A Long Line of Dead Men

"No, there have been quite a few divorces. But the ones who've divorced show a consistent pattern of career stability. There's nobody in the whole group who looks at all like the kind of loose cannon he'd almost have to be, in order to do the damage he's done."

"So it's not somebody in the group."

"And who could it be outside the group? Nobody else knows these people exist. I told you I went out and saw Fred Karp's widow. She was married to him for something like twenty-five years. She knew he had dinner with some old friends once a year, but she thought they were fraternity brothers of his from Brooklyn College. And she didn't know the names of any of them."

"She also told you she didn't think he could have killed himself."

"Well, the survivors always tell you that about suicides. If you go up in a tower and shoot twenty people, the neighbors tell the press you were a nice quiet boy. If you kill yourself, they say you had everything to live for."

"Then you think he did kill himself?"

"I think it's beginning to look that way."

"I thought you said the suicides could have been faked."

"Most suicides could have been faked," I said. "There are exceptions, like the poor son of a bitch who shot himself on live TV with the camera rolling."

"I'm glad I missed that one."

"But even if most suicides could have been faked," I went on, "that doesn't mean they are. Most of them are just what they look like. So are most accidents."

"You think the Warren Commission got it right?"

"Jesus, where did that come from?"

"Left field. I just wondered. Do you?"

"I think they're a lot closer to the truth than Oliver Stone. Why? You think I'm too quick to believe what I want to believe?"

"I didn't say that."

"Well, it's a possibility, whether you said it or not. It seems to me I've been working hard to prove that somebody really is knocking them off, and that I'm coming reluctantly to the conclusion that the true villain of the piece is our old friend Coincidence. But maybe that's what I wanted to conclude all along. I don't know."

"It just seems to me," she said, "that you're attaching an awful lot of significance to a good credit rating."

"It's not just that I'd be inclined to okay these guys for MasterCard. The whole lifestyle that goes with it, the whole-"

"I know. You look at the TRW reports and all you see is one big Norman Rockwell painting. They're the American Dream, aren't they?"

"I suppose so."

"And you feel excluded because you can't have that life, and even more excluded because you don't even want it. That's a big part of it, Matt, isn't it?"

The telephone rang.

"Saved by the bell," she said, grinning, and reached to answer it. "Hello? May I ask who's calling? Just a moment, I'll see if he can come to the phone." She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. "Raymond Gruliow," she said.

"Oh?"

I took the phone from her and said hello. He said, "Mr. Scudder, this is Ray Gruliow. I think we ought to get together, don't you?"

The voice was his, all right, rich and rasping, an instrument that he wielded like a rapier. I'd heard it last on the television news, when he was lecturing a gang of reporters on the insidious effect of institutionalized racism on his client, Warren Madison. Madison, as I recalled, had been so victimized by racism that he dealt dope, robbed and murdered other dope dealers, and shot six of the cops who showed up at his mother's house to arrest him.

"Maybe we should," I said.

"I've got a court appearance scheduled in the morning. How's the later part of the afternoon? Say, four o'clock?"

"Four is fine."

"Do you want to come over to my house? I'm on Commerce Street, if you know where that is."

"I know Commerce Street."

"Oh, of course you would. You were at the Sixth Precinct, weren't you? My house is number forty-nine, right across the street from the Cherry Lane Theater."

"I'll find it," I said. "Four o'clock? I'll see you then."

"I look forward to it," he said.

"Four o'clock tomorrow," I told Elaine, "and he looks forward to it. I wonder what the hell he wants."

"Maybe it's unrelated to what you're working on. Maybe he wants to hire you as an investigator."

"Oh, sure," I said. "He heard what a bang-up job I did nailing the Velcro Vaulter and he wants to sign me up for his team."

"Maybe he wants to confess."

"That's it," I said. "Hard-Way Ray Gruliow, with his house on Commerce Street and his twenty-grand lecture fees. He's been killing his old friends for the past twenty years, and he wants my help in turning himself in."

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