Even the Wicked

"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.