Even the Wicked

21

I stayed put over the weekend. I went to a couple of meetings, and Saturday afternoon Elaine and I took the #7 train out to Flushing and walked around the new Chinatown. She complained that it wasn’t like Manhattan’s Chinatown at all, feeling neither quaint nor sinister but disturbingly suburban. We wound up eating at a Taiwanese vegetarian restaurant, and after two bites she put down her chopsticks and said, “I take back everything I said.”

“Not bad, huh?”

“Heaven,” she said.

Sunday I had dinner with Jim Faber for the first time in quite a few weeks, and that meant another Chinese meal, but in our own part of town, not way out in Queens. We talked about a lot of different things, including Marty McGraw’s column in that morning’s News, in which he’d essentially accused Will #2 of jerking us all around.

“I can’t understand it,” I said. “I talked to him a couple of days ago and he was pissed off at the Post for running a story suggesting that this Will is all hat and no cattle. And now he—”

“All hat and no cattle?”

“All talk and no action.”

“I know what it means. I’m just surprised to hear it coming out of your New York mouth.”

“I’ve been on the phone with a lot of Texans lately,” I said. “Maybe some of it rubbed off. The point is he called them irresponsible for writing Will off, and now he’s deliberately goading him himself, telling the guy to shit or get off the pot.”

“Maybe the police put him up to it.”

“Maybe.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“I think they’d be more inclined to let sleeping dogs lie. That’s more their style than using Marty as a cafs-paw.”

“Cats and dogs,” he said. “Sounds like rain. McGraw’s a drunk, isn’t he? Didn’t you tell me that?”

“I don’t want to take his inventory.”

“Oh, go ahead and take his inventory. ‘We are not saints,’ remember?”

“Then I suppose he’s a drunk.”

“And you’re surprised he’s not perfectly consistent? Maybe he doesn’t remember objecting to the story in the Post. Maybe he doesn’t even remember reading it.”

Monday I got on the phone right after breakfast and made half a dozen calls, some of them lengthy. I called from the apartment, not from my hotel room across the street, which meant I’d be charged for the calls. That allowed me to feel virtuous and stupid instead of shady and clever.

Tuesday morning Marty McGraw’s column included a letter from Will. There was a teaser headline to that effect on the front page, but the main story was about a drug-related massacre in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. Before I even saw the paper, the doorman rang upstairs during breakfast to announce a FedEx delivery. I said I’d be down to pick it up, and I was eager enough to get going that I skipped my second cup of coffee.

The delivery was what I was expecting, an overnight letter containing three photographs. They were all four-by-five color snaps of the same individual, a slightly built white man in his late forties or early fifties, clean-shaven, with small even features and eyes that were invisible behind wirerimmed eyeglasses.

I beeped TJ and met him at a lunch counter in the Port Authority bus terminal. It was full of wary people, their eyes forever darting around the room. I suppose they had their reasons. It was hard to guess which they feared more, assault or arrest.

TJ spoke highly of the glazed doughnuts, and put away a couple of them. I let them toast a bagel for me and ate half of it. I knew better than to drink their coffee.

TJ squinted at the photos and announced that their subject looked like Clark Kent. “’Cept he’d need more than a costume change to turn hisself into Superman. This the dude chilled Myron?”

“Byron.”

“What I meant. This him?”

“I think so.”

“Don’t look like no iceman. Look like he’d have to call in for backup ‘fore he’d step on a cockroach.”

“That witness you found,” I said. “I was wondering if you could find him again.”

“The dude who was dealin’.”

“That’s the one.”

“Might be I could find him. You sellin’ product, you don’t want to make yourself too hard to find. Or folks be buyin’ from somebody else.” He tapped the picture. “Dude saw the shooter from the back, Jack.”

“Didn’t he get a glimpse of his face after the shooting?”

He tilted his head back, grabbing at the memory. “Said he was white,” he recalled. “Said he was ordinary lookin’. Must be he saw him a little bit, but don’t there be other witnesses got a better look at him?”

“Several of them,” I agreed.

“So what we doin’, coverin’ all the bases?”

I shook my head. “The other witnesses might have to testify in court. That means their first look at Havemeyer ought to be in a police lineup. If his lawyer finds out some private cop showed them a picture ahead of time, then their ID is tainted and the judge won’t allow it.”

