But Jonathan Prentis, however he had dressed at the Village Brawl, had not been just like anybody. Nathan Shapiro thought of that, sadly, as a patrol car took him and Tony Cook uptown and cross-town to West Twentieth Street, and the headquarters of Homicide South. Prentis had been important; he had been what people called a “personality.” In the early days of his revival meetings—what he had called his “gospel meetings”—the New York Times and the Daily News had carried stories about them. (The Times on the split page.) They had kept a tally of those “saved.” The first of the meetings had been carried live on the local television station, and there had been taped excerpts in news reports.
Shapiro had been vaguely conscious of this. He had not watched the telecasts. He prefers symphonies on FM radio. He had skimmed the news stories. But he knew enough about Prentis to know what was coming now. It would be, for the newspapers and radio and television reporters, a big one. And he would be in the middle of it. Oh, they would start at the top, of course—start with the assistant chief inspector in charge of the detective division. But they would work down to him. And, this time, they would discover his incompetence.
He had been a patrolman walking a beat, or riding in a patrol car, in Brooklyn. He had been a detective (3rd gr.) on a precinct squad in the Bronx. He envied the younger Nathan Shapiro who was not often thrust into situations which emphasized his inadequacy. What it comes down to, he thought, as the car turned up Eighth Avenue, I’m pretty good with a gun. That should all along have been evident to—
“A hell of a funny place for him to get it,” Tony Cook said. “A dive, really. Oh, a hell of an expensive dive. But a place that sells spirituous liquors.”
“Spirituous liquors?” Shapiro said. It didn’t sound like Tony Cook.
“What he called the stuff,” Tony said. “Very down on it last night. At the meeting, I mean. First glass of beer is the first step down to hell. Look not upon the wine when it is red. Strong drink is a mocker. Went on for maybe ten minutes. Also, cigarettes. The fumes from hell.”
Reminded, Tony Cook lighted himself a cigarette.
“And he gets himself killed in a joint with half a dozen Scotches inside him,” Cook added, when the cigarette burned evenly.
“Four,” Shapiro said. “The girl had two. From about eleven-thirty until about two, if the waiter’s right. And is spilling all he knows, of course.”
“You think he isn’t?”
“No. Everything he remembers, I think. A lot to fill in, of course.”
Which was obvious to them both. Routine would try to fill it in—the detectives of the precinct squad would try to fill it in. There was a waiter named Emile, whose station was near Booth 22. There were half a dozen other waiters. There were the bus boys and the hat-check girl. There were, if they could be tracked down, customers of the Village Brawl. (That would be pretty hopeless, except for a few who might have charge accounts; who might be known to Angelo Granzo.)
Somebody might have seen something. Might have seen a man bending into a booth. It would take a lot of detectives to find out; a lot of doorbell ringing; a lot of trudging.
“This girl who sings there,” Tony said. “Adele something.”
“Lorraine,” Shapiro said. “Adele Lorraine. Yes, up on the platform. Singing to the customers. A vantage point to see things from. A job for the precinct boys. It’s a good squad, Tony.”
Tony Cook said, “Sure,” in the tone of a man who is thinking of something else. “Speaking of girl singers—”
The car stopped in front of the West Twentieth Street station. They got out of it and the patrolman driver saluted, not very seriously. They flicked hands at him.
“Of girl singers?” Shapiro said, as they climbed a stairway.
“Rachel knows a girl who sings in the choir,” Tony said. “This revival choir. Did until last night, anyway. Not that that would get us anywhere. Somebody they hired locally. Sings in nightclubs when she can get jobs, Rachel says. Only thing is, she might know people. Probably just other choir singers. Might have heard—oh, bits and pieces floating around. Like the Reverend Prentis not being quite so holy as he made out. As he apparently wasn’t.”
“Not by his standards,” Shapiro said. “You, Tony. You know the name of this choir singer?”
Tony did not. All right, he could find out. Only—he looked at his watch. The time was eight-thirty-nine.
“She won’t like it,” he said. He was told there was no hurry; that it was a hundred to one the girl wouldn’t have anything that would help them.
