“Probably a member of the John Birch Society,” Priory had reported to his bureau. “Hard to get people to talk about that. Could be he’s a member of the K.K.K.”
(Priory had added, not for the record, that he was the wrong man for this job; that it was a job for a WASP, which a man named Alonzo Priory obviously was not.)
The city police were cooperative; the sheriff’s office was less so. Neither force knew anything against the Laceys. Except for that damn book of hers, of course. Sure was strange she should write like that. Fine old family, the Laceys were. You wouldn’t expect a Lacey to do a thing like that.
Shapiro had read several chapters of Snake Country before he went to bed the night before. He had found them absorbing—an oddly moving picture of a land he could not imagine, but felt he was slowly coming to know as he read on; a country populated by black people and white people; a dozen characters of both races had become tangible in his mind before, at around midnight, Rose had called to him that he had better—had really better—come to bed. People he wanted very much to get to know better; people who grew in his imagination as he had waited for sleep. The heroine—at least he supposed she was going to be the heroine—had seemed to him to be a girl of subtle intelligence; a girl growing into a woman of discernment and of courage. And, he suspected, a woman who was to come to no good end. Jo-An herself, he had wondered. Jo-An as seen through Jo-An’s now-for-always-blinded eyes?
Shapiro had not seen anything in the book which defamed anybody. But of course, Shapiro thought, I’m a product of Brooklyn and the son of a rabbi. I wouldn’t know about products of the deep South, about sons and daughters of families who for generations had lived on plantations and once had owned slaves; men and women who looked backward while time ground them forward. I’m not, Nathan had thought before, finally, he went to sleep, even able to visualize what they call a “plantation.”
The telephone rang on his desk. Detective Cohen had just called in, from a booth at Saks Fifth Avenue. Subject had got to Saks a little after nine forty-five. He had had to wait for Saks to open. Cohen had gone in after him, and into an almost empty store. After wandering around for a time, subject had gone to the shirt counter. Cohen was taking a chance in telephoning. But on the other hand, it was all chancy, with no crowd to merge into. Cohen had noted that he stuck out like a sore thumb and that he was chancing it and going to look at shirts himself.
So—John Henry Lacey III was stocking up on clothes. Possibly, recently acquired knowledge that he was his sister’s sole legatee had sent him on a buying spree. The pertinence of this, if any, escaped Nathan Shapiro.
He used the telephone. Copies of the photograph of John Henry Lacey III had been distributed to detectives on the day shift. They were being shown to desk clerks and bellhops and waiters in hotels. This man? A week ago or perhaps ten days ago? If he had had breakfast at one of the hotels he might have asked for grits. Yeah, that’s it. Grits. And damn if I know either, mister.
Shapiro looked at his watch. It was after ten. He got the Manhattan directory and looked up Oscar Karn, Inc. He dialed the number.
“Oscar Karn, Incorporated. Good morning.”
Mr. Karn was not yet in; probably he would not be in until eleven or a little later. Yes, his secretary probably had arrived. “Who shall I tell Miss Prentice is calling?”
Shapiro told her who was calling. “One moment, please.” A buzz. “Miss Prentice speaking. Can I help you?”
Shapiro told her how.
“I’m sorry,” Miss Prentice said. “We don’t expect Mr. Karn to be in today. As a matter of fact, he phoned to say he wouldn’t be. That he had decided to extend his weekend by a day. Would you care to leave a message?”
“No message,” Shapiro said. “But perhaps you can help me. It’s my understanding your office received a manuscript from Miss Jo-An Lacey on Friday. The manuscript of her new novel.”
“I believe that is correct. It came in late Friday afternoon, I understand. Special delivery, certified mail. Actually, I signed for it. And Mr. Karn called in and was told it had arrived. At least, I suppose it was the manuscript of her new novel.”
“You didn’t open it to find out?”
“Certainly not. It was addressed to Mr. Karn himself.”
“We’d like to have a look at it.”
“I’m afraid,” Miss Prentice said, “that that would be quite impossible, Lieutenant. Without specific instructions from Mr. Karn, that is. And anyway—”
She paused for a moment.
