Preach No More

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  Shapiro went back to the table he had been sitting at and sat at it again. Detectives do a lot of waiting, a lot of it to no purpose.

  Cook came back through the wide doorway from the service bar. He put checks down in front of Shapiro.

  There were three sets of them, each set a food check and a bar check stapled together.

  “Granzo says this order—way the checks are numbered,” Cook said. “He’s gone upstairs to change. Charley went along to keep him company. Probable order, because the top one they had dinner.”

  The name of the restaurant was printed at the top of the uppermost check. “The Village Brawl” looked strange in Old English lettering. Below the heading were blanks—“Table No.—,” “No. of Persons—,” “Waiter No.—.”

  Table No. 22; No. of Persons 2; Waiter No.? The waiter appeared to be numbered “A” with a wriggly line after it. André? Presumably. And where the hell was André Brideaux? Of course, it was a rain-drenched morning, with visibility low and streets slippery. And a man who has got to bed around three in the morning may be slow in waking up four hours or so later.

  The orders were scrawled on the slip. “Two st. well.” The word “well” was underlined three times. The two steaks had come to eighteen dollars, plus tax. A hell of a lot of money for two steaks, Shapiro thought.

  The bar check stapled to it had, in the same scrawl, “1 dai sw” and “bourb. O.F. g.a.” The “dai”—daiquiri?—had cost a dollar and a half. The “bourb. O.F.”—bourbon? Old Fitzgerald?—had cost two dollars. The total, written on the back of the bar check, was $21.50 plus $1.28 tax. Quite a lot, Shapiro thought, for a dinner for two, with one drink each. Conceivably, of course, other things had gone with the steak as part of complete dinner. Still—

  Shapiro and Cook looked up as a uniformed man came to their table, with a small, dark man walking in front of him. The small man wore a long raincoat, which made him look even smaller. He had a narrow face and a sharp nose and very bright dark brown eyes. The patrolman said, “Mr. Brideaux, Lieutenant. The waiter you wanted to see.” Shapiro said, “Thanks,” and “Sit down, Mr. Brideaux.”

  Brideaux said, “M’sieu,” and looked at Cook and said it again. Then he sat down. Shapiro said, “Better take that coat off. Looks wet.” Brideaux said, “M’sieu,” again and stood up and took the coat off and put it on a chair. Under the coat he had worn a pull-over sweater and gray slacks. He sat down again.

  “You served Booth twenty-two last night?” Shapiro said.

  “And six others,” André Brideaux said. “And a couple of outside tables off and on, because Emile got rushed.”

  He spoke without accent. The “m’sieu” was, Nathan Shapiro decided, a formality; a word to go with “André.”

  “That where this guy got bumped off?” André said. “Booth twenty-two?”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “Remember how many people you served in that booth last night?”

  “Look,” André Brideaux said, “we were busy last night. And I had these seven booths to serve and helped Emile on a couple of outside tables. And you’ve got the checks right there, haven’t you, Captain?”

  The man was observant, which was a good thing in a witness.

  “Yes,” Shapiro said, and flipped the check slips over. “A couple,” he said. “Another couple. And the third for that table is marked one person. Way you remember it?”

  André held out a rather small, very clean hand, and Shapiro gave him the slips, in the order in which they had been given him. André looked at the top slip. He said, “Hell, I sure remember this one, Captain. Man must have weighed in at about two hundred and the woman wasn’t much under that. Came in at seven, for God’s sake. Minute we opened. Mr. Granzo wasn’t down yet. Wasn’t hardly anybody around. I had the early trick last night. This isn’t much of a dinner place. Mostly people come in, oh, from nine, nine-thirty on. Band starts at nine. But these two out-of-towners—”

  They had come in at a few minutes after seven. The hat-check girl wasn’t even on yet. The big man had said, “Don’t look very busy, do you?” and André had said, “Most people come a little later, m’sieu. But the kitchen is open.” The man had looked around and said, “Where’s the band?” André told him it came on later. And the woman had said, “Look, Ralph, we’re here, aren’t we? Came all the way down here because Mabel and Henry told us about it? And I’m hungry anyway.”

