“Don’t bother, Mr. Akins. Some other time, maybe. You showed this rendering when? This morning?”
“Around ten. Didn’t take long. Rogers knows a good thing when he sees it. Not like Birnham. Cranky old bastard, Nat Birnham is. Of course, his program’ll run to three or four million. Naturally wants to make sure it’ll sell cars. He’s Mini-Motors, you know.”
Akins did not merely drop names—probably all of them irrelevant. He hurled names. Nate Shapiro cringed slightly under the impact. He repeated “Cars?”
“Mini-Motors. Little beetles, they make. Make in Japan, actually. Can’t call them ‘beetles’ of course. Took an hour, damn near, to make Nat see why. That Volks agency’s got a genius handling the account. Have to admit that, I guess. Yes, sure have to give them that.”
“That was today? That you showed this—rendering—to Mr. Birnham?”
“Around ten-thirty until lunchtime. Right after Texton—I told you Texton snapped theirs up, didn’t I? No sweat with Rogers. Old Nat was—oh, all right—a different kettle of fish. Has been for the last couple of years. Hard man to deal with. But then—fifteen percent of maybe four million a year—well, there you are, if you get what I mean.”
Nate got what he meant, or thereabouts. He’d thought agencies got only ten percent. No, that was what authors’ agents got. Agents for painters got a lot more, but they had to run galleries. Information you had to pick up on one case was no damn good on the next. Not as long as Bill Weigand kept throwing the odd ones at him. Probably next time he’d need a course in nuclear physics.
“Mr. Bradley,” Nate said. “Any idea what he was doing today?”
“In his office,” Akins said. “This morning, that is. Trying to work out a bug for Birnham, I guess. Way we’d planned it, anyway. All right, we knew we didn’t have it in the rendering I showed the old grouch today. Amelia’ll probably know.”
“Amelia?”
“Amelia Kline. She’s his secretary. Was, anyway. You’ll have to ask her, Lieutenant.” He looked at the watch on his wrist. “If she hasn’t gone for the day.”
Shapiro looked at his own watch. It was a quarter of five.
“We’d like her to wait around for a while,” he told Leslie Akins. “Will you see—”
But Akins had already switched on his intercom. It said, “Yes, Mr. Akins,” in a rasping but female voice.
“Amelia happen to be in there with you, Sue? If she is, the police say they’d like to have a word with her. Ask her to stick around for a while, will you?”
“Of course, Mr. Akins. She’s—well, sort of broken up, you know.”
“We all are,” Akins said. His voice, which had had an almost sprightly tone when he had talked of Texton and of Birnham’s Mini-Motors, moderated to a texture more appropriate. “Think she’d like a brandy or something?”
There was a brief pause. Then, “She says not, Mr. Akins. We’ve both had coffee sent in. She’ll be here when they want to talk to her.”
Akins said, “Fine, Sue. And you might stick around too, if you don’t mind.”
“Certainly, Mr. Akins.”
“Sue Perkins,” Akins said to Shapiro. “My secretary. Amelia’s in there with her. Taking it hard, apparently. Been working with Frank since he joined us.”
“Which was nearly three years ago, you said, Mr. Akins. Bringing several accounts with him. About those accounts. They’ll stay with the firm?”
Akins spread his hands. He shrugged. Then he said, “No reason why not, I hope. Up to the clients, of course. You can’t ever tell about clients, Lieutenant. Gee whiz, some of them. Go skittering off. But I think the accounts Frank brought with him will stick around. We’ve done a good job for them. Frank was good. Damn good. But he’s not the only good man around. Take over the creative end myself, if it comes to that. Frank handled it the last couple of years. No reason I can’t take it on.”
Nathan Shapiro nodded his head, in acceptance of the assertion that Leslie Akins was as creative as anyone else. Nathan had supposed that creation was the province of Jehovah, but it appeared that He could delegate.
“You said you and Mr. Bradley ‘got back’ about a quarter of three,” Shapiro said. “From where, Mr. Akins? Lunch, I suppose? And that a Mr. Langhorn was waiting to see him.”
“Yes, Lieutenant. We had lunch at the Ad Lib, as we often did unless we were splurging for clients, if you see what I mean. Little place on Thirty-fifth. Easy walking distance, and Frank did say he had to get back because he had an appointment with Langhorn. Pain in the ass, Langhorn’s been. But more Frank’s ass than mine.”
