Max Hansen looked at the picture and said, “Sure. Eleven-oh-six. One egg, soft-boiled, and toast and Sanka. Seven-thirty on the dot every morning. Paid cash, like the boss wants them to. Always had change after the first morning. Always gave me a quarter. Which was ten per cent, but what the hell? It takes all kinds.”
When had this been?
Sometime late last month. Yes, the twentieth to the second would be about right. No, there wasn’t anything in particular to remember about Mr.—what was the name again? Oh, sure, Mr. Prentis. Just a nice-enough guy who always was up when his breakfast came and always said “Good morning” and had the change ready. Up and dressed? Yes. Partly dressed, anyway. Dark trousers and a white shirt. Collar attached to shirt?
“Now you mention it, mister, no. No collar on the shirt—open at the neck, as I remember. Make a difference?”
“Sometimes,” Tony told him, “Mr. Prentis wore clericals. Like a priest. Have to button the collars on separately. At least, I suppose they do.”
Max Hansen shook his head. He didn’t know—just thought it was that kind of shirt.
“Anything else you do remember?” Tony asked him. “I know it was a good while ago and that you take a lot of breakfasts up. Anything at all? I mean, he was always up and had trousers and shirt on. Never—well, never any sign of a hangover? Anything like that?”
“No. Nice clean gentleman. Always shaved, which mostly they aren’t at that time in the morning. Smelled of after-shave lotion part of the time. Nice clean old boy.”
Hansen had been sitting on a chair with its back to the window, Tony Cook on a straight desk chair. Tony got up from his chair and said, “Thanks, Mr. Hansen. Sorry to have barged in on your rest time.”
Max Hansen stood up too. He was a little heavy, but he had quick, neat movements.
Tony Cook reached for the doorknob, which he could do without moving, so small was the room. He stopped with his hand on the knob and turned back.
He said, “This after-shave lotion you smelled. Sure it was that, Mr. Hansen?”
Hansen shrugged his shoulders. He said, “What else?”
“Not a woman’s perfume?”
“The maids aren’t supposed—” Hansen said and stopped. He said, “I see what you mean. No, I wouldn’t think so. Not that kind of a man, from what I saw of him. Anyway, this isn’t that kind of hotel, mister.”
“Any man can be that kind of man,” Tony said. “And any hotel—well, no hotel can make people moral. And this one, like most nowadays, has elevators people operate themselves. And I imagine there aren’t too many people in the lobby late at night.”
“No. Our guests turn in early, mostly. But I still think Mr. Prentis wasn’t that kind of man. Didn’t you say he was a clergyman or something?”
“Yes. It could have been a woman’s perfume? This after-shave lotion.”
“Well,” Hansen said, “Along about then I had a cold, sort of. Nasty weather we were having.”
“Yes,” Tony said. “It sure was, Mr. Hansen. This room eleven-oh-six. One bed in it, or two?”
“Single room,” Hansen said. “Double bed.” He suddenly snapped his fingers. “I remember now,” he said. “When I’d bring his breakfast up, the bed was always smoothed out. Not made up, you know what I mean. Just spread up, sorta.”
7
Tony couldn’t see that he had very much. He couldn’t see that he had anything. The Reverend Mr. Jonathan Prentis had stayed a couple of weeks at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. He had Room 1106 and had paid twenty-two dollars a day for it. He had been a neat man who used after-shave lotion and spread his bed up before the waiter brought his breakfast, which consisted of one soft-boiled egg and toast and Sanka. He had had breakfast every morning at seven-thirty, which, presumably, meant that his search for wickedness in Greenwich Village had not required late hours, when wickedness might be most expected to prevail. No photographer named Marvin Resnik had been registered at the hotel at the same time. (Tony had had to make a return trip to the desk to check that out.)
It wasn’t raining when Tony went out of the hotel into Fifth Avenue. When he crossed Ninth Street, walking toward the Square, the wind was brisk through it from the northwest, and the sky that way was beginning to brighten. It would be cold tonight, but it wouldn’t be raining.
