'Too much money,' she said. 'You mean like the line about a cocaine habit is God's way of telling you you've got too much money?'
'I don't think cocaine's got anything to do with it. Glenn Holtzmann had too much money, that's what made me dig deeper and find out about his secret life.'
'He had all that cash in the closet, didn't he? How does that apply to Adrian Whitfield?'
'It doesn't.'
'Then—'
'Sometimes it's only a cigar,' I said.
* * *
I don't remember any dreams that night, or even a sense of having dreamed. Elaine and I went home and finished what we'd started in her shop, and I slipped right off into a deep sleep and didn't stir until dawn.
But there had been a thought nagging at me before we went to bed, and it was still there when I woke up. I took it out and examined it, and I decided it wasn't something I had to devote my time to. I had a second cup of coffee after breakfast and considered the matter again, and this time I decided it wasn't as though there were too many other matters with a greater claim on my time. I had, as they say, nothing better to do.
And the only reason not to pursue it was for fear of what I might find out.
* * *
I made haste slowly. I went to the library first to check my memory against what the Times had run, noting down dates and times in my notebook. I spent a couple of hours at that, and then I went outside and sat on a bench in Bryant Park and went over my notes. It was a perfect fall day, and the air had the tang of a crisp apple. They'd been forecasting rain, but you didn't even have to look at the sky to know that it wasn't going to rain that day. It felt in fact as though it would never rain, or turn any colder than it was now. The days wouldn't get any shorter, either. It felt like eternal autumn, stretching out in front of us until the end of time.
Everybody's favorite season, and you always think it's going to last forever. And it never does.
* * *
Enough time had passed since Whitfield's death for them to have taken the NYPD seals off the door. All I had to do was find someone with the authority to let me in. I don't know precisely where that authority was vested— Whitfield's heirs, the executor of his estate, or the co-op's board of directors. I'm sure it wasn't the building superintendent's decision to make, but he took it upon himself to make it, his resolution buttressed by the portrait of U.S. Grant I palmed him. He found a key and let me in and lingered at the door while I poked around in drawers and closets. After a while he coughed discreetly, and when I looked up he asked me how long I'd be. I told him that was hard to say.
'Because I'll have to let you out,' he said, 'and lock up after you, only I got a few things I have to be
doing.'
He jotted down a phone number, and I agreed to call him. I felt a lot less pressed for time once he was out of there, and it's better if you're not in a hurry, especially when you don't know what you're looking for or where you're likely to find it.
It was close to two hours later when I used the phone in the bedroom to call the number he'd left me. He said he'd be up in a minute, and while I waited for him I retraced the route from the phone, the one Whitfield had used to call me that last night, into the room where he'd died. There were no bottles on or in the bar—I guess they'd removed everything for lab tests—but the bar was there, and I stood where he'd have stood to make himself his last drink, then stepped over to where he was when he collapsed.
There was nothing on the carpet to indicate where he had lain, no chalk outline, no yellow tape, no stains he'd left behind, but it seemed to me I knew just where he'd fallen.
When the super came I gave him an extra $20 along with an apology for having taken so long. The bonus surprised him, but only a little. It also seemed to reassure him that I hadn't appropriated any property of Whitfield's during his absence, although he still felt compelled to ask.
I hadn't taken a thing, I told him. Not even snapshots.
* * *
I didn't take anything from Whitfield's office, either, nor did I find anyone to let me in. Whitfield had shared an office suite and secretarial and paralegal staff with several other attorneys in an old eight-story office building on Worth Street. I went to a noon meeting on Chambers Street the day after my visit to his apartment, then walked over to Worth and checked out his offices from the fifth-floor corridor. I weighed a few possible approaches and found them all unlikely to work on lawyers or legal secretaries, so I got out of there and walked clear up to Houston Street and saw a movie at the Angelika. When it broke I called Elaine and told her I'd get dinner on my own.
'TJ called,' she said. 'He wants you to beep him.'
I would have if the phone I was using had a number on it. Most of them have had their numbers removed from the dials, and even if you manage to worm the number out of a cooperative operator, it won't do you any good; NYNEX has rigged the bulk of their pay phones so that they can no longer
receive incoming calls. This is all part of the never-ending war on drugs, and its twin effects, as far as I can tell, have been a momentary inconvenience for the dealers, all of whom promptly went out and bought cellular phones, and a slight but irreversible decline in the quality of life for everybody else in town.
I had a plate of jerked chicken and peas and rice at a West Indian lunch counter on Chambers Street and went back to Whitfield's building on Worth. It was past five o'clock so I had to sign in with the guard downstairs. I scribbled something illegible on the sheet and rode up on the elevator. There were lights on in the law offices and a quick glance in passing showed me a man and two women seated at desks, two of them plugging away at computers, one talking on the phone.
I wasn't surprised. Lawyers keep late hours. I walked the length of the corridor and tried the men's room door. It was locked. The lock seemed unlikely to pose much of a challenge—it was designed, after all, to keep out the homeless, not to protect the crown jewels. On the other hand, if I was going to commit illegal entry I ought to be able to spend the next couple hours in a pleasanter spot than a lavatory.