Nathan merely raised eyebrows above his melancholy eyes.
“Writer,” Akins said. “Frank had an option on a book of his. Oh, assigned to the firm when Frank joined me, of course. No use to us, as it’s turned out. Been making a nuisance of himself, Langhorn has. Claims Frank gypped him. But he took Frank’s offer for the option—a thousand, I think it was. And the option’s clear enough. TV rights in perpetuity if we take it up. Pretty academic, as it’s turned out. I think Frank had a nibble before we joined up. But nothing came of it. And nothing has since. Langhorn made noises about suing, but he wouldn’t have had a prayer, our lawyers say.”
Nathan said that perpetuity seemed like a long time. He said that Langhorn probably didn’t like Frank Bradley much, if he thought Bradley had gypped him.
“Hated his guts, probably,” Akins said. “Oh, all right. Could be old Frank made what might have been a shrewd deal, if anything had come of it. Some authors do better. Get paid for each show. And don’t have to write the scripts. Also get screen credit. ‘Character created by Joe Zilch.’ That sort of thing. Frank was to pay a flat five thousand. On top of the option money. All right, Langhorn should have had an agent. Or read the contract before he signed it. Water under the bridge, anyway. And, as it turned out, no water.”
Nathan raised his eyebrows again.
“No sponsor,” Akins said. “We tried it on a few clients, but no soap. Costs one hell of a lot, a series like that does. Scriptwriters, actors, cameramen, light men, directors and assistant directors—whole thing runs to quite a lot. And network time on top of it. Got to sell the product, but big.”
Nathan said he saw, and again with only partial truth. He decided to go back to something simpler.
“At lunch,” he said. “You and Mr. Bradley had a drink or two, maybe?”
“I had a couple of dry manhattans,” Akins said. “Frank had a couple of martinis. Could be he had three. We were going over things and I didn’t pay much attention. You getting at something, Lieutenant?”
“Whether Mr. Bradley had enough to drink to make him a little—well, wobbly?”
“So he’d lose balance and fall out the window? No, I shouldn’t think so. He seemed steady enough when we were walking back. Nothing to show he was feeling the drinks. Anyway, about what we usually have when we lunch together. Of course, sometimes drinks hit you harder one day than they do another. And a muggy day like this—well, nobody’s up to par. And old Frank just had a salad for lunch. Did, sometimes. Always a light eater, at lunch anyway. I suppose it’s possible he was feeling a couple of drinks. All I can say is, he didn’t show it. Not to me, anyway. But—you wouldn’t have any more investigating to do, if that was the way it was, would you? Just—just accidental death. Damn tragic thing, but there we’d be, wouldn’t we?”
Leslie Akins could stretch the obvious out to considerable length, Shapiro thought. But he agreed that that was where they would be. He said they might have a word with Miss Kline and let her go home—that, after all, she’d had a shock.
“We all have,” Akins said. “In here, Lieutenant? I’ve got a few things to clear up.”
“Perhaps her office,” Shapiro said, and he and Tony Cook and Captain Charles Fremont stood up. Akins remained sitting, very upright, behind his wide desk. “Just go through Frank’s office,” he told them. “I’ll see she’s right along.”
They went through the co
nnecting doorway between Akins’s office and the one which had been Frank Bradley’s. Detective Latham was standing by the open window through which Bradley had fallen. The window, Nathan Shapiro noticed, did have a low sill. Not more than a couple of feet above the floor. Akins had been right in urging his partner to have a guardrail put across the window. An easy enough window to fall out of, particularly if a couple, or three, drinks had left you a little woozy. They’d have left me that way, Nate thought. And also with a growling stomach. But probably men in the advertising business got used to drinks in the middle of the day and didn’t notice them. I don’t know a damn thing about people like Akins and Bradley, Nate thought. I don’t even know their habits.
“Looks like maybe I was crying wolf,” Fremont said. “Nothing to bring you guys in on, Nate. But it just—well, didn’t feel kosher. Just—accidental death?”
“Could be,” Nathan said.
“Anyway,” Fremont said, “Ken and I may as well get along back to the station house.”
“Sure,” Nate said. “Tony and I’ll poke around a little more. Probably not come up with anything.”
