A Long Line of Dead Men

29

I met Ray Gruliow in a bar called Dirty Mary's a block from City Hall. They do a brisk lunch business there, the crowd running to lawyers and bureaucrats, the specialty of the house a shepherd's pie topped with cheddar and browned under the broiler, but we were an hour too early for lunch and the place was empty except for a couple of old lags at the bar who might have been left over from the night before.

Hard-Way Ray looked as though he, too, could have been left over from the night before. His face was drawn and he had dark circles under his eyes. He was in a booth with a cup of coffee when I got there, and I told the waiter I'd have the same.

"No he won't," Gruliow said. "He'll have an ordinary cup of coffee. Black, right?"

"Black," I agreed.

"And I'll have another the hard way," he said. That, he explained when the waiter had withdrawn, was with a shot in it. I told him I'd figured that out.

"Well, you're a fast study," he said. "I don't usually start the day this way, but I had a hell of a night last night. Anyway, I've been up for hours. I had to be across the way there when the gavel came down at nine o'clock. I got a postponement, but I had to show up and ask for it." He sipped his fortified coffee. "I like drinking out of coffee cups," he said. "Gives you an idea what Prohibition must have been like. And I like a shot of booze in a cup of coffee. It keeps the caffeine from making you too edgy."

"Tell me about it."

"You used to drink it that way?"

"Oh, once in a while," I said. I took out a copy of the sketch and handed it to him. He unfolded it, got a look at it, shook his head, and started to refold it. I put out a hand to interrupt the process.

"God," he said. "I've looked at this guy's ugly face until I can see it in my dreams. And I find myself expecting to see him everywhere, do you know what I mean? In the cab coming down here this morning I kept sneaking peeks at the driver, trying to see if it could be him. I took a second look at the waiter before."

"Just take a look at the sketch for now," I suggested.

"What am I going to see that I haven't already seen?"

"You used to know this man," I said.

"I already told you he looks familiar, but-"

"You haven't seen him in thirty years. He was in his middle twenties when you knew him."

He ran the numbers, frowned. "He's forty-eight now, isn't he? Thirty years ago he would have been-"

"He lied about his age, either to be consistent with his fake ID or because he didn't want to be considered too old for the security-guard job. He must have taken eight or nine years off his real age. It's not the biggest lie he ever told."

"God, I know him," he said. "I can picture his face, I can see him talking, I can almost hear the voice. Help me out, will you?"

"You know his name. It's part of your annual litany."

"Part of our-"

"For years now," I said, "you all thought he was dead."

"My God," he said. "It's him, isn't it?"

"You tell me, Ray."

"It is," he said. "It's Severance."

"I made a couple of stops on my way here," I told him. "I went over to Lew Hildebrand's apartment and caught him before he left for work. I saw Avery Davis at his office. They were both able to identify the sketch as James Severance. In fact Davis said he had already been struck by the killer's resemblance to Severance, and would have mentioned something except that he knew Severance was dead. Everybody knew it, and how could you possibly forget it? You've been reading his name all those years."

"And he's not dead?"

"I went down to Washington yesterday," I said. "I went to see if his name was engraved on the Memorial down there."

"And it wasn't?"

"No."

"I'm not sure if that proves anything, Matt. Their accuracy's a long way from a hundred percent. People have been left off the Memorial, and guys who survived the war have found their names carved in stone. He could be carried on the books as MIA, he could have been overlooked in any number of ways-"

"He never served," I said.

"He was never in Vietnam?"

"He was never in the service, period. I went to the Veterans Administration and I found somebody who knew somebody at the Pentagon. They did a pretty comprehensive check of the service records. He was never in any branch of the service. I don't know if he was ever called up, or if he even bothered to register for the draft. That would be harder to check, and I'm not sure there's any point to it. What's relevant is he didn't die in Vietnam, and he doesn't seem to have died anywhere else, either. Because he's still alive."

"It seems impossible."

"Avery Davis said it's like finding out at age thirty that you were adopted."

"I know what he meant. I barely knew Severance. He never said much. I saw him once a year for a couple of years, and then he missed a dinner because he was in the army, and then the following year or the year after Homer read his name. And I've heard it read once a year ever since."

"How did he get chosen for the club?"

"I don't know. Either he was somebody's friend or Homer found him all by himself. Did Lew or Avery-"

I shook my head. "They met him for the first time at Cunningham's. And they didn't know how he got there. I wonder how he faked his death. How did you learn of it?"

