Write Murder Down

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  Room 912 at the Hotel Algonquin was still, slowly and thoroughly, being taken apart. Fingerprints found in the room matched those found in the Gay Street apartment and those taken from the body.

  Tony Cook looked up the telephone number of the Hotel Algonquin and dialed it and asked for Room 912 and got, “Yeah?” He identified himself. Yes, they were about finished. No, they had not found four or five hundred pages of typescript copy. They had found a checkbook and clothing which would be turned over to the property clerk. They had not found a book with telephone numbers listed in it. But they had found the stub of a telephone bill showing charges listed to “A. Jones.” One of them was for a long-distance call made a week before. Judging by the charge, it had been a rather lengthy call. “Wait a minute.” The call had lasted five minutes—a little over five minutes. It had been to Mobile, Alabama, and the number called had been—

  Tony noted down the area code and the number. He said, “Thanks,” to the man still in Room 912 and dialed the number he had been given. There were clicks and scratches and the murmur of mixed voices. Then there was the signal of a number being rung. It rang nine times unanswered before Tony gave it up.

  The other tenants in the house on Gay Street had not heard anything out of the way going on in the apartment on the second floor. Yes, the couple on the third floor had heard a typewriter clattering below them for weeks. Not, so far as they could remember, the evening before. Perhaps not the evening before that. They had other things to do than listen to somebody else’s typewriter. Nobody remembered hearing voices in the second-floor apartment or people moving around in it. “This is an old building. They built them solid when they built them then. Some of these new places—”

  People had looked at prints of the head-and-shoulders view of the young woman who had called herself “A. Jones.” People were still looking at the pictures, shown them by detectives from Charles Street and by uniformed men from the precinct. Policemen would be showing the pictures for many hours. So far they were getting shaken heads; they were getting “Maybes” and “Seems to me likes.” They were getting nothing that helped—not in grocery stores or restaurants or in pharmacies; not in bars or boutiques or from hairdressers. “Seen this young lady around? Been a customer of yours?” They got shaken heads; they got, “Can’t say that I have.” They were working out with Gay Street as a center.

  They had found the real estate agent who handled the apartment Jo-An Lacey had died in. There had been a young lady alone at a desk in the real estate office. She did not remember ever having seen the young woman of the photograph. “Of course, there are half a dozen of us here. It must have been one of the others who showed the apartment.” Of course there were records. The apartment—let’s see now. It was a furnished apartment and had been rented a month before to an A. Jones. No, there was no lease; the apartment had been rented on a monthly basis. At a hundred and seventy-five a month. Two months’ rent had been paid in advance. “Here’s a funny thing. This A. Jones person seems to have paid in cash. Sort of thing that doesn’t happen much any more. Some of them try to pay with credit cards.”

  Captain William Weigand, commanding, came along the corridor from his office into the squad room. He stopped at Cook’s desk and Cook stood up.

  “Shapiro’s got you with him on this Gay Street job, right?” Weigand said.

  Tony said, “Yes, sir. We’ve found out who she was anyway, Captain. A writer named Lacey. Nate—I mean the lieutenant’s gone to see her publisher.”

  “He called in,” Weigand said. “He’s on his way up to Mount Kisco to see this publisher. Who seems to be off on a weekend. Put a report through when you get around to it, Tony.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And how’s Miss Farmer?”

  “She—she’s fine, sir.”

  “Oh,” Weigand said, “things get around, Tony.”

  Tony Cook said it seemed like they did. He said, “Lieutenant Shapiro wants me to get in touch with the Mobile police about Miss Lacey. That O.K., Captain?”

  “Of course,” Weigand said. “It’s your baby. Yours and Nate’s.”

  He went out of the squad room and along the corridor outside and down the stairs. Through channels, Tony put in a call for somebody—anybody responsible—in the detective division of the Mobile Police Department. He waited five minutes and his telephone rang. He got, “Lieutenant Buncombe, go ahead,” in a Southern male voice and then, “Yes, suh. Can I help you? This is Buncombe.” There was a momentary pause. “B-u-n-c-o-m-b-e, that is.”

