A Streak of Light

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  “Right through here,” Tony said, and led the way through there. It was along a corridor, and from another doorless room to their right there was a clicking racket, like that of a dozen typewriters being hammered by typists with heavy hands.

  “Ticker room,” Tony said. “Associated Press, UPI, AP local.”

  There was a copyboy in the ticker room. He was tearing lengths of paper from one of the rapidly typing, unattended machines.

  The short corridor ended in an area as large as the city room they had left. Originally, Shapiro guessed, it had been a room as open as that one. Offices had been partitioned off on both sides and at the end. There were two offices at the end of the room, and the door of one of them stood open. Detective Captain Callahan, commanding the precinct squad, stood in the open doorway, his back to the outer room. He was talking to somebody in the office. The door to one of the side offices was also open. A uniformed patrolman stood outside it. Four men were inside. One of them was using a camera; another was making a sketch of the room. Two lab men were dusting for prints.

  “Took the body away several hours ago,” Tony said. “Call went in to the precinct about four thirty.”

  It had taken a time for word to reach Homicide, Shapiro thought. Precinct had probably hoped to wrap it up unaided. Precinct squads cooperate with Homicide, but sometimes at arm’s length. Homicide squad men are often referred to as “the brains,” no compliment being intended.

  Callahan turned to face them as they walked toward him. He said, “Oh.” Then he said, “Morning, Nathan. You’re sure as hell welcome to it.”

  Shapiro said, “Good morning, Captain. Want to fill us in?”

  “With what we’ve got,” Callahan said. “Which isn’t one hell of a lot. Man named Claye got cooled. But plenty. Seems he wrote a column. Shot once. Middle of the forehead. In his office down there, where—way I get it—he wasn’t really supposed to be. Some time around midnight, probably. But, seems like, nobody heard the shot. But you may as well get it from Mr. Parker here.”

  Callahan stepped aside, and Shapiro and Cook went into the office. It was reasonably large and had a floor-to-ceiling window through which bright sunlight was slanting.

  “Mr. George Parker,” Callahan said. “Lieutenant Shapiro, Mr. Parker. And Detective—”

  Tony Cook supplied his name, which Callahan repeated to the slight, largely bald man who was sitting behind a desk too big for him. Parker looked worried. He was sweating perceptibly, although it was not especially warm in the room. Of course, he was sitting partly in the slanting morning sun.

  Shapiro said, “Good morning, Mr. Parker,” and waited.

  “Look,” Parker said. He had a small voice, one appropriate to his size. “I’ve been over it twice already. First this lieutenant who got here around five this morning, and then to Captain Callahan here. And it’s not worth all that much.”

  “I know,” Shapiro said. “We repeat ourselves, make other people repeat themselves. Just the way the routine is, Mr. Parker. Have to ask you to go over it again, I’m afraid.”

  Parker sighed. He said, “All right. I’m an assistant city editor. Early trick. Only it’s more a slot man, really. Catch the overnights, check the mornings and have one of the boys follow up. Unless it’s page one stuff, that is. Check on the services. Read copy. Send stuff along to the composing room. Sort of—oh, sweep up yesterday, if you know what I mean. See we’re not missing out on anything. See what I mean?”

  “I guess so,” Shapiro said. “This morning, Mr. Parker. Wasn’t like the usual morning, obviously.”

  Parker said it sure as hell wasn’t.

  He had come in at three in the morning, which was his regular time. He had been the first of the lobster crew. He usually was. There were two copyreaders with him on the early shift, and two reporters. To get started on the A.M.’S rewrite. While he waited for the others, he had gone over the copy already on the copydesk. Collier, Eugene Collier, the drama critic, had got his copy in all right. “Always go over that myself. Sometimes Gene gets in words Mr. Sampson doesn’t like. Used ‘scatological’ one time. Boss Sampson pretty much went through the ceiling. Thought it was a dirty word.”

  “This morning?” Shapiro said.

  The movie review copy was in. The Sentinel was exposing abuses in social welfare. Copy on that, the third installment, was in proof. What wasn’t in either typescript or proof was Roger Claye’s Friday column, “News in Perspective.”

