Write Murder Down

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  They followed him up a narrow flight of stairs. Blood had flowed down the stairs, but they could, with care, edge around it. The blood was dry, now. The body of a dark-haired youngish man was sprawled on the landing. It wasn’t bleeding anymore. A door off the landing stood open. Tony Cook edged around the body, and Sanders followed him. There was another uniformed man in the room—the small, cluttered room—the open door led to. There were also two men in civilian clothes, with gold-colored shields pinned to their jackets. Cook and Sanders pinned their own shields on. Regulations require that shields be visible at the scene of a crime. Tony knew one of the detectives from the precinct squad. Tony said, “Hi, Frank,” to Detective (1st gr.) Francis Pergotilli. He got a “Hi” back.

  “Stuck him with a butcher knife,” Pergotilli said. “Just happened to be taking the knife around the corner to be sharpened, according to her first story. Nineteen, she says she is. Says he tried to rape her. Trouble with that is, they’ve been shacking up for damn near a year, and we’ve found half a dozen people who don’t mind swearing to it. People who live in this dump. Over at the station house now, they are. So’s the girl. Marcella Little, she says her name is. No place we can find around here sharpens knives. Probably coming clean right now, Marcella is. Boyfriend playing around, so she stuck a knife in him.”

  “Pretty much cleaned up, way it sounds,” Tony said.

  “Except for that damn—well, about time.” The last was to two men in white uniforms who were coming up the stairs. They stopped at the landing, and one of them unrolled a furled canvas stretcher.

  “Busy morning,” one of the white-uniformed men said to Detective Pergotilli. “Another one of those goddamn stair jobs,” he said to the other man, who was trying to spread the stretcher out beside the body and finding there wasn’t enough room for it.

  “You’re lucky it isn’t on the fifth floor,” Pergotilli told them.

  Tony got the name of the victim and said he couldn’t see the point of sitting in on it at the precinct station house. “Guess you’ve got it pretty well sewed up,” he said, and Pergotilli said he guessed they had.

  Homicide frequently gets called in on killings the precinct squad has wrapped up, or is about to wrap up. And there are almost always butcher knives hysterical people can lay hands on. No, Sanders didn’t mind writing it up for them. He wasn’t in any hurry about lunch. Tony Cook wasn’t particularly hungry, either. Blood which had flowed down staircases from ripped bodies still made him a little queasy. He likes hamburgers, but likes them only rare. So he ordered a cheese sandwich with his beer. It turned out to be a process cheese and didn’t taste of much of anything.

  It was a little cooler than it had been the day before. It still wasn’t what anybody could call cool. It just wasn’t as stifling as it had been Sunday; had been even in the country. He found he was walking toward Gay Street in the Village. Conditioned reflex, he told himself, and turned back toward the office. The present squad room of Homicide South was, at any rate, air-conditioned. Manhattan was really hell in July. And there were still reports to type. In triplicate.

  There wasn’t much else. A “suspicious death” in an apartment on West Twenty-second. Ferguson was out on it, with Sanders. S.O.S. was finding his neck stuck out.

  About two-thirty, Tony was up on his reports and lighted a cigarette. This one he could really smoke. Cigarettes left slanting in ashtrays when fingers are busy are often forgotten and left to smolder out. Of course, those you don’t have to count. Some day, probably, he’d have to try one of those filter holders. Only he’d feel rather silly with a holder stuck in his mouth. F.D.R. had got away with it, but F.D.R. was a man who could get away with things.

  He agreed with Detective (2nd gr.) Mark Ferguson—now back—that the Yankees were beginning to show signs of life and that it was about time and that nobody would ever see anything like the old Yanks again. And that, yes, it was being a dull day. And that, if all hell broke loose for the four-to-midnight boys, he wouldn’t mind too much.

  It was after three o’clock, with less than an hour of the shift to go, when Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro came out of his office into the squad room and looked at Tony Cook and used his head to beckon with. Shapiro’s long face was set in lines of deep depression, which was the way it was usually set. Perhaps even more so than usual, Tony thought, as he put on his jacket and buttoned it to cover the gun and joined Shapiro at the door.

