Murder Has Its Points (3 page)

(The editors had hesitated long and thoughtfully over that one, but had let it stand.)

Reviews of fiction do not, of course, disturb many—they raise tempests in few and smallish teacups. But there had not been so many startled yaps from indignant readers emitted since John O'Hara, many years before, had compared Hemingway to Shakespeare, to the latter's disadvantage. And Willings, in New York for the publication—instead of in the Virgin Islands, where he had lived for years, and created many legends and more wisecracks—had told a good many people that he would make Payne eat not only the review, but the entire section in which it appeared—a section profitably heavy with advertising.

“After all,” Payne said now, “he's a has-been who never was, and if he wants to make—”

It was after seven, and the party had thinned somewhat. High-pitched voices carry, particularly when they are used with emphasis.

There was a stirring at the bar, a ripple among the still-packed drinkers. There was, suddenly, comparative silence in the end of the room the Norths and Payne stood in—a silence broken, with painful distinctness, by the tag-line of a story which, in more prudish days, would not have been told in mixed company. (Which, Pam thought, God knew this was.) After the tag-line, unfortunately spoken by a woman, had trilled out, the silence was momentarily almost complete.

It was broken by a wordless sound which might have been made by a large and very angry cat.

2

There was a convulsion at the bar, as if a very localized earthquake had occurred there. Men swayed outward from a center; a woman said, shrilly, “Ouch!” And a large, square man came from the eye of the disturbance—a man with a crisp red beard; a man wearing a light gray suit and a dark blue shirt. Folded newsprint bulged one of the pockets of the suit's jacket. Oh dear, Pam North thought, he's really going to.

Gardner Willings, advancing on his all-too-evident prey, did not adopt open-field running. Gardner Willings opened the field, as a plow a furrow. He leaned slightly forward as he walked, heavy shoulders set for impact. Pam looked at Anthony Payne. It occurred to her that Mr. Payne seemed to grow perceptibly less large. His chin no longer really jutted. If anything, it nestled. But, nevertheless, he stood and waited. Had he not—see
The Africa I Know
, by Anthony Payne (North Books, Inc. $3.95)—once stood firm against enraged tribesmen? Pam looked again at Gardner Willings. Better, she thought, enraged tribesmen.

Willings bowled aside a gossip columnist who had not been quite quick enough. Willings stopped, at the last possible moment, in front of Payne. He looked at Payne. He leaned even closer and looked at him from inches.

“Seem to have teeth,” Willings said, loudly. He reached a large, red-haired hand out toward Payne as if to make sure. Payne drew his head back. He said, “See here, Willings,” in a voice which seemed even more highly pitched than before.

“Cream and sugar?” Willings said. “Or mix it with pap. That's it—pap.” He turned slightly and spoke loudly to nobody in particular. “Bring pap,” he said. “Pap for Payne.”

Nobody moved. One waiter shook slightly, as if about to move, but thought better of it.

“Listen, Mr. Willings—” Jerry said, still standing beside Payne. I wish Jerry'd move away, Pam thought. One of them might miss.

“You,” Willings said. “Drop dead. Whoever you are. Or, you want to help him?”

He took the folded newsprint out of the bulging pocket. It was the
Globe-Express
literary supplement of two weeks before. There was no doubt of that. Folded lengthwise it a little resembled a club. Book advertising grows heavy in mid-November.

“Butter?” Willings said. “It'll run to butter. Don't want to make it hard for you, you pig-nit.” (Pig-nit?) “Apple worm. Synthetic, huh? I'll synthetic you, you—you—” he looked at Payne as if he saw him for the first time. “Hairless toad.”

He waved the still folded copy of the
Globe-Express
book review section back and forth in front of Payne's face. Then he thrust it toward Payne's mouth.

“Eat,” he said. “For what you are about to receive, Payne in the anatomy, may the medicine men you never came within miles of make you—”

He did not finish. He lunged toward Payne with the folded paper. It was as he did this that it became apparent that he was very drunk. As he lunged he swayed.

And as he lunged, Payne hit him—hit him on the chin. It did not seem to those watching that the blow was a hard blow. But Gardner Willings reeled back and was on the floor before anybody could catch him.

He sat there for a moment and began to shout. He didn't bother to invent insults this time. He used those at hand—those always at hand. As he shouted at Payne, he started to get up.