  “Detective Cook, New York Police, sir. We’re after information about a Miss Lacey. Jo-An Lacey. Lives in Mobile. That is, she did live in Mobile.”

  “Not in the city,” Buncombe said. “The Lacey Plantation’s where she lives, Mr. Cook. Where they’ve all lived since before the war. Sure, everybody round hereabouts knows the Lacey family. Not that I mean knows, come to that. Specially since that book of hers. Think she went a bit far, some of us do.”

  All Buncombe’s words sounded to Tony’s New York ears as if they were, obscurely, other words. He found he was translating as he went along.

  “What you want to know about Miss Lacey?”

  “I’m afraid,” Tony said, “we want to know who killed her, sir.”

  “Killed her? Killed Jo-An Lacey? That’s what you’re saying, mister? Up there in New York?”

  It was obvious that the location made a bad matter much worse to Lieutenant Buncombe. Laceys didn’t go north to get killed.

  “In an apartment in Greenwich Village.”

  “In Green-witch Village!”

  As if “New York” had not been bad enough.

  “She was using the name Jones,” Tony Cook said. “But I’m afraid there’s no doubt the deceased was Miss Lacey.”

  Lieutenant Buncombe repeated the name “Jones” in a tone of complete consternation. Bad matters could get no worse.

  “This—er—plantation of the Laceys’? Far out of town, sir?”

  “Outside the city limits a few miles. Tumbled down some, but she’s—I mean her brother’s—been putting it back together, sort of. Guess she must have made some money out of these books of hers. Place had been running down for years, from what I hear. People down here didn’t think much of those books of hers. Felt she was running her own place down, sort of. Didn’t read them myself.”

  “She and her brother lived on the plantation alone, sir?”

  “Maybe a darky or two to help out. And men working on the house the last few years.”

  “There are other Laceys around there? Relatives?”

  “Funny thing,” Buncombe said, “mostly people have a lot of relatives. Cousins and the like. Can’t seem to think of any for them, somehow. Their parents got killed years ago. Went up in an airplane and it ran into a mountain. Just Jo-An and that brother of hers. John Henry Three, he’s called. Supposed to run some kind of real estate business, from what I hear. Thing is, mister, they’re not in our territory. Sheriff’s the man you want, come down to it.”

  “We’ll get on to it, sir. Happen to know whether they’ve got a telephone? The Laceys, I mean.”

  “Be in—hold it a minute and I’ll look.”

  Cook held it for rather more than a minute.

  “Yep. John Henry Lacey Three. Want the number?”

  Cook did. He got it. It was the number he had supposed it would be—the number which had not answered to its ringing. He thanked Lieutenant Buncombe, who said, “Any time, mister,” and then, “Suah is too bad about Jo-An.”

  Tony Cook put the receiver back. Almost at once it rang at him. He said, “Cook,” into it.

  “Hi, Tony. Pieronelli. Maybe we’re onto something. Know that restaurant over on Bank Street? Call it ‘André’s,’ but it’s Italian all the same.”

  “Yes,” Tony said. “I know it, Charley. Damned good lasagna.”

  “That’s the place. Well, seems our Miss Jones went in there now and then. At least, the headwaiter’s pretty sure. Says
it’s a lousy picture—makes her look dead, he says—but he’s pretty sure. I told him it wasn’t the picture made her look dead. He thinks she came in for dinner three-four times last month or so. Remembers because the first time she didn’t tip much and then, way he puts it, got wised up and tipped too much, if anything.”

  “She was from the deep South,” Tony said. “Name of Lacey. Wrote novels. She went into the place alone?”

  “Way he remembers it, she was alone the first couple of times. After that a man was with her.”

  “The man, Charley?”

  “This headwaiter—his name’s Lorenzo, not André—thinks the man with her had a beard. Not that that means much nowadays. That’s all he remembers about him. Just that he maybe had a beard.”

  “Color of same?”

  “He doesn’t remember that, Tony. Just a beard.”

  “The last time they were in together?”

  “Two-three nights ago, he thinks.”

