Or Was He Pushed? Read online

  Or Was He Pushed?

  A Nathan Shapiro Mystery

  Richard Lockridge

  I am in debt to John Gallaway for information, from an expert in the field, on the functioning of advertising agencies. He is not, of course, responsible for any mistakes I may have made. They are entirely my own.

  R.L.

  For Hildy

  1

  She said something in a drowsy voice, but she was turned away from him in the wide bed and he could not make out what she had said. It was possible, of course, that she was murmuring in her sleep. Drowsiness can be an aftermath. Tony Cook said, “Hmm?” softly so as not to waken her—not yet to waken her.

  “Since I was much younger,” Rachel said. This time the words were a little clearer. “I’ve told you that.” Then she turned to lie on her back beside him. “Almost since I was a little girl. The thing is, you just don’t listen.”

  “Yes, dear,” Tony said. “Told me what?”

  “About wanting to be an actress,” Rachel Farmer said. “Only I’m too tall. I’d have to play opposite a basketball player. Only Mr. Bradley says it calls for a tall girl. And photogenic. And he thinks I’ll be able to read all right. He says the test came out O.K. He says a little more Brooklyn, if I can manage it, because Gloria’s supposed to come from Brooklyn. Anyway, she doesn’t seem to say much before she’s killed.”

  Tony raised himself on an elbow and looked down on her. It was a hot July night in Manhattan, in the second-floor apartment on Gay Street, and she was wearing nothing to impede the view.

  “Photogenic you are,” he told her. “Brooklyn I wouldn’t have thought. And who the hell is Mr. Bradley? and Gloria, for that matter? Except that she gets killed. You’ve lost me, darling.”

  “Advertising,” Rachel said. “I’ve posed for them quite a lot in the last couple of years. Photographs, mostly, but some sketches. Dresses, mostly. But now and then furs. A sable, one time. And it must have been a hundred and ten in the studio. I thought he’d never get the shot he wanted. And I was supposed to be climbing a flight of stairs.”

  Tony Cook remembered the photograph; she had shown it to him, reproduced in The New Yorker. She hadn’t looked hot. She had looked lovely, and precisely like a woman who should be wearing sables. (Not, of course, that he had ever known one. Detectives, even if first grade, seldom encounter girls in sable coats.) Tony lowered his head to the pillow, but lay so that he could look at her. With some effort, he directed his mind to the subject at hand, whatever it might be.

  “This man Bradley,” he said. “He’s going to make a movie. Is that it? And give you a part in it?” Abruptly, he sat up. “In Hollywood?” he said. There was apprehension in his voice.

  She turned toward him, and her head moved negatively on the pillow. She had let her dark hair grow long again. It lay across her right shoulder and almost covered her right breast.

  “No,” Rachel said. “Right here in New York, Tony. On location. It’s for TV—a pilot is what they call it. Film. But they hope it will be a series. ‘Brook No Evil,’ Mr. Bradley says it’s called.”

  Tony found his attention was wandering. But not far. With some difficulty, he recalled it. He said, “When?”

  Rachel said, “When what?”

  “This movie. The pilot. Pilot film? What you were talking about.”

  “When the script’s approved, Mr. Bradley says. If Miss Claymore is free then. Peggy Claymore. We saw her last winter. In something called After Hours. The critics didn’t think much of the play, but all three of them liked her. When she was onstage, you were sending out rays. Don’t do that, Tony.”

  “Just sending out rays,” Tony told her. “I—well, I didn’t think you minded.”

  “You distract me. You don’t care at all that maybe I’m going to get to be an actress.”

  “I am very happy for you, Miss Farmer,” Tony said. He spoke formally, as if they both had clothes on. “I never send out rays toward five-feet two-inch blondes. Even when they have reddish hair.”