"Let me think." He took a sip of his hard-way coffee. "God, it was a long time ago. I seem to remember Homer reading a letter from him, explaining that his heart was with us even though his body was wearing a uniform. And he hoped to be with us soon, and if anything happened to him he'd made arrangements for us to be notified."

"He was setting you up."

"I guess so. It must have been a year later that Homer read his name along with Phil Kalish's and explained that he'd received a telegram a couple of months before."

"From whom?"

"I don't think he said. I suppose I assumed it was either from the army or from a relative of Severance's. Obviously it wasn't from either, no matter how it may have been signed. Severance sent it himself."

"Yes."

"Was he already planning to kill us?"

"Hard to say."

"And why, for God's sake? What did we ever do to him?"

"I don't know," I said. "You know, I met him a few times. I sat across a table from him."

"So you've said."

"And I've met the surviving members, most of them, anyway. And it's hard to imagine him sitting down to dinner with the rest of you. I'll grant you that you've all worked hard and created successful lives for yourselves while he's been living in cheap hotels and eating in diners and holding subsistence jobs when he's worked at all. The different paths you've taken for the past thirty years would account for some of the difference, but I think he must have been different to start with."

"Well, hell," he said. "I didn't like to say it when I regarded him as one of our honored dead, but I can say it now, can't I? He came across as a loser."

"A loser."

"A nobody, a nebbish. A guy who wasn't going to make the cut. You're right, he wasn't in our league. He didn't belong at the same table with the rest of us."

"Maybe he realized that himself," I said. "Maybe it pissed him off."

He wanted to speculate on Severance's motives, and what might have gone through his mind. Earlier, he said, before he had any idea who the killer was or what might be motivating him, it had struck him that the whole affair was a sort of collective form of erotomania, where a disturbed individual becomes fixated on someone, often a celebrity. "Like that woman who kept breaking into David Letterman's house," he said. "Or the lunatic who killed John Lennon."

"Afterward," I said, "there will be plenty of time to figure out what makes him tick."

"Afterward?"

"After he's locked up," I said. "And I think it's time to make sure that happens as soon as possible. I'm afraid I've gone about as far as I can go with this, Ray. I'm ready to turn it over to the professionals."

"I never thought of you as an amateur."

"I am when it comes to mounting an all-out manhunt. That's the way to catch him fast. Between the cops and the tabloids and America's Most Wanted, there's no way he'll be able to stay hidden."

He looked at me. "And what about us?"

"The club's story will come out," I said. "If that's what you mean. But there's no way to avoid that."

"No?"

"I don't see how."

He cupped his chin in his hand. "Let's assume he's in New York," he said. "Do you think you could find him?"

"Without the police?"

"Without the police or the press."

"I don't have their resources."

"No, but you have other resources at your disposal. We could give you a substantial operating budget. And you could offer a reward."

"It's not impossible," I said. "But you'd just be postponing the inevitable. The story would have to come out when he went to trial, and it would be every bit as sensational and get just as much of a play."

"When he went to trial."

"That's right."

"And what do you suppose would happen at that trial? And afterward?"

"I'm not sure I follow you."

"What would happen? What would be the outcome of the trial?"

"I suppose he'd get convicted of murder," I said. "Unless he had Hard-Way Ray for a lawyer."

He laughed. "No, I'm afraid he'd have to get along without my services. But are you all that certain he'd be found guilty? Which killing do you suppose he'd stand trial for?"

"Billings is the most recent one."

"And what's the evidence? Can you put him on the scene? Can you tie him to the car? Can you produce a murder weapon, let alone prove it was in his hand?"

"Once the police go to work on it-"

"They might have an eyewitness or two who can pick him out of a lineup," he said, "but I wouldn't count on it, and I don't have to tell you how little most eyewitness testimony is worth in a courtroom. Who else has he killed? Watson's widow? Watson himself? Can you prove any of that? We know he was on the scene, he discovered Alan's body, but where's your evidence?"

"What's your point?"

"My point is that a conviction is by no means a foregone conclusion. You can throw out the early cases entirely. He killed Boyd and Diana Shipton, he went down to Atlanta and shot Ned Bayliss, he hanged Hal Gabriel with his belt, God knows what else he did, and you can forget all of that because there's not going to be any way to prove it. And I seriously doubt you can convince a jury he killed anybody else, either."