It’s as short a way as any other to the subway, Tony thought, and walked along Washington Square, against the wind, and turned to his left and then to his right and found the number he was looking for in Washington Place. It was the number of a three-story brick building with half a dozen worn sandstone steps leading up to a doorway. Rather a good doorway, Tony thought. The house was one which had once, a good many years ago, been a private house. It would be converted to apartments now—floor through, perhaps. Perhaps two to a floor.
Four name slots on the wall in the entry hall. Four mailboxes and four bell buttons. Basement apartment, apparently. It would be at garden level. “Janet Rushton” on the top floor. Only her name in the slot. Tony rang the doorbell above her name. He rang it twice, like a postman. He waited to be spoken to through the grill above the button and was not. Nor did the inner door of the entry hall clatter at him. He tried again, after giving Janet Rushton time to finish whatever she was doing. Nothing came of that. He looked through the grill of her mailbox. She hadn’t picked up her mail.
It didn’t matter. It was a hundred to one that she would have nothing to tell them. Probably it was a thousand to one. She might, conceivably, be a peephole into the Mission of Redemption, Inc.—a peephole from outside. He’d give her another ring later.
He went down the sandstone steps and walked west, across Sixth Avenue, and on to Sheridan Square. He rode up to Twenty-third on a local and walked down to West Twentieth and up stairs to the squad room of Homicide South. He checked on Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro and found he wasn’t in his office and typed out his own report. He finished it at five o’clock and checked out and took a taxi home, since he had a date at six-thirty—a date which required a second shave and a shower and a suit just back from the cleaners.
Nathan Shapiro climbed familiar stairs out of a subway station in Brooklyn and walked familiar streets. He stopped to buy the latest edition of the New York Post (“Evangelist Slain! Story on Page 3.”)
Cleo heard his footfalls on the staircase and barked excitement and jumped against the door to hurry him. Which meant, by the pattern of the little Scotty’s behavior, that Rose wasn’t home yet and that Cleo was lonely. And, of course, starving. And probably wanted to go out for a walk.
Shapiro let himself in and, when Cleo jumped up to him, caught her and held her in his arms for a moment and told her that she was a good dog and that he would feed her as soon as he got his raincoat off. He got his raincoat off and hung it in the closet, and Cleo spoke sharply from the kitchen, wanting to know what was keeping him from a matter of utmost importance. He fed Cleo, who ate eagerly and didn’t say anything, after she had finished, about going out. Which, Nathan thought, was just as well. He took his jacket off and unstrapped his gun and put it on its shelf and put his jacket back on again and sat in front of the fireplace, which was only an electric heater, whatever its pretense. He looked at the portrait of his father over the fireplace. He felt that Rabbi Emmanuel Shapiro was looking down at him. Probably with disappointment.
He would be justified, Nathan thought. I’m out of my depth, as always. As always, I’m the wrong man for the job Bill Weigand’s given me. These are people I am incapable of understanding; people who are alien to me as I am to them. It is not that their faith is different from my faith. I am not one of those Jews who must always remember his Jewishness. As many of our friends are Christians as are Jews. No issue arises.
But these people are violent in their belief. Their religious belief is like a rushing wind on which they ride and with which they buffet. I am incapable of understanding people like these—like Higgs and this Mrs. Mathews, who thinks that the smoke from a cigarette is the smoke from hell
. Quite literally, probably. Not a pallid thing like a hazard to your health. A sinful thing.
Nathan Shapiro lighted a cigarette and wished Rose would come home. Rose sustains him. He got up from the sofa in front of the fireplace and turned on all the lights in the living room. Although it was not cold in the room, he switched on the electric element in the fireplace. It was not cold, but he felt the dreariness of cold.
The afternoon had got him nowhere. The Reverend Higgs had, of course, known that Prentis, that the Voice, had come east earlier than the others and had stayed downtown at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, not at the Wexley with himself and Acton and Farmington and Humphrey. There was nothing unusual about it. He often came early to the scene of their meetings; came to “prepare himself.” Came to seek out sin that he might destroy it; came to withdraw himself in prayer. Yes, it was not unusual for him to go alone. “Into the wilderness.” That had seemed to Shapiro an unusual way to describe the kind of hotel Tony Cook said the Fifth Avenue was, but Higgs and the others spoke an unusual language.
