothes and some personal things. He had a trunk and a suitcase and a bag.”

“Were his initials on any of it?”

“His initials?” Herold frowned. “Why—Oh, yes. They were on the trunk and the suitcase, presents from his mother. My wife. Why?”

“Just PH, or a middle initial?”

“He has no middle name. Just PH. Why?”

“Because if he changed his name he probably found it convenient to keep the PH. Initials on luggage have dictated ten thousand aliases. Even so, Mr. Herold, assuming the PH, it is a knotty and toilsome job, for we must also assume that your son prefers not to be found, since the advertisements failed to flush him. I suggest that you let him be.”

“You mean quit looking for him?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t. My wife and my daughters—Anyway, I won’t. Right is right. I’ve got to find him.”

“And you want to hire me?”

“Yes. You and Goodwin and Panzer.”

“Then I must inform you that it may take months, the expenses will be considerable, the amount of my bill will not be contingent on success, and I charge big fees.”

“I know you do. Lieutenant Murphy told me.” Herold looked more like a man in trouble than when he came in. “But I can call you off at any time.”

“Certainly.”

“All right.” He took a breath. “You want a retainer.”

“As an advance for expenses. More important, I want all the information you can give me.” Wolfe’s head turned. “Archie, your notebook.”

I already had it out.

An hour later, after the client had left and Wolfe had gone up to the plant rooms for his afternoon session with Theodore and the orchids, I put the check for three thousand dollars in the safe and then got at the typewriter to transcribe my notes. When I was done I had five pages of assorted facts, one or two of which might possibly be useful. Paul Herold had a three-inch scar on his left leg, on the inside of the knee, from a boyhood accident. That might help if we found him with his pants down. It had made him 4F and kept him out of war. His mother had called him Poosie. He had liked girls, and had for a time concentrated on one at college named Arline Macy, but had not been hooked, and so far as was known had communicated with none after heading east. He had majored in Social Science, but on that his father had been a little vague. He had taken violin lessons for two years and then sold the violin for twenty bucks, and got hell for it. He had tried for football in spite of his bum knee, but didn’t make the team, and in baseball had played left field for two innings against Kansas in 1944. No other sports to speak of. Smoke and drink, not to excess. Gambling, not to the client’s knowledge. He had always pushed some on his allowance, but there had been nothing involving dishonesty or other moral turpitude before the blow-up.

And so on and so forth. It didn’t look very promising. Evidence of some sort of dedication, such as a love for animals that hop or a determination to be President of the United States, might have helped a little, but it wasn’t there. If his father had really known him, which I doubted, he had been just an ordinary kid who had had a rotten piece of luck, and now it was anybody’s guess what he had turned into. I decided that I didn’t appreciate the plug Lieutenant Murphy of the Missing Persons Bureau had given me, along with Saul Panzer. Any member of the NYPD, from Commissioner Skinner on down, would have given a day’s pay, after taxes, to see Nero Wolfe stub his toe, and it seemed likely that Murphy, after spending a month on it, had figured that this was a fine prospect. I went to the kitchen and told Fritz we had taken on a job that would last two years and would be a washout.

Fritz smiled and shook his head. “No washouts in this house,” he said positively. “Not with Mr. Wolfe and you both here.” He got a plastic container from the refrigerator, took it to the table, and removed the lid.

“Hey,” I protested, “we had shad roe for lunch! Again for dinner?”

“My dear Archie.” He was superior, to me, only about food. “They were merely sauté, with a simple little sauce, only chives and chervil. These will be
en casserole
, with anchovy butter made by me. The sheets of larding will be rubbed with five herbs. With the cream to cover will be an onion and three other herbs, to be removed before serving. The roe season is short, and Mr. Wolfe could enjoy it three times a day. You can go to Al’s place on Tenth Avenue and enjoy a ham on rye with coleslaw.” He shuddered.

It developed into an argument, but I avoided getting out on a limb, not wanting to have to drop off into Al’s place. We were still at it when, at six o’clock, I heard the elevator bringing Wolfe down from the plant rooms, and after winding it up with no hard feelings I left Fritz to his sheets of larding and went back to the office.

