“Lissen, Chief. You haven’t still got that bee in y’r bonnet about Lanerd’s havin’ been murdered!”
“Yair. I have. And it’s going to sting somebody yet.” I told him what I had in mind. What Lanerd had told Hacklin on the phone just before he died.
At LaGuardia the next plane for Cincinnati was at nine peeyem. That left time for a leisurely session at the airport barbershop. While I waited for the white chair, I skimmed the early edition of our most sedate journal. They’d page-oned it: Dow Lanerd Found Dead in Hotel Suite.
The copy desk had cut conjecture to the bone. The facts were accurate, far as they went. The famed Mr. Giveaway, promoter and developer of many leading radio and television programs had been discovered lying on the floor of a bathroom in his suite at the Plaza Royale, Fifth Avenue home of many socially prominent. He had been shot in the right temple by his own automatic pistol; preliminary police reports indicated the president of Lanerd, Kenson & Fullbright, internationally influential advertising agents, had shot himself.
The assistant medical examiner placed the time of death at approximately nine p.m., Saturday evening. An informant at the office of the District Attorney suggested that the executive’s death might have been due to a temporarily unbalanced mental condition, following a fatal encounter with a member of the Prosecutor’s staff a short time before the suicide.
There was a guarded reference to a violent dispute in connection with an unnamed woman who was being sought for questioning.
Business and club associates of Lanerd professed the usual profound shock and sorrow, denied all knowledge of financial or domestic difficulties in the life of “the most successful advertising man of the decade.” Mrs. Lanerd, prostrated by the blow, could not be reached for comment.
Reading between the lines, there remained an impression of a drunken brawl in some girl’s room, a fight and a fatality, followed by remorse and suicide. All very commonplace. Very unfortunate. Very silly.
There was nothing concerning the note Tildy’d left for him, so people wouldn’t begin to get ideas about the Plaza Royale being a cozy spot to pitch a love nest. That was the only break the hotel got. Except that Auguste wasn’t mentioned.
Under the lather and the hot towel, I went over it all. Lanerd, Auguste, Roffis, Gowriss, Ruth, Yaker, Edie, Walch, Marge, MacGregory, Nikky, Tildy. Aussi, the man in the taxi!