Die Laughing

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  “So,” Cook said, “we end up where we’ve been all the time, don’t we?”

  “Not entirely,” Shapiro said. “If she sticks to the story—if Mulligan’s boys don’t find anything to make it come unstuck—a jury might believe her, Tony. And if the kid has any kind of a lawyer, the lawyer won’t let the kid go on the stand to deny the girl was there.”

  “He told us. Mulligan’s steno took it down.”

  “In,” Shapiro said, “the absence of the boy’s lawyer. Let’s give this Gage guy another buzz and if we don’t get him call it a day.”

  They didn’t get him. Nathan Shapiro took the subway home to Brooklyn and walked familiar streets to a familiar apartment. He smiled down at a familiar face, which had never, in a real sense, become familiar to him—which to him, after years, remained delight. But his sad eyes did not smile at Rose.

  “After you’ve eaten,” Rose said. “Had a glass of that wine of yours.”

  He ate. Afterwards they sat side by side on a sofa and the air conditioning in the apartment hummed softly and Nathan Shapiro sipped from a glass of sweet red wine. Because it was, in a sense, as much her case as his, he told her about the boy and the girl. He told it with no comment, no judgment, in phrasing or inflection but when he finished Rose said, “Why don’t you believe her, Nathan? Because they’re babies and in love with each other?”

  He was a little surprised at that because it seemed a tangent. But when he thought for a moment he realized that it was not necessarily a tangent.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “That may enter into it. Only, I hadn’t realized that kids were like that nowadays. Romantic, this Lieutenant Mulligan called it. As if he were quoting from another language.”

  “My dear,” Rose said, “they aren’t changed so much. Oh, in the way they talk. With the words they use changing, I sometimes think, from day to day. And many of them are bitter now, and the bitterness comes out more freely. Weren’t you bitter at the world when you were very young, Nathan? Think it a mismanaged world?”

  “Perhaps,” Nathan said, and sipped his wine. “I didn’t march in protest demonstrations. I didn’t go around chanting. Neither did you. We were talking about something else, weren’t we?”

  “They fall in love,” Rose said. “The way they always did. Phrase it differently when they talk about it. And are more direct about it. A lot of them are, anyway. They feel, I think, more—hurried. Less willing to wait. It seems to be always wartime nowadays, doesn’t it? With—oh, with life to live all at once.”

  “These two kids. You think they’re different? Some kind of Romeo and Juliet?”

  She laughed at that and shook her head. She said, “Not that, Nathan. I don’t know this girl—what’s her name again?”

  He told her the girl’s name.

  “Not anything about her,” Rose said. “The boy. He reads a lot, I think. I wouldn’t be surprised if he writes poetry. Oh, not Marvell. Nobody does any more and it’s perhaps rather a pity. In another idiom. But the impulse may be the same, down underneath.”

  “Marvell?”

  “‘Had we but world enough and time,’” Rose Shapiro told her husband. “To his reluctant mistress. Not that anybody could call Marvell a romantic, I suppose. In the technical sense. We’re drifting, aren’t we? But we often do, don’t we?”

  Shapiro said yes to that.

  “If the girl wasn’t there when she says she was,” Rose said, “she’s lying to protect him, isn’t she? Romantically, because she’s in love with him.”

  “Every so often,” Shapiro said, “people lie to get their names in the papers. Even confess to things they haven’t done.”

  “You think this Ellen is that kind of girl?”

  “No. But I don’t know, most of the time, what kind of people people are. You know that.”

  She smiled at Nathan, with both amusement and tenderness in her smile. He was looking at the empty fireplace they sat in front of, but he knew how she was smiling.

  “And the boy can be lying to keep the girl out of—out of a bad thing,” Rose said. “Out of trouble with rigid parents. Her father sounds rigid. Inflexible. Roy may think her parents would do something to the girl if she got mixed up in anything bad.”

  “Send her to a convent?” Nathan said, gravely.

  “To what they call a select boarding school, more likely,” Rose said. “Oh, I know you’re joking, my dear.”

