by Frances
O’Malley’s face did not lighten, but he began to nod his head; Bill had expected that; been afraid of that. O’Malley was, for some seconds, silent when Bill had finished.
“All right,” he said, then, and kept reason in his tone. “You see it. Friends of yours or not, you see it. What have you done about them?”
“Left them ordering dinner,” Bill might have said. “Nothing,” he did say.
“Nothing,” O’Malley said. “Nothing!”
Bill waited.
“Listen,” O’Malley said. “A woman gets killed. Right?”
“Right.”
“Shut up a minute. Listen! Her husband gets killed. Only, before he gets killed, he calls up a man—call the man Jones if you want to. Say he isn’t—” O’Malley paused. “Say he’s just anybody. Tells this man—call him Jones, like I say—he’s got something important to see him about. Important to this man Jones. Call him Jones. You with me?”
“Right,” Bill said.
“And,” O’Malley said, and leaned forward over his desk. “And—it’s in this man’s room—this Jones man’s—the other man’s wife gets killed. You with me?”
Bill was.
“So what,” O’Malley said, “does this man Barnes want? What’s he know that’s so important to Mr. North? You’re a cop—supposed to be a cop. Say it’s just a man named Jones.” He considered that for an instant. “North is, I mean,” he said.
“I know what you mean,” Bill told him.
“Barnes was to meet North at five. That’s what North says. North and—and Mrs. North—go to Bleeck’s to wait. Barnes doesn’t show. You think they were surprised?”
“Yes,” Bill said. “I do, inspector.”
O’Malley clutched his head in his hands, to hold it in place.
“You’re not dumb, captain,” he said. “Anyway, I hope you’re not dumb. A shakedown. Want me to spell it?”
He would, anyway. Bill nodded.
“Barnes knows something about his wife’s getting killed,” O’Malley said, patiently. “Knows North killed her. Probably knows why. All this malarky about not knowing what he wanted. That’s—malarky. North knew, well enough. Knew where he lived, too. Went down there—this Bleeck’s business is eyewash. Decided it was a better idea to bash his head in than to pay what Barnes wanted. Bashed his head in. Went up to Bleeck’s and put on this waiting act. With his wife. Well?”
“You think Mrs. North went along?” Bill asked. “To help kill Barnes?”
“How the hell,” O’Malley enquired, “would I know, Weigand? Do I have to do everything? Wait a minute.” He shuffled through the papers on his desk; found the one he wanted. “Two to four hours, the M.E. says. Says that at about seven-thirty. So Barnes could have been killed at three-thirty. Plenty of time for North to get to Bleeck’s.”
“Plenty,” Bill said.
“They got there at five,” O’Malley said. “Who says that?”
“They do.”
“Who else?”
“I didn’t ask anybody else. Right. I got there at six or thereabouts. They could have got there only fifteen minutes earlier, instead of an hour earlier, as they said. The round of drinks they were getting could have been their first, not their second, as I assumed. So they could have killed Barnes as late as five, or five-fifteen, and been at the restaurant when I got there.”
“Now,” O’Malley said, “you make sense, Bill. Now you do.”
“And,” Bill said, “if North killed Barnes at five, say, or a little before, and got blood on his clothes, as he might have, he’d have had time to go home and change before he went to Bleeck’s.”
“Now you’re making sense,” O’Malley told him. “Like a cop should. So now—what?”
Bill took a deep breath.
“Now,” Bill said, “nothing, inspector. Nothing about the Norths.”
O’Malley merely glared. He was beyond words.
“They had nothing to do with either murder,” Bill told him, and watched the red face redden.
“Says who?” O’Malley asked. “Says you.”
“Yes,” Bill said. “Oh—I’ll have the restaurant checked out, if you say so. Find out they got there at five, as they said. I’ll ask Jer-Mr. North if he happened to kill Barnes and not mention it.”
“You,” O’Malley said, “will bring them in.”
It had come to that. There had always, Bill thought, been a time it would come to that.
“No,” he said. “I won’t, inspector. You can take me off the case. Sure. You can get somebody to bring them in. Sure. You can put me back in uniform, and bring departmental charges and a lot of things. But—the Norths never killed anybody and never will.”
