Die Laughing Read online

  Die Laughing

  A Nathan Shapiro Mystery

  Richard Lockridge

  For Hildy

  I

  This is what Patrolman Williams (J. K.) saw at five minutes after five on the afternoon of Sunday, the eighth of June, and, in due course and the official language prescribed, reported to precinct:

  He was walking—officially, he was proceeding—east on Point Street, which has that name for only a block in its meandering course through the West Village. It was a warm day without being a hot one, and the wind from the west pushed him gently along his beat. He was not expecting anything; on that part of his beat he seldom expected anything which would concern a policeman and almost always he was right. There the houses are old and, with few exceptions, of uniform height, which is four stories. Many of the houses there are occupied by single families, although some have been remodeled to provide floor-through apartments.

  It is almost sedate in the block which is Point Street. There are, commonly, no hippies nearer than Eighth Street. The street was almost deserted as Patrolman Williams walked the block. There were not even many cars parked at the curbs. The cars of the residents of Point Street were in Westchester County and in Fairfield County and in New Jersey.

  As he entered the Point Street block, Patrolman Williams had been hailed anxiously by a couple in a green Pontiac with Connecticut plates. They were expected for cocktails by a friend who lived in Patchin Place and they had, they were sure they had, gone precisely as he had told them. So where—where on earth?—was something called Patchin Place?

  They were, Patrolman Williams told them, headed directly, or as directly as was possible, away from it. The best way to get there—

  He told them and they listened. Right at the second intersection, and a block on and then right again. Then diagonally to the left, because the street they would be on turned one-way against them. At the intersection of West Fourth and West Tenth Streets they—

  Patrolman Williams wished them luck and did not voice his great doubt that they would have it. Greenwich Village, West or East, is not a simple place for aliens. It is not entirely coherent even for those who live in it.

  Williams walked on to the east. He was four doors from Mrs. Singleton’s house, which was twice as wide as any other house in the block, when the front door of the wide house opened violently and a tall man came out of the house in a leap. He jumped the three white steps which led from door to sidewalk and began to run east. He ran like a very young and active man. He wore tight dungarees and a white skivvy shirt.

  Patrolman Williams didn’t like any part of it. He reached for his gun, although he wasn’t going to shoot anybody for running, and yelled, “Hey, you!” He went into a trot after the running man. There was no point in trying to match the runner’s speed. Years younger than I am, Williams thought. A kid, really. “Hey, you!”

  And the kid turned and began to run back toward Williams, who stopped and waited.

  It was a kid, all right. Six feet or near it; blond hair and a wide forehead and blue eyes. A nice-looking kid. A kid who had, from the look of his dungarees, been kneeling in soft earth. Earth stains, pretty surely. But the stain on the white skivvy shirt wasn’t the brown of earth.

  “All right, son,” Williams said, “what’s the great hurry?”

  “She’s dead,” the boy said. “I found her and she’s dead. Dead, I tell you. Somebody shot her or stabbed her.”

  The boy’s voice went high, shrill. It shook. He shouted, although he was very close to the patrolman. Pretty close to hysteria, Williams thought.

  “All right,” Williams said. “Take it easy, son. Who’s dead?”

  “Mrs. Singleton,” the boy said. “She lives there.” He pointed.

  Williams knew where Jennifer Singleton lived. Everybody knew who she was and where she lived and that the house she lived in had been designated a “landmark.” And that it was appropriate that Jennifer Singleton should live in such a house.

  “All right, son,” Patrolman Williams said. “Let’s go have a look. Maybe Mrs. Singleton just cut herself, accidental like.

  He didn’t think so. The stain on the boy’s skivvy shirt was pretty certainly blood. He took the boy by a tanned, strong arm and they went back into the landmark mansion the boy had fled from until a policeman yelled at him.

