An hour later, I was still in the office. Only now it was a crime scene. With me were two detectives from the Thirteenth Precinct. The lieutenant, a short, stocky man with a brush cut—about thirty-five, I guessed—introduced himself as Robert Hatcher. With his splayed ears and the pleat in his nose, he resembled a light-heavyweight, or a man who could once have played tackle for the New York Giants. His partner, Sergeant Lawrence Falco, on the other hand, was rather spindly, and wore a sweatshirt, jeans, and a royal-blue poplin jacket with a Mets insignia on the right breast pocket. A baseball cap completed his outfit. Falco’s taut, swarthy face was riddled with acne scars. He held a much-chewed yellow pencil in one hand and a small Handi-Notes pad in the other. It was Hatcher who led the questioning.
“You say you got here about eight o’clock?”
“As near eight as I could tell,” I said. “I didn’t look at my watch.”
“And you think Foxcroft was alive when you arrived?”
“I thought so at the time, but now—”
“Now what?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t actually hear him say anything.” I had told Hatcher and Falco about the way I’d been hit, and about the figure I saw slipping out the office door. Was it a man or a woman? I couldn’t tell in the dark.
“How many people have keys to this office?” asked Hatcher.
All my key people, I was about to say, when it occurred to me that this might sound flip; and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you do not crack wise with the police. So I began to list them. “Sidney Leopold, my editor in chief. Lester Crispin, my art director. Harry Bunter, rights director. Mary Sunday, our sales manager…”
Hatcher took this in stride. Publishing isn’t the only equal opportunity employer, after all; so is the police force. “Who else?” he said.
Falco was busy writing in his notebook while Hatcher walked over to the window and stood looking out, hands behind his back, which was turned toward me.
“Mortimer Mandelbaum, of course. My controller. And my secretary, Hannah Stein.”
“And Foxcroft?”
“Naturally.”
“Nobody else?”
“That’s the lot.” I sighed. “But the door was left unlocked. Anyone could have come in.”
“I’ll want to talk to everybody tomorrow morning,” Hatcher said, turning to face me. “Tell me, did the victim have any enemies you know of?”
“Well…” I hesitated just long enough for Hatcher’s eyes to narrow. He raised his head and stared directly at me. “So he did have enemies.”
“I suppose so,” I said. “ ‘Enemies’ may be too strong a word, though, Lieutenant. Let’s say he didn’t have many friends.”
“Names?”
“Just about everyone in the office.”
“Including you, Mr. Barlow?” Hatcher had gray eyes, gray lightly flecked with blue, and they were fixed on mine. His ears went up slightly, and two sharp furrows appeared on his forehead. I had the feeling I was looking at a proper bulldog. Ought I to tell him about my recent quarrel with Parker? Let him find out for himself—he would, soon enough. I merely nodded.
Hatcher turned to Falco. “The weapon, Sergeant?”
Falco put away his notebook and produced a plastic Ziploc bag. Inside it I saw what appeared to be a small-caliber gun.
Hatcher held up the bag. “Recognize this?” he said.
“No, should I?”
“It’s a cheap .25-caliber semiautomatic, otherwise known as a Saturday night special. Anyone could pick up one on the street for seventy-five or a hundred dollars. It’s the amateur’s weapon of choice. Foxcroft was shot in the right temple at close range with this little baby. Except for its weight, you might think it was a water gun.”
“Any chance he might have committed suicide?” I asked, knowing the answer ahead of time. Parker was too much under his own intoxicating spell to quit this mortal coil untimely.
“None,” said Falco, joining the conversation for the first time. Or was it an interrogation? More an interview, I supposed.
“I think that’s all for now,” said Hatcher. “As soon as the crime scene boys are finished, and the M.E.’s men take the body away, you can go home. Needless to say—”
“I’m not planning to go anywhere. I’ll be available whenever you want me.” I rose from my chair and crossed to the door. When I opened it, I could see light pouring out of Parker’s office down the hall, punctuated by a camera flashing, and I could hear the sound of men moving around inside.
“I appreciate your time,” Hatcher said. “I know this must have been a shock to you. Finding the body and all, that is.”
I’ll say it has, I thought. The only dead bodies I’m used to around here are all between the covers of books. Or on the pages of manuscripts.
When the police finally packed up their gear, and Parker had been trundled off in a body bag strapped to a gurney (as though he might have wanted to get up and move around), I got up myself and left the office.