“Dude I found ain’t about to testify,” he said. “So it don’t matter how tainted he gets.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Tainted,” he repeated, savoring the word. “Only thing, I supposed to work for Elaine today. Mindin’ the shop while she checks out this Salvation Army store somebody told her about.”

“I’ll cover for you.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Lotta stuff you got to know, Bo. How to write up sales, how to make out the charge slips, how to bargain with the customers. It ain’t somethin’ you can do just walkin’ in off the street.”

I swung at him and he grinned and dodged the blow. “Didn’t I tell you?” he said. “You got to work to establish the jab.” And he snatched up the photographs and headed for the door.

The photos had been taken by a third-year student at Western Reserve, in Cleveland. I’d started out with a name and phone number from Wally Donn, but the guy I reached was swamped with work and didn’t know when he could get to it. He gave me two other numbers, and when each one led me no further than an answering machine I looked in my book and called a fellow I knew in Massillon, Ohio. Massillon’s not exactly next door to Cleveland, but I didn’t know anybody closer.

I’d met Tom Havlicek six or seven years ago when a man I’d locked up once killed an old friend of Elaine’s, along with her husband and children. Havlicek was the cop in charge, a police lieutenant who liked his work and was good at it. We’d hit it off and stayed in touch. I’d managed to deflect his periodic invitations to come out to Ohio and hunt deer, but I’d seen him twice in New York. He came alone the first time, to attend a police products trade show at the Javits Center, and I met him for lunch and showed him a little of the city. He liked what he saw enough to bring his wife a year or so later, and Elaine and I took them to dinner and arranged theater tickets. We joined them for the revival of Carousel at Lincoln Center, but they were on their own for Cats. Friendship, Elaine explained, only goes so far.

It didn’t take long to determine, through a contact in the Cleveland Metropolitan PD, that William Havemeyer had skated thus far through life without getting into trouble. “He hasn’t got a yellow sheet,” he reported. “Which means he hasn’t been arrested. Not in Cuyahoga County, at any rate. Not under that name.”

I thanked him and got the name and phone number of his Cleveland contact.

“Now, since they never arrested him,” he went on, “they sure don’t have a photo of him, and Garvin” — his friend on the CMPD — “gave me a number of a guy he knows who retired recently, but it turns out he’s in Florida for the season. So I thought of my sister’s boy.”

“He’s a police officer?”

“A college student. He’ll be a lawyer when he’s through. Just what the world needs more of.”

“You can’t have too many lawyers,” I said.

“That seems to be the Good Lord’s view of the matter, the way he keeps making more of them. Won’t be long before they’ve got nobody left to sue but each other. He’s a bright young man, never mind who his uncle is, and photography’s his hobby.”

“How is he at lurking?”

“Lurking? Oh, to get the photo. I’d say he’s a devious cuss. Serve him in good stead in his chosen profession. Should I call him?” I said he should. “And when are we going to shoot some deer, will you tell me that?”

“Probably never.”

“Never make a hunter out of you, will we? You know what? Why don’t you come out here after the season’s over and we’ll just take a walk in the woods, which is the best part of hunting anyway. No guns to carry, and no risk of being mistaken for a twelve-point buck by somebody who had his breakfast out of a flask. Of course you don’t get to bring home any venison that way.”

“Which spares you from having to pretend to enjoy it.”

“Not your favorite meal, eh? Nor mine either, truth be known, but there’s something about going out and getting it that satisfies a man.”

I called him from Elaine’s shop to tell him the photos had arrived and his nephew had done a good job.

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said, “but I’m not surprised. He always took good pictures, even as a little kid. I spoke to him just last night, and I’ll tell you what pleases me is how much fun he got out of doing the work. We could make a good police officer out of that boy.”

“I bet your sister would love to hear that.”

“Her and my brother-in-law both, and I guess I see their point. No question but that lawyers get richer than cops. Who ever said the world’s a fair place?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I swear it wasn’t me.”

I spent a few hours minding the shop, and it’s a good thing I don’t have to do that too often. Someone — I think it was Pascal — wrote something to the effect that all of man’s problems stem from his inability to sit alone in a room. I’m generally pretty good at sitting alone in a room, with or without the TV on, but that day I found it a trial. For one thing, I wanted to be out on the streets doing something. For another, people kept interrupting me, and to no purpose. They would call up, ask for Elaine, want to know when she would be coming back, and ring off without leaving a name. Or they would come to the door, stick their heads in, register a certain amount of dismay at seeing me instead of the lady of the house, and go somewhere else.