  “Her father came with her to the station house,” Shapiro said. “Let her have her way about telling her story. Not pleased about it, at a guess. Probably tried to talk her out of telling it. But didn’t, obviously, force her out of it. And, this boy of yours apparently didn’t know Franklin. Know whether he and Mrs. Franklin are strict parents.”

  “Oh,” Rose said, “the girl could have told him. Probably did; probably made a big thing out of it. The way kids do. My parents don’t understand me. That sort of thing. Not that there may not be truth in it. A good many parents don’t. I meet a good many parents. Part of the job. Why do you believe the boy and not the girl, Nathan? Really why?” “Because,” Shapiro said, “I don’t think she’s ever been in the Singleton house. Ever gone up those stairs. Because, dear, she’d remember that staircase, which is a very special sort of thing. Has a special sort of—grandeur, I guess the word is—you don’t see any more. ‘Just stairs. Wide stairs.’ That’s what she said when I asked her about them. She went, she says, to look at flowers because flowers are so pretty. She went up a grand staircase without noticing it? Without imagining elegant ladies coming down it a hundred years or so ago? Where’s your romantic then, Rose?”

  Rose said, “Hmm.” She thought a moment. She said, “Uh-huh.” Then she said, “So nothing will come of it? Of the girl’s romantic gesture? You and this Lieutenant Mulligan will just forget about it? Wipe it off the record?”

  “No,” Shapiro said. “Oh, no, Rose. Because, whether she’s lying or telling the truth, it’s part of the case, now. No. Mulligan will tell the District Attorney’s office, because they won’t want to be surprised if—when—there’s a trial. And the D.A.’s office will tell the defense attorney, which is the way the New York County D.A.’s office does things.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know,” Shapiro said. “But if I were the boy’s lawyer, I’d go before the judge who fixed bail and ask for a reduction in bail. In view of the newly discovered circumstances. And the District Attorney’s office would oppose reduction, but maybe not very hard.”

  “And?”

  “Probably not make much difference if the judge did lower the bond,” Shapiro said. “Because there isn’t any money. Father’s a grocery clerk. And, sometimes, delivery boy. And bondsmen don’t put up their money without getting their share. So the boy’ll probably stay—”

  The telephone rang. Rose answered it. She said, “Yes, he is, Captain.” She didn’t sound happy about it and Nathan crossed the room and took the telephone from her, needing to be told nothing more than the change in his wife’s voice had told him.

  He listened. He said, “All right. I’ll come over.” He listened for a moment more. He said, “Well, she married a cop, Bill,” and listened again. He said, “Mine to Dorian,” and hung up.

  He went to the shelf on which his service revolver lives when it is not attached to Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro. He began to strap it on.

  “Man we’ve been trying to get hold of has showed up,” Shapiro told Rose, and waited an instant. Rose said, “Damn,” as was appropriate.

  “And Bill Weigand sends his best,” Shapiro said. “And says he’s sorry.”

  Nathan Shapiro kissed his wife and put on his hat and went down to familiar streets and to a subway station which also is familiar. A familiar train took him away from where he wanted to be.

  IX

  Joseph Gage’s apartment was the second floor of a house in the West Thirties. It was a well-kept-up house, Shapiro thought as he climbed white steps and turned a polished doorknob and selected the button
he wanted from five buttons, each set in a polished brass plate. When he pressed the button, the door clicked at him almost at once, and he climbed a flight of carpeted stairs to a landing. The door he faced at the top of the flight was opened before he had time to ring the doorbell.

  The man who stood in it was tall. He had smooth black hair and a lean, sharply defined face—deep-set eyes and bony nose and hard jaw lines. He also had a pointed black beard.

  Shapiro said, “Mr. Gage?” and the man said, “Yes. You’ll be Captain Weigand?”

  His voice had volume; a little more volume, Nathan Shapiro thought, than was at the moment entirely needed. There was a word for that kind of voice, Shapiro thought. Not loud, actually. But carrying. “Projected”—that was the word for the voice. Shapiro, not projecting his own, said that he was not Captain Weigand and said who he was.

  “Talked to Weigand,” Gage said. “They told me he was the man to talk to. But all right. Come on in.”

  The room Shapiro went into was a high-ceilinged room with tall windows on the street side. The windows were closed and an air conditioner hummed.

