Die Laughing Page 17

  “Yes,” Nathan said. “I’m sorry about the gun, dear.”

  “Then take it off,” Rose told him. “And sit down and I’ll get us something cold to drink. Gin and tonic? I’ve been thinking of a gin and tonic.”

  “Iced tea,” Nathan Shapiro said.

  She shook her head at him. But she shrugged slim shoulders and went toward the kitchen. Shapiro sat down. He did not take his jacket off nor unbuckle his shoulder holster. He sat and left his mind free for the tickle in it. From the kitchen the teakettle whistled and then, after a minute or two, Rose came back, carrying a tray with ice tinkling in two tall glasses. She put the tray down on a table and, still standing, looked down at Nathan.

  “You’re home,” she said. “You can take your coat off at home. And your gun off at home. Unless—Nathan. Are you going to—”

  “Perhaps I’ll have to,” Nathan said. “After a glass of tea.”

  “You’re tired,” she said. She brought him tea and they sat side by side on a sofa which faced an empty fireplace. “It’s about Mrs. Singleton, isn’t it? And—it wasn’t as simple as they thought, was it? They’ve let Roy go, haven’t they? It was on the radio.”

  “Reduced his bail,” Nathan said, and sipped from his glass. The coldness of the glass pleased his hand. He hoped his stomach would approve the tea. It had no immediate comment. “The mother of his girl friend put up the bond money. So he was free—could have been free—to try to kill a man named Agee.”

  She repeated the name. She said, “The playwright? Why would he? Has he been arrested again?”

  Nathan shook his head slowly.

  “Rose,” he said, “this teacher of his. The man who thinks the kid’s got talent.”

  “Clarke Pierson?”

  “Yes. Can you tell me anything about him?”

  “He’s a qualified man. Doctorate from Columbia. He’s taught at the school for several years. He’s well thought of as a teacher. No, Nathan, I don’t really know him. He seems—oh, a little wispy. But I’m only beginning to know the teachers at Clayton.”

  “He told me he’d written a play several years ago,” Shapiro said. “That it was put on and flopped. That he hadn’t written one since. You knew about that, Rose?”

  “Oh,” she said, “about him. Yes. Things get around. He was a writer before he became a teacher. Magazine stories, I think. Or, anyway, stories intended for magazines. And this play of his that flopped—yes, I’ve heard about that.”

  “Wanted to be a writer,” Shapiro said, as much to himself as to his wife. “Turned out to be teaching kids how to write.”

  “I know,” Rose said. “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. It’s not especially true, dear.”

  “Of Pierson?”

  She turned her glass between her fingers slowly and looked at the empty fireplace.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Oh, perhaps, Nathan. Why are you interested in poor little Dr. Pierson? He is a doctor, you know. Of philosophy. Because he once wrote a play that failed?”

  “I heard something today,” Shapiro said. “Cook did, rather. From this Rachel of his.”

  “Who,” Rose said, “is quite a girl. What did Tony Cook hear?”

  “That sometimes playwrights send copies of their plays to actors. Plays they think have parts in for the actors they send them to. Do you know if that happens?”

  “Oh, yes,” Rose Shapiro said. “I’ve heard it happens. And?”

  “I don’t know the ‘and,’” Shapiro said. “Probably something I’m just fumbling with, as usual.”

  “Sometimes,” Rose said, “you make me mad, my darling. Sometimes you make me very mad indeed. That ‘as usual’ business. Because it isn’t that at all. As I keep telling you over and over. You do not fumble. Repeat that after me.”

  He turned to face her and smiled the smile which so greatly, if for the most part so briefly, changed his sad face.

  “Teacher,” Nathan said, “I do not fumble. I do not fumble. And I am quite good with a gun, too. Do you know anything more about Clarke Pierson? How old he is? Whether he’s married.”

  “In his early forties,” Rose said. “It’ll be in the records if it matters. Yes, he’s married. And he and his wife have a child, I think. Perhaps they have two children.”

  “Does he make much?”

  “None of us makes much, Nathan. He—enough to live on. That’ll be in the records too, of course.”

  “And where he lives?”

