The Shattered Raven Read online

  The Shattered Raven

  A Novel

  Edward D. Hoch

  Contents

  1 Victor Jones

  2 Susan Veldt

  3 Barney Hamet

  4 Susan Veldt

  5 Barney Hamet

  6 Victor Jones

  7 Barney Hamet

  8 Susan Veldt

  9 Barney Hamet

  10 Susan Veldt

  11 Barney Hamet

  12 Susan Veldt

  13 Victor Jones

  14 Barney Hamet

  15 Susan Veldt

  16 Barney Hamet

  17 Susan Veldt

  18 Barney Hamet

  19 Victor Jones

  20 Barney Hamet

  21 Susan Veldt

  22 Barney Hamet

  23 Victor Jones

  24 Barney Hamet

  For my mother

  … and for Patricia

  1 Victor Jones

  VICTOR JONES FELT GOOD that morning.

  It was the day after Easter, and Manhattan was bathed in a sunshine rare for this early in the spring. From his window he could see strollers far below along the street, bound for nowhere, only breathing in the deep fresh air of the day and perhaps smiling to each other as they passed.

  He felt good, that is, until the morning mail was spread on the desk before him. Then he saw the letter at once, addressed to him in a vaguely familiar hand, bearing the return address of Amalgamated Broadcasting Company. He knew, before opening the envelope, that it was a letter from Ross Craigthorn.

  Ross Craigthorn—a name from the past that he rarely thought of any more in connection with his own well-ordered life. Of course Craigthorn could be seen on television nightly, when his half-hour news commentary for Amalgamated reached more homes than Huntley or Brinkley or Cronkite. But that was different, something remote, as when he occasionally saw Craigthorn’s handsome face across the room at a crowded party to which they’d both been invited. They had not spoken to each other, nor communicated in any way, for some twenty-two years.

  And now, after all that time, this letter had come. He slit open the envelope and pulled out the two sheets of paper. The letter had been neatly typed, but it was obvious that Ross had done it on his personal machine. This was not a letter to be entrusted to curious secretaries.

  Dear Victor, it began. He hadn’t seen that salutation in twenty-two years.

  Dear Victor,

  Perhaps you will be surprised to hear from me after all these years, and you may be more surprised that I am addressing you by your real name. The envelope, of course, bears another name, but to me you will always be Victor Jones.

  Why am I writing you now? At one time, just after it happened, I swore I would never see you again or speak your name or do anything that might remind me of that awful past.

  But now, Victor, something has happened which brings it all back, which forces me to an action I never planned to take. You see, Victor, I have been contacted by Irma.

  Yes, Irma Black. You remember Irma. She was there. Saw us. Knew our names. Our names at that time, anyway. And now Irma is in Manhattan. She has found me, of course, because my name did not really change that much, and my face is on television every night.

  Irma Black has contacted me and asked for one hundred thousand dollars. It is not a small sum, despite what you might have read in the trade press about my new contract. It is, in fact, too large a sum for me to think of paying. For Irma Black it would be only the first of many sums.

  It is paradoxical, I suppose, Victor, to think that if I were a factory worker or a garbage collector the sin of our past would be worth no money to anyone. It is only the fame that has been thrust upon me which makes it a valuable sin, valuable to people like Irma Black.

  I will not pay the blackmail, Victor. I will not pay one cent to the woman. So I am left with a sticky alternative. She can break the story in any number of columns around town, blacken my name, perhaps ruin my reputation. I cannot allow that.

  The only path that seems open to me is to beat her to the punch. The statute of limitations has run out on our crime, as you know. I feel that if I go before the public and tell them what I did—what we did—so long ago, perhaps I can convince them it was a youthful folly. I can beg their forgiveness, throw myself on their mercy, and keep my position in the broadcast world.

  In any event, it is the only course open to me and it is one which I must take. That is why I am writing to you at this time, Victor, because of course I cannot reveal my crime without revealing our crime. I will have to tell your part in it, and even if I do not identify you by your present name, I fear the identity which you have assumed will not long remain a mystery.

  I’m sorry to have to drag you into it, with your fine reputation in the field. But I have no choice. Feel free to phone me, Victor, if there is anything you want to say, but be advised that my decision is irrevocable. I hope you will agree with this course of action, and I beg your forgiveness in advance for any trouble and heartbreak it may cause you.

  Yours for an honest future,

  Ross Craigthorn.

  Victor Jones finished reading the letter and sat for a long time staring at the desk before him. Then, lighting a cigarette to calm his nerves, he read it over once more from the beginning. Then he picked up the telephone, remembered he did not know the number of Amalgamated Broadcasting, and set down the receiver again while he consulted the directory. He dialled the number with a hand remarkably steady and asked to speak to Ross Craigthorn, just like any businessman might. There was some delay. Finally a secretary came on the wire. “Mr. Craigthorn is recording at the moment. Could he return your call?”

  “No. No.” Victor Jones said. “I’ll phone him again a bit later.” He hung up and smoked another cigarette, and wondered what in hell he was going to do with his life.

  An hour later he managed to reach Ross Craigthorn. The voice on the other end was just a bit surprised. “Well—Victor, isn’t it? Is that the name I should call you?”

