A Streak of Light

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  “Simms is busy too,” Shapiro said. “Writing an editorial about the breakdown of law and order.”

  “Well,” Tony said, “we know Claye’s dead.”

  “A man named Claye,” Shapiro said. “A renowned columnist. Formerly a publicity man for the NAM. And a member of the John Birch Society.”

  “Gives us the feel of him,” Tony said, and Shapiro agreed that it did.

  “Of the surface of him, Tony,” Shapiro said. “We could do with more. Let’s see if Mr. Wainwright is too busy to talk to us. As long as we’re here.”

  They went back along the corridor walled by the office doors to the two adjoining offices at the end of it. Through the door to Simms’s office they could hear the clatter of typewriter keys. Simms was still writing a lament for the passing of Roger Claye—and, of course, the rule of law and order. Tony knocked on the door of the adjacent office. After a moment they heard, “Come in.” The voice did not, as Shapiro had supposed it might, quaver. His voice, if it was Wainwright’s, was not that of a man who was slowing down; was not what he had been. It was not a young voice, but it was a vigorous one. They went into the office.

  It was about the size of Simms’s adjacent office. A gray-haired man was sitting at a bare-topped desk, his back to a tall window through which the sun was shining. It shone on the thick gray hair of the man sitting behind the desk. Shapiro said, “Mr. Wainwright?” and the editor of the New York Sentinel said, “Yes.” Shapiro told him who they were. Wainwright said, “So?”

  “We’re trying to get some background on Mr. Claye,” Shapiro told him. “Something personal about him, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m familiar with the English language,” Wainwright said. “If you are, you can read about him in the next edition. Read all about it, as they used to say. In the old days, when people got their news from newspapers.”

  Wainwright might be old. Shapiro guessed, from his lined, pale face, in his middle or late seventies. But there was still crackle in his voice. His hands moved still with quick precision.

  “We’ll read it,” Shapiro said. “Sometimes there’s more about a man than comes out in an obituary. Something, oh, between the lines.”

  “We’ll give Roger Claye full coverage,” Wainwright said. “What have you got in mind, Lieutenant?”

  “Anything you can tell us. What kind of man was he, sir?”

  The “sir” was more or less involuntary. But Shapiro felt it belonged there.

  “Very able man,” Wainwright said. “By today’s standards. Can’t you be more specific about what you want?”

  “In his Who’s Who entry,” Shapiro said, “there seems to be a gap of several years. A gap in his activities. Oh, a couple of books published. But the period is a little more than five years. Researching for his books, Mr. Wainwright? Or working on newspapers? We like to know all we can find out about a victim’s past, you see.”

  “On the chance it might have spilled over into the present?”

  “Something like that, Mr. Wainwright. You see, at this stage of things, we have to grope around where we can.”

  “When was this period you find a gap in, Lieutenant?”

  “Five-year period—1956 to 1962.”

  Wainwright shook his head. He said, “Afraid I can’t help you. Oh, he wasn’t working on a newspaper. Never did, actually. Did marry Faith Bradford along then. Wouldn’t have needed to work at anything, I suppose. Maybe he just—coasted. And wrote those books. I’ve not read them, but I doubt if they needed much research. Think pieces, out of the top of his head, I imagine. Like the ones he’s been doing for us.”

  “What do you mean, he never worked on a newspaper, sir? He worked for this one.”

  “Meant just what I said. He wasn’t ever a newspaperman. Started out writing a column. Kept on writing a column. Think pieces.”

  “Oh,” Shapiro said. “I’d always supposed columnists came up from being reporters. Or, maybe, editors of some kind.”

  “Or sportswriters,” Wainwright said. “Like Broun. Pegler, for that matter. Yes, that’s the usual progression. I don’t know that ‘up’ is always the right word, Lieutenant. But let it ride. Thing is, Claye just—burst into bloom. No budding period. From press agent to seer in a single jump.”

  “Quite a jump,” Shapiro said. He put a little emphasis on the word “quite,” Wainwright’s tone having encouraged it.

  Wainwright smiled slightly. “It would seem so,” he said. “Heretofore unprecedented.”

