A Long Line of Dead Men

Unless-

Well, it was crazy, but why expect sane behavior from someone who was systematically wiping out his lifelong friends? Maybe bringing in a detective would add a little excitement to the game. Maybe it was getting dull, knocking off somebody every year or so. Maybe it was infuriating the way the rest of them refused to realize what was going on. So maybe Lew Hildebrand had decided to even the odds a little by bringing in a detective. But, because he didn't want to make things too hard for himself, he'd had the good sense to hire a detective who wasn't all that bright…

Get a good night's sleep, Jim Shorter had urged.

Fat chance.

20

They assembled, nine of fourteen of thirty-one, at three o'clock on the last Tuesday in June, a hot and hazy day with the burnt reek of ozone soiling the dense air. No one was anxiously early or fashionably late. The first to arrive were Gerard Billings and Kendall McGarry, who came in separate taxis that discharged their passengers simultaneously. The two men rang Gruliow's bell at five minutes before the hour. They had no sooner taken seats than the bell rang again. When Bob Berk arrived at 3:02, apologizing for being late, he was the ninth man. It was five minutes after three when Ray Gruliow got to his feet to open the meeting.

He had done this once before. With Frank DiGiulio's death the previous September, he had become the club's senior member, and had accordingly presided at the a

What he had not done before, what no one had done, was open a meeting at other than the traditional time and place. He had given some thought to the form this meeting ought to take, and had consulted several of the others on the matter. His conclusion was that it ought to vary as little as possible from the usual form, and he began accordingly by intoning the names of deceased members in the order of their passing, begi

"I want to thank you for coming," he said. "I've talked with each of you about the situation we're facing, and I know some of you have talked to one another. Let me see if I can summarize what we're up against, and then we can go around the room in our usual fashion and get a sense of where we are on this. There's a fellow who'll be joining us at three-thirty, a detective by the name of Scudder. It would be good if we could reach some sort of consensus by the time he gets here…"

I got to Commerce Street fifteen minutes early and killed the time wandering the narrow winding streets. It took me back to when I was a new face at the Sixth Precinct, itself housed on Charles Street in those days. I was new to the Village, and excited by what I saw, but I kept getting lost on those eccentric streets. I thought I'd never get the hang of it, but nothing familiarizes you with an area like a tour of duty there. I caught on.

At 3:30 exactly I mounted the steps at Gruliow's house and worked the lion's head door knocker. Gruliow opened the door at once and met me with a smile, one he'd shown me before, the one that suggested that we two shared a secret. "You're right on time," he said. "Come on in. There's a bunch of fellows here who want to meet you."

The heat notwithstanding, I was glad I'd worn a suit. They were all in dark business suits, except for Lowell Hunter, whose suit was seersucker, and Gerard Billings, the TV weatherman, with his trademark bow tie and a Kelly-green blazer. Gruliow introduced me and I shook hands all around, trying to fix each face in my mind and match it with a name I already knew. I didn't have that many to remember; of the nine, I had already met Gruliow and Hildebrand, and I recognized Billings and Avery Davis. That left Hunter, along with Bob Berk, Bill Ludgate, Kendall McGarry, and Gordon Walser.

Of the other five, Brian O'Hara was trekking in the Himalayas with his eldest son and wouldn't be back for another ten days. John Youngdahl lived in St. Louis; he'd moved there eight years ago, never missed the a

After the introductions we all took our seats and they all waited for me to say something. I looked around at the ring of expectant faces and all I could think of was that I wanted a drink. I took a deep breath and let it out and pushed the thought aside.

I told them I was grateful to them for the meeting. "I know you've had a little time to discuss the situation," I said, "but I thought I might tell you what it looks like from my perspective, which is that of an outsider and a professional investigator." I talked for fifteen or twenty minutes, discussing the various deaths in turn, speculating on the probable legitimacy of the suicides and accidents. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I didn't trip over my own tongue and I guess I made some sort of sense. From the looks on their faces, they were hanging on every word.

"Where we go from here," I said, "is up to you gentlemen. Before I list the alternatives, I'd like to use this conference for another purpose and take advantage of the opportunity to ask you some questions."

"Like what?" Gruliow wanted to know.

"Your club's had a death rate well in excess of average. That's what prompted Lew to hire me. I wonder how many of you were similarly disturbed at the number of deaths, and if the possibility of murder ever suggested itself to you."

Kendall McGarry, one of whose ancestors had signed the Declaration of Independence, said he'd had exactly that thought, and that it had come to him a full two years ago. "But I dismissed it at once as fanciful and preposterous, the sort of premise you'd hang a miniseries on, good enough for television but utterly incredible in real life."

Bob Berk confessed to a similar fleeting thought. Gordon Walser, who'd a

Gerard Billings said he'd have been bothered more if a higher proportion of the deaths had been the result of illness. "That's threatening," he said. "Cancer, heart attacks, all those little time bombs in your cells and blood vessels. Those are the things that scare you. Suicide, though, that's a choice, and one I've never even considered for myself. A private plane crash, well, I don't fly my own plane, so how's that going to happen to me? As far as murder's concerned, that's like getting struck by lightning. It happens to other people. You stay out of bad neighborhoods, you keep your hands off other men's wives, you don't walk through Central Park at night, and you don't mess around with Jim. You know, the Jim Croce song?" He sang a few bars, his voice trailing off as the others stared at him.

Bill Ludgate said he'd been acutely aware of the high death rate, but that it had never made him suspicious. He'd just been bothered by the realization that his generation had started to die off, and that he himself might be closer to the end of life than he'd thought. Avery Davis said, "You know, I took the same thought and went in the opposite direction with it. I figured the fellows who'd passed on had done the dying for us. If they were dead, then my odds of hanging around for a while were that much better. Which is nonsense when you think about it, but it seemed almost logical at the time."