Murder Can't Wait

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  It wasn’t, as Forniss had warned, pleasant. Stuart Fleming had been a big man, a big and tapering man; he had been young, at a guess, and he had short-cut blond hair. There was a good deal of blood, drying now, everywhere. Nathan Shapiro’s stomach twitched, but it always did when he looked at things like this.

  Fleming was wearing a pair of walking shorts, a polo shirt, and a plaster cast on his right leg. One of the bullets had hit him in the neck, and it would, obviously, have been enough. There were four other bullet wounds, three in the torso, one in the left hip.

  “Thorough,” Heimrich said. “From there, Charlie?” He pointed to a small window beside the sheet of glass which was almost the wall of the room. It was broken. “Ventilating pane,” Forniss said. “Yep. Could damn near reach in and touch him. Damn near did, the doc thinks. Breaking the window first. Might have had time to do something, after the breaking woke him, if it hadn’t been for that.”

  He pointed at the cast on the leg of what, a few hours ago, had been a man named Stuart Fleming.

  Shapiro said, “Mm-m-m.”

  “Looks like they knew,” Shapiro said. “Where to find him, and that he couldn’t move fast. Roll off the bed, say, when he heard the window break. Of course, they could have scouted. They do, usually. Man selling brushes. Or magazine subscriptions. Only….”

  He paused.

  “Letter postmarked day before yesterday,” he said. “Stamped in at the office yesterday afternoon. Not an awful lot of time.”

  “Now, lieutenant,” Heimrich said. “He may have told somebody he was going to write the letter.”

  , Shapiro said he supposed that was it. But he did not sound happy as he made the supposition.

  “As you say,” Heimrich said, “it takes a little time to organize a kill. Usually. But if there’s a real hurry—”

  “I suppose so,” Nathan Shapiro said.

  They went out of the bedroom through a door leading to the small flagstoned terrace outside. “About here,” Forniss said, and showed them about where. “Empty shells there,” and pointed. “One missing. Probably threw into the grass. Time he cut his grass, wasn’t it?”

  “Boys asking around to see if anybody heard the shots,” Forniss said. “No luck yet. Cleaning woman found the body. Name of Florence Arn. Comes at eight three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This is Friday.”

  Heimrich said, “Thanks, Charlie.” Forniss said, “Any time, M. L.” They had worked together a lot, Shapiro thought. He was going to be a third wheel on a bicycle. Stick around until he was sure there wasn’t anything in Fleming’s papers to give them a lead to the fix boys—and he didn’t think there would be—and get along back to town. Get out of other people’s way and get out of the country.

  “No sign anybody came in after the kill, sergeant? Did a spot of looking around.”

  “Well,” Forniss said, “no, lieutenant. But—there’s this. Seems this Mrs. Arn managed to lose her key a week or so ago. So Fleming left the front door unlocked for her. Only, a lot of people live in places like this don’t lock up most of the time. Anybody could have walked in after he shot Fleming and looked around. Very neat about it, if somebody did. Speaking of being neat.”

  He jerked his head toward the bedroom window.

  “Yes, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “By all means, Charlie.”

  *As recounted in The Faceless Adversary.

  II

  Nathan Shapiro sat at a desk in the small room Stuart Fleming had used as an office. He shuffled papers. There was nothing to indicate that somebody had shuffled the papers ahead of him, and nothing to indicate that somebody had not. The papers, in desk drawers, weren’t in any order apparent to Shapiro. On the other hand, there was no reason to suppose Fleming had kept them in any special order. Bills marked Pd and dated; orders to inactive duty of Ens. Stuart Fleming, U.S.N.R.; a letter signed Cathy which read: “Friday won’t do after all. Sorry,” which was not dated and probably meant nothing anyway. A checkbook, the first date entered that of March 21, which showed a little over five thousand dollars on deposit in a bank in North Wellwood, New York; the return half of a round-trip ticket between New York and Brewster—two-day limit, and expired. People kept the damnedest things, Nathan Shapiro thought, and sighed.

  He heard movement from bedroom through living room and knew what the movement meant. Fleming’s body might be more useful in a mortuary, although Shapiro doubted it, and doubted if Heimrich thought it would. Seemed to be an able man, Heimrich. Would take all the steps anybody could take; had a good routine set up. He shuffled more papers.

