Free Right to Die by Jeremiah Healy Page B

like he’d heard the word but never studied the language that spawned it. I waited until he finished the slab and was tricking with the little veins of meat marbled in the fat.
    “Neely?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “About these threats?”
    “Yeah, sure. What about them?”
    “What do you think?”
    “Think.” He put down his utensils, rolled his rump as if to fart, then just wallowed deeper into the booth. “I think this broad’s asked for it, what I think.”
    “Can you tell me what you found out on the notes?”
    “The notes? Jesus, everybody but Jimmy Hoffa handled the things and the envelopes before the little secretary brought ‘em in to me. Even so, I followed routine. Had ‘em run through the lab.”
    “You take elimination prints from Andrus’s people?”
    “Nah. Just sent the notes on through. They even did that Sherlock thing, the computer search out to 1010 Commonwealth there?”
    Neely suddenly straightened a little. “Look, Cuddy, I’m no brain trust, but I know what’s what, okay? I keep up with things the best I can. The staties didn’t find no match with any of the prints they got on file.”
    “I give you some names, will you run them through too?”
    “See if anybody’s got a sheet?”
    “Yes.”
    “Sure, I’ll do that. Sure.” He rifled his pockets for a pad and pen. I gave him O’Brien, Doleman, and Yary from the threat files, then Walter Strock as well.
    Neely scratched his forehead. “Strock?”
    “Something?”
    “Not sure. I’ll run it. You got social security numbers on any of these guys?”
    “No.”
    “How about D.O.B.’s?”
    “Just the addresses.”
    “Even so, gonna get a hell of a list for the O’Brien, although thank Christ it ain’t ‘John’ or ‘James,’ computer’d be burping all fuckin’ night. I’ll still give it a try for you.” The waitress came over with a bowl of salted peanuts. Neely thanked her, his fingers plowing through the nuts like the blades of a backhoe.
    He said, “Anything else you need?”
    I decided to follow Murphy’s advice. “You get many of these threat things, Neely?”
    “Aw, you know how it is. Runs in cycles. Broad like this Andrus, though, she probably could hire a stevedore, haul them away for her.”
    I told him about the drawerful of folders.
    “That’s my point. I get one of these, I end up chasing after scumbags write the kinda fan mail you wouldn’t wish on Geraldo there. Jesus, Cuddy, every day some shithead sees somebody new on the tube, he decides to make the lady his personal project, you know? Guy can barely read the labels in a Seven-Eleven writes a love poem, then jerks off into the envelope before he licks it. Whaddaya gonna do?”
    “Okay if I follow up on the names? Go talk to them?”
    “Fine. Let me just tell you, think about what you want to have happen here.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Start with the Secret Service, okay?”
    The Secret Service. “Okay.”
    “Now, they got thousands of guys, no shit, got nothing better to do than guard a couple of big shots like the President and all, maybe total with the Kennedy kids and Truman’s widow, total twenny, twenny-five.”
    The Kennedy children were now overage, and Mrs. Truman left us in the early eighties, but I didn’t want to wreck Neely’s train of thought.
    “And even the Secret Service can’t keep track of all the scumbags writing letters and making phone calls. The calling, I gotta admit, that’s gonna slow down some, now they got these computers, you can see the number the guy’s at with this little screen thing on your phone there. ‘Course, soon’s the scumbag union finds out about the screens, they’ll just call from some pay phone and a different one every time.
    “But your letter-writing scumbags, now, they’re different. All’s you got is the handwriting and the postmark and maybe, just maybe, the saliva or cum juice or whatever the fuck other fluid they leave on the envelope, right? Only there’s got to be enough of