Even the Wicked by Lawrence Block

I’d remember. And Elaine, because if she’d done anything like that I’m sure she would have told me.”
    “Because the two of you have an open and honest relationship.”
    “Absolutely,” I said. “And Marty McGraw.”
    “What kind of a relationship have you got with him?”
    “None,” I said, “but I ruled him out. He was addressing a dinner of Police Athletic League supporters while Will was taking out Patsy Salerno up in the Bronx, and he was right here in New York when Roswell Berry got his in Omaha.”
    “Aborted in the fourth trimester,” Ray said. “He mention this in a column? I must have missed it.”
    “I checked him out myself.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Adrian said something about Marty wanting an exclusive interview,” I said, “and in the next breath explained he’d wanted to do it over the phone, not face to face. But that put the idea in my head. I figured the police would have checked him out six different ways, but I couldn’t see how it would hurt to see for myself.”
    “The whole business has been good for McGraw, hasn’t it? I can see how he’d want to keep the pot bubbling. But he didn’t do it.”
    “I’m afraid not.”
    “And neither did you or I or Elaine, or all the guys recovering from bypass surgery. Or your friend who got shot, but it could have been somebody else who got shot or stabbed or fell off a building. Will, the world’s foremost anonymous killer, could have been iced by somebody who didn’t even know who he was.”
    “There’s irony for you.”
    “He could have died some kind of anonymous death, and we’ll never know who he was. Be a hell of a thing for Adrian, wouldn’t it?”
    “How do you figure that? He’d be off the hook.”
    “Think about it.”
    “Oh.”
    “You’re only off the hook if you know you’re off the hook,” he said. “How long before you let the bodyguards go? How much longer before you can really relax?”
     
     
    I thought about Whitfield, and after dinner I gave him a call. I left a message on his machine. It was nothing urgent, I said, and evidently he took me at my word, because I didn’t hear from him.
    I saw him on the late news, though. There’d been no developments, but that wouldn’t stop them from pressing him for comments. It was the same principle that kept Will’s name on the front page of the Post.
    He was on the news again the following evening, but this time there was a story to go with it. His trial, due to go to the jury in a week to ten days, had been abruptly settled, with his client agreeing to plead to a lesser charge.
    I went to a meeting at St. Paul’s. I was still carrying the little elephant around with me, and Ginnie showed up so I gave it to her. I was going to leave on the break but I’d been doing that a lot lately, so I made myself stay to the bitter end. It must have been around ten-thirty when I got home, and I was pouring a cup of coffee when the phone rang.
    “Matthew Scudder,” he said. “Adrian Whitfield.”
    “I’m glad you called,” I said. “I saw you a couple of hours ago on the news.”
    “Which channel?”
    “I don’t know, I was watching two or three of them at once.”
    “Channel surfing, eh? A popular indoor sport. Well, I think we’d have won if it went to the jury, but I couldn’t advise my client to roll the dice. He’s essentially getting off with time served, and suppose the jury should wind up seeing it the wrong way?”
    “And there’s always that chance.”
    “Always. You never know what they’re going to do. You may think you know, but you can never be sure. I thought they were going to convict Richie Vollmer.”
    “How could they? The judge’s instructions ruled that out.”
    “Yes, but he stopped short of a directed verdict of acquittal. They wanted to convict, and more often than not a jury will do what it wants to do.”
    “A conviction wouldn’t have stood up.”
    “Oh, no way. Judge Yancey could very easily have thrown it out on the