  Rose did not know. She thought somewhere in the Village. Within walking distance of the school. She did not know what made her think that. O—she did know, of course.

  “I was a little late a week or so ago,” she said. “Was walking to the subway station. And saw him. He was walking south on Seventh Avenue and carrying what looked like a bag of groceries. As if, I thought, he was carrying it home. I remember thinking the bag looked too heavy for him and hoping that he didn’t have to carry it too far. He doesn’t look strong, does he?”

  “Not especially,” Nathan said. “As you said, a little wispy. Of course, they fool you sometimes. Sometimes the word is wiry, not wispy. He was at the school today?”

  So far as Rose Shapiro knew, Clarke Pierson had taken his classes that day at Clayton High School. His day would have ended at four in the afternoon—could have ended then. He might, of course, have stayed on in his classroom and read papers his pupils had written.

  “I wonder,” Shapiro said, “whether Pierson is in the telephone book.”

  He went to another room where he keeps telephone directories of New York’s five boroughs. One can never tell in what borough information waits to be uncovered.

  Clarke Pierson lived on Charlton Street. Shapiro noted the number in his mind and went back to what was left of his iced tea, and to Rose. Rose was almost certain that Charlton Street was in the Village. She said, “Nathan!”

  “I’m afraid so,” Nathan Shapiro said. “Couple of questions I’d like to ask Mr. Pierson. Stupid questions, probably.”

  Rose Shapiro said, “Damn.” Nathan Shapiro used the telephone. Tony Cook, who had taken to spending a good deal of his off-duty time in Greenwich Village, probably would know where Charlton Street was.

  The apartment house in Charlton Street was six stories tall and looked as if it were tired of holding itself up. The small lobby was dingy and dimly lighted. Cook flicked his cigarette lighter on and moved it up and down in front of the slots in which tenants had listed their names until he found the name they wanted. Clarke Pierson lived in Apartment 6A. There was an old and reluctant elevator which creaked a little as it lifted them toward the sixth floor. The sixth floor corridor was even more dimly lighted than the lobby. They found a door with “6A” lettered on it, and Cook pushed a button beside it. There was an unexpectedly loud clatter from inside. After a few moments there were footfalls inside, and the door opened to the extent of a safety chain.

  “Wispy” was, Shapiro thought, more than ever the word for the man who partly opened the door. “Wispy” was the word for the pale hair he smoothed down as he looked out at, and up at, the two tall men. He wore a white shirt, open at the neck, and dark trousers.

  “Police lieutenant,” Shapiro said, and gave his name, and Pierson said, “Oh. You again. I told you all I know about the boy. And my wife’s asleep.”

  “We won’t be long,” Shapiro said. “And we’ll try to keep our voices down, Mr. Pierson. Just one or two more points you can maybe help us with.”

  “About the boy?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Shapiro told the small man, who kept on smoothing his hair, although it no longer needed smoothing. “Something else has come up that may involve the boy.”

  “I told you all I know about him,” Pierson said. “He’s a good student. He has a good mind. As kids go, he writes well.”

  “More or less about that,” Shapiro said. “Kind of things he writes. Might, we thought, show the kind of kid he is. This is Detective Cook, by the way. Working with me on Mr
s. Singleton’s murder.” He paused for a moment, as if he hesitated about going on. Then he said, “And the attack on Mr. Agee. Which may turn out to be another homicide. We don’t know yet.”

  “Agee?” Pierson said. “Somebody’s attacked Agee?” He sounded incredulous. He sounded like a man who had not, that evening, listened to radio news.

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “Anyhow, it looks that way now. Looked at first like an accident, but now it looks as if he got hit with a poker. And, of course, as if the killing of Mrs. Singleton and this attack on Agee might be related.”

  “I don’t see—” Pierson said, and shrugged his narrow shoulders. “But, all right. Come on in.”

  He unhooked the chain and opened the door. They followed him into a small room. Somebody had been cooking onions in the apartment. Pierson had left a pipe smoldering when he went to the door. He drew on it and shook his head and relighted it. He sat in a chair by the table on which the pipe had been resting in an ashtray. Then he got up and went to a door which opened off the small room and closed the door.

