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  By the time the Rolls had glided across the George Washington Bridge and with the silence of a cat turned northward on the Palisades Parkway, he had skimmed the Book Review and found, as usual, page after page of tiresome critics whose reviews always seemed to be longer than the books they were assessing. Once at a literary cocktail party he had marshaled the temerity to suggest to an editor of the review that if less space were given over to windy critics about books that few would read, more authors might also be reviewed. He had been answered with the amazed glare one would expect if one showed up at a black-tie affair in a pair of faded jeans and scuffed cowboy boots-except, of course, if one happened to be Theodore Roosevelt Janus.

  Presently, the Rolls-Royce left the highway for the narrow, winding country roads of Stone County. Peering through the window at the idyllic landscape, he imagined himself in the role of Dr. John H. Watson in "The Copper Beeches," listening intently while Sherlock Holmes mused that the lowest and vilest of the alleys in London did not represent a more dreadful record of sin than the smiling and beautiful countryside.

  While Holmes's cases frequently drew him to the countryside, the mere thought of leaving his town house on West Thirty-fifth Street had been anathema to Nero Wolfe. On the rare occasion when the great detective did exit his abode he traveled by automobile, but grudgingly. Even with his trusted aide Archie Goodwin at the steering wheel, Wolfe would clam up and sit anxiously on the edge of the seat, gripping the strap in case he might have to leap for his life.

  To ride in a taxi was invariably "a frantic dash." He had done so to visit Archie in a hospital and another time for the purpose of saving his capable assistant's life. And he had called at police headquarters when Archie happened to be locked up in a jail, prompting Wolfe to direct his considerable outrage in the direction of Inspector Cramer, along with a threat to have the police force abolished.

  Like himself, Wiggins mused as the Rolls proceeded, only the most extraordinary occasions not connected to a case could entice Wolfe out-of-doors. Once a year he went to the Metropolitan Orchid Show. In 1934 he had left his residence to dine at the same table as Albert Einstein. And rarely did he go to the scene of a crime. He expected Archie Goodwin to do all the legwork and return to report back with all the pertinent details, which Wolfe then pieced together like parts of a jigsaw puzzle to produce the solution to a typically New York sort of crime.

  This was not to say that other cities were devoid of stimulating murder and mayhem. Los Angeles had supplied readers of mysteries the cases of hard-boiled private dick Philip Marlowe and a handful of other latter-day fictional sleuths. And there had been occasionally notable actual crimes, such as the Menendez brothers, the O.J. Simpson case, the murder of Bill Cosby's son, and the sensational murder trial that had kept Theodore R. Janus on the West Coast for a year-long media circus. Yet it wasn't the crime that transfixed the nation via television. Its attraction had been Janus's dazzlingly effective swordsmanship in his legal duel with Maggie Dane.

  Soon, thanks to his middle-of-the-night brainstorm, Wiggins thought with immense pride and satisfaction as the Rolls took him northward, there would be a grand reunion of the most exciting pairing of male and female lawyers since Spencer Tracy had battled Katharine Hepburn in the film Adam's Rib.

  Alive with anticipation, he found himself suddenly emerging from woods at the crest of a hill affording spectacular views on all sides of the glories of the Hudson Valley. Executing another turn, the Rolls moved slowly along a dirt road that seemed little more than a cow path. Then he saw a large gray fieldstone house that seemed to crouch like a mountain lion about to spring.

  Coatless but wearing a black vest, Janus leaned in the front doorway.

  "I'm so grateful that you came up, Wiggins," he said, taking him by the arm and leading him indoors. "Frankly, you're the only one I could ever entrust with this matter."

  Following Janus down a long corridor whose walls were hung with framed pencil and pastel sketches of him done by courtroom artists for television news programs, he came to a large office that appeared to be a museum to Janus's namesake. Displayed on every table, shelf, and wall were images and artifacts of Theodore Roosevelt as Dakota Territory cowboy, police commissioner of New York City, vice president and then president of the United States, father and family man at his Sagamore Hill home at Oyster Bay, South American jungle explorer, with his foot resting on a head of a lion on a big-game safari in Africa, and Bull Moose Party candidate for president in 1912.

