'I thought it didn't matter,' he said. 'I thought he was going to die anyway. And he was!'
'Yes.'
'And so are we all, every last one of us. We're all mortal. Does that mean it's no crime to kill us?'
No crime for God, I thought. He does it all the time.
'I told myself I was doing him a favor,' he went on bitterly. 'That I was giving him an easy out. What made me think that was what he wanted? If he'd been ready to die he could have taken pills, he could have put a plastic bag over his head. There are enough ways. For God's sake, he lived on a high floor, he could have gone out the window. If that's what he wanted.' He frowned. 'You can tell he wasn't eager to die.
There was only one reason for him to sell that policy. It was to get money to live on. He wanted his life to be as comfortable as possible for as long as it lasted. So I provided the money,' he said, 'and then I took away the life.'
He'd removed his glasses in the course of that speech, and now he put them on again and peered through them at me. 'Well?' he said.
'Now what happens?'
* * *
Always the beautiful question.
'You have some choices,' I said. 'There's a Cleveland police officer, a friend of a friend, who's familiar with the situation. We can go to the stationhouse where you'll be placed under arrest and officially informed of your rights.'
'The Miranda warning,' he said.
'Yes, that's what they call it. Then of course you can have your attorney present, and he'll explain your options. He'd probably advise you to waive extradition, in which case you'll be escorted back to New York for arraignment.'
'I see.'
'Or you can accompany me voluntarily,' I said.
'To New York.'
'That's right. The advantage in that, as far as you're concerned, is chiefly that it cuts out a certain amount of delays and red tape. And there's another personal consideration.'
'What's that?'
'Well, I won't use handcuffs,' I said. 'If you're officially in custody you'll have to be cuffed throughout, and that can be both embarrassing and uncomfortable on the plane. I don't have any official standing so I'm not bound by rules of that sort. All we'll have to do is get two seats together.'
'On a plane,' he said.
'Oh, that's right. You don't fly.'
'I suppose it strikes you as terribly silly. Especially now.'
'If it's a phobic condition the rules of logic don't apply. Mr.
Havemeyer, I don't want to talk you into anything, but I'll tell you this. If you're officially taken into custody and escorted to New York, they'll make you get on a plane.'
'But if I were to go with you—'
'How long does it take on the train?'
'Under twelve hours.'
'No kidding.'
'The Lake Shore Limited,' he said. 'It leaves Cleveland at three in the morning and arrives at ten minutes of two in the afternoon.'
'And that's how you went to New York?'
'It's not that bad,' he said. 'The seats recline. You can sleep. And there's a dining car.'
You can fly it in a little over an hour, but even if I left him in a holding cell in Cleveland, I wouldn't be able to catch a flight back until sometime the next morning.
'If you want,' I said, 'I'll take the train with you.'
He nodded. 'I suppose that would be best,' he said.
23
It was a long night.
I left Havemeyer alone long enough to duck across the street to the car and bring Jason Griffin up to speed. He had plans for the evening but insisted it was no problem to cancel them, and that he'd be glad to take me and my prisoner to the train station. I told him he might as well join us inside the house, and he agreed that it would be more convenient than sitting in the car with the wide-mouthed jar his uncle had recommended.
While he locked the car, I hurried back to the house myself, anxious about having left Havemeyer alone.
I was afraid I might find him dead by his own hand, or on the phone with his lawyer. It was hard to say
which of the two prospects was more troubling, but both fears proved groundless. I found him in the kitchen, rinsing out our teacups.