A couple of people did come in and browse, but I didn’t have to talk price with them, or make out charge card slips, because none of them tried to buy anything. One inquired about the price of several paintings — all the prices were clearly marked — and said that she would be back. That means about as much as saying “I’ll call you” to a woman after the two of you have seen a movie together. “People who keep shops,” Elaine had told me, “are more realistic than girls on dates. We know you won’t be back.”

I had time to read the papers. Marty McGraw’s column did indeed include Will’s latest letter. Without naming names, the anonymous author made it clear that the three men on his list were just a starting point. Many more of us were candidates for his next list, unless we saw the light and mended our ways. The letter struck me as tired and unconvincing. I had the feeling Will #2 didn’t even believe it himself.

TJ breezed in somewhere around the middle of the afternoon. He was wearing baggy jeans, with a down vest in hunter orange over his camo jacket. He was dressed for success, if your line of work happens to be street crime.

“Got to change,” he said, slipping past me to the back room. He came back wearing khakis and a button-down shirt. “Don’t want to scare the customers off,” he said, “but if I went downtown like this, I’da scared the dude off.”

“You found him?”

He nodded. “Says it’s the man he saw.”

“How sure is he?”

“Sure enough to swear to it, ‘cept he ain’t about to swear to nothin’. Told him he wouldn’t have to. That straight?”

“Probably. Can you take over now until Elaine gets back?”

“No problem. Where you goin’, Owen?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“I don’t guess,” he said. “I detect. Where I detect you’s goin’ is Cleveland.”

I told him he was a good detective.

I’d already called from the shop to book the flight, and I walked over to Phyllis Bingham’s office to pick up the ticket, then back to the apartment to pack a bag with a clean shirt and a change of socks and underwear. I didn’t know how long this was going to take, but I figured to be away overnight no matter what.

Phyllis had me flying Continental out of Newark. I beat the rush hour traffic to the airport, and by the time we were on the ground in Cleveland most of the commuters were sitting down to dinner. There was a small group of people with hand-lettered cardboard signs waiting at the security gate, and one of the signs had my name on it. The kid holding it was tall and rangy, with close-cropped reddish-blond hair and a narrow face.

“I’m Matthew Scudder,” I said, “and you must be Jason Griffin. Your Uncle Tom said he’d try to reach you, and that you’d come if you had the time free.”

He grinned. “He told me I’d better have the time free. ‘Meet his plane and drive him out to Lakewood, and anywhere else he wants to go.’ Is that where you want to go first? This man’s house in Lakewood?”

I said it was, and we went to his car, a Japanese import a couple of years old. It sparkled, and I guessed that he’d taken it through a car wash on his way to the airport.

On the way, I asked him what he knew about the case. “Nothing,” he said.

“Tom didn’t tell you anything?”

“My uncle’s a need-to-know kind of guy,” he said. “He gave me a name and an address and told me to go take the guy’s picture without being obvious about it. I told him I might have to buy a telephoto lens.”

“I’ll reimburse you.”

He grinned. “‘Borrow one,’ he said. So that’s what I did. I parked across the street from Mr. Havemeyer’s house and waited for him to come home. When he did get home he drove straight into the garage. It’s an attached garage, which is unusual in that neighborhood. They’re mostly older homes there, but his is newer than the others and it’s got a carport-type garage. So he went on in without giving me a look at him, let alone a chance to zoom in and take his picture.”

“What did you do, wait for him to come out again?”

“No, because he’d probably leave the same way, right? Uncle Tom hadn’t told me how to cope with this sort of situation. As a matter of fact the only advice he gave me — well, can you guess what it was?”

“Bring a milk bottle.”

“He said a wide-mouthed jar. Same difference. I asked him what I was supposed to do with it, and he said after I sat there for a couple of hours the answer would come to me. At which point I figured out what the jar was for. You’ll never guess what he told me next.”

“What’s that?”

“‘When the jar fills up, empty it in the gutter.’ I said, like, pour it out in the gutter? No one’ll see you, he said, and it’ll wash away. I told him thanks for the wise counsel, but I probably would have figured out how to empty the jar on my own. He said after all the rookies he’s trained over the years he’s learned to leave nothing to chance.”

