The Missing Chapter

“I only learned of it an hour or so ago myself. Seems they were in the same restaurant, over on Fifty-fourth near Fifth. It’s a popular hangout for book people, and both of them apparently had had a few pops. Ott was sitting with his wife at a booth in the bar waiting to get a table for dinner when Keith, who’d already been drinking someplace else, walked in. Frank Ott made some sarcastic comment about how he, Keith, had found the ultimate way to get even with Charles for what happened here at Monarch.”

“Interesting. Had there been bad feelings between Ott and Billings?”

“No more than the usual editor-agent friction, at least not as far as I know. Anyway, from what I hear, Billings lashed back and called Frank a whiner and a second-rate agent. That led Frank to say something else, I’m not sure what, and the upshot was that they started scuffling. Billings, who’s at least twenty years younger and twenty pounds heavier, threw one punch — decked Frank, right there in the bar.”

“Was Ott hurt?”

“Mainly his pride. The guy who called me is an editor with another house whom I’ve known for years. He was sitting at the bar and saw the whole silly mess. He said Frank ended up with an ugly bruise on his cheek, and his wife was crying and swearing at Keith — she let loose with a dandy string of those words that give movies the PG rating. The bartender and a couple of patrons broke things up, and as far as my source knows, no charges got filed.”

“You literary types certainly live exciting, rough-and-tumble lives,” I said. “It’s a wonder anybody finds the time to get books written, edited, and published.”

“Go ahead, rub it in,” Vinson responded, not angrily, but in a weary voice.

“Do you read any particular significance into what happened last night?” I asked.

“I’ve been sitting here musing ever since I got the call. Honestly, I still have trouble believing either of them could be a killer. I haven’t talked to them and don’t plan to, but I think what occurred in the restaurant last night was caused by a combination of liquor and the tension of being close to somebody who died violently. Charles’s death is all anybody in our business is talking about these days, including people who never even met him.”

I thanked Vinson for his time and hung up, turning to face Wolfe. “Keith Billings and Franklin Ott got into a fistfight in a Midtown restaurant last night,” I told him. “Billings won on a TKO.”

He looked up and frowned. “Archie, in this house, messenger is not, and never will be, a verb.”

Nineteen

After Wolfe had pointed out my latest grammatical faux pas, I filled him in on the Billings-Ott bout, as described by Vinson. He made a face, and after I had finished, he directed me to visit both participants. “Should I call first?” I asked after we had gone over the ground Wolfe wanted covered with each of them.

“No. I am aware that you have plans for this evening; tomorrow is soon enough.”

“It is also Saturday, which means I’ll have to catch them at home.”

“Do so,” he replied, returning to the onerous task of reading Childress’s book. The plans Wolfe referred to were a dinner date I had with Lily Rowan at Rusterman’s, which dishes up the best meals in Manhattan outside of the brownstone. It was founded and operated for many years by Wolfe’s best friend, Marko Vukcic, and after Marko was murdered, Wolfe served for a time as executor of the estate, dining there at least monthly and dropping in once or twice a week, unannounced, to check on the kitchen and raise hell if the staff wasn’t maintaining the standards for which the eatery had become famed. On the rare occasions when Wolfe dines out today, Rusterman’s is still the place — the only place.

Lily ordered the tournedos Beauharnais and I had the squabs à la Moscovite, and we both showed our approval of the artistry of Felix, the chef and current owner of the establishment, by cleaning our plates before indulging ourselves with the soufflé Armenonville.

“You seem a mite preoccupied this evening, Escamillo,” Lily said as she eyed me over a cup of steaming espresso, using the nickname she had tagged me with when we first met and I had made the acquaintance of an agitated bull in a pasture.[1]

“Just musing idly about my agenda for the morrow,” I told her. “I need to see a couple of guys who got into a bare-knuckle boxing match in the bar of a restaurant last night.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You do lead the most interesting life.”

“Funny, that’s approximately what I told someone else earlier today.” I went on to give her a capsule history of the case and all the players.

“Here’s my theory,” Lily purred. “They all conspired to kill him, and they drew lots as to which one would actually pull the trigger. From the way you describe this Childress person, he can’t possibly have had any friends — not even Vinson.”

“Surely you are not suggesting that our client himself is a murderer?”