Whitfield had taken it well, Bushing recalled, ultimately treating the physician as a hostile witness. He'd forced Bushing to admit that neither surgery nor chemotherapy offered any prospect of curing his condition, and got him to estimate how much time he had left. Six months to a year, Bushing told him, and referred him to an oncologist at Sloan-Kettering.
Whitfield called that man, a Dr. Ronald Patel, and made and kept an appointment with him. Patel confirmed Bushing's diagnosis and proposed an aggressive protocol of radiation and chemotherapy, which he felt might win the patient another year of life. Whitfield thanked him and left, and Patel never heard from him again.
'I assumed he wanted another opinion,' Patel said.
If he wanted an opinion on anything, he was in the right town for it. Everybody had one, and by Tuesday morning I think I'd heard them all. The general consensus seemed to hold that Whitfield's death was suicide, and one authority on the topic described it as an opportunistic act of self-destruction. I knew what he meant, but it struck me as a curious phrase.
More than a few people were bothered by the method he chose, regarding it as showing little consideration for others—or, for that matter, for Whitfield himself. Cyanide brought an end that was a long way from painless. You did not drift off dreamily into that sleep from which there was no awakening.
All that was to be said for it, really, was that you went fast.
'Still,' I told Elaine, 'there aren't that many gentle paths out of this world, and a surprising number of
people pick a rocky road for themselves. Cops eat their guns with such regularity you'd think the barrels were dipped in chocolate.'
'I think it makes a statement, don't you? 'I'm using my service revolver, therefore the job killed me.' '
'That fits,' I agreed, 'but by now I think it's just part of the tradition. And it's quick and it's certain, unless the bullet takes a bad hop.
And the means is close at hand.'
A local television personality quoted Dorothy Parker: Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you
And drugs cause cramp;
Guns aren't lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful—
You might as well live.
This brought a rejoinder, predictably enough, from a spokeswoman for the Hemlock Society, who felt the need to point out just how far we'd come since Parker wrote those lines. There were, she was pleased to report, several carefree ways one could do away with oneself, and the two of which she seemed fondest consisted of gassing yourself in the garage with carbon monoxide or suffocating yourself with a plastic bag.
'Unfortunately,' she said, 'not everybody has a car.'
'Sad but true,' said Elaine, talking back to the television set.
'Fortunately, however, just about everybody has a plastic bag. 'Dad, can I borrow the car tonight? No? Well, can I borrow the plastic bag?'
The real victim, someone else maintained, was Kevin Dahlgren, who'd been subjected to no end of stress by virtue of the fact that Whitfield had been inconsiderate enough to drop dead in front of him.
At least one talk show included a psychologist and a trauma expert talking about the possible short- and long- term impact of the incident upon Dahlgren.
Dahlgren ducked most interviews, and acquitted himself creditably when he was cornered. He had, he said, no opinion as to whether he'd witnessed an act of suicide or murder. His only regret was that there'd been nothing he could do to save the man's life.
If Dahlgren didn't want the victim role, a man named Irwin Atkins was eager to snatch it up for himself.
Atkins was Adrian Whitfield's final client, the brawler who'd decided to plead guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge just hours before Adrian Whitfield went off to argue his own case before a higher court.
Building on the speculation that Whitfield had felt free to end his life once the case had been disposed of, Atkins served notice of his intention to file an appeal on the grounds that he'd been improperly served by counsel.
'He's got two arguments,' Ray Gruliow told me. 'One, Whitfield deliberately talked him into pleading because he was in a rush to go home and drink rat poison, or whatever the hell it was. Two, Whitfield's suicidal state of mind impaired his judgment and rendered him incapable of furnishing sound legal advice.
He could buttress his second argument by pointing out that Whitfield was sufficiently unbalanced as to take on a mutt like him for a client.'
'You think it'll work?'
'I think they'll let him withdraw the plea,' he said, 'and I think he'll regret it, the silly son of a bitch, when his retrial ends in a conviction.'
'And will it?'
'Oh, I'd say so. You pull something like that, withdraw an eleventh-hour plea, and you invite the widespread perception that you're a pain in the ass. I think it's all a load of crap anyway. Adrian didn't kill himself.'
