The Father Hunt

I nodded. "So you would like to know what he wants to know, so you let me in when you're busy. I'll make it brief and answer questions within reason. What we told you was the truth and the whole truth: our only client was and is a woman who wants us to find her father, whom she has never seen. She doesn't know who or what he was or is, and she wants to. We have smoked out three different Grade A leads, but they have all fizzled. Two full weeks, and we have a load of nothing, either for the client or for you. So an hour ago Mr. Wolfe decided that it's easier to find a murderer than a father, therefore the father was the murderer. As you know, that isn't how his mind usually works, but this isn't his mind working, it's a spasm, though he says he doesn't have spasms. It's just that his appetite is letting him down and he's desperate, and he pays me and I have to humor him when he sends me on a sappy errand. I would like to buy a fact. If there is any interesting fact about that hit-and-run that hasn't been published and you'll tell me what it is, off the record, I am authorized to give you Mr. Wolfe's word of honor that if we get anything you might be able to use we'll pass it on to you before we make any use of it our-

selves. At least two minutes before. I'd offer my word of honor too, only I'm not sure you think I have one. Questions."

He picked up a phone transmitter, in a moment told it, "Coffee," replaced it, and swiveled his chair to face me without twisting his thick neck. "We haven't bothered with Amy Denovo," he said. "After that ad of course we knew she was Wolfe's client, but we had pumped her good in June. The father angle didn't help us any unless she found him and maybe not then. You say you haven't? Found him?"

"We haven't got even a smell. But you came to see me and you phoned Mr. Wolfe."

"You had phoned Stebbins. You know damned well that when I find Wolfe within a mile I smell a rat. I thought-"

"Do I tell him you called him a rat?"

"You do not. He's a lot of things I can name, but he's not a rat. I thought he might be able to name a man who smokes a certain kind of cigar."

"I know one who smokes Monte Cristos. He gets them from a purser on a ship."

"Yeah. You'll clown while they're embalming you. If you want an interesting fact off the record, we've got one we've been saving, but hell, we might as well put it on television. We've got nine fingerprints of that hit-and-run driver, and six of them are as good as you could want."