“Thing is,” Tony said, “Rachel has a lot of jobs. Here, there and everywhere. Once she’s gone out she’s damn hard to catch up with.”
He spoke, Shapiro thought, from the experience of a man who has tried. He thought it understandable. Urged, Tony had brought Rachel for dinner to the Shapiro apartment in Brooklyn, and Rose had liked her. “Offbeat,” Rose had said. “Her generation is, Nathan. From the viewpoint of ours. But a nice kid, I think.”
Rose, assistant principal of a high school in Greenwich Village, was in contact with the generation which reached up toward Rachel Farmer’s. She could tell the “nice” ones from those not so nice. At any rate, Nathan Shapiro was certain she could. He has implicit confidence in Rose’s judgment. She was wrong about Nathan Shapiro, of course, but right about almost everything else. She thought Nathan was as intelligent as his father had been, which was nonsense—agreeable nonsense, but nonsense all the same. Rabbi Emmanuel Shapiro had been a great man.
Captain William Weigand, commanding, was not yet in his office at Homicide South, so Nathan Shapiro could not, once more, stress his unfitness for the investigation assigned. Shapiro went to his own small office. What had so far come through was scrappy, added little. Jonathan Prentis had been an ordained minister of the Evangelical Disciples Church; he had been fifty-one years old; he was a native of the state of Arkansas. He had attained nationwide fame as an evangelist some ten years ago; he had carried his crusade across the Atlantic five years or so later. London had been responsive, at least in attendance. Edinburgh had not. He had not preached in Paris. On the West Coast of the United States, particularly in the Los Angeles area, the crowds who went to hear him had needed police control. Chicago had been almost equally responsive, and the police had found vigorous action necessary. Nobody had been killed and only thirty or so had needed hospitalization.
He had been preaching in New York for three weeks, and last night’s meeting was to have been the last of the series. He had preached three times a week—Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays for the most part, if the New York Rangers were not playing home games.
His permanent address had been “The Tabernacle, Little Rock, Arkansas.” In New York it had been the Hotel Wexley, on Broadway in the Seventies.
He had been married, for a little more than ten years, to Hope Pruitt Prentis. They had no children.
All scrappy; all hurriedly scraped together from newspaper files and, presumably, Who’s Who in America. Not enough for a picture to form, for any coherence to form. A glossy print of a man slumped forward on a table in a restaurant booth; a close-up of a piece of wood protruding from the left side of his back. Piece of wood about three inches long, at a guess. Attached to a pointed rod about four inches long, probably. But it would, by now, have been measured. It would have been checked for fingerprints. Probably, from the photograph, without substantial result. Rough wood, from the picture. Good prints rarely come from rough wood.
Check in with Weigand, who would be in any minute, and make his pitch. And get nowhere with it and pick up Tony Cook and go up to a hotel on upper Broadway and ask people questions. His telephone rang. He said, “Shapiro,” and then, “All right, Bill. I’ll be right along.”
At his desk in the squad room, Tony Cook looked at his watch again. It still lacked several minutes of being nine in the morning. She wouldn’t be pleased. All right. Not Tony calling. Detective (1st gr.) Anthony Cook, of Homicide South.
He dialed a familiar numb
er. He listened to the signal which told him that a telephone bell was shrilling in a second-floor apartment in Gay Street. A telephone within easy reach of a wide bed. He knew. Once or twice he had had to reach for it across a long and slender girl.
The telephone rang four times. She couldn’t already be up and away. Or even up and making coffee. Or—
“’Lo?”
The voice was weighted down, blurred, by sleep.
He said, “Tony. I’m sorry as hell, but—”
“Mister,” Rachel Farmer said, “go back to sleep. It isn’t even dawn yet.”
“Darling,” Tony said, “I’m sorry as hell.”
“The thing is,” she said, and some of the sleep had gone out of her voice, “you only just left. So it can’t be—is it raining or something? It sounds as if—”
“Raining,” he said. “Reason it’s still so dark. Are you all right?”
“Mister,” Rachel said, “how can I tell? At this hour?” There was a momentary pause and a slight rustling sound. She was, he thought, sitting up in bed. He could see her sitting up in bed. It was a distracting thing to see.
