And he remembered Glenn Holtzmann, who had evidently lived there ever since he moved back to the city from White Plains. The landlord, a Mr. Dozoretz, had only good things to say about Holtzmann, who had paid his rent on time, made no unreasonable demands, and caused no problems with other tenants. He’d been sorry to lose him as a tenant, but not surprised; the fourth-floor studio was a tight fit for one person, and far too small for two. A great shock, though, what had happened to Mr. Holtzmann. A tragedy.
Sometime after noon I called down to the deli and asked them to send up some coffee and a couple of sandwiches. Fifteen minutes later I was so lost in thought that the knock on my door came as a surprise. I ate my lunch dutifully, without really tasting it, and got back on the phone.
I called New York Law School and spoke to several different people before I managed to confirm the dates of Holtzmann’s attendance there. No one I talked with remembered him, but his records indicated an unremarkable student. They had the name of the White Plains firm where Holtzmann had gone to work after graduation, and his address there, the Grandview Apartments on Hutchison Boulevard, but that was as recent as their information got; he hadn’t bothered to keep them up to date.
The Westchester Information operator had no listing for the law firm Kane, Breslow, Jespesson & Reade, but under Attorneys she had a Michael Jespesson listed. I called his office but he was out to lunch. I thought, in this weather? Why couldn’t he order in from a deli and eat at his desk?
I might have tried the Grandview Apartments but I couldn’t imagine what I might ask whoever took my call. Even so, it was a struggle to keep from calling them. There is an acronym in the New York Police Department, or at least there used to be. They taught it to new recruits at the Academy, and you heard it a lot in all the detective squad rooms. GOYAKOD, they said. It stood for Get Off Your Ass and Knock On Doors.
You hear it said that that’s how most cases are closed, and that’s not even close to true. Most cases close themselves. The wife calls 911 and announces she shot her husband, the holdup man runs out of the convenience store and into the arms of an off-duty patrolman, the ex-boyfriend has a knife under his mattress with the girl’s blood still on it. And of the cases that require solution, a majority are closed through information received. If a workman is as good as his tools, a detective is no better than his snitches.
Now and then, though, a case won’t solve itself and no one will be obliging enough to drop a dime on the bad guy. (Or on the good guy; snitches lie, too, like everybody else.) Sometimes it takes actual police work to clear a file, and that’s when GOYAKOD comes into play.
It’s what I was doing now. I was employing a foul-weather version of GOYAKOD. I was sitting on my ass and using the phone, waging the same kind of war of attrition on the blank wall of Glenn Holtzmann’s death. The only thing wrong with it is that sometimes it becomes pointless and mechanical. You’re at a dead end, but rather than admit it and try to figure out where you took a wrong turn, you keep on knocking on doors, grateful that there is an endless supply of doors to knock on, grateful that you can keep busy and tell yourself you’re doing something useful.
So I didn’t call the Grandview. But I didn’t throw their number away, either. I kept it handy, in case I ran out of doors.
When I reached Michael Jespesson, he was shocked to learn that Glenn Holtzmann was dead. He had been aware of the murder but had paid very little attention to it; it was, after all, a street crime committed on streets well removed from his own. And it had been several years since Holtzmann had been associated with his late firm. Somehow the victim’s name hadn’t registered.
“Of course I remember him,” he said. “We were a small firm. Just a handful of associates plus a couple of paralegals. Holtzmann was a pleasant fellow. He was a few years older than the standard law-school graduate, but only a few years. The first impression he made was that of a real self-starter, but he turned out to be less ambitious than I’d guessed. He did his work, but he wasn’t going to set the world on fire.”
That echoed what Eleanor Yount had told me. She’d initially seen him as a likely successor, then realized he lacked the drive. But somehow he’d driven himself all the way to the twenty-eighth floor. Add up the cash and the apartment and he’d left an estate well in excess of half a million dollars. Imagine what he could have accomplished if he’d had a little ambition.
“Maybe he was just in the wrong place,” Jespesson said. “I wasn’t surprised when he left. I never thought he’d stay. He was single, he hadn’t grown up in the area, so what was he doing in White Plains? Not that he was a born New Yorker. He was from somewhere in the Midwest, wasn’t he?”
“Pennsylvania.”
“Well, that’s not the Midwest. But he wasn’t from Philadelphia. He was from somewhere out in the sticks, if I remember correctly.”
“I think Altoona.”
“Altoona. New York is full of people from Altoona. White Plains isn’t. So I wasn’t surprised when he left us, and if he hadn’t left then he’d have done so a few months later.”
“Why?”
“The firm broke up. Sorry, I took it for granted that you knew that, but there’s no reason why you should. Nothing to do with Holtzmann, anyway, and I don’t think he could have read the handwriting on the wall. I don’t think there was any handwriting on the wall. I certainly didn’t see it.”
I asked if there was anyone else I should talk to.
“I think I knew him as well as anyone,” he said. “But how do you come to be investigating? I thought you had a man in custody.”
“Routine follow-up,” I said.
“But you do have the man responsible? A homeless derelict, if I remember correctly.” He snorted. “I was going to say he should have stayed in White Plains, but we have our share of street crime here, I’m sorry to say. My wife and I live in a gated community. If you wanted to visit us I would have to leave your name with the guard. Can you imagine? A gated community. Like a stockade, or a medieval walled city.”
“I understand they have them all over the country.”
“Gated communities? Oh yes, they’re quite the rage. But not in Altoona, I shouldn’t think.” Another snort. “Maybe he should have stayed in Altoona.”
Why didn’t he?
Why had he come to New York? He’d gone to college not far from home, returned home after graduation, and very likely fallen into the job selling insurance at his uncle’s agency. Then when he came into a few dollars he moved to New York and went to law school.
Why? Didn’t Penn State have a law school? It would have been cheaper than moving to New York, and would have been a logical preface to taking the Pennsylvania bar exam and practicing law not far from home. He could even have gone on selling insurance in his free time; he wouldn’t have been the first person to work his way through law school in that fashion.
But instead he’d had a clean break. Hadn’t looked back, as far as I could tell. Hadn’t taken his bride back home, hadn’t introduced her to his family.
What had he left behind? And what had he taken with him when he made the move? How much had his parents left him?
Or had they left him anything at all?
Start with the uncle. I called Eleanor Yount to see if the firm’s records had him listed by name. She had an assistant pull Glenn’s résumé and reported that he had not been specific in listing his job experience prior to law school. Like his after-school jobs and summer employment, his career in insurance had been merely summarized. Sales and administrative work at uncle’s insurance office, Altoona, PA, he’d written, along with the dates.