  “You and I,” Shapiro said, his voice as depressed as his face, “we always get the lousy ones. Know anything about the advertising racket, Tony? Except that that Rachel girl of yours poses for advertising shots. How is Rachel, by the way?”

  Tony said that Rachel was all right and asked about Rose. The sadness diminished in Nathan Shapiro’s face. He said that Rose was fine and that he was trying to get her to take a week in the Catskills, where maybe it was cooler than God knew it was in Brooklyn, but that she wouldn’t go. “Says if I can stand it, she can. Like her, isn’t it?”

  Tony agreed that staying in New York in July because her husband had to was very like Rose Shapiro. He added that he didn’t know anything about advertising agencies except that Rachel often modeled for them.

  They got in a squad car, which had a uniformed man to drive it.

  “I didn’t suppose you would,” Shapiro said, and gave the driver a Madison Avenue address. An address below Forty-second, Tony realized. “Neither do I. I told Bill that, but it didn’t do any good. Never does, does it? He keeps on giving us the lousy ones.”

  “All right, Nate,” Tony said. “Because you keep cracking them, maybe.”

  He was entirely familiar with Shapiro’s conviction that Captain William Weigand, commanding, Homicide South, inconsiderately assigns Shapiro cases which involve people entirely alien to Shapiro’s experience—cases involving evangelists who preach sermons beyond Shapiro’s ken, people who paint pictures, even people who write novels and publish novels. Beyond Tony’s experience, too, except that Rachel knew people of that sort—painters especially—and that he had met some of them with her. They found detectives an alien breed, of course. There was that to keep in mind.

  “Suspicious death, precinct boys put it down as,” Shapiro said, as the squad car took them uptown, obeying all traffic regulations, stopping at all red lights. “Charlie Fremont’s a careful one. Man falls seven floors and squashes on a roof and Charlie gets suspicious. Because, he says, how can you get a window open to fall out of it?”

  “Old building, maybe,” Tony said. “Ought I to know Fremont?”

  “Captain, precinct squad,” Shapiro said. “Went out on it himself, apparently. Thorough sort. Always has been. Good cop. Doesn’t like to believe what stares him in the face.”

  “Neither do you,” Tony told him, and got “Mmmm” as answer. “The deceased had a name?”

  “Name of Bradley,” Nathan Shapiro told him. “Firm’s Folsom, Akins and Bradley. Something like that, anyway. Here we are.”

  They were in front of a corner office building a couple of blocks below Forty-second on Madison. It belonged to the setback era, not the more recent straight-up, featureless glass.

  “Here we are, Tony,” Shapiro repeated. Tony sat for a second or two, looking at the back of the driver’s head. Then he said he’d be damned. He didn’t say why. After all, Bradley wasn’t an unusual name. Probably there were quite a few men named Bradley in the advertising business.

  They went into the lobby of the building. A barbershop opened off it, and also a restaurant. It was pleasantly cool in the lobby. The board by the bank of elevators told them that Folsom, Akins & Bradley occupied the twelfth floor. They got into an elevator under a sign that said “Express to 12” and pressed a button marked “12” which glowed its appreciation of their choice.

  The car stopped, rather abruptly, and its doors opened on a cubicle which contained a jar partly filled with sand. There were two cigarette butts on top of the sand. There was a small, straight chair against one wall and a small tab
le beside it that held an ashtray. There were no butts in the tray. The door facing them was marked “Folsom, Akins & Bradley.” They opened the door and confronted a desk with a very trim young woman behind it. There were deep, leather-covered chairs along the side walls and doors in both of the walls. There was a third door, also closed, behind the receptionist’s desk.

  Nobody was sitting in any of the chairs.

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?” the trim young woman asked them. “Only I’m afraid everybody’s canceled every—”

  “Police, miss,” Shapiro said. He showed her his badge and put it back in his pocket.

  “Through that way, Lieutenant,” the girl said. “And then straight on to the next-to-last office on your left. That’s where they all are.”

  She had actually looked at his badge, Shapiro thought. Apparently a trim mind went with the trim body. They went through the doorway she had indicated; went along a passage between rows of desks, all except three deserted. Young women were typing at three of the desks. Beyond the desk area—a typists’ pool, evidently—they went down a wide corridor, with closed doors on either side of it. The doors had names on them: “Mr. Lawrence,” “Mr. Cartwell,” “Miss Logan,” and a good many others. A plaque on one door was labeled “Art Department.” Nearly at the end of the corridor, another short one went off to the right.