  Usually, Claye got his copy to the office on the afternoon before it was to be printed. After being read and sent by the late-afternoon copydesk to be typeset, it was proofed up and on managing editor Sampson’s desk in the city room when Sampson came in, usually about eight A.M. And proofs were also at the copydesk when Parker came in. Now and then, but rarely, only the copy from Claye’s typewriter was there, waiting to be read and set in type.

  This morning there had been neither copy nor proof. And there was no proof in the composing room. Parker had sent Ted there to check. Theodore Simon, that was. The copyboy working the lobster trick.

  Parker had waited until almost four before he had done anything about it. Once in a while—“once in a blue moon”— Claye got his copy in late, sending it down by messenger. When it was three fifty-five—about then, anyway—Parker had decided he’d better check with Claye. “Although it was a hell of a time to be calling him up. He’s a big shot around here, Lieutenant.”

  The small assistant city editor had nerved himself and dialed the number of Claye’s house. “What they call a town house, Lieutenant. On West Eleventh, I think it is. Never been there, of course.”

  He had let Claye’s telephone ring a dozen times before he accepted that he was not going to get an answer; that there was nobody at the Claye house to answer. “There’s a Mrs. Claye, but apparently she wasn’t home, either.” And if there were living-in servants, they obviously weren’t going to answer telephones at four o’clock in the morning.

  But there would be hell to pay if there was no Claye column in Friday’s Sentinel, and none to mail out or to send out on leased wire to the syndicate’s subscribers.

  There was one last chance, and a faint one. Claye might, for some unguessable reason, have decided to come down to his office and write his column there. He never had before. Actually, as far as Parker knew, Claye almost never came to his office. Still—

  “I sent the kid back to have a look. Just on a million-to-one chance.” The kid was Ted Simon.

  Roger Claye was in his office. He was sitting in a high-backed chair at his desk. There was a hole in the middle of his forehead and dried blood down the front of his clothes and on the top of the desk.

  Theodore Simon had run back to Parker’s desk in the city room and reported what he had seen. Then he had run out of the city room and down a corridor to the men’s room.

  He had still been there when the first patrolman had arrived.

  “Lieutenant Daley sent him home,” Callahan said. “He was one sick kid. Still being sick when Joe Daley got here.”

  2

  Lieutenant Joseph Daley, who had had the midnight-to-eight shift at the precinct squad room, had sent the shaken copyboy home in a police car. Young Simon lived with his parents in the West Twenties.

  Daley hadn’t thought of many questions to ask the boy who had found a dead man sitting at his desk, still partly upright, with a hole in his head and blood all over him. Yes, the door to Claye’s office had been closed. No, it had not been locked. Ted Simon had knocked on the closed door before he opened it, although he hadn’t really expected anybody would be in the office. He had opened the door and seen who was.

  Ted, when he had told Daley that, had had to back into a cubicle and vomit again. Then Daley had arranged for him to be taken home.

  “Nothing to show there was anything thrown around in the office,” Callahan told Shapiro and Cook. “What I mean is, no struggle. Looks like Claye just sat there and waited to be shot. By—the way it looks—somebody sitti
ng across the desk from him. Sometime between midnight and one A.M., at a guess. The assistant M.E.’s guess, that is.”

  That was right. Of course, the city room was separated from these offices by the corridor with the ticker room off it. And the tickers made quite a racket. Yeah, sure, the tickers ran all night.

  “I guess that’s about all we have to ask you now, Mr. Parker,” Shapiro said. “Right, Captain?”

  “Far’s I’m concerned,” Callahan said. “Anyway, I’ll see if the boys at Claye’s office have turned up anything.”

  Callahan went out of the office and down the corridor toward the city room. Parker stood up behind the desk. He looked at Nathan Shapiro.

  “Yes, Mr. Parker,” Shapiro said. “You can go along home, if you want to. We know where you live, don’t we?”

  “In Queens,” Parker said. “Yeah, one of them wrote my address down.” He came around the desk and stepped toward the office door.

  “One other thing,” Shapiro said. “Mr. Claye wouldn’t have had to go through the city room to get in here? Not that there was anybody around when he did come in, apparently.” Claye would not have had to go through the present city room to get to his office.

  “Present?”

  “The Sentinel used to be a morning paper,” Parker said. “Fifteen or twenty years ago. And what’s the Sentinel now was the Evening Sentinel. Long way back. Back when the old man owned them both. Before my time, Lieutenant.”

