“Shackleford Jones,” Bracken said. “Of much the same standing, actually. Quite different technics, of course. Mr. Jones’s work was much more abstract. Mr. Shayburn stemmed more from the impressionists.”
“My,” Dorian said, “there’s so much I don’t know about art, Mr. Bracken.” There was still a phrase left over, and she decided to play the charade to the end.
“But I do know what I like,” Dorian Weigand told Mr. Oscar Bracken. She watched his face. Nothing appeared on it. Not even skepticism.
In the doorway from the gallery she turned. Oscar Bracken was going back into his office.
The main floor of Bryant & Washburn was almost deserted as Dorian walked through it. The sidewalk outside was not. What appeared to be a convention jostled together at the curb and waved anxiously at buses bound downtown. Most of the buses did not stop. But there was now and then a top-lighted cab which did stop for a man or woman who had given up on the Transit Authority.
If she could work her way among the more stubborn waiters, Dorian thought, she might be lucky with a cab. She began to work her way.
It was slow going. And it was, she thought after the first jostling moments, a going of the wrong way. She should have gone up or down the avenue and taken her chance of a taxi in mid-block. Or she should have crossed the one-way avenue and waved at taxis from the other side. The two cabs which had stopped and picked passengers from the bus stop had beguiled her.
But she had already gone too far, was too enmeshed by others. And she was being jostled from behind and pushed forward toward the curb. Somebody was being inconsiderate, roughly rude. She started to turn to protest the pressing rudeness but then she was at the curb.
As she reached it a bus swerved in and, as it did, all who had been waiting for it surged forward. She held back against the pressure, but suddenly it was sharper. Somebody was pushing between her shoulder blades and the pressure was harsh, violent.
She felt herself losing balance and was in the street and the bus bearing down on her was suddenly enormous. Desperately she tried to twist her body out of its path. As she twisted she raised hands against the bus which was coming on to crush her.
She cried out, “No! No!” and held her hands up against the crushing bus.
XI
Probably, Nathan Shapiro thought, he had made one of his usual mistakes. He sat at his desk and looked moodily at the wall opposite, and considered his inadequacy—the inadequacy mysteriously not apparent to the Police Department of the City of New York. There is, he thought, more to being a detective than collecting facts and trying to fit them together. There is, finally, an ability to sense what is true and what is not true; to realize, almost by instinct, when one is being told a story which will not hold water.
There is little doubt, Shapiro thought, that Maxwell Briskie told me lies. What I should have done was to book him as a material witness and get somebody from the D.A.’s office—Bernard Simmons, preferably—and give him the full treatment. A hundred to one, Simmons, probably with Bill Weigand sitting in, would have broken down his unlikely story; got him to say, finally, “All right, I killed him.”
Briskie could have said more than that and, in extenuation, probably would have said more than that. He might, for example, have contended that he had really gone to the studio to try to buy the picture his wife had posed for. He might have said there was a quarrel, and that Shackleford Jones had come at him with a gun and that they had struggled and the gun had gone off as they wrestled for it. He might have said that he went back the next day to “find” the body of his friend or to make sure his friend had really died.
Probably he had, in fact, gone back Thursday to make sure that the police would not discover something which would incriminate Maxwell Briskie. It would not be the first time a murderer had tried, after thinking things over, to return and tidy things up.
Shapiro’s mistake was not irreparable. It was unlikely that Briskie would, at least immediately, try to make a run for it. He could have the lithe little featherweight brought in and have him booked. Meanwhile …
Meanwhile, Shapiro looked up a telephone number and dialed it and listened to the signal of its ringing in an apartment in Gay Street. He let the signal sound half a dozen times. Rachel Farmer either was not at home or was not answering her telephone. So he could not, immediately, ask her whether, on Wednesday morning, she had met Maxwell Briskie in Little Great Smith Street—he walking away from Jones’s studio and she walking, if only generally, toward it.
He looked at his watch and the hands showed a little after four. He could, if he wanted, call it a finished, if generally wasted, day. But it did not feel like a finished day. It felt like a day in which there was still something to be done, some discrepancy to be resolved.
