A Streak of Light

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  The second room, visible through an open door, was smaller. It also contained a couch, but this one had been turned down for the night.

  “Sit down, gentlemen,” Wainwright said, and himself sat down on the couch. “I take it you are accusing me of murder? On some evidence, I suppose? Other than the fact that light shows under my office door.”

  He spoke as a man might who has called a bluff. Which, Nathan Shapiro thought, in effect he has. This did not show in Nathan’s long, sad face.

  “Actually,” Nathan Shapiro said, “we haven’t accused you of anything, Mr. Wainwright. Just want to ask you a few questions. You’re not under arrest.”

  Wainwright smiled. It was a narrow smile.

  “You’ve cautioned me,” he said. “Told me about my rights.”

  “At your suggestion, Mr. Wainwright. At your request, in effect.”

  “We’re quibbling,” Wainwright said. “What questions do you want to ask me?”

  “Do you own a gun? A small gun? Handgun. A twenty-two or twenty-five revolver?”

  “Yes. Have for years. And it’s properly licensed, Lieutenant. Permit issued by your department. To a respectable citizen, who needed it for his own protection. Which you can easily verify, if you doubt my word.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Shapiro said. “I’ve no doubt you have a licensed gun, Mr. Wainwright. Permits aren’t too hard to come by, particularly for people like you. People of responsibility, I mean. Where is this revolver now, Mr. Wainwright?”

  “In the bottom drawer of my desk at the office is where I keep it,” Wainwright said. And Shapiro turned toward Cook and said, “Tony?”

  “No,” Tony said. “Not there now. Had a look an hour or two back. No gun in any of the desk drawers, sir.”

  This seemed to baffle Jason Wainwright. His pale face set in lines of bewilderment for a moment. “But—” he said, and stopped.

  Puzzlement left his face. “You get forgetful when you reach my age,” he said. “Incipient senility, I suppose it is. Of course the gun isn’t in my desk downtown. I took it out after Claye was shot. Thought—well, that I might need it. Whoever shot poor Claye might come after others on the staff. And I was right, wasn’t I? Claye and then Mr. Perryman and then Roy Sampson. A vendetta against Sentinel executives, it seems to be, wouldn’t you say, Lieutenant?”

  “Possibly,” Shapiro said. “By somebody, or some group perhaps, calling itself ‘The Enforcers.’ Is that what you have in mind, Mr. Wainwright?”

  Wainwright shook his head. He had no idea what Lieutenant Shapiro was talking about.

  “All right,” Shapiro said. “And is it all right if Cook uses your typewriter for a minute or two?”

  Again the faint smile appeared on Wainwright’s face. “And if I say no, Lieutenant?”

  “I don’t think you will,” Shapiro said. “I don’t think you really want to. Not any more.”

  Wainwright looked hard at Shapiro before he spoke. Then he said, “Well, well. A policeman and—and what? A psychiatrist? Should I be calling you Dr. Shapiro?”

  “Just a cop, Mr. Wainwright. Trying to do a job. The typewriter?”

  “I suppose you will anyway,” Wainwright said. “The courts might object, I suppose. But, go ahead, Mr. Cook.”

  Tony went to the typewriter and fed it paper. He noted the activities of the quick brown fox. He switched on the light over the typewriter and studied under it what he had typed. He shook his head. “Hard to tell, Lieutenant,” Tony Cook said. “Need a microscope, looks like. But—maybe. The e just a little, perhaps. Job for the lab boys.”

  He folded the sheet and put it in his pocket. He went back to his chair. Shapiro looked at Jason Wainwright and, rather obviously, waited for a comment. Or for a question. He got neither. After he had given Wainwright ample time to ask what the hell was going on, if he didn’t know what was going on, Shapiro said, “The gun, Mr. Wainwright? And, no, we haven’t got a search warrant. Or did you throw the gun away?”

  “Should have, shouldn’t I?” Wainwright said. “Bottom drawer of the chest in the bedroom. Under the shirts.” Tony Cook went into the bedroom and opened the bottom drawer of the chest. He took a little revolver from under a neat pile of white shirts, fresh from the laundry. The gun had left a small smudge of oil under the bottom shirt.

