Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 41 Read Free Page B

dining room I had written “FBI” on a sheet from the scratch pad and put it on Wolfe’s desk. It hadn’t improved my appetite any. If she had been wrong about the tail it could have had great possibilities, including a fat raise for me in the form of a check for me, personally.
    Wolfe sipped coffee, put the cup down, and said, “I have fourteen bottles left.”
    “My God,” Lon said, and sniffed the brandy. It was funny about him. With his slicked-back hair and his neat little tight-skinned face he looked like nobody in particular, but somehow he always seemed to fit, whatever he was doing—in his room on the twentieth floor in the
Gazette
building, two doors down from the publisher’s corner room, or dancing with a doll at the Flamingo, or at the table with us in Saul Panzer’s apartment where we played poker. Or sniffing a fifty-year-old cognac.
    He took a sip. “Anything you want,” he said. “Barring nothing.”
    “Actually,” Wolfe said, “it isn’t very special. Certainly not fantastic. First a question: Do you know of any connection, however remote, between Mrs. Lloyd Bruner and the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”
    “Sure I do. Who doesn’t? She sent a million people copies of Fred Cook’s book, including our publisher and editor. It’s the latest status symbol, and damn it, I didn’t get one. Did you?”
    “No. I bought mine. Do you know of any action the Bureau has taken in reprisal? This is a private and confidential conversation.”
    Lon smiled. “Any action they might take would alsobe private and confidential. You’ll have to ask J. Edgar Hoover—unless you already know. Do you?”
    “Yes.”
    Lon’s chin jerked up. “The hell you do. Then the people who pay his salary should know.”
    Wolfe nodded. “That would be your view, naturally. You seek information in order to publish it; I seek it for my private interest. At the moment I seek it only to decide where my interest lies. I have no client and no commitment, and I should make it clear that even if I commit myself and go to work I shall probably never be able to give you any publishable information, no matter what the outcome is. If I can, I will, but I doubt it. Are we in your debt?”
    “No. On balance, I’m in yours.”
    “Good. Then I’ll draw on it. Why did Mrs. Bruner send those books?”
    “I don’t know.” He sipped brandy and moved his lips and cheeks to spread it around before swallowing. “Presumably as a public service. I bought five copies myself and sent them to people who should read them but probably won’t. A man I know gave thirty copies as Christmas presents.”
    “Do you know if she had any private reason for animus against the FBI?”
    “No.”
    “Have you heard any suggestion of such an animus? Any surmise?”
    “No. But evidently you have. Look, Mr. Wolfe. Strictly off the record, who wants to hire you? If I knew that, I might be able to furnish a fact or two.”
    Wolfe refilled his cup and put the pot down. “I may not be hired,” he said. “If I am, it’s quite possible that you will never know who hired me. As for facts, I knowwhat I need. I need a list of all the cases on which FBI agents have recently worked, and are now working, in and around New York. Can you supply that?”
    “Hell no.” Lon smiled. “I’ll be damned. I was thinking—it was incredible, but I was thinking, or rather I was asking if it was possible that Hoover wanted you to work on Mrs. Bruner. That
would
be an item. But if you—I’ll be damned.” His eyes narrowed. “Are
you
going to perform a public service?”
    “No. Nor, it may be, a private one. I’m considering it. Do you know how I can get such a list?”
    “You can’t. Of course some of their jobs are public knowledge, like the jewel snatch at the Natural History Museum and the bank truck at that church in Jersey—half a million in small bills. But some of them are far from public. You read that book. Of course there’s talk, there’s always