  "You have quite an impressive collection," Wiggins said as Janus directed him into a large Victorian era armchair that faced a life-size oil painting of Janus by the renowned portraitist Kevin Gordon. A small shelf beneath it held leather-bound copies of all the books Janus authored.

  "When I'm dead and gone," Janus said, seating himself behind a massive desk that looked old enough to have been Roosevelt's, "all this goes to the Smithsonian."

  "That's very generous and patriotic of you."

  "Have you given any thought to what will become of your very impressive collection of Sherlockiana and your Nero Wolfe first editions?"

  "Not a whit."

  "You should do something about it. Life is short. My office will be happy to make all the arrangements for you."

  "Maybe I'll take a leaf from the pharoahs of Egypt and have it all buried with me."

  "I know several Sherlockians and a few Wolfe Pack members who would have you dug up and your grave looted in less than the proverbial New York minute "Janus said, reaching for a handsome cigar humidor. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

  "Of course not. It's your house."

  Janus opened the lid. "These are Cubans," he said, carefully looking for flaws. "They were smuggled in from London. Have one."

  "Thanks, but being a Sherlockian, I'm a pipe man."

  "The ever present briar. But Sherlock smoked cigars, too."

  "With a cigar stuck in my mouth I'd look like the character Clemenza in The Godfather."

  With the cigar lighted, Janus looked at it admiringly and said, "I'm at a loss for words to express how deeply honored I am to be this year's recipient of the Nero Wolfe Award."

  "I assure you the honor is ours."

  Janus puffed smoke and watched it drift away. "The way I've heard it, not every member of the committee felt that way."

  "That's water under the bridge."

  "Indeed so." He carefully laid the long cigar in a crystal ashtray. "But it was your nomination of me for the Wolfe award, and your persistence on my behalf, that has brought you and me to this moment. I know you have to be wondering why I've dragged you all the way up here on a Sunday morning. You have surely deduced that it was not simply to express my gratitude." "That's true."

  "I did so because you are the only person whom I can trust, and this house is the only place I feel truly safe."

  Wiggins gasped. "Good lord, Theo, whatever do you mean?"

  Retrieving the cigar, Janus smiled. "I have every reason to believe there will soon be an attempt to kill me."

  "An attempt to kill you? By whom?"

  "I have no idea. I only know someone has already tried."

  Wiggins struggled to his feet. "When? Where? How?"

  "Last week. I was exercising my favorite horse. The shot was fired from a passing car. I actually heard the bullet zing past my right ear." He dug into a pocket, drew out a wad of gray metal, and held it between thumb and forefinger. "This is it. I found it in a tree trunk."

  Wiggins returned to his chair. "Because I did not learn of this case of attempted murder in the press, you obviously did not report this to the police. Why not?"

  "I'm working on the case in my own way."

  "Excuse me, my friend, but to paraphrase a well-known legal maxim, a lawyer who hires himself as a detective has a fool for a client. You must go to the police now."

  "With what? An uncorroborated story that would be trumpeted by the news media as a publicity stunt?"

  "You have the bullet."
/>   "I could have fired it into that tree myself. Besides, it is in no condition to be of value as evidence. You need the gun to make a ballistic match. To obtain the gun, you'd have to locate its owner. Meanwhile, I want you to keep the bullet and tell no one about this conversation. In the event I am murdered, you can take it to your police friends."

  "Theo, you can't risk your life by playing detective!"

  "If this individual is to be caught, he has to be given the chance to try again."

  "What if he tries and succeeds?"

  Janus chuckled. "I will die with the satisfaction of having disappointed cardiologists who persist in telling me I must have bypass surgery immediately and warning me that if I do not quit drinking and smoking cigars I'll die of a massive heart attack. Well, if I am murdered, I hope before I croak there'll be time for one more drink and a last oscuro cigar."

  "Either you're early," declared Chief of Detectives Harvey Goldstein, "or I'm late."

  He carried a weighty shopping bag in each fist.

  Laying aside the thick Mancuso file, Detective Sgt. John Bogdanovic rose from a butter-soft leather chair and reached for the bags.

