Very Cold for May

Chapter Eight

Jake got down to work the next morning at ten thirty and found Noble in his office exulting over the morning papers.

“Did you see these, Jake?” he cried happily. “They’re beautiful, simply beautiful.”

Jake hadn’t. He walked around behind Noble’s desk and glanced at the stories, which had been inspired by the press conference in Riordan’s suite the previous afternoon.

From the agency’s and Riordan’s standpoint, they were excellent. The dominant tone was that Riordan was being harried by officious government snoops. There was, in addition to the straight news coverage, a feature story on Riordan’s Chicago plants in the News, with production figures to indicate their importance to the war effort. And in a front page editorial entitled STOP THE WITCH HUNT, the Tribune ominously warned its readership that free enterprise and the American Dream were being threatened by these promiscuous and irresponsible investigations. The editorial made the point that the Hampstead Committee was not a specially privileged unit, and should not take unto itself the authoritarian powers of a police state. The Committee, the editorial concluded, under the direction of one Gregory Prior, had brought no charges against Mr. Riordan, but had, nevertheless, already damaged his reputation by implication and innuendo.

“Get that line about Gregory Prior,” Noble said, delightedly. “Jake, we’re off to a running start.”

“Did we make the wires on any of this stuff?” Jake asked.

“You’re damned right. AP and UP covered, and Time has already called this morning and asked for dope on Riordan. I got Niccolo busy on a handout.”

“Fine,” Jake said.

He picked up a fresh copy of the Tribune from Noble’s desk and took it to the bar, while Noble began to outline an idea for a picture story on Riordan’s family life, with the accent to be laid heavily on its domestic simplicity and young Brian’s war record.

Jake listened absently and went through the paper. The murder of Avery Meed was on the first page, the fact of his having been Riordan’s secretary giving it additional news value. May was on page four now, and there were no further developments in either case. The police were investigating several possibilities and were expecting a conclusive development within the next twenty-four hours. Jake wondered why they always said just that; and wondered what would happen if they announced instead that they had lost all interest in the case and were now engrossed with making ceramics.

Noble suddenly pounded his fist on the desk, and said, “There! What do you think of that?”

“Oh, great,” Jake said. “I’ll get someone on it right away.”

“Jake, you act like you’re tired or something.”

“I was taken unexpectedly drunk last night,” Jake said, and winced. He wondered if he were likely to develop into the sort of graceless idiot who was never at a loss for rakish comments about his hangovers.

Mixing a drink, he caught sight of himself in the mirror behind the bar. He was wearing a dark gray suit, with a neatly knotted blue silk tie. His graying hair was combed down smoothly and he was freshly shaved. But his face was pale and drawn, and his eyes were tired. He looked like a man of distinction who had gone hog-wild over the sponsor’s product.

Noble watched him in the mirror. “You’d better check into a steam bath this afternoon,” he said. “We’ve got to be at top form from now on, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Jake said. He sipped his drink and met Noble’s eyes in the mirror. “Where were you the night that May was killed, Gary?”

Noble remained motionless behind his desk, staring at Jake expressionlessly; but Jake saw his hand move and close nervously on the handle of a long letter opener.

“Why do you want to know?” he said finally.

Jake turned from the bar and shrugged. “Let’s don’t make small talk. I found out last night that Bebe Passione hadn’t been in town for ten days. She’s in Miami. You said you were with her the night before last when May was killed. I know damn well you weren’t in Miami, Gary. So where were you?”

“I went to see May that night,” Noble said, and suddenly he looked old and frightened. The color left his normally ruddy cheeks, and he ran both hands nervously through his rumpled white hair. He met Jake’s eyes anxiously. “I–I thought I could clear up that business about the diary. Jake, I need the Riordan account. Grant’s cancelled last week, but I didn’t tell anybody about it, not even you. You know I can’t talk about a lost account. It’s like talking about dying. Anyway, I thought if I could straighten things out with May it would put us in solidly with Riordan.”

Jake sat down tiredly in a deep leather chair and rested his head against the back. “Was she alive?” he asked.

“Yes, she was alive,” Noble said quickly. “I got there around two thirty, I guess. I told her what I wanted, but she wouldn’t go for it, Jake. She didn’t want money.”