“All right,” Rachel said. “I’m awake now. And, yes, I’m all right. Is that what you called up to ask me?”
“No,” he said. “A man’s been killed.”
“Not by me,” Rachel said. “Oh—anybody we know, Tony?”
“The man we heard last night,” he said. “The preacher. In a place called the Village Brawl over on Eighth Street.”
“Rather a gyp joint,” she said. “In an expensive sort of way. I wasn’t there last night, dear. You must have a very short memory.”
“No,” he said. “My memory’s fine.” He tried to remember that he was Detective (1st gr.) Anthony Cook. And to quit thinking about a girl who never wore anything at night sitting up in bed. He said, “Listen, Rachel,” and was unhappy about the sternness which seemed to have come into his voice.
“The Reverend something Prentis has been killed,” she said. “I’m listening, mister. At nine o’clock on a rainy morning when I was sound asleep.”
“I said I was sorry,” he told her. “I am sorry. Last night you said you knew a girl who sang in this revival choir.”
“When she couldn’t get nightclub spots,” Rachel said. “Yes. Jan Rushton.”
“Jan?”
“Oh, I suppose for Janet. You don’t think she killed him, do you? Because she seems to be a nice kid. I don’t know her very well, but she’s a nice blonde kid. How did this man get killed?”
“With an ice pick.”
“It doesn’t sound like her,” Rachel Farmer said. “Not at all like her. She’s too young to know about ice picks. They went out—oh, when I was a very little girl. Ages ago.”
He said, “Not ages, for God’s sake,” because Rachel’s voice—and the mental picture of her sitting up in bed—distracted him. “You’re only—”
She laughed at him, but laughed gently. She said, “It’s too early in the morning, dear. And you’re too far away. About Jan Rushton?”
He said, “A blonde? Good-looking?”
“Cute anyway. Yes, blonde hair. And blue eyes. I’ve only met her a couple of times at parties.”
“Type who would play around?”
“I wouldn’t wonder. You like little ones with blue eyes and blonde hair, Tony?”
“You know the kind—” he said, and caught himself and said, “No, Rachel,” in an impersonation of a policeman’s voice. “Do you know where she lives?”
“In Washington Place, I think. I don’t know the number. I’m not even sure it’s Washington. It could be Waverly. I told you I’ve only met her a couple of times. Listen, you were at one of the parties yourself. You must have met her.”
“I never remember little girls with blue eyes and blonde hair,” he told her, and thought, By God, recently that’s been true. “Washington Place. Or perhaps Waverly Place. Do you happen to know whether she shares the apartment, or the room or whatever, with somebody?”
“No, Tony. But she’ll have a telephone. And she’ll be in the book, because an agent might call any time and have a big offer. Is she supposed to be a witness or something?”
“I doubt it,” Tony said. “A source of information, maybe. Will you have dinner with me tonight, lady?”
“Well, we had dinner last night.”
“Last night we had hamburgers and went to be saved. Tonight?”
“Yes, mister. And there’s a movie at the Eighth Street. Seven, about?”
“If we’ve got to go to a movie,” Tony said, “and are going to have a decent dinner, six-thirty.”
She said, “All right, mister. I’ve got to put some clothes on and go out in the rain to a place full of drafts and take them off again. Six-thirty.”
There was only one Rushton, Janet, in the Manhattan book. She did live on Washington Place. But she did not answer her telephone, although he let it ring a dozen times.
He got up from his desk when Detective Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro came into the squad room. Nate looks even sadder than usual, Tony thought. He’s made his pitch to the captain—the pitch that he’ll be no good at this one. And the captain has brushed him off again. He walked toward Nathan Shapiro and Nathan raised dark eyebrows, sadly, in question.
“Name’s Janet Rushton,” Cook said. “Lives on Washington Place, down in the Village. In the phone book. Doesn’t answer the phone.”
“Probably wouldn’t have anything to tell us if she did,” Shapiro said. “You can try her again later.”
Cook followed Shapiro down the stairs from Homicide South. At the bottom of the stairs, he said, “She’s a blonde, Rachel says.”