“Anyway,” Miss Prentice said, “Mr. Karn told me to have it sent up to him in the country. By messenger. And I’m quite sure the messenger has already left. If you’ll wait a moment—”
Shapiro waited the moment, which turned out to be several minutes. He could hear the sound, but not the words, of Miss Prentice’s voice, apparently on another telephone. Then she spoke again to him.
“The messenger left about fifteen minutes ago,” she said. “By car. Or motorcycle, perhaps. Is there any other way I can help you, Lieutenant?”
There was no other way she could help Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro.
“He often takes manuscripts up to the country to read,” Miss Prentice said. “Because there are fewer interruptions there, you know.”
Shapiro said he saw and hung up. Almost at once the telephone blared at him. He spoke his name into it.
“Sergeant Finney, Lieutenant. At the bureau.”
Which meant the D.A.’s Homicide Bureau.
Shapiro said, “Yes, Sergeant?”
“Detective Priory just called in. He’s the man the lieutenant sent down to—”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“I don’t know it was worth the long-distance toll,” Sergeant Finney said. “Doesn’t sound so hot to me, but the lieutenant said to pass it along to you. O.K.?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Seems this—wait a minute—this John Henry Lacey the Third is the girl’s half brother. Father married twice, and John Henry comes from the first marriage. Al Priory just found that out this morning. Seems everybody down there had just assumed he knew because all of them knew. He said—I took this call of his—They sort of figure, I guess, everybody in the world knows about the Laceys.’ Also, he hasn’t got to see somebody named—wait a minute—somebody named Sturdevant, because Sturdevant doesn’t get to his office much before noon. And that the colored man at the plantation—only person there, Al says—is pretty vague about when Lacey left to go up north. Maybe a week, maybe two weeks. He can’t rightly tell. Is pretty sure he’d have gone by train, or bus maybe, since the Laceys don’t much like to fly, because that’s the way the colonel and his wife got themselves killed. Al didn’t explain that, Lieutenant. Figured he was running up toll charge, I guess. O.K.?”
“Probably their father and his wife,” Shapiro said. “Her father and mother, that would be. His father. That’s all Priory had?”
“Yeah. Not worth the charges, I wouldn’t think. But the lieutenant said to pass it along.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “Pass everything along, Sergeant.”
That John Henry and Jo-An Lacey were half siblings didn’t, Nathan thought, looking at the cradled telephone, seem particularly important. Interesting, yes. Helping toward a solution? That was not evident. Would a half brother be more likely to kill for an inheritance than a full brother? That was by no means certain. Brothers kill sisters and sisters brothers. Men and women too kill mates and their own children. Usually, of course, with guns and in the heat of family bitterness and despair. Jo-An Lacey had not been killed with a gun. She had been killed slowly and with deliberation. And almost surely, Shapiro thought, for money and not in rage.
Dejection grew in Nathan Shapiro’s mind. He wasn’t getting anywhere. More and more it was evident that this particular job was one for which he was outstandingly unsuited.
The telephone rang. At least I can answer telephones, Nathan thought, and picked the telephone up and said, “Shapiro.�
� He added, “Homicide South,” which was a waste of two words. To his own ears, his voice sounded grumpy.
“Terry Simms, Nate. Sound as if you’d got out of the wrong side of the bed. More than usual, I mean.”
“Sorry, Terry,” Shapiro said to Lieutenant Terence Simms, commanding the Detective Squad of the West Fifty-fourth Street station. “Maybe I did.”
“Maybe this will cheer you up,” Simms said, in a not-particularly hopeful tone. Nobody who knows him has much hope of cheering Nathan Shapiro up. “One of the boys has got a line on this man Lacey of yours. Thinks he has, anyway. Want to talk to him?”
“Yes,” Shapiro said, and waited a moment and heard, “Detective Arthur Spencer, Lieutenant. Found a man who’s pretty sure he waited on this man Lacey. At a hotel called the Brentwood. On Seventh Avenue. Run-of-the-mill sort of place. Identifies the photograph. Anyway, is pretty sure about it. Thinks he served breakfast to a man who looked like that in the coffee shop.”
“When, Spencer?”