  “He wouldn’t be able to identify the man, I suppose?”

  “Nope. Just a beard. No special color beard.”

  It wasn’t much. As Charles Pieronelli had pointed out, there were a lot of beards around. By no means all of them were red.

  Tony dialed the Alabama number. This time there was an answer after four rings. The answer was, “Lace resdunce.” The second time Tony got it, he asked for Mr. Lacey.

  “Ain’t heah, suh. Ain’t been heah fo bout a week maybe.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “I’se Henry, suh. Works for Mistuh Lacey and the lady.”

  “Do you know where Mr. Lacey has gone, Henry?”

  “Seems like he went up no-th, suh. Way it seems to me, suh. Called somebody and asked about when trains went, seems like.”

  “If he comes back,” Tony said, “ask him to call this number, will you?” and gave him the telephone number of Homicide, Manhattan South. “And ask for Detective Anthony Cook.”

  “Wha’s that, suh?”

  “New York City. A Police Department number. Will you tell him?”

  “Yassuh. I’ll suah do that, suh.”

  The four-to-midnight shift was beginning to drift in. Tony looked at his watch. The four-to-midnight was getting in on time.

  Tony lighted a cigarette. Nate ought to be showing up pretty soon, or calling in. I ought to write a report. But about what that means a damn? Better wait until Shapiro shows.

  He waited half an hour and Shapiro did not show. He went along home.

  6

  The man behind the counter served Nathan Shapiro a hamburger and two cups of surprisingly good coffee, and sure he knew the Karn place, and that if you went up One-seventeen for maybe a mile or so and turned right on Green Lane and then, after maybe about another mile, turned left, you couldn’t miss it.

  The last words thudded dully into Nathan Shapiro’s mind. He has heard them often. People, in that one respect, are likely to underestimate me, he thought. I can miss anything.

  He went to the car. He found Route 117 with little difficulty, although traffic considerably delayed him. He even found Green Lane. What he thought was the turnoff to the left was somebody’s driveway, and a large German shepherd barked at him with what appeared to be fury. The next left turn wasn’t anybody’s driveway. And, after about a quarter of a mile, there was a driveway with a sign saying “The Karns” beside it. Shapiro turned up this driveway, which was of impeccably raked gravel. The drive led to a wide white house, with white pillars supporting a balcony. Shapiro parked the police car in the big, empty turnaround. He parked it facing out.

  The man who answered the door wore a white jacket. Broad, heavy shoulders strained the jacket. He said, “Yes?” in the tone one uses to a man selling encyclopedias or the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Shapiro said he would like to see Mr. Karn.

  “Mr. Karn is playing golf,” the man in the white jacket said. “Always does Friday afternoon. He and Mrs. Karn both.” He looked at Shapiro thoughtfully. He made up his mind. He added, “Sir.”

  “Have you any idea when he’ll be back?”

  The man in the white jacket looked at the watch on his wrist. Shapiro looked at his own watch. It was a little after four o’clock. No wonder he had needed the hamburger.

  “Hard to tell, sir. Sometimes he plays late. But there’re people coming in for drinks, and he’ll probably—” He stopped, looking beyond Nathan Shapiro, and Shapiro heard the crunch of tires on the gravel. The car was a black Cadillac.

  “Here he is now,” the man in the white jacket said and went past Shapiro and down to the Cadillac. A rather short and moderately broad man got out from behind the wheel. He wore a neatly trimmed gray beard. The white jacket went to the other side of the car and opened the door, and a woman in shorts, who was several inches taller than the man, got out.

  Shapiro went down toward the Cadillac. The woman came around the car. She said, “You’re the TV man, I hope?”

  “No,” Shapiro said. “I’m a—”

  “Damn,” the woman said. “You just can’t count on them.”

  She went across the gravel toward the house, golf shoes crunching.

  The gray-bearded man, who was, Shapiro guessed, somewhere in his middle sixties, held out keys toward the man in the white jacket without looking at him.

  He said, “Trouble with the color. Everything comes out pinkish. You wanted to see me?”

  “If you’re Mr. Oscar Karn, yes,” Shapiro said.