“And,” O’Malley said, “they’re friends of yours. Why don’t you say that, Weigand?”
“Right,” Bill said. “And they’re friends of mine.”
“They’re screwy,” O’Malley said. “They keep cats. They’re in the middle of this thing. A woman goes in the Norths’ room and gets killed. A man’s got something important to tell them and gets killed. And—they’re friends of yours! Well?”
“Right,” Bill said, and waited.
“You,” O’Malley said, “are a damn fool.”
“Possibly.”
“And you sit there—” He looked at Bill Weigand, who had stood up, now it had come to this. “You stand there and I order you to bring them in for questioning, or suspicion of homicide or—hell—material witnesses. And what do you say, captain? You say no.”
“I,” Bill Weigand said, very quietly, “say ‘no,’ inspector.”
“I bring charges. I put you in uniform. Hell—I get you thrown off the force. Where you’ve been a hell of a long time. You don’t want to be a cop, Weigand?”
“I want to be a cop. You can do all those things. The Norths don’t kill.”
And then O’Malley leaned back—leaned far back—in his office chair and looked at Weigand; looked at him with sharp blue eyes half shut in the red face.
“You stake a lot,” he said, and his voice—for O’Malley’s voice—was low, “on these screwy friends of yours.”
“Right.”
“You’re a damn fool.”
They went in circles. “Possibly,” Bill said.
O’Malley closed his eyes entirely. He took a deep breath into his massive chest. And then, as if from a great way off, but quietly—for O’Malley very quietly indeed—he said, “What do you plan to do next, captain?”
“Find out what Mullins got from Judge Parkman,” Bill said, as quietly. “Talk to people at the broadcasting company. Get what I can out of Chicago. I’m still on it, then?”
O’Malley opened his eyes.
“Don’t,” he said, “be a damn fool, Bill. You think I’d expose anybody else to these—these friends of yours? With the whole department understaffed already?”
He leaned forward over his desk.
“Only,” he said, “you’d better be right. It’d be tough all around if you turned out wrong. Why Chicago?”
“Barnes came from there. At least, worked there for some time. Probably married Miss Towne there. I talked to the city editor of the Globe-Dispatch. Man named Perkins. What I got was—”
Bill sat down again. O’Malley listened.
Pam North wriggled across the seat and wriggled out. Jerry closed the cab door and the cab flicked off, and Pam looked after it resentfully. “The small economy size,” she said. “How I hate them. Remember when they were big enough to get into? And, out of?”
Jerry did.
“More runs,” Pam said. “Every time I get in one I get runs. Unless, of course, I get them when I get out. In stockings.”
Jerry had supposed in stockings. He said so. It was a pleasant evening, as November evenings go in New York—it was not actually raining, and there was only a moderate fog; the air, a stimulating mixture of gasoline fumes and coal smoke, barely stirred. There was hardly enough wind, indeed, to blow discarded newspapers along the gu
tters. “New York in the fall,” Pam said. “And small economy-size cabs. And—”
A man loomed—a big man, wearing a camel’s-hair coat; his tawny head bare. He said, “Hi, folks,” in a low and musical voice—a voice which had in it, at the moment, a note of mingled pleasure and what Pam took to be embarrassment. He smiled down at them—he smiled down at almost everyone—with diffidence, as if he might have intruded; as if, indeed, they might well tell him to go away.
“Why,” Pam said, “Mr. Kingsley.”
“Just taking a walk,” Byron Kingsley said, in the tone of one who hopes it will be all right with everybody. “Not been down in this part of town yet and heard a lot about it, ma’am. Evening, sir.”
“It isn’t what it used to be,” Pam told him, as people have for years been telling other people about the area of Manhattan still known as the Village. “All built up, now. See?”
She indicated the apartment house in front of which they stood; the apartment house the Norths lived in. “When we were first here,” Pam said, “it was only four stories and on top there was a studio. With a painter, sometimes.”
“It’s sure grown, ma’am,” Kingsley said, looking up at it. It went up many stories now; it had setbacks and balconies.