  Whoever had gunned Fleming had known the layout of the house. Probably had known that Fleming was more or less immobilized. Knew he would be in bed? Hell, it is always a hundred or more to one that anybody will be in bed between two and four in the morning. Except, on occasion, policemen.

  What it would be nice to find would be a carbon of a letter to somebody they knew, somebody the Rackets Squad knew well, saying, “I know all and am going to the district attorney to tell all,” signed Stuart Fleming. That would be swell to find. That he wasn’t going to find. A thousand to one no such letter, or anything like such a letter, had been written. Fleming had said something to somebody; and somebody, meaning to or not, had passed the something along, and it had gone along and along until it got to where it meant a lot. Might have started weeks ago; might have started anywhere.

  The papers finished, and nothing found—except that Fleming had paid two hundred and fifteen dollars on April 1, to the Wellwood Realty Corporation and that the stub said “Off. rent”—Shapiro flipped back the sheets of a desk calendar. A week ago that day, the Friday before that Friday, the pad had the notation, “Ca. 7” but a line had been drawn through that. The day that wouldn’t do for Cathy, Shapiro supposed. The Tuesday before that, “Din A. & E.”

  “Find anything?” Heimrich said behind him, and Shapiro turned and shook his head sadly, and said, “Didn’t expect to. Of course, I could have missed something. It was once over lightly. Maybe your boys will have better luck.”

  He sounded, Merton Heimrich thought, as if he considered it most likely he had missed something—as if missing things was what he regarded as his way of life. Notably lacking in confidence, this Nathan Shapiro was. A doleful man. Although, as a lieutenant in what Heimrich guessed to be his mid-thirties, he hadn’t done too badly on the force. So, couldn’t have missed too many things.

  “If he talked to anybody it might have been to his brother,” Heimrich said. “Lives about a mile from here. Notified, naturally, and the brother’s wife—name of Enid—rushed over. Upset as hell, Charlie says she was. Said she couldn’t leave her husband alone at a time like this and went off again.”

  Shapiro said, “Oh.”

  “Forniss is going over and talk with them,” Heimrich said. “Thought you might like to go along.”

  “I suppose I may as well,” Shapiro said, and stood lankily up, his brown eyes sad. “I suppose it won’t do any harm. Then, far’s I can see, I may as well get back—” But he stopped and looked at Heimrich and his brown eyes—rather large brown eyes—narrowed, and were suddenly no longer sad.

  “It was good shooting with an automatic, wasn’t it?” he said. “Even from close. In the dark.”

  Merton Heimrich nodded his head.

  “Only,” he said, “apparently it wasn’t dark, lieutenant. Apparently Fleming had the light on by his bed. This cleaning woman—this Mrs. Arn—is quite sure it was on when she got here.”

  “Reading late? Only—”

  “No,” Heimrich said, “there wasn’t anything around for him to have been reading. Not in the bedroom.”

  To which Nathan Shapiro said, “Oh.” Then he said, “Odd clothes for him to have been sleeping in, weren’t they?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said, “I thought so, too, lieutenant.”

  The chances were, Merton Heimrich thought, driving a familiar road, that this sad-looking policeman from the city had brought
the case with him—that Fleming had stumbled on something the racket boys didn’t like and had, therefore, been taken care of. Emptying an automatic into him; that was what a racket hired man would do. A good, thorough job; that was what the racket boys liked and expected from their hired hands.

  Only—only—

  What information as vital as all that could Fleming have come on? What information which was his exclusively would die with him? A squeal from a college boy, a Dyckman football player, didn’t really sound like a lot. The boy could squeal again. If the boy was left alive to squeal. Or others could, if the moving in on the varsity squad had been extensive. And—the D.A. could get the whole squad in, man by man, and shake out of it what there was to shake. Fleming must have had something very special; something not duplicated elsewhere. A tape recording? There was always a chance of that. Not in the house—not in the house now, at any rate. At the office Fleming had recently rented on Hill Lane in North Wellwood? In a safe deposit box? After he had held the hands of sorrowing brother and sister-in-law, which was about all he could be expected to do, Forniss would check on that.