  A door on the left stood open, and the name on that door was “Mr. Bradley.” They went through that doorway, pinning their badges on. They went into a small room and faced a small desk. There was no one behind the desk. A rather wider door stood open behind the desk, and voices came from beyond it. They went through that door into a big corner office. It was not as cool in that office, and a casement window on their left was hinged wide open. A tall, white-haired man stood at the window, his back to the office—and to a large desk with two telephones on it and a high-backed, leather-covered chair behind it. Shapiro said, “Afternoon, Charlie,” and the white-haired man turned to face them. He said, “So you got it, Nate. Hell of a long way for the poor son of a bitch.”

  There were two other men in the room. One wore a sport jacket and had a detective’s badge pinned to it. He was sitting in a deep chair, facing toward the desk. The man beside him in an identical chair had wide shoulders, over which a gray suit jacket fitted smoothly. He stood up as Shapiro and Tony went into the room. He had blond hair, cut short, and a tanned squarish face. There was a clipped blond mustache on his upper lip. He wore a white shirt with a button-down collar and a dark red bow tie. It wasn’t, Tony thought, a snap-on bow tie. He nodded his head, slowly, at Tony and Nathan Shapiro. There was a waiting, no-comment expression on his tanned face. He did not say anything. He was a tall man, as tall as Tony Cook. He was, Tony thought, probably in his late forties. Tony returned his nod. He also nodded his head, in greeting, at Detective (1st gr.) Ken Latham. Shapiro went over and stood beside Captain Charles Fremont. He looked down. It had been a hell of a long way down.

  “Fifth-floor roof,” Fremont said. “You can see where he landed.” On a section of the fifth-floor roof, above which the setback began, a square of gray canvas was spread. There appeared to be nothing under the canvas.

  “Pretty messy,” Fremont said.

  “Would have been,” Nate Shapiro said. “How long ago, Charlie?”

  “About an hour. Hour and a half,” Fremont told him. “Can’t find anybody who saw him fall. Thought somebody over there might be able to fix it, but nope. All hard at work. Not looking out of windows.”

  “Over there” was the facade of the other rise of the building. There were lighted windows up and down it, and men and women at desks beyond the windows. “That’s a ‘spire,’” Fremont said. “Building’s called ‘Twin Spires.’ Anyway, we don’t know when he fell.”

  “Around three, probably,” the tall, bronzed man said. “We got back about a quarter of. A man was waiting to see him, Miss Kline says. Was in Frank’s office only about ten minutes, she says. Man named Langhorn.”

  They turned back from the window.

  “This is Mr. Akins, Nate,” Fremont said. “Lieutenant Shapiro, Mr. Akins. Of the Homicide Squad.”

  Akins said, “Homicide?” There was surprise and question in his voice. “Poor Frank just fell out the window. Tried to get him to have a guardrail put in, but he just laughed at me.”

  “Probably what happened,” Shapiro said. “Just that we’re supposed to try to make sure about things. This is Detective Cook, Mr. Akins. Try not to bother you too long. Mr. Bradley was your partner, I take it. Yours and Mr. Folsom’s, that is.”

  “Yes,” Akins said. “Mine. Ted Folsom retired several years ago. Founded the agency, Ted did. Folsom and Akins, it was before Frank came in. Now, God knows. Leslie Akins Associates, I guess. But God knows. Few hours ago—a hell of a thing to happen, Lieutenant. One hell of a thing to happen.”

  He shook his head in a baffled sort of way.

  “Few hours ago we were on top of the world,” he said. “Just a few lousy hours ago. Damn it to hell. What you say we go into my office? Keep feeling old Frank’s still here, somehow.”

  He led them to a door in the side wall of the office and into another corner office of equal size. Afternoon sun slanted into this one, which was perceptibly cooler than the other had been. The windows in this office were closed. They were, in fact, unopenable, Nate Shapiro noticed. Leslie Akins went to sit behind a wide desk and motioned them toward chairs. Shapiro and Fremont and Tony Cook sat down. Detective Latham had remained in the other office.

  “Cooler in here,” Akins told them.

