A Long Line of Dead Men

He had done this once before. With Frank DiGiulio's death the previous September, he had become the club's senior member, and had accordingly presided at the annual meeting in May. This was only the second time the gavel had passed in thirty-two years- from Homer Champney to Frank DiGiulio, and now to Gruliow.

What he had not done before, what no one had done, was open a meeting at other than the traditional time and place. He had given some thought to the form this meeting ought to take, and had consulted several of the others on the matter. His conclusion was that it ought to vary as little as possible from the usual form, and he began accordingly by intoning the names of deceased members in the order of their passing, beginning with Philip Michael Kalish and James Severance and Homer Gray Champney, concluding in due course with Francis DiGiulio and Alan Walter Watson.

"I want to thank you for coming," he said. "I've talked with each of you about the situation we're facing, and I know some of you have talked to one another. Let me see if I can summarize what we're up against, and then we can go around the room in our usual fashion and get a sense of where we are on this. There's a fellow who'll be joining us at three-thirty, a detective by the name of Scudder. It would be good if we could reach some sort of consensus by the time he gets here…"

I got to Commerce Street fifteen minutes early and killed the time wandering the narrow winding streets. It took me back to when I was a new face at the Sixth Precinct, itself housed on Charles Street in those days. I was new to the Village, and excited by what I saw, but I kept getting lost on those eccentric streets. I thought I'd never get the hang of it, but nothing familiarizes you with an area like a tour of duty there. I caught on.

At 3:30 exactly I mounted the steps at Gruliow's house and worked the lion's head door knocker. Gruliow opened the door at once and met me with a smile, one he'd shown me before, the one that suggested that we two shared a secret. "You're right on time," he said. "Come on in. There's a bunch of fellows here who want to meet you."

The heat notwithstanding, I was glad I'd worn a suit. They were all in dark business suits, except for Lowell Hunter, whose suit was seersucker, and Gerard Billings, the TV weatherman, with his trademark bow tie and a Kelly-green blazer. Gruliow introduced me and I shook hands all around, trying to fix each face in my mind and match it with a name I already knew. I didn't have that many to remember; of the nine, I had already met Gruliow and Hildebrand, and I recognized Billings and Avery Davis. That left Hunter, along with Bob Berk, Bill Ludgate, Kendall McGarry, and Gordon Walser.

Of the other five, Brian O'Hara was trekking in the Himalayas with his eldest son and wouldn't be back for another ten days. John Youngdahl lived in St. Louis; he'd moved there eight years ago, never missed the annual May meeting, but was unable to come in this afternoon on such short notice. Bob Ripley was in Ohio to attend a daughter's college graduation, while Douglas Pomeroy and Rick Bazerian had business appointments they'd been unable to reschedule.

After the introductions we all took our seats and they all waited for me to say something. I looked around at the ring of expectant faces and all I could think of was that I wanted a drink. I took a deep breath and let it out and pushed the thought aside.

I told them I was grateful to them for the meeting. "I know you've had a little time to discuss the situation," I said, "but I thought I might tell you what it looks like from my perspective, which is that of an outsider and a professional investigator." I talked for fifteen or twenty minutes, discussing the various deaths in turn, speculating on the probable legitimacy of the suicides and accidents. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I didn't trip over my own tongue and I guess I made some sort of sense. From the looks on their faces, they were hanging on every word.

"Where we go from here," I said, "is up to you gentlemen. Before I list the alternatives, I'd like to use this conference for another purpose and take advantage of the opportunity to ask you some questions."

"Like what?" Gruliow wanted to know.

"Your club's had a death rate well in excess of average. That's what prompted Lew to hire me. I wonder how many of you were similarly disturbed at the number of deaths, and if the possibility of murder ever suggested itself to you."

Kendall McGarry, one of whose ancestors had signed the Declaration of Independence, said he'd had exactly that thought, and that it had come to him a full two years ago. "But I dismissed it at once as fanciful and preposterous, the sort of premise you'd hang a miniseries on, good enough for television but utterly incredible in real life."