“A place to start,” Shapiro said, and went across the corridor. He partly closed the open door to the “central office.” On the outside of it there was a metal plaque, supported by a chain. It read: “The Reverend Jonathan Prentis. Minister of the Gospel. Come Unto Jesus.”
Shapiro went into the room.
It was, apparently, the living room of a suite. There were doors on either side, both closed. It appeared to have been refurnished as an office. The desk was an office desk; the steel filing cabinet at right angles to it was an office filing cabinet. The man sitting behind the desk was a small man in clericals—a small, thin man with a narrow face and eyes set narrowly together. His clerical collar was, Shapiro thought, large for him—large by at least two sizes. Threatened, Shapiro thought, the Reverend Higgs could retract his head into the collar.
Maloney said, “This is Lieutenant Shapiro, Reverend. From the Homicide Squad. This is the Reverend Higgs, Nate. He feels we must have made a mistake.”
Shapiro said, “Mistake?” and pulled a chair up and sat facing John Wesley Higgs across the desk. “How a mistake, Mr. Higgs?”
“In identifying the man who has been killed as the Reverend Prentis,” Higgs said. He had a harsh, somewhat croaking voice. “He would never have been in a—a nightclub. Where liquor is served. Where lasciviousness is permitted.”
Shapiro repeated “lasciviousness?” with a rising inflection.
“Dancing,” Higgs said, and on that word his voice seemed harsher. “Have you been saved, Lieutenant?”
“Not in the sense you mean, Mr. Higgs,” Shapiro said. “Or that I take it you mean. I am a Jew, Mr. Higgs. My father was a rabbi.”
Which has nothing to do with anything, Nathan Shapiro thought. Except my being the wrong man for this job.
“God’s mercy encompasseth all of His children,” Higgs said, apparently in consolation.
Shapiro said, “Mmmm.” He said, “I’m afraid there’s no real doubt about the identification, Mr. Higgs. Unless, of course, somebody had stolen Mr. Prentis’s wallet and all his papers. We don’t think it was that way, Mr. Higgs. A tall man with dark hair, Mr. Prentis? Handsome in an austere sort of way?”
“He is a man of God, Lieutenant,” Higgs said. “I suppose he could be described as you describe him. But he would never have gone to a place like that. That is beyond belief. I have known him since we were young men together, working together in the vineyards. He would never enter a place of iniquity.”
Acting Captain Maloney had not come into the room with Shapiro. He had closed the door after Shapiro and remained in the corridor. Now he opened the door and leaned in. He said, “Fingerprint boys have finished up, Nate. Plenty to match the ones they brought with them.”
“The ones from the corpse?” Shapiro said and was looked at in surprise.
“Sure,” Maloney said. “What the hell, Nate?”
“Mr. Higgs seems to feel we’ve made a mistake in identity,” Shapiro said. “That Mr. Prentis would never have been in a place like the Village Brawl.”
“Well,” Maloney said, “he sure as hell was.”
He went back out into the corridor and closed the door.
“So, Mr. Higgs,” Shapiro said. “There can’t be any doubt, can there? Not with papers and now fingerprints matching. So he was there, Mr. Higgs. And was killed there.”
Higgs shook his head. He said again that it was beyond belief. His voice remained harsh, but it was less emphatic.
Shapiro waited.
“Unless,” Higgs said, and shook his head again. He did not go on for several seconds and Shapiro said, “Yes, Mr. Higgs?”
“Our mission takes us often into strange places,” Higgs said. “For the salvation of souls. Into the homes of the rich and of the poor. Even, sometimes, into places of degradation. Such as this—what was the name of this place?”
“It’s called the Village Brawl,” Shapiro said.
“It wasn’t clear on the radio,” Higgs said. “Or, if I heard it, I couldn’t believe it.”
Shapiro had had a little difficulty in believing it himself when he had answered his telephone in the Brooklyn apartment.
“The name of it,” he told Higgs, who kept on shaking his head. “A restaurant and nightclub. Rather large. Quite expensive. Operated legally. At least, we’ve had no complaints about it. You mean Mr. Prentis might have—” He groped momentarily for words. “Might have gone there with someone whose soul needed saving? Or—gone to preach there?”