“What did she want?” Jake asked.

Noble shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what she wanted, Jake. She seemed glad to see me, and we had a drink or two. But I couldn’t make any progress with her. She was just in one of those moods. She said she was expecting someone else at three and hustled me out.”

“Yes? That’s interesting. Who?”

“She didn’t say.” Noble scratched his head. “But it was odd. She told me about it, and then she laughed. It was a private joke, I gathered.”

“Okay. You said she was in ‘one of those moods.’ What do you mean?”

“I’ll be damned if I know exactly,” Noble said, frowning. “But it was just that she didn’t seem to be taking me or herself seriously. It was all an act we might have been doing in a charade game. There was a young ass from Chicago University there when I arrived. Maybe she was showing off for him. He had a crew cut and horn-rimmed glasses and was behaving as if he’d been on a steady diet of Oscar Wilde for years.”

“This was two thirty?”

“Yes, and May was wearing red silk Mandarin pajamas and there was incense burning on the mantle.” Noble shook his head. “It was all pretty disgusting.”

“That’s a fine middle-class attitude,” Jake said. “What you mean is that her refusal to be bribed by you was disgusting.”

“Don’t snap at me,” Noble said, peevishly. “I’m not up to it. Maybe ‘picturesque’ is what I meant. At any rate she chased this character from the University, and we got down to business. But we didn’t get down far enough. She just laughed at me, said she was touched by my concern for Riordan, but that she couldn’t let that stand before her artistic integrity. But,” and Noble suddenly pounded his fist on the desk in exasperation, “she was laughing at me all the time. She didn’t mean any of that crap about artistic integrity.”

“I know what you mean,” Jake said. “Where did you go when you left her?”

Noble wet his lips and got to his feet. “I just went out and got drunk,” he said. “I felt lousy, and one drink led to another. I heard the radio flash about May in the Croydon bar, so I called you, and then came over to the office. I–I realized that it would look bad if it came out that I’d been to May’s. So I cooked up the story about being with Bebe for you, and hoped you’d cover up for me by saying we’d been together all night talking business.”

Jake sighed. “I don’t care very much, understand, but have you got any witnesses at these bars where you did your drinking? Do you have anybody who can back up your story?”

Noble made himself a drink and remained at the bar, stirring the liquor with one hand and rubbing his forehead with the other. “You know how things like that are, Jake,” he said, with a petulant frown. “You have a few drinks, and talk with somebody you don’t want to talk to, and then you go out and drift somewhere else, and do the same thing. You’re looking for somebody that wants to listen to you, but everybody wants to talk about himself, and then you look for a girl, and there aren’t any, and you get drunker and sadder all the time and when it’s all over it just adds up to nothing.” He sighed despondently. “Who’d remember me? I’m just a fat man who wears loud ties and talks all the time.”

“For God’s sake, cut it out,” Jake said, disgusted and amused at the same time. “Instead of all this corn, I’d suggest you backtrack your route of that night and look for someone who can support your story. The police will get to you eventually, and they’ll want more than a dissertation on the bitter irony of solitary drinking.”

“I’ll do that,” Noble said with a switch back to his normal vigor. “Now, you’d better check on how Niccolo is coming with that job for Time.”

“Sure. First things first,” Jake said, drily, and left Noble staring after him perplexedly.

Jake walked down to his office, careful to keep his eyes straight ahead when he passed Sheila’s open door. He didn’t feel up to an apology this early in the morning. The door between his office and Toni Ryerson’s cubicle was open, and he saw that her neatly shod feet were in their customary position atop her desk. He walked into her office and said hello, and she immediately began badgering him with questions about Avery Meed’s murder.

“I don’t know a thing,” he told her, with a shrug. “He was strangled with one of his own neckties and the murderer is still at large, as authors are found of saying.”

Dean Niccolo came in through the other door to Toni’s office, with a pipe in his mouth and grinning cheerfully. He sat down, stretched out his long legs, and nodded to Jake; and Toni, Jake noticed, colored and began to shift papers about on her desk with aimless efficiency.

Jake said, “How’s the Riordan handout coming?”

“Pretty well,” Niccolo said. “I’ll have it ready by noon.”

“I’ll bet it’s good,” Toni said.

