“The State Police? Up in Westchester? The Karn place?”
“Memo on that,” Farwell said. “Matter of fact, I took it myself. Subject’s apparently on his way back to town. Subject being?”
“Lacey,” Shapiro told him. “Being driven back by Mr. Karn? Or didn’t they say?”
“Being driven back by Karn’s chauffeur,” Farwell said. “Man—wait a minute, Lieutenant. Man named Stokes. Karn isn’t along, according to the trooper who called. I guess that’s all’s come in, Na—sir.”
Nathan said, “Thanks,” and hung up. He dialed again at once. Tony Cook answered.
“When you and Miss Farmer go out to dinner,” Shapiro said, “did you plan to go some place in the neighborhood?”
“We haven’t decided, Nate. Rachel says she’s got a steak and—”
“Has she got a freezer?”
“Sure.”
“Ask her to put the steak in it,” Nathan said. “Take her up to dinner at the Algonquin. O.K.? Put it on the expense account, if you like.”
“No,” Tony said. “Sure well go there, if you say so. Not at the expense of the department. Why, Nate?”
“There’s just a chance,” Shapiro said, “that Miss Farmer may see somebody she’s seen before. Lacey seems to be on his way back to town. Presumably to the Algonquin. Maybe just to pick up his luggage, of course. Maybe not. Maybe he’ll have dinner there.”
“He won’t get grits, I shouldn’t think,” Tony said. “We’ll have dinner at the Algonquin. And drinks in the lobby. And Rachel will keep her eyes open.”
“Good,” Nathan said. “And what the hell are grits?”
“Hominy grits,” Tony said. “People in the South eat them, apparently. Sort of like porridge, at a guess. I never tried them myself. We’ll be at the Algonquin as soon as Rachel puts her clo—what I mean is, she’ll want to dress up some if we’re going out. Instead of staying in, I mean.”
Puts her clothes on, Tony was going to say before he got flustered, Nathan thought, and he thought it was a wonder that Tony, in the presence of Rachel with no clothes on, had been making as much sense as he had. Not that it was any of Nathan’s business how two attractive people played. But he felt momentarily cheered. He went back to the sofa in front of the fireplace and sipped iced coffee. He looked at the portrait of his father. He got up, and Rose shook her head sadly and lighted a cigarette.
Nathan went back to the telephone. This one would have to go through channels. For Nathan Shapiro, the channel started with Captain William Weigand, Commanding, Homicide South. The office would know Weigand’s whereabouts, but he might as well try the Weigands’ apartment first. He dialed.
Dorian Weigand answered the telephone. She said, “Yes, he is, Nathan. We were just sitting watching the boats.”
The Weigand apartment overlooks the East River. In it you can sit in front of a big window and watch tugs towing barges, or pushing barges.
Bill Weigand said, “Yes, Nate?” and listened. He said, “Yes, we’d better. Seersucker suit? A taste for something called grits? Right.”
“Of course,” Shapiro said, “he may have changed his clothes.”
“Yes,” Weigand said, “he may have changed his clothes, Nate. I’ll get it started.”
What Weigand got started were the feet of detectives from several precinct squads. He got them plodding into the lobbies and up to the desks of hotels, beginning with those nearest Pennsylvania Station, into which a stranger to town might most easily wander. They were not armed with much—not with photographs, only with a somewhat shadowy description. A tall thin man, perhaps wearing a seersucker suit? A man with a Southern accent? A man who, if he had eaten breakfast at the hotel—had breakfast sent to his room or gone to the coffee shop for it—might have asked for grits? A man who might have had for luggage only one heavy suitcase? A man with a wispy chin beard? A man who might have checked in a week ago or ten days ago?
Police work is like that. It requires a lot of walking; the asking of a lot of questions which are not likely to be answered. A photograph would have helped; probably the detective from the District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau who had flown down to Mobile, Alabama, as soon as Jo-An’s body had been identified would turn up photographs, including one of John Henry Lacey III. If he did, he would wire it up. In that case, the detectives plodding from hotel to hotel could plod all over again.