  The London correspondent’s tautology, at cable press rates, seemed to be a lingering joke in the editorial department of the Sentinel.

  “Possibly his marriage didn’t hurt,” Wainwright said, a little as if he were talking, reflectively, to himself. Shapiro waited, as he felt he was supposed to.

  “Faith’s father,” Wainwright said, “was a business associate of the Sentinel’s present owner. Over a period of years, I believe. Roberts Bradford. Not Robert. Roberts with an ‘s.’ Family name. He died a couple of years ago. Widower. One child, our Faith. What some people call a substantial man, Bradford was.”

  “He was a publisher?” Shapiro said. “Like Mr. Perryman?”

  “Wholesale grocer,” Wainwright said. “Our owner runs a chain of supermarkets. Before they were called supermarkets. Chain of grocery stores. He owns it. His and Bradford’s interests—well, interlocked to a degree. Not particularly germane to your investigation, is it?”

  “Probably not,” Shapiro said. “Is what you mean, sir, that the Bradford-Perryman association may have given a certain impetus to Claye’s jump? The hitherto unprecedented jump? When Claye and Faith got married?”

  “Is it?” Wainwright said. “Mr. Claye was a very able man, Lieutenant. Probably didn’t need what you call impetus.”

  Shapiro had not been questioning Claye’s ability. He said so. Wainwright merely smiled and nodded his head.

  “Mr. Perryman bought the Sentinel?” Shapiro said. “Quite a change from the retail grocery business, wasn’t it?”

  “About fifteen years ago,” Wainwright said. “From old Lester Mason. You’ve heard of Mason, I suppose?”

  “Not until Mr. Parker mentioned him.”

  Wainwright looked surprised. “Built the paper up to what it is,” Wainwright said. “To what it was fifteen years ago, that is. Sold the morning paper. Then the Evening Sentinel became the Sentinel. Bought up three afternoons, and merged them. The Sentinel-Observer, Sentinel-Express. That sort of thing. Always boiled down to just the Sentinel, of course. Quite a newspaperman, old Mason was. In his way, which some people didn’t like. Particularly those who were working on the absorbed papers, naturally.”

  Shapiro said he saw. He said, “You came to the Sentinel from one of these absorbed newspapers, Mr. Wainwright?”

  “No, Lieutenant. Original Sentinel man. Oh, I’ve seen them come and go. Mostly go, the last few years. Variety of reasons. Radio and TV. Was a time the afternoons made a point of being on the street first with big stories. Now, who cares? The news is stale by the time we print it. And the big stores opening branches in the suburbs, because that’s where their customers are going. And taking their advertising with them. Different fifty years ago—no, more than fifty. When I got my first job here, Lieutenant. As a cub, on the morning edition. Fifty-five years ago, damn near. I’m an old man, Shapiro. Should have retired years ago, some people think. Still, I like to stick around to see what happens. And, I’ve got a contract renewable at my option. A thing the present owner had to take over from old Mason. I’m talking quite a lot, I’m afraid. Wasting your time. And my own. Ought to be lining up the articles for tomorrow’s page. And going over the stuff for the op-ed page, although that’s really Pete Simms’s job. I—yes, come in.”

  It was Peter Simms who had knocked—and came in.

  “Piece on Claye,” Simms said. “Sixth floor wants it for the night. And wants to read it over. Want you to vet it first, of course.”

  “Channels,” Wainwr
ight said, and took the typed sheets Simms held out to him. He started to read and then looked at Shapiro, who had got up from the wooden chair he had been sitting in.

  Wainwright said, “I talk too much, Lieutenant. Without being of any help, I’m afraid.”

  Shapiro said he appreciated the time Wainwright had given him. He did not comment on the help Wainwright had, or had not, given him. He looked at Tony Cook, who had been making notes, and they both went out into the corridor.

  4

  One of the left-behind patrolmen had been looking for them, to deliver a message from the Claye stakeout, relayed through precinct. Mrs. Roger Claye had returned to the Eleventh Street town house. At least, a woman with a key to the house had returned to it, by cab, and had gone into it. The cab had driven off. One thing noticed; probably of no importance: the hacker had driven off with his flag still down. Nobody had got out of the cab except the woman who had a key to the house.

