“You stick around yourself, Mr. Simms.”
“Not for long,” Simms said. “I’ve got an offer from the Chronicle. Not an associate editor, or anything like that. Writing editorials. Editorial articles, as Jason calls them. Chance to get on their editorial board in a couple of years, maybe.”
“You’re taking the offer?”
“Probably. Not going anywhere here. Only—well, I hate to leave old Jason to the wolves. Not that I can scare off many wolves. Not the kind we have around here. But one of these days, Jason’s going to retire.”
“And you, I suppose, would take over the job as editor, Mr. Simms.”
Simms laughed. There was no amusement in his laughter. He dragged deeply on his cigarette and stubbed it out. He stubbed it out very thoroughly. He looked at Shapiro for several seconds and then shook his head.
“Not a chance,” he said. “No more than the snowball. The traditional snowball. Sampson and Burns, our esteemed business manager, would see to that. Hell, I’m a Wainwright man. Rumor going around they, and Mr. Perryman, of course, had picked Claye. Somebody knocked that plan out of kilter night before last.”
He stopped suddenly.
“And don’t be getting ideas, Lieutenant,” he said. His voice was peremptory; it was as if he gave an order. “Jason doesn’t need the job. He can retire any time, at full salary. Like—oh, like a Supreme Court justice. Stipulated in this famous contract of his. The one Perryman had to take over when he bought the paper. So don’t get any ideas about Wainwright.”
“I wasn’t getting any,” Shapiro said. “Not about anybody, so far.”
“This left-wing fanatic, Lieutenant? The way Perryman, Sampson et al think it is?”
“Possibly,” Shapiro said. “Yes, Cook?”
Tony is no longer really surprised by that. It does sometimes come a little suddenly. This time he was ready.
“Mr. Sampson seems to have a great deal of say around here,” Tony said. “Of course, I don’t know much about newspaper setups, but isn’t that unusual? For a managing editor to, way it looks, be pretty much running things?”
“Varies from paper to paper,” Simms said. “Most I’ve worked on, the M.E. just runs the news side. The editor makes policy, which is the policy the owner sets, of course. Yes, Roy Sampson has more influence than most. In a way, he does run the show. The way the owner wants it run. And Perryman is a big-business man. Thinks—well, the way most industrialists think. So did Lester Mason, I suppose. But Mason, from what I hear, was a newspaperman. From way back. Yes, Mr. Cook, Sampson is pretty important around here. Good many papers, they’d call him something else. Executive editor, probably. Matter of terminology.”
“Yes, I see,” Shapiro said. “Cook and I both gathered Sampson doesn’t think highly of Mr. Wainwright. Of his competence. Matter of fact, he said Mr. Wainwright is wishy-washy. Term he used. Apparently you don’t find him that, Mr. Simms.”
“Typical of Sampson,” Simms said. “Saying that, I mean. Couldn’t be more wrong. Thing is, Wainwright knows there are at least two sides to questions. Issues. Knows which side he’s on, all right. But knows there is another side. And that everybody on that side doesn’t have to be either a crook or a jackass. Sampson doesn’t. For him there’s only one truth, and it comes direct from God. Well, anyway, from the sixth floor. By way of Alabama. One of the be-kind-to-niggers-long-as-they-know-their-place boys. If they don’t, they’re probably commies. All whites should be able to buy any gun they want. To protect themselves. You probably know the type.”
“And there’s an international conspiracy among Jewish people to take over the world,” Shapiro said. “One I haven’t got in on, apparently. Yes, I know the type, Mr. Simms. Isn’t limited to the South.”
“No,” Simms said. “A little more virulent there, maybe. Or maybe not. And being rational isn’t regional either, I suppose. But you’re not here to talk philosophy, are you, Lieutenant?”
“No,” Shapiro said. “To find a killer.”
“Then,” Simms said, “you’re looking in the wrong place, don’t you think?”
“It looks that way,” Shapiro said. “Mr. Wainwright is off every Saturday, I take it?”
“Yes. We work a five-day week here. Didn’t use to be that way. First paper I ever worked on, it was six days and Saturday night to get out the Sunday morning paper. That wasn’t in New York. The Guild stopped that sort of thing. Drove old Mason crazy, their moving in did. What Jason tells me, anyway. Mason started a backfire. Company union, affectionately known as the Loyal Order of Catspaws. Trouble was, his union hung onto the Guild’s coattails. Very disappointing to the old boy, I gather. Hated to bow to the inevitable. But did, in the end. As I said, he seems to have been a newspaperman.”