  “Well,” Gage said, “you people found out who killed my wife? This kid there’s a story about in the Times? Damned murdering kids. Sit down, why don’t you?”

  Shapiro sat down in a low, modern chair. The chair was so low that there was nothing to do with legs but stretch them out in front.

  “The boy is a suspect,” Shapiro said. “You called the captain. Wanted to tell us something?”

  “Knew you people would want to talk to me,” Gage said, and sat down in another low chair and stuck his legs out. He also stroked his pointed beard. “Nothing to tell you you don’t know. She was my wife and she was lovely and some bastard killed her. You people suspect husbands the first thing, from what I’ve heard.”

  “Have you?” Shapiro said. “No. Want to talk to them, of course. Matter of fact, I’ve been trying to get you on the phone most of the day.”

  “In a boat,” Gage said. “Fishing. Out on Long Island I’ve got a shack and a boat. I rented a car yesterday morning and drove out and went fishing. Drove back this afternoon and went to the theater—plenty of time to change and put on make-up before I went on. And in the lobby there was a notice. ‘This performance canceled,’ the notice said. So I went around to the stage door and old Barny told me she’d been killed.”

  “The first you’d known of it?”

  “It sure as hell was. After Barny told me, I came back here and read about it in the Times. It said that Captain William Weigand of the Homicide Squad was in charge, so I called this Weigand. Your boss, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “You don’t listen to the radio much, Mr. Gage? Or read newspapers out on Long Island?”

  “Out there,” Gage said, “I fish.”

  “Have friends with you yesterday? Before you left to drive back to town?”

  “Nobody. Oh, I get it. No. Nobody can say he was with me yesterday at—about when, Lieutenant?”

  “Five o’clock or around then,” Shapiro said. “Have you got a key to your wife’s house, Mr. Gage?”

  “So I could go in and kill her?”

  “Just, have you got a key to the house. From what we hear, you and your wife were separated. It was her house.”

  “It sure as hell was her house. No, I didn’t have a key. Gave mine back to her when—when we decided things weren’t working out for us. Decided to take a breather. Think about things for a bit. You married, Lieutenant?” He paused for a moment. “Shapiro?”

  Shapiro said yes.

  “Ever want to take a vacation from your wife?”

  Shapiro said no.

  “Some do and some don’t,” Gage said. He pulled at his beard. He said, “Shave this damn thing off now with the show closed.” Shapiro shook his head. “Had to grow it for the part,” Gage said. “God knows why. But Les wrote a beard in.”

  “Lester Agee, you mean? One of Mrs. Singleton’s former husbands?”

  “The chap,” Gage said. “He’s one of the chaps you’d better talk to.”

  “I have,” Shapiro said. “He’s very broken up about Mrs. Singleton’s death. That is, Mrs. Gage’s death.”

  More than you seem to be, Shapiro thought, and did not say.

  “Wants you to think so,” Gage said. “The only thing breaks Les up is third-act trouble. What did he tell you? About Jenny? And, at a guess, about me?”

  “That you and your wife were separated. That she was planning a divorce. Or that you both were. Is that true?”

  “Make any difference now? Now she’s dead?”

  “It might,” Shapiro said. “Were you planning a divorce?”

  “While back, yes,” Gage said. “Week or so ago we decided not. Fact is, I was going to move back into the house this week. Something good old Les didn’t know about. Unless she broke it to him, which maybe she did.”

  “Earlier today,” Shapiro said, “he told me you and your wife were going to get a divorce. And—that he and she were going to remarry.”

  Gage laughed at that. He had, to Shapiro’s ears a harsh laugh—a derisive laugh.

  “The poor hopeful son of a bitch,” Gage said. “Wasn’t on the cards. Never had been. Oh, that she might go to Reno. Yes. But, as I just told you, that was out. Whatever Les Agee thought.”

  “Or,” Shapiro said, “was told?”

  Gage said he didn’t get it. Then he said, “You mean Jenny told him that? Not like her, Lieutenant. Straight as a string, Jenny was. That I’ll say for her.”

  “Straight as a string” has always seemed an odd simile to Shapiro, who knows how strings can tangle. As, of course, can murder investigations.

