A Streak of Light Read online

  Tony went downstairs. It was still hot on the street. The freshening breezes of autumn ought to be along any day now. Or any week. Not yet, obviously.

  It was ten after four. If David Perryman left the Sentinel Building at four, he could hardly reach his apartment on Grove Street before around four thirty. Assuming he went directly home; did not stop somewhere for a beer. It was a good afternoon for a beer, perhaps in some air-conditioned bar. Tony Cook started to walk crosstown toward Gay Street.

  Perhaps it would make sense to buy a small car of his own. A little Volks, maybe. There was a garage on Christopher Street where he could park it. They’d nick him, of course. So would payments on even the smallest Volks. But so would taxicabs. Life had been simpler when Homicide South was in the West Twenties instead of on the east side of town.

  Tony walked west.

  6

  Shapiro went down to Canal Street by subway. The local train wasn’t crowded. It was merely hot and stuffy. There were two Sentinel trucks on the cross street south of the Sentinel Building. Waiting, presumably, for bundles of newspapers of a late edition.

  Shapiro climbed the stairs to the second floor. The arrow on the “Enquiries” sign at the head of the stairs pointed up the corridor. But the double doorway opening into what Nathan now knew to be the city room stood open, and he went that way.

  There were fewer people in the city room than there had been in the morning, and few of them seemed to be doing much of anything. One man was typing; another was on a telephone. Only one of the three desks which made up the “city desk” was occupied, and the man at it was reading a newspaper. Sampson was not at the set-apart desk under a window in the corner of the big room.

  The Sentinel obviously was simmering down for the day. Probably Peter Simms, associate editor, had folded his typewriter and stolen away. I could have called ahead, Nathan thought. Well, I didn’t. He went through the corridor which connected the two halves of the Broadway side of the second floor. The tickers were still chattering in their small, noisy room.

  Along the wider hallway, none of the offices on the Broadway side seemed to be occupied. Most of the doors stood open. It must have been rather like this at around midnight, or perhaps at one o’clock that morning.

  But at the end of the hallway, the door of Peter Simms’s office was closed. Shapiro knocked on it and got a response. The response was “Yes?” which Shapiro accepted as an invitation to open the door.

  Simms, at his desk, put down the paper he had been reading. He said, “Afternoon, Lieutenant. Still here? Got it wrapped up?”

  “Back here,” Shapiro said. “And no, nothing’s wrapped up. Maybe you can help us, Mr. Simms.”

  “Glad to,” Simms said. “How?”

  “Mr. Claye called his wife about five o’clock last evening,” Shapiro said. “He was shot to death here sometime early this morning. We’d like to know what he was doing during those eight or nine hours. Who he was with. What was keeping him here in town.”

  “Can’t help you, I’m afraid. He sure as hell wasn’t with me, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  Shapiro assured Simms that that was not what he was getting at and Simms said, “Well?”

  Shapiro sat in a chair across the desk from Peter Simms.

  “We try to find out all we can in a case like this about the person who was killed,” he said. “What his habits were. Who his friends were. What kind of man he was, if you see what I mean. Sometimes that helps to tell us why he was killed. And the why may lead to the who. How well did you know Mr. Claye, Mr. Simms?”

  “To say hello to is about all. When we happened to meet, which wasn’t often. As I told you, he didn’t come to the office much. Sent his copy in. Never talked to him—really talked to him. Said it was a pretty day out. Or a lousy day. Few times I ran into him in the hall.”

  “So you don’t know anything about his personal life?”

  “Not a damn thing. For all I know, he was a bluebeard, with closets stuffed with corpses. Or a saint, about to ascend. We—let’s say we didn’t move in the same circles.”

  “Can you suggest anybody who did, Mr. Simms? Move in the same circles? Would know whether he was a bluebeard or a saint?”

  “No. Oh, I put it extravagantly, of course. Don’t suppose he was either. No. I don’t know offhand anybody who can tell you much about his personal life. What he thought, what his prejudices were—all that’s clear enough from his columns. Our morgue will have a file of them, of course. You can always read up on them, Shapiro.”

