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"An original thinker?"
"Case in point. While Im saying the sentence, the phrase Ive got in mind is nut job. And the thought strikes me that maybe hes got my phone tapped and hell resent me for casting aspersions on his state of mind. So I do a spot edit in midsentence, strike out nut job and pencil in original thinker.
"The journalistic mind at work. "
"But on second thought I dont really believe he has my phone tapped, and what does he care what I call him? Names will never hurt him. Im not sure sticks and stones will, either. What makes you think hes lying about getting Whitfield?"
"The amount of time it took him to write. Its been a full week since Whitfield died. "
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Thats what proves it. "
"Proves what? That he did it? Because I dont see how. "
"We just got this," he said, "or it would have run along with the rest of the story. So I dont want to say anything over the phone because wed like to be first with it tomorrow. You right here in the city? You know where the News is, dont you?"
"Thirty-third between Ninth and Tenth. But if you hadnt asked I might have gone to the old place on East Forty-second. Thats still the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the News. "
"Whats the zip code?"
"The zip code? You want me to write to you?"
"No, not particularly. Look, you havent got anything against tits, have you? Theres a joint called Bunnys Topless on Ninth and Thirty-second thats quieter than a sulky Trappist this time of day. Why dont you meet me there in half an hour?"
"All right. "
"You wont have any trouble recognizing me," he said. "Ill be the guy with a shirt on. "
* * *
I dont know what Bunnys Topless is like at night. It would almost have to be livelier, with more young women displaying their breasts and more men staring at them. And its probably sad at any hour, deeply sad in the manner of most emporia that cater to our less-noble instincts. Gambling casinos are sad in that way, and the glitzier they are the more palpable is their sadness. The air has an ozone-tainted reek of base dreams and broken promises.
Early in the day, the place made no sense at all. It was a cave of a room, the door and windows painted matte black, the room within not so much decorated as thrown together, its furnishing a mix of what the previous owner had left and what had come cheap at auction. Two men occupied stools at either end of the bar, dividing their attention between the TV set (CNN with the sound off) and the bartender, whose breasts (medium size, with a slight droop) looked a good deal more authentic than her bright red hair.
There was a little stage, and they probably had dancers at night, but the stage was empty now and a Golden Oldies station on the radio provided the music. A waitress, clad like the bartender in cottontailed hot pants and rabbit ears and high heels and nothing else, worked the booths and tables. Maybe things would pick up some at lunchtime, but for now she had two men each at a pair of tables in front and one man all by himself in a corner booth.
The loner was Marty McGraw, and anybody would have recognized him. A little photo of him, head cocked and lip curled, ran three times a week with his column. There was gray in his hair that didnt show in the photo, but I knew about that for having seen him so many times on television since the Will story first broke. Aside from that, the years hadnt changed him much. If anything, time had treated him as a caricaturist would have done, accenting what was already there, making the eyebrows a little more prominent, pushing out the jaw.
Hed shucked his suit jacket and loosened his tie, and he had one hand wrapped around the base of a glass of beer. There was an empty rocks glass next to the beer glass, and the raw smell of cheap blended whiskey rose straight to my nostrils.
"Scudder," he said. "McGraw. And this little darling"-he waved to summon the waitress-"assures me her name is Darlene. Shes never lied to me in the past, have you, sweetie?"
She smiled. I had the feeling she was called upon to do that a lot. She had dark hair, cut short, and full breasts.
"The bartenders name is Stacey," he went on, "but shed probably answer to Spacey. You dont want to ask her to do anything terribly complicated. Order a pousse-caf? and youre taking your life in your hands. A shot and a beers a safe choice here, and you want to make the shot some cheap blend, because thats what youre gonna get anyway, no matter what it says on the bottle. "
I said Id have a Coke.
"Well, thats safe," he said, "if not terribly adventurous. Another of the same for me, Darlene. And dont ever change, understand?"
She walked off and he said, "The zip codes one-oh-oh-oh-one, or should I say one-zero-zero-zero-one? You notice how they been doing that lately?"
"Doing what?"
"Saying zero. You give a credit card number over the phone, say oh for zero, and theyll replace all your ohs with zeroes when they read it back to you for confirmation. You know what I think it is? Computers. You copy down a number by hand, whats it matter whether you make an oh or a zero on the page? They both look the same. But when its keystrokes, youre hitting different keys. So they have to make sure. "
Our drinks came. He picked up the shot and tossed it off, took a small sip of the beer. "Anyway, thats my theory, take it or leave it, and its got nothing to do with Wills letter, anyway. He got the zip code wrong. "
"He put an oh for a zero?"
"No, no, no. He wrote down the wrong number entirely. The right address, 450 West Thirty-third Street, but for some goddam reason he put one-oh-oh-one-one instead of one-oh-oh-oh-one. One-oh-oh-elevens the zip for Chelsea and part of the West Village. "
"I see," I said, but I didnt. "But what difference does it make? He did get the street number right, and youre the New York Daily News, for Gods sake. You shouldnt be that hard to find. "
"You would think that," he said, "and I take back what I said before, because its all of a piece with people saying zero instead of oh, and having to get the keystrokes right. Its fucking technology getting in everybodys face is what it is. "
I waited for him to explain.
"It delayed the letter," he said, "if you can believe it. Id hate to guess how many pieces of mail a day get sent to the News, most of them written in crayon. So youd think the dorks who sort the mail could figure out where we were, especially since its no more than a long five-iron shot from the main post office. But all you have to do is put a one where an oh ought to be, pardon me all to hell, I mean a zero, and theyre lost. Theyre fucking stymied. "
"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 somebodys 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 collectors item in this day and age, but what youre interested in, what anybodyd 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. "
"Isnt that what I just said?"
&nbs
p; "I just want to make sure Ive got this right," I said. "It went through the stamping machine before midnight, and as a result it had Thursdays date on it and not Fridays. "
"Youve got it right. " He pointed to my glass. "Whats that, Coca-Cola? You want a refill?" I shook my head. "Well, I damn well do," he said, and got Darlenes 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 Im missing something, the letter went in the mail before Whitfield was dead. "
"Probably true. "
"Just probably?"
"Well, youre 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 its entirely possible somebody neglected to advance the date on the postmark at the stroke of midnight. But Id certainly say its odds-on that Adrian Whitfield still had a pulse when Will mailed the letter. "
"Peck Slip," I said. "Thats down by the Fulton Fish Market, isnt it?"
"Thats 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. Hes already poisoned the whiskey and written the letter, and now he drops it in the mail. Why doesnt he wait?"
"We already know hes cocky. "
"But not half-cocked. Hes mailing the letter before his victims dead. Suppose Adrian goes out and drinks a bottle of wine with dinner and doesnt want to mix the grape and the grain when he gets home? Suppose Adrians still alive and kicking when Wills letter turns up on your desk? Then what?"
"Then I call the cops and they run over to Whitfields apartment and grab the scotch bottle before he can take a drink from it. "
"Does he ever say anything about the scotch?" Id 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 didnt 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. "Theres a reference to poison," I said, "and he talks about the security setup at Whitfields apartment. He doesnt specifically say the poisons in the whiskey. "
"Still, once he mentions poison and talks about the Park Avenue apartment-"
"Theyd search everything until they found cyanide in the scotch. "
"And Will winds up looking like a horses ass. "
"So why take the chance? Whats the big hurry that he has to get the letter in the mail?"
"Maybe hes leaving town. "