  “Want her to sleep if she can,” he said. “She’s not well. Not at all well. Needs what rest she can get. What about the things Roy Baker writes, Lieutenant? Strange line of inquiry, it seems to me. Was he the one hit Les Agee with a poker?”

  “We don’t know,” Shapiro said. “We follow all lines of inquiry, Mr. Pierson. Never can tell what we may turn up. And you know this boy, maybe, as well as anybody. You’re an educated man and, I’d guess, a perceptive one. It’s like consulting an expert, in a way. Not a field Cook here and I know much about.”

  “Field?”

  “Writing field,” Shapiro said. “This kid’s probably written a good many things for this class you teach. Stories? That sort of thing?”

  “Stories,” Pierson said. “Essays. Young Baker’s written fiction, mostly.”

  “What kind?”

  “Well,” Pierson said, “pretty gloomy stuff, for the most part. But most of what the kids write is gloomy nowadays. They—oh, say they take a dim view of the world. It’s a tense generation, Lieutenant. In some respects a desperate one. Understandably, it seems to me.”

  “These stories young Baker wrote,” Shapiro said. “Violent stories? Make you feel—oh, that there’s violence in the boy. Comes out in what he writes?”

  “Yes. But that doesn’t mean that he’d do violent things. Sometimes, when they’re writers, or are wanting to be writers, writing acts as a release, you know. A—one might call it a transference. A sublimation, in a sense. See what I mean?”

  Shapiro said he guessed so. He said it wasn’t anything he knew much about. He spoke sadly, in a low voice, as of one who mourned his own ignorance.

  “One story young Baker wrote,” Pierson said, “was about a mugging. From the point of view of one of the kids who had mugged an old man. A vivid piece, for a kid. Real and vivid. But that doesn’t mean that Roy had ever mugged anybody. Merely that he could imagine it.”

  “Sure,” Shapiro said. “But it might show there was potential violence in the boy, wouldn’t you say? That his imagination ran to violent things?”

  “Probably there’s violence in all of us,” Pierson said. “Potential violence. Writers express it in words. In make- believe. But I’m a school teacher, lieutenant. Not a psychiatrist. I can’t tell you whether Roy is the kind to hit a man on the back of the head with a poker. Wouldn’t be evidence if I tried to guess. You’ve got real evidence that he attacked Agee?”

  “Looking for it,” Shapiro said. “Nothing, yet, actually, to pin it on him. Mrs. Singleton is killed and maybe the kid kills her. Mr. Agee knew her. Had been married to her and written a lot of plays for her. And somebody tries to kill Agee.”

  “I thought young Baker was being held as a material witness.”

  “Out on bail,” Shapiro said. “Released several hours before Agee was attacked this afternoon. And Agee was down at Mrs. Singleton’s house Sunday. Was going to take her to dinner, apparently. Thing is, he may have seen something.”

  “Something that would incriminate the boy?”

  Shapiro said it could have been that way. Or, of course, that the boy thought Agee had; perhaps was just afraid he had.

  “Murderers get frightened,” Shapiro said. “Get—oh, to imagining they’ve made mistakes. Sometimes ones they haven’t really made. But they can’t take chances. Have to try to clean everything up. Like whoever used a poker to hit Agee with tried to clean the poker up. Wipe it with something. Maybe with his own handkerchief. Wiped prints off and tried to wipe blood and hair off. And fragments of skin.”

  “He failed?”

  “Far as identifiable prints go, no. But the lab boys found blood and several hairs on the shaft of the poker. Hard to get a thing like a poker clean when it’s been used the way this one was.”

  Tony Cook looked intently at Shapiro, as if he were about to say something. He didn’t say anything.

  “Violence in the boy,” Shapiro said and nodded his head. “Came out in what he wrote. Not proof of anything, as you say, Mr. Pierson. Just—call it maybe a hint of something.”

  “Not even that, I’d think,” Pierson said. “It’s a violent world, Lieutenant. A harsh world. Not a world for drawingroom comedies like the things Agee’s still writing. A world filled with angry young men.”