Jake wondered idly if she were in love with Niccolo. And glancing at him, tanned and muscular, with his dark features glowing with health, he decided she would be crazy if she weren’t. There was a controlled and indolent power in Niccolo that was very provocative.

Niccolo smiled at her and said, “Why, thanks. Thanks a lot.”

Toni beamed and Jake excused himself and returned to his office, closing the connecting door behind him. He found Toni’s rapt reaction to Niccolo somewhat difficult to bear.

Lighting a cigarette, he walked restlessly to the window, observing with dour satisfaction the cold cheerless view of the boulevard and lake.

For a few minutes he tried to think about the Riordan account, but his thoughts slid away from that and settled on the circumstances of May’s death.

The one ‘fact’ they had to work with, it seemed, was that Avery Meed had gone to see May at Riordan’s request, and had come away with the diary. That was what Meed had told Riordan, at least. Meed might have lied to his boss, although there was no apparent reason for that, and Riordan might have lied to Lieutenant Martin, but, again, there was no reason for it. Taking everyone’s word then, Meed had gone to May’s home, had got the diary, and had come away with it.

Then had Meed murdered May?

There was one point that made that more than a possibility. Meed had intended to buy May off; and if he had been successful then the money or check should have been among May’s effects. She would hardly have given him the diary on his promise to pay.

Therefore, since the police had found nothing of the sort, Meed must have taken the diary without paying for it — and he could hardly have done that while May was alive. Possibly, very possibly, it seemed, he might have made his offer, been refused and then been forced to kill her to get the diary.

The other possibility was that May had been dead when Meed arrived. If that were true, then May was murdered by someone with no interest in the diary, for it had been left for Meed to find.

All of this speculation led him no closer to the answers he wanted: Who killed May? Who killed Meed? Where was the diary?

There was still Mike Francesca unaccounted for, Jake knew. Mike, that amiable assassin, would have murdered May with a sigh of regret but without hesitation if it were necessary to his peace of mind and safety.

Jake’s reflections were cut short by the ring of his phone. The receptionist told him Gregory Prior was waiting and wished to see him immediately.

“Send him in,” Jake said, and settled back in his chair with a smile.

Prior appeared in the doorway of Jake’s office a moment or so later, wearing an expression of grim and righteous anger on his face. He also wore a hard worsted, pepper-and-salt tweed suit, a white Oxford cloth shirt and a green wool knit tie.

“Well, this is pleasant,” Jake said. “Sit down, won’t you?”

“Thanks,” Prior said, and sat down without relaxing the stiffness of his body. “I won’t take much of your time. I guess you’ve seen the morning papers.”

“Why, yes,” Jake said. “Why?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Did you see the Tribune editorial, for instance?”

Jake smiled innocently. “Now that you mention it, I remember it quite well. It mentioned you by name, I think. Said something about witch hunting, didn’t it?”

“You can afford to be amused,” Prior said bitterly. “Do you realize you’ve already, with that one editorial, convinced thousands of people that Riordan is merely being hounded by a snooping, bureaucratic committee?”

“Well, that was my fondest hope,” Jake said mildly. “But, after all, I didn’t write the editorial.”

Prior’s lips tightened. “I know you’re responsible for the present attitude of the press on the Riordan investigation. Frankly, I can’t understand people like you, Harrison. You’re willing, even glad apparently, to defend a thieving war racketeer like Daniel Riordan. You’ll do anything at all, I suppose, for money.”

“That’s a nice, simple way of putting it,” Jake said equably.

Prior lit a cigarette with a quick, angry gesture; then, after inhaling deeply, he looked directly at Jake and said, “Ever have any trouble sleeping nights? Do you ever ask yourself what principles, if any, you live by?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Jake said. “I don’t lure small children into alleys, and I don’t speak snidely of Free Enterprise, and I sleep wonderfully. What that has to do with the subject, however, escapes me. Getting to the point, I suggested we work harmoniously on this account, but you ignored that and, at the first opportunity, sounded off to the papers in a manner that made Riordan look like a culprit. So I hit back. You seem to want to know why I did; well, now you know.”

