“If you don’t you don’t,” Shapiro said. “Sorry to have waked you up, Mr. Schmidt.”
Schmidt went out of the office. He didn’t hurry to the door. He did walk a little as if his feet hurt. But after all he was a waiter. Probably his feet hurt most of the time.
“Priests do go to Charles,” Tony said. “Did in the old days. Food’s good there, and they like to go where the food’s good. Like they say about truck drivers.”
Shapiro was thinking, disconsolately, that, as usual, he wasn’t getting anywhere. Then he heard Tony’s last sentence and looked up at him and shook his head.
“Eating places along highways,” Tony said. “If truck drivers stop at them, the food’s good, people keep saying. Which is a lot of baloney, actually. They stop where there’s room to park their rigs. Who next, Nate?”
“Granzo, I think,” Shapiro said, and Tony went to get Granzo. He came back with him. Granzo was very neat in a blue suit which was fitted in at the waist. He looked sleepy.
He had never seen the man in either photograph. At least, he didn’t remember ever seeing him.
“Thing is,” Granzo said. “He looks like you could see him and not see him. Know what I mean?”
“Yes,” Shapiro said.
“If he had that collar on, like a priest’s collar,” Granzo said, “and came in to the Brawl I’d remember him. Because priests don’t. Anyway, I wouldn’t want them to, know what I mean? Because they’d make some people feel they oughtn’t to have a good time.”
“But you don’t remember him dressed either way? Last Wednesday night? Thursday morning? At the restaurant?”
“No. Was he there, you think? He could have been, maybe, because we had a rush. With this—this man got killed?”
“We don’t know,” Shapiro said. “We’re trying to find out. Anyway, you don’t remember him?”
“No. How tall is he?”
“Not tall. Five six. Maybe only five five.”
Granzo looked for a moment like a man in thought. But then he shook his head.
“All right,” Shapiro said. “Sorry we had to wake you up, Mr. Granzo.”
“All the time people wake me up,” Granzo said. “So I get waked up.”
“André Brideaux,” Shapiro said, when Granzo had gone. Tony got Brideaux.
Brideaux wore a sports jacket with a good deal of green in it and dark slacks and a sports shirt which was all green. And he looked at both pictures carefully and shook his head over both. He said, “Same man, isn’t it, m’sieu?” He was told it was the same man. “No, m’sieu, I guess not,” and then, “He a tall man?”
“About your height,” Shapiro said.
“Seems like I saw a man dressed that way,” Brideaux said. “Ordinary collar, though. Standing just inside the door and looking around, the way they do sometimes. Wondering if it’s going to cost too much. Sometimes they just look around and go out. Sometimes a man and a woman come in together and look the place over and decide it looks too rich for their blood. Or’s too noisy or something. Sometimes I figure the man comes in alone first and sometimes the woman does.”
“Wednesday night,” Shapiro said. “Could it have been Wednesday night you saw a man dressed the way this man is? Dark suit? Dark tie? Man about five feet six?”
“M’sieu,” André said, “I know what night you mean. The night this guy got killed. Been jammed up ever since. People are morbid, sort of.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “The man you saw. He may have been this man?”
“Could be. Could not be. That’s all I can tell you, m’sieu. Maybe yes. Maybe no.”
“Stood inside the door and looked around,” Shapiro said. “Come in and get a table? Or go out, the way you say some of them do?”
“M’sieu, I was working. We were busy. I don’t know what he did.”
“Before or after you seated Mr. Prentis?”
Brideaux shook his head hopelessly.
“Before or after the girl joined Mr. Prentis in the booth?”
Brideaux shook his head again. He said, “M’sieu, I told you I couldn’t say it was this man. Just a not very tall man, like me, in a dark suit. Could have been anybody. Town’s full of men like that.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “Thanks for coming in, Mr. Brideaux. Sorry to have waked you up. Brought you all the way down here.”
“It’s O.K.,” Brideaux said. “Anyway, I guess you had to.”
“We’re not getting much of anywhere, are we?” Tony Cook said after Brideaux had gone out of the office.