  André had taken them to Booth 22, because it was on his station.

  “Sweet daiquiri,” André told Shapiro and Tony Cook. “‘And a bourbon with ginger ale.’ Ginger ale, for God’s sake. Old Fitzgerald and ginger ale.”

  The evident indignation was lost on Shapiro, who drinks sweet wine, and that rarely. It was not wasted on Cook, who said, “Jesus Christ!”

  “Yeah,” André said. “Makes you wonder don’t it?”

  They had looked over the menu and the man had said, “These steaks? Porterhouse?”

  “I said, boneless sirloin, sir,” André told them. “The man said he’d never heard of that and I told him they were fine prime steaks and the woman said, ‘Well, we’re here, Ralph.’ So he said, ‘Oh, all right,’ or something like that and ordered these drinks of theirs. I had to make the drinks myself because Joe wasn’t on yet. And I put in the order for the steaks and got their soup orders and told them what the choice of vegetables was. Last night it was string beans and sprouts, and they both took the sprouts.”

  He had an excellent memory, Shapiro thought. He didn’t give a damn what this couple had had to eat, but it is a good thing to encourage an excellent memory.

  André had brought the steaks and, “This guy cut into his and it was a little pink and he said, ‘Hey, you, I said we wanted them well done. You didn’t hear me, maybe?’”

  André had taken the steaks back to the kitchen and the chef had made violent sounds—“They get upset easy, these chef types”—and cooked the steaks until they were gray all through. The man had said, “More like it,” and “Where’s the ketchup? Ought to be on the table.”

  André had got the ketchup.

  “I’d got them French fries,” André said. “He put ketchup on them.”

  There was something like a shudder in his voice. He looked at Cook and shook his head. Cook obliged him. Cook said, “Jesus!”

  “Yeah,” André said. “On the French fries, and the steak.”

  He looked at Cook again and Cook said, “Takes all kinds, they say,” but without any conviction.

  The couple had finished their dinner—both had had ice cream with chocolate sauce for dessert—at a little after eight. By that time other waiters had come on and there were a few other customers. Drinking customers. André had brought the big couple their checks and the big man had checked the addition very carefully and said, “Where’s the cashier’s desk? Didn’t see it when we came in.”

  “On the check,” André told Cook and Shapiro, “it says, ‘Please pay waiter.’ I showed him what it said and he said something like it was a funny way to do things, and gave me a fifty-dollar bill. Took all the small bills Mr. Esposito had, pretty near, it being so early in the evening. He counted it all twice and I thought he was going to leave me just the silver, but the woman said, ‘That’s not enough, Ralph. You know how they are in New York.’ Something like that. So he left me a dollar.”

  It was obvious that the memory shook him. Shapiro gave him a few seconds to recover and then said, “After that? In Booth twenty-two, I mean?”

  André went to the second check and his face brightened.

  “Nice couple of kids,” he said. “Maybe about nine-thirty. Celebrating something, way it looked. Champagne. Brut. And after they’d danced a while, chicken sandwiches and another half bottle. Nice kids. Thought they were going to make a night of it, but a little after eleven they left.”

  “Do better this time?” Cook asked him, and André slid the slip across the table to him.

  “Paid American Express,” André said. “Wrote the tip in.”r />
  The tip had been written in. It was a sizable check. The tip was somewhat over 20 per cent of it.

  “They were sure nice kids,” André said. “I’d figured they were celebrating something and were going to make a night of it.”

  “Perhaps they did,” Shapiro said. “Now, Mr. Brideaux. This last customer.”

  “André, Captain. Just André.”

  “All right, André,” Shapiro said. “This last man in Booth twenty-two?”

  André went to the last check for Booth 22.

  “I see,” Shapiro said, “you put a ‘one’ in the number-of-persons place. So I take it he was alone?”

  André looked for some seconds at the slip. He looked up at Nathan Shapiro and down at the slip again. But there was nothing evasive in his look across at Shapiro. There was merely, Shapiro thought, momentary uncertainty. André looked at the face of the check and then nodded his head.