The connection was not as clear to Nathan Shapiro as it evidently was to Peter Simms, to whom being a newspaperman was apparently similar to holding a degree of nobility. It was not germane.
“This day-off business,” Shapiro said. “You get to pick them?”
“Goes by seniority, more or less,” Simms said. “And, to a degree, by the requirements of the job. Everybody wants Saturday, of course, to go with Sunday. Saturday’s a dull day, nowadays. Stock markets closed; people get out of town. Our kind of people, anyway. Circulation drops way down. Advertising with it. Not that either is very sensational these days.”
“Will the end of Claye’s column bring circulation down further, Mr. Simms?”
Simms shrugged his shoulders. He said, “Could be. Probably he had a following. Syndicate following, anyway. But who knows? Could leave Perryman in the black; could put him in the red. Deeper in the red, could be. One reason I’ll probably take up the Chronicle’s offer. Matter of permanence, call it.”
“That bad, you think?”
“Maybe not. You’d have to ask Ralph Burns about that. I just work here.” And then, “Yes, son,” in response to a knock on his door.
An office boy came in with the first—the Home—edition of the New York Sentinel under his arm. He put a copy of the paper on Simms’s desk and, in response to a gesture, handed a copy to Nathan Shapiro.
The attempt on Leroy Sampson’s life did not rate a streamer. It did get a two-column headline and the right-hand column of the front page.
The headline read:
EDITOR FOILS ASSAILANT’S ATTEMPT ON HIS LIFE
Shapiro folded the paper and put it in a jacket pocket. Perhaps he would, in time, get around to reading about Leroy Sampson’s narrow escape from death.
There was another knock on Simms’s door. It was another office boy. He carried a bundle of mail. He started to put it down on Simms’s desk.
“No, son,” Simms said. “Goes to Mr. Gilbey. Third office up, on your left.”
The boy said, “Yes, sir,” and carried the mail out again.
“Keep changing office boys around here,” Simms said. “He’s a new one, to me anyway. What he’s got is letters to the editor. Viewing with alarm the growing something or other. Congratulating the Sentinel on its firm stand for the free enterprise system. Frank Gilbey will sort this batch out. Throw them in the wastebasket or pass them along to Jason on Monday. Some of them we print, after fixing up the spelling.”
The ringing of the telephone on his desk interrupted him. He said, “Simms. Yes, Roy,” and listened for several seconds. Then he said, “O.K., if you and Burns want it. You checked with Wainwright?” He listened again. Then he said, “O.K. It’ll be coming up. Sure, reign of terror ought to do it. Only, Roy, I’ll send it out. You’ll see it in proof.”
He hung up.
“Have to get to work,” he told Shapiro and Cook. “Mr. Sampson and Mr. Burns think we ought to have an editorial about all this. Front page, no less. Reign of terror detected at the Sentinel, the defender of our liberties. Further evidence of the breakdown of law and order. Sampson says he’s been in touch with Jason—only he said he’d ‘contacted Wainwright’— and that Wainwright approves. So, unless you two—? They do
want it for the next edition.”
“We won’t bother you anymore, Mr. Simms. Taken up a good deal of your time already.”
Simms’s telephone rang again just as they reached the door. He said, “Simms,” and listened. Then he used the handset to beckon them back. Then he said, “All right, Ed. Caught them. I’ll pass it on.” He replaced the receiver.
“Ed Riley,” he said. “The city editor. He’s got a letter he thinks you’d better see. A crank letter, only he thinks maybe not.”
Shapiro said, “Thanks.” Peter Simms was winding paper into his typewriter as they went out of his office.
Ed Riley was the burly blond man they had earlier seen standing at Sampson’s desk. His voice, when he greeted them, listened to their names and gave his own, was softly out of proportion to his bulk.
“Probably just a crank letter,” he said. “We get them every so often. Sometimes they come in red ink. Anyway—”
He held an envelope out toward Shapiro, holding it gingerly between his fingernails. “Only,” he said, “I’m afraid the horse is already stolen, Lieutenant. My prints all over it, probably. No way of knowing, had I?”
