Murder For Art’s Sake Read online

  They went on through Eighth Street and still went slowly. A derrick hoisting steel girders narrowed the roadway to a single lane and the building which the girders were to form was already a dozen stories tall and evidently going taller. Across the street from it there was a row of four low houses, dull red and sedate and old and each had a roof skylight facing toward the north.

  “Lived in that one,” Cook said, and pointed toward one of the old houses. Nathan Shapiro had seen the street number and said “Yes. We’ll come back and have a look, Tony.” There was a police cruise car parked in front of the house and, behind it, a precinct squad car. A trim woman in a dark blue silk suit was walking west on that side of the street. She stopped in front of the house, which was the second of the four from Fifth, and looked up at it. Then she walked on toward Fifth.

  They turned uptown and, with the Village behind him, Cook drove with confidence. He found a place to put the car—a place marked Official Use Only— and, after identification and a moderate lapse of time, a man in a white uniform pulled a drawer open for them. The pathologists had not yet got around to taking Shackleford Jones apart to see what had made him stop ticking. But that was clear enough when the cadaver was turned to one side so that they could see the back of its head.

  He had been a substantial man, solidly built. “Five-eleven, hundred and ninety,” the morgue attendant told them. His body was deeply tanned, except where shorts had covered it. Sun beating down on him somewhere had burned his forehead dark. But, by comparison, his cheeks were almost pale. Shapiro puzzled over this for a moment and made a guess. When he had lain in the sun, absorbing its rays into his skin, Shackleford Jones had worn a beard. When he had come back from wherever he had been, from wherever there had been sunshine to lie in, Jones had shaved off his beard.

  Jones had had blue eyes. He had had rather a heavy jaw. He had had strong, square hands. They looked, Shapiro thought, like the solid hands of a workman. Vaguely, Shapiro had expected thin hands with tapering fingers. He had expected a thin and tapering man, not this solid, rugged man. One makes up his mind as to what a man who does certain things in his life should look like, Shapiro thought. But men do not really fit the images one forms of them. Type-casting is, he thought, limited to the stage. The body of Shackleford Jones did not fit what Shackleford Jones had been.

  Had been, at a guess, until he was somewhere in his middle forties. He had had sandy hair, and it had been thick healthy hair. He had had an appendectomy, probably some years before. He was short the little toe on his right foot. The muscles of his right arm were well developed. He looked, Shapiro thought, as if he might have played squash. He did not look like a man who would shoot himself in the back of the head.

  The last thought was, of course, a ridiculous one. Men are no more type-cast for suicide than for occupation. At a guess, Shackleford Jones had not killed himself because he was a sick man; a man already dying slowly and unwilling to wait death out. But guessing about that was not in the province of Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro. The autopsy would decide that.

  “We know what he looked like, anyway,” Cook said, as they walked toward the car. “He looked husky enough.”

  There was that, for what it was worth. Shapiro could not see that it was worth much of anything. He found a booth and used a telephone.

  Precinct had finished with the apartment. Papers found there had been bundled up and were being gone over. Shackleford Jones had had a passport. From the passport, it appeared he had recently been in Spain. He had had a checking account at the Sheridan Square office of the Chemical Bank New York Trust Company. The most recent statement showed a balance a little under four thousand dollars. But the statement dated back for more than three weeks. Jones had not balanced his checkbook for almost two weeks. When he had, previously, he had made several errors in addition. He had paid his rent for the loft in Little Great Smith Street and had a canceled check to prove it. (Amount, eighty-five dollars.) He had paid the Upton Realty Corporation two hundred and fifty dollars shortly after the first of the month, according to a stub entry. The stub said merely “Upton.” A telephone directory and patience had produced the rest. The two hundred and fifty was the month’s rental on the apartment in East Eighth Street. Jones had lived in it for two and a half years. He had paid his rent punctually.

  The papers which had been bundled up did not include a will. Which proved nothing, since sensible people customarily leave their wills with the lawyers who draw them. Of course, sensible people also balance their checkbooks. Jones had had an account in the West Side Savings Bank. It totaled two thousand seven hundred and fifteen dollars and ninety-five cents.