  “Always was,” Gage added to what he had just said.

  “By the way,” Shapiro said, “you’d known Mrs. Singleton—I keep calling her that, but apparently everybody did— known her about how long, Mr. Gage?”

  “Four or five years. We’ve been—had been—married a little over two years.” He paused for a moment and pulled at the bothersome beard. “Four or five years I’d known her pretty well. Acted with her. In another way, I’d sort of known her most of my life. Who she was, if you get what I mean. As who didn’t?”

  “By the way,” Shapiro said. “How old are you, Mr. Gage?”

  “You want to know the damnedest things. Thirty-seven. And, sure if that’s what you’re getting at, she was maybe twenty years older. That what you’re getting at?”

  “Just getting the picture.”

  “Only,” Gage said, and leaned up in the low chair and drew his legs in. “Only you’re not. You’re just counting years. And with her years didn’t count. She was—what? Pretty near sixty?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Didn’t come into it,” Gage said. “Doesn’t with women like Jenny was. Just knew she’d been pretty wonderful for a long time.”

  “According to Who’s Who,” Shapiro said, “she was fifty- eight.”

  “More than anybody I’ve ever known,” Gage said, “she was what age she wanted to be. See her in Always Good-bye?”

  “No, I never saw her.”

  “Woman of around thirty in the play,” Gage said. “Young thirty. Face. Voice. Everything. I—hell, man, I felt old when we were on together. And that laughter of hers. Jesus, the way she could laugh!”

  For the first time, to Shapiro’s ears, Gage’s voice had grief in it—grief and longing.

  “Did you know, Mr. Gage, that Agee was paying her part of his royalties? Because, he says, the idea for this play was partly hers?”

  “First time I ever heard of that,” Gage said. “Not a hell of a lot like Les Agee. And she sure as hell didn’t need it. Must have been a—oh, sort of a token thing.”

  “You knew she sometimes had ideas for plays?”

  “Sure. Anyway, ideas for parts for her. Lots of us do in the profession. Do myself.”

  “Speaking of her not needing money,” Shapiro said, “and of her having a lo
t of it. Know anything about her will, Mr. Gage?”

  “Wondered how long it would take you to get to that,” Gage said. “Yes, I was in it. The way she changed it when we got married, anyway. Could be she’s changed it again, couldn’t it? After we decided on this vacation I told you about? Could have cut me off without a penny for all I know.”

  “Not quite,” Shapiro said. “Dower rights. Unless some other arrangement was made? Some agreement?”

  “Not that she told me about.”

  “Oh,” Shapiro said, “you’d have known. Papers for you to sign. You knew that she and Mr. Agee remained friends. After you and she were married?”

  “Of course. Why the hell not?”

  “Saw each other rather frequently, the way I get it,” Shapiro said. “As a matter of fact, they were going to have dinner together last night. So he says. And he did show up at the house. After the police got there. Around six, that was.”

  “So?”

  “He says he didn’t have a key to the house,” Shapiro said. “You say you didn’t have.”

  “That’s right. About me anyway.”

  “You know Mr. Agee fairly well.”

  “Well enough. Arrogant so-and-so, for my money.”

  “Likely to be a violent so-and-so?”

  “What’s the idea? Giving me an out to see if I jump at it?”

  “Just asking.”

  “No jump,” Gage said. “Acted sometimes as if he thought he was God Almighty. Want me to say he’d go off his rocker if Jenny told him she and I were going to stay together? Go back together. So there wouldn’t have been any remarriage. What you want me to say?”

  “If that’s what you think.”

  “No,” Gage said. “That’s not what I think. When he directed—sometimes he did his own plays—he’d yell at people. Most of them do. Think they know more about acting than actors.”

  “Happen to know whether he’d ever been an actor himself?”

  “For a time, I think. Years ago. I never saw him act. Decided writing plays was a better bet. As God knows it is, if you happen to hit the way he did. Acting is a mug’s game for most of us. Way the theater is nowadays, specially. Get roped in on a turkey and, nine times out of ten, that shoots the bloody season. For example—I’m out of a job now. Because they won’t reopen Always Good-bye. Not without Jenny. So—” He shook his head.