After all, if he couldn't trust himself, who could he trust?
Marco's was a little place down on Second Avenue. It wasn't the most elite bar in New York, but it wasn't the worst dive, either.
Marco was standing near the door when Bethelman entered. "Ah! Mr. Bethelman! The package you were expecting is here. The—ah—gentleman left it." The beaming smile on his face was a marvel to behold.
"Thanks," Bethelman said.
Marco dived behind the bar and came up with a package wrapped in brown paper and an envelope addressed to Bethelman. The package was about three inches wide, a little less than six inches long, and nearly an inch thick. He slid it into his topcoat pocket and tore open the envelope.
There should be close to ten thousand dollars in the package, the note said. You promised Marco a grand of it if number 367 won—which, of course, it did. He got hold of the runner for you.
Again, the note was in his own handwriting.
He gave Marco the thousand and left. There were some things he'd have to find out. He went to his apartment on 86th Street and put in a long distance call to Dr. Elijah Kamiroff in Boston. After an hour, he was informed that Dr. Kamiroff was out of town and was not expected back for two weeks. Where had he gone? That was confidential; Dr. Kamiroff had some work to do and did not wish to be disturbed.
Bethelman cursed the biochemist roundly and then went to his private files, where he kept clippings of his own stories. Sure enough, there were coverages of several things over the past two weeks, all properly bylined.
Two weeks before, he had written the little article on research being done on cancer at Boston University School of Medicine, most of which he'd gotten from Dr. Kamiroff. No clues there; he'd evidently been behaving naturally for the past two weeks. But why couldn't he remember it? Why was his memory completely blanked out?