The Devil Knows You’re Dead

Chapter 3

Within the hour, I knew as much as Lisa Holtzmann did.

Elaine and I had gone out to dinner after an early movie. We got back to her place in time for all but the first five minutes of L.A. Law. “I hate to say this,” she said when it was over, “and I know it’s not politically correct, but I’ve had it up to here with Benny. He’s so relentlessly dim.”

“What do you want from him?” I said. “He’s retarded.”

“You’re not supposed to say that. You’re supposed to say he has a learning disability.”

“Okay.”

“But I don’t care,” she said. “You could find a higher IQ growing in a petri dish. I wish he would smarten up or ship out. But then I feel that way about most of the people I meet. What do you want to do now? Is there a ball game on?”

“Let’s watch the news.”

And we did, half watching, half listening. I paid a little more attention when the perky anchorwoman began talking about a Midtown shooting, because I still respond to local crime news like an old Dalmatian to the ringing of the fire bell. When she mentioned the site of the shooting Elaine said, “That’s your neighborhood.” The next thing I knew she was reading the victim’s name off the teleprompter. Glenn Holtzmann, thirty-eight, of West Fifty-seventh Street in Manhattan.

They went to a commercial and I triggered the remote and turned off the set. Elaine said, “I don’t suppose there’s more than one Glenn Holtzmann on West Fifty-seventh Street.”

“No.”

“That poor girl. The last time I saw her she had a husband and a baby on the way, and now what has she got? Should I call her? No, of course not. I didn’t call her when she lost the baby and I shouldn’t call her now. Or should I? Is there anything we can do?”

“We don’t even know her.”

“No, and she’s probably surrounded by people right now. Cops, reporters, film crews. Don’t you think?”

“Either that or she hasn’t heard yet.”

“How could that be? Don’t they hold back the name of the victim pending notification of next of kin? You hear them say that all the time.”

“They’re supposed to,” I said, “but sometimes somebody screws up. It’s not supposed to happen that way, but lots of things happen that aren’t supposed to.”

“Isn’t that the truth. He wasn’t supposed to get shot.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for God’s sake,” she said. “He was a bright young guy with a good job and a great apartment and a wife who was crazy about him, and he went out for a walk and — did they say he was making a phone call?”

“Something like that.”

“Probably to find out if she needed anything from the corner deli. God, do you figure she heard the shots?”

“How do I know?”

She frowned. “I just find the whole thing very disturbing,” she said. “It’s different when you know the person, isn’t it? But that’s not all. It just seems wrong.”

“Murder’s always wrong.”

“I don’t mean morally wrong. I mean in the sense of a mistake, a cosmic error. He wasn’t the kind of person who gets shot down on the street. Do you know what this means? It means we’re all in trouble.”

“How do you figure that?”

“If it could happen to him,” she said, “it could happen to anybody.”

The whole city saw it that way.

The morning papers were full of the story. The tabloids led with it, and even the Times stuck it on the front page. Local television stations gave it the full treatment; several of them had studios within a few blocks of the murder scene, which gave it a little added impact for their employees, if not for their viewers.

I didn’t stay glued to the set myself, but even so I saw interviews with Lisa Holtzmann, with people from the neighborhood, and with various police officials, including a detective from Manhattan Homicide and the precinct commander at Midtown North. All the cops said the same thing — that this was a terrible crime, that such outrages could not be allowed to go unpunished, and that all available police personnel would be working the case in around-the-clock shifts until the killer was in custody.

It didn’t take long. The official estimate of the time of death was 9:45 Thursday night, and within twenty-four hours they were able to announce an arrest. “Suspect charged in Hell’s Kitchen homicide,” the newsbreaks chirped. “Film at eleven.”

And at eleven we watched the film. We saw the suspect with his hands cuffed behind him, his face pointed toward the camera, his eyes wide and staring.

“Jesus, will you look at him,” Elaine said. “The man’s a walking nightmare. Honey, what’s the matter? You can’t possibly know him.”

“I don’t know him,” I said, “but I recognize him from the neighborhood. I think his name is George.”

“Well, who is he?”

I couldn’t answer that, but they could and did. His name was George Sadecki, and he was forty-four years old, unemployed, indigent, a Vietnam veteran, a fixture in the West Fifties. He had been charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Glenn Holtzmann.