  “The old man, Mr. Parker?”

  “Mr. Lester Mason. Bought the Sentinel in the early part of the century. Began buying other papers, too. Merged them with the Sentinel. What I meant was, this whole group of offices used to be one big room—the city room of the morning paper. He sold that, though.”

  Shapiro said he saw. He watched Parker walk away. He was as small walking as he had been sitting down. He walked toward the city room.

  And then the building began to tremble a little. To vibrate. And from somewhere there was a muffled sound.

  “It’s all right,” Tony said, when Shapiro looked at him. “Just the presses, Nate. In the basement. They’ve started to roll them.”

  Shapiro nodded his understanding. He said, “Want to check out on the other men who were on this early trick with Parker, Tony? Not that we’re not probably getting it straight from Parker, but still. Callahan’s probably got them cooped up somewhere.”

  Cook said, “Sure,” and started out the door. He just missed collision with a man coming briskly in. Cook said, “Sorry.” The newcomer didn’t say anything. He came on into the office and looked hard at Nathan Shapiro.

  He was, at a guess, in his middle forties. He was an inch or so shorter than Shapiro, which made him about six feet tall. He was compactly built; he had dark brown hair, cut a little shorter than was then the mode. He had a lean, intelligent face, deeply tanned. He looked to Shapiro like a man who probably played tennis a lot.

  “You’re another of them, I take it,” the man said. He did not wait for comment, but went past Shapiro and sat behind the desk. It was clear that it was his desk.

  “If you mean policemen,” Shapiro said. “Yes, I am, Mr.-”

  “Simms. Peter Simms. Associate editor. You people are all over the place, aren’t you?”

  “Pretty much, I guess,” Shapiro said, and added his name and rank. “Thing like this does bring us out, Mr. Simms.”

  Simms agreed that it sure as hell did. He said it with a faint smile. Then he sobered. “It’s a damn bad thing, Lieutenant,” he said. “Bad for the Sentinel. Bad for a lot of people, probably. Republicans especially, of course. Probably left-wing terrorists did it. And I quote Roy Sampson, although I don’t know if he’s had a chance to say it yet. Claye was quite a guy, Shapiro. Any way you looked at it.”

  There was, Shapiro thought, the implication that there had been more than one way of looking at the late Roger Claye. He pulled a chair up and sat on the other side of Simms’s desk. He said, “Associate editor, Mr. Simms?”

  “What it says on the masthead. Russel Perryman, owner and publisher, Jason Wainwright, editor. Peter Simms, associate editor. Wainwright and I are supposed to set the policy, as reflected in the editorial articles. Carry it out is more like it. Perryman sets it. After all, it’s his newspaper. He’s the one hired Claye. And Roy Sampson, come to that. Who sees that our news stories have the right approach. Anything else you want to know, Shapiro?”

  The faint smile was back, on lips and in voice.

  “Primarily,” Shapiro said, “who killed Mr. Claye. Any idea who might have wanted to, Mr. Simms?”

  “Possibly a tenth of the population of the country,” Simms said. “Oh, I don’t mean actually kill him. Just somehow to get him to stop writing. You read his column, Lieutenant?”

  Shapiro shook his head.

  “Strange,” Simms said. “The sixth floor thinks everybody does.”

  “The sixth floor, Mr. Simms?”

  “The old man. Mr. Russel Perryman, owner and publisher. He has his offices on the sixth floor. On high, as it were. From whence all edicts flow. Like, Richard Nixon will go down in history as one of the nation’s greatest presidents. Yes, still, Lieutenant. And I quote from last Monday’s Roger Claye’s column, Roger having been the anointed prophet.”

  Shapiro merely raised his eyebrows.

  “Sound a little flippant, you think, Lieutenant? Perhaps I do. What it comes down to, I’m a newspaperman.” He said this as if it were a total explanation of something.

  Simms watched Shapiro’s face.

  “Skip it, Lieutenant,” he said. “We’re all a little edgy this morning. Got me out of bed about six. Probably got everybody out about then.”

  Shapiro could only guess what he was supposed to skip. If he was skipping anything important, he could always come back and look for it.

  “You were home at six?” Shapiro said.

  Simms’s smile grew wider. It seemed about to turn into open laughter.