  The papers had not included a suicide note. One had been looked for.

  The apartment, unlike the studio, apparently had been cleaned regularly. Jones’s own fingerprints were in it, where one would have expected them to be—on chairs and tables, on his desk and his portable typewriter. There were prints of others, none on record in New York and all coded to Washington. “Looks like he had a cleaning woman in a couple of times a week, according to the f-p boys,” Lieutenant Jacobs told Lieutenant Shapiro. “How’re the brain boys doing, Nate?”

  Homicide South was, to Lieutenant Jacobs, populated by brain boys.

  “Puttering,” Shapiro said. “Looking at the cadaver. Big one, isn’t it, Jake?”

  Jacobs admitted it was a big one. Anyway, a pretty big one.

  “Which,” Jacobs said, “doesn’t prove a damn thing, does it, Nate? You still think somebody cooled him? You and the doc?”

  He was being patient, Shapiro thought.

  “Nothing to show he didn’t cool himself,” Shapiro said, agreeing. “But it came through ‘suspicious,’ Jake. So …”

  He shrugged thin shoulders to go with the hanging “So.”

  At the apartment in East Eighth Street Shapiro used the key he had taken from Rachel Farmer. The long living room they went into was very unlike the studio in which Shackleford Jones had died. This room was carpeted in pale green. The carpet had a deep pile, recently trodden by many feet. There was a fireplace on one side of the room. It had not recently been used; had been carefully cleaned after its last use. But it was blackened by many fires. Against the wall opposite the fireplace there was a long sofa, deeply cushioned, covered in a material striped in deep yellow and soft white. At either end of it were chairs which looked comfortable, and did not look like each other.

  There were a good many pictures on the living-room walls, which were painted pale yellow. But here pictures did not rush at one; here they were at peace against the yellow walls—the just yellow walls. Not, Shapiro thought, that they were of themselves peaceful pictures. These, like those in the studio, had jagged shapes and flagrant colors. But here they seemed at home; seemed to have intent. No more than before could Shapiro fathom their intent. They were not, so far as he could see, “about” anything. Probably the Farmer girl was right; probably they were not supposed to be. But still …

  The framed canvas which hung above the fireplace was, when he looked at it first, like the others—a painting of shapes and colors, saying nothing. But then, as he continued to look at it, it became oddly comprehensible. The shapes and colors formed into the head and shoulders of a man—shaped themselves so, lost that shape, resumed that shape. Then, quite suddenly, the face they disjointedly hinted at became a familiar face.

  This painting was, whatever the Farmer girl said, “about” something. This painting was about Shackleford Jones, deceased. Shapiro walked over to it and looked at the small metal plate set into the frame. “Self portrait” was etched on the plate. And in the lower right-hand corner of the canvas there was the now familiar “Shack.” Shapiro experienced a moment of self-congratulation, and instantly rejected it.

  “Could do with some light in here,” Cook said, from deeper in the long room.

  Daylight came through two windows, curtained in pale green, at one end of the room. It was true that not a great deal of light came th
rough them, although they reached from floor to ceiling. Shapiro, who was nearest it, flicked up a switch by the door. Three lamps went on softly in the long room and one under the self portrait threw light up against the canvas. The picture changed as the light fell on it. It took life from the light.

  There was a closed door in the right-hand wall beyond the fireplace. Shapiro turned the knob and pushed the door open and brushed his hands together to rid them of fingerprint dust. He stood in a bedroom, unexpectedly large—large enough to hold a double bed comfortably. There was a clothes chest in the room; a door opened to a closet. The late Shackleford Jones had had a good many clothes and had kept them neatly hung. Another door opened to a bathroom. The tub in it had recently been polished.

  The bedroom was better lighted, now in late afternoon, than the living room had been. The light came through tall French doors which could be opened onto a tiny balcony above a backyard garden. Shapiro looked through the glass and, momentarily, watched a black and white cat climbing a high board fence. The cat jumped against the fence and appeared to walk up it. When he reached the top of the fence he sat down and looked around, Shapiro supposed, for another cat.