  "My heart attack was over a year ago," Goldstein said as he stepped past his rangy, muscular aide. "I appreciate that I am well past fifty, as well as a tad thin of head hair, a little saggy in the midriff, and nearsighted, and I realize we're in the middle of a cold wave, but I really am perfectjy capable of toting my bags. The owner of Usual Suspects sends regards."

  Bogdanovic retreated to the chair. "Has it occurred to you that you probably constitute Wiggins's entire margin of profit? How many books do you buy from him each week?"

  The bags went on top of a desk. "Any amount expended in any mystery bookshop is damn well spent. There can never be too many places for a person to go to engage in the normal recreation of noble minds. In this instance, the detective is Nero Wolfe. By the way, you've been invited to the Black Orchid Banquet."

  A puzzled frown creased Bogdanovic's lean face. "I had no idea you were into flowers."

  Goldstein sighed impatiently. "The Black Orchid Banquet is the annual dinner given in honor of the central character in all the volumes in these bags. In addition to being the greatest detective in American crime fiction, Nero Wolfe was expert in the field of orchidaceae."

  Bogdanovic's puzzlement twisted into grimace. "Oh, gawd. Is this another gang of grown-ups like the Baker Street Irregulars who pretend detectives in mystery stories were real?"

  "The Wolfe Pack is similar to that Sherlockian group," said Goldstein as he lifted a dozen paperbacks and a handful of hardcover books from bags to desktop, "only Wolfies aren't quite as serious about Nero as the BSI boys are regarding Sherlock."

  Bogdanovic snorted. "Boys is right."

  Goldstein's smile was tolerant. "As chairman of the steering committee, Wiggins has done me the honor of asking me to make one of the toasts that will precede the presentation of the coveted Nero Wolfe Award to Theodore Janus."

  Bogdanovic lurched up. "Janus? These Wolfe people are going to honor the mob's number one mouthpiece?"

  "In addition to being the country's most famous criminal defense lawyer, Janus is author of a Nero Wolfe encyclopedia," Goldstein said, holding up a ponderous paperback. "This is it. An astonishing feat of scholarship!"

  Bogdanovic crossed the large office to a window with a view of the flat sprawl of Brooklyn beyond the East River. He stood with hands in the pockets of tan slacks, drawing back a brown jacket to reveal a tan shoulder holster holding a black Glock automatic pistol. In Goldstein's years as a sergeant the departmental weapon had been Smith and Wesson's .38-caliber snub-nose police special revolver. Clipped to the tan belt around the young detective's trim waist was a gray beeper. The left pocket of the coat contained a cell phone no larger than a billfold. Just down the corridor in his immaculate office Bogdanovic had the latest computer technology. Its bewildering array of related equipment linked him to cyberspace-traveling law enforcers against whom criminals had an even bleaker prospect of getting away with it than their kind in the alarmingly increasingly distant and uncomplicated time of Goldstein's youth.

  Recognizing a stance that was invariably prelude to a John Bogdanovic remonstrance, he sighed. "All right, Sergeant. What's really eating you?"

  Bogdanovic spoke without taming. "I do not think the chief of detectives should be socializing with a guy who is linked to organized crime. Especially with this Mancuso thing going on."

  "Because Janus defends mobsters doesn't make him one."

  "There's another reason I'm against you taking part in this banquet," Bogdanovic said, wheeling around. "I don't think you should be hobnobbing with the shyster who got Morgan Griffith off with a slap on the wrist."

  "Twenty-five to life without parole is a slap on the wrist?"

  The lanky detective returned to his chair and flung himself into it dejectedly. "Griffith should've got the death penalty."

  Both men fell silent as their thoughts turned back two years to the murder that had introduced them to a remarkable detective by the name of Arlene Flynn.

  Goldstein smiled. "Bogdanovic and Flynn! You two were great together! She shouldn't be wasting all that talent in the sticks. Working for me she could earn twice what she gets with the Stone County district attorney's squad. And she'd be more challenged."

  "There are people for whom money isn't all that important. And a lot of people don't share your view that New York is top of the ladder in all things, including the crime department."