  “See,” she said. “You do remember Peggy Claymore. She’s the kind most men do, I guess. Anyway, she’s going to play Enid Brook. That’s why it’s called ‘Brook No Evil.’ Paul and Enid Brook. They’re private detectives. In the pilot, Mr. Bradley says, they find out who killed me. That is, Gloria. Tony.”

  “Go on telling me about this movie—pilot—you’re going to have a part in. It’s very interesting, darling. This Peggy Claymore plays a private detective and you play—”

  “You expect me to think what I’m saying when you’re—”

  “No,” Tony said. “This is no time for a—”

  “Then just quit talking—oh, oh.”

  “Yes,” Tony said. “Oh, yes. Yes.”

  They quit talking.

  After they had shared a shower, Rachel sat in a summer robe and watched him while he dressed. “You’ve got one end longer than the other,” she said about his necktie, and he retied it. Then he sat beside her on the sofa in the living room and poured them very small drinks from the cognac bottle. It had got to be a little after one of Sunday morning but, for once, Sunday was Tony’s day off.

  “It isn’t,” Tony said, “that I’m not interested in this acting job of yours. You know that, don’t you?”

  “All right, Tony. First things first.”

  “For both of us?”

  “For both of us. Only tomorrow you’ll listen, won’t you?”

  “When we both have clothes on,” Tony said, and stood up.

  “That will make it easier,” Rachel said, and watched Detective (1st gr.) Anthony Cook buckle on his shoulder holster with the off-duty .25 in it. He leaned down to kiss her good night. This time they kissed lightly.

  At the door, Tony said, “About ten all right?”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “And you’ll remember the door chain?”

  “Yes, Tony. I always remember the door chain.”

  It is not too many blocks from Gay Street—which is a short street in the Village and has a crook in it—to Anthony Cook’s apartment in West Twelfth. Walking them, Tony had vague qualms. Probably, he should have tried harder to keep his mind on what she was telling him. Understandably, it was important to her. But so were other things, he thought, as he climbed the stairs to his apartment.

  Tomorrow—today, that is—when we drive into the country, I’ll listen more carefully. And, of course, we’ll both have our clothes on.

  2

  It had been a pleasant Sunday in the country. It had not been perceptibly cooler; the relative coolness of the country is, at least during daylight hours, largely an illusion. Heat does not, to be sure, glare up from grass as from pavements. Air, not handcuffed by tall buildings, does move a little more freely when it is inclined to move at all. On that July Sunday, even in Putnam County, the air had been content to sit—heavily. But it had been cool at the inn where they lunched.

  Tony had brought up the matter of her embryonic career as an actress, but she had brushed it down again. “We’ve been over that,” Rachel had said. “I told you all I know about it last night. You didn’t really listen. Anyway, it’s sort of secret, I think.”

  He insisted he had listened. At any rate until he was distracted. Which, on the whole, was as much her fault as his.

  “All right,” Rachel said then, “we distract each other. And, all right, I’m glad we do. That looks like a nice, peaceful road.”

  They had taken the nice peaceful road, which was narrow and curving and up and down. It was also tree-shaded, and Tony turned off the air conditioning in the rented Chevy and opened the windows. “What’s that funny smell?” Rachel had asked. Tony told her the funny smell was air and, since they were passing a pasture, a little cow. r />
  They had had to go back to a main highway to reach the inn, and then the air was primarily exhaust fumes and Tony turned the air conditioning on again and closed the windows. Lunch was admirable, and they did not hurry over it. Asked, Rachel was sure she would not have to go off to Hollywood. “As sure as I am about any of it,” she said.

  They had started back early, to “avoid the rush.” The rush of homing New Yorkers joined them. When they were still almost twenty-five miles from Manhattan, a raging thunderstorm also joined them. The wipers fought against a sheet of water. Thunder bombarded them and lightning tore holes in the sky. Rachel said “Ow!” at intervals, and Tony, after confirming her interjection once or twice, said nothing at all. The Saw Mill River Parkway, which floods rather eagerly, had only started to flood when they had finished with it. They were on the Henry Hudson when the rain stopped. They left the Henry Hudson at Ninety-sixth Street—the West Side Highway being closed—and went on down West End Avenue, which after a while became Eleventh. When they turned off that onto Twenty-third Street, the sun was coming out.

