A Streak of Light

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  Tony Cook was at his desk in the squad room. Motioned to, he followed into Shapiro’s office.

  David Perryman had gone uptown. “To see a friend and take the friend to lunch,” Tony said, “and to tell the friend that their date for a Saturday matinee was off, because he had to be available if his father, still under intensive care at St. Vincent’s Hospital, took a turn for the worse. Showed up at the hospital around two, he thinks.”

  Tony had checked on that. Young Perryman had been admitted to his father’s cubicle in the intensive care unit at two ten; he had been allowed five minutes, during which he had done nothing more than sit and look at his unconscious father and watch the zigzag line of the monitor. He had been told that Russel Perryman was holding his own and that it was too soon for a definite prognosis, but that there was cause for hope.

  David Perryman, after being assured he would be called if needed, had walked back to his apartment. Since he had been up most of the night before, at the hospital, he had tried to take a nap. Tony Cook’s arrival had awakened him.

  “Looked it, too,” Tony said.

  Cook had walked to the Claye house in West Eleventh Street. After a considerable wait, a Japanese in a white jacket had come to the door.

  Yes, Mrs. Claye had moved back into the town house; yes, the staff had returned from the country. No, Mrs. Claye was not home at the moment. Well, if it was really important, he could ask Mrs. Claye’s personal maid, Marie. If Mr. Cook wanted to wait.

  Cook had waited several minutes. He had waited outside, not having been asked in. The Japanese had finally returned. He was sorry he had been so long. He had had to convince Marie that the present whereabouts of Mrs. Roger Claye were any business of the police. He had finally succeeded.

  Mrs. Claye had gone uptown, shopping. At about noon. To purchase “suitable clothing.” No, Mrs. Claye had not had any visitors during the morning. People had called on the telephone. That was to be expected. Mrs. Claye had answered the telephone herself, for the most part. Two or three calls had been answered first by Marie. No, a call from a Mr. Mead had not been one of those she answered.

  And the butler—or houseman—had not let anybody into the house. Yes, he thought he had heard the name Brian Mead. Mrs. Claye had, he thought, mentioned him. He had something to do with the theater. Mrs. Claye was interested in the theater.

  It was very sad about Mr. Claye. He had been a most honorable man. And the butler’s name was Yoshi, which was short for a much longer name that Mr. and Mrs. Claye had found difficult. And Yoshi was most sorry that Mrs. Claye was out.

  “Nothing that helps much,” Tony Cook said, and Nathan Shapiro agreed that there wasn’t. Mead, if Tony was sure the man who had been finishing a drink at Hugo’s bar was Mead, might have been in Greenwich Village for any number of reasons, none of which need concern the police.

  Since he was already in that part of town, Tony had gone to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Its sidewalk café was still open. “Usually is through September, Nate.” There was only one couple at a sidewalk table when Tony walked past it into the Fifth Avenue entrance of the hotel.

  Tony had got Jason Wainwright’s room number and had used the house phone. He had got no answer. The desk clerk had not found Mr. Wainwright’s key in the box, but that didn’t mean anything. When Mr. Wainwright went out he almost never left his key at the desk. He merely put it in his pocket.

  Of course, the Fifth Avenue doorman knew Mr. Wainwright. Mr. Wainwright had lived in the hotel for years. Yes, he had whistled Mr. Wainwright up a cab. A little before noon, he thought it had been. He often got a cab for Mr. Wainwright particularly on Saturday mornings. He had not, of course, ever asked, but he’d somehow got the impression that on Saturdays, Mr. Wainwright usually went uptown for lunch. No, he didn’t know where uptown. Once or twice he had heard, or thought he had heard, Mr. Wainwright say, “Gramercy Park,” to the cabdriver. But he couldn’t be sure. No, that morning he had not heard Mr. Wainwright give any directions. He was helping new guests get their luggage out of a cab while Mr. Wainwright’s was pulling away.

  A wasted afternoon, as far as Tony Cook was concerned, and as far as he could see. There was, however, one other thing. One of the precinct boys had got a fill-in on last Thursday night’s poker game, got it from Ralph Burns, the Sentinel’s business manager.

