Bloodied Ivy by Robert Goldsborough Page B

little difficult.” Nevins said nothing. He just looked at me as I drove, probably wondering about the types who inhabit that strange and incomprehensible city down the river.
    I rolled along at twenty-five miles an hour, with Amundsen two car-lengths behind, his flashers on. The sun had come out, and there were plenty of gawking pedestrians on Hudson Street as our little parade pulled into the lot behind the police station, a one-story brick building with white columns on the front. The whole town seemed to be done in American Colonial.
    “You’ll probably get a commendation for this, Sergeant,” I said to Amundsen as we walked in the back door. “And you, too, son,” I added to Nevins. “By any chance is there a wanted poster of me on your bulletin board?”
    “Just keep flapping your gums if you want more trouble than you’ve already got, if that’s possible,” Amundsen huffed. I started to ask which TV police shows he got his dialogue from but checked myself. There was no sense wasting my humor on somebody who wouldn’t appreciate it.
    Inside, Amundsen steered me to a small, windowless room with three straight-backed chairs and a gray metal table against one wall that had seen better days. “Wait here,” he said gruffly. Before I could respond, he stormed out and banged the door behind him. The room had all the cozy ambience of police stations everywhere. The only thing on the eggshell-white walls was a calendar from the local Chrysler-Plymouth dealership with a picture of an Irish Setter and a cute litter of puppies. And the only reading material was a brochure with the catchy headline “Ten Tips on How to Keep Your House Safe from Burglars.” My watch told me it was eleven-thirteen as I started in learning how to make my house a burglarproof fortress.
    Seven minutes and four tips later, the door opened and a tall, thin specimen wearing a brown suit and with more hair above his eyes than on top of his head came in, shut the door hard, and looked down at me. His eyes were little and mean. “Mr. Goodwin, I’m Lieutenant Powers. Sergeant Amundsen has filled me in on what happened at Professor Markham’s house. He also told me you had nothing to say. You’ll talk to me.”
    I glanced up, trying my best to look bored, which wasn’t hard. “What am I charged with, Lieutenant?”
    “Don’t get smart with me.” Like Amundsen, he liked to sneer. Must be something they teach them at the academy. “Remember, you’re not in New York City now.”
    “I’ve been reminded of that already today,” I said lightly. I was beginning to know how Clint Eastwood feels in a new town. “You folks seem to have a real complex about New York. Am I being held without a charge?”
    “Listen, goddamn it, if we want to book you, we’ll have no problem doing it. Breaking and entering, for starters. Now are you going to tell me what you were doing in Professor Markham’s house?”
    “Well, I guess you’ve bullied it out of me,” I answered. “As I told Sergeant Amundsen, my employer, Nero Wolfe, and I have a client named Walter Cortland, of whom you may have heard. He’s a professor at the university, and he thinks Hale Markham was murdered. He hired us to confirm—or refute—his contention.”
    “Yeah, Ed mentioned that damned Cortland.” Powers actually snarled. “I might have known. What a pain-in-the—oh, the hell with it. Listen, Einstein, if you’re working for that whiny pest, how come you didn’t just get a key to Markham’s place from him, huh?” He looked down at me with a smirk and I wondered if, like his New York Police counterpart, Lieutenant Rowcliff, he stuttered when he lost control. It was tempting to find out, but probably not worth the effort.
    “He went up to Kingston for the morning and he forgot to leave me the key, Lieutenant, it’s as simple as that. Honest. Call him—he can tell you. He’s supposed to be back by about one.”
    Powers fired more questions at me, but I got stubborn