Outside, a coroner’s vehicle waited, roof light flashing, and several police cars, drawing a few curious bystanders with their bright red beacons. A slam of the ambulance back door, and Parker was gone, whisked off to an inhospitable morgue I had visited once and dreaded entering ever again.
A line of Donne’s came into my mind: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind.” That was rather how I felt at this moment: smaller somehow, and more vulnerable. It could have happened to me. And Parker Foxcroft was surely not just any man; in his own way, at what he did best, he was a genius. But what kind of man was he? It occurred to me that although I had worked with Parker for almost three years, I knew him hardly at all. We did not socialize, Parker and I. I had never set foot in his apartment, nor had he ever been in my house. He was not a Player, so I never ran into him at 16 Gramercy Park. He was, like so many of the people we work with, a stranger.
I did not feel quite like going home to bed, although it was getting late, so I strolled back to The Players, breathing deeply of the flower-steeped air when I passed by Gramercy Park.
I was not surprised to find Frederick Drew in the Grill Room, leaning on the bar and in earnest conversation with Juan, the barman. When he saw me, his face brightened into what was for him almost a smile. I did not expect to find him any more sober than when I had seen him last, nor was he.
“Nick,” he murmured. “Well met by distilled waters.”
“Arsenic and Old Lace,” I said. Drew nodded. Howard Lindsay, who had more than a hand in that particular play, was president of the Club back in the fifties, and often concluded his master of ceremonies role at a Players Pipe Night—these are formal Club entertainments of one kind or another—with the same line: “Let me lead you beside distilled waters,” as he directed the audience to quit the dining room and descend to the Grill.
“Fred,” I said, “I’m glad to see you.” A lie, but I was curious about one thing. “When we were talking earlier this evening…”
“Yes?”
“Excuse me a moment, Fred. I turned to the barman. “Juan—please. A Rémy Martin.”
When I had the brandy snifter well in hand, and had inhaled deeply of the glorious smoky aroma of Rémy, I said: “You were about to tell me how you lost your teaching job when I was called to the phone. By the time I got back you were gone.”
“Yeah,” he said. “ ‘Nature her custom holds, Let shame say what it will.’” I recognized the Shakespearean line inscribed over the urinals in the Club’s men’s room. “Piss call.”
“What happened, Fred? Tell me.”
He drew himself up, leaned toward me, coming so close I thought for a moment he was going to seize me by the lapels. When he spoke, his face turned a choleric red, and his voice could have been heard all through the room. Even the barman stiffened. As for me, I shrank back from the full force of his anger.
“That fucking Parker fucking Foxcroft fucked me but good!”
It was hard for me to know what to say. “Parker? How?” A lame response, but the only one I could come up with.
“You know I was teaching creative writing—and what a crock of shit that is, as though anybody could teach anybody else how to write creatively—at the Hamilton Institute, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, your man Foxcroft is apparently a bosom buddy—asshole buddy, I should say—of the head of the English Department at Hamilton, a guy named Larry Peterson. What did Foxcroft do? He persuaded Peterson to drop me from the faculty and give my courses to a young protégé of Foxcroft’s.” He shook his head as though to clear it; I could see tears forming in his eyes. He named a short-story writer who had been published widely and was enjoying a vogue.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Fred—damned sorry, in fact.”
“Dead in the water,” he said, his voice now so soft I could barely hear him. “Killed by a cocksucker named Parker goddamned Foxcroft.”
I wondered if I ought to tell him that he was speaking of the late Parker Foxcroft. Perhaps it would cheer him up, even if it wouldn’t get him his job back. For some reason even I didn’t understand, I remained silent.
“Nick,” said Drew, tears now streaming down his cheeks, “I depended on that job to put food on my table. And I’ve got two other mouths to feed. My wife can’t work… and… well, shit, man, what am I supposed to do?”
Few things, I think, are harder to bear than the sight of a grown man weeping—and if that man is less than a friend, the experience is more painful still. I had every reason to sympathize with Frederick Drew and none to mourn Parker Foxcroft, but the men of my generation and class—if that word doesn’t sound too pompous—were raised as young Stoics. To muffle the sobs, suppress the tears, take the agony inside oneself, quite as a Spartan warrior, it is said, was expected to let a fox gnaw at his entrails without showing any evidence of pain.
Drew pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped his eyes. “Someday—somehow—Foxcroft will get his,” he said.
Amen, I said to myself. Selah—whatever that means.