  II

  It had been a bright day in early June, and after they had, together, walked the little Scotty bitch named Cleo and pecked at the New York Times, they had gone under the East River to Manhattan and Central Park. They had walked there in the sun—walked between benches on which old men dozed in the sun and nursemaids chattered contentedly, with occasional glances at baby carriages. They had avoided being knocked over by strenuous people on bicycles. It had been entirely pleasant, and they had gone to the zoo. A lioness was in her outside cage, lying stretched out in the sun.

  They had lunched at the cafeteria and because they were late had found a table on the terrace. Afterward they had ridden downtown on a Fifth Avenue bus and walked through Washington Square and to the Seventh Avenue subway. They had gone back under the river to Brooklyn. They had had dinner at a German restaurant near their apartment. Cleo had been glad to see them when they went into the apartment. She was firm, however, about being taken for another walk, and Nathan Shapiro took her. She was more cooperative than she often was. Altogether it was a most pleasant Sunday, and Nathan was back in time to turn on the radio for the Sunday evening symphony.

  Back in the apartment, Shapiro could take his gun off and put it on the closet shelf where it lived when it did not live on Nathan Shapiro, lieutenant, New York Police Department. When he was not in the apartment it always lived on him, even when, on an off-duty Sunday, he strolled with Rose in Central Park and looked at lionesses lying stretched out in the sunshine.

  Rose brought in a bottle of wine and a small glass on a tray. She brought in a gin and tonic for herself. She put the tray down on a table and looked pointedly at the wine bottle and shook her head at it.

  “It’s a summer day,” Rose Shapiro said. “A day for a cold drink. I could put it in a tall glass on ice and add a little soda and—”

  She stopped because Nathan was, gently, shaking his head at her. He smiled as he shook his head and the smile changed his long face. The sadness native to it was, if only momentarily, dissipated by the smile, although the smile was one of rejection. The smile reached even to his sad dark eyes.

  “It’s sweet,” Rose said. “It’s sticky. The only thing to be said for it is that it’s kosher.”

  “Well,” Nathan said, “I am the son of a rabbi, darling.”

  “Not to that extent,” Rose said, and sat down, holding her own glass. “I’ve known you to—”

  She stopped because the radio, which had been speaking with marked enthusiasm about a brand of yoghurt, said, “And now the news. The police are questioning an eighteen-year-old high-school senior named Roy Baker in connection with the fatal stabbing today of Jennifer Singleton, Broadway star for many years. According to the police, it was young Baker who found her body in the second-floor bedroom suite of her home on Point Street, in Greenwich Village. According to the police, the youth was picked up as he was leaving Mrs. Singleton’s house, which is listed as a landmark. In Vietnam, twenty-four marines were killed and seventy-five wounded when they were ambushed during mopping-up operations in the western highlands area. South Vietnamese troops involved in what is officially described as a joint operation are reported to have suffered no casualties. Cairo charged today that—”

  Cairo’s charge ended in a click. Rose Shapiro moves quickly when she feels a need for quickness. The big radio phonograph wheezed slightly and was silent.

  “So?” Nathan Shapiro sa
id. “Egypt is usually charging something.”

  “Nathan,” Rose said. “Didn’t you listen?”

  “Yes,” Nathan Shapiro said. “Jennifer Singleton has been killed. I’m sorry. She was a fine actress. Perhaps even a great actress. I’m sorry when anyone is killed, darling.”

  She nodded quickly, but the nod dismissed. It wasn’t, Nathan Shapiro realized, because of shock at hearing of Jennifer Singleton’s death that she had clicked off the radio.

  “The boy,” she said. “They named the boy. Which means —what does it mean?”

  “At a guess,” Shapiro said, “because they’re pretty sure he’s the one they want, Rose.”

  “If they are they’re wrong,” Rose Shapiro said. “Wrong as they can be. I know the boy, Nate. He’s a fine boy. I know him, Nate.”

  Nathan Shapiro shook his memory briefly and a name sifted out—Roy Baker. He repeated it aloud. He said, “It isn’t an uncommon name, Rose. Probably there are dozens of Roy Bakers going to high schools in the five boroughs. No reason to think this is your Roy Baker.”

