'Now imagine Ray Gruliow.'
'I didn't dream about Ray,' I said, 'and this isn't going to work. I appreciate what you're trying to do—'
'I know you do.'
'But it's not going to work.'
'I know. Can I ask you a couple of questions?'
'I suppose so.'
'What's your name?'
'Matthew Scudder.'
'What's your wife's name?'
'Elaine Mardell. Elaine Mardell Scudder.'
'Do you love her?'
'Do you have to ask?'
'Just answer the question. Do you love her?'
'Yes.'
'Who'd you dream about?'
'Nice try, but it's not going to…'
'Yes?'
'I'll be a son of a bitch.'
'So? Are you going to tell me?'
'Pleased with yourself, aren't you?'
'Pleased beyond measure, and—now stop that!'
'I just want to touch it for a minute.'
'Say the name, will you? Before it slips your mind again.'
'It won't,' I said. 'Now why in the hell would I dream about him?'
'Fine, keep me in suspense.'
'Glenn Holtzmann,' I said. 'How did you do that?'
'Ve haff vays of making you remember.'
'So it would seem. Glenn Holtzmann. Why Glenn Holtzmann, for Christ's sake?'
I was no closer to the answer an hour later when I went downstairs for the papers. Then I forgot Glenn Holtzmann for the time being.
There had been another letter from Will.
9
'An Open Letter to the People of New York.'
That's how Will headed it. He had addressed and mailed it, like all the others, to Marty McGraw at the
Daily News, and they were the ones with the story. They gave it the front-page headline and led with it, under McGraw's byline. His column, 'Since You Asked…' ran as a sidebar, and the full text of Will's letter appeared on the page opposite. It was a long letter for Will, running to just under eight hundred words, which made it just about the same length as McGraw's column.
He started out by claiming credit (or assuming responsibility) for the murder of Adrian Whitfield. His tone was boastful; he talked at first about the elaborate security set up to protect Whitfield, the burglar alarm, the three shifts of bodyguards, the armor-plated limousine with the bulletproof glass. 'But no man can prevail against the Will of the People,' he proclaimed. 'No man can run from it. No man can hide from it. Consider Roswell Berry, who fled to Omaha. Consider Julian Rashid, behind his fortified walls in St. Albans. The Will of the People can reach across vast space, it can slip through the stoutest defenses.
No man can resist it.'
Whitfield, Will went on, was by no means the worst lawyer in the world. It had simply been his lot to serve as representative of an ineradicable evil in the legal profession, an apparent willingness to do anything, however abhorrent and immoral, in the service of a client. 'We nod in approval when an attorney defends the indefensible, and even tolerate behavior in a client's interest which would earn the lawyer a horsewhipping were he so to act on his own behalf.'
Then Will launched into an evaluation of the legal system, questioning the value of the jury system. There was nothing startlingly original about any of the points he raised, though he argued them reasonably enough so that you found yourself ready to forget you were reading the words of a serial murderer.
He ended on a personal note. 'I find I'm tired of killing. I am grateful to have been the instrument selected to perform these several acts of social surgery. But there is a heavy toll taken on him who is called upon to do evil in the service of a greater good. I'll rest now, until the day comes when I'm once again called to act.'
* * *
I had a question, and I made half a dozen phone calls trying to get an answer. Eventually I got around to calling the News. I gave my name to the woman who answered and said I'd like to talk to Marty McGraw.