  “We’ll probably have to,” Shapiro said, and his voice was disgruntled. The half smile appeared on Simms’s lips and he nodded his head.

  “Any chance, you think, that Mr. Wainwright knew him better?”

  “One in a million, at a guess. Wainwright had to read his columns, of course. Part of the job. Read them in proof. Not to approve them in advance. I doubt if they had much other contact. But you can ask Jase, of course. Only it will have to be tomorrow, unless you want to look Jase up at his hotel. He’s gone for the day. Tomorrow’s page all set up. So, being a sensible man, he’s gone home. Which I’m about ready to do, Lieutenant. Unless?”

  “I won’t keep you,” Shapiro said. “Since you didn’t really know Mr. Claye and can’t think of anybody who might.”

  “Afraid that’s the way it is,” Simms said. “Unless—” He paused and looked at the opposite wall for a moment. “You could beard the lion, I suppose,” he said. “In his den on the sixth floor. Probably just growl at you. Great man for growling, the owner and publisher is. But he did, I guess, know Claye better than anyone else around here. After all, he hired him. Possibly at Mrs. Claye’s suggestion. She was a Bradford, after all. And her father and Perryman were probably buddies. Could be, our owner and publisher was on friendly terms with the Clayes. Sort of all family together, it could have been. But I don’t know. Just guessing.”

  Shapiro said he saw. He said he might have a word with Mr. Perryman, as long as he was there. And assuming Mr. Perryman, also, had not gone for the day.

  Simms merely shrugged at that. As Shapiro left the associate editor’s small office, Simms stood up behind his desk. He said, “Don’t let him bite you, Lieutenant.”

  Shapiro made what could have been an appreciative laughing sound. He did not go back along the hall to the city room, but instead took the short corridor to his right that led him past Wainwright’s door and into the main corridor. He walked down that to the elevators. He might as well, he thought, take a chance of being growled at. Or perhaps bitten. Simms apparently did not hold his employer in high regard. There had, however, seemed to be affection in his voice when he spoke of his immediate superior, Jason Wainwright. It could be that all was not serene in the staff of the New York Sentinel. On the other hand, of course, newspaper people were a sort about whom Shapiro knew nothing. They could not be evaluated by so complete an outsider.

  From the indicator, one of the two elevators was going up. It went from the third floor to the fourth as Shapiro watched. The other elevator was at the sixth floor and appeared to be sitting there. Shapiro pressed the down button. The sixth-floor light went out, and the car started down. It reached the third floor—sports and financial departments, Shapiro remembered—and stopped there. Shapiro again pressed the down button.

  The elevator obeyed. It reached the second floor and opened its door.

  Nathan Shapiro started to step inside. And stopped. The car’s light was off. It was dim inside. But light enough to see by.

  The man lying on the floor of the car was a tall man. He lay facedown. There was blood on the floor and the man was still bleeding. From, Shapiro thought, a wound in the upper chest. Blood was bubbling out of the man.

  The elevator door started to close. Shapiro reached in and the door came against his arm and opened again. Shapiro flicked the light switch on the panel; the light came on. He pushed the red EMERG STOP button, which would hold the door open, and went into the car. He crouc
hed by the bleeding man. The man was still alive. But he wouldn’t, Shapiro thought, be alive long. Not at the rate he was losing blood.

  It was then ten minutes of five.

  Tony Cook did not hurry on his way west, crosstown with the sun in his face. Even walking in the shade on the south side of the street, it was hot. When, on Sixth Avenue, he turned south, there was almost no shade at all, even on the west side of the avenue. Between Ninth and Tenth Streets, Tony stopped at Hugo’s for a beer.

  Charles French Restaurant had once had Michelob on draught, but Charles had gone, and draught beer with it. At Hugo’s bar, which was hardly any cooler than the street, Tony settled for Budweiser from a bottle. He lingered over it. Probably David Perryman would stop for a beer himself on his way from the Sentinel office to Grove Street.

  It was almost half-past five when Tony Cook found the Grove Street address. It was half a block from Sheridan Square, which is by no means square. It was a three-story “brownstone”—made of brick. Tony climbed the five steps and went into the entry hall.