  For once in his life, Heimrich thought, with mild amusement, he had an edge on Charlie Forniss, who always knew somebody everywhere. “Happen to know a man in …” Forniss said very often, and always truthfully, and short cuts commonly resulted.

  “Happen to know a man here in North Wellwood,” Heimrich had told his sergeant, and when Forniss and Shapiro had driven away from the shining little house, Heimrich had driven away also, in the opposite direction. This left two troopers standing by—on the off chance of what, Heimrich did not precisely know.

  Heimrich turned up a driveway toward a square white house and looked at the clock on the dashboard, which was in one of its infrequent periods of activity. A little after eleven, the clock thought it was. Dr. Walter Brinkley, retired professor of English at Dyckman University, would probably be at his typewriter, composing what he would eventually designate as a “note” on something or other—something having to do with the way English is spoken in various parts of the world. (His last “note” had run to two volumes.) But Walter Brinkley would not really mind being interrupted—not now that murder had once again invaded North Wellwood. It was too bad, Heimrich thought, turning his car in front of the house and getting out of it, that regional accents would not this time be involved.

  A tall Negro came around a corner of the house. He was wearing army slacks with grass stains on the knees and an army shirt, a costume not characteristic. He said, “Good morning, captain,” and then added, “Cap’n, suh.”

  Heimrich said, “Good morning, Harry. The professor around?”

  “Gardening,” Harry said. “If you’ll jes come this way, suh.”

  Heimrich followed the tall man who took care of Walter Brinkley, and was led around the corner of the house. Walter Brinkley was kneeling on a rubber pad on the grass beyond the terrace, and was gently clawing at the soil with a hand cultivator. He sat back on his heels. He was a round and rosy man, with white hair and in his early seventies. He could still sit on his heels.

  “Morning, M. L.,” Walter Brinkley said. “Exposing the rhizomes.” He considered. “Sounds slightly improper, doesn’t it? Iris. Blooms better, they say, if the sun can reach the rhizomes. So that was what the sirens were about.” He stood up. “I wondered,” he said. “I do hope it was nobody I knew, M. L.”

  Except in his writing, Professor Brinkley was a man for short cuts. He took them with intrepidity.

  “Man named Fleming,” Heimrich said. “Can be it’s open and shut. But—” He shrugged his shoulders.

  Lines formed in Walter Brinkley’s face. He still didn’t look in his seventies, but he looked nearer them. He made a sound which, Heimrich thought, reflected both regret and surprise. He came up onto the terrace and took a package of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and said, “Thank you, Harry,” for the lighter flame which came out of nowhere. He looked at his watch.

  “Not quite time, professor,” Harry Washington said. “But I’ll start getting things ready.” He went into the house. He spoke from inside the screen door. He said, “Suh.”

  “Almost forgot that time,” Brinkley said, a little absently. “A game he plays—with himself, with me. I suppose with all white people. Without malice. But I’ve told you about that. You said Fleming?”

  “Yes.”

  “But,” Brinkley said, “it—it would be so needless, M. L.”

  “Now, Walter,” Heimrich said, and sat down on a terrace chair. “It always is, naturally.”

  “Fleming,” Brinkley said, “was dying of leukemia. A matter, I suspect—I’ve heard—of months. If somebody did not want him alive it was only necessary to wait.”

  There was something wrong there, Merton Heimrich thought. In the terminal stages of leukemia a man does not go north for spring skiing, does not look as Stuart Fleming must have looked before somebody used an automatic.

  “It is shocking,” Brinkley said. “Really shocking, M. L. Angus was a gentle man, waiting gently to die. That somebody—”

  “I think,” Heimrich said, “we’re not talking about the same man, Walter. The same Fleming. The man killed was Stuart Fleming. Angus’s brother. A considerably younger brother, I gather.”

  Walter Brinkley shook his head and said “Oh” and then, after a pause, “I had almost forgotten young Fleming. As a man gets on—” He did not finish that. He said, “You came to tell me about it, M. L. Why?”

  “You know people around here,” Heimrich said. “Probably they’re not concerned, but—”

  He told the white-haired man what they knew of Stuart Fleming’s murder.

