Breakfast Serial

The place where I go to get coffee in the morning, a must if I am to avoid the thumpa-dump-dump of a caffeine-depletion migraine, is a generally colorful place — a gay, leather bagel shop. Until they got rid of the leather recently.

Franny's Place, across the street from my office on notoriously colorful 13th Street, is usually peopled by a wide range of individuals with a wide range of interests. Gays and straights and bi's, whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians, folks ranging from button-down lawyer types to the tattoo and nose ring set.

The place goes from the early hours, where the bleary-eyed like myself go for their morning jolt, until the wee hours, when the drag queens and see-and-be-seens pour out onto the street, which is the heart of the lesbian and gay culture scene.

Tuesday afternoon, Franny's Place was visited by a couple of guys with a keen interest in that scene.

Not as participants, at least not on this day.

But as hunters.

The men were from the FBI.

They were looking for Andrew P. Cunanan.

—-

"You just missed them," said the woman behind the counter, noticing me notice the fresh new flyer bearing several pictures of Cunanan.

"I just missed who?" I asked as I dumped a stream of sugar into my iced coffee.

"The FBI. They were just here giving out flyers. They said that Cunanan might be back in the area."

Dropping my money on the counter, I ran out to the street, but could see nobody that looked like he was with the FBI. When I went back in to pick up my coffee, the woman told me that the FBI was canvassing gay neighborhoods trying to ferret out information about a man who, as far as either one of us had known to this point, was on the FBI's 10 most wanted list for killing four people, including a man in South Jersey.

The FBI, she said, wanted to get the word out that if anyone saw Cunanan back in Philly, they should avoid him and then call their office.

Immediately.

When I got back to my office, I called the number on the flyer, got an answering machine and left a message. A little while later, FBI spokesperson Linda Visi called me back, leaving a message on my machine telling me to call her.

When I did, I got a recording.

A very unusual recording, I thought at the time.

"If you are calling regarding Andrew Cunanan, the Philadelphia office of the FBI has no information regarding any possible new developments. It is necessary to call the field office where these developments possibly could have occurred. If you are calling about any other matter, please leave your name and number."

I left my name and number and asked Visi to confirm what the woman at Franny's Place told me. That the feds thought maybe the clever Cunanan was back in town.

Still clueless about what was really going on, I joked with a colleague about Visi's message.

"If you are calling about serial killers, press one now. If you are calling about plain old regular killers, press two now..."

(When we finally spoke, human to human, Visi reiterated that the Philly office has taken a keen interest in Cunanan because he is accused of killing William Reese, who was a caretaker for a federal cemetery in Pennsville, NJ.

Cunanan "was in the area at one time," said Visi. "He may have come in contact with somebody. We need to talk to that person.")

—-

For me, a veteran of daily newspaper wars, one of the strange things about working at a weekly newspaper is being removed from the ebb and flow of daily news events.

Though we are amply equipped with Internet access, we have no television blaring at the office, no wire service hookup and no constant chatter emanating from the police scanner to provide us with up-to-the-second updates.

This broken link is the single thing I miss most from my days at the dailies, when a single sentence from the wires could send an entire newsroom into a frenzy, dozens of people scattering and scampering and banging the phones.

It is also part of what makes us good at what we do, finding stories that are not tied to the burps and farts of life as seen in the dailies or on TV.

We don't cover fires.

We rarely cover crime.

We try to show that life is more than what you see if you flip on the news at 11, which makes the world seem like everyone is either murdered or immolated or devastated by wild weather.

Still, if truth be told, I miss the adrenaline rush that comes from chasing fire trucks and police cars.

And I really miss being among the first to know when people like Gianni Versace are gunned down.

I didn't find out, of course, until I turned on the late news and heard the words Versace, murdered and Cunanan in the same sentence.

Instantly, it became clear about why there was all the hubbub about Cunanan that afternoon.

—-

The next morning, as I strolled into Franny's Place for my a.m. caffeine infusion, there was an air of admiration in the voice of the man pouring up the joe.

"He's a pretty smart guy," said the Java man about Cunanan. "He may be crazy, but he's pretty smart. That's why he's still out there. He's too smart."

The day after designer Versace was gunned down as he was opening the gate to his Miami manse, Cunanan, the male prostitute suspected of firing the fatal shots, has joined the ranks of David Berkowitz, Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer in the public consciousness.

Sure, he was already fairly well known in the gay world.

Now that he had killed someone as famous as Versace, whom even a confirmed schlumper like myself has heard of, Cunanan has captured the attention of an America that has a eerie love-hate relationship with our serial killers.

They are sick, this is true.

But what are you talking about this morning?