“No way, of course,” Shapiro said, and took the envelope. He handled it by the edges, although probably the horse had been stolen. Post-office clerks would have left fingerprints.
The typewritten address was: “Edmond Riley, Esq.” The envelope was the prestamped kind, obtainable from post offices. Shapiro used the eraser of a pencil to slide the single folded sheet out of the small envelope. The sheet was of standard typewriter paper. There was no heading. The message was typed. Pica type; no sign of misalignment of keys immediately apparent. It read: “The rat Claye is only for starters. We will strike again. And again. Until we rid the world of people like you. Hitler-like enemies of humanity.”
It was signed, still in typescript: “The Enforcers.”
“Just a crank letter,” Riley said. “Case like this brings them out of the woodwork. I’m telling you.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “We get a good many, of course. Claiming what they call ‘credit’ for bombs and murders. Confessing to crimes to get their names in the papers and on the air. We know the world is full of nuts, Mr. Riley.”
“Probably half a dozen more in today’s letters to the editor,” Riley said. “People hoping to get them printed in the column we call ‘The Public Mind.’ Gone along to Gilbey to be sorted out.”
Shapiro said, “Mmm.” He looked again at the envelope. Postmarked Grand Central Station, New York. Dated P.M. the day before. Addressed to Edmond Riley, Esq.
“Many come addressed this way?” he asked Riley.
“First one ever, far’s I can remember,” Riley said. “Usually, just to the editor. Sometimes to Wainwright, as editor. Get the name from the masthead. Try to make it look personal, figuring it will get more attention that way.”
Shapiro said he saw. Masthead? He took the first edition of the Sentinel out of his pocket. It was a thin paper of twenty pages. Editorials in the first section, page nine. The masthead. Top of the left-hand column. “The New York Sentinel Corporation; Russel D. Perryman, President.” And, in descending order: “Jason Wainwright, Editor. Leroy Sampson, Managing Editor. Peter Simms, Associate Editor.”
That was all.
“I see you’re not on the masthead,” Shapiro said to the burly city editor.
“Don’t get down to city editors,” Riley said. “Not on this totem pole.”
“Then?”
“Yes,” Riley said, “I wondered too, Lieutenant. Of course, everybody else in the trade knows the name of the city editor here. But, well, I wondered too. Very specific, isn’t it? And spelled right, too.”
“Riley?”
“Sometimes they get the e in the wrong place—with two ls, of course,” Riley said. “And a u for the o in my first name.”
“Addressed to you, personally, it might get quicker attention?” Shapiro said.
Riley smiled, approving an apt student. He said he had thought of that. Why he had thought the lieutenant might want to give it his own quick attention.
Shapiro took the typed message, the typed boast and threat, out of the pocket he had put it in. On a cursory examination, there were no evident irregularities; nothing that would, on comparison, identify the typewriter on which the message had been written. No filled letters, no letters out of alignment. But a matter for experts, of course. Nathan Shapiro does not regard himself as an expert in anything except, perhaps, the use of a handgun. Pressed, he will admit he is reasonably good with a handgun.
Still, he might make a start for the lab boys.
“A lot of typewriters here in this room, aren’t there?” he said.
“Twenty or so,” Riley said. “I never counted.”
He looked around the big city room. Only a few of the many desks were occupied. Typewriters had been folded into half a dozen of the desks. “At least twenty,” Riley said. “Most of the boys and girls are downstairs drinking coffee. We pretty much duck after the Home goes to bed. Yes, at least twenty typewriters. And in the building, maybe a couple of hundred. I know what you’re thinking Lieutenant. But I doubt it like hell.”
“You’re probably right,” Shapiro said. “Still.”
“Knew my name,” Riley said. “Knew his way around here. Even knew Boss Sampson’s habits. Oh, I get your point. Want to start with mine? How does it go again?”
Shapiro told him how the threatening message went. Riley swiveled to face the typewriter on its stand beside his chair, and typed. His fingers were quick on the keys. Several spaces below the words “The Enforcers,” he typed, “Riley, city desk.” He handed the sheet to Shapiro. The paper was grayish, not the clear white of the paper on which the message had come.
“All of them?” Riley said, and waved a hand around the room.
“It might help,” Shapiro said, to which Riley said, “Jesus!” Then, with his soft voice a little raised, he said, “Notson. You up?”