Higgs had not visited the Voice at the downtown hotel. He had devoted himself to his duties. “Did my little for the cause we serve.” He supposed that Prentis might have made contacts—“with the unsaved”—during his week of preparing himself. He knew nothing of that.
Theodore Acton had made Prentis’s reservation at the Fifth Avenue and taken him there in the rented limousine and made sure that the room was ready. On March second, after the chartered plane had arrived, he had sent the car down to bring Prentis to the Wexley. Yes, Mrs. Prentis had come with the main body. She usually did. Acton had not seen Prentis during the ten days before the meetings began at the Garden.
Neither had Farmington. Farmington had been busy getting his choir together and into shape.
Marvin Resnik, the photographer, had spent his time shooting pictures of sinful places. Forty-second Street. Sure. The Bowery. Some shots of Harlem and some in the East Bronx. Nothing in Greenwich Village. He hadn’t known that the Voice was staying at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. He knew what was wanted without being told. He’d made, maybe, a dozen films. They didn’t use the same one at every gospel meeting.
It had been a wasted afternoon. It had, in fact, been a wasted day. He—
Rose’s key scraped in the lock. He walked across the room to meet her, and she looked up at him and said, “You’re tired, Nathan. Have you had your wine? I’m sorry I’m late, dear.”
He bent down to kiss her and, as their lips met, relaxation ran through his mind. He sighed his relaxation, and she pushed him a little way from her and looked up at him. She looked at him for seconds. She said, “You’re very tired, Nathan. They make you work too hard and start your work too early on a rainy morning.”
He smiled down at her. He said, “Yes, tired, I suppose. And out of my depth, Rose. Way out of my depth.”
She smiled, too. There was gentle amusement in her smile. She said, “Of course you are, Nathan. Or think you are. Sit down and I’ll get us drinks.”
She watched him, obedient, go back to the sofa in front of the fireplace. She started toward the kitchen and he said, “I think I’ll have a Scotch and water tonight. A very small Scotch and water.”
She stopped in surprise and turned to look at him. She said, “Of course, darling,” and went on, thinking that it must have indeed been a very bad day. He looked at the glowing coils in the fireplace and looked up at the portrait of his father. He thought, “I’m sorry, Papa,” and heard the clatter of ice as Rose stirred her martini. She brought their drinks in on a tray and put the tray down on the table between sofa and fireplace. They lifted drinks.
“People I don’t understand,” he said. “People I’ll never understand, Rose.”
“I know,” Rose said. “It was in the paper. And you told me a little this morning. Evangelists are hard to understand. I realize that. The prophets must have been, dear. They’re people, like all of us. You have great understanding of people.”
She raised her glass to the portrait of Rabbi Emmanuel Shapiro. She said, “As your father had.”
Always, Nathan Shapiro thought, she tries to buoy me up. Always she refuses to accept what is obviously true. He took a sip from his glass. His stomach probably was going to be very annoyed.
“Painters you didn’t understand,” she said. “And another time it was theater people you couldn’t understand. And both times you understood in the end. Don’t you remember that, darling?”
“It was luck,” he said. “I bungle into things sometimes. I suppose that’s why they never learn.”
The “they” were, Rose knew, the superior officers in the Police Department, City of New York. The ones who kept giving him jobs for which he was unfit. She put her glass down on the table and reached across and put her hand on the back of his. She left it there only for a moment and picked up her glass again. “Why whisky tonight, Nathan? Instead of the wine?”
“Reaction, I suppose,” he said. “I’ve been—oh, I feel I’ve been preached at all day. I haven’t been but—oh, it was in the air. Tony Cook lighted a cigarette while he was asking one of them some questions and got a tirade. Also, wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging.”
“Ours, actually,” Rose said. “From Proverbs. But theirs too, of course. Is the Scotch raging, Nathan?”
“Only a little bitter,” Nathan said. “It’s only that—well, that they take it so hard. Belief ought to be—oh, a tranquil thing. Something accepted. Or, of course, not accepted. Not something to rant about.”
She shook her head.