  “At home and in bed, Lieutenant. And asleep. With my wife in the bed next to mine. And our daughter, who is six years old and named Phyllis, in her room. Also asleep. And our apartment is in Brooklyn Heights, and Captain Callahan, or one of his boys, has the exact address. And I was there all night. Lieutenant. And asleep from about eleven until the phone rang. And, no, I didn’t take time out to come over here and shoot Claye. Anything else, Lieutenant?”

  “That about covers it,” Shapiro said. “Is there a guard on here at nights, Mr. Simms? Somebody to check people in and out?”

  “Could be. You’ll have to ask the man who runs the building. The superintendent. I don’t come over here much at nights. Don’t ever, far’s I can remember. No night work this end of things.”

  “You’re lucky,” Shapiro told the man who did not seem, particularly, to be in mourning for his lost colleague. “Well—”

  He started to stand up.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Simms said. “We’ll help you any way we can. All of us. Want me to check out about a night guard?” He reached for the telephone on his desk.

  The captain would have checked on that, Shapiro told him. And that he wouldn’t, for now anyway, take up any more of Simms’s time. He might want to talk to him again, of course. When they had got more into things.

  Shapiro was turning toward the office door when it opened. A long-haired youth came in. He had a sheaf of newspapers under his arm. He took one out of it and put it on Simms’s desk. He turned and started out.

  “Give the lieutenant a copy,” Simms said. The boy turned and looked at Nathan Shapiro.

  “Yes, Homer, he’s a policeman,” Simms said.

  Homer didn’t say anything. He did give Shapiro a copy of the first edition, the Home Edition, of the Sentinel.

  There was a streamer headline across the top of the front page. It read: SENTINEL COLUMNIST SLAIN AT OFFICE DESK.

  There were subsequent headlines down the right-hand column; at the top, the type was arranged in an inverted pyramid.
>
  ROGER CLAYE SHOT TO DEATH AT SENTINEL OFFICE

  Under that there was a single line:

  Left Terrorists Suspected

  Shapiro’s eyes went down to the text of the article. He read:

  Roger Claye, renowned political columnist of The Sentinel, was shot to death in his office in the Sentinel Building in the early morning hours today. According to the police, he was shot once in the head as he sat at his desk, apparently by someone sitting opposite him.

  The crime, the police say, was committed between the hours of midnight and 3 A.M., when the first of the reportorial staff came on duty. The body was discovered at about 4 A.M. by a member of the early staff who had been sent to discover why Mr. Claye’s column, intended for today’s Sentinel, had not reached the copydesk.

  Mr. Claye’s typescript for his Friday column had not yet been found when this edition of The Sentinel went to press. The column, widely acclaimed, customarily appears on the opposite-editorial page under the heading “News in Perspective” Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It also appears in more than a hundred other newspapers throughout the United States and Canada.

  Mr. Claye has long been noted for his impartial espousal of the conservative viewpoint in national and international affairs. The possibility that he was the victim of some left-wing activist is not ruled out by the police, working under the direction of Chief of Detectives Timothy J. O’Malley.

  Trust Deputy Chief Inspector O’Malley to get his name in, Shapiro thought. Of course, everything all policemen wearing gold shields did was under O’Malley’s supervision. Still—

  He was interrupted in reading, and in his vagrant thoughts, by Simms’s voice. Simms was talking on the telephone.

  “Listen, Roy,” Simms said. “What’s this ‘more than a hundred’ business? Can’t your boys get the figures? After all, it’s our syndicate.”

  There was a rasping sound from the telephone. It went on for some seconds.

  “All right,” Simms said, “so they get in late and have to look up the current figures. So, it’s a hundred and twenty-three in the Night Edition. And listen, Roy, isn’t that ‘renowned’ laying it on a little … Oh, sure he was. But we haven’t got him to sell anymore, pal. And this left-wing terrorists—all right, activists—where did the cops get that bit, Roy? I’ve got one of them in the office here with me now, and he hasn’t told me anything along that line. A Lieutenant Shapiro … Yes, I suppose he is, from the name. Want me to ask him? Oh, all right. But you brought it up … Yes, I know we do. But no more than we usually do. Nothing like we did during Watergate. All right, Roy. Only thing was, Mr. Perryman will be expecting exact figures. Yes, I know.”