The reporter named Notson, who was reading the first edition of the New York Sentinel, said, “Yeah,” and came over to the city desk.
“Give the police a hand,” Riley said. “Type this out on everybody’s typewriters, starting with your own. Keep the sheets separate, and identify the typewriter you used for each one. O.K.? Like this.”
He gave Notson the carbon he had made of his own copy of the threatening message. Notson read it and said, “Jesus H. Christ!”
“Yes,” Riley said. “And in the new lead for the Night.”
Notson said, “O.K.,” and went back to his typewriter.
“I can do some of them,” Tony Cook said. “Touch may be different.”
Shapiro agreed that that would be a good idea, and that the touch wouldn’t matter as far as he knew. If the lab boys thought it would, the lab boys could do their own typing.
“Sit down,” Riley said, and Shapiro sat in a chair at one end of Riley’s desk. He took a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket, but Riley shook his head.
“Better go out in the hall if you want to smoke,” Riley said. “No smoking in the city room. Boss Sampson’s rule, since he gave them up himself. Rule doesn’t apply to you, of course. Still, upset the old boy.”
Shapiro put the pack back in his pocket.
“Quiet here on Saturdays,” Riley said. “A third of the staff gets this as their day off. I go along after we put the Night to bed. So does Mr. Sampson, although he may stick around this afternoon to make sure this editorial he wants on the front page gets on the front page.”
Shapiro nodded his head to show he had heard. Then he said, “By the way, is David Perryman one of the city staff who gets Saturday off?”
“Sure,” Riley said. “The owner’s son, what else? Not that he asked for it. He’s a good kid. It just—well, sort of worked out that way.”
“By way of Mr. Sampson?”
“Well,” Riley said, “most things around here do, Lieutenant. In one way or another. As you may have
gathered. Not that I’m not all for Dave getting Saturday off. He’s a damn nice kid. And turning out to be a good rewrite man. Also, he called in a while back. Gone home from the hospital. Said his old man seems to be holding his own, thanks to blood transfusions. Seems Dave was a donor last night.”
Shapiro said that they, also, had heard that Russel Perryman’s condition had stabilized. He added that Homicide South had a man standing by.
“Could be he knows who shot him,” Riley said.
Shapiro agreed it could be and said he hoped it would be. His voice, however, did not reflect too much hope. “Dark in the elevator,” he explained. “He was coming in from a lighted corridor. And I don’t suppose he had much time. Ever hear of a gang calls itself ‘The Enforcers?’”
Riley never had. “They keep on sprouting up,” he said. “Making righteous noises and blowing people up, kidnapping people, shooting people. To create a new society which won’t cut down redwood trees. Black Panthers, Weathermen, all kinds. Come to that, even your people have a terrorist gang. Runs in the human animal, I suppose. But no Enforcers I’ve ever heard of.”
Neither had Nathan Shapiro. He asked directions to the nearest telephone booth.
He would have to go down to the lobby floor to find one, Riley told him. Or, he could use any of the phones in the city room. He could dial 9 and then his number. “This one,” Riley said, and pointed to the phone on his desk. “As long as you don’t tie it up too long. District men’ll be calling in, maybe.”
Shapiro said he’d use one of the others, and went to one of the unoccupied desks. The instrument there had earphones, which Shapiro didn’t use. He got Headquarters. O.K., they’d send up for some typed sheets for comparison. Yes, they’d find the precinct detective who’d be holding them. Sure, they’d switch him over.
Captain Rosenwald, commanding the detachment responsible for observation of terrorist activities and the tactical force which, as needed, did more than observe them, had never heard of an organization calling itself The Enforcers. Which didn’t mean that one didn’t exist. “They keep coming out of the woodwork,” Captain Rosenwald told Lieutenant Shapiro, who already knew that they kept coming out of the woodwork, although perhaps not so fast as they had a few years before. O.K., he’d appreciate it if Rosenwald would shop around. Yes, it was yesterday that The Enforcers had emerged from the woodwork. Sure, The Enforcers might be one man or, for that matter, one woman. He did remember that a kidnapper in Georgia had been the “General”—or perhaps “Colonel”—of a purging army which did not exist. Yes, if Rosenwald turned up anything, he’d be at Homicide South.
A Streak of Light Page 11
