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Abbott was staying at a Salvation Army halfway house in Lower Manhattan until his parole became official on Aug. 25. He was required to check in seven times a day, but otherwise was free to enjoy the city. He was doing just that on early Saturday morning, July 18, in the company of two attractive, well-educated young women he had met at a party. At 5:30 they stopped at the Bini-Bon Restaurant near the halfway house; it is a threadbare bohemian place, open 24 hours. Behind the counter was Richard Adan, 22, an aspiring actor and playwright who worked the graveyard shift in the café, which is owned by his father-in-law Henry Howard. Adan took the "toughest duty," explains Howard, "because he was interested in people. Some curious types come in after midnight."
Abbott asked Adan the direction to the men's room and was told it was for the help only. Abbott calmly asked if he could use it anyway. Adan told him it was against health rules; if opened to the public, it would not remain clean. Could this have touched the consuming rage Abbott had written about? He quietly asked Adan to step outside to "talk this over." The younger man agreed. Around the dark street corner, a knife appeared. Adan was stabbed in the chest, in almost exactly the way that Abbott had described in his book.
As Adan staggered toward the restaurant, Abbott ran in and told his two friends, "Come on." Minutes after they left, the police arrived. No charges have been filed, but Abbott is wanted for questioning in the murder. Federal authorities have a warrant out to arrest him as a fugitive, should he leave New York State.
"What happened?" asked Scott Meredith, who is both Mailer's and Abbott's literary agent. "Every conversation I had with Jack, we talked about the future. Everything was ahead of him." John Dockendorff, director of the halfway house, was "absolutely baffled how Jack got the knife and how he hid it." Abbott had been "cooperative" and had even appeared for one of the attendance checks after the murder, before vanishing into the streets.
Others glimpsed the handwriting on the prison walls. Erroll McDonald, Abbott's editor at Random House and one of his guides in the complexities of free life —how to order from a menu, where to buy toothpaste—noticed the ex-convict's tendency to "interpret indifference as rudeness." Novelist Jerzy Kosinski, who had had his own correspondence with Abbott since 1973, said, "Looking at him, I had the feeling there could be uncontrollable anger one moment and a very easy embrace the next." Finally, anyone who read his work noticed, as Kosinski did, that "he wrote in such a sheer rage that I could feel his letter burning in my hand."