Something in Briskie’s story that didn’t jibe with something else? Or something about the painting by Shackleford Jones which Dorian Weigand said had turned up in the art gallery of a Fifth Avenue store? After she had been so almost certain that Jones would not sell outright to a department store? Perhaps that was the discrepancy which nibbled in his mind—a discrepancy not in a story but in the actions of a man now dead. It might be an idea to go up to this department store gallery and find out from whoever ran it how he had got a picture by Shackleford Jones. Had Jones carried it in, possibly under his arm? Or had whoever ran the gallery gone to Jones’s studio and looked around and said, “All right, I’ll take that one.”
If he could not be perceptive, Nathan Shapiro thought, he could at least be thorough.
He was on his feet when his telephone rang. He said, Yes, it was Lieutenant Shapiro speaking, and was asked to hold on a minute for Mr. Jeremiah Osgood. He held on a minute.
About making an appraisal of the paintings of Shackleford Jones, in behalf of Jones’s widow, Mr. Osgood had had a change of mind. “Very well,” Osgood said, “say she talked me into it. Appealed to my sympathies. But I felt I ought to clear it with you. And, of course, find out if the studio is sealed up, or whatever the police do under such circumstances.”
It was not sealed up. It was locked up.
That, Osgood said, presented no problem. Mrs. Jones had a key.
“Tentatively,” Osgood said, “I’ve arranged to meet her there this evening. If that will be acceptable to the police?”
Shapiro, briefly, thought it over. It might, he thought, be useful to have an expert’s opinion of the value of the contents of Jones’s studio. For, at the least, comparison with the expert who would eventually be appointed by the surrogate’s court.
Shapiro said, “We don’t object, Mr. Osgood. When is this appointment with Mrs. Jones?”
Unfortunately, Osgood was tied up and would be for some time. His tentative appointment with Mrs. Jones was for seven o’clock. The light would not be at its best so late even on a June evening. But there would be enough light for a “preliminary survey.”
“I’ll have a man meet you there,” Shapiro said. “You can give him whatever figures you come up with, as well as giving them to Mrs. Jones.”
Osgood said, “Well-l-l-l,” with doubt in his voice.
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “We’ll do it that way, Mr. Osgood. If at all. Or, of course, you can get a court order. Mean some delay.”
“Send your man along,” Osgood said. “Mrs. Jones says she wants to get back home. Seems she’s not partial to New York. Seven, then. The man you’re sending; he know anything about paintings?”
“No,” Shapiro said. “Not anything at all. As a matter of fact, I may be the man myself.”
“Be glad to meet you,” Osgood said, without any special conviction. “Until around seven.”
He hung up with that, and Shapiro looked again at his watch. If there had been any chance of getting early back to Brooklyn, the chance was shot. He telephoned Rose and told her so, and she was resigned, if by no means happy. As he walked through the squad room he stopped at Tony Cook’s desk and told Cook where to spend at least part of the evening.
>
Four-thirty to seven. If he was lucky with traffic, he could get to Bryant & Washburn’s gallery before the store closed.
He got a cruise car to take him up, which helped with traffic, although the siren was not used at first. Then, when the car, turning back to come down Fifth Avenue above the store, came onto the avenue, it was used.
In the block below, the traffic man on duty was waving traffic toward the east side of the street. A police cruiser was parked beside a bus in front of Bryant & Washburn, and its roof light was flashing red. The driver of Shapiro’s car turned on his flasher to go with his siren. A block or two uptown another siren wailed down the street. Ambulance, this time, Shapiro knew.
Shapiro’s car pulled up behind the other police car and Shapiro and Sergeant Joe Friendly spilled themselves out of it.
“Break it up,” a uniformed man from the first cruiser was telling a clustering crowd. “Break it up. Give the lady a chance to breathe.”
Over shoulders, Shapiro saw the lady. She was Dorian Weigand. She was sitting on the curb, holding her head in her hands.
