Lawrence Block - Even the Wicked

“There must have been a postmark,” I said.

“More than one,” he said. “There was the original one, when it went through the machine at the intake station before it got shipped uptown to the Old Chelsea station on West Eighteenth, which is where they ship the mail for delivery to the one-oh-oh-one-one zips. Then it went out in somebody’s route bag and came back again, and then it picked up a second postmark when they bounced it from Old Chelsea to the Parley building on Eighth Avenue, which is where the one-oh-oh- oh -one mail gets delivered out of. The second one was handwritten, which probably makes it a collector’s item in this day and age, but what you’re interested in, what anybody’d be interested in, is the first postmark.”

“Yes.”

He knocked back his glass of beer. “I wish I had it to show it to you,” he said, “but of course the cops took it. It tells you two things, the zip for the intake station and the date it went through the stamping machine. The zip was one-oh-oh-thirty-eight, indicating the station was Peck Slip.”

“And the date?”

“Same night Whitfield was killed.”

“What time?”

He shook his head. “Just the date. Which escapes me at the moment, but it was that night, the night he died.”

“Thursday night.”

“Was it a Thursday? Yeah, of course it was, and we were on the street with it Friday morning.”

“But the postmark was Thursday.”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“I just want to make sure I’ve got this right,” I said. “It went through the stamping machine before midnight, and as a result it had Thursday’s date on it and not Friday’s.”

“You’ve got it right.” He pointed to my glass. “What’s that, Coca-Cola? You want a refill?” I shook my head. “Well, I damn well do,” he said, and got Darlene’s attention and signaled for another round.

I said, “Whitfield died around eleven that night, and the first news flash was on New York One just before midnight. Unless I’m missing something, the letter went in the mail before Whitfield was dead.”

“Probably true.”

“Just probably?”

“Well, you’re assuming the post office did everything right,” he said, “and you already know how long it took them to deliver the fucking letter, so why should they be letter-perfect in any other area of operations? Meaning it’s entirely possible somebody neglected to advance the date on the postmark at the stroke of midnight. But I’d certainly say it’s odds-on that Adrian Whitfield still had a pulse when Will mailed the letter.”

“Peck Slip,” I said. “That’s down by the Fulton Fish Market, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. But the post office serves the whole three-eight zip code, and that includes a big chunk of downtown. One Police Plaza, City Hall—”

“And the Criminal Courts Building,” I said. “He could have been in court that afternoon, watching while Adrian entered a guilty plea for Irwin Atkins. He’s already poisoned the whiskey and written the letter, and now he drops it in the mail. Why doesn’t he wait?”

“We already know he’s cocky.”

“But not half-cocked. He’s mailing the letter before his victim’s dead. Suppose Adrian goes out and drinks a bottle of wine with dinner and doesn’t want to mix the grape and the grain when he gets home? Suppose Adrian’s still alive and kicking when Will’s letter turns up on your desk? Then what?”

“Then I call the cops and they run over to Whitfield’s apartment and grab the scotch bottle before he can take a drink from it.”

“Does he ever say anything about the scotch?” I’d clipped the piece from the News and I got it out now and scanned it. Our own drinks had come by this time, with Darlene setting them down and removing their predecessors without interrupting us. She didn’t have to collect any money. Joints like that used to make you pay when they served you, but that was back before everyone paid for everything with a credit card. Now they run a tab, just like everybody else. “There’s a reference to poison,” I said, “and he talks about the security setup at Whitfield’s apartment. He doesn’t specifically say the poison’s in the whiskey.”

“Still, once he mentions poison and talks about the Park Avenue apartment—”

“They’d search everything until they found cyanide in the scotch.”

“And Will winds up looking like a horse’s ass.”

“So why take the chance? What’s the big hurry that he has to get the letter in the mail?”

“Maybe he’s leaving town.”

“Leaving town?”

“Take another look at the clipping,” he suggested. “He’s announcing his retirement. There won’t be any more killing because he’s done. He’s saying goodbye. Isn’t that what a fellow might do on his way to catch a slow boat to China?”

I thought about it.

“Matter of fact,” McGraw said, “why else announce his retirement? He’s got enough news for one letter, claiming credit for Whitfield. He could save the rest for another time. But not if he’s pulling up stakes and relocating in Dallas or Dublin or, I don’t know, Dakar? If he had a plane to catch, that’d be a good reason to put all the news in one letter and send it off right away.”

“And if it gets there before Whitfield takes the drink, then what?”

“Given that the son of a bitch is nuts,” he said, “I’d be hard put to say just what he’d do, but I suppose he’d deal with it one way or the other. Either he’d come back and figure out some other way to get the job done or he’d decide fate had let Adrian off the hook. And maybe he’d write me one more letter about it and maybe he wouldn’t.” He reached to tap the newspaper clipping. “What I think,” he said, “is there’s no question in his mind that Whitfield’s gonna go straight home and swallow the scotch. You read what he wrote, he’s talking about a fait accompli. Far as he’s concerned, it’s a done deal. Whitfield’s already dead. If there’s a word or phrase in his letter that suggests for a moment that the outcome’s still up in the air, I sure as hell missed it.”

“No, you’re right,” I said. “He writes about it as though it already happened. But we’re sure it didn’t?”

“It’s possible Whitfield was dead before this letter picked up its postmark. Barely possible. But the letter probably got dropped in a mailbox, and in order for it to get picked up and trucked to the Peck Slip post office and go through the machine that stamped it with a postmark—”

I scanned the clipping one more time. “What I asked you over the phone,” I said, “was whether there was anything in the letter that absolutely ruled out the possibility of suicide.”

“That’s why I suggested a meeting. That’s why we’re sitting here. The letter doesn’t rule out suicide, except for the fact that Will says he did it, and he’s never lied to us in the past. But the postmark rules it out.”

“Because it was mailed before the death happened.”

“You got it. He might have decided to claim credit for Whitfield’s suicide. But, good as he is, he couldn’t read Whitfield’s mind and know ahead of time that he was going to kill himself.”

It took me awhile to get away from Marty McGraw. He looked around for the waitress, but she must have been on her break. He shrugged and walked over to the bar and came back with two bottles of Rolling Rock, announcing that he’d had enough whiskey for the time being. He drank from one of the bottles, then pointed at the other. “That’s for you if you want it,” he said. I told him I’d pass, and he said he’d figured as much.

“I’ve been there,” he said.