The paralysis which seemed to have set in everywhere ended then. Several men grabbed Willings and helped him up, and held him. Jerry and, emerging suddenly, Tom Hathaway, held Payne although (Pam thought) needlessly. Payne, in fact, looked not only frightened but vastly surprised.

Willings stopped talking. He stopped a scarcely begun struggle to be free.

“All right,” he said, in a quite ordered voice, “I won't hurt the two-bit phony.”

He tossed the book section on the floor. He kicked it away with contempt. He looked again at Payne, and this time his gaze seemed very different. There was, this time, a coldness in his fixed stare at the hairless man. And then, for the first time, Gardner Willings became a formidable man, and a rather frightening one. Before, in a somewhat dreadful way, it had all been a little funny. Now—now there was nothing funny about the way Willings looked at Anthony Payne.

I wouldn't, Pam thought, want to be the man who knocked Gardner Willings down, turned the tables on Willings, made Willings look—look like a clown. Because, Pam thought, in spite of everything—pose and bluster and everything—Gardner Willings is a dozen Anthony Paynes. I wouldn't want to be Payne against the other eleven.

Willings turned and walked away—walked very straight, very steadily, and people got out of his way. Willings walked out of the Gold Room and it was only after he was out of the room, out of sight, that the buzzing started. Even then it had an oddly artificial quality, like the' ad-lib crowd-murmurs of a stage scene.

Pam had moved away from Jerry and from Payne, being allergic to falling gladiators, especially large ones. She moved back.

“Sorry,” Jerry said to Payne. “Wouldn't have had this sort of thing happen.” He looked around the room, which was suddenly much emptier than it had been only a minute or two before. Those associated with the press—gossip columnists of Broadway, commentators on the literary scene—were getting out of there. There was no doubt to what purpose. “God knows,” Jerry said, and shuddered slightly. It is always to be hoped that literary cocktail parties will engender publicity but—

“Blustering bully,” Payne said. Color had returned to his face. The jaw jutted again. “Time somebody stood up to him.”

Gerald North looked at Payne. He looked at him as if Payne somewhat surprised him.

“Yes,” Jerry said. “I suppose so, Tony. Only—”

Payne turned and waited. It seemed to Pam, watching, that his expression was truculent.

“Nothing,” Jerry said. “Let's get ourselves a drink. Pam?”

“By all means,” Pamela North said.

Business at the bar had noticeably slackened. It was possible to have drinks made to order, and to the Dumont's usual, and admirable, formula. It was even possible to find a table to sit at while drinking. Jerry had fallen silent; even when Hathaway and, later, Livingston Birdwood joined them, he continued to appear abstracted. Pam could guess why. He was reading headlines probably at the moment being written.

“Gardner Willings K. O.ed.” That, or something like that, would be one of them. “Noted Writers in Party Brawl.” “Book Review Leads to Fisticuffs.” “Anthony Payne Invited to Eat Words; Declines with Fists.”

Pam put a hand on Jerry's, under the table. “Read 'em and weep,” Pam said, softly. Gerald North's response was brief. “God,” Jerry said. He finished his drink and beckoned a waiter.

Payne, also, seemed abstracted, as if he were having second thoughts. As well he may, Pam thought. He seemed, further, to have developed a sudden and considerable thirst. Dutch courage? But Willings was, now, long gone.

And so, Pam thought, looking around the room, half listening to Hathaway's assurance that there was really no harm done, to Birdwood's skeptical “hmmm,” is almost everybody else. Only two waiters, now; several busboys now, and most of them by no means boys. The thin youngster whose face had momentarily showed hate—of whom?—was not in sight, although now was certainly a time for busboys. Lauren Payne was not in sight—no doubt she had developed the headache Pam had herself thought of acquiring. The man who had looked anxiously at her—oh yes, Blaine Smythe—he also was not to be seen. Nor Faith Constable; nor Alice Draycroft. Of course not Alice—Alice was working; long ago Alice must have gone for a quick, before-performance, dinner. Lars Simon had—at least she was sure he had—left before the brawl. Pity to miss the fireworks, which he probably would have enjoyed. (Even if, in the end, Anthony Payne had eaten nothing so indigestible as newsprint.) Everybody she had—no, there was Pink Chiffon. Pam hoped that the woman she was talking to was, this time, really the wife of an author. (One who could be compared to Ned.)

