A Long Line of Dead Men (34 page)

"I can't even buy that myself."

"Neither can I. I figure the bastard's nuts. I also figure he's done enough harm for one lifetime."

I had an idea where this was going. I didn't much want to go there. I got the waiter's attention and had him refill my coffee cup.

Gruliow said, "Say I'm wrong. He stands trial, they find him guilty on all counts, and he goes to prison."

"Sounds good to me."

"Does it? Obviously, it makes the club and all of its members the focus of a lot of unwelcomed publicity, but there's no avoiding that, is there? Maybe we'd survive as an institution. For my own part, I can't imagine ceasing to get together every May. But I hate to think how all that media attention would change things."

"That's unfortunate, but-"

"But we're talking life and death here, and our desire to stay out of the spotlight is comparatively inconsequential. I can't argue with that. But let's take this a little further. What happens to Severance?"

"He stays in some maximum-security joint upstate for the rest of his life."

"Think so?"

"I thought we were supposing he'd be found guilty. I don't think the court's going to slap his wrist and let him off with time served and five years' probation."

"Let's assume he gets a life sentence. How much time would he serve?"

"That depends."

"Seven years?"

"It could be a lot more than that."

"Don't you think he could behave himself in prison? Don't you think he could convince the parole board that he's a changed man? Matt, the man's the most patient son of a bitch on God's earth. He's spent thirty years killing us and he's only a little more than halfway through. You think he won't be content to bide his time? They'll have him stamping out license plates and it'll just be another menial job, like working as a rent-a-cop in Queens. They'll stick him in a cell and it'll just be another in a long string of furnished rooms. What does he care how long he has to sit on his ass? He's been sitting on his ass for thirty years. Sooner or later they'll have to let him out, and do you think for one moment that he'll be magically rehabilitated?"

I looked at him.

"Well? Do you?"

"No, of course not."

"He'll start in where he left off. By the time he gets out, Mother Nature will have done some of his work for him. There'll have been some thinning of the ranks. But some of us will be left, and what do you bet he comes after us? What do you bet he tries to pick us off one by one?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it without saying anything.

"You know I'm right," he said.

"I know you've always opposed capital punishment."

"Absolutely," he said. "Unequivocally."

"That's not how you sound this morning."

"I think it's regrettable that a man like Severance could ever be released from prison. That doesn't mean I think the state should go into the business of official murder."

"I didn't think we were talking about the state."

"Oh?"

"You want to apprehend him without involving the media or the police. I get the feeling you'd like to see sentence passed and carried out in much the same manner."

"In other words?"

"You want me to find him and kill him for you," I said. "I won't do it."

"I wouldn't ask you to."

"I don't want to find him so you can kill him yourself, either. How would you do it? Draw straws to see who pulls the duty? Or string him up and have everybody pull on the rope?"

"What would you do?"

"Me?"

"In our position."

"I was in your position once," I said. "There was a man named... well, never mind what his name was. The point is that he had sworn to kill me. He'd already killed a lot of other people. I don't know if I could have got him sent to prison, but I know they wouldn't have kept him there forever. Sooner or later they'd have had to let him out."

"What did you do?"

"I did what I had to do."

"You killed him?"

"I did what I had to do."

"Do you regret it?"

"No."

"Do you feel guilty?"

"No."

"Would you do it again?"

"I suppose I would," I said. "If I had to."

"So would I," he said, "if I had to. But that's not what I have in mind. I don't really believe in capital punishment whether it's the state or an individual who imposes the sentence."

"I'm lost," I said. "You'll have to explain."

"I intend to." He drank some coffee. "I've given this some thought," he said, "and I've talked to several of the others. How does this sound to you?"

I heard him out. I had a lot of questions and raised a lot of objections, but he had prepared well. I had no choice but to give him the verdict he wanted.

"It sounds crazy," I said at length, "and the cost-"

"That's not a problem."

"Well, I don't have any moral objection to it," I said. "And it might work."

The first week in August I got a call around one in the afternoon. Joe Durkin said, "Matt, I'd like to talk to you. Why don't you come around the station house?"

"I'd be happy to," I said. "What would be a good time?"

"Now would be a good time," he said.

I went straight over there, stopping en route for a couple of containers of coffee. I gave one to Joe and he lifted the lid and sniffed the steam. "This'll spoil me," he said. "I've been getting used to squadroom coffee. What's this, French roast?"

"I don't know."

"It smells great, whatever it is."

He set it down, opened a drawer, took out one of the palm cards that had been circulating around town for a couple of weeks. It was on postcard stock and about the size of a standard postcard. One side was blank. The other showed James Severance as sketched by Ray Galindez. Beneath the sketch was a seven-digit telephone number.

"What's this?" he said, and flipped it across the desk to me.

"Looks like a postcard," I said. I turned it over. "Blank on the back. I guess you would write your message here and put the address over here on the right. The stamp would go in the corner."

"That's your phone number under the picture."

"So it is," I said. "But if the picture's supposed to be me, I'd have to say it's a lousy likeness."

He reached to take the card from me, looked at me, looked at it, looked at me again. "Somehow," he said, "I don't think it's you."

"Neither do I."

"Whoever it is," he said, "I got a snitch tells me the guy's picture's all over the street. Nobody knows who he is or why somebody's looking for him. So I figured I'd call the number and ask."

"And?"

"And I'm asking."

"Well," I said, "it's in connection with a case I'm working on."

"No kidding."

"And the subject of the sketch might be an important witness."

"Witness to what?"

"I can't say."

"What did you do, take holy orders? You're bound by the seal of the confessional?"