  “He’s a member of the student council,” Rose said, still standing by the radio phonograph. “He’s been in my office several times. With other members, usually. He’s a fine boy, Nathan. What did you say?”

  “That there are probably a good many boys named Roy Baker going to New York high schools,” Nathan Shapiro said. He spoke gently. Rose is seldom excited. She was then. It is a good thing to be gentle with the excited, especially when they are also the loved.

  “Nathan,” Rose said, “I know the boy. And I know about him. He wants to go to college and he ought to go to college. His mother is dead and he lives with his father some place in the Village. On Morton Street, I think it is. And his father is a grocery clerk or something like that and there isn’t much money. He works after school and on Sundays, I think, and—”

  She broke off and went back to her chair and drank from her tall glass, apparently without knowing that she did so.

  She identifies herself too much, Nathan Shapiro thought—too much with the boys and girls who go to the schools she teaches in. Or, as now—as since the autumn before—helps direct. The autumn before Rose Shapiro, a high-school teacher in Brooklyn for some years—a teacher of English—had been made an assistant principal and been transferred to a school which needed one. The school happened to be in Greenwich Village, but Greenwich Village in Manhattan is not too many subway stops from Brooklyn.

  She identifies with the kids, Nathan thought. And, because she is a sensitive and perceptive person, she gets to know a good deal about them. And I suspect she is usually right about them. The symphony, Shapiro decided, would have to wait its turn.

  He went to the telephone at the other end of the living room and dialed and heard, “Homicide South, Detective Cook.”

  “Evening, Tony,” Shapiro said and gave his own name. He did not preface it with the word “Lieutenant,” partly because he did not need to with Anthony Cook, detective, first grade, and largely because Nathan Shapiro regards his rather recent promotion as an outstanding, and incomprehensible, mistake on the part of the Police Department of the City of New York. When possible, he avoids referring to this colossal error in judgment.

  “About this Jennifer Singleton killing,” Shapiro said. “Want to give me a rundown, Tony?”

  “Put you on to Lieutenant Conley?”

  “No need to bother him,” Shapiro said. “Just a once-over will do, Tony. This kid who’s been picked up. Happen he goes to Clayton High?”

  “Did,” Anthony Cook said. “I’d put it that way, Lieutenant. On account of it looks like they’ve got him cold. Couple of our boys are checking it out, but the way it looks precinct’s got him cold. Seems—”

  Shapiro listened for several minutes. He asked one or two questions. One of them was, “Any idea what the kid looks like, Tony?”

  “White boy,” Anthony Cook told him. “Blond hair and blue eyes. Nice-looking kid, for what good that’s going to do him. Unless they get women on the jury.”

  “Charged?”

  “Not yet, far’s I know. Maybe the material-witness gimmick. If you’re specially interested, Lieutenant, I’ll get what else I can and call you back. You home now?”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “I’m not all that interested, Tony. Happened to hear about it on the radio and got curious. Inquisitive, like the book says to be.”

  “The book” is Rules and Regulations and Manual of Procedure, Police Department, City of New York. It says: “A good detective is always more or less suspicious and very inquisitive.” Nathan Shapiro follows the rules, although with no special hope that, in his case, much will come of it. It is Shapiro’s belief that he is good only with a gun. That much he will admit.

  He went back, a little reluctantly, and sat down and sipped his sweet wine. It did taste rather syrupy. Rose looked at him, dark eyes intent. He put the glass down and nodded his head.

  “I’m afraid it is your kid, darling,” Nathan told his wife. “Blond boy? Good-looking? Eighteen or thereabouts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Athlete? Track, maybe?”

  “I think so. He’s a good student, Nathan. Mr. Pierson—he has Roy in a creative writing class—thinks the boy has unusual talent. And—he’s a good boy. I know he’s a good boy. It’s some—some bad mistake.”

  Shapiro shook his head at that and took another sip from his glass and then said, “I’m afraid it doesn’t look like being, Rose. You see, he was caught running and there was blood on his shirt. She was killed with a knife, Rose. Probably a switchblade like a good many of the kids carry. He didn’t have it on him, but he had time to get rid of it. Probably they’ll find it in the house somewhere. You say he and his father haven’t much money?”