“He’s a wise man,” I said. “But I’m on your side. I have a feeling you’d have worked out the part about emptying the jar all by yourself.”

“Maybe, but on the other hand I have to admit I never would have thought to bring the jar in the first place. You don’t ever see them peeing in bottles in the movies.”

I agreed that you didn’t. “How’d you get the pictures?”

“There was this kid shooting baskets all by himself a few doors down the street. I told him I’d give him five bucks if he could ring the doorbell and get the man inside to come outside of his house. He went and rang it and ran off, and Mr. Havemeyer opened the door a crack and then shut it again. I snapped a picture but it wasn’t one of the ones I sent you because you couldn’t see anything. Anyway, I told the kid that wasn’t good enough, but if he did it again and got the guy to come out I’d pay him the five and another five on top of it.”

“And it worked.”

“He made it work. He went into his own house and got a paper bag about so big and filled it with crumpled newspaper. Then he put it on the stoop and set it on fire, and then he rang the bell again and pounded on the door and ran like a thief. Mr. Havemeyer opened the door a crack again, and then he rushed outside and started stomping and kicking at the burning bag.” He grinned. “It took me a minute to get focused because I was laughing too hard to hold the camera steady. It was pretty funny.”

“I can imagine.”

“It’s an old Halloween trick, actually.”

“As I recall,” I said, “there’s a surprise in the bag.”

“Well, yeah. Dog crap, so when you stomp out the fire you’re stepping in it. The kid skipped that part.”

“Just as well.”

“The pictures don’t show what he’s doing,” he said, “because with the lens I was right in tight on his face. But I have to laugh when I look at them, because his expression brings it all back.”

“I thought he looked sort of beleaguered.”

“Well,” he said, “that’s why.”

Cleveland’s airport is south and west of the city. Lakewood is situated on the lake, appropriately enough, and a little ways to the west of Cleveland, so we could get there without running into city traffic. Jason drove and kept up his end of the conversation, and I found myself comparing him with TJ. Jason was probably a year or two older, and looked on the surface to have had an easier time of it, blessed as he was with a white face and a middle-class upbringing. He’d had a good deal more in the way of formal education, although you could argue that TJ’s street sense was as valuable, with a tuition every bit as pricey. By the time we got to Lakewood I’d decided that the two of them weren’t as different as they seemed. They were both decent kids.

Lakewood turned out to be an older suburb, with big trees and prewar houses. Here and there you’d see a lot that the builders had originally passed up, with a little ranch house perched on it looking like the new kid on the block. We parked across the street from one of these and Jason killed the engine.

“You can’t see where the fire was,” he said. “When I drove off he was going at it with a broom. I guess he did a pretty good job of cleaning up.”

“He could have hired that same kid to scrub it for him.”

“That would be something, wouldn’t it? I don’t know if he’s home. With the garage door shut you can’t tell if his car’s there or not.”

“I don’t think I’ll have to set any fires to find out,” I said. “I’ll just ring his doorbell.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

I considered it. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“Then I’ll wait here.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. It may be a while.”

“No problem,” he said. “I’ve still got that jar.”

I only had to ring the bell once. The eight-note chimes were still echoing when I heard his footsteps approaching. Then he opened the door a crack and saw me, and then he opened it the rest of the way.

The photos were a good likeness. He was a small and slender man, with some age showing in his pink face and some gray lightening his neatly combed hair. Close up, I could see his watery blue eyes behind his bifocal lenses.

He was wearing dark gabardine slacks and a plaid sportshirt. There were several pens in the breast pocket of the shirt. His shoes were brown oxfords, recently polished.

There was no fire raging on his stoop this time, just another middle-aged guy. But Havemeyer still sported his beleaguered expression, as if the world was just a little bit more than he could cope with. I knew the feeling.

I said, “Mr. Havemeyer?”

“Yes?”

“May I come in? I’d like to talk with you.”

“Are you a policeman?”

It’s often a temptation to say yes to that question, or to leave it artfully unanswered. This time, though, I didn’t feel the need.

“No,” I said. “My name is Scudder, Mr. Havemeyer. I’m a private investigator from New York.”

“From New York.”

“Yes.”

“How did you get here?”

“How did I...”

“Did you fly?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” he said, and his shoulders drooped. “I guess you’d better come in, hadn’t you?”