In New York: Tracking a Murder Suspect

By Dean Brelis

The hunter: Detective William Majeski, 36, of Manhattan's Ninth Precinct. The hunted: Jack Henry Abbott, 37, ex-con (bank robbery and murder), protege of Norman Mailer, and overnight literary sensation with the publication of his prison memoirs, In the Belly of the Beast. They came into conflict, unseen opponents, shortly before dawn on July 18. Answering a call for police help in the East Village, Majeski arrived to find the body of an aspiring actor named Richard Adan lying in the street. Adan, 22, had been stabbed after an argument that began in the restaurant where he worked nights.

Majeski is a good cop, entirely dedicated to what he calls "the profession." That night he believed the man who had murdered Adan had to be caught "before he killed anyone else." The detective ran into a bit of luck when someone pointed out two stylish young women who had been sitting with Adan's assailant. From them, he got Abbott's name and description. Back at the station, Majeski delved into Abbott's background, trying to figure out where he would go next. Five hours after he fled the scene of the crime, Abbott brazenly kept a brunch date at the apartment of a writer friend. Majeski missed him there by a few hours, but he had picked up the scent. "The way the writer described Abbott coming in and chatting on about his plans for writing more books and taking a place in the literary world of New York told me two things I hadn't known. Abbott was scared that he had already lost his literary place. And he was getting ready to run. It also told me that I was dealing with a cold, calculating guy. Then when I talked to

Norman Mailer, I got more insight, and Abbott began to take shape. Abbott had called him at 6 o'clock in the morning up in Provincetown, and Mailer wasn't happy about being pulled out of bed that early. Abbott said he'd call back later. He never did. He mistook Mailer's response for rejection. He didn't tell him anything about being in trouble. From that, I was sure that Abbott was already beginning to think that he should turn to the people he had known in prison. They were his people, his society."

Because the N.Y.P.D. doesn't have the budget to send detectives around the country on a chase, Majeski had to track Abbott by telephone. He set up a command post in the basement of his Staten Island home. Using a nationwide network of law-enforcement contacts, he plotted Abbott's moves on a map of the U.S. Majeski's reading runs from works on psychology to Sherlock Holmes, and it served him well in his remote-control manhunt. So did In the Belly of the Beast. "All the clues to what he is, how he thinks, what he would do were in the book."

The key, Majeski felt, was to keep the pressure on. "Abbott believed he would outsmart us all, find a place to hide and live out his life without a worry. But if he knew someone was on his trail and not giving up, then he would begin to worry." Majeski believed that Abbott would stay away from the airlines. "He'd never flown, and he wouldn't trust a plane. Besides, he's infatuated with buses. To him, they represent adventure and his dream of escape to somewhere else." Because Abbott had served a long sentence in Illinois, the detective guessed he would head for Chicago. Majeski knew that Abbott was intrigued with disguise and would probably shave off his beard, so he sent out two descriptions of the fugitive. One identifying mark: the letters J-A-C-K tattooed on four fingers of Abbott's left hand.

Within the first week, Majeski had pinpointed Abbott traveling by bus from New York to Pennsylvania, then to Washington, D.C., and finally on to Chicago. At that point he was two days behind his quarry. Majeski assumed that Abbott would visit his sister in Salt Lake City, but he turned up instead in El Paso, Texas, then in Mexico City. By now the hunter was only one day behind the hunted. But then Majeski lost the trail and did not pick it up for another week, when Abbott was sighted in Vera Cruz.

Assigned to other cases in the busy Ninth Precinct, Majeski doggedly tracked Abbott in his free time. He amassed scores of details, hoping to detect a pattern and to anticipate Abbott's moves. When the fugitive left New York City, he had $200 in his pocket. He took odd jobs to earn more money, hitchhiked when he could not afford a bus, and sometimes lived off old friends or people he met along the way, to whom he introduced himself as Jack Eastman.

Majeski began setting the final trap when Abbott reappeared in El Paso and bought a bus ticket to New Orleans.

The detective alerted police buddies in Louisiana that Abbott might go there to work as a roustabout. Abbott was spotted the day he arrived. The man with J-A-C-K on his fingers was next seen in bars where Greek seamen stuffed $5 bills into belly dancers' brassieres. As the sightings were relayed back to Staten Island, Majeski sensed that Abbott was tired of running.

He was sure of it when the madam of a New Orleans whorehouse reported, "This lonely man came in and wanted to go in a dark corner with a girl, and paid for her to put her arms around him. He just shook.

He didn't cry." Back in his basement command post, Majeski concluded that Abbott was a broken man, if still a vain one.

As the dragnet zeroed in on four work camps where transient workers often stayed, Majeski predicted that Louisiana police would find Abbott combing his hair in front of a mirror and that he would give up without a fight. The savvy New York cop was uncannily right on both counts.

The hunter and the hunted finally came face to face last month in a Manhattan courtroom. Nodding toward Majeski, Abbott asked: "Who's he?" There was electricity in the air when he heard the name Majeski. "Yeah," Abbott said coldly, "I know him." They will see each other again early next year, when Jack Abbott goes on trial for murder.

--By Dean Brelis

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