  It had been the regular poker game, Burns had told Detective Helms of the precinct squad. Yes, by “regular” he meant that it was held on an agreed night every week, except in summer. Pretty much every week after Labor Day. They played in the conference room of the advertising department. Yes, that was on the fourth floor. It was a large room with comfortable chairs and a suitable table. Mr. Sampson had even arranged to keep one of the elevators running that night, though both of them were usually, Helms was told, shut down nights. “The old man isn’t one to waste his money,” Burns had said.

  There was a nucleus of regular players. Burns himself, Roy Sampson, Evans—Burton Evans, the advertising manager. During the last few years, poor old Claye. As a matter of fact, the game used to be in Sampson’s apartment, uptown. Roy had never said so, in so many words, but Burns gathered that Mrs. Sampson, Emily Louise—O.K., Emmy Lou—had got fed up with it. So they’d moved downtown to the Sentinel Building. There was a Canal Street restaurant which would send in sandwiches when ordered. And drinks, sure. But the conference room had its own refrigerator and bar.

  Two nights ago? “It was the first game of the fall. If you can call this kind of weather fall. Feels as if we jumped the gun a little. Rounded some players up.” Burns himself, Sampson, Claye—“poor guy”—and Evans. A man named Rosen, advertising manager of one of the Fifth Avenue shops, had been expected but had begged off at the last minute. At literally the last minute; at about nine thirty, when they were ready to deal the first hand, with only four players. Rosen was to have been Evans’s special guest. “O.K., you could say Burt was buttering him up.”

  “Four makes a lousy game, you know,” Burns had told Detective Helms. “Particularly since Roy always gets himself dealt out a little before eleven, so he can go downstairs and catch the eleven o’clock TV news. Mostly they get their hot stuff from the wire services, way we do, but sometimes one of their own boys comes up with something we need to follow up. Anyhow, Roy Sampson isn’t a man to take chances.”

  It was then that Detective Helms had explained that Leroy Sampson was no longer to be spoken of in the present tense. Burns had said, “Jesus Christ!” and had asked what the hell was going on around here? Helms told him that was what they were trying to find out. And had they tried to rustle up a fifth for the game?

  After announcing that he’d be damned, he sure as hell would, Burns had said that they had tried to ring in old Wainwright, who’d been pretty much a regular a few years back and had dropped out. “Getting along, old Jase is. Not up to much nowadays. Keeps getting physical checkups. Used to be quite a poker player.”

  Somebody, Claye as he remembered it, had called Jason Wainwright at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Wainwright had said he’d like to, but didn’t feel up to it. “Hell, he must be damned near eighty.”

  So the four of them had played. One hand of draw, as Burns remembered it, and one of five-card stud. “I won a couple of dollars at draw. With a pair of nines, for God’s sake. Lost them at stud, with a third king in the hole for Roy. And that time, I had a pair of aces. Goes to show, doesn’t it?”

  Helms agreed that it went to show. He said, “A couple of dollars, Mr. Burns?”

  “Oh,” Burns said, “I didn’t mean that literally. More like maybe fifty. But we don’t play for high stakes. On the other hand, it isn’t precisely penny ante.”

  The stud hand had taken some time, partly because of Burns’s mistaken confidence in his pair of aces. It had been about twenty of eleven when Sampson had raked in his chips and stacked them and looked at his watch. And asked to be dealt out while he went down to listen to “those elitist bastards on CBS.” He had gone down. Yes, B
urns supposed, by elevator. And did Helms know how the old boy was making out?

  The last Helms had heard, Russel Perryman was still in intensive care at St. Vincent’s; still on the critical list. And about how long had Mr. Sampson been away from the game?

  “Until about, oh, eleven thirty, at a guess. We knocked it off and had a round of drinks. Three isn’t any kind of a game, you know.”

  Helms agreed that three-handed poker isn’t much of a game, although perhaps preferable to three-handed bridge. So Mr. Sampson had come back about half-past eleven, and the four of them had continued playing. “Until around when, Mr. Burns?”

  Only until around midnight, as Burns remembered it. Then Roger Claye said he’d have to sign off; that he had a little work to do. No, he had not said what the work was. “I assumed he’d thought of something he wanted to get into his column. His Friday column. Something he’d just thought of, maybe.”

  Claye had left the advertising department’s conference room, or gambling room. Burns had assumed he was going home, or, if the house was still closed up, back to his hotel. “Seems he didn’t,” Burns said. “Seems he went downstairs to that office of his.”