Prior shook his head with a gesture of controlled desperation. “You talk as if this were a boxing match. Don’t you understand that my job is to track down a man who has cheated and defrauded his country in time of war, has cost the lives of American soldiers to fatten his own bank accounts? You’re distorting and impeding that work because you’re paid to do so, and I say it’s scandalous.”

“Oh, relax a minute,” Jake said. “You’re annoyed because you’ve been held up as a symbol of fascistic bureaucracy. Well, that’s a bit thick, of course. But even if I weren’t paid to think so at the moment, I’d have a low opinion of your committee and particularly its eminent chairman, Senator Hampstead. He’s always struck me as a tyrannical, prudish old bastard. But the important thing right now is that Riordan has not been charged with any crimes, and until he is, and until that charge is proved by due process of law, then it’s my job and my duty to defend him from the mudslinging innuendoes, and damnation-by-association tactics of you Washington ferrets.”

“Do you actually believe that?” Prior asked.

Jake let out his breath slowly. For a second he wished he could feel convinced he was doing a job because it was the right thing to do; he wished he was standing on the side of the angels. But of course he wasn’t.

“No, I don’t believe that,” he said shortly. “I’m a press agent. And public relations is a process which takes money from a client, and puts it in the pocket of a press agent. But as long as you have no case against Riordan, then my position is proportionately stronger. Until you get some evidence, I’ll just knock you silly in the papers every day.”

“Okay, then, listen to this,” Prior said, putting out his cigarette with a curiously deliberate gesture. “I came to Chicago as Senator Hampstead’s representative, to investigate a contract Riordan made with the Army to produce one-hundred-and-fifty-five-millimeter gun barrels. Do you know how we got on his trail? No, you probably don’t know, or care. We received reports from theater commanders in the ETO, reports which had come to them through company, regiment, and division commanders, about barrels which cracked and split during combat firing. It took time to coordinate these reports, to determine what firm had supplied most of the defective barrels, and to get ordnance reports on the quality of the metal recovered from those burst guns. That was a long painstaking job and when it was completed we saw that Dan Riordan’s company had made most of those barrels.

“Now we’re moving in on him. Already our first check into his books tells us that he arbitrarily ignored his contracts with the army. He used a cheaper grade of steel, a steel that cracked under the heat and pressure of firing.”

Jake fingered his letter opener and shrugged slightly. “You probably have more information than I do, Prior. But Riordan told me that much himself. He said it was a question of using cheaper steel or of making no barrels at all. He preferred using the cheaper steel.”

“Sure, he would,” Prior said, harshly. “Because he charged the government for the price of the high-quality steel. Riordan owns, among other things, a casting company and a steel mill. He bought cheap steel from his mill, the Sterling Steel Corporation, and made a profit on the sale, and then he put that cheap steel into the barrels made by the Riordan Casting Company. When he sold those barrels — supposedly made of high-grade steel — he collected a double profit, the first on the sale from his mill to his steel company, and secondly by unloading that inferior material at a price paid for the very best steel.”

“You’ve worked pretty fast,” Jake said, pointlessly; he didn’t know what else to say.

“We’re still working, too,” Prior said, grimly. “We also know that Riordan bribed a government plant inspector, a man named Nickerson, to okay the faulty barrels. When we catch up with Nickerson we’ll have a case that Riordan will never wriggle out of. Possibly you can understand my irritation now. Maybe I sounded like a stuffed shirt coming in here to complain about your doing your job, but we know what kind of a client you’ve got — and it hurts to be made a fool of when you’re in the right.”

“Of course,” Jake said, absently. He was thinking that the agency would have to change its pitch on Riordan now. Jake hadn’t thought much about Riordan’s guilt or innocence, but he had felt that if Riordan were guilty he would have covered things so he wouldn’t be caught. Obviously, he was not only a crook, but a stupid one.

“Why don’t you simply lock him up, if you’ve got him cold?” Jake asked.

“First of all, that’s not our job. My report goes to the Senator who, in spite of your feeling, is an able and conscientious man, and he decides whether or not his committee will investigate the matter thoroughly. When that investigation is over, the Attorney General will move in to prosecute. And our case right now is not fully completed. We won’t get through his books for several more weeks.”

Prior stood up abruptly and smiled at Jake, “You probably think I’m a very naive person to come here like this and raise hell with you for making me look like a fool in the papers. Perhaps I did sound off to the reporters without thinking. Maybe we can have lunch some day, if you’re not tied up, and stop fighting each other.”

