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I asked if any of them had noticed anything suspicious. Any sense that they were being followed or stalked? Any strings of wrong numbers, or callers who rang off without identifying themselves?
No one had anything substantial. Bob Berk, who lived in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, said there had been a lot of clicking and static on his residential phone line for a while, almost as if it were tapped, but that the problem had cleared up several months ago as inexplicably as it had started. Bill Ludgate said his wife had been bothered by someone calling and hanging up without saying anything, and that he'd been on the verge of doing something about it when he happened to learn the identity of the caller; it was a girlfriend of his, trying to reach him at home.
"You dog, you," Gerry Billings said.
But the affair was over, Ludgate said, and the calls had stopped.
I asked a few more questions. I didn't tell them this, but I was less interested in the information they could give me than in the sense I got of who they were. I knew where they lived, I knew how old they were, I knew what they did for a living and how good a living it brought them, but I wanted some sense of who they were as individuals.
I wasn't sure what I wanted with it.
When they were out of answers and I was out of fresh questions, I reviewed their options. They could go to the police, starting either with Joe Durkin, who knew a little about their situation, or anywhere else in the chain of command. If they weren't happy with the response they received, or if they wanted to ensure a full-scale high-priority investigation from the jump, they could go directly to the media.
Or I could continue my one-man investigation, moving slowly, sifting leads, and waiting for some kind of break. That would keep the spotlight off the club, and keep everybody's name out of the paper, but it might not get anywhere. Still, I'd have certain recommendations to make regarding personal security, and they'd be able to function as auxiliary investigators, keeping in contact and reporting anything irregular or suspicious the minute they noticed it.
"There's no guarantee I'll get anywhere," I told them. "But the cops can't give you a guarantee, either. And they'll turn your lives inside out."
"Because of the media attention, you mean?"
"Even without that. If I were a cop, you know the first thing I'd do? I'd ask each of you to account for your whereabouts on the night in February when Alan Watson was murdered."
A couple of them reacted visibly; it had not yet struck them that they were suspects. "Maybe you should anyway," Avery Davis said. "All of us and the five men who couldn't make it." I shook my head. "Why not?"
"Because I haven't got the resources to check your alibis effectively. Personally, I don't think the police would crack this by checking alibis. My guess is that there'd be a few of you who'd be unable to prove you couldn't have followed Watson home and killed him. That's no indicator of guilt. As a matter of fact, whoever did kill Watson might very well have an alibi in reserve, and it might be impossible to disprove. But the cops would have to check everything out, because you can't leave a single stone unturned in an official investigation. Especially when the case has a high profile."
Gruliow said, "What's your recommendation, Matt?"
"I don't have one. How can I recommend anything? You gentlemen have to make the call. You're the ones with your necks on the block."
"And if it were your neck?"
"I don't know," I said. "It's easy to argue either side. It would seem obvious that the safest course is to go public right away, but I'm not sure that's so. This is a very patient killer. What would he do if the police gave the investigation priority and the newspapers splashed it all over the front page? My guess is he'd crawl in a hole and lay low. He's in no hurry, he hasn't got a train to catch. He can afford to wait a year or two. Then, when everybody's convinced he never existed in the first place, he can select his victim and kill again."
"For God's sake, why?" Lowell Hunter demanded. "It's not one of us, is it? It can't be."
"I can't believe it's anybody in this room," Bob Berk said.
"And outside of this room? You think it's Ripley or Pomeroy or Brian O'Hara or- who else? John Youngdahl? Rick Bazerian?"
"No."
"If it's one of us," Bill Ludgate said, "that means one of us is crazy. Not a little bit eccentric, not marching to a different drummer, but genuinely nuts. I only see you fellows once a year, but I think you're all relatively sane."
"Can I quote you on that, Billy?"
"So it has to be someone outside the club," he continued, "but who could possibly want to kill us? Who even knows we exist, for Christ's sake?"
"An ex-wife," Ray Gruliow said. "How many of us have been divorced?"
"Why would an ex-wife want to-"
"I don't know. Alienation of affections? Who the hell knows why an ex-wife would do anything? But we're spi
I said I'd just as soon get some fresh air, which turned out to be a particularly inappropriate figure of speech; when I left Gruliow's centrally air-conditioned house, the airless heat hit me with physical force. I stood on the top step for a moment to get my bearings. Across the street, a black limousine was parked in front of the Cherry Lane Theater. The driver was leaning against the fender and smoking a cigarette. For a moment I thought he was staring at me, but his eyes didn't follow me when I came down the stairs, and I realized he was looking at the door to see if anyone else was about to come through it.
"They'll be another fifteen minutes," I called to him. "Minimum."
He shot me a guarded look; he was glad to have the information but didn't think it was appropriate for me to talk to him. Well, fuck you, I thought, and walked down the street to where I could get a look at the back of the limo. ABD-1, the license plate read. I decided the limo belonged to Avery Blanchard Davis, and gave myself credit for having figured something out. It was about time.
It was 4:19 when I walked out of Gruliow's house and just past 4:30 when the front door opened again and Hard-Way Ray stepped out and looked first to his left and then to his right. He didn't see me.
I had walked to Seventh Avenue and picked up an iced coffee at a deli, then perched on the stoop of an apartment house across the street to drink it. Davis's chauffeur had finished his cigarette by then and disappeared behind the limo's tinted glass. No one passed, on foot or on wheels, except for one redheaded kid on a skateboard who zoomed around the corner from Bedford Street, raced on past me and around the bend, and disappeared forever. I finished my coffee and flipped the cup into an uncovered garbage can. Then the door opened across the street and Gruliow came out and looked for me and didn't see me.
I got up, and the movement caught Gruliow's attention. He beckoned and I let a car pass, then walked on across the street. Meanwhile he'd come down the steps to meet me on the sidewalk.
"We'd like you to stay with it," he said.
"If you're sure."
"Let's go back inside," he said, "so I can tell you officially."