Even the Wicked: A Matthew Scudder Novel (Matthew Scudder Mysteries)

  “You’ve got it backwards. I’m supposed to take your order.”

  “I don’t want to take your order, I just want to know what it is. Are you a Carmelite or are you one of the Little Sisters of the Poor?” When she looked confused he said, “I’m just joking, honey. Don’t mind me. I know you’re new here, but they must have told you I’m harmless.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I bet you’re armed and dangerous.”

  He grinned, delighted. “Hey, you’re okay,” he said. “You give as good as you get. I’ll tell you what. Bring me another round, a double shot and a beer, but what you can do, you can make it two double shots, and two beers.” My face must have shown something, because he said, “Relax, Mattie. I know you wouldn’t touch a drop to save your soul, you self-righteous fuck. And please pardon my French, sweetheart, and whatever you do don’t tell your Mother Superior what I just said. I want you to bring me two rounds at once so we won’t have to disturb you later, and you can also bring my sobersided father here whatever he’s having.”

  “Club soda will be fine,” I told her.

  “Bring him two club sodas,” he said, “and the devil take the hindmost.” She walked off, her cottontail bobbing, and he said, “I don’t know how I feel about silicone. They all look perfect but they don’t look real. And what’s the effect on the next generation? Do teenage boys grow up expecting perfect tits?”

  “When you’re a teenage boy,” I said, “all tits are perfect.”

  “Not if all you ever see is silicone. Used to be girls would go out and get their tits done so they could get a guy. Now there’s married men asking their wives to call the plastic surgeon, make an appointment. ‘What do I want for Christmas, Mona? Well, now that you mention it, big knockers’d be nice.’ Make sense to you?”

  “Hardly anything does,” I said.

  “Amen to that, brother.”

  “And yet you come here,” I said.

  “I like tawdry,” he said, “and I like tacky, and I have a passion for paradox. And, even though I barely look at the tits, it’s nice to know they’re there if I get the urge. Plus this place is three blocks from the fucking office and yet no one from the paper would be caught dead here, so I don’t get disturbed. That’s my story, Monsieur Poirot. Now what’s your excuse?”

  “I came here to see you.”

  She brought the drinks. “On my tab,” he said, and gave her a five-dollar tip. “I’m a class guy,” he said. “You notice I just gave her the money. I didn’t try to stuff it down the front of her spandex shorts, as I’ve seen some of the customers do. I more or less assumed you came here to see me, O Great Detective. What I wondered is why.”

  “To see what you could tell me about Will.”

  “Ah, I see. You want the hat trick.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You unmasked one killer and brought another back alive. What’s it like in Lakewood, Ohio, anyway? Do the natives wear shoes?”

  “For the most part.”

  “Glad to hear it. You got Adrian, you got this Havemeyer, and now you want Will Number Two. Adrian’s understudy, if you want to stay with the theatrical image Regis invoked so nicely in his oped piece.” His eyes widened. “Wait a minute,” he said.

  “Havemeyer’s first name is William, isn’t it? What do they call him?”

  “When I called him anything,” I said, “it was Mr. Havemeyer.”

  “So it could be Bill or Willie. Or even Will.”

  “It could be anything at all,” I said. “I told you what I called him.”

  “I thought cops always call perps by their first names.”

  “I guess I’ve been off the job too long.”

  “Yeah, you’ve turned respectful. It’s good you’re not still wearing the uniform or you’d be a disgrace to it. If they call him Will, and who’s to say they don’t, that’d be the hat trick all right, wouldn’t it? Three guys named Will, and Mattie gets ’em all.”

  “I’m not chasing Will Number Two.”

  “You’re not?”

  I shook my head. “I’m just your average concerned citizen,” I said. “All I know is what I read in the papers.”

  “You and Will Rogers.”

  “And I was wondering what you might know that they’re not reporting. For instance, has there been another letter from the guy?”

  “No.”

  “He always sent a letter after each killing. Like a terrorist group claiming credit for a bombing.”

  “So?”

  “It’s surprising he’d break the pattern.”

  He rolled his eyes. “It’s Adrian’s pattern,” he said, “and Adrian’s not writing letters these days. Why expect the new guy to operate, the same way?”

  “That’s a point.”

  “Adrian didn’t threaten three guys at once, either. There’s a lot of differences between them, including the psychological gobbledygook everybody’s been spouting.” He had already thrown down one double shot, and now he took a dainty sip of the other and chased it with an equally dainty sip of beer. “That’s why I wrote what I did,” he said.

  “The column where you taunted him?”

  “Uh-huh. I don’t know. One day I was annoyed the way everybody else was calling him a paper tiger, and next thing I knew I was trying to bait him.”