  “I received your letter this morning, Ross.”

  A grunt on the other end. “I thought I’d made it clear what the situation was, but I’m glad you called, nevertheless. It’s a difficult thing. It’ll be difficult for our families.”

  Victor Jones was staring at nothing. “You can’t go through with this Ross. The past is dead. Buried.”

  “Of course it is, but that foolish woman is trying to bring it to life again.”

  For just a moment Victor Jones was back—back into decades of time. To the place where it had all begun with the two of them.

  “Doesn’t our friendship mean anything to you, Ross?”

  “Of course it does, Victor. It’s meant something to me for all these years, even though we don’t see each other anymore. You’ve been successful and so have I.”

  Victor interrupted. “You’re far the more successful.”

  “Then I have the most to lose, haven’t I? I have the most to lose by getting up and telling people what happened all those years ago. If I’m willing to risk it, Victor, you should be too.”

  Victor Jones tightened his grip on the receiver. “I’m not willing to risk it, Ross. I’m not! You can’t bring me into it.”

  “I’ll try to keep you out, of course. I’ll try to be vague about your identity. Perhaps they won’t guess—and perhaps they will. There’s no way of telling the story without leaving hints. This woman is on my back. It’s the only way I know to get rid of her, short of murder.”

  “Maybe you should consider that, Ross.”

  Craigthorn laughed. “Always the kidder, Victor. Didn’t you get us into enough trouble twenty-two years ago?”

  “Then you’re really going through with it?”
/>
  “I am.”

  “When?”

  “Funny thing! You know—of course, you know—that I’ve always read mystery novels. You did too, back in those days. This group, the Mystery Writers of America, is presenting me with an award as the Reader of the Year. I guess I’ve mentioned a few times on television that I read them. The dinner is at the Biltmore, a week from Friday. Funny thing—speaking to all those mystery writers, editors and such. A lot of people go to the dinner. Perhaps you’ll be there yourself, although I wouldn’t want to embarrass you needlessly. It seems like a good opportunity to tell the story. I think they’d be a sympathetic audience and I think the press would break it in the right way.”

  Victor Jones said nothing for a moment Finally he commented, “That’s a damnable thing to do, Ross. Don’t you know …?”

  Craigthorn interrupted. “I can’t talk any more now, Victor. My decision has been made. I’m sorry. I’ll try to keep you out of it. Goodbye!”

  There was a click and the line went dead, and Victor Jones was left holding the receiver. He hung up slowly, then sat pondering the desk calendar before him. Yes … he already had a note that the MWA dinner was a week from Friday. A coincidence of sorts, he supposed, that their paths should come together in exactly this way.

  He turned back to his typewriter and started to write a piece he’d been trying to do all week. But nothing came to his churning mind.

  Ross Craigthorn was going to talk. He pondered that for the better part of an hour before he decided, quite suddenly, and with no second thoughts, that he would have to murder Ross Craigthorn.

  2 Susan Veldt

  FOR SUSAN VELDT IT had all begun on a snowy morning back in January when she’d come to work late because the Fifth Avenue buses were piled up in a traffic jam at 42nd Street. Long ago she had wished for a subway beneath Fifth Avenue, and in the summer she avoided the problem by taking the Sixth Avenue and walking a block, but on a morning like this, she was not about to brave the slushy snow collected at every corner. It was the bus for her, and when the bus was late, she was late.

  She lived uptown, in a section that many people considered fancy, facing Central Park with a good view of the zoo. It was a fine apartment, sublet to her by a college friend who was spending a year in Europe, and who came from a family with money. Susan was glad to have the apartment and thankful for the view of the park, even though an occasional lion’s roar drifted up on the nights when she slept with the window open.

  This morning, though, the silence of the snow was everywhere, and even the animals seemed to be smothered in it. She saw them drifting lazily in their snowy cages as she waited for the bus. When it finally came, she boarded it and settled in for the long trip down to 22nd Street and the far-from-palatial offices of Manhattan magazine.

  Susan Veldt was a staff writer for Manhattan, a job that paid her a mild eighty-two hundred dollars a year, but carried with it a certain amount of prestige in New York literary circles. Manhattan had been born out of the foggy dreams of its publisher and editor, Arthur Rowe, a brilliant man from the midwest, whose every project seemed to bring with it the unceasing flow of profit.

  Susan had heard of the founding of Manhattan the previous summer, and when the critics sneered at another Gotham-oriented magazine along with The New Yorker and New York and Cue, she set off for the downtown offices to see what it was all about.

  Arthur Rowe, bespectacled, thin of hair and chomping a pipe between yellow teeth, impressed her immediately. He looked like an editor should look, and talked like an editor should talk. He pointed a pencil at her and told her to get to work that first day and she’d been working ever since.

  The magazine was a weekly, with Susan doing a bylined article every second or third week. She had explored, among other topics, the Central Park Zoo, the plans for a nuclear power plant in Queens, the latest walking tours of Mayor Lindsay, the unemployed show folk of Broadway, and the creeps of 42nd Street. Still, Arthur Rowe always managed to produce new assignments for her, and this snowy January morning was no exception.