“It sure has,” Pam agreed and then, because it occurred to her that Byron Kingsley might feel that he was being—how would he put it himself? Teased? Even condescended to?—said, quickly, “They tore the other one down, of course. First.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kingsley said. “Still mighty interesting down here. Different, sort of. Well, you all don’t want to stand here. It’s right cold.”
“Why,” Pam heard herself saying, “don’t you come up and have a drink, Mr. Kingsley?”
Kingsley said, “Well—” and looked at Jerry North who said, with what conviction he could manage—more, at that, than Pam had expected—“Sure. Good idea.”
Kingsley said, “Well—” again, in the tone of one who now, surely, intrudes. Then he said it was mighty nice of them.
“Of course,” Pam said in the elevator, “the apartment’s an awful mess. Painters. But anyway—”
The elevator stopped; Pam led the way down the corridor. Jerry opened the door and the odor of paint rushed out to meet them. Martini attempted to rush out also and was blocked by a foot. She spoke of this, bitterly, but then retreated into the living room and rolled to her back, legs softly crooked in a pleading position. Pam crouched and rubbed her belly. She told her she was a nice cat, a beautiful cat. She lifted her into arms and said, “And you smell of paint like everything.” At which, Martini purred for a moment, and then wriggled. Pam put her down.
“Mighty pretty cat,” Kingsley said, obligingly, in his soft voice. And then Martini crouched and laid her ears back. He reached down to touch her and she backed away and hissed. And then she ran.
“Gee,” Kingsley said, “I’m sorry. I do something wrong?”
“Strangers,” Pam said. “I thought she’d outgrown that. It’s probably—I don’t know. She hates things to be upset and there’ve been painters. It’s—” She looked around the room. Most of the furniture was still in the painters’ midden, with canvas over it. “Perhaps Jerry’s room,” Pam said. “Or the bedroom.”
Jerry’s room was occupied by that part of the living room furniture which was not in the midden. The bedroom contained beds and an accessible chair or two. Jerry threaded his way to the liquor cabinet, excavated it; made drinks. “Mighty good bourbon,” Kingsley said. “Looking at you, folks.”
They looked. They sipped. Silence intervened. Pam was tempted to ask Kingsley if he had written any good books recently, and resisted. Jerry was tempted to look at his watch, and resisted. Kingsley was not, apparently, tempted by anything at all, except possibly by bourbon. After a time, he repeated that it was mighty good bourbon.
“Except,” Pam said, “that everything tastes of paint.”
“Don’t mind it,” Kingsley said. “Mr. North—I do all right?”
“Do all right?”
“With the police,” Kingsley said. “You know what I mean?”
“Oh,” Jerry said. “Fine.” And wondered what on earth his author did mean, and reminded himself that North Books, Inc., had never had another such author and—
“—in the papers,” Kingsley was saying.
“It’s likely to be,” Pam said, proving that she, at any rate, had been listening. “If the police tell them, of course. But don’t worry about it, Mr. Kingsley.”
“Back home,” Kingsley said, “people would think it was sort of funny. My being in her room and everything. And then her being killed.”
He shook his head at his glass, which was still largely full.
“Everybody’s been so swell,” he said. “I’d hate to throw a monkey wrench into the machinery. I’d sure hate to do that, sir.”
“Forget it,” Jerry said. “Nobody’ll think anything about it.”
“Bad publicity,” Kingsley said. “I’d hate that to happen. But I had to tell them. I don’t suppose it did any good but—you say I did all right? Didn’t give them any—wrong ideas?”
“You did fine,” Jerry said. “Nothing else you could have done. Don’t worry.”
That was it, Kingsley told them. He had been worrying. He couldn’t help worrying. He spoke slowly, still diffidently. He said that it was probably hard for them to realize how—how prodigious all this had been for him.
“You come out of a small town,” he said. “Nobody—thinks much of you. Except, maybe, that there’s something queer about you because—well, because you write, instead of farm, or work in a store. And then—all this. You see what I mean? People writing about you, wanting to interview you on TV. Inviting you to things.” He looked up at them and smiled and Pam thought, He’s sweet, really. And, under it—how much more he must be, to write as he does. You wouldn’t think it, Pam thought.