  “I was wondering about that.”

  “I decided they were right,” he said, “and I decided the guy was never gonna do anything, and I got the bright idea that if I stuck something through the bars of his cage and poked him he’d at least roar, and maybe that would give the cops something to go on. And I knew it was safe to provoke him because he wasn’t about to get out of the cage.”

  “But he did.”

  “Yeah. I’m not saying it’s my fault, because fucking Kilbourne was pretty provocative himself, telling Will to strike the set and get his ass off the stage. But I don’t mind telling you it’s pretty much ended my interest in the matter.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m glad I haven’t had another I-shot-the-sheriff letter from the son of a bitch. If he writes any more letters I hope he mails them to somebody else. I don’t think he will, and I don’t think he’ll kill anybody else, either, although I’m not about to suggest they quit guarding Peter Tully and Judge Rome. But the point is I’m walking away from it. I can find other things to write about.”

  “It’s not hard in this town.”

  “Not hard at all.”

  I took a long drink of club soda. Out of the corner of my eye I watched our waitress take an order from a table of new arrivals, three men in their early thirties dressed in jackets and ties. One of them was stroking her bottom and patting her cottontail. She didn’t even seem to notice.

  I said, “Maybe I shouldn’t even bring this up,” I said, “considering your lack of interest. But I wanted your input.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I dug out my notebook, flipped it open. “‘My curse upon the withered hand that grips my nation’s throat.’”

  He froze with the glass halfway to his lips, screwed up his face in a frown. “What the hell is that?”

  “Sound familiar?”

  “It does but I can’t think why. Help me out here, Mattie.”

  “The first letter from Will Number Two, where he shared his little three-name list with us.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “He was going on about Peter Tully, right after that crap about chucking a wrench into the machinery of the city, or whatever the hell it was. So?”

  “Except he had it a little different. ‘A curse upon the withered hand that grips a city’s throat.’A curse instead of my curse, and a city instead of my nation.”

  “So?”

  “So Will was paraphrasing the original.”

  “What original?” He frowned again, and then drew back his head and looked at me. “Wait a minute,” he said.

  “Take all the time you want, Marty.”

  “I’ll be sweetly and resoundingly
fucked,” he said. “You know who the cocksucker was quoting?”

  “Who?”

  “Me,” he said, eyebrows raised high in indignation. “He was quoting me. Or paraphrasing me, or whatever the hell you want to call it.”

  “No kidding?”

  “You wouldn’t know it,” he said, “because nobody knows it, but once upon a time I had the bad taste and ill fortune to write a play.”

  “The Tumult in the Clouds.”

  “My God, how would you know that? It’s from Yeats, the poem’s ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.’ Sweet Christ, it was awful.”

  “I’m sure it was better than that.”

  “No, it was a stinker, and you don’t have to take my word for it. The reviews showed rare unanimity of opinion on that subject. Nobody objected to the title, though, even though it had nothing to do with flying. There was plenty of tumult, however. Short on clouds, long on tumult. But it was Irish as all getout, my heartfelt autobiographical take on the Irish-American experience, and nothing gets an Irish book or play off to a better start than a title from Yeats. It’s good the old boy wrote a lot.”

  “And the line’s from your play?”

  “The line?”

  “The one about the withered hand and the nation’s throat.”

  “Oh, that Will did a turn on. In the play the withered hand was Queen Victoria’s, if I remember correctly. And the throat was that of Holy Ireland, you’ll be unsurprised to learn. It was a tinker woman who delivered the line. Mother of Mercy, what did I know about tinker women? Or Ireland either, for that matter. I’ve never been to the poor benighted country, and never want to go, either.”

  “You’re pretty good,” I said.

  “How’s that, Mattie?”

  “Not recognizing the line at first. Then realizing that I must know where it’s from, and deciding to come up with it first yourself. And pretending that you’re unaware that I know where the line’s from, but how could you be? Because how would I know the original line if I didn’t know about the play?”

  “Hey, you lost me around the clubhouse turn.”

  “Oh?”

  He hefted his glass. “You sober sons of bitches,” he said, “you just don’t understand how this stuff slows down the thought processes. You want to go over that again? You must have known because I had to know because you knew because I said you said—you see what I mean, Mattie? It’s confusing.”

  “I know.”

  “So do you want to run it by me one more time?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Hey, suit yourself. You’re the one brought it up, so—”

  “Give it up, Marty.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I know you did it. You wrote the letters and you killed Regis Kilbourne.”

  “That’s fucking nuts.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why would I do any of that? You want to tell me that?”

  “You wrote the letters to stay in the limelight.”

  “Me? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Will made you really important,” I said. “You wrote a column and the next thing anybody knew a killer was knocking off prominent people all over New York.”