  “Way it looks,” Helms said. “None of you got the idea he was going somewhere to meet somebody?”

  Burns had not. He had supposed that Claye, as Claye had said, had some work to do. Presumably on his column for the following day. Neither Evans nor Sampson had expressed any doubts, or raised any question, about Roger Claye’s intentions. “Nobody thought he was going off to get himself killed.” If that was what Helms was getting at.

  “Well,” Helms said, “he did meet somebody. He did get himself killed. The rest of you—you and Mr. Sampson and Mr. Evans. You go on playing?”

  They had not. They had had a final drink. Then Sampson had left. Yes, he and Evans had gone down together in the same elevator. Sampson was not around. “Probably had his usual taxi waiting. He’s got—used to have—a tame driver. Before that, he had his own car and a chauffeur, for God’s sake. Way I get it, Emmy Lou’s got it coming out of her ears. Father was in textiles or something. In a big way, at a guess. Or maybe Wallace gave him liquor distributing rights, or something. Anyway, Mrs. Sampson’s rolling in the stuff. Rolling alone now, apparently. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  Helms had admitted it made a person think.

  “Didn’t say what about,” Tony Cook said, finishing a rather long narrative to Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro. “Anyway, they all managed to get taxis. Evans lives on lower Fifth somewhere. Burns has an apartment in the East Sixties—I’ve got their addresses, if we want them.”

  “This Helms seems to have known the questions to ask, doesn’t he?” Nathan said. “Sampson was away from the game for more than half an hour, apparently. Plenty of time for him to have seen something. If there was anything to see, of course.”

  “Yes,” Tony said. “Or somebody.”

  Nathan Shapiro nodded his agreement. It was what he had had in mind. He looked sadly down at his desk. There were papers on it. There were always papers on it.

  One of the papers he looked at, discouragement on his face, was a report from the lab, from the experts who had been comparing typing from various machines in the Sentinel offices. Comparisons had so far got them nowhere in particular. Oh, the letter from something calling itself “The Enforcers” to Edmond Riley, city editor, had been typed on an Underwood. No idiosyncrasies had been found in the typefaces. To be sure, the e was slightly out of line, microscopically out of line. None of the comparison copies showed this misalignment, which was, in any case, too slight to be of much use, particularly in court—when it comes to court. If it comes to court.

  The Enforcers’ typewriter had been manually operated, not an electric. Whoever had used it had had a heavy touch. The periods had punched holes in the paper, which was Eagle Trojan Bond, sub. 20—in common enough use.

  Nothing helpful. Shapiro had not supposed there would be.

  Headquarters had no record of a terrorist organization which called itself “The Enforcers.” Or of a crackpot group of any kind so called. Which didn’t, of course, prove anything. Or proved merely that The Enforcers had not previously surfaced.

  So there we are, Shapiro thought. Nowhere in particular. He looked across his desk at Detective Anthony Cook. “Yeah,” Cook said, “some guys playing poker. Two floors above where Claye got hit. And a twenty-two doesn’t make a noise like a cannon.”

  Shapiro made no response to this and Tony Cook had expected none. Cook had merely spoken to establish his continued presence. He doubted he had. Nathan continued to look through him, apparently at the wall beyond.

  Then, as much to the wall as to Tony, Shapiro said, “A man approaching eighty does get concerned about his health, of course. Sees that he has regular checkups. Maybe—”

  He did not amplify the “Maybe.” Instead, he said, “We’ve got Mr. Simms’s telephone number, Tony? His home number? Although probably, nice afternoon like this, he’ll be out somewhere.”

  It was late afternoon; it was after five. Their shift had been over for more than an hour. Tony had a date, but it was not until seven. Rose, long used to her role as a policeman’s wife, wouldn’t start to wonder until well after six. It would be later when she would start to worry.

  Tony had the telephone number of Peter Simms. Shapiro got an outside line and dialed it. It took Simms only three rings to answer. Shapiro was sorry to keep bothering him.

  It was no bother. Simms had just started to mix their evening cocktails. Anything he could do to help, and it was a damn shame about Sampson. There was, however, no note of deep grief in Simms’s voice. To Shapiro’s next question there was a moderately surprised “Huh?”