  The gun was not loaded. Tony sniffed the muzzle. It smelled of oil.

  Wainwright and Nathan Shapiro watched him through the open doorway.

  “Yes,” Wainwright said. “I cleaned it this afternoon. Should have thrown it away, I suppose. Can’t think why I—” He stopped with that. He did not look at Shapiro or at Tony Cook. He looked down, apparently at his own hands. They waited.

  “Oh,” Wainwright said, “perhaps I can. I suppose I wanted—well, to get it over. Because it can’t really make much difference, can it?”

  It was a surprising question and there was no ready answer to it Shapiro could think of. So he merely waited, and Wainwright continued to stare at his hands. Finally, he spoke.

  “Comparison microscope,” he said. “I suppose that’s it. And is the e out of alignment, Mr. Cook? Like a specimen you’ve got? It shouldn’t be. The machine is practically new. A couple of months or so. Of course, I’ve been using it quite a lot. Writing the history of the Sentinel. Would have been rather a long book. More than a hundred years to cover. A hundred and about twenty-five, actually. And fifty of them mine. Fifty-one it would have been next spring. Twenty-seven when I first went on the paper. You take shorthand, Mr. Cook?”

  “Yes, sir,” Tony Cook said. “Yes, Mr. Wainwright.”

  “Then I’ll dictate you a lead,” Wainwright said. “For the first edition of Monday’s Sentinel. Not for tomorrow’s Chronicle or News. Or for radio or TV. Exclusive for my newspaper. Ready?”

  Cook was ready.

  “Jason Wainwright, for many years editor of the New York Sentinel, today confessed to the fatal shooting of Roger Claye, syndicated political columnist, according to the police. The police also say that Wainwright admitted firing the shots which seriously wounded Russel Perryman, the Sentinel’s owner and publisher, and killed Leroy Sampson, the newspaper’s managing editor.”

  He stopped. Then he said, “That do you, gentlemen? It’s just the lead, of course. It can be marked, ‘More to come,’ if it’s sent along in takes. Making it easy for you, aren’t I? Because your evidence is a little skimpy, isn’t it? Light in a crack under a door; grooves on a couple of bullets; maybe a typed e a shade out of alignment. Not the sort of thing a jury really likes, is it? No smoking gun, as they tried to find on Nixon. Until he handed it to them. Even the Sentinel had to print that, Lieutenant. Tried to bury it, but it wouldn’t stay buried. Upset Perryman a good deal. Wasn’t, after all, just a Democratic attempt to reverse a ‘resounding victory at the polls.’ Although Claye didn’t really give that line up. You should have read him on it.” He looked up, then, at Nathan Shapiro. “Or,” he said, “perhaps you shouldn’t. You look like an honest man to me, Lieutenant. It would have gagged you. It did me. A lot of things did during the past few years. Yes, a lot of things.”

  “Enough to make you murder, Mr. Wainwright? Because that’s what you seem to be confessing to. Hadn’t you better get a lawyer?”

  “So he can plead me not guilty by reason of insanity? He might get away with it, you know. An honest man probably counts as an insane man nowadays. And a man who tried to prevent a rape, of course. Obviously a crazy thing to do. I realize that; have all along, I suppose.”

  “A rape, Mr. Wainwright?”

  “Oh, not of a woman, Lieutenant. Rape of a newspaper. Destruction of a newspaper. A newspaper—and this probably will sound insane to you, also, Lieutenant—a newspaper I’ve lived with for more than fifty years. Been married to, in a way. Longer than I was married to Agnes, really. We’d been married a little over forty years when she died. Six years ago, that was. Six years last month. You married, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes. For quite a long time, Mr
. Wainwright.”

  “Then maybe you can understand. It took my wife a long time to die, you see. A long and very slow time. An acutely painful time before it finally ended. I had nothing left then, you see. Nothing except the Sentinel. And, in a way, the paper became my second wife. Ridiculous, isn’t it? But then, so many things are, aren’t they? I don’t suppose you can understand, can you? The feeling I got that the Sentinel was my paper. It wasn’t, of course. Lester Mason’s and then Perryman’s. But—still, mine. Am I making any sense to you, Lieutenant?”