“The town’s full of them,” Shapiro told him, and led the way into a police sedan. They went up the West Side Drive and left it at Seventy-second and went cross-town to Broadway and up it a few blocks.
The Hotel Wexley was ten stories high. It had the sedateness of age. The space in front of it was marked “Loading Area. No Parking.” There were two cruise cars and a sedan marked “Police” against the curb and the lab car double-parked outside them. The driver from the West Twentieth Street car pool pulled behind the lab car, and Shapiro and Cook got out into the rain. It was raining harder than ever. A cold wind hurled rain at them. A week ago it was supposed to start being spring, Tony thought.
There was a patrolman, dressed for the weather, outside the main door of the Hotel Wexley. He said, “Morning, sir,” to Shapiro. He said, “Sixth floor.”
The lobby was large and empty. At the far end of it an electric sign said, “Coffee Shop,” and there were a few people in it having breakfast. Outside the coffee shop a man was running a vacuum cleaner back and forth on the carpet.
Tony pushed the “up” button for an elevator—any one of four elevators. Above the elevator doors there were dials with pointers, and according to the pointers all the elevators were going up. But then, although the pointer was fixed at “10,” the door of one of the elevators slapped open and a man came out of it, preceded by a Scotty on a leash. The Scotty sniffed Shapiro’s trouser legs and then looked up and widened his mouth in what was either a snarl or a grin. He didn’t say anything. The man he was leading said, “Come on, you,” and they went toward the hotel door.
“Smelled Cleo,” Tony said as he pressed the “6” button in the car. Tony had met the Shapiros’ Scotty bitch. Shapiro said, “Mmmm,” and the car stopped and, after a pause, the door opened. A heavily built man with an unexpectedly narrow and sharp face came out of a room opposite the elevator and said, “Morning, Nate. Couple of your boys here already.”
Shapiro said, “Morning, Frank,” to Francis X. Maloney, acting captain, commanding the precinct detective squad. “Maxwell and Smith.” Maloney said, “How’s Bill Weigand?” and Shapiro said, “Fine. Up to his ears.” Maloney said, “Who isn’t?” and then waved toward the door he had come out of.
“They’ve got the whole floor,” Maloney said. “Seems to be the central offi
ce, far’s I can tell. We just got here ourselves.”
“The wife?” Shapiro said.
Maloney gestured down the corridor. He said, “Been told. One of the girls’s with her. They had separate rooms, incidentally. Opposite sides of the hall. Both corner rooms.”
“One of the girls” would be a policewoman. Probably a detective third. If that, she would do more than hold the hand of the bereaved and say, “There, there, dear.” If Mrs. Jonathan Prentis wasn’t hysterical, or otherwise in shock, the detective, third grade, would be getting information out of her.
“In there?” Shapiro said, and pointed toward the open door across from the elevators.
“A priest or something,” Maloney said. “I guess they don’t call them priests, but he’s got a priest’s collar, sort of. Chief assistant, he says he was. Name of Higgs.” He paused and shook his head. “John Wesley Higgs,” he said, and shook his head again. Then, apparently to himself, he added, “Holy Mother of God!” Once more he shook his head. “Talks like he wrote the Holy Scriptures,” he said, this time to Nathan Shapiro.
“This girl,” Shapiro said. “The one with Mrs. Prentis?”
“Name of Grace Flanders,” Maloney said. “Just made detective. Nice, hard-working kid.”
“You might go along and sit in, Tony,” Shapiro said. “Give Detective Flanders a hand if she needs one.”
Cook said, “O.K., Lieutenant,” and went off down the corridor. Shapiro said, “The setup?” to Acting Captain Maloney.
“Like I said,” Maloney told him, “we just got here. But somebody had waked up early and listened to news on the radio. And passed the word along. So, when I got here, they were popping in and out of doors and some of them were crying and saying, ‘No, no!’ That sort of thing. Must be—hell, there must be twenty of them on the floor. Maybe more. Haven’t had a chance to straighten them out. There’s a choir leader and someone they call the director and the fund chief—that’s what they call her. Kind of a treasurer or bookkeeper or something. And a lot of other women, mostly middle-aged. Secretaries, typists. I don’t know. And this man Higgs. This chief assistant.”
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