“There are ranters in all religions,” she said. “In our own. Jews picket the Israeli mission to the United Nations because autopsies are permitted in Tel Aviv. Arabs declare a holy war against us. Buddhists set themselves on fire. People aren’t rational, Nathan. Except—what do the Quakers say?—except me and thee. But that’s wrong, I have no doubts about thee. Where was I? I meant to say something.”
“That there are ranters in all religious faiths,” Nathan said. “That reason is a rarity. That you and I—oh, and others; most people we know, actually—are rational. But we aren’t very religious, are we? We belong to a congregation. We observe ancient forms. But with people like these, belief is—oh, a violence. I’m uneasy with violence, Rose.”
“And very philosophical this evening,” Rose said. “And, you tell me so yourself, very handy with a gun.”
He laughed, suddenly. It was a low laugh; almost a contented laugh.
“Violence against the violent,” he said. “You let me wander on, dear. I count on that.”
“And I on what you call your wandering,” Rose said. “Finish your drink, dear, while I get us something to eat. Out of the freezer, I’m afraid, because I was so late.” She finished her own drink and stood up. “It will be something kosher,” she said, and, gently, laughed down at him.
He smiled up at her and nodded his head. Then he reached a hand out and took her nearest hand and held it for a moment.
He looked with some surprise at his still almost-full glass. He lifted it and tasted again. Not as good as the sweet wine he usually drank. Sharp. Almost harsh. Conceivably, he was carrying reaction to sumptuary laws to an extreme. He sipped again. On the other hand, the results were pleasant and his stomach did not seem unduly resentful.
It was a little after seven and they had almost finished dinner, which was as kosher as it needed to be—and before which each had had two relaxing, and therefore sinful, drinks—when the telephone rang.
They were finishing coffee at a little after eight, which was early, but Rachel still was holding out for the movie at the Eighth Street Playhouse. They were in a booth in the café section of Charles Restaurant, and curtains were draped down on either side of them which looked as if they might be drawn for seclusion but in fact could not be. On the wall above them was an extremely opulent nude within a heavy gold frame. On the wall above the booth opposite them, which could seat eight and at the moment was doing it, there was another
nude, reclining, with a man in the evening dress of the eighteenth century sitting stiffly beside her and looking fixedly in the wrong direction.
Tony Cook was lighting Rachel’s cigarette and leaning across the table to do it—and thinking that going to a movie was a hell of a way to waste an evening—when Monsieur Michel came to the booth and stood in view. Monsieur Michel had been “Mike” before Charles reverted to La Belle Epoque. Tony said, “Yes, Mike?”
“Sorry,” Mike said, and sounded it—“sorry, but there’s a telephone call for you, Mr. Cook.”
Which could mean only one thing, and Tony said, “Damn it to hell,” and began to edge out of the booth. Rachel, who also knew what it meant, said, “Damn it for me, too,” and began to pull up to her shoulders the wrap she was sitting on. She was wearing a black dress which clung to her and moved with her movements. Most becomingly. Tony looked down at her for a second and shook his head and sighed and followed Monsieur Michel toward the telephone.
He was not gone long. When he came back Rachel, with her coat on, was standing outside the booth, and a waiter was beside her, adding up the bill. He put the bill down on the table and Tony put money on it, and they walked out of the café section and past the bar and into Sixth Avenue.
“I take it,” Rachel said, “that the evening’s shot, Tony. You don’t need to take me home.”
She said this because he had waved a taxi down and was leading her toward it. She said, “It’s only a few blocks. The taxi will take twice as long as walking.”
But she got into the taxi. He told the driver Gay Street, and the driver had never heard of it and it had to be explained, and the driver said, “O.K., mister,” in a somewhat surly tone. It wasn’t a long haul; not long enough. He probably was missing a chance to get something decent on the meter. Rachel looked at Tony and waited.
“This girl you knew,” Tony said. “The one who sang in Prentis’s choir. She’s dead, Rachel. Anyway, somebody’s dead in her apartment. Has been since sometime this morning. Maybe late last night. She was found a couple of hours ago. Somebody finally put things together and passed the word. That was Shapiro who called.”
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