Read The Thomas Berryman Number for Free Online

the puzzle together, he has to find all the pieces.
    I sat in the motel bed looking at all of my pieces. ExposÉs are made of this:
    The name of a bar in Provincetown, Mass.: A. J. Fogarty’s.
    A hotel: the Bay Arms (also in Provincetown).
    A New York florist’s: Flower & Toy Shop.
    Phone numbers Ben Toy had charged calls to since entering the hospital:
    212-686-4212 (Carole Ann Mahoney)
    312-238-1774 (Robert Stringer)
    617-753-8581 (Bernard Shaw)
    212-838-6643 (Mary Ellen Terry)
    212-259-9311 (Berryman; N.Y.C.)
    516-249-6835 (Berryman; Long Island)
    Names: Dr. Reva Baumwell (100 Park); Michel Romains; Charles Izzie; Ina and Calvin Toy.
    I added notes to myself:
    Call Lewis Rosten (my editor) about gunman in Philadelphia.
    Call Alan Shulman about lunch and/or boxing match.
    I called N.Y. telephone information and asked for the number of Thomas Berryman in Manhattan.
    They gave me 259-9311, which I knew of course.
    “That’s at 60 West 80th Street?” I then asked.
    “No, sir,” the operator said. “It’s 80 Central Park South.”
    I added Berryman’s New York address to my list.
    Then I started dialing the other numbers.
    The response at 686-4212 set the tone for the rest of my morning. A young woman with a bright, friendly, mid-western voice answered.
    “Hi there.”
    “Hi. My name is Ochs Jones. I’m a friend of Ben Toy’s.”
    “Who?”
    “Ben Toy, Thomas Berryman … They said that you …”
    “Oh. Hold on. You must want Maggie.”
    Off receiver: “Mags, a friend of Ben Toy? …”
    The phone is set down on a table. Sounds of women walking around in high heels on hardwood floors. Ten minutes pass. The phone is hung up. I call again and there’s no answer.
    The desk at the Bay Arms Hotel in Provincetown had no record of a Toy or Berryman staying there during the month of June.
    A. J. Fogarty’s suggested I call after five, when the night staff came on.
    There was no answer at the florist’s.
    Both Hertz and Avis said there was no way Harley Wynn or anyone else could have rented a Lincoln Mark IV at Boston’s Logan Airport. The Wizard at Avis said it was a “logistical impossibility.”
    Around noon I decided to call Lewis Rosten. Lewis is my editor at the
Citizen-Reporter.
He’s a thick-skinned wordsmith out of the University of the South—Sewanee. He’s 100% bite, no bark, and the prime mover behind this book. Also, he’s my friend.
    It sounded like he’d just arrived at the office.
    “Ochs, how is it going? Or isn’t it? Where are you?”
    “Still up on Long Island,” I said. “You sound pretty chipper. Must have a pretty good headline going for today.”
    “It’s pure rubbish.” Rosten drawled pure Mississippi. “Speculation about this Joe Cubbah cat up in Philadelphia.”
    “I talked with Ben Toy at the hospital last night,” I said. “I really think this might be something, Lewis.”
    I read from my notes on Toy, filling in my own gut feelings.
    “Jeeee-ssus!” Rosten yowled when I was finished. “I was going to apologize for sending you up there in the middle of things down here … I just had this feeling about that doctor who called … Listen,” Rosten said, “Toy said,
‘I can’t tell you,’
when you first asked him who had hired Thomas Berryman?”
    “Yeah. But then he came right back and said he didn’t know. It’s hard to read Toy. They have him on a ton of medication … Apparently he’s kicked the shit out of some attendants. He’s a pretty big boy.”
    “How did they get him in there anyway?”
    “You know, I don’t know … I don’t have all the details anyway. He fell asleep on me last night.”
    Rosten wasn’t too happy with that one.
    “When do you see him again?” he wanted to know.
    “I hope today … I, uh, made a few problems for my-self last night. Looked at some hospital workups on Toy. Got caught.”
    Far, far away in Nashville Rosten calmly puffed away on his pipe. “Accidents,” he muttered, “will occur in the best-regulated