“What it comes to,” Byron Kingsley said, “I’m just a country boy, I guess. I’ve come what they call a far piece. I’d—well, I’d sure hate to have anything spoil it. You think this won’t, Mr. North?”
“Of course not,” Jerry said. “Just interest people more, if anything.” He thought of trying to explain to this man from the country—this greatly talented, oddly simple and immensely valuable author of his—that, for people of a certain sort, in a certain category, almost no publicity is really bad. (Unless, of course, it can be publicly alleged that they read Das Kapital in youth. It seemed somehow unlikely that Byron Kingsley had.) “Don’t worry about it,” Jerry said again and this time he did, in spite of himself, glance at his watch. Jerry likes his sleep; the previous night had given him little. It was, to be sure, only a few minutes short of ten o’clock.
If Kingsley observed Jerry’s surreptitious glance, he did not reveal it. He nodded at his drink again and sipped from it—a big, gentle man, reassured in a strange world. He said he’d try not to; that he was glad he had bumped into the Norths, because he had been worrying. He looked up. He said, “It’s a strange thing. Why would anybody want to kill a fine woman like that?”
The Norths did not know.
“I wonder,” Kingsley said, “whether they—the police, I mean—are getting anywhere?”
“They’re very good,” Jerry said, a little vaguely. “I—”
“Why don’t we listen?” Pam said. “We can’t look, because the TV is under things. But—” She leaned down to turn on the bedroom radio, on a shelf under the night table. The radio said nothing for a few seconds. Then it made preliminary scratching sounds. Pam, who had been lying on the bed, leaned from it—at some risk of falling under it—and twisted knobs.
“—o’clock news,” the radio said, in an authoritative, deep voice, “James Fergus reporting. First, a quick look at the weather. Rain is expected beginning late tonight and continuing tomorrow, probably becoming mixed with snow in the northern suburbs. We will have the complete weather report at the end of the broadcast. In a moment, a sp
ectacular development in the continuing investigation of the murder of Amanda Towne, famed star of the Continental Corporation’s network. But first, a word about Supercal. Have you—”
“Fergus,” Pam said. “Fergus. Oh—he was the announcer on her show. It must be difficult for him to—”
“Shhh,” Jerry said.
“It’s just about Supercal, whatever that is,” Pam said. “It’s bad enough to have commercials without listening to—”
“Pam!” Jerry said. “Shush!”
“—I’ll spell it for you,” the radio said. “S-u-p-e-r-c-a-l. The combination of ingredients recommended by four out of five doctors for—”
“I have always,” Pam said, “wondered about the fifth one. Shot him, prob—”
“Pam!”
“And now the news. Less than twenty-four hours after the discovery of the body of Amanda Towne, famed TV personality and valued colleague of all of us here at the Continental Broadcasting Corporation, her estranged husband was found murdered this evening in his Greenwich Village apartment. According to police, Russell Barnes, Miss Towne’s husband and an employee of a New York newspaper, was beaten to death, apparently with a poker. Police believe the two deaths are connected.”
Nobody—not even Pamela North—interrupted James Fergus now. Byron Kingsley leaned toward the radio; Jerry North was, now, far from sleep.
“As most of you will recall,” the radio said, in the deep, steady voice, “Miss Towne’s body was found last night in a suite of a midtown hotel occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Gerald North. Mr. North, a New York publisher, and his wife, have denied any knowledge of her death and this has, apparently, been accepted by the police. The police have now established definitely that Miss Towne was smothered, apparently by a pillow pressed down on her face.
“However, Deputy Chief Inspector Artemus O’Malley, in charge of the investigation of both deaths, says that Barnes appears to have had an appointment with Mr. North for late yesterday afternoon—an appointment he failed to keep. Mr. North, according to Chief O’Malley, asserts that Barnes had arranged the appointment in a telephone call, saying it was important. But Mr. North denies having known Barnes or any knowledge of why Barnes wanted to see him. Stay tuned to this station for further reports on this rapidly developing case.