Shapiro’s face drooped. He shook his head. He said, “The doorman. What’s his name, Tony?”
“Believe it or not, he says it’s Rex Prince.”
“I’ll try to believe it,” Shapiro said. “Bring him in, Tony.”
The doorman was as tall as Tony Cook and almost as broad of shoulder. He was young. He had a pleasant, squarish face. Shapiro said, “Mr. Prince?” and the man smiled and said, “Rex Prince, sir. You can blame my parents.”
There seemed to be no answer to that except an agreeing smile and a nod of the head. Shapiro provided both. He opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a photograph of Janet Rushton and put it where Prince could see it. He said, “Remember ever seeing this girl, Mr. Prince?”
Prince picked the photograph up and looked at it and said, “She’s good-looking, isn’t she? Looks kind of familiar. An actress, or something?”
“She was a singer,” Shapiro said, and Prince looked down at him and said, “Was, Lieutenant?”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “She’s dead, Mr. Prince.”
“Pity,” Prince said. “Good-looking girl. Never sang at the Brawl that I know of.”
“No,” Shapiro said. “I don’t know that she ever did. But—you connect her with the restaurant?”
Prince shrugged his broad shoulders. He said, “Sort of, maybe. Could be she’s in one of my classes, but that doesn’t seem right. Maybe I just went some place she was singing.”
“Classes?” Shapiro said.
“N.Y.U.,” Prince said. “I go there daytimes. Nights I get people taxis. Pretty sure it isn’t at the university I saw her. If I ever did see her. If she’s not—if she wasn’t—just a pretty girl like—” He stopped abruptly. He said, “Wait a minute.”
Shapiro waited less than a minute.
“Taxi,” Prince said. “That’s it. I got her a taxi and she gave me a dollar. Usually it’s a quarter. Sometimes with women just a dime. Couple or three nights ago, I think it was.”
“At the restaurant?”
“Sure. Hey, it was the night this man got killed. That’s the night it was.”
“Tell me about it, Mr. Prince,” Shapiro said. “I suppose she came out of the restaurant and—”
She had come out of the restaurant and come out alone. Prince couldn’t be sure about the time. Perhaps it had been one-thirty or thereabouts. It had, he was certain, been before the time people began to crowd out of the Village Brawl, as they did after two, when the band stopped playing.
It was unusual for a woman to come out alone, but it was not unprecedented.
“Sometimes they have quarrels with the guys they’re with. Sometimes, I guess the guys get drunk. So they walk out.”
Usually they got taxis; if they were in their right mind they got taxis. “Women don’t walk around here much at night if they’ve got sense. Not alone they don’t. It isn’t safe.”
“All right,” Shapiro said. “I know it isn’t safe. This girl—you’re pretty sure it was this girl?”
“Now I am. Because now I remember she gave me a dollar.”
“Came out alone and asked you to get her a taxi?”
“I said, ‘Get you a taxi, miss?’ and she said, ‘Please.’ So I went out and flagged one down. I was lucky. Of course, a lot of the hackers keep an eye on the Brawl about that time of night. So the cab pulled up and—”
“Wait a minute, Mr. Prince,” Shapiro said.
He got the photographs of
Higgs out of the desk drawer and put the one with the simulated necktie on top and pushed the glossies on the desk so Prince could see them. Shapiro said, “Ever see this man that you remember?”
“Looks pretty much like just anybody, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “I suppose he does. Only—”
“Wait a minute,” Prince said. “Sort of a short man?”
“Yes. Anyway, not tall.”
“Man like that,” Prince said. “I don’t say that man, but he had on a dark suit and wasn’t very tall. Man like that’s as far as I can go.”
“Yes?”
“When I’d got the cab and opened the door and turned back to say, ‘All right, miss,’ she wasn’t looking at me or the cab. She was looking down the street at a man who was coming along toward us. The way you look at somebody you think maybe you know, or ought to know, but aren’t sure about. You know how it is, Lieutenant?”
Shapiro said he knew how it was.