  “And Omaha. Don’t forget Omaha.”

  “Then Will killed himself, and it turned out the Wizard of Oz was just the little man behind the curtain. He was Adrian Whitfield, and he wasn’t larger than life anymore. There was no more story, and that meant no more front-page headlines for you. And you couldn’t stand that.”

  “I got a column runs three times a week,” he said. “You know how many people read what I write, Will or no Will?”

  “Quite a few.”

  “Millions. You know what I get paid to write what I write? Not millions, but close.”

  “You never had a story like this one before.”

  “I’ve had plenty of stories over the years. This town’s up to here with stories. Stories are like assholes, everybody’s got one and most of ‘em stink.”

  “This was different. You told me so yourself.”

  “They’re all different while you’re writing them. You have to think they’re special at the time. Then they run their course and you move on to something else and tell yourself it’s special, and twice as special as the last one.”

  “Will was your creation, Marty. You gave him the idea. And he addressed all his letters to you. Every time there was a new development, you were first with it. You showed what you got to the cops, and you were the first person they shared with.”

  “So?”

  “So you couldn’t bear to see the story end. Regis Kilbourne was closer than he knew when he compared the case to a Broadway play. When the star left the stage, you couldn’t stand the idea of closing the show. You put on his costume and tried to play the part yourself. You wrote letters to yourself and wound up giving yourself away, because you couldn’t keep from quoting your own failed play.”

  He just looked at me.

  “Look at the three men you put on Will’s list,” I said. “A union boss who threatens to shut down the city and a judge who keeps unlocking the jail-house door. Two fellows who manage to piss off a substantial portion of the population.”

  “So?”

  “So look at the third name on the list. The theater critic for the New York Times. Now who the hell puts a critic on that kind of list?”

  “I wondered that myself, you know.”

  “Don’t insult my intelligence, Marty.”

  “And don’t you insult mine. And don’t ride roughshod over the facts or all you’ll get for your troubles is saddle sores. You know when The Tumult in the Clouds opened? Fifteen years ago. You know when Regis Kilbourne started reviewing for the paper of record? I happen to know, because it was in all the obits. Just under twelve years ago. It was another guy reviewed Tumult for the Times, and he died of a heart attack five or six years ago himself, and I swear it wasn’t because I jumped out of a closet and yelled ‘Boo!’ at him.”

  “I read the Times review.”

  “Then you know.”

  “I also read Regis’s review. In Gotham Magazine.”

  “Jesus, where’d you find that? I’m not even sure I read it myself.”

  “Then how come you quoted it? In the same letter where you talked about Peter Tully’s withered hand having the city by the throat, you had this to say about Send-‘em-Home Rome.” I found it in my notebook. “‘You have not the slightest sensitivity to the feelings of the public, and no concern for their wishes.’ That’s what you wrote. And here’s what Kilbourne wrote about you: ‘As a journalist, Mr. McGraw presents himself as one who would rather keep the common touch than walk with kings. Yet as a playwright he has not the slightest sensitivity to the feelings of the theatergoing public, and no concern for their wishes.’”

  “I remember the review.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Now that you read it to me, I remember it. But I swear I didn’t recognize the line in Will’s letter. The hell, he quoted my play, he could quote my reviews while he was at it. Maybe the son of a bitch was obsessed with me. Maybe he thought throwing some quotes around, which I didn’t even happen to recognize, maybe he thought that was a way to curry favor with me.” He looked at me, then shrugged. “Hey, I’m not saying it makes sense, but the guy’s a nut. Who can figure someone like that?”

  “Give it up, Marty.”

  “The fuck’s that supposed to mean? ‘Give it up, Marty.’ You sound like some fucking TV show, anybody ever tell you that?”

  “Kilbourne’s review in Gotham was scathing. The play got negative notices all around, but Kilbourne was vicious, and all of his venom was directed against the play itself and the man who wrote it. It amounted to a personal attack, as if he resented a columnist presuming to write a play and wanted to make sure you never tried it again.”

  “So? That was fifteen years ago. I had a couple of drinks, I kicked a chair and punched a wall and said a couple o
f words I never learned from the nuns, and I forgot about it. Why the hell are you shaking your head at me?”

  “Because you quoted the review.”

  “That was Will quoted the review, remember? Will Number Two, and I don’t know who he is but he ain’t me.”

  “You quoted the review in your column, Marty.” I opened the notebook again and cited chapter and verse, quoting lines from Kilbourne’s review that had found their way into various columns Marty had written both before and after the death of Adrian Whitfield. When I finished I closed the notebook and looked at him. His eyes were lowered and a full minute passed without a word from him.