  “Tall man?” André said. “Tall and black hair and—oh, sort of rigid? That the man, Captain? The man somebody killed?”

  “I don’t know what he looked like,” Shapiro said. “I haven’t seen the photographs yet and—”

  “Yeah,” Tony Cook said. “That’s what he looked like, Nate. From a distance, anyway.”

  Shapiro looked at him.

  “I went to this meeting of his last night,” Cook said. “What they call a gospel meeting.”

  There was a defensive note in his voice, Nathan Shapiro thought. Shapiro merely nodded his head.

  “Miss Farmer wanted to go,” Cook said. “It was quite a show.”

  Shapiro nodded his head again.

  “He had a voice like nothing I’d ever heard,” Cook said. “Deep and—I don’t know. Rich, I guess. Like—hell, I don’t know. Seemed to be all over the Garden, if you know what I mean. Gave you a sort of funny feeling. As if you were hearing something you’d never heard before.”

  “Were you, Tony?”

  Tony Cook shook his head.

  “That New York is a sink of iniquity,” Tony said. “That everybody in it is going to hell unless they accept the Lord. At first it sounded—I don’t know. Sounded different because of this voice of his. After a while I didn’t listen much and—well, got to thinking it was going to be a hell of a job to get a cab if we waited until everybody left. So we—well, we went home. I mean, back to Miss Farmer’s apartment.”

  He was overexplaining, Shapiro thought and was a little amused. But his smile was inward, where his smiles usually hide themselves.

  “Same man,” André said. “Anyway, there was something sort of special about his voice. Tall, black hair and this voice. Pretty sure it was the same man. Came in by himself. That’s why I put ‘one’ down for the number of guests.”

  “Came in alone,” Shapiro said. “About when, André?”

  André Brideaux shrugged.

  “Maybe eleven-thirty,” he said. “Some time around then. The jo—the place was hopping. Way it usually is about then.”

  “Mr. Granzo seat him?”

  “No. It’s come back now. The boss was seating a foursome. One of the men he knew, way it looked. And this guy came up to the rope and I had a minute and I said, ‘One, sir?’ And he said, ‘Two, please, I’m expecting a friend to join me.’ So twenty-two was free and I took him there and gave him the supper menu and asked him if he wanted to order or wait for his friend. He said I could bring him a Scotch on the rocks with a little water on the side. So I did. That’s when I put the ‘one’ on the check.”

  “He was still alone when you brought the drink back?”

  “Yes, m’sieu.”

  “But later?”

  “Later,” André said, “it was a hell of a rush, Captain. And Emile got jammed up and I was helping him. Way we do it, one of us gets in a jam anybody who’s free helps him out. See what I mean? People get all jumbled up, like.”

  He looked at the check on the table in front of him.

  “Six Scotches,” he said. “Must have been somebody with him. Part of the time, anyway. He—wait a minute. Way it was—”

  The way it was, as André remembered it, he had been passing Booth 22 and the tall man had raised a glass and then raised two fingers. So André had gone to the bar for two more Scotches and had brought them back to the booth. The man had still been alone in it, but he had gestured across the table and André had put one Scotch in front of him and the other on the mat across from him. “It was set up for two,” André said.

  “I figured this friend of his had shown up,” André said. “And—oh, gone to the men’s, or something. Or seen somebody he knew at another table and gone to say hello to him. Place like this, people wander around a good deal.”

  “You say ‘gone to the men’s,’” Shapiro said. “This friend of his was a man, then?”

  Suddenly, André hit himself on the forehead with the flat of his hand. He said, “Captain, I’m nuts. The friend sure as hell wasn’t a man. It was a girl. I went by and looked in to see if they wanted something, and here was this girl across from him. A real dish, she was. I must be going nuts not to have remembered.”

  “You were busy,” Shapiro said. “Can you remember what this girl looked like?”

  André slapped his forehead again, not so hard this time. Then he shook his head.