“First,” Prince said, “I thought he was a friend of hers and she was going to say, ‘Hello,’ or something. ‘Hi, there,’ or something. She—oh, sort of hesitated.”
“But she didn’t say anything?”
“No. He was pretty close by then and he just kept walking along. Looking—oh, looking through her. As if he’d never seen her before. So—well, I thought she sort of shrugged her shoulders, as if she’d made a mistake. And I guess she had.”
“It was light? Light enough to see by?”
“Sure. Plenty of light.”
“Then?”
“Then she opened her handbag and began to grope around in it, the way they do looking for change. But she couldn’t find any—looked in a coin purse, way I remember it—and then got out a billfold and took a dollar bill out of it and gave me that. I said, ‘Thank you, miss,’ and held the cab door open for her and closed it after she’d got in.”
“Did you hear where she told the driver to take her?”
“No. It wasn’t any of my business.”
“The man she apparently thought she knew and decided she didn’t know. He just walk on up the street?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying any attention to him. Anyway, a couple came out of the restaurant and wanted a cab, and I went out in the street and blew the whistle and waved. Took longer that time, as I remember it. Sometimes there’ll be two or three in a bunch with the top lights on and sometimes it’ll take five-ten minutes.”
“This man you saw. Who might have been this man.” Shapiro tapped the photograph with his fingers. “He could have gone into the restaurant?”
“Could have, I guess. I can’t say he did and I can’t say he didn’t. I’m sorry, Lieutenant.”
“No reason you should be,” Shapiro told him. “You saw quite a bit, Mr. Prince.”
“Remember,” Prince said, “I can’t swear it was this girl, Lieutenant. Much less this man. I just think it was maybe this girl. Could have been. Because not very many people tip a dollar just to get a cab. Not if they’re sober, and this girl was. That all, Lieutenant?”
“I guess that’s—” Shapiro said and stopped. “No,” he said. “I want you to do something else, Mr. Prince. Go back and sit where you were sitting before you came in here. Oh, for an hour or so. There’ll be people walking past you. Coming here or going to one of the other offices. I’d like you just to look at them. If you see anybody you’ve seen before, or think maybe you’ve seen before, tell Detective Cook here. Or signal him. He’ll be at his desk. He’ll keep an eye on you.”
“Well,” Prince said, “thing is, Lieutenant, I’ve got an eleven-o’clock class. Math, and I’m finding math rather tough going. But—”
“Yes, Mr. Prince,” Shapiro said. “I’m going to ask you to cut the class. Because the way people walk is often identifying.”
“This man?” Prince said and pointed to the photograph.
“Anybody who looks familiar.”
“This girl. This good-looking girl. Did somebody kill her, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, Mr. Prince. Somebody killed her.”
“O.K.,” Prince said. “For that I’ll cut the class. Because she was a good-looking girl and—well, it’s a hell of a waste.”
Shapiro said, “Thanks, Mr. Prince. It may be an hour or so,” and felt oddly reassured, as one does when returning to a normal world from a world of fantasy.
Prince went out with Tony Cook to sit in a chair from which he could see those who walked along a corridor from the squad room toward the offices, one of which was Shapiro’s and one that of Captain William Weigand, commanding, and toward the interrogation rooms beyond.
Tony Cook would see that men walked along it, so that Rex Prince would have a choice. The chances were high that if he made one it would be the wrong one. He’d pick Detective (2nd gr.) Timothy Maxwell. Or somebody off the street come in with a squeal. Identifications are flimsy things, and Prince had seen the man Janet Rushton appeared to know only briefly, and the light had not been all that good. But the whole thing was flimsy. It was as much hunch as anything else.
Nathan Shapiro sighed and shook a frustrated head and went to Weigand’s office. The door was partly opened, and Bill Weigand was talking on the telephone. He was saying, “I know, Andy. Nobody ever hears anything. Or thinks it was a backfire. Right? But just keep asking.”
He listened a minute. He said, “Right. Keep on looking in ash cans.”
He put the telephone in its cradle and said, “Andy’s a good man, but he does want his hand held.”
“So do I,” Shapiro told him and sat on a wooden chair. “And approval. But it’ll be a shot in the dark. It may bounce back.”