Jerry looked at his watch and shook his wrist and looked at it again.

“What say,” Jerry said, “we get some dinner? Tony? Birdwood? Tom? Find Mrs. Payne and—”

Payne shook his head. His wife had “gone up.” Headache. Probably taken something to put her to sleep. Subject to headaches, poor thing.

“Here?” Birdwood said, with doubt. He was younger than one would have thought, since he was “Productions, Inc.” He was tall and rangy and had deep-set eyes.

Payne shook his head, violently.

“No,” Jerry said. “Somewhere—quieter.”

They went out of the Gold Room and through the lobby and stood on the sidewalk in front of the Dumont among others waving for taxis. They had, Pam thought, picked a bad time. All that remained of the party seemed to have joined them. They'd be hours getting a taxi. And they all needed food by now. Anthony Payne especially, Pam thought. Payne did not seem entirely steady on his feet. Jerry took his arm.

The Dumont's doorman stood, perilously, in the middle of the street and blew a shrill whistle furiously, and, as need arose, dodged expertly. Down the street a cab stopped; started up again, and its roof light went on. The doorman beeped at it almost hysterically; grabbed it as it approached. And the lead-off couple, looking smug to all who were still to wait, got in and were driven off. Jerry waved in the air and the doorman nodded his head, but then gestured at others who waited. It will be forever, Pam thought.

Their “party”—try to think of something else to call it—was a group of five, wedged some distance from the curb, with Payne swaying slightly in the center—swaying and, at intervals, turning from side to side. He was also talking. He was talking about Willings. He had now, it appeared, reached in his own mind a satisfactory explanation of Willings. Willings was crazy. He turned to Pam and said, “That's it. The poor old bastard's gone nuts.” Pam said of course, and that that was probably it. “Crazy as a loon,” Payne said, and turned to say it to Jerry, who held his arm. “Sure,” Jerry said. “That's it.” “Ought to be locked up in a loony bin,” Payne told Tom Hathaway. “Right you are,” Hathaway said. “Only explanation.” “Been showing in his work for years,” Payne said to Livingston Birdwood, who looked discomfitted and said, “Hm-mm.”

“What I say—” Anthony Payne said, and dropped dead.

This was not, of course, instantly apparent. It was apparent that he dropped, and, falling, pulled his arm from Jerry's not insistent hold. He dropped to the sidewalk, in a huddle, twitched violently, and more or less straightened out and lay still.

“Poor bloke's passed—” Hathaway began, and did not finish. Jerry was sitting on his heels by Payne and looked up at Hathaway and shook his head, and then Hathaway squatted on the other side of Payne and looked and said,
“Good God!”
and then put his head back and began to look, apparently, up at the sky.

There was blood by that time. It came out of a small, neat hole almost in the middle of the top of Payne's bald head.

It was the doorman who ran, heavily, to call the police.

Every now and then in New York somebody comes into the possession of a rifle and goes either to a roof or to a high-up window and indulges in target practice, with people as targets. There is no rational explanation of this; many things happen in New York, and in other cities, which do not admit of rational explanation. The police of New York are, to this, resigned. “Town's full of crackpots,” any policeman will tell anyone. There is nothing to do about crackpots except to try to catch them.

And this, of course, is made the more difficult by the fact that reason does not anywhere enter in. Premeditated crimes, including murder, are reasonably designed, and hence may be considered by the rational mind. In professional crime there is always the hope, usually justified, that a squeal will sound, particularly if pressure is properly applied in likely places, most of which the police know. Police laboratories sift the logic of fact and present the sittings for addition. (“The cord with which the woman was tied up is of a type used by upholsterers. This particular sample was manufactured by the Such and Such Company, which has sales outlets in—”)

But none of these methods of operation is of much use when somebody has shot somebody else merely for the fun of it.

During the November on a late evening of which Anthony Payne had dropped dead on the sidewalk in front of the Dumont Hotel, there had been seven snipings in the five boroughs, four of them in Manhattan. Three of these had occurred earlier in the week Payne died in. One child had been slightly grazed; a young woman had been shot in the leg, again not seriously; an elderly man had been barely nicked, but he had died of a heart attack in the moment of his shocked surprise.