  There were only three mailboxes on the wall in the small lobby—one, evidently, for each floor. David Perryman lived, from the arrangement of the mailboxes, on the second floor. Tony pressed Perryman’s bell and waited to be clicked in. Or, if young Perryman was the cautious sort, to be gratingly asked for identification.

  Neither of these things happened. A second pressure, more sustained this time, resulted again in nothing. Probably, Perryman had had more than one beer on his way home. Or was not coming home at all. This was Friday—and a damned long Friday. On Friday afternoons, those who can often leave early for Long Island or Westchester. Or, conceivably, for rural New Jersey.

  As the son of the owner of the Sentinel—and of a supermarket chain—David Perryman was presumably one of those who could leave early. Perhaps Saturday was a day off for him from the Sentinel city desk.

  I could go home and shower, Tony thought. Get the air conditioning going. Wait until time to go down a flight of stairs and knock on Rachel’s door. Two quick ones, a pause, and then a third. So she’ll know who it is.

  Well, wait another few minutes and then call it a day? Too bad there isn’t anything to sit on. Wait until, say, a quarter of six.

  At a quarter of six, Tony pressed the doorbell button once more. Young Perryman might have been in the shower, with water running noisily. There was still no response. The hell with it. David Perryman could be seen at any time; asked at any time whether he had known Roger Claye. Probably he hadn’t. If Claye had been a visitor at the elder Perryman’s house, it probably was after David had left the house in Sutton Place for his own apartment in Grove Street; presumably for his own life there.

  Tony opened the door to the street. He was confronted by a tall young man in a summer jacket and darker summer slacks. He had reddish-brown hair and a rather long, noticeably mobile face. It was his height as much as anything else that made Tony take a chance. Like father, like son, perhaps.

  “You wouldn’t be Mr. Perryman, would you?” Tony said, backing into it.

  “No reason why not,” the tall youngish man said. “You looking for me?”

  Tony explained who he was and that he’d like a few minutes of Mr. Perryman’s time.

  “About Claye’s death, I suppose,” Perryman said. “Don’t know how I can help you, but sure, come on up if you want to.”

  Tony did want to, if only mildly. He followed Perryman, after Perryman had used his door key, up a flight of carpeted stairs to where Perryman used his key on another door.

  The apartment was typical of those in converted town houses. It had two large rooms, connected by a narrow hallway with a bath opening off it. There would be a smaller room opening off each of the large ones. One of the small rooms would face the street; the other, probably used as a kitchen, would have a window in the rear, overlooking the backyard. Or, if it went to that, the garden.

  “Sit down somewhere,” Perryman said. “I’m going to have a beer. Want one? Or I can get you something else. Martini, if you’d rather. Or don’t you drink on duty? Or with people you’re supposed to question?”

  Tony said he’d be glad to have a beer. He added that it was a good day for cold beer. Perryman said it sure was and that he’d get the air conditioning going. He flicked a switch on his way to the kitchen, which was where Tony had assumed it would be.

  There were plenty of places to sit in the big living room. Money had been spent on the room, and spent with taste. Possibly, of course, an interior decorator’s taste. Tony did not know how well newspaper reporters were paid nowadays. When he had, briefly, been a copyboy, reporters had grumbled about their wages. But that had been a long time ago, probably before the Newspaper Guild. Which had made newspaper publishers grumble. Of course, David Perryman’s father was a millionaire. Probably several times a millionaire. Which would help.

  Perryman came back into the room, carrying two opened bottles and two glasses. By their special shape, they were bottles of Michelob. Perryman sat down in a deep chair near the one Tony had chosen. He put a bottle of Michelob and a glass on the small table in front of it and reached the other glass and bottle across to a table near Tony Cook’s chair. He leaned forward a little in his own.

  He said, “Well, what do you want to know? Where was I at midnight last night?”

  “Not especially,” Tony told him, and poured beer into his glass. The glass, like the beer, had been chilled. “Unless you were down at the Sentinel office. We’ve no reason to think you were.”