  Jones had lived comfortably in East Eighth Street. Perhaps, some weeks earlier, there had been tulips in the garden he could look down on.

  Shapiro went back into the living room. Cook had opened folding doors at the end of it. The doors, closed, concealed a kitchen. It was, as kitchens go in old houses which have been converted to apartments, large. Its equipment was compact. One could stand at the sink and look through a window and, again, look down at the garden. Shapiro looked. The cat, now, was crouched on top of the fence. Perhaps he had seen another cat.

  There was an electric range in the kitchen and, above it, an exhaust fan was set into the wall. The range looked new. So did the refrigerator opposite it. For no special reason, Shapiro opened the refrigerator door.

  There was a good deal of food in the refrigerator—bread and eggs and butter; in “crisper” bins below the main storage area, oranges and lemons and a head of romaine. In the main compartment were bottles of gin and vermouth and rum. There was also, on its side, a bottle of champagne. There were four small birds wrapped, professionally, in cellophane. Shapiro took one of the birds out and read the wrapper. He read: “Meadow Hill Squab.” In smaller type he read: “Keep frozen until ready to use.” The squab was cold; it was not frozen.

  Rose did not use much food from a freezer. When she did she sometimes took what she planned to use from the freezer a few hours beforehand, to let the thawing begin. Shapiro put the squab back with the others and said, “Hm-m-m” to which Cook said, “Find something?”

  Shapiro pointed into the refrigerator and Cook crouched and peered into it. He said, “Did himself all right, didn’t he?” and stood up and looked at Shapiro and raised his eyebrows.

  “Squabs,” Shapiro said and pointed at them. “Frozen, but taken out of the freezing section. Not this morning. He was dead this morning. Yesterday, it could be, couldn’t it, Tony? Planned to roast them last night, could be, couldn’t it? For a guest, probably. Two squabs each and half a bottle of champagne each. And a salad. Everything all ready and planned, wouldn’t you say, Tony? By a man who expected to eat squab and, perhaps, toast a lady friend.”

  The refrigerator clicked and began to whir. Shapiro closed the lower door and reopened the freezer compartment. There were six ice-cube trays in it, all full of ice. There were four longstemmed cocktail glasses standing on the freezing plate beside the trays. There was also a can of frozen daiquiri mix.

  “Liked his martinis cold,” Shapiro said. “Could be, of course, that the daiquiri was to have been for him and the martinis for his guest. Two chilled glasses for each of them.”

  He tugged gently at one of the cocktail glasses. It was frozen in. So were the others. So was the can of daiquiri mix.

  “Same type icebox Rose and I’ve got at home,” Shapiro said, speaking as much to himself as to Detective Anthony Cook. “Defrosts once every twenty-four hours at the time you set it for.” He looked at this refrigerator’s dial. “Two in the morning he set it for,” Shapiro said. “Two in the morning the freezing plate would warm up and the ice on it melt and the water run off. Supposed to, anyway. Doesn’t always with ours. Run off, I mean.”

  Cook listened. He was patient about it. A detective, even first grade, listens when a lieutenant talks. Even when the lieutenant doesn’t seem to be getting much of anywhere.

  “Freezer goes back on,” Shapiro said, “and anything standing on the plate freezes to it. Have to defrost to get things loose again.” He ran fingers over the ice which had formed on the metal freezer plate. It was not, he thought, very thick around the bases of the glasses, where it would have held. At a guess, the glasses had frozen in at two o’clock that morning. Shapiro closed the door of the freezing compartment.

  “See the way it looks, don’t you?” Shapiro said. “Left here yesterday morning and went over to that studio of his to paint one of those things of his. And expected to be back here for dinner, wouldn’t you say? Sort of a party dinner. Expected to be alive to eat it, didn’t he?”

  “Could be he made up his mind all at once,” Cook said. He considered this. “I guess it could,” he said, with doubt.