  Shapiro nodded his head. He said, “Yes, Mr. Wainwright.” Tony had never heard more sadness in Shapiro’s almost always sad voice.

  “Perryman is killing it,” Wainwright said. “Killing it slowly, as my wife died slowly. Turning it into a house organ for the radical right. For the John Birchites. Do you know Claye actually put in his Who’s Who entry that he’s a member of the Birch Society? Although they keep their membership secret? And he surfaced deliberately. A strange thing to—well, boast about, wouldn’t you say?”

  Shapiro did not say anything.

  “Young Perryman’s a good kid,” Wainwright said. “Been seeing a bit of him since they told me. He’ll get the paper if his father dies. Run it like a newspaper, I think. Put Ed Riley in as managing editor. Riley’s a good man. Knows his job. Hell of a lot better newspaperman than Sampson ever was. Make Simms editor, probably. Or take the job himself, maybe. Although he’s too young for it.”

  “Change the policy of the paper, you mean?”

  “If you mean less conservative, no, I shouldn’t think so. Nor, come to that, would I. I’m as conservative, at bottom, as Russel Perryman. Well, damn near, anyway. Only—well, honest. Have the old-fashioned notion that a newspaper should print the news. All of it, whether its owner agrees with it or not. Very, as I say, old-fashioned. Almost, well, communistic to a man like Claye. He would have been the last straw, you see. Or the last dagger. Won’t be now. Why I had to kill him.”

  “Want to tell us about that? About the killing. You don’t have to, of course. Don’t have to without your lawyer present. But you know that.”

  Wainwright merely nodded his head.

  “Called me up Thursday night, Claye did. Said he thought I’d like to look at his Friday column before he sent it to the composing room. Said he thought I’d very much like to see it, since part of it concerned me. Suggested I drop by his office around midnight, after the poker game. So, well, I agreed. Only I went down a little early.”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “And were in your own office with the light on when Sampson went down to look at the TV news.”

  “With a streak of light showing under my door,” Wainwright said. “You see, I could guess pretty well what Claye was going to show me. A few things I wanted to clean up in my office, before I saw Claye. Papers, that sort of thing.”

  “And get your gun,” Shapiro said.

  “And get my gun, yes. So—it was what I knew it would be. An announcement from Perryman that, as of that day, Roger Claye would take over as editor-in-chief of the Sentinel, succeeding Jason Wainwright, who was retiring after long and faithful service. Made it sound as if I were a superannuated housemaid. So I read his script and shot him.”

  “And took his copy with you?”

  “Of course. And tore it into small pieces for the nearest trash can.”

  “Then Perryman?”

  “Yes. He’d have put somebody just as bad in my job. If he could find anybody just as bad. To run my paper even deeper into the ground.”

  “And Sampson?” Shapiro said. “I take it you knew his habits.”

  For a moment, Wainwright looked blank, his train of thought interrupted. Then his face cleared, and he nodded.

  “You mean about his morning trips to the men’s room, I suppose. Yes, I did. What had slipped my mind was his habit of checking up on the eleven o’clock TV news. Usually at home, of course. He’s told me about it. Proving what a thorough editor he was; how he didn’t miss a trick. I didn’t realize that he turned the set on when he was at the office. That he would come down from the fourth floor—from the poker game—to watch the news program. Only afterward I had a more or less subconscious memory of hearing the TV going while I was waiting for Claye. He must have been playing it pretty loud. Then—well, I began to be uneasy. Began to wonder what he might have seen. Or heard. From my office. What he might have guessed. So—”

  “So, on the outside chance, you took a shot at him in the men’s room. Waited for him, being pretty familiar with his habits?”

  He could put it that way, Wainwright said. “And I missed. I wouldn’t have tried again, I think, if he hadn’t called me at The Players. Been insistent about seeing me about Thursday night. So—”

  He hadn’t planned on Sampson. Sampson was “a lightweight, not worth killing. Mostly just bluster.” But Sampson had seen the streak of light under the door. He knew Wainwright’s habits too, and got him by telephone at the bar of The Players. “Where I usually go for lunch on Saturdays.” Sampson had been peremptory about seeing Wainwright and had said it was “about Thursday night.”