“To wrest a soul from the devil,” Higgs said. “He was a man of God. We are called sometimes to strange places, Lieutenant. Into sordid places. To wrestle with the devil in places where he reigns. It is the only explanation. Yes, that is believable. Was he alone in this place of evil?”
“Apparently not,” Shapiro said. “According to one of the waiters, he had a young woman with him. For part of the time, anyway.”
“A woman of the streets,” Higgs said. “Whom he was seeking to turn from her evil ways.”
“We don’t know who she was,” Shapiro said. “Or what kind she was. He had a few drinks with her. That we do know.”
“No,” Higgs said. “That cannot be. It is a sin to drink spirituous liquors. Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging. That is from Scripture. Proverbs nineteen, verse one.”
“Proverbs twenty, I think,” Nathan told him. “But no doubt you’re right. And the waiter may, of course, have been mistaken.”
The blood tests wouldn’t be; the blood tests would show alcohol. But there was nothing to be gained by pointing this out to the small, harsh-voiced man of faith.
“Mr. Prentis had a meeting last night,” Shapiro said. “At Madison Square Garden. Were you there, Mr. Higgs?”
“Of course. I was always with him. It was a magnificent meeting, Lieutenant. A hundred and ninety-six came forward to accept Christ. Little children. And men and women long steeped in sin. There was rejoicing in heaven.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “The meeting lasted until about when, Mr. Higgs?”
“About ten, I think.”
“Then?”
Higgs shook his head.
“What did Mr. Prentis do then?” Shapiro said. “If you know.”
“Oh,” Higgs said. “We came back here. Back to the hotel. The Reverend Prentis and Mr. Farmington and I.”
“By taxi?”
“In the limousine, of course. The one we rent. The strain of the meetings, the exaltation of the meetings, drain the Reverend Prentis.” He paused for a moment. “Drained,” he said. “If it is true that he has passed on.”
“I’m afraid it is,” Shapiro said. “Came back here, the three of you in the car. Then?”
“I retired,” Higgs said. He gestured toward one of the doors. He said, “My bedroom is there. Mr. Farmington has the other room.” He motioned toward the other door.
“Mr. Farmington?”
“The choir leader. And the soloist. He was, I think, a singer in the opera before he found salvation. He is a man of dedication.”
“Last night,” Shapiro said. “Did he go to bed too, Mr. Higgs?”
“I believe he stopped downstairs for a cup of coffee,” Higgs said. “He sometimes does.”
“And Mr. Prentis himself?”
“He said good night, as he always did. He said, ‘May God watch over you.’ He went down toward his room.”
“He was still in uni—I mean in clerical clothing?”
“Yes. He wore it at all times, of course. As an outward demonstration of his inward dedication.”
“He was an ordained minister?”
“Certainly. We graduated from the seminary together. Were ordained at the same time.”
“In what congregation?” Nathan Shapiro asked, and thought that that probably was the wrong word. “Denomination, I mean.”
“Evangelical Disciples, Lieutenant. We believe Holy Scripture to be the Word of God.” He looked at Shapiro rather sharply. “In all respects,” he said. “We are what so
me more frivolous call fundamentalists.”
“You’d worked with Mr. Prentis for many years? Since you both were ordained?”
That was not entirely true. They had drifted apart for a time. Higgs had been “called” to a small church in southern Arkansas. Prentis to a considerably larger one in Tennessee. Prentis had, after a few years as pastor of his church, embarked on his “evangelical mission.”
“I sought at one time to follow in his footsteps,” Higgs said. “I had not his gifts. I heard him preach in—Memphis, I think it was. I asked whether I could not aid him. He permitted it. That was many years ago.”
Shapiro said he saw. He said, “According to Captain Maloney, you were his chief assistant.”
“Ours is a large mission,” Higgs said. “There are many details. I helped with those. Tried to spare him those.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “How, Mr. Higgs? I’m just trying to get the picture. Arranged transportation? That sort of thing?”
“No,” Higgs said. “Those matters are in the hands—the very capable hands, Lieutenant—of Theodore Acton. I helped him with his sermons. With the articles he wrote for newspapers and magazines. In a most modest way. The inspiration was always his, of course.”