  “Oh,” Shapiro said. “It always has been. Violence takes different forms at different times. Speaking of plays, Mr. Pierson. Roy ever write a play for your class?”

  “No.”

  “The kids are free to write plays if they want to? As a playwright yourself, I’d think you might have encouraged them to.”

  “Schoolteacher,” Pierson said. "Schoolteacher who once thought he could write plays. I told you that, Lieutenant. One of the boys in this creative writing class did a play a few weeks ago. Frivolous bit of nothing. Like the plays Agee’s been writing all his life. Like, come down to it, this thing of his poor Jennifer was in.”

  “I didn’t see it,” Shapiro said. “You did, didn’t you Tony?”

  “Yes,” Tony said. “Seemed all right to me. You saw the play, Mr. Pierson?”

  “Last week,” Pierson said. “Passé bit of nothing. Old hat. And, the thing is, it needn’t have been. The general situation—he could have made a play out of it. He turned it into chatter. Wisecracks he thought were epigrams. Without Jenny and that laugh of hers it couldn’t have lasted a week. He missed the whole point of it. Didn’t you really feel that, Mr. Cook?”

  “I don’t know,” Tony Cook said. “Seemed pretty funny to me. Most of the time, anyway.”

  Pierson leaned forward in his chair. He looked a little as if he were about to jump out of it. And when he spoke his voice went up.

  “That’s just it,” he said. "That’s precisely what’s the matter with it. Same thing as is the matter with most of what Agee writes. Takes a situation which isn’t a comedy situation and twists it out of shape to make it comedy. Here’s this woman, successful in her own world, traps herself in another. In a world where she’s lost. Tries to adjust to the life and to the man—the people—who make it. And the effort nibbles away at her—at what she really is, until there’s nothing left of her. Not tragedy in the big sense. Just—just slow disintegration. Not, God knows, a tinkling little joke, like what Agee turned it into.”

  He leaned back suddenly in his chair and knocked his pipe clean and slowly filled it again. His hands, Shapiro thought, were a little shaky.

  “Sorry,” Pierson said when he had stuffed his pipe. He lighted it. “Something of a tirade, that. Just that I hate to see good ideas loused up the way this one was. A tirade, and way off the subject.”

  “Perhaps it was Mrs. Singleton’s doing,” Shapiro said. “What you call the twisting of Always Good-bye, that is. Seems the idea was partly hers. Agee says so, anyway. And he was sharing his royalties with her because it was. You know about the theater, Mr. Pierson. Isn’t that a little unusual?”

  Pierson said, “What?
” like a man who had not been listening. Then he said, “I don’t know, Lieutenant. I never had any royalties to share. You say she suggested the idea?”

  “Agee says so. In some detail, I gather. Says she’d had ideas for plays before. For her to star in. And that none of the other ideas was worth much. He seemed surprised that this one was. Could be she got the idea from somebody else. Think that’s possible, Mr. Pierson?”

  “How the hell would I know?” Pierson said. “And what’s it got to do with what you’re after, anyway?”

  “Probably nothing,” Nathan Shapiro said. “Like this woman in the play—I’m trying to adjust to a life I don’t know anything about. Just groping around. Come on a man like yourself, who’s knowledgeable about such things, and I muddle along trying to get things straight. Bad habit of mine.”

  “A waste of time, anyway,” Pierson said. “This bit of froth of Agee’s can’t, so far as I see, have anything to do with who killed Jenny Singleton. And, if it was that way, hit Agee on the back of the head. I’d think you’d look for something more—tangible.”

  “Oh,” Shapiro said. “We do that too, Mr. Pierson. Just now we’re looking for a rather small man who wore a dark suit and a dark hat on a hot Sunday afternoon. And who either went to Mrs. Singleton’s house with her an hour or so before she was killed or had been waiting for her to come. Or, of course, merely met her by chance in front of the house.”

  “Somebody see a man like that?”

  “Yes, Mr. Pierson. Somebody did. Very clearly. Looking down from a window across the street. Pretty sure he can identify him if he sees him again, General Whitehall is.”