“They do sometimes,” Bill Weigand said. “But go ahead, Nate.”
Nathan Shapiro went ahead. When he had finished, Weigand said, “It is pretty thin. Even if you get an identification—a halfway identification—it will be thin, Nate.”
Shapiro nodded his head in agreement.
“And the question is, why, Nate? Everybody stands to lose because the whole enterprise falls apart and everybody—well, spills out. And juries like motives. We both know that. Good, substantial motives. Like standing to gain a million dollars. Or, hell, two dollars and fifty cents.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “We both know that, Bill.”
“On what you’ve got—which is damn near nothing; which is nothing but a guess—the D.A.’s office won’t go along. Because they don’t like to go along to nowhere.”
Nathan said that he knew, and his voice was dispirited.
“They’ll want to sit in,” Weigand said. “They’ve got to approve.”
Shapiro didn’t say anything to that, because Bill Weigand was talking to himself, repeating what they both knew—the Homicide Bureau of the District Attorney’s office has to approve a homicide charge and doesn’t like to unless it’s pretty sure it can be made to stick.
“Here?” Weigand said.
“Yes. With the recorder running. And nobody has to say anything and is entitled to be represented by counsel. So anybody in his right mind clams up. Only—”
He let it hang there and Bill Weigand waited for some seconds and then said, “You think he isn’t, Nate?”
“I don’t know, Bill. They’re—they’re all strange to me. I told you at the start they would be. That I was the wrong—”
“Yes,” Bill Weigand said. “Trouble is, you always say that, Nate. And it turns out not to be true. All right. These people are a long way from your world. From mine, too, come to that. As far from mine as from yours, although now and then I go to church the way you, now and then, go to the temple. That doesn’t enter, Nate. They’re—hell, they’re people—right?”
“I guess so,” Nathan said, the doubt still in his voice. “Oh, sure. Fanatics are people.”
“You’ve got a hunch about the why, Nate?”
Nathan hesitated for some time—for a long enough time to get a cigarette out and get it lighted. But then, slowly, he nodded his he
ad.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s preposterous, but I maybe have.”
Weigand waited but Nathan Shapiro only shook his head again.
“Right,” Bill Weigand said, “have him brought down. And I’ll get onto the D.A.’s office. Bernie Simmons will see somebody’s sent along to sit in. Take half an hour or so, probably.”
“Take that long to get him down here, probably,” Shapiro said and went back to his office and his telephone. He called the uptown precinct and got Captain Maloney and told him what was wanted. He said, “Not together. The man first. And Detective Flanders with the woman. O.K.?”
“You’re free with precinct cars,” Maloney said. “But O.K., Nate.”
Shapiro sat at his desk with the office door partly open so that he could see who walked up and down the corridor. Quite a few did.
13
After about half an hour, during which Nathan Shapiro had ample time to assure himself that he was, as usual, making one hell of a mistake, a youngish man in a dark suit which included a vest walked past the open door. He had smooth black hair, neatly cut, and Shapiro flicked fingers along the back of his own neck. Yes, he needed a haircut. Rose should have reminded him.
The black-haired youngish man’s footfalls stopped after a second or two, and Shapiro knew he had gone into Weigand’s office, the right number of steps up the corridor. Then he heard the footsteps coming back. O.K. The man had looked like a lawyer. One of the new ones, probably. They changed around a lot.
The man came into the office, and Shapiro stood up behind his desk.
“Ogden. D.A.’s office,” the man with black hair said. “The captain says you’re the one to see. That if it’s cracked, you’ve cracked it.”
He held out a sleek hand, and Shapiro reached across the desk and shook it. It was a fine, firm handshake with no nonsense about it. Not, Shapiro thought, a man to be sympathetic about a shot in the dark; about a wild guess. And not a man likely to have met many people like those connected with the Mission of Redemption, Inc. Episcopalian, at a guess. High Church, probably.
“I’m not sure it’s cracked,” Shapiro said. “Sit down, Mr. Ogden, and I’ll fill you in.”
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