Even the Wicked

Two shots, and the shooter was off and running before the light died in Byron's eyes. He was lucky. He could have tripped and gone sprawling, he could have run around a corner and right into a cop. Or, failing that, he could have rushed past somebody who managed to get a good look at his face.

Didn't happen. He got away clean.

* * *

That afternoon I beeped TJ, and he met me at a coffee shop a couple of blocks from there. "We been here before," he said. "Fixed the place up since then. Looks nice."

"How's the cheeseburger?"

He considered the question. "Fulfillin'," he said.

"Fulfilling?"

"Be fillin' me full," he said, pushing his plate away. "What kind of work you got for me?"

"Nothing we could use a computer for," I said, and told him what I knew about Byron Leopold and the manner of his death.

"Legwork time," he said. "Knockin' on do's and talkin' to ho's."

"That's the idea."

"We on the clock?"

"You are," I said.

"Means you payin' me, but who be payin' you?"

"Peter's paying me," I said, "while I try to find out what happened to Paul."

'Think you lost me 'round the turn, Vern."

"I have a client," I said. "Adrian Whitfield."

"Lawyer dude. Got his self on Will's list."

"That s right."

"How's he hooked up with Byron?"

"He's not," I said, and explained Whitfield's theory.

"Thinks Will's runnin' warm-up sessions," he said. "Make sense to you?"

"Not really."

"Me neither," he said. "What for's he need to practice? He doin'

fine."

* * *

Suppose Byron Leopold's murder was a street crime. Maybe he'd been killed out of anger at something he'd said or done. Maybe he'd witnessed a crime, maybe he'd seen something from his window or heard something from his park bench. Maybe he'd been mistaken for somebody who'd burned the shooter on a drug sale, or made a pass at the shooter's lover.

If it was anything of that sort, there was a chance the word would get around on the street, and I sent TJ

off to look for it. He could get more that way than I could.

Meanwhile, I could look for the motive in Byron's life.

I picked up the phone and called Ginnie. "Tell me about him," I said.

"What do you want to know?"

"There are things that don't add up. He was a rent-stabilized tenant with a decent apartment in a good building that went co-op a little over twelve years ago. It was a noneviction plan, which meant the tenants could either buy in at the insider's price or stay on as rental tenants.

That's what he did, he went on paying rent."

"He was shooting half a dozen bags of heroin at the time," she said. "Junkies don't generally make the best investment decisions. He said he wished he'd bought the apartment when he had the chance, but it never even seemed like an option at the time."

"What's surprising," I said, "is that he managed to keep the place at all. If he was a junkie—"

"He had the habit but not the lifestyle, Matt. He was a Wall Street junkie."

"You don't mean he was addicted to the stock market."

"No, he was addicted to heroin and alcohol. But he worked on Wall Street. It was a low-level position, he was some sort of order clerk in a brokerage house, but he put in his nine-to-five and didn't take too many sick days. He kept his job and he paid his rent and he never lost his apartment."

"I know there are people who manage to pull that off."

"Drunks do it all the time. When you hear the word heroin you automatically think of criminals."

"Well, buying it's a criminal transaction to start with."

"And a heavy habit costs more than most junkies can earn legitimately. But if you've got a decent job and your habit's not a monster, you can maintain."

"I know there are middle-class people who use it," I said. "There was that woman last month, a magazine editor married to a tax lawyer.

Of course she didn't use a needle."

"Not in the age of AIDS. Byron wouldn't have used a needle either, if he'd started a few years later than he did. But it's still heroin even if you snort it. You get high if you use it and dope-sick if you don't. And if you take too much it kills you. The reason we know about the magazine editor is that she died of an overdose."

We talked about that, and then I said, "So he kept the same job all those years."

"He kept it until he got sober. Then he lost it when his firm was swallowed up in a merger, but I don't think he was out of work for more than two months before he found something very much like it with another firm. And he kept that job until he had to quit for health reasons."

"And how long ago was that?"

"I think six months, but it may have been longer than that. Yes, it was, because I remember he had stopped working before the holidays, but he went back to the office Christmas party."

"Always a comfortable place for a sober alcoholic."

"He was depressed afterward, and I don't think it was from being around all the drinking. Although that might have been part of it. I think it was from knowing that part of his life was over. He'd never be able to go back to work."

"Some people would call that one of the good things about AIDS."