Higgs was, Shapiro thought, making rather a point of his unimportance, of the smallness of his contribution.
“His was the voice,” Higgs said, adding to it. “The inspiring Voice.” His inflection supplied a capital to “voice.”
And yours the words? Shapiro wondered, and thought it could make no difference.
“To get back to last night,” he said. “Mr. Prentis went to his room. He was still in clericals, of course. You went to bed. And to sleep at once?”
“Almost.”
“Mr. Farmington? You said he stayed downstairs for coffee. Did you hear him come in?”
“No. He would have moved very quietly. He is a considerate man.”
“By the way,” Shapiro said. “Where is he now, do you know?”
“One of us was asked to go with the police to identify—identify Mr. Prentis,” Higgs said. “They suggested Mrs. Prentis, but she was in no condition to undertake so shattering a task. So it was agreed that the duty—the sad duty—should devolve on Mr. Farmington.”
A wordy man, Shapiro thought. But he knew nothing about men like this.
“Speaking of Mrs. Prentis,” he said. “I understand she and Mr. Prentis have separate rooms here? Across the hall? Something like that?”
“Yes. They are devoted, of course. But it is often necessary for the Reverend Prentis to withdraw for prayer. For contemplation.”
“So,” Shapiro said, “you last saw Mr. Prentis walking down the corridor toward his room. He was then in his clerical costume. Clothes, I mean. Did you actually see him go into his room?”
Higgs had not.
“He might, I suppose, have gone into his wife’s room, across the hall?”
Higgs did not know. He thought Prentis usually went directly to his own room after a service. “To rest and pray.” He might, of course, have gone to his wife’s room the night before.
“To reassure himself about her health. She was not feeling well yesterday. Otherwise, of course, she would have attended last night’s meeting. She is a devoted Christian woman.”
“Sick yesterday?”
“Oh, no more than a cold,” Higgs said. “She finds this climate difficult, I’m afraid.”
“So do I,” Shapiro said. “You—I mean the whole—” He paused. Mission? Troupe? He gave it up and said, “Lot of you were going on from here to Chicago?”
“In April we take our mission there,” Higgs said. “Were to have taken it there. But now—” He raised narrow shoulders under his black coat. His head did somewhat recede into his collar with the movement. And a kind of blankness came into his eyes.
Shapiro said, “Yes,” in a tone of sympathy. He said, “Mr. Prentis was dressed casually when he was killed, as I understand it. In a sports jacket and slacks. Did he often dress that way?”
“At home sometimes, I believe. Never on his ministry. At least, I never saw him dressed that way. A sports jacket and slacks? That is what you said?”
“Yes. The usual question, Mr. Higgs. Did Mr. Prentis have any enemies? Anyone who might—”
“Satan was his enemy,” Higgs said. “By all the godly he was loved.”
The harsh voice was emphatic, almost peremptory.
It seemed improbable to Shapiro that Satan would have used an ice pick. In any event, Satan was outside his jurisdiction.
“You probably have a good many things to do,” he told the Reverend Mr. Higgs. “We’ll want to talk to you again, probably.”
“My hands will not be idle,” Higgs told him.
But they still were when Shapiro went out of the room. Higgs was sitting at the desk. His hands were spread out on the desk. He was looking down at them.
Shapiro turned at the door and looked back at John Wesley Higgs. The emphasis has all gone out of him, Shapiro thought. He seems to have grown smaller. The hands he stares down at have become useless hands, their task completed. More than a man died this morning, Shapiro thought. For this man who is still alive a future died.
5
Shapiro walked down the corridor to have a look at Jonathan Prentis’s room. It was already being looked at by Detective (2nd gr.) Carl Maxwell and a man from the precinct squad. Acting Captain Maloney was watching them.
They were laying shirts and handkerchiefs and socks and underwear on one of the twin beds. They were laying clothes from a closet on the other. The clothes were dark and clerical-looking. Shapiro did not see any sports jacket. The one he had been stabbed in, Shapiro thought, must have been the only one he had brought east—the one he had counted on to prevent his being recognized in a public place, or at least in a place no more public than a dimly lighted nightclub in the Village. Where a customer could be even less visible in a booth.
