The only thing, I tried to tell myself maybe I dreamed it. But the fucking paperweight's sitting on the bedside table, so it's no dream. I killed him.
Can you believe it?
S: I guess I have to.
M: Yeah, and so do I. I killed a human being because he gave my play a bad review fifteen years ago. I can't fucking believe it. But I believe it.
27
'You like irony,' I told Ray Gruliow. 'Maybe you'll like this. I suspected Marty early on. Matter of fact, I suspected him long before he did anything.'
'That's irony, all right,' he said. 'I'd recognize it anywhere. And we even talked about it at the time. You ran a check on Marty, made sure he was otherwise occupied when a couple of Will's victims qualified for last rites.'
'Patsy Salerno and Roswell Berry. He couldn't have killed either of them, but before I established as much I had this scenario spinning in my mind. He writes the original column, just pouring out his very real feelings about Richie Vollmer.'
'And Richie calls up and says he's not really such a bad guy, and Marty arranges to meet him, sucker-punches him, and strings him up.'
'Seems farfetched,' I said.
'Oh?'
'What struck me as a little more plausible was that some public-spirited citizen read Marty's column and got inspired.'
'And wrote Marty a letter, and then did a number on Richie.'
'Yes to the second part,' I said. 'But no to the first. The way I figured it, all the Will letters were Marty's. He wrote the original column and thought that was the end of it. Then Richie turned up hanging from a tree limb. Then Marty saw a way to make a big story a whole lot bigger.
He invented Will and wrote two letters, one he pretended to have received before Richie's murder, expressing agreement with the column, and one he sent himself afterward, taking credit for it.'
'Just to make a better story out of it,' he said. 'And position himself as a key player.'
'Without any intention of taking it any further. But it's a hell of a story.'
'Bigger than Bosnia.'
'Well, closer to home. You get a story like that, you don't want to let it die. You already wrote two Will letters and nobody looked at you cross-eyed, so you write one more and threaten somebody you figure the city could live without.'
'Patsy Salerno, for example.'
'Right. But Marty was miles away making a speech when Patsy was killed, so that took a farfetched theory and made it impossible. I thought up a few variations on the theme. Maybe Marty wrote the letters, and whoever had killed Richie was equally obliging when it came to knocking off the rest of the people on the list. I didn't think that could work, and the Omaha business exploded it.'
'What do you mean?'
'The letter writer knew Roswell Berry had been stabbed before he got the coat hanger treatment. And that was something only the killer would have known, and Marty was in New York when it happened.'
'And then Adrian died.'
'Adrian died,' I agreed, 'and Adrian turned out to be Will, and that made the story bigger than ever, so big that Marty couldn't bear to see it die out. And he got the idea of writing a letter. Why not? He was a writer.'
'Did you ever let him know you'd checked him out?'
I had to think. 'No,' I said. 'Why?'
'Then you don't have to worry that you put the idea into his head.'
'Never occurred to me. I wasn't the only one who had checked him out early on. The cops made sure he was clean, and he must have known they investigated him. But I don't think anything or anybody gave him the idea of picking up where Adrian left off. I'd say it was something he couldn't help thinking of.'
'And no one was going to suspect him, because they'd already ruled him out. Both you and the cops.'
'Uh-huh.'
'And it was just an innocent hoax at first, with no murderous intent. Until he got caught up in his own bullshit.'
'You sound like his lawyer.'
'No,' Ray said, 'and God forbid. I've got enough guilty clients at the moment.' He talked about one of them, one who was actually likely to be able to pay him a fee for a change, and then he said, 'I understand you're going to be coming into a few dollars yourself.'
'It looks that way.'
'The way I heard it, Leopold's beneficiary is giving you a third.'
'That's what she says. She could change her mind once she's got the money in her hand. People do.'
'You think she will?'