  So Wainwright had given up the idea of lunching at The Players and agreed to meet Sampson in Washington Square Park—and gone back to the hotel to get his gun, going in through the Ninth Street entrance because there was no doorman there, and going out the same way. And doing what had then seemed necessary about Leroy Sampson.

  “It wasn’t really,” Wainwright said. “More a reflex than anything else. The animal reflex to run from danger. It was afterward that I decided not to run. Just to wait for you two to come around. Go find you, or somebody like you, if you didn’t come. So—handcuffs, I suppose.”

  He held out his hands for the cuffs. They were frail old hands.

  Cook reached for the handcuffs on his belt, but Shapiro said, “No, Tony. I think not. Not now, anyway. I’ll have to talk to the captain about it, but I think Mr. Wainwright can stay here overnight. And tomorrow, probably. Arraignment Monday morning, if Weigand agrees. With a man outside his suite, of course. Although I doubt Mr. Wainwright plans to go anywhere.”

  The faint smile appeared again on Wainwright’s lips.

  “No,” he said. “No place, Lieutenant. Except, of course, prison for life. Which will be six months at the outside. Perhaps as little as three, they tell me. You’d guessed that, hadn’t you, Shapiro?”

  Shapiro had guessed that.

  “Like my wife,” Wainwright said. “I hope not as long as it was with her.”

  It was after ten when Tony Cook got to Gay Street. He had had to stay with Wainwright until a man from the night shift came down to take over; he had waited until Shapiro had got in touch with Captain William Weigand and got approval. Weigand was doubtful about a preliminary charge as a material witness. He would have to consult the District Attorney’s office about that.

  So it was almost ten thirty when Tony Cook climbed the stairs in Gay Street. He stopped outside Rachel’s door. She had said not after ten. Still. He rapped, not resolutely, on her door. There was no answer, no stirring inside.

  He thought of using his key. They had exchanged keys when he had moved into the apartment above hers. He decided not to use the key; to let her sleep, in preparation for her hard day tomorrow.

  He went up the stairs and into his own apartment.

  He had his jacket and gun off before he looked toward his bed.

  Rachel was in it. She did not appear to be asleep. She does not sleep with her eyes open.

  Tony Cook finished undressing and went to bed.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Nathan Shapiro Mysteries

  1

  There were two telephones on the not-large desk in the small office. One of them was black and had been there for years. When it wanted attention it screamed. The other, the red one, had been there only about a week, and merely muttered. It was a direct-line telephone with its own number, available from outside—direct, but actually one of t
wo extensions. The other extension was on the desk of Captain William Weigand, commanding. But Weigand was not in his office at a few minutes before noon that Monday in late September.

  Nathan picked up the telephone which had muttered its summons and said “Shapiro” into it. His tone was resigned; after all, it was Monday morning.

  The answer was in a woman’s voice. A faintly familiar voice, but one which Lieutenant Shapiro could not immediately place. “Good morning, Nathan,” whoever it was said. “I was trying to get Bill.”

  Of course. He should have recognized the softly pleasant voice.

  “The captain isn’t in today, Mrs. Weigand,” Nathan Shapiro said. “Down at headquarters. The Commissioner sent for him.”

  “Dear old Coxey,” Dorian Weigand said. It was not the way Shapiro would have referred to Edwin James Coxe, Police Commissioner of the City of New York. Of course, Mrs. Weigand was not on the force, except by marriage. And Coxe, who had come up through the ranks, a feat just short of unique, had been Bill Weigand’s first commanding officer, years ago. When Weigand had been in the uniformed division, his law studies at Columbia University interrupted by lack of funds. The Weigands and the Coxes presumably were friends, privately, hence the “dear old Coxey.”

  “It’s like him to tell Bill himself, instead of through channels,” Dorian said.

  That needed no amplification. It was already well known. William Weigand had gone up from captain to deputy inspector. This meant that he would no longer command Homicide, Manhattan South, which rated nothing higher than a captain. It meant that some other captain would command the squad, of which Shapiro was one of three lieutenants. The event did nothing to brighten a Monday morning. With Bill Weigand, Nathan knew where he was. Usually, of course, in surroundings with which he was totally unfamiliar. But Nathan had got used to that. Also, he and Weigand were friends.