“Maybe a week ago. Maybe ten days ago. He’s not sure. Like most of them, you know. Sort of remembers this man from the picture and sort of remembers he wanted something called grits with his eggs. Says he signed the check. Put his room number on it and signed. Only he signed something like Lawrence, the way he remembers it. Not Lacey.”
“And?”
“A James Lawrence registered at the hotel on the sixteenth,” Spencer said. “Sixteenth of this month. Checked out on the twenty-third. Was in Room Four-one-two. Nobody remembers anything about him and the pix didn’t help. Except with this waiter.”
“Bellhops?”
“One of them thinks maybe he took a suitcase up to Room Four-twelve about then. Doesn’t remember the man. Not from the picture, I mean. Remembers taking a man—pretty sure just a man by himself—up to Four-twelve about then. Remembers, anyway, that whoever it was tipped him a dime and said, ‘Here, boy,’ when he gave it to him. The bellhop’s around sixty.”
“Black, Spencer?”
“Matter of fact, he is.”
“From the sixteenth to the twenty-third,” Shapiro said. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
“What they say.”
“I suppose nobody remembers getting this Lawrence a cab when he left? The doorman? Or carrying his luggage down?”
“The Brentwood doesn’t run to a doorman,” Spencer said. “At a guess, most of their guests carry their own luggage. A check’s out on the hackers, but you know how much time that takes.”
Shapiro knew how much time it takes to check the trip records of taxicab drivers. He said, “Good going,” and hung up.
It was good going. It was not firm; such things are seldom firm. If it ever came to picking John Henry Lacey III out of a lineup, the waiter from the Brentwood probably would say, “Maybe that one, I guess. Only I ain’t sure.”
Witnesses too often are like that. Witnesses tend to fade away.
The telephone rang again and Nathan said, “Shapiro,” into it.
“Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro?”
“This is Shapiro.”
“Long distance calling, sir. I have Lieutenant Shapiro on the line. You may go ahead, sir.”
“This is Detective Priory, Lieutenant. Of the D.A.’s bureau. Detective Alonzo Priory. They said to call you direct if I had anything hot, only maybe this isn’t all that hot. I’m calling from Mobile, Alabama, Lieutenant.”
“I know where you are,” Shapiro said. “Go ahead, Priory.”
“About this Lacey kill, sir. Man named Karn involved in it. That’s right, Lieutenant?”
“He’s been her publisher,” Shapiro said. “About Mr. Karn?”
“He was down here in April. Down here for about three weeks. At the hotel I’m calling from. He didn’t stay at the Lacey Plantation. That’s what everybody calls it. Plantation. But he had Miss Lacey here at the hotel with him. The whole three weeks, from what they tell me.”
“With him? How much with him, Priory?”
“Not all that much,” Priory said. “Different room. Different floor. He had a suite. She just had a room. From what I can find out, she was in his suite quite a lot. Seems, from what he more or less spread around, they were working together on a manuscript of hers. I sort of asked around about that, and it looks like they were, all right. Anyway, they had the public stenographer up several times. To his suite, I mean. They—mostly Miss Lacey but part of the time Karn—dictated to her. She said they had a lot of typewritten sheets with stuff written on them in pencil, and they would dictate from these sheets and say to mark it, ‘Insert page two thirty-seven.’ Or like that. And she would type it out with the page number. And Miss Lacey told her Mr. Karn was her editor and that he was suggesting some changes in her new book. The stenographer says she knew about Miss Lacey and that she wrote books. Seems she wrote one that made—well, quite a stir down here. The stenographer says she hasn’t read it herself, but heard a lot of people talking about it. I don’t know whether this is worth calling you about, sir, but the boss said to call you direct if I came across anything might be important.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “What we want you to do, Priory. Three weeks, you say?”
“April fifth to the twenty-fifth,” Priory said. “Near enough three weeks.”
“Near enough,” Shapiro said. “Have you got to see this man Sturdevant yet? Her lawyer?”
“Last time I called he still hadn’t come in to his office. You want me to call you after I’ve seen him, if I ever get to?”
“If she made a will,” Shapiro said, “and he’ll tell you what was in it, yes. No—only if the will doesn’t leave her entire estate to her brother. If it does, just send your report through channels.”