  “I was here,” David Perryman said. “Here and in bed and probably—by then—asleep. We weren’t much keeping track of time.” He poured beer into his own glass, carefully not heading it up. “The rest of the ‘we’ was female,” Perryman said. “In case you’re wondering.”

  “I wasn’t,” Tony said. “But I assume this girl can confirm you were in bed with her last night. If it came to a point where we needed confirmation. Which I’ve no reason to think it will.”

  “Sure she will,” Perryman said. “No secret about it. You want her name and address?”

  “No,” Tony said. “Not now, Mr. Perryman. And you can take the chip off your shoulder, if you’d just as soon. We don’t think you killed Claye. Why would you?”

  Perryman drank beer. He said, “No reason. He was an all-right guy. As reactionary sons of bitches go. I had nothing against him, as him. I’m not partial to his tribe. Maybe you’ve gathered that. Down at the office. Maybe Boss Sampson’s told you I’m a Communist. Boring from within. Maybe that’s why you’re here, huh?”

  “No,” Tony said. “Nobody’s called you a Communist, Mr. Perryman. Are you, by the way?”

  “Hell, no. They’re worse off than we are, I guess. At least we can say, ‘Ouch, that hurts,’ out loud without being put in loony bins.”

  It had been a long time since Tony had heard that expression. Perhaps youth was retrogressing. Certainly, he and Perryman were on a diverging course from the one he had planned.

  “What I wanted to talk to you about,” Tony said, “was Mr. Claye. What kind of a man he was. Apart from his political views. You knew him, probably.”

  “A little,” Perryman said. “He was around the house a few times while I was still living at home. He married the daughter of an old friend of Dad’s, and they came around now and then. A while back. When I was just a kid, actually. When he first started writing that column of his. You’ve read that column? Dad thinks it’s gospel.”

  Tony shook his head.

  “It’s a real stinker. Of course, you could say that about Dad’s whole paper. It’s more a house organ for the reactionaries, actually. Like the Daily Worker was for the Communist Party. You know what? We even edited AP copy to cut out any reaction to the statements of men like Reagan. Not supposed to. Violation of our franchise, actually. Supposed to edit only for length, you know.”

  Tony didn’t know. He did know that they kept wandering from the subject, which was the personality of the
late Roger Claye.

  “About Claye,” Tony said. “You did know him at one time? When you were, as you say, a kid?”

  “The way a kid knows an old man,” Perryman said. “Which isn’t very well, I suppose.”

  “He was in his fifties,” Tony said. “What it says in Who’s Who, anyway. Not an antique, exactly.”

  “When I was around fifteen,” Perryman said, “he seemed like an old man to me. Oh, all right. One’s point of view changes. But I remember feeling his wife was more my age. More my generation, that is. Of course, that isn’t really true. She’s in her thirties somewhere. But a hell of a lot younger than Mr. Claye was.”

  “But you say that Claye was an all-right guy, Mr. Perryman. Aside from his political views, that is. Pretty much the views your father has, I take it.”

  “Why Dad hired him,” David Perryman said. “Yes, when I was around fifteen-sixteen, he seemed an all-right person. As stuffy old codgers go. But you can’t really separate what a man thinks from what he is, can you? What a man thinks is what he is.”

  Tony had reservations to that generalization. He has known reasonably pleasant persons with outlandish ideas. He did not voice his reservations. He said, “I guess so. You saw Mr. Claye and his wife together, I suppose. They seem to be getting along all right?”

  “I keep telling you it was when I was just a kid, living at home,” Perryman said. “What do kids know about things like that? Far’s I know, they got along all right. Didn’t throw plates at each other. Dad wouldn’t have approved of that. Of course, Faith’s twenty years younger than Claye was. More than twenty, from the way they both looked.”

  “Young enough to be interested in, maybe even looking for, a younger man?”

  David emptied his beer glass and, for a moment, regarded it. Then he shook his head.

  “I guess it’s no comment on that one,” he said. “She didn’t confide in me. Didn’t make passes at me, either. Want another beer? I’ve got a date in an hour or so.”