  “I’ve got a great idea, Sue!” he said, lighting up the pipe. “You’re going to do a series for us called It Happens Every Spring.”

  “Baseball?” she asked, looking a bit askance.

  “No baseball. It’s going to be about the awards business here in Manhattan. Look at this—the New York film critics just gave out their awards, and some other critics’ group, too. It happens all the time. Especially, it happens in New York in the spring. You’re going to cover all the dinners and all the banquets—all the ceremonies—and write me a nice series on them.”

  “Straight or funny?” she asked, chewing at the eraser tip of her pencil.

  “Use your own judgement. I think more funny than straight—a little bit of satire. You know the sort of thing. Make like you’re working for The New Yorker on this one.

  She chuckled and got out her notebook. “When do I start?”

  “First I want a list of them—how many there are, which ones we should cover. We’ll have another meeting in a couple of days.”

  “How about the Oscars? Are they included?”

  “Oscars are Hollywood. This is Manhattan. No Oscars. You don’t get a free trip to the Coast, Susan.”

  She sighed and made a note on her pad, and went out.

  For Susan Veldt, that was the beginning of it.

  The next meeting actually took place a full week later, because Arthur Rowe had been called to the printers in Albany, where they were having indecipherable problems with web offset presses. He returned gloomy and full of curse words for the men who ran that end of the business, then settled into his leather armchair and stared at her as if he had no idea what brought her to his sanctum.

  “What’s up, Susan?”

  “Well, what’s up is that you wanted me to cover those awards.”

  “Oh, yes. Do you have a list of them?”

  “Here,” she sighed, starting off with number one. “The Grammy Awards, little miniature …”

  He interrupted immediately. “Little miniature is redundant. Susan, I’m going to make a writer out of you if it kills me.”

  “All right. All right,” she said, happy to see that he was relaxing. “The Grammy Awards, given for the best records of the year in various categories. The awards are presented at a banquet at the end of February. There’s a television show that follows later, but the banquet is the thing to cover.”

  “Good,” he told her, making a note on his big yellow pad. “Next?”

  “The National Book Awards, second week in March. Very, very literary. Lots of speeches, including usually a blast at the war or the way things are run in Washington.”

  “Good.” He made a note of it, then looked up for her next entry.

  “The Oscars come in early April, but we’re not covering those. Then we skip to about mid-April for the Tony Awards. You know, the Antoinette Perry, American Theatre Wing.”

  “Right, Then where are we?”

  “Usually about a week later, the New York Drama Critics give a …”

  He interrupted. “We’re too late for the Film Critics. We’d better leave off the Drama Critics too or we’ll get a rhubarb going about favouritism. The Tony Awards will cover that end of it.”

  “Right. That’s just one less article I have to write. Let’s see…” She bit at the pencil again, wishing she had a cigarette. She didn’t really smoke a great deal, but one would have tasted good just then. Of course Rowe kept some on his desk. He even occasionally smoked one when he ran out of pipe tobacco, but she didn’t want to ask and disturb his genial disposition.

  “In late April, we have the Edgar Awards.”

  “The what?” he asked.

  “Edgar. For Edgar Allan Poe. They’re given by the Mystery Writers of America for the best detective novel, short story, movie, television show, things like that.”

  “Sounds good,” he said. “I think I’ve read something about them somewhere. I’m not
much of a mystery buff myself, though.”

  She hurried on. “Early May—around the first week, the Pulitzer Prizes are given at Columbia University.”

  “That’s one we want,” he said.

  “Then, I think we could wind up about mid-May with the Emmy Awards—the television things, you know. They have a joint ceremony, in New York and Hollywood.”

  “Right. How many does that make altogether?”

  “Well, let’s see: We have the Grammys and the National Book Awards and the Tonys and the Edgars. That’s four … and the Pulitzers and the Emmys—which would be six.”

  “Six is a good number for a series. Let’s make it six. We might decide on a lead article or a concluding article summarising the whole thing, but figure on six for now. Get at your typewriter and start working!”

  She got at her typewriter later that afternoon, plugging away at what would be an initial article, or at least the rationale for the series as it existed in her own mind.

  It happens every spring, she began. The awards business is big business because it’s the sort of business that encourages other business. Whenever something wins an award in any field of the arts, be it a movie or a book or a television show or a phonograph record or a play or just about anything, it generally means increased grosses, increased sales, increased customers—more money to the author or the producer or whoever is involved in the thing. Perhaps the most famous awards of this sort are the Oscars given in Hollywood, but the remainder of the awards business is centred in New York and it is big business, as I have said. It is a business that runs all year round and reaches its climax on the island of Manhattan in the spring, where no less than six major sets of awards are given out to the happy participants. The awards are given at televised events with lavish banquets, or just plain semi-private meetings, and the news generally appears in the New York Times and other papers, the following morning. Sometimes the names of the winners leak out in advance, but generally it’s a well-guarded secret until the actual night of the event.

  In this series of articles, I intend to take you to these events—six of them, at least—being held in Manhattan this spring. I think you’ll enjoy the experience. I know I will.