Shapiro squatted in front of Dorian and said, “Mrs. Weigand. Mrs. Weigand.”
Dorian took her hands from her face. Her hands were bruised. Her face was not. She said, “Where did you come from, Lieutenant? Did Bill send you?” But then she shook her head and shaking it did not seem to hurt. “I am shaken up,” she said. “It only happened minutes ago. How could Bill … ?”
She moved her head again, clearing it again.
“I’m all right, really,” Dorian said. “Only, somebody pushed me in front of a bus, Lieutenant.”
She looked up. “That bus,” she said, and pointed at it.
The bus was at the curb and the driver was out of it. He was talking to one of the policemen from the first cruise car. The driver, obviously illustrating, wrenched his hands around as if they held a steering wheel. The policeman made notes. The driver spoke loudly.
“Right out in front of me,” he said. “Like she stumbled or something. Right out in front of me. What I thought, she was a goner. Only, she moved fast. Like—like a shortstop moves, sort of. I tell you, officer …”
Dorian stood up. She said, “Ouch. I certainly sat down hard.” Her skirt showed she had sat down hard. But when she moved the few steps to the policeman and the driver she walked with the grace Shapiro had come to realize was part of her. And when she was near enough she held out her hand to the bus driver. He looked at it in surprise. Dorian looked at it too. It was red and already beginning to swell; two fingernails of her right hand were jaggedly broken.
“All right,” she said. “The will for the deed, I guess. But I want to thank you. If you hadn’t been good—very, very good—I —well, I guess I wouldn’t be talking to you. Or to anybody. If you hadn’t, at the last minute, turned it away from me—”
“You were right in front of it, lady,” the bus driver said. “You sure moved fast. You was lucky, lady. We was both lucky.”
“Officer,” Dorian said, “he couldn’t have been better. As he says I—” she hesitated a minute and looked up at Shapiro, who had joined her—“I stumbled right out in front of him. It was all my fault.”
“Got to make a report, all the same,” the policeman said. “When we put in a call for an ambulance, we’ve got to make a report. You all right, lady?”
“Fine,” Dorian said. “I—”
The ambulance had finally got through traffic, its siren still wailing. A man in white came out of it and looked around and said, “Which one’s hurt?” He looked at Dorian. He said, “You, miss?”
“I tried to push a bus out of the way,” Dorian said. “I mean, stop it by pushing it. But I’m all right. I—what’s the phrase, Lieutenant?” The last was to Shapiro.
“Declines medical attention,” Shapiro said. “You’re sure, Mrs. Weigand?”
She was quite sure. The patrolman would have to have her name for his report. “Mrs. William Weigand.” The patrolman said, “Seems to me—” and stopped with that.
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “Captain William Weigand. Homicide, South.” He identified himself, while he was about it. He also said he would take Mrs. Weigand home. In the police car, she squirmed uncomfortably and said, “I certainly did sit down hard.” And then she said, “I think somebody tried to kill me, Lieutenant. I didn’t stumble. Somebody pushed me.”
“Tell me,” Shapiro said, and threaded the car through traffic. “You’re certain somebody deliberately pushed you?”
“Almost,” she said. “A hard shove in the back, when I was on the curb. Just as the bus turned in toward the curb. If the driver hadn’t been very good. …” She looked at her bruised hands. She said she had been lucky. She turned to look at the man beside her.
“No,” she said. “I’ve no idea who it was. Or why whoever it was …” She paused again. “I went back to look at the picture. It isn’t there any more, Lieutenant. They say it’s been sold. They say it wasn’t by Shack Jones but by a man named Shayburn. You see …”
She had told him the rest of it by the time he pulled the police car to the curb in front of the apartment house. She had begun with Myra Dedek’s offer to include work of hers in a show of cartoon drawings. She would write a good report, Shapiro thought. Better than most of those it was part of his job to read. He went up to the apartment with her.
Weigand was in the apartment when they went into it. He had been standing in front of the glass which made the far wall of the living room and turned from it when he heard them and walked up the room and then said, “What’s happened to you?” and spoke quickly, hurrying the words.