  A cruise car took Shapiro and Tony Cook uptown to West Eleventh Street. The house was four stories tall and a little wider than those on either side of it. White stone steps led up from the sidewalk. They looked scrubbed. There was a polished brass rail on either side of the steps. They went up the steps and a heavy wooden door stopped them. There was no glass in the door. There was a button to push, and Tony pushed it. There was no sound of a bell through the solid, heavy door, but after they had waited for some seconds, the door opened. It opened on a chain.

  The woman who had opened the door but not unchained it was slight and had auburn hair, hanging loosely to her shoulders. She looked, to Shapiro, to be in her early thirties. She was wearing a black suit, with a white blouse under the jacket. She said, “Yes?” She had a clear, quiet voice.

  Shapiro said, “Mrs. Claye?” and when she nodded her head, soft hair swirling around it, “We’re police officers, Mrs. Claye.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I supposed you’d come. About this terrible thing that’s happened. This—unbelievable thing.” She unchained the heavy door and opened it. They went into a big entry hall, deeply carpeted, with a staircase rising out of it. The house faced south, and the morning September sunlight spilled through the open door from the east and brightened the deep orange carpet.

  Shapiro felt that they should have carefully wiped their feet outside. And was glad that they would not have to break the news to Faith Claye. Radio, or perhaps morning TV, had done that for them.

  A very pretty woman, he thought, as she led them into a long living room. She touched a switch, and table lamps went on in the room. The light was subdued; everything in the room was subdued—subdued and quiet and—elegant? So, for that matter, was Faith Claye herself. She was taking it well, Shapiro thought. When, inside the room, she faced them and motioned to deep chairs on either side of a wide fireplace, she did not look as if she had been crying. Her face was merely grave.

  When Shapiro and Cook had sat in the chairs she indicated, she herself sat on a sofa facing the fireplace. Logs, which looked almost too perfect to be real, were arranged in the fireplace—ready for the dank cold of November. A very pretty woman, whatever her age, Shapiro thought again. Years younger than her husband had been, certainly.

  “You’ve found out who did it?” she said, her voice still clear and quiet. “Who murdered my husband?” On the word “murdered,” her voice caught, just perceptibly. “Is that what you’ve come to tell me?”

  “No,” Shapiro told her. “We haven’t yet, Mrs. Claye. I’m Nathan Shapiro, by the way. A Homicide lieutenant. This is Detective Cook.”

  She nodded.

  “Since you already know what happened,” Shapiro said, “perhaps you can help us, Mrs. Claye.”

  She said she didn’t know how she could, but that, of course, she would in any way she could. She said, “Would you like coffee or something, Lieutenant? Mr. Cook?”

  Both shook their heads.

  “I don’t know why I said that,” she said. “There’s really nobody here to get us coffee. I’m not even sure there’s coffee in the house. It’s—well, still pretty much closed down for the summer. We’d planned to move back in a couple of weeks, but now—” She did not finish the sentence, let her voice trail off. She said, “How can I help you?”

  “The usual things,” Shapiro said. “Do you know if your husband had any enemies, Mrs. Claye?”

  “Hundreds, I suppose. Thousands. But not the kind I guess you mean. Riffraff. Radicals who call themselves liberals. Want those of us who do things to support all those who won’t. And people who want us not to spend anything for our own defense; want us to be left at the mercy of communism; of the people in the Soviet Union who are planning to take over the world. People like that hated Roger. Because of all he stood for.”

  She left no doubt where she stood, Shapiro thought. Probably he would have to look up and read some of her late husband’s columns. Or perhaps he wouldn’t need to.

  Shapiro said he saw. He said that, of course, they would be looking into that angle.

  “What I was thinking of,” he said, “was personal enemies. Anybody who might have hated your husband as—well, as a man. Not merely disagreed with what he wrote. What, as you say, he stood for.”