  No, if Jason Wainwright was worried about his health he had kept his worries to himself.

  “Last guy in the world to bore people with his symptoms, Jase is,” Simms said. “Get to be his age, you’re pretty sure to have them, I suppose. But you’d never catch Jase whining about them, way some people do. Take my esteemed —no, don’t take her. Take anybody in his late seventies, I suppose. But not Wainwright.”

  “Happen to know, Mr. Simms, whether Mr. Wainwright had regular physical checkups? Mr. Burns seems to think he did.”

  “Never mentioned them to me,” Simms said. “Could be he did to Burns. But Burns is a worrier himself. Hears about something and right away is sure he has it. And rushes off to his doctor. His most recent doctor. Probably has the idea everybody does the same. Why this sudden interest in Wainwright’s health, Lieutenant?”

  “Just routine. Nothing special. As far as you know, he’s in good health? For a man his age, anyway?”

  “Sure. Come to think of it, he did say something about it a month or so back. He’d been to a hospital for a thorough going-over, and had been away from the office for about a week. When he came back, he said he’d been sorry to dump everything on me and that they’d given him a clear bill. Said one of the doctors told him, ‘You’ll probably outlive all of us.’ Tickled the old boy, because the doctor looked like being somewhere in his fifties.”

  No, Simms did not know to what hospital Wainwright had gone for his checkup. Could be St. Vincent’s, which wasn’t too far from the hotel Wainwright lived in. But he didn’t know. If he had ever known, he’d forgotten. Then, unexpectedly, “Damn!”

  He left it there, while Shapiro waited.

  “Nothing,” Simms said. “I was mixing our drinks when the phone rang. Can’t remember whether I put the vermouth in. Have to assume I did, I guess. Better none than too much. Right?”

  Shapiro did not answer that, having no idea what the right answer would be. He again apologized for bothering the associate editor of the New York Sentinel, whose name, unlike that of the paper’s city editor, did appear on the masthead.

  He got from Tony Cook the telephone number of the Claye town house. He dialed it.

  The response this time was not so quick. It was after the fourth ring, midway o
f the fifth, that a man said, “The Claye residence.” Lieutenant Shapiro? If the lieutenant would wait, please? Shapiro waited. The next voice was female. “Ullo? This is Marie. I will see whether Madame is free.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant?” On a note of extreme, if tried, patience. “Yes, this is Faith Claye. Are there more questions? It has been a very—trying day. As perhaps you can realize, Lieutenant Shapiro.”

  The “even you” was implied in the markedly New England voice.

  “Just one thing we’ve been wondering about,” Shapiro told her. “Your husband’s state of mind the last few weeks.”

  “State of mind, Lieutenant? What an odd question. What do you mean, precisely?”

  “Well, say, was he in good spirits? Cheerful? Or, possibly, apprehensive? As if he were disturbed about something? Anything you can tell us about his state of mind?”

  She did not see how that would help anyone in any way. And she was quite tired, as perhaps he could appreciate. In any case, her husband had seemed, recently, much as he always was. Certainly not “apprehensive,” whatever the lieutenant might have in mind by that. He was never what could be called apprehensive, if Lieutenant Shapiro meant about himself. Did he think her husband had been afraid someone would kill him? No more than anybody else, the way things had got to be in this country.

  “The only thing Roger was apprehensive about was the country’s drift,” Faith Claye said. “Drift into socialism, into a kind of welfare state, with people who won’t work, living on—sponging on—people who do work. Who have the work ethic which is dying out. And those awful unions, which are strangling the free enterprise system. And the government’s determination to run all our lives. About things like that, of course he was what you call apprehensive. Never about himself. My husband was a brave man, Lieutenant Shapiro. A fighter. If you understand what I mean.”

  Shapiro did understand what she meant. He was sure Roger Claye had been brave, and a courageous fighter against the welfare state. Against the burgeoning relief rolls. And against free lunches for schoolchildren from impoverished— and therefore, of course, shiftless—families. He managed, he hoped, to convey all this in the tone of his “Yes, Mrs. Claye. We’re sure he was.” And Mr. Claye had seemed in good spirits the last few weeks? (Except, of course, about the dangerous drift of the country from the spirit of its founders. And, as went without saying, the free enterprise system. Since it went without saying, Shapiro did not say it.)