“I tried to push a bus around,” Dorian said. “And I could do with a drink.” And then she walked into the arms stretched out toward her.
Bill Weigand, who is a man for whom first things come first, made martinis for Dorian and himself, and poured a glass of sherry for Nathan Shapiro. They sat and sipped, and only after several sips did Weigand say, “All right, the two of you. Give.”
He listened; now and then asked a question to clarify a point. When they had finished he said, “You can’t be certain that somebody pushed you intentionally. Right?”
She said, “Right, Bill. If you mean I can’t prove it, right.”
“In the store,” he said. “Possibly in this group in front of it. Mrs. Jones. Osgood. This curator—Bracken.”
“He went back into his office when I was leaving. Of course, I took a local elevator down. It stopped at every floor.”
Bill Weigand nodded his head.
“This man who works for Mrs. Dedek. Weldon—”
Shapiro supplied the rest of the name.
“He left before I did,” Dorian said. “So did Mrs. Jones: So, I suppose, did Miss Farmer. But she just happened to be in the advertising department. Looking for a job.”
“A good many people just happened to be around,” Weigand said. “Right? Right, Nate?”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “A good many coincidences.” He finished the sherry in his small glass, and shook his head when Weigand looked at it. He sighed. He said, “Too many.”
“Not including Briskie,” Weigand said. “Or Mrs. Briskie. Rather a pity, isn’t it, Nate? Since Briskie seems a likely client.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “We don’t know the Briskies weren’t there, of course. I should have put a tail on him, I suppose.” He sighed. “Or have booked him.”
“Has he got a key to Jones’s apartment?”
“He says not. Says that the door was unlocked both times he went there. He doesn’t have to be telling the truth. About any of it. But I can’t, offhand, see what he’d have against Mrs. Weigand.” He shook his head sadly. “There’s a lot I can’t see. I’m over my head. As I told—”
“No,” Weigand said. “We’ve had that. Right? Cook working out O.K.?”
“When I can think of something for him to do,” Shapiro said.
“You plan to have him go along to Jones’s studio this evening?�
��
Shapiro did not. Detective Anthony Cook was in Gay Street, awaiting the return of Rachel Farmer, with intent to ask whether she had been in Little Great Smith Street Wednesday morning, as according to information received, she had been. And, if she had, why she hadn’t mentioned it.
“You think Briskie just dragged her in? Red herring?”
That was possible, Shapiro thought. The trouble was, too damn many things were possible.
“The story he tells is possible,” Shapiro said. “It doesn’t, actually, sound unreasonable when you hear it. Only—there’s something in it doesn’t jibe with something else. The trouble is, I haven’t come up with any idea what it doesn’t jibe with.”
Weigand assured him that he would. This did not in the least convince Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro.
While he was going down in the elevator, Shapiro realized that the glass of sherry, small as it was, had been a mistake. It had been a tangy sherry, not the kind of wine to which he was used. His stomach was talking back to him, although he had said nothing to it. Of course, it often did when Shapiro was out of his depth. Which meant most of the time.
He was in the police cruiser when he realized what, aside from the wine, was annoying his stomach. Nothing had gone into it since breakfast and that aggrieved it.
He drove the cruiser back to West Twentieth Street and turned it in to Precinct, which owned it. He had a pastrami sandwich at a counter near by and coffee to go with it. He could have done with a beer but decided his stomach couldn’t. He walked, not hurrying, to the nearest Eighth Avenue subway stop and took a downtown local. He got off at West Fourth Street and began to walk west—mostly west, anyway—toward Little Great Smith Street.
He was at the intersection of West Fourth and West Twelfth streets when his mind put a tentative finger on the discrepancy which had been bothering it. Probably, of course, his memory was at fault. It often was. That could be checked out, after he had looked again at the paintings in Shackleford Jones’s studio. If, after further exposure to high colors and amazing shapes, he was still up to it.
Murder For Art’s Sake Page 13