“Of course,” Jake said. He found himself rather admiring Prior’s frankness, although he was normally dismayed by honest people, because they were an erratic element in the well-ordered and hypocritical world of business.

They walked down the corridor to the reception room together, and Jake found his thoughts turning to May again, as they seemed to inexorably now. He said, “Here’s something I’d like to talk to you about. May Laval was a friend of mine, and I talked with her the night before she was killed. I knew about the diary she’d kept and what she intended doing with it, of course, and I asked her to lay off Riordan. She said she was going ahead with the book, not to spite Riordan, particularly, but because it was a thing she had to do. Now, what changed her mind? She called you later that night, didn’t she?”

“Well, she called my assistant, Coombs. About one in the morning, I think. She said she had some information that we might find useful. Coombs told me and I called her and made a date for the following morning. The next morning we learned she’d been killed. I understand from the papers that now a man named Avery Meed has been killed, and that he had the diary.”

“That’s right,” Jake said. “But the diary is still missing.”

“Well, perhaps it will turn up. I’d like to see it, you know. You say you knew this May Laval. What sort of a person was she?”

Jake shrugged. “That’s a difficult question,” he said.

They entered the reception room and Prior stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Judging from the papers she was simply a rather glorified prostitute.”

“That’s not quite accurate,” Jake said.

“Well, I didn’t mean to sound stuffy,” Prior said hastily. “But the picture one gets second hand is hardly that of a convent-bred little miss. The papers are playing that up pretty strong, of course.” He smiled at Jake as he said this, but his eyes were cool. “The papers have a habit of distorting things, I know,” he said.

“Let’s not start that again,” Jake said. “Getting back to May: She was a generous friend, and could be loyal, warm-hearted and amusing. Her vice was that she needed attention, and worked a bit too hard getting it.”

“Yes, I saw her home, you know,” Prior said. “She apparently used everything from her red pajamas to her furniture with the thought of hitting you squarely in the eye. Her book would undoubtedly have been wonderful reading. But tell me this; the papers said Meed took the diary from her home. Does that mean he killed her?”

“It’s a thought,” Jake said. “It’s undoubtedly occurred to the police.”

“Yes, it’s an obvious idea,” Prior said.

They were both silent a moment, and then Prior smiled at Jake, and said, “We’re in the Postal Building if you should want me...”

The receptionist waved to Jake as he turned from the door and started back to his office.

“I have a call for you. You can take it here, if you like.”

“Thanks,” Jake said.

To his considerable surprise it was Denise Riordan. They talked of unimportant things for a while, and then she said, “I would like to talk with you this afternoon. Do you have any free time?”

“Why, of course. How about two thirty, here at the office?”

“Couldn’t we have a drink somewhere? Offices are too functional to suit me.”

Jake raised an eyebrow at the phone. “All right.” He thought a moment, remembered an invitation to a cocktail party that had been in the morning mail. “How about the lobby of the Palmer House at two thirty?”

“That’s fine.”

Jake put the phone down and wondered what the devil Denise Riordan wanted to see him about. He didn’t like the idea of rendezvousing with clients’ wives. It was unpolitic.

Walking back to his office he decided that the time had come to make amends with Sheila, so he stopped at her office. She was working at her desk, looking cool and lovely in a gray suit with a red flower pinned to the left lapel.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he said. “I was pretty much of a damn fool, I suppose.”

“Don’t be sophomoric, Jake,” Sheila looked up and smiled briefly. “I was wrong last night, too. It’s none of my business what you think and believe.”

“And never the twain shall meet, eh?” Jake said.

“I think you’ve used me as an ersatz conscience long enough,” Sheila said, looking down at her desk. “Maybe you’ve felt that if one of us disapproved of some of the things you’ve done with the agency, that was enough. I’m through being an indulgent mother to you.”

“Let’s talk it over when I get rid of this hangover,” Jake said moodily. “This is like having a cop tell you he doesn’t care what you do.”

“I’m no cop,” Sheila said. “You can break all the windows in the block from now on, and I’ll have no objections.”

“Wheel” Jake said in a listless voice.

He walked back slowly to his office.