  “I don’t know,” Rose said. “Don’t really know. Only that his father’s a grocery clerk or something like that.”

  “The boy had close to a hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket when they—the patrolman on the beat, actually—caught him running away from the house. He says he was running to find a policeman, but actually he ran away from one. He’d been working in Mrs. Singleton’s garden. He says he does two afternoons a week and most of Sunday. The way it seems to figure—”

  The way it seemed to figure was that Roy Baker thought the house was empty. He was right in part; both the cook and the maid were off on Sunday afternoons; Mrs. Singleton herself slept late on Sundays—on all days, presumably. On Sundays she had breakfast around eleven and after the cook had served it she was off for the day. Around two in the afternoon, or thereabouts, Mrs. Singleton went out to lunch, usually with friends.

  Roy Baker, part-time gardener, general handy man when needed, would know the Sunday routine in the big house—the landmark duly certified by a commission. He admitted that he did. He denied he knew that Jennifer was inclined casually to drop money into an unlocked drawer in her dressing table—money the maid and the cook could take for household expenses as they needed cash. He denied a lot of things without convincing anybody. He denied, specifically, murder. He denied that he had been looking for money, or anything else he could find, in Jennifer Singleton’s bedroom suite and had been walked in on by the woman he was stealing from and had attacked her with a knife, perhaps meaning only to threaten and killing when she ignored threats. Which would not make any difference in the outcome for the boy, since murder in the course of committing a felony is murder in the first degree.

  Why had he run to find a policeman instead of telephoning?

  He had thought whoever killed Mrs. Singleton might have left his fingerprints on the telephone.

  “Which,” Shapiro said, “is about as thin as they come, Rose.”

  “He’s a boy,” she said. “A frightened boy. Thinking like a terrified boy. The money?”

  “He says that part of it was his wages for the week, which was in an envelope on the kitchen table, where it usually was left for him on Sundays. The rest—a hundred dollars—he said wa
s a present from Mrs. Singleton. A graduation present. It was in a separate envelope with his name on it. He said he had gone upstairs, after calling up and not being answered, and knocked on the door to her rooms. He says he wanted to thank her. He said the door was not tightly shut and that when he knocked he knocked it open. He says he said, ‘Mrs. Singleton?’ and then saw her lying face down on the floor. He says he turned her over on her back, thinking that she was merely hurt, and that that must have been when he got blood on his skivvy shirt.”

  “It could have been that way,” Rose said. “Nathan, it was that way. You don’t listen. You’ve known me a long time and you know who I am. What I’m like. But you don’t listen.”

  “To you,” Shapiro said, “I always listen, darling. You think he’s the kind of boy who wouldn’t do a thing like this. But it isn’t that easy, Rose. Be fine if it were—if we could just look at somebody and maybe talk to him a little and then say, ‘Yeah, he’s a killer, all right,’ or ‘Nope, not the type to kill anybody.’ Make police work a lot—”

  “Don’t tell me what I already know,” Rose said. “It isn’t like you.”

  “Still?” Nathan Shapiro said, his voice soft, “what you say does come to that, doesn’t it? That you can tell what a person is, and is capable of, by looking at him. Talking to him.”

  “Not everybody,” Rose said. “I don’t say that. But—he’s a kid, Nathan. I know kids. Good kids and stubborn kids.

  When you see as many as I’ve seen for a long time you get—oh, feelings about them. You see the same traits appear and reappear. Some girls are going to turn out to be tramps, and you recognize trampishness in a girl before she really begins to show it. Some boys—mostly the stupid ones, but not always—are going to get in worse and worse trouble the older they get.”

  “Predestination?”

  “No. Oh, a lot of things. Environment. It’s bad for a lot of kids at Clayton High. For a lot of kids all through the city. Resentment. Anger. A lot of things that a lot of people think explain everything. They do explain a lot. But there’s something left over, Nate. Something that—oh, that’s built into people.”