  They left the car at the rental garage and found a cab to take them to Hugo’s on Sixth Avenue. Now that it had stopped raining, there were plenty of cabs. It was only a little after nine when they climbed the stairs to Rachel’s apartment.

  “No, Tony,” Rachel said, when he reached toward her. “I’ve got an appointment at the crack of dawn. Of course you can kiss me good night. No, Tony. No. Go home, Tony. I promise I won’t go to Hollywood. Anyway, who does anymore? No, Tony. And your gun’s jabbing into me. And I won’t forget to fasten the chain. Good night, Tony. It was a lovely day. Good night.”

  I don’t think she’s really cross with me, Tony thought at his desk in the Homicide South squad room at a little after eight on Monday morning. We did keep our clothes on all day, but we’ve done that before, now and then. And this acting job of hers, if there is an acting job, won’t take her out of town. That time somebody flew her over to Paris on a modeling job because they wanted an authentic Eiffel Tower background—that time was bad enough.

  There were reports to type, in triplicate. There were always reports to type. It was lucky, Tony thought, that he had elected a typing course in high school. Did anybody write longhand anymore? “Held. Chg. involuntary manslaughter.” Nobody was ever going to keep firearms out of the hands of butterfingered idiots. Nobody was trying, thanks to the National Rifle Association and a misreading of the Constitution of the United States. Hadn’t anybody ever thought of banning the manufacture of ammunition, except for the use of the armed forces and law-enforcement officers. Let the killers kill with what cartridges they had until they ran out of them. Try to catch them, of course. Oh, supply ammunition to forest rangers and game wardens. Otherwise the country will be overrun by deer. Like the three does we saw yesterday, grazing with the cows. Of course, people would try to make their own gunpowder. There were, he’d read, illegal whiskey stills still working in the mountains of the Carolinas. Probably in New York mountains, too. A good many people trying to home-brew gunpowder would blow themselves up. And people would hit each other over the head with empty revolvers and rifles.

  He wound reports out of his typewriter and wound new forms in, along with carbon paper. He typed reports. People had been killed on Saturday, but not very interestingly. Which was a hell of a way to think about violent death. But detectives, also, can be bored. Revolted, but at the same time bored. Perhaps, if one stayed at it long enough, not even revolted, not even angry. I hope I retire before I get like that, Anthony Cook thought.

  It was eleven-thirty before he got his first call of the day—knifing in a Washington Street tenement hallway near the southern tip of the island of Manhattan. Tony took Detective (3rd gr.) Samuel Oscar Sanders—known, rather obviously, as “S.O.S.”—with him.

  The tenement on Washington Street was ancient and ugly and five stories tall. There were two police cruise cars and a precinct squad car parked in front of it. One of the cruisers had had to double-park. There was an Armenian restaurant on the ground floor. A man in a chef’s apron, not very clean, was standing in the doorway of the restaurant, looking out.

  A patrolman in uniform came out of a narrow doorway on one side of the restaurant entrance and went to the double-parked cruiser, which had been talking to itself in a raspy monotone. It stopped talking, and the patrolman talked. “Damn it, we’re beginning to get flies,” he said. He got out of the cruiser and came to the squad car, which Sanders had had to double-park behind the cruiser. “Have to ask you to move along,” the patrolman said. “Can’t stop here, blocking traffic the way you are.”

  “Homicide,” Sanders said.

  The patrolman said, “O.K., Mac. Second floor. Still lying there, the stiff is. Where the hell the van is, we’re trying to find out, M.E.’s been here and the lab boys and all. Cadaver’s still lying there. Come on if you’re coming.”

  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 triplic
ate.

  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?”