Might as Well Be Dead

I swiveled and dialed, and when I had the number Cramer came to my desk and took it. I was supposing he would tell someone to get the list from the file and read it off to me, but no sir. That way I could have faked something, and who would trust Goodwin? He stayed at the phone, and when the list had been dug out and was called off to him he relayed it to me, item by item, and I wrote it down. As follows:

Motor operator’s license

Social Security card

Eastern Insurance Co. Identification card

2 tickets to baseball game for May 11th

3 letters in envelopes (personal matters)

Newspaper clipping about fluorine in drinking water

$22.16 in bills and coins

Pack of cigarettes

2 books of matches

4 keys on a ring

1 handkerchief

Ballpoint pen

Pencil

Pocket knife

I started to hand it to Wolfe, but Cramer reached and grabbed it. When he had finished studying it he returned it to me and I passed it to Wolfe, and Cramer asked him, “Well?”

“Thank you very much.” Wolfe sounded as if he meant it. “One question: is it possible that something, some small article, was taken from his clothing before this list was made?”

“Possible, yes. Not very likely. The man and woman who saw it from the parked car are respectable and responsible citizens. The man went to where the body was lying, and the woman blew the horn, and an officer came in a couple of minutes. The officer was the first one to touch the body. Why? What’s missing?”

“Money. Archie, how much did you give Johnny for expenses?”

“One hundred dollars.”

“And presumably he had a little of his own. Of course, Mr. Cramer, I am not ass enough to suggest that you have a thief on your force, but that hundred dollars belonged to me, since Johnny Keems had possession of it as my agent. If by any chance it should turn up-”

“Goddam you, I ought to knock you through that wall,” Cramer said through his teeth, and whirled and tramped out.

I waited until I heard the front door slam, then went to the hall and on to the one-way glass panel to see him cross the sidewalk and climb into his car. When I returned to the office Wolfe was sitting with his fingers interlaced at the apex of his central mound, trying not to look smug.

I stood and looked down at him. “I’ll be damned,” I said. “So you’ve got your little fact that stings. Next, who did he grease with it?”

He nodded. “Not too difficult, I should think. Apparently you share my assumption that he bribed somebody?”