  “Blonde, I think,” he said. “All I thought was, He’s got himself a dish, all right. But they didn’t need fresh drinks yet and I had a lot who did. Pretty sure she was a blonde. And built. I know damn well she was stacked.”

  “You served them another round,” Shapiro said. “Two more, since they had six altogether.”

  “Took their order,” André said. “Same again. But I was really jammed up and Emile wasn’t, and I said, ‘Mind giving these to twenty-two, sir?’ And he said—oh, I don’t know. That he sure would. Anyway, he did, because when I went by the next time they both had pretty full glasses.”

  “They seemed to be getting along all right?”

  “Far’s I could tell. They were talking, I guess. Look, Captain, I was rushed. Job like this, you get the customers what they want. You don’t look at them much.”

  “This young couple,” Cook said. “The ones who ordered champagne. Apparently they made more of an impression on you.”

  “We weren’t so busy then,” André said. “And they were sweet kids. It was like they were celebrating something. It—well, it sort of shone out of them, know what I mean? And I had a sort of lull then. Not like later.”

  “The man—the tall man we’re talking about—had a drink,” Shapiro said. “Then he ordered two more, and the girl wasn’t there yet. Or was leaving her coat or something. Then, when they were both in the booth together, he ordered another round and Emile took the drinks over. That comes to five, so far.”

  “Yeah, he ordered one more later. She—I remember that—put her hand over her glass and shook her head.”

  “Any idea how much later, André?”

  André shrugged his shoulders. Then he said, “Maybe around one. Maybe after one. They didn’t drink fast. Except maybe he did the first one.”

  “He got here some time around eleven-thirty,” Shapiro said. “Any idea how much later the girl came? I mean, when he ordered another drink for himself and one for her. When you thought she probably was leaving her coat at the check room?”

  “Maybe half an hour, Captain.”

  “And they were still there after one, when she refused a drink.”

  “About then, Captain. The combo plays until two, see. And we’ve got this minimum, so they don’t save anything by rushing off.”

  “What is the minimum, André?”

  After nine, when the music started, the minimum was five dollars a person. Most people went over it.

  “What do the drinks cost, André? The Scotches?”

  “Two and a half a throw. But it’s an honest two ounces, Captain.”

  “So their drinks came to fifteen dollars.”

  “Plus tax, Captain.”

&n
bsp; “Well over the minimum. I take it he paid you.”

  He had beckoned. André thought it probably had been close to two. Anyway, things had begun to slow down. André had gone to the table and given the man a check. He had been alone in the booth. André had assumed the girl had gone to the ladies’ to freshen up. The man had given him a twenty-dollar bill. He had tipped two dollars. He had remained sitting in the booth, and André had assumed he was waiting for the girl to come back.

  “Last you saw of him?”

  It had been, André said. He himself had come on early and so he got off early. At a little after two.

  “You didn’t see the girl again?”

  He had not. He had got off early and gone home by subway.

  “The man—his name was Prentis—seemed all right when he paid? Sober enough, I mean? He’d had four drinks, after all.”

  “He seemed all right. After all, Captain, they’d spaced the drinks out.”

  “Eleven-thirty or so until almost two,” Shapiro said. “Yes. You didn’t see anybody stop by the booth at any time?”

  “And stick this ice pick into him? Listen, Captain. Wouldn’t I have told you?”

  Shapiro was sure he would have. He supposed that, when the place was full, people moved around a good deal? Left their tables to go to the dance floor? Perhaps did some table-hopping?

  “Sure. They all the time bump into you if you aren’t careful.”

  “Did Mr. Prentis—the Reverend Mr. Prentis—and the girl dance?”

  André answered that merely with a shrug.

  Shapiro looked at Tony Cook and raised dark eyebrows.

  “This man was dressed just like anybody else?” Cook asked André.

  “Look,” André said, “they dress all sorts of ways. Dinner jackets even.”

  “Sure,” Tony said. “This man, André. Not dressed like a minister. I mean, black suit, turned-around collar.”

  “Just like a lot of them,” André said. “Jacket. Tweed maybe. You don’t notice too much when the lights are down. The way they are when we’re open.”

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