  “No,” she said, “I’m sure he didn’t have any enemies of that kind. He would never have hurt anybody, not to make them hate him. Make them want to kill him. You’ll find it was some terrorist—some crazy extremist—who did it, Lieutenant. I’m sure of that. Probably one of these kids who go around killing policemen and call themselves revolutionaries.”

  “We’ll look for people like that,” Shapiro told the auburn-haired woman, who had spoken intensely although without raising her voice; who had leaned toward him as she spoke and had clenched the fists in her lap. “Can you tell me something about your husband’s activities yesterday, Mrs. Claye? Last night? How he happened to go down to his office at the newspaper in the middle of last night? An office, we’re told, he didn’t use much.”

  “Now and then he went there,” she said. “When he wanted to look up something in their library—the morgue, I think they call it. Something for his column. I suppose that’s why he went there last night. Uncle Russel doesn’t have that building properly guarded. I’ve told him that often enough.”

  Uncle Russel? Of course—Russel Perryman, owner and publisher; “Uncle” a courtesy title.

  “Did you know your husband was going down to the Sentinel last night, Mrs. Claye?”

  “No, he didn’t say anything about that. Only that he was tied up and not to expect him until morning. That would be this morning. But, as I said, he sometimes went down there at night to look things up. And sometimes, when we’re back in town, to that poker game of theirs.”

  “Poker game?”

  “Some of the men on the paper—some of the executives, I mean—play poker once a week down there, and Roger sometimes sits in when we’re in town.”

  “And he said not to expect him until this morning? Expect him where, Mrs. Claye?”

  “At home, of course. Where we always are in the summers. Up until the middle of October, usually.”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “And just where is that, Mrs. Claye?”

  “In Bedford Hills. It’s quiet and peaceful there, and much cooler than it is here in town. Roger always liked to work there. Of course, sometimes he could get up only on weekends. Thursdays, usually, after he had finished his Friday column and turned the copy in.”

  “But not this past Thursday?”

  “No. There was something coming up. Breaking, he called it, that he wanted to comment on in his Friday piece. He always called them pieces, Lieutenant.”

  “It was yesterday he called you—I assume he called you —in Bedford Hills and told you he wouldn’t get there until today?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant. He calls me almost every evening when he’s in town and I’m up there. Did, I mean. He won’t anymore, will he?”

  She put her face in her hands then, and sat so, bent forward, for so
me seconds. But when she straightened up again, it appeared to Shapiro that she was still dry-eyed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I—I guess I’m still a little numb. Then, suddenly, it hits me.”

  “It happens that way lots of times,” Shapiro said. “And I’m sorry we have to bother you just now. But sometimes we have to. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course,” she said. “And I want to do everything I can to help. And it’s really what Roger wrote so much about— the individual’s part in maintaining law and order. I—I never dreamed I’d have a part in it. That it would come so close to me. But decent people don’t, I guess. Think it stays miles away, among the dreadful radicals. And criminals, of course. Other criminals, I mean. Roger was always saying that; that it was up to ordinary, decent citizens to protect our society from those who want to destroy it, to tear it apart.”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “Mr. Claye called you yesterday and said he had to stay in town. I suppose he would have stayed here, Mrs. Claye? Here in the house, I mean.”

  “No,” she said. “The staff goes to the country with us. In early May, usually. This house is shut up for the summer. Oh, a man we hire stays here. Sleeps in a room downstairs to keep an eye on things; see the house isn’t broken into. But there’s nobody here to do things. Even to keep the air conditioning on. When he had to be in town during the summer, Roger stayed at the Plaza. My father used to keep rooms there, and now—until now, I mean—Roger used them when he had to be in town.”

  “I see,” Shapiro said. “About when did Mr. Claye call, Mrs. Claye?”

  “About five. Somewhere around then. When he usually called.”

  “And you stayed in Bedford Hills last night and drove in when—well, when you heard the news on the radio?”

  “On TV, actually. At the Algonquin, when I was having breakfast. You see, I didn’t stay in Bedford last night. I’d meant to and then—well, something came up. So I got a train into town. From White Plains. I had Luther drive me over to the station. Luther’s our chauffeur, of course.”