  After a pensive moment Goldstein muttered, "Ridiculous!"

  "I'll bet that if you asked Arlene she'd agree with me that it's not going to look right if you give Janus this silly award."

  "In the first place, it's not a silly award. Secondly, I am not the person who'll give him the award. I'm delivering a toast to Lily Rowan. In the Wolfe novels she is a girlfriend of Nero Wolfe's assistant, Archie Goodwin. At the banquet Lily is being represented by someone who is an expert on Wolfe. She will be the one presenting the award to Janus."

  "Well she can do it without me. Wiggins can count me out."

  "Not so fast with regrets, John-boy. The woman in question happens to your favorite prosecutor from the other coast."

  "Maggie Dane? She is going to be there?"

  Goldstein drummed stubby fingers atop the stack of books. 'Johnny, I've never seen such a look of surprise on your mug."

  "I don't get it," Bogdanovic said, rising again. "How can she give an award to the guy who used every dirty legal trick there was to beat her in that travesty they had the nerve to call a murder trial out there in La La Land?"

  "They go back a long way. Before she became a prosecutor in "Because Janus defends mobsters doesn't make him one."

  "There's another reason I'm against you taking part in this banquet," Bogdanovic said, wheeling around. "I don't think you should be hobnobbing with the shyster who got Morgan Griffith off with a slap on the wrist."

  "Twenty-five to life without parole is a slap on the wrist?"

  The lanky detective returned to his chair and flung himself into it dejectedly. "Griffith should've got the death penalty."

  Both men fell silent as their thoughts turned back two years to the murder that had introduced them to a remarkable detective by the name of Arlene Flynn.

  Goldstein smiled. "Bogdanovic and Flynn! You two were great together! She shouldn't be wasting all that talent in the sticks. Working for me she could earn twice what she gets with the Stone County district attorney's squad. And she'd be more challenged."

  "There are people for whom money isn't all that important. And a lot of people don't share your view that New York is top of the ladder in all things, including the crime department."

  After a pensive moment Goldstein muttered, "Ridiculous!"

  "I'll bet that if you asked Arlene she'd agree with me that it's not going to look right if you give Janus this silly award."

  "In the first place, it's not a silly awa
rd. Secondly, I am not the person who'll give him the award. I'm delivering a toast to Lily Rowan. In the Wolfe novels she is a girlfriend of Nero Wolfe's assistant, Archie Goodwin. At the banquet Lily is being represented by someone who is an expert on Wolfe. She will be the one presenting the award to Janus."

  "Well she can do it without me. Wiggins can count me out."

  "Not so fast with regrets, John-boy. The woman in question happens to your favorite prosecutor from the other coast."

  "Maggie Dane? She is going to be there?"

  Goldstein drummed stubby fingers atop the stack of books. 'Johnny, I've never seen such a look of surprise on your mug."

  "I don't get it," Bogdanovic said, rising again. "How can she give an award to the guy who used every dirty legal trick there was to beat her in that travesty they had the nerve to call a murder trial out there in La La Land?"

  "They go back a long way. Before she became a prosecutor in"BecauseJanus defends mobsters doesn't make him one."

  "There's another reason I'm against you taking part in this banquet," Bogdanovic said, wheeling around. "I don't think you should be hobnobbing with the shyster who got Morgan Griffith off with a slap on the wrist."

  "Twenty-five to life without parole is a slap on the wrist?"

  The lanky detective returned to his chair and flung himself into it dejectedly. "Griffith should've got the death penalty."

  Both men fell silent as their thoughts turned back two years to the murder that had introduced them to a remarkable detective by the name of Arlene Flynn.

  Goldstein smiled. "Bogdanovic and Flynn! You two were great together! She shouldn't be wasting all that talent in the sticks. Working for me she could earn twice what she gets with the Stone County district attorney's squad. And she'd be more challenged."

  "There are people for whom money isn't all that important. And a lot of people don't share your view that New York is top of the ladder in all things, including the crime department."

  After a pensive moment Goldstein muttered, "Ridiculous!"

  "I'll bet that if you asked Arlene she'd agree with me that it's not going to look right if you give Janus this silly award."