Fremont said, “O.K.,” and he and Detective Latham went out of the office. There were two doors in the wall opposite, and they used the one which opened directly on the corridor. That door had no name lettered on it, only the room number. Shapiro and Cook used the other door, which let them into Amelia Kline’s office. There was nobody in the small office.
“All right, Tony,” Shapiro said. “What’re you keeping bottled up?”
Tony was not aware that he had showed signs of bottling anything up. Sometimes Nate seemed to have second sight, or something.
“Probably nothing,” Tony said. “Only, Saturday night Rachel told me she was maybe going to get an acting part in a movie. TV kind of movie—something she called a pilot. And that a Mr. Bradley had offered it to her. Maybe another Mr.—”
He stopped because the door from the corridor opened and a small young woman, with short black hair and a small, beautifully designed face came into the room. Her full lips trembled a little, Tony thought. He also thought she had been crying.
“Miss Kline?” Nathan Shapiro said. “We’ll try not to keep you too long. My name’s Shapiro. Police lieutenant. This is Detective Cook. Probably this bad thing has made you—well, a little shaky.”
“I’m all right,” she said. “It’s a dreadful thing, but I’m all right.”
She crossed the room rather, Nathan thought, as if she were feeling her way across it. She sat at her desk. There was only one other chair in the small office. Shapiro pulled it toward the desk and sat on it. Tony stood, his back against the wall.
“About this afternoon,” Shapiro said. “Mr. Akins says he and Mr. Bradley got back from lunch about a quarter of three. Way you remember it, Miss Kline?”
“Yes,” she said. “It was about then. Fr—Mr. Bradley went directly into his office. I mean, not through here. It was—oh, about ten of three when he told me to have Mr. Langhorn go in.”
“Told you on the intercom?”
“Yes. Mr. Langhorn’s appointment wasn’t until three, actually. But he was early. Got to the reception desk about twenty of. I said Mr. Bradley hadn’t come back from lunch yet but that I was expecting him any moment and that Mr. Langhorn could come in here and wait, if he wanted to. So he came in. Sat on that chair you’re sitting on, Lieutenant. Shapiro, you said your name is? I’m—I’m all confused.”
“Shapiro, yes. Nathan Shapiro. It’s quite natural you should be confused, Miss Kline. Just take it easy. Mr. Langhorn just sat here and waited?”
“He fidgeted a lot. The chair wasn’t big enough for him, I guess. He’s a big man, you know.”
Shapiro didn’t know. He said, “Mr. Langhorn had been in to see Mr. Bradley before?”
“Several times, Lieutenant. Last spring—well, it seemed like he came in almost every day. Sometimes—oh, just barged in.”
“Mr. Bradley always saw Mr. Langhorn when he came in? Even when he barged in?”
“Yes. Oh, sometimes he’d say, ‘God, not again.’ Something like that. But he always saw him.”
“Have you any idea what he came to see Mr. Bradley about?”
“About the rights to a book Mr. Langhorn had written,” she said. “The performance rights. Television. Mr. Bradley owned them. That is, the firm does now, of course. Mr. Langhorn wasn’t satisfied with the terms of the contract. Thought—said he thought, anyway—that they weren’t fair. Which wasn’t true, of course. Frank—I mean Mr. Bradley—is always fair. The fairest—”
She did not finish. She spread her hands flat on the desk in front of her and put her forehead down on them. Shapiro waited. After a few seconds, he said, “Just take it easy, Miss Kline. I realize this is hard for you.”
She was sobbing, quietly. Her slim shoulders moved with her sobs. After a little, she said, “I’m sorry. Terribly sorry.” Her voice was choked. Then she said, in the same muffled voice, “Almost three years. Would have been three in—and now it’s all—like a light turned off.” She lifted her head. She sat straight in her chair. After she had cleared her throat, her voice was steady again. It was a light, clear voice.
“I don’t know why I’m acting like this,” Amelia Kline said. “It’s really ridiculous, Lieutenant Shapiro. It’s only that Mr. Bradley was a fine man. A very fine man. And I’ve got so used to working for him. I’m dreadfully sorry. I don’t know what you’re thinking of me.”