  He hadn’t needed to. The temperature in this air-conditioned office was noticeably lower than in the one which had been Frank Bradley’s, now that the door was closed between them. The open window in Bradley’s office let in the city’s steaming air—the city’s lung-clogging air.

  “Much cooler,” Shapiro agreed.

  “Whole building’s cooler than Frank wants—” The present tense stopped him for a moment. “Than poor Frank wanted his office,” Akins said. “Had to have the duct shut off when he joined us. And workable windows put in. Cost quite a bit, actually. The people who own the building let out a squawk, and we had to fork over half of it. They still yelled. Something about upsetting the whole balance of the building, whatever they meant by that. But we’re good tenants, with a long lease. So—”

  “Mr. Bradley objected to air conditioning?”

  “Had a thing about it, Lieutenant. A lot of sinus trouble, Frank had. Had some idea that air conditioning is bad for sinuses. Don’t know where he got it. Be the other way around, you’d think, wouldn’t you? Air conditioning filters the muck out of the air. Some of it, anyway. But there was no arguing Frank out of it. People get notions, don’t they?”

  Nathan Shapiro agreed that people got notions. “These sinus attacks Mr. Bradley had,” Shapiro said. “Ever make him dizzy?”

  “If they did, he never mentioned it. Oh. I see what you’re getting at. Low sill on that window in there. As I said, I tried to get him to have a guardrail put in. But no, he never said anything about getting dizzy. Never talked about his health, actually. Except for this sinus thing. Aways seemed fit to me. In damn good condition for his age, I’d have said.”

  “We have to check out all possibilities,” Shapiro told the man who sat so erect behind his desk. “About how old was Mr. Bradley?”

  “Fifty. Around there, anyway. Had his own agency for ten years or so, before he and I joined up. After Ted Folsom retired, that was. Ted had been creative executive, you see. Left a hole when he stepped out. Frank filled it for us.”

  Shapiro said he saw, which wasn’t entirely true. Creative executive? As usual, Nathan thought, Bill Weigand’s thrown me in out of my depth. This time, I don’t even know the terminology.

  “When was this, Mr. Akins? When you and Mr. Bradley became associated. Became partners. It is a partnership, I gather. Not a corporation?”

  “Partnership, yes. We’ve never inc
orporated. Three years ago, Lieutenant—or nearly. Three years come October, actually. He brought several accounts with him, of course. One big one. Hopkins Industries, that was. The cosmetic people, you know. Soaps. Shampoos. Antiperspirants. Face creams. That sort of thing. Got a new product coming out, as a matter of fact. Toothpaste. Call it ‘Dazzle.’ For that ‘dazzling smile.’ Frank gave them the name of it. TV spots, starting in September. With Lusterglow going piggyback.”

  “Lusterglow?”

  “Shampoo, Lieutenant. ‘Restore youth’s luster to your hair.’ Aimed at women in their forties and fifties. Women’s magazines. What are left of them. And TV spots, of course. Piggyback, some of them. Straight thirty seconds on others.”

  It didn’t get any simpler for Nate Shapiro. Nor did it seem to be getting them anywhere, like how Frank Bradley had come to fall out of a window to a messy death.

  “Thirty seconds doesn’t sound like much time,” Fremont said, not advancing matters.

  “We can cram a lot into thirty seconds,” Akins said. “Have to, at what the networks charge. Up to a hundred and fifty thousand, full network, prime time.”

  Nate said “Dollars?” involuntarily. But he knew Akins had meant a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. For half a minute he just found it hard to believe.

  “Suppose we get back to today,” Nathan Shapiro said.

  3

  Until it ended as it did, the day had been like any other day, Akins told them. Akins himself had shown a couple of renderings to clients. And—

  “Renderings?” Shapiro asked.

  “Mock-ups of ads,” Akins said. “For magazine advertisements, Lieutenant. Layouts. Illustrations here. Text there. With simulated type, of course. But the text typed out for them to O.K. The one for Texton went over big. Four-color job. Mostly photographs of this new synthetic of theirs. Folds and folds of it. Hell of a layout. I’ll say that for Wally. Damn sincere text. Their ad manager gobbled it up. Chris Rogers. Got it around here somewhere—if you’d like to see it?”