Wolfe was standing over by the bookshelves, looking at the globe, which was even bigger around than he was, checking to make sure that Omaha, Nebraska, was where it always had been. That done, he crossed over to his desk, and around it, and lowered his colossal corpus into his custom-made chair.

He cocked his head to survey the Feraghan, which covered all the central expanse, 14 x 26. “It’s April,” he said, “and that rug’s dirty. I must remind Fritz to send it to be cleaned and put the others down.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, looking down at him. “But for a topic for discussion that won’t last long. If you want to avoid discussing Paul Herold start something with some body to it, like the Middle East.”

He grunted. “I don’t have to avoid it. According to Lieutenant Murphy, that’s for you and Saul. Have you reached Saul?”

“Yes. We’re going to disguise ourselves as recruiting officers for the Salvation Army. He starts at the Battery and works north, and I start at Van Cortlandt Park and work south. We’ll meet at Grant’s Tomb on Christmas Eve and compare notes, and then start in on Brooklyn. Have you anything better to suggest?”

“I’m afraid not.” He sighed, deep. “It may be hopeless. Has that Lieutenant Murphy any special reason to bear me a grudge?”

“It doesn’t have to be special. He’s a cop, that’s enough.”

“I suppose so.” He shut his eyes, and in a moment opened them again. “I should have declined the job. Almost certainly he has never been known in New York as Paul Herold. That picture is eleven years old. What does he look like now? It’s highly probable that he doesn’t want to be found and, if so, he has been put on the alert by the advertisements. The police are well qualified for the task of locating a missing person, and if after a full month they—Get Lieutenant Murphy on the phone.”

I went to my desk and dialed CA 6-2000, finally persuaded a sergeant that only Murphy would do, and, when I had him, signaled to Wolfe. I stayed on.

“Lieutenant Murphy? This is Nero Wolfe. A man named James R. Herold, of Omaha, Nebraska, called on me this afternoon to engage me to find his son Paul. He said you had given him my name. He also said your bureau has been conducting a search for his son for about a month. Is that correct?”

“That’s correct. Did you take the job?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Good luck, Mr. Wolfe.”

“Thank you. May I ask, did you make any progress?”

“None whatever. All we got was dead ends.”

“Did your search go beyond your set routine?”

“That depends on what you call routine. It was a clear-cut case and the boy had had a rough deal, and you could say we made a special effort. I’ve still got a good man on it. If you want to send Goodwin down with a letter from Herold we’ll be glad to show him the reports.”

“Thank you. You have no suggestions?”

“I’m afraid not. Good luck.”

Wolfe didn’t thank him again. We hung up.

“Swell,” I said. “He thinks he’s handed you a gazookis. The hell of it is, he’s probably right. So where do we start?”

“Not at the Battery,” Wolfe growled.

“Okay, but where? It may even be worse than we think. What if Paul framed himself for the theft of the twenty-six grand so as to have an excuse to get away from father? Having met father, I would buy that. And seeing the ad asking him to communicate with father—not mentioning mother or sisters, just father—and saying a mistake was made, what does he do? He either beats it to Peru or the Middle East—there’s the Middle East again—or he goes and buys himself a set of whiskers. That’s an idea; we can check on all sales of whiskers in the last month, and if we find—”

“Shut up. It is an idea.”

I stared. “My God, it’s not that desperate. I was merely trying to stir your blood up and get your brain started, as usual, and if you—”

“I said shut up. Is it too late to get an advertisement into tomorrow’s papers?”

“The
Gazette
, no. The
Times
, maybe.”

“Your notebook.”

Even if he had suddenly gone batty, I was on his payroll. I went to my desk, got the notebook, turned to a fresh page, and took my pen.

“Not in the classified columns,” he said. “A display two columns wide and three inches high. Headed ‘To P.H.’ in large boldface, with periods after the P and H. Then this text, in smaller type: ‘Your innocence is known and the injustice done you is regretted.’” He paused. “Change the ‘regretted’ to ‘deplored.’ Resume: ‘Do not let bitterness prevent righting of a wrong.’” Pause again. “‘No unwelcome contact will be urged upon you, but your help is needed to expose the true culprit. I engage to honor your reluctance to resume any tie you have renounced.’”