I recalled something Joe Durkin had said. "It's a wonder anybody ever goes to jail for anything," I said.

"I don't know about that," he said. "I think the system is generally pretty good at locking people up. Too good, sometimes. But that doesn't mean you can make a tight enough case against Severance to put him away. Hell, if you had the goods on him, he could probably plead insanity and make it stand up. He's devoted his life to a career of senseless systematic serial murder. You want to try to sell him to a jury as a model of mental health?"

"I can't even buy that myself."

"Neither can I. I figure the bastard's nuts. I also figure he's done enough harm for one lifetime."

I had an idea where this was going. I didn't much want to go there. I got the waiter's attention and had him refill my coffee cup.

Gruliow said, "Say I'm wrong. He stands trial, they find him guilty on all counts, and he goes to prison."

"Sounds good to me."

"Does it? Obviously, it makes the club and all of its members the focus of a lot of unwelcomed publicity, but there's no avoiding that, is there? Maybe we'd survive as an institution. For my own part, I can't imagine ceasing to get together every May. But I hate to think how all that media attention would change things."

"That's unfortunate, but-"

"But we're talking life and death here, and our desire to stay out of the spotlight is comparatively inconsequential. I can't argue with that. But let's take this a little further. What happens to Severance?"

"He stays in some maximum-security joint upstate for the rest of his life."

"Think so?"

"I thought we were supposing he'd be found guilty. I don't think the court's going to slap his wrist and let him off with time served and five years' probation."

"Let's assume he gets a life sentence. How much time would he serve?"

"That depends."

"Seven years?"

"It could be a lot more than that."

"Don't you think he could behave himself in prison? Don't you think he could convince the parole board that he's a changed man? Matt, the man's the most patient son of a bitch on God's earth. He's spent thirty years killing us and he's only a little more than halfway through. You think he won't be content to bide his time? They'll have him stamping out license plates and it'll just be another menial job, like working as a rent-a-cop in Queens. They'll stick him in a cell and it'll just be another in a long string of furnished rooms. What does he care how long he has to sit on his ass? He's been sitting on his ass for thirty years. Sooner or later they'll have to let him out, and do you think for one moment that he'll be magically rehabilitated?"

I looked at him.

"Well? Do you?"

"No, of course not."

"He'll start in where he left off. By the time he gets out, Mother Nature will have done some of his work for him. There'll have been some thinning of the ranks. But some of us will be left, and what do you bet he comes after us? What do you bet he tries to pick us off one by one?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it without saying anything.

"You know I'm right," he said.

"I know you've always opposed capital punishment."

"Absolutely," he said. "Unequivocally."

"That's not how you sound this morning."

"I think it's regrettable that a man like Severance could ever be released from prison. That doesn't mean I think the state should go into the business of official murder."

"I didn't think we were talking about the state."

"Oh?"

"You want to apprehend him without involving the media or the police. I get the feeling you'd like to see sentence passed and carried out in much the same manner."

"In other words?"

"You want me to find him and kill him for you," I said. "I won't do it."

"I wouldn't ask you to."

"I don't want to find him so you can kill him yourself, either. How would you do it? Draw straws to see who pulls the duty? Or string him up and have everybody pull on the rope?"

"What would you do?"

"Me?"

"In our position."

"I was in your position once," I said. "There was a man named… well, never mind what his name was. The point is that he had sworn to kill me. He'd already killed a lot of other people. I don't know if I could have got him sent to prison, but I know they wouldn't have kept him there forever. Sooner or later they'd have had to let him out."

"What did you do?"

"I did what I had to do."

"You killed him?"

"I did what I had to do."

"Do you regret it?"

"No."

"Do you feel guilty?"

"No."

"Would you do it again?"

"I suppose I would," I said. "If I had to."

"So would I," he said, "if I had to. But that's not what I have in mind. I don't really believe in capital punishment whether it's the state or an individual who imposes the sentence."

"I'm lost," I said. "You'll have to explain."

"I intend to." He drank some coffee. "I've given this some thought," he said, "and I've talked to several of the others. How does this sound to you?"

I heard him out. I had a lot of questions and raised a lot of objections, but he had prepared well. I had no choice but to give him the verdict he wanted.

"It sounds crazy," I said at length, "and the cost-"

"That's not a problem."

"Well, I don't have any moral objection to it," I said. "And it might work."