  “Sure,” Shapiro said. “Probably I’m making too much out of nothing much. Habit of mine, my wife tells me. Of course, bits and pieces are what they’ve left us.”

  He sighed. Probably Cook was right. No one could tell what went on in the mind of a man before he killed himself. Shapiro would have thought an act so final was one to think about for a considerable time. Shackleford Jones, even on a morgue slab, had looked like a man who enjoyed living; one who would have been tempted to life by a cold bottle of champagne and the crisp succulence of roasted squabs. His thoughts were idle, as usually they were, Nathan Shapiro told himself. Still —

  They turned simultaneously at the sound—the sound of key grating in lock, the click of the lock’s tongue snapping from its striking plate. The door hinges squeaked a little as the door was pushed open. For an instant, looking up the room, Shapiro expected to see Rachel Farmer walking thinly into it.

  He did not. This woman walked with confidence, as the Farmer girl had. She, too, apparently expected to find the room unoccupied. But this woman was small and trim. She wore a blue silk suit and carried a handbag which matched the suit. She moved into the room with quick grace on high-heeled blue shoes, which also matched the suit.

  She moved so for only a few quick steps and then stopped and looked at the sconce light under the picture. She had not expected to find the room lighted, Nathan Shapiro guessed. She looked down the room.

  Nothing, this time, hid Shapiro and Cook. And nothing hid from them the tall man who followed the trim woman into the room. He wore a polo shirt and gray slacks and, somewhat unexpectedly to Shapiro, sandals. He had a pointed beard which, from the distance, looked well tended. He carried a long screwdriver in his right hand.

  “Who,” the woman said, “are you two? And what are you doing here?”

  She had a clear, incisive voice. It kept its incisiveness for the length of the room.

  “Police,” Shapiro said, and he and Cook began to walk toward the woman and the man, who swayed the screwdriver back and forth in his hand as if he felt there were something he ought to do with it. “And you, miss?”

  “Myra Dedek,” the woman said. “It’s Mrs. Dedek. I thought all of you had finished here.”

  That, Shapiro thought, was reasonably obvious. He said, “Just about, Mrs. Dedek,” and thought that if it had been a shock to her to find a painter named Jones lying dead on the floor, with congealed blood around him, she had bounced back from shock. She looked like a woman who would bounce back. Her almost unlined face was firm, decisive as her voice. Her black hair waved obediently on her small, precise head. She looked a little, but not too much, as if she had just come from a beauty salon.

  “What
do you expect to find here?” she asked, and now there was a little impatience in her voice. “The poor man killed himself. Is that a crime?”

  In New York suicide is a violation of the penal code. There was no use, at the moment, going into that.

  “Routine,” Shapiro said sadly. “There’s always routine, Mrs. Dedek. Forms have to be filled out.”

  She shrugged neat shoulders. She said, “In poor Shack’s kitchen? Or are the two of you just hungry?”

  An aggressive woman, Shapiro thought. For any special reason aggressive? Or merely so by nature? Ran a picture gallery uptown. Seventy-ninth Street off Madison. Had gone to the studio that morning to talk with Jones about a one-man show set for the next fall. To find out what he had that he had not shown before. What he had done in Spain during the previous winter. Had a key because he wasn’t always there and she was seldom free to waste her time.

  She had still been crying when the first policemen reached the studio in Little Great Smith Street. She had regained composure quickly. She had been succinct and reasonable. She had not seen Shackleford Jones for more than a week; had snatched the first moment she had free. No, she had not telephoned before she went to the studio. “He hated the telephone. Most of the time he didn’t answer it.” She had been downtown, anyway; had decided it would be a good time to drop in on Jones. If he wasn’t there, a good time to look at his new things, if there were new things, without his fussing around about it.

  She had knocked at the studio door and there had been no answer. She had used her key and opened the door. From the doorway, she had seen Jones lying face down on the studio floor, with congealed blood around him. She had screamed, at first involuntarily, because of what she saw. She was shaking as she told the first policeman about this; her body shook and her voice shook.