  “I’m Karn,” the man said. He had a low, rather grating, voice.

  “I’m a police lieutenant,” Shapiro said. He added his name to it. He said, “From the city, Mr. Karn.”

  Karn merely raised bushy gray eyebrows.

  “About Miss Jo-An Lacey,” Shapiro said. “One of your writers, we understand.”

  “Yes. What about her?”

  “Whatever you can tell us,” Shapiro said. “You see, Mr. Karn, Miss Lacey’s dead.”

  Karn looked at him. His eyes went blank and the face under the neat beard seemed to sag. After some seconds he said, “Dead?”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “I’m sorry to say she is, Mr. Karn. And, we think, murdered. In an apartment down in Greenwich Village. We’re—we’re looking into the circumstances.”

  I sound as if I were writing a report, Shapiro thought. “Circumstances surrounding the death of—”

  “No use standing here in the sun,” Karn said. “Somebody killed Jo-An? That’s what you’re saying.”

  Shapiro said yes, but he spoke to Karn’s back. He walked after the shorter man between the white pillars and into the house. He heard the man in the white jacket taking something out of the Cadillac’s trunk, but he did not look back. He went after Karn and through a wide entrance hall and, to the right, into a big living room with Venetian blinds closed against the afternoon sun. Sunlight sifted between the slats and made patterns on a polished oak floor.

  Oscar Karn walked down the long room, his golf shoes clattering a little on the floor and leaving marks on it. He walked toward a bar at the end of the room. Nathan Shapiro followed him halfway down the room and stopped.

  At the bar, Karn turned back. He said, “You want a drink?”

  “No.”

  “God knows I do,” Karn said. “Sit down somewhere, will you?”

  Shapiro found a chair facing a low sofa, with a table between the chair and the sofa. Karn brought a tall glass with ice and whisky in it and sat on the sofa. He said, “What did you say your name is? I’m no good at names. Particularly—well, when something like this is sprung on me. God! Jo-An!”

  “Nathan Shapiro. I’m a lieutenant, Mr. Karn. Working out of Homicide, Manhattan South.”

  “Who’d kill a girl like her? Who’d want to?”

  “We’re trying to find out, Mr. Karn.”

  “Suppose you tell me about it, Lieutenant. And then I’ll tell you anything I can. Anything you think might help.”

  Shapiro told him about it.

  Karn said, “Jes
us Christ.” Then he said, “In an apartment way down there? Calling herself Jones?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think she didn’t kill herself? Not that I think she would have. Still—from the way you say it looked?”

  “We don’t think she killed herself, Mr. Karn,” Shapiro said. “You knew she was in New York?”

  “She came up to see us. Brought her manuscript with her. She’d sent along three, maybe four chapters in advance. I said, ‘Come along and bring it with you.’ She showed up five or six weeks ago.”

  “And did she—it was a new novel, I gather?”

  “Yes. She called it ‘Lonely Waters.’ It was—from what I got to read of it, the best she’d done. They’ll use the big words for it, Lieutenant. Words like ‘great,’ maybe.”

  “She gave you the manuscript?”

  “No, she didn’t. She’d decided there were things she wanted to do with it. Changes she wanted to make. She worked like that, getting everything right. She has—had it about ready, though. She was going to bring it in Monday at the latest. Possibly sooner.”

  “She told you that? When, Mr. Karn?”

  “Tuesday, I think it was. Yes, it would have been last Tuesday.”

  “She came into your office and told you that? Or told you on the telephone?”

  “Phone. I hadn’t seen her for—oh, three weeks, at a guess.”

  “You knew she was in this Gay Street apartment?”

  “No. I supposed she was staying at the Algonquin, where she’d stayed before. Working there.”

  “She didn’t say anything about having rented a place in Gay Street? To work in, I suppose?”

  “No. But—well, it’s not an unusual thing for a writer to do, Lieutenant. Sort of—well, hide out. Get away from people. From telephone calls, and friends coming in and that sort of thing.”

  “She had a telephone in the apartment,” Shapiro said. “Do you know whether she had many friends in New York?”