Shapiro finished his coffee. He looked at his watch and found that it was almost six o’clock of the Sunday evening. He said, “What do you say we go out to dinner? Over to Manhattan, say. To make up for the walk in the park we didn’t get to take.”
“Oh,” Rose said, “I’ve got—”
She looked at her husband. She didn’t say what she’d got for dinner. She said, “I think that’s a fine idea, dear. I’ll change, but it won’t be a minute. Meanwhile—”
She looked at him again.
“Why, darling,” Rose said, “don’t you wear your other suit?”
Nathan looked down at himself. The suit looked all right to him. Perhaps it did need a little pressing. So, as far as he remembered, would the other suit. “Sure,” Nathan said. “I’ll even put on a clean shirt.”
They changed. The other suit was pressed. Rose had taken care of that. They got a cab more quickly than they had any right to expect. Shapiro said, “The Algonquin. It’s on Forty-fourth Street between Sixth and Fifth.”
“The Avenue of the Americas,” the hacker said. “Sure thing, Mac.”
They had gone several blocks and been stopped by a light before Rose said that she had a feeling, and Nathan said, “What kind of feeling, Rose?”
“That on Sunday nights in summer a lot of hotels close their restaurants,” Rose said. “I don’t know about the Algonquin. But probably they still sell drinks.”
“What about the people who live there?” Shapiro said.
“Oh, go somewhere that’s open,” Rose told him. “Or perhaps there’s still room service. We may have to get a room for overnight. To get dinner.”
13
There were people having drinks in the lobby of the Hotel Algonquin. It was not as crowded as it had been the other time Shapiro had been in it. The doors to the Rose Room were open, but those to the Oak Room were closed. One of the people in the lobby was a slender young woman with long blond hair. She was sitting by herself in a deep chair from which she could see around most of the big room and also see the elevators. In front of her on a small table was a glass which, from its shape, contained sherry.
“She looks like somebody we know a little,” Rose said, and Nathan, who had merely glanced at first, looked again. The slender young woman looked at him—she seemed to be looking at everybody—but showed no sign she had ever seen him before. Shapiro’s expression was equally blank. He said, “There’s one,” and they went to a sofa behind the big clock. They tinkled the bell and Rose looked at her husband and said, “What’s so funny, dear?”
Nobody else, looking at Nathan Shapiro, would have thought there was anything funny; to most he would have looked as sad as always.
“Rachel Farmer,” Nathan said. “Doing it up brown. Or, actually, doing it up blond. Miss Farmer with a wig, dear. And Tony—” Nathan looked around the room. “Yes,” he said. “Over there in the corner, behind a copy of something called Variety.”
A waiter said, “Sir? Madam?”
Rose said, “A very dry martini, please.” Nathan said, “A sherry. Not too dry.” He added the last with no special sound of hope in his voice.
The waiter went away.
“Probably,” Nathan said, “the wig was Miss Farmer’s idea.” He leaned forward and twisted a little so that he could see Rachel Farmer in her blond wig. She seemed to be regarding the elevators. She reached forward and picked up her little glass and sipped from it.
“The wig looks bunchy, somehow,” Shapiro said.
Rose explained that. Rachel had let her own hair grow long. Her own hair was bunched under the wig. Rose thought the
wig looked very natural, considering. And that Rachel probably had assorted wigs—accouterments of her profession. “Sometimes,” Rose said, “photographers may also prefer blondes. Now, of course, because if she recognizes the man she’s supposed to recognize, he might recognize her. And—”
Their drinks came and a check with them. Nathan put a bill on the tray with the check. He said, “Do you serve dinner on Sundays?” The waiter said, “No, sir. Sorry, sir. Thank you, sir,” and carried the tray away.
“The traffic will be bad on Sunday afternoon,” Rose said. “On a summer Sunday afternoon. I wonder why—” She stopped, because Nathan was not listening. He was looking toward the almost-head-high partition which shields those drinking in the Algonquin lobby from those who are going into and out of the hotel. If those moving either way are tall enough, their heads are visible. Rose looked as Nathan was looking. She saw a head with rather sparse blond hair and a scraggly chin beard. She looked at Nathan, and Nathan nodded.
