Lawrence Block - Hope to Die

I said, "You're near Waverly Place, right?"

"Between Waverly and Washington," he said, "but I'm on my way out, pal, so there's no point coming over."

"That's all right," I said. "I've got no further use for you."

"Well, the hell with you too," he said, and hung up.

T J had some other ideas of how to find Breit, so he stayed at his computer while I caught a subway downtown. I came up to the surface at Broadway and Astor Place and walked a block and a half to a narrow building with a cast-iron front. Most of its eight stories of commercial loft space had been turned into residential units. All the mailboxes had names on them, and Breit was not among them, but that was no surprise.

A sign directed me two doors south to the super, and I managed to find him in the basement, a light-skinned black man with a long oval face, a pencil-line mustache, and just a trace of the West Indies in his speech. I said I was looking for a man named Adam Breit, and he laughed as if that was the funniest thing he'd heard in days.

"It would be very helpful if he left a forwarding address," I said.

"Oh," he said, "that would be helpful for everyone, wouldn't it? When he left here Mr. Breit had the better part of two years to go on his lease, and he was a full three months behind in his rent. The landlord would be very happy to know where he is, and so would Mr. Edison and Mrs. Bell."

"Mr. Edison and- "

"Mr. Conrad Edison," he said, enjoying himself, "and Mrs. Alexander Graham Bell, best known as Ma. He didn't pay the light bill or the phone bill."

"When did he move out?"

"Now there's a question. It seems to me it was sometime after the first of the year when his absence became evident, but as to when he quit the premises, I don't really know. The landlord was after him about the rent, and finally brought a locksmith over to open the door, and it was Old Mother Hubbard all over again."

"How's that?"

"When she got there, the cupboard was bare. He took his clothes, left his furniture, and lit out for the Territories."

"Just like Old Mother Hubbard."

"Exactly."

"Furniture worth anything?"

"He owed money on it, and it must have been worth something, because the firm that sold it to him sent people to fetch it back. What's your business with him, if I may be so bold?"

"That's a good question," I said. "Speaking of business, was he running one here?"

"Speaking of business," he said, "I was busy minding my own, so I'd be hard put to say. He lived here, and people came to see him during business hours, and during nonbusiness hours as well, but who's to say what a man's hours of business may be?"

"Who indeed?"

"I don't think he was trafficking in illegal substances, if that was going to be your next question."

"It wasn't."

"And you never answered my question, now that I think about it, aside from declaring it a good one. Did our Mr. Breit owe you money, too?"

"No," I said, and I could have let it go at that, but something about this gentleman made me want to say more. "I can't be a hundred percent sure," I said, "but it looks as though he killed five people."

"Oh, my," the man said. "Five, you say?"

"It looks that way."

"Well, that's just terrible," he said. "Why on earth would he want to go and do something like that?"

I went back the way I'd come, on the subway, and when I got to the Northwestern T J was downstairs, in what passes for the lobby. He said, "Thought I'd save you a trip upstairs. I been all over the Internet, and the man don't exist."

"Adam Breit."

He nodded. "Spelled either way, E-I-T or I-G-H-T. He a psychiatrist, a psychoanalyst, a psychologist, any damn kind of a shrink, he gotta be listed somewhere."

"You couldn't find a thing?"

"Oh, I found all kind of things," he said. "Broader you make your search, more useless shit you turn up. Put in 'Adam Bright' an' you get some news story, some politician predictin' 'a damn bright future for the farmers of Schuyler County.' You narrow it down enough to be useful, ain't no Adam Breit to be found."

"Well, he's not at Broadway and Waverly," I said, and told how Breit had pulled up stakes and disappeared.

T J said, "Maybe he did light out for the Territories. Or he was the first person killed."

"The man we're looking for killed Adam Breit and took his identity."

"You don't like that?"

"Not a whole lot," I said, "since you've just established he didn't have an identity to take."

"Slipped my mind."

"And he's still around, because Peter Meredith and his friends are still seeing him. I gather he's some kind of guru, the spiritual leader of their little commune."

"The Buddha of Bushwick," he said. "You want to find him, you start right there."

"On Meserole Street? I don't know. If they think he's the closest thing to God, how much are they going to give out about him? All we'd do is run into a brick wall."

"An exposed brick wall," he said.

We needed a place to start, and I didn't think Meserole Street was it. I thought for a minute and said, "Seymour Nadler."

"You think him an' Breit the same person? He sets up this other identity, goes down an' lives on Broadway an' Waverly an' meets with Peter Meredith an' the rest of them, an' then- " He stopped, shook his head. "That don't make no sense," he said.

"That's not where I was going."

"Good thing, too."

I said, "The burglary. When we figured Nadler was our guy, there were two possibilities. He faked the whole burglary, or it was legit and a day or two later he made a false report about a missing gun."

"One or the other."

"But if Nadler's in the clear- "

"Then the burglary was legit, an' the burglar took the gun."

"Right. And how did Adam Breit wind up with it?"

"He was the burglar."

"Right again," I said, "which would explain the similar MO in both burglaries. They were similar because one man committed both of them."

"Now that we know that," he said, "what do we know? The burglar did it, but are we any closer to finding him?"

"Think about it."

He thought about it. "He did it to get the gun."

"That's my guess."

"How'd he even know the gun was there?"

"There you go," I said.

Some years ago, back when I lived in the room that is now T J's, a couple of computer hackers, David King and Jimmy Hong, spent an evening on my behalf deep in the innards of the phone company's computer system, digging out records that were supposed to be unobtainable. They've gone on to bigger and better- and far more legitimate- things, but one legacy they left me was a lifetime of free long-distance calls. I don't know exactly what they did or how they did it, but out-of-state calls made from that telephone never showed up on a bill.

I suppose stealing is stealing, whether it's the phone company or a blind newsboy you're ripping off, and I'm sure moral relativism is philosophically unsustainable, but what the hell, nobody's perfect. If I had to call all over Martha's Vineyard looking for Seymour Nadler, I was just as happy to do it from T J's room, secure in the knowledge that nobody was ever going to have to pay for it.

When I finally got him I said, "Dr. Nadler? I'm sorry to disturb you. I believe you spoke yesterday with Detective Ira Wentworth?"

"Yes?"

"I have a follow-up to that interview, Doctor. I wonder what you can tell me about any connection you might have had to a man named Adam Breit."

"I can't talk about patients," he said. "I'm sure you're familiar with the principle of doctor-patient confidentiality, and- "

"As I understand it," I said, "that would only apply if Adam Breit were a patient."

"If he's not a patient," Nadler said, "then why are you calling me?"

"We thought he might be a colleague."