'What happened to him?'
He shrugged. 'Who knows? He put in his papers just a few months after the Icepick thing. Cited unspecified personal reasons for returning to civilian life. He'd only been in for two, three years. You know what the drop-out rate's like for the new ones. Hell, you're a drop-out yourself.
Personal reasons, right?'
'Something like that.'
'I dug up an address and a number. He probably moved six times between then and now. If he didn't leave a trail, you can always try downtown. He wasn't here long enough to have any pension rights but they usually keep track of ex-cops.'
'Maybe he's still in the same place.'
'Could be. My grandmother's still living in three little rooms on Elizabeth Street, same apartment she's been in since she got off the boat from Palermo. Some people stay put. Others change their houses like they change their socks. Maybe you'll get lucky. Anything else I can do for you?'
'Where's Haring Street?'
'The murder scene?' He laughed. 'Jesus, you're a bloodhound,' he said. 'Want to get the scent, huh?'
He told me how to walk there. He'd given me a fair amount of his time but he didn't want any money for it. I sensed that he probably didn't-some do and some don't-but I made the offer. 'You could probably use a new hat,' I said, and he came back with a tight grin and assured me that he had a whole closetful of hats. 'And I hardly ever wear a hat these days,' he said. I'd been offering him twenty-five dollars, cheap enough for the effort he'd expended. 'It's a slow day at a quiet precinct,' he said, 'and how much mileage can you get out of what I just gave you? You got anybody in mind for that Boerum Hill killing?'
'Not really.'
'Like hunting a black cat in a coal mine,' he said. 'Do me one favor? Let me know how it comes out.
If it comes out.'
I followed his directions to Haring Street. I don't suppose the neighborhood had changed much in nine years. The houses were well kept up and there were kids all over the place. There were cars parked at the curb, cars in most of the driveways. It occurred to me that there were probably a dozen people on the block who remembered Susan Potowski, and for all I knew her estranged husband had moved back into the house after the murder and lived there now with his children. They'd be older now, seventeen and nineteen.
She must have been young when she had the first one. Nineteen herself. Early marriage and early childbirth wouldn't have been uncommon in that neighborhood.
He probably moved away, I decided. Assuming he came back for the kids, he wouldn't make them go on living in the house where they found their mother dead on the kitchen floor. Would he?
I didn't ring that doorbell, or any other doorbells. I wasn't investigating Susan Potowski's murder and I didn't have to sift her ashes.
I took a last look at the house she'd died in, then turned and walked away.
THE address I had for Burton Havermeyer was 212 St. Marks Place. The East Village wasn't that likely a place for a cop to live, and it didn't seem terribly likely that he'd still be there nine years later, on or off the force. I called the number Antonelli had given me from a drugstore phone booth on Ocean Avenue.
A woman answered. I asked if I could speak to Mr. Havermeyer.
There was a pause. 'Mr. Havermeyer doesn't live here.'
I started to apologize for having the wrong number but she wasn't through. 'I don't know where Mr.
Havermeyer can be reached,' she said.
'Is this Mrs. Havermeyer?'
'Yes.'
I said, 'I'm sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Havermeyer. A detective at the Sixty-first Precinct where your husband used to work supplied this number. I'm trying to-'
'My former husband.'
There was a toneless quality to her speech, as if she was deliberately detaching herself from the words she was speaking. I had noted a similar characteristic in the speech of recovered mental patients.
'I'm trying to reach him in connection with a police matter,' I said.
'He hasn't been a policeman in years.'
'I realize that. Do you happen to know how I can get hold of him?'
'No.'
'I gather you don't see him often, Mrs. Havermeyer, but would you have any idea-'
'I never see him.'
'I see.'
'Oh, do you? I never see my former husband. I get a check once a month. It's sent directly to my bank and deposited to my account. I don't see my husband and I don't see the check. Do you see? Do you?'
The words might have been delivered with passion. But the voice remained flat and uninvolved.
I didn't say anything.