In front of the desk, just visible from where they sat, a body became attached to the head. It was a long, thin body, in a noticeably unpressed seersucker suit. Nathan Shapiro leaned and twisted so that he could see Rachel in her blond wig. She had lifted her sherry glass but was looking beyond it. She was looking expectantly, Shapiro thought, as if an overdue date were being waited for. She was looking at, among others, John Henry Lacey III, returned from the country. There was no change in her expression.
Lacey picked up his room key and went to the elevator. There he turned, as he waited, and looked over the lobby. The Shapiros were out of his view; Tony Cook was behind Variety. Rachel bent her head a little as she lifted her glass again and sipped from it. The elevator door opened and people came out of the car, and Lacey waited and went into it. The door closed on him.
Rachel stood and shook her head, indignantly—a woman who had been stood up and who was fed with it. Tony folded his copy of Variety and tucked it into his chair and went around the end of the shielding partition and then along the corridor it formed between the Blue Bar and the desk and the lobby. Rachel met him halfway with an “It’s high time” expression on her face.
“There ought really to be footlights,” Rose said.
“They’re young,” Nathan said. “For the young there ought always to be time for games.”
Tony put an arm around Rachel’s shoulders. He kissed her lightly on the cheek. He guided her around the grandfather clock to the sofa where the Shapiros were sitting. Nathan stood up.
“Didn’t know you planned to sit in,” Tony said, and Rachel said, “Good evening, Lieutenant. Hi, Rose. This damned thing’s too tight. It’s giving me a headache. The answer is yes, I’m almost sure.”
The sofa was wide enough for the four of them.
“Pretty sure?” Nathan said. “Or really very sure? And how long ago?”
“He stands out in a funny sort of way,” Rachel said. “By not looking as if he belonged here. He didn’t belong in Gay Street, either. Yes, I’m pretty sure. All right, very sure. And it was a week ago. Perhaps a little more than a week ago.” She turned to Tony. “Can I take this damn thing off now, mister?” she asked him.
“If you don’t go back to calling me ‘mister,’” Tony said. “And it was your idea, darling. Just pull it—”
“No,” Shapiro said. “Wait until we’re outside, if you don’t mind. Lacey may decide to come down and go out to dinner.” He tapped the bell. The waiter returned; he was very quick, because the number of customers had diminished. A very dry martini, a very dry sherry, a not-so-dry sherry, and a bourbon on the rocks.
“They don’t serve dinner on Sundays,” Rachel said. “I was invited to dinner, mis—Tony. And when I bought this wig, I wore my own hair short. Bought it to sit on the back of a motorcycle, holding on to the man in front, with long blond tresses blowing back. And the fan almost blew me off the seat.”
She fidgeted with her blond wig, trying to ease its pressure on her forehead.
“Advertising the motorcycle?” Rose asked.
“Some toothpaste or other,” Rachel said. “I had my mouth open, from the joy and excitement of it all. There was special lighting on my teeth. Took them almost three hours to get it just right. Good.” The last was to the waiter who brought them drinks.
Shapiro lifted his and put it down without tasting it. He got up and went through the sparsely populated lobby. He stopped at the desk and asked something and got an answer and nodded his head. He went to one of the telephone booths and closed himself into it. He was there several minutes and came back and sat down again.
“Precinct will get a man over,” he said, speaking chiefly to Tony Cook. “Man named Fleming. Ever run into him, Tony?”
“If his first name is Frederick,” Tony said. “Old F.F. He’s been around for years. Good man, for all I know. We wait for him?”
“I think so,” Shapiro said. “Sorry, Miss Farmer. About the wig, I mean. It shouldn’t be long. Then—then we can all go somewhere to dinner. Unless you and Tony?”
Rachel and Tony Cook looked at each other, briefly.
“The four of us would be fine,” Rachel said.
“We can go down to Charles,” Tony said.
“I hope he comes soon,” Rachel said. “The way this thing’s cutting into me, I’ll be marked for life.”
They drank, Rachel fingering the wig from time to time.
Nathan’s sherry wasn’t really the way he likes sherry.