“Sure had a lot of clothes for a man in his trade,” Maloney said. “Nothing in any of the pockets we’ve found so far.” He took an envelope out of his jacket pocket. It was sealed and Maloney had written his name and rank and the date on the face of it.
“Six hundred and forty-five dollars in bills under a pile of handkerchiefs,” he said. “Hell of a place to leave that much.”
Shapiro said, “Yes.”
“Get any place with this Higgs?”
“Not especially. That Mrs. Prentis’s room?” He gestured toward the door across the hall.
Maloney said, “Yeah,” and the door opened and Tony Cook came out and shut it after him. He shrugged his shoulders.
“This Flanders kid is a good kid,” he said. “Didn’t need any help from me. And didn’t get much, probably because there isn’t much to get.”
What Detective Grace Flanders had got was that Mrs. Prentis had not seen her husband since about six o’clock the evening before. Then she had had dinner with him in her room. On the nights of meetings the Reverend Jonathan Prentis ate very little, and often it was served to both of them in one of their rooms. He had left her about six-thirty and gone to his own room. “‘To pray and prepare himself’ is the way she puts it,” Tony said. She had taken aspirin. “She’s got a pretty bad cold.” She had read for a time. “From the Scriptures.” Mrs. Mathews had come in at, she thought about eight-thirty to see if she needed anything.
“Mrs. Mathews?” Shapiro said to Maloney.
“Head secretary,” Maloney said. “General factotum, way I get it. She’s around somewhere. Was, anyway.”
If she had been, she would be. People would not have been encouraged to drift away.
“This Mrs. Mathews gave her a sleeping pill,” Tony Cook said. “Insisted that she take it, Mrs. Prentis says, ‘I knew it was sinful, but I felt so wretched.’” She did not know when she had fallen asleep, but thought it was soon after she had taken the pill. “Nembutal, grain and a half,” Tony said. “Mrs. Mathews left the bottle.”
; Mrs. Prentis had been wakened at a little after eight, by Mrs. Mathews.
“She told me she had bad news,” Hope Prentis had told Detective Flanders and, later, Tony Cook. “Dreadful news. That Jonathan had had an accident. That—”
She had broken up then, telling Cook of her wakening.
“She seems to be taking it hard?” Shapiro asked.
“Crying a good deal,” Cook said. “Shaking, sort of. Yes, I guess she’s had a jolt.”
Shapiro raised his eyebrows.
“All right,” Tony said. “I wouldn’t say she’s prostrated, or anything like that. More sort of dazed, maybe.” Shapiro waited. “Well,” Tony said, “sort of dopey. As if, maybe, she’d taken another sleeping pill before Miss Flanders got there and it had begun to take effect. But that’s only guessing.”
“She was asleep when her husband came back last night? He didn’t—oh, look in to see how she was? Since she was under the weather?”
“If he did, he didn’t wake her up. Anyway, that’s what she says.”
“She has got a cold?”
“Yeah. Sneezing. Runny eyes. I wouldn’t say she had pneumonia or anything like that. Head cold. Able to be up and about if she wanted to be up and about.” He paused. Then he nodded his head.
“Incidentally,” he said, “she’s a blonde, Lieutenant. And about thirty, at a guess. A lot younger than the Reverend Prentis was, I’d think.”
“He was fifty-one,” Shapiro said. “Pretty, Mrs. Prentis?”
“Nobody’s pretty with a head cold,” Tony said. “But, yes, I’d call her that. She’s got on a long-sleeved nightgown that comes up to her chin, pretty near. And she’s in bed with a blanket pulled up, so I don’t know about the rest of her. But she’s got sort of a pretty face, and she’s a hell of a lot younger than Prentis was.”
“And,” Shapiro said, “you don’t like her, do you, Tony?”
“Well,” Tony said, “call her not my type, Lieutenant.”
“Or believe her?”
“Well,” Tony said, “there’s nothing wrong with the way she tells it. And a grain and a half would put her pretty well out. Particularly if she’s not in the habit of taking the stuff. Could have been the way she says.”
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