“Yes, sir. I’m calling from my room now, Lieutenant, and it will go on my bill. I’m supposing—”
“Yes, Priory. It’ll go on your expense account. By the way, did you find out whether Mr. Karn paid for Miss Lacey’s room as well as his own?”
“Yeah. I mean, he did, Lieutenant. Anything else?”
“What you can dig up,” Shapiro said. “This Lacey Plantation is quite a way outside Mobile, I take it?”
“Thirty-two miles,” Priory said. “If the rental people didn’t rig their odometer. Sixty-four miles out and back was what the clock said. Only way to get out there, Lieutenant. Big sort of run-down place, but there’s been work done on it. Recently, at a guess.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “This colored man you talked to out there. He couldn’t be at all definite about when Mr. Lacey left to come north?”
“Week ago, he thought. Only maybe two weeks ago. Seems they take things sort of easy about time down here. Like getting into your office around noon. Could be it’s the climate, I suppose.”
Shapiro supposed it could be the climate. He hung up.
Detective Priory was doing a good job. Detective Spencer was doing a good job. So, apparently still at Saks Fifth Avenue, was Detective Cohen. Everybody’s doing a good job, Nathan Shapiro thought. Except me, of course. I just sit and answer telephones. And pick up scraps and pieces.
That Oscar Karn had spent three weeks in Mobile in April, consulting with his author about her book, probably wasn’t even a scrap. For all Shapiro knew, editors might often travel many miles to confer with authors. Authors who might produce best sellers, at any rate. Perhaps Jo-An Lacey had got stuck and sent out a call for help. He assumed that writers sometimes got stuck, like detectives. He hoped, for writers’ sakes, not as irretrievably.
Three weeks in a hotel, and paying Jo-An’s hotel bill. Not at Jo-An’s house in the country. Understandable, that. The “plantation” was more than thirty miles out of town. Undoubtedly, Karn had flown down to Mobile and so would be without a car of his own—without, for example, the black Cadillac and the man named Stokes to drive it. A waste of time and energy to drive back and forth, of course. And with work being done on the house, Jo-An may not have had space for a guest.
There hadn’t, obviously,
been any secret about Karn and Jo-An having been at the hotel together; having worked together in Karn’s suite; having called the public stenographer in to take notes and type inserts.
It was true that Karn hadn’t mentioned being in Mobile during most of April. He had left the impression in Shapiro’s mind, that he had, in recent years, seen Jo-An only in New York. But that, Shapiro thought, is only an impression in my mind, and impressions in my mind are worth their weight in smoke. I’ll ask Karn about it when he shows up in town and Karn will say, “Sure, Lieutenant. There wasn’t any secret about it. Sort of thing editors do all the time.”
Separate rooms on different floors, Shapiro thought. More convenient if the rooms had been on the same floor, and only a door or two apart. But hotels cannot always give unlimited choice as to the locations of rooms they have available. If people want to visit one another in their rooms people must provide their own mobility.
A messenger refilled Lieutenant Shapiro’s In basket. The Lucera case was due to come up in three days. Shapiro would have to testify. He made a note of that. The Hotel Algonquin would like to have release of the room formerly occupied by Miss Jo-An Lacey. Shapiro put “O.K. NS” on the request and put it in the Out basket. His copy of the photograph of John Henry Lacey III came through. It looked like Lacey, but probably was taken several years before. It showed Lacey, in jacket and nonmatching slacks, with his hand on the collar of an Irish setter. At least, the dog looked like an Irish setter. Lacey looked at least five years younger in the picture than he had in the squad room of Homicide South and in the lobby of the Algonquin. He also, Shapiro thought, looked more robust. Also, he hadn’t then worn a beard.
The telephone rang. I might as well be an answering service, Nathan thought, and told the telephone who was answering it.
“Detective Cohen, Lieutenant. I’m back at the Algonquin. Subject’s still—hold it. I’d better call you back, sir. Looks like subject’s checking out.”
Shapiro said, “O.K., Cohen,” and hung up. He waited about five minutes, and the telephone rang again. He said “Shapiro.” It was not Detective Cohen.
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