It was only about ten minutes before a gray-haired, rather stocky man, apparently in his fifties, walked into the lobby and looked around it, as though for an empty table. There were plenty of empty tables. He looked at the Shapiros and at Rachel and Tony. It was obvious from his expression that he had never seen them before. He chose a chair which faced the elevators and tinkled the bell on it.
“Fleming,” Tony said. “To take over the watch.”
“He spotted us,” Shapiro said. “So we can drink up and go.”
They drank up and paid and went. They had to go in two taxis, since New York taxicabs no longer carry four, except when, once in a hundred times or so, a survivor from a brighter day comes along.
“Sixth between Tenth and Eleventh,” Tony said. “You two go ahead.”
Nathan and Rose took the first cab the doorman flagged and paid a quarter for it. But the next was on the tail of the first, and they were stopped in order at Fifth Avenue. It was Rose who looked back from their leading cab.
“She’s got it off already,” she told Nathan. “She looks much better without it. Also, she’s rubbing her forehead.”
They arrived almost simultaneously at Charles French Restaurant. Tony Cook opened the door for them and Rose went in first. Rose said, “Goodness!” which is as mild a term as has ever been applied to the redecorated Charles.
“All the same,” Tony said, “it’s damn good food.”
Which is also a mild comment on the kitchen of Charles French Restaurant.
Shapiro’s In basket was full when he got to his desk at nine o’clock Monday morning. As he went through the squad room, Tony Cook was at his desk, typing. Detectives spend much time typing departmental English. Nathan Shapiro looked at his In basket, sighed and pulled papers out of it.
Fleming had sat in the lobby of the Hotel Algonquin until it was almost midnight and the lobby almost empty and the remaining waiter hovering. Subject, who had been described to Detective (1st gr.) Frederick Fleming had not reappeared. Fleming had gone out of the hotel to the car he had parked so he could see the hotel entrance. A few had gone into it; subject had not come out. Fleming had been relieved at eight in the morning by Detective (2nd gr.) Abram Cohen.
Cohen had gone into the restaurant of the hotel to have what was for him a late breakfast. He had found it an early one for the Hotel Algonquin guests. There had been only two other men having breakfast in the dining room. One of them, from description supplied, was subject. He was reading the menu when Cohen went to a table at a little dista
nce. He asked the waiter something which Cohen could not overhear and the waiter shook his head. Subject looked annoyed, Cohen thought. No grits, probably, Nathan thought.
Cohen had finished his breakfast while subject was still drinking coffee. He had gone to the lobby and sat in it, partly behind a copy of the New York Times. Subject had come out of the restaurant and gone to the elevators and gone into one. Cohen had moved to another chair where the light was better, along with the view of the elevators. Cohen had waited half an hour, getting a third of the way through the New York Times. He had taken a chance and called in. He had been told to keep on waiting. He had not reported again at eight fifty-two.
Detective Alonzo Priory, attached to the District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau, had got a photograph of John Henry Lacey III and wired it in. Copies were being made. Priory had not yet been able to see Leslie Sturdevant, senior partner of the law firm of Sturdevant, Grosvenor and Jones. He had, from this place and that, been able to sift out some information about Jo-An and John Henry.
Jo-An had not been especially popular in the area of Mobile, Alabama. It was too bad about her, of course—it sure was too bad about her. But that book of hers. Funny way for a Southern lady to be writing. Defaming the Southland, when you came right down to it Writing like she was an outside agitator, almost. One source had gone further. Way she wrote you’d think she was a nigger lover. Sho wouldn’t have expected that from a daughter of John Henry Lacey II. You sho wouldn’t.
There were fewer opinions about John Henry Lacey III. He was in the real estate business; Detective Priory had got the impression he was not very deeply in it. He was a member of the Plantation Club; all Laceys had always been members of the Plantation Club. Apparently he did not often visit the club. Stayed out at that plantation of theirs most of the time, seemed like. But he was a real Lacey, all right—not like that sister of his. Must be a problem to him, that sister of his. Probably the reason he didn’t come into the city much. Embarrassing to have a sister who wrote books like that, defaming her own part of the country.
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