"I was hired by an attorney," I said, "and what was told to me comes under the umbrella of attorney-client privilege."

"Who hired you?"

"Raymond Gruliow."

"Raymond Gruliow."

"That's right."

"Hard-Way Ray."

"I've heard him called that, come to think of it."

He took another look at the sketch. "Guy looks familiar," he said.

"That's what everybody says."

"What's his name? That can't be confidential."

"If we knew his name," I said, "he'd be a lot easier to find."

"A witness saw him and sat down with an artist, and that's where the sketch came from."

"Something like that."

"I understand there's a reward."

I looked at the palm card. "Funny," I said. "It doesn't say anything here about a reward."

"I heard ten grand."

"That's a lot of money."

"It seems like a lot to me," he said, "when I think of what I've done for the price of a hat. What's funny is you never brought the sketch around here."

"I didn't think you'd recognize him. You don't, do you?"

"No."

"So there wouldn't have been much point in showing you the sketch."

He gave me a long look. He said, "When there's that much of a reward for somebody, it's generally somebody who doesn't want to be found."

"Oh, I don't know," I said. "What about that little boy who disappeared in SoHo? There were reward posters all over the place."

"That's a point. There aren't any posters with this fellow, are there?"

"I haven't seen any."

"Just cards you can tuck away out of sight. Nothing on the lampposts or mailboxes, nothing tacked up on bulletin boards. Just a lot of cards circulating quietly around the neighborhoods."

"It's a low-budget operation, Joe."

"With a five-figure reward."

"If you say so," I said, "but I still don't see anything here about a reward."

"No, neither do I. This is good coffee."

"I'm glad you like it."

"Last time we talked," he said, "you were looking into all these old cases. That painter and his wife, that gay guy who got more than he bargained for, that cabbie who picked up the wrong fare. Remember?"

"As if it were yesterday."

"I'll bet. This guy here tied in with them?"

"How could he be?"

"Why do you always answer a question with a question?"

"Do I have to have a reason?"

"Fucking smartass. What's the status of those old cases, anyway?"

"As far as I can tell," I said, "they're all still dead."

The waiting was hard to take.

We got the word out on the street a good ten days before I heard from Joe Durkin. I started with a few people like Danny Boy Bell who are professionally adept at spreading and gathering information, and I gave each of them a sheaf of palm cards bearing Severance's likeness and my phone number. TJ went to work on Forty-second Street, spreading the word among the people he knew on and around the Deuce and working the cheap hotels and SRO rooming houses in the neighborhood. Gruliow made a few phone calls and sent me off to see various criminals and political outcasts he'd defended over the years. Of one he said, "This one hugged me after the trial and said to call him if I ever wanted somebody killed. I've been tempted a few times, believe me. It's a good thing I don't believe in capital punishment, not even for ex-wives."

I was pretty sure he'd go to ground in Manhattan. If he'd ever lived outside the borough, I didn't know about it. In all the months he'd stalked Alan Watson, patrolling his streets in a Queensboro-Corona uniform, even (if he was telling the truth) having an affair with Watson's wife, he'd chosen to live in Manhattan. He could have found a cheaper and more comfortable room a few blocks from the Q-C offices, or within easy walking distance of Watson's Forest Hills home. But he'd moved instead to East Ninety-fourth Street. He'd have had to take two trains to get to work, and two more to get home.

So I centered the manhunt in Manhattan, and I put the most energy into those parts of town where someone like Severance wouldn't stick out like a white thumb. I hit the places that called themselves hotels or rooming houses, and I went to lunch counters and drugstores and asked if they knew where I could find a room for rent, because every neighborhood has some SRO hotels that don't hang out a sign.

And we left palm cards in delis and bodegas, too, and in shoeshine parlors and ginmills and numbers drops. And then it was time to sit back and wait, time to be home in case the phone rang, and that's when it got difficult.

Because it's easier when you're doing something. Sitting in my room at the Northwestern, watching a ball game or a newscast, reading a book or a newspaper, staring out the window, I couldn't avoid the thought that it was all misplaced effort, all a waste of time.

He didn't have to be in Manhattan. He could be lying on a beach in California, biding his time, waiting for the New York heat to die down. He could be in Jersey or Connecticut, stalking one of the club's suburban members. While I sat here, waiting for the phone to ring, he'd be sighting his target and making his kill.

The day after I spoke to Durkin, I picked up the phone and called Lisa Holtzmann.

I didn't even think about it. I had the phone in my hand and was dialing her number without having made any conscious decision. The phone rang four times and her machine picked up. I rang off without leaving a message.

The following afternoon I called her. "I was thinking of you," I told her, but I don't even know if that was true. She told me to come over, and I went.

Two days later I went to the 8:30 meeting at St. Paul's. I left on the break and called her from a pay phone on the corner. No, she said, she wasn't busy. Yes, she felt like company.

In her bed that night, she lay beside me and told me that she was still seeing the art director for the airline magazine. "I've been to bed with him," she said.

"He's a lucky man."

"I don't know why I bother planning conversations in my head. You never say what I expect you to say. Do you really think he's a lucky man? Because I don't."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm such a whore. I saw him the night before last. You came over during the afternoon, and then I went out to dinner with him that night. And brought him home and fucked him. I was still sore from the afternoon but I went ahead and fucked him anyway."

I didn't say anything and neither did she. Through her window I could see New Jersey all lit up like a Christmas tree. After a long moment I reached out and touched her. At first I could feel her trying to hold herself in check, but then she let go and allowed herself to respond, and I went on touching her until she cried out and clung to me.