Even the Wicked

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.