He pursed his lips a moment, then nodded. “That will do. Followed by my name and address and phone number.”

“Why not mention mother?” I asked.

“We don’t know how he feels toward his mother.”

“He sent her birthday cards.”

“By what impulsion? Do you know?”

“No.”

“Then it would be risky. We can safely assume only two emotions for him: resentment of the wrong done him, and a desire to avenge it. If he lacks those he is less or more than human, and we’ll never find him. I am aware, of course, that this is a random shot at an invisible target and a hit would be a prodigy. Have you other suggestions?”

I said no and swiveled the typewriter to me.

Chapter 2

A
T ANY GIVEN MOMENT there are probably 38,437 people in the metropolitan area who have been unjustly accused of something, or think they have, and 66 of them have the initials P.H. One-half of 66, or 33, saw that ad, and one-third of the 33, or 11, answered it—three of them by writing letters, six by phoning, and two by calling in person at the old brownstone house on West 35th Street, Manhattan, which Wolfe owns, inhabits, and dominates except when I decide that he has gone too far.

The first reaction was not from a P.H. but an L.C.—Lon Cohen of the
Gazette
. He phoned Tuesday morning and asked what the line was on the Hays case. I said we had no line on any Hays case, and he said nuts.

He went on. “Wolfe runs an ad telling P.H. he knows he’s innocent, but you have no line? Come on, come on. After all the favors I’ve done you? All I ask is—”

I cut him off. “Wrong number. But I should have known, and so should Mr. Wolfe. We do read the papers, so we know a guy named Peter Hays is on trial for murder. Not our P.H. But it could be a damn nuisance. I hope to God he doesn’t see the ad.”

“Okay. You’re sitting on it, and when Wolfe’s sitting on something it’s being sat on good. But when you’re ready to loosen up, think of me. My name is Damon, Pythias.”

Since there was no use trying to convince him, I skipped it. I didn’t buzz Wolfe, who was up in the plant rooms for his morning exercise, to ride him for not remembering there was a P.H. being tried for murder, because I should have remembered it myself.

The other P.H.’s kept me busy, off and on, most of the day. One named Phillip Horgan was no problem, because he came in person and one look was enough. He was somewhat older than our client. The other one who came in person, while we were at lunch, was tougher. His name was Perry Hettinger, and he refused to believe the ad wasn’t aimed at him. By the time I got rid of him and returned to the dining room Wolfe had cleaned up the kidney pie and I got no second helping.

The phone calls were more complicated, since I couldn’t see the callers. I eliminated three of them through appropriate and prolonged conversation, but the other three had to have a look, so I made appointments to see them; and since I had to stick around I phoned Saul Panzer, who came and got one of the pictures father had left and went to keep the appointments. It was an insult to Saul to give him such a kindergarten assignment, considering that he is the best operative alive and rates sixty bucks a day, but the client had asked for him and it was the client’s dough.

The complication of a P.H.’s being on trial for murder was as big a nuisance as I expected, and then some. All the papers phoned, including the
Times
, and two of them sent journalists to the door, where I chatted with them on the threshold. Around noon there was a phone call from Sergeant Purley Stebbins of Homicide. He wanted to speak to Wolfe, and I said Mr. Wolfe was engaged, which he was. He was working on a crossword puzzle by Ximenes in the London
Observer
. I asked Purley if I could help him.

“You never have yet,” he rumbled. “But neither has Wolfe. But when he runs a display ad telling a man on trial for murder that he knows he’s innocent and he wants to expose the true culprit, we want to know what he’s trying to pull and we’re going to. If he won’t tell me on the phone I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“I’ll be glad to save you the trip,” I assured him. “Tell you what. You wouldn’t believe me anyway, so call Lieutenant Murphy at the Missing Persons Bureau. He’ll tell you all about it.”