  “Depressing,” Brinkley said, when he had been told. “Gangsters. Or is it mobsters? Terms do so change with the years. A—a dull breed, don’t you think? And none, I’m sure, living in North Wellwood.” He looked at Heimrich and his blue eyes were intent. “You think it isn’t the way it looks, don’t you?”

  “Now, Walter,” Heimrich said. “May not be. Probably it is—probably Fleming stumbled on something, was told something and somebody put the finger on him. But—” He raised his shoulders.

  “You’re not satisfied,” Brinkley said. “A hard man to satisfy, aren’t you? You’ve come to a gossipy old man for … gossip.”

  “To a friend,” Heimrich said. “Who has helped before. To get the feel of things.”

  “Gossip,” Brinkley said. “I’m afraid I haven’t any which will help. If it were Angus now. Angus was in classes of mine years ago. A good student. A better tennis player, but a good student. You know he’s very well off, Merton?”

  “Take it,” Heimrich said, “that I know very little. That we’ve only begun.”

  “Inherited,” Brinkley said. “Not long ago, actually. Three or four years it’s been since old Lance died.” He paused. “It is odd,” he said, “how one uses words. How one unconsciously dissociates one’s own self from certain inclusions. Lance Fleming was three or four years older than I when he died. About the age I am today. Oh—I say I’m old but—” He stopped abruptly. “There is no need to prove it by maundering on,” he said, firmly. “Lance bought a great deal of land when land was cheap. A good many stocks when the stocks were cheap. This was common knowledge.” He paused again. “You live in a place as long as I’ve lived here,” he said, “and common knowledge seeps into you. But that’s why you came, isn’t it?”

  “Now, Walter,” Heimrich said. “I came to be informed.”

  “The money, Fleming said, went to Angus—almost all of it to him, nothing outright to the younger son. To Stuart. A friend of mine who drew up the will told me. Stuart went to the South-eastern University law school—very excellent institution, I understand. Got into some sort of scrape there which—er—annoyed his father. Why do you close your eyes when people are talking to you, Merton?”

  “Habit,” Merton Heimrich said. “Sometimes voices tell more than faces. Sometimes voices and faces don’t tell the same
things. But at the moment—habit. Probably bad. Any idea what kind of scrape?”

  “I gathered with a woman,” Brinkley said. “There the veil of professional reticence was drawn. Lance was a—an unbending sort of man. People were a little surprised when he accepted Enid. Enid’s Angus’s wife. But it’s Stuart you’re interested in, not all this.”

  “Now, professor,” Heimrich said. “As always—how can I tell what I’m interested in until I hear it? Was Enid what Lance Fleming might consider a—scrape?”

  “Much younger than Angus,” Brinkley said. “Can’t be more than twenty-five. Angus is—let’s see. Freshman in—Angus must be in his late thirties. Scientist. Used to be connected with a firm which manufactures X-ray equipment. Made marked improvements in certain devices, I understand.”

  Heimrich said, “Oh.”

  “Yes,” Brinkley said. “Didn’t take proper precautions, I suppose. Got—er—too familiar with the devices. And … leukemia. About Enid—nice young thing, from all I’ve heard. Iowa from her speech. Northern Iowa, I’d say. Very pretty. Was a chorus girl for a time. Why some people thought Lance might make a fuss. He didn’t. This has nothing to do with mobsters.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “About Stuart?”

  About Stuart, Walter Brinkley knew very little. He too had gone to Dyckman. Afterward to law school. Had opened an office in North Wellwood a few months ago.

  “The impression was,” Brinkley said, “that he came here, started his own office in what’s barely a village, to be near his brother—to stand by his brother. There is this, apparently. He rents the house—rented it. Which might indicate he didn’t plan to stay on permanently. As I said, what’s common knowledge in a place like this seeps in. And, common knowledge isn’t necessarily reliable, is it?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “On the other hand, better than no knowledge at all, naturally. Stuart Fleming had lived around here about how long?”

  Since, Professor Walter Brinkley thought, early in the previous autumn. A little more than six months, make it. He had, certainly, been there around Thanksgiving; Brinkley had been at a small party Angus Fleming had given about then, and met Angus’s younger brother. “Angus was better then. He’s gone downhill rapidly in the last few months.”