Lawrence Block - Even the Wicked

“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?”