"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.
"He's in Manhattan," she said. "Perhaps he has a phone, and perhaps it's in the book. You could look it up. I know you'll excuse me if I don't offer to look it up for you."
"Certainly."
"I'm sure it's important," she said. "Police business always is, isn't it?"
THERE was no Manhattan telephone book at the drugstore so I let the Information operator look for me. She found a Burton Havermeyer on West 103rd Street. I dialed the number and no one answered.
The drugstore had a lunch counter. I sat on a stool and ate a grilled cheese sandwich and a too-sweet piece of cherry pie and drank two cups of black coffee. The coffee wasn't bad, but it couldn't compare with the stuff Jan had brewed in her Chemex filter pot.
I thought about her. Then I went to the phone again and almost dialed her number, but tried Havermeyer again instead. This time he answered.
I said, "Burton Havermeyer? My name's Matthew Scudder. I wondered if I could come around and see you this afternoon."
"What about?"
"It's a police matter. Some questions I'd like to ask you. I won't take up much of your time."
"You're a police officer?"
Hell. "I used to be one."
"So did I. Could you tell me what you want with me, Mr.-?"
"Scudder," I supplied. "It's ancient history, actually. I'm a detective now and I'm working on a case you were involved with when you were with the Six-One."
"That was years ago."
"I know."
"Can't we do this over the phone? I can't imagine what information I could possibly have that would be useful to you. I was a beat patrolman, I didn't work on cases. I-"
"I'd like to drop by if it's all right."
"Well, I-"
"I won't take up much of your time."
There was a pause. "It's my day off," he said, in what was not quite a whine. "I just figured to sit around, have a couple of beers, watch a ball game."
"We can talk during the commercials."
He laughed. "Okay, you win. You know the address? The name's on the bell. When should I expect you?"
"An hour, hour and a half."
"Good enough."
* * *
THE Upper West Side is another neighborhood on the upswing, but the local renaissance hasn't crossed Ninety-sixth Street yet.
Havermeyer lived on 103rd between Columbus and Amsterdam in one of the rundown brownstones that lined both sides of the street. The neighborhood was mostly Spanish.
There were a lot of people sitting on the stoops, listening to enormous portable radios and drinking Miller High Life out of brown paper bags. Every third woman was pregnant.
I found the right building and rang the right bell and climbed four flights of stairs. He was waiting for me in the doorway of one of the back apartments. He said, "Scudder?" and I nodded. "Burt Havermeyer,"
he said. "Come on in."
I followed him into a fair-sized studio with a Pullman kitchen. The overhead light fixture was a bare bulb in one of those Japanese paper shades. The walls were due for paint. I took a seat on the couch and accepted the can of beer he handed me. He popped one for himself, then moved to turn off the television set, a black and white portable perched on top of an orange crate that held paperback books on its lower two shelves.
He pulled up a chair for himself, crossed his legs. He looked to be in his early thirties, five-eight or -
nine, pale complected, with narrow shoulders and a beer gut. He wore brown gabardine slacks and a brown and beige patterned sportshirt.
He had deep-set brown eyes, heavy jowls and slicked-down dark brown hair, and he hadn't shaved that morning. Neither, come to think of it, had I.
"About nine years ago," I said. "A woman named Susan Potowski."
"I knew it."
"Oh?"
"I hung up and I thought, why's anybody want to talk with me about some case nine or ten years old?
Then I figured it had to be the icepick thing. I read the papers.
They got the guy, right? They made a lap and he fell in it."
"That's about it." I explained how Louis Pinell had denied a role in the death of Barbara Ettinger and how the facts appeared to bear him out.
"I don't get it," he said. "That still leaves something like eight killings, doesn't it? Isn't that enough to put him away?"