“That you’ve had a very bad experience, Miss Kline. One that I’m making you go through again. If it’s too much for you, we can—well, it can wait until tomorrow.” He paused. He said, “I suppose.”
She shook her head. There was something like defiance in the movement of her head. Shapiro did not think it was defiance of him.
“Mr. Bradley told you to have Mr. Langhorn come in,” he said. “He went in? About what time did you say?”
“About ten minutes of three.”
“And closed the door after him, I suppose. So that you couldn’t hear what they talked about.”
“Yes. No. Of course I couldn’t. Anyway, I was busy. Typing. A long memo to Mr. Parker. He’s the executive on the Hopkins Industries account—one of the accounts Mr. Bradley controlled. Had overall charge of. About the general ideas the copywriter was to try to get over.”
Shapiro said he saw. He was getting used to assuring people he saw what he didn’t see. The words were getting dry in his mouth.
“Was Mr. Langhorn very long in Mr. Bradley’s office, Miss Kline?”
“Only about ten minutes.”
“He came out this way? Through this office?”
“Yes.”
“How did he look?”
She didn’t know what he meant.
“Angry? Upset? As if, say, he and Mr. Bradley had been having an argument?”
“Mr. Langhorn always looks angry,” she said. “When I’ve seen him, anyway. And he did sound angry, I guess.”
“After he came out? Said something angrily to you?”
“Oh, no. Not to me. I don’t suppose he even knew I was here. To Mr. Bradley. Spoke back in to him as he was closing the door. What he said was, ‘You’ll find out.’ No. ‘You’ll sure as hell find out.’ And then he closed the door. Slammed it, almost.”
“Did you hear Mr. Bradley answer him? When Langhorn said that Mr. Bradley would find out. Would sure as hell find out.”
“I didn’t hear anything. Just the door banging.”
“And Mr. Langhorn didn’t say anything to you?”
“He just—went out.”
“As if he were in a hurry?”
“He always seemed in a hurry whenever I saw him. As if he were running after something. He’s a writer, of course. Even some of our copywriters act—oh, strangely. As if they were running after things and not catching them.”
Nathan supposed they did; supposed, also, that this tense, shaken young woman knew more about them than he did. The writer wi
th whom he had had the nearest to a personal contact had been dead when he saw her. To Amelia Kline’s generalization, he merely nodded his head. Then he said, “Go on, Miss Kline. Mr. Langhorn went out. In a hurry. Then?”
Then she had gone back to typing the memo to Mr. Parker. She had almost finished it when the telephone rang. The call was for Mr. Bradley. His wife was calling. “At least, she said, ‘Mr. Bradley, please. This is Mrs. Bradley.’”
“You say she said she was Mrs. Bradley. I take it you didn’t recognize her voice?”
“She’d never called before, Lieutenant. Not since I’ve been Mr. Bradley’s secretary. Which has been since he joined the firm. Three years, and now—” Her voice seemed to catch in her throat. But when she went on, her voice was light and clear and steady. There was strain, however, in the tiny muscles around her dark brown eyes.
“I called Mr. Bradley on the intercom,” she said. “I said that Mrs. Bradley was calling and should I put her through. I never put anybody through without asking him. It was always the way he wanted it. Sometimes, of course, he’d be in the middle of something and not want to be interrupted.”
She stopped, as if she had finished. After a few seconds, Shapiro said, “Go on, Miss Kline. Did Mr. Bradley say to put his wife on?”
“He didn’t—” Her voice faltered again. “He didn’t say anything. I said, ‘Mr. Bradley? Mr. Bradley?’ and then I thought he’d probably gone into Mr. Akins’s office. They went back and forth quite a bit, and I told Mrs. Bradley that her husband seemed to have stepped—to have stepped out of his office and that if she’d hold on I’d try to find him. She said, all right, she’d hold on. So I went into his office. He wasn’t there and—and the door to Mr. Akins’s office was closed. But the window was wide open. Wider open than I’d ever seen it. So—oh, I don’t know why. I don’t know why—so I went over to the window. And, I looked down, Lieutenant. I looked down.”
Then her slim body began to shake. The movement of her body was convulsive, and Shapiro got up from his chair and began to reach toward her. But she stiffened her body, stiffened the trembling out of it, and shook her head. Shapiro sat down again. For a long moment, silence seemed to congeal in the room.
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