Page 3 (1/2)

By the tihters in the ring, a pair of sluggish heavyweights I asked how the other bout had turned out

"Went the distance," TJ said "Check it out-for a ht I kne to speak Spanish"

"How's that?"

"The ring announcer He's talkin' away, and I'm understandin' every word, and I'onna seeheld in Mississippi," I said "The ring announcer was speaking English"

"Yeah, well, I knows that It slippedall that Spanish frolish, I just thought it was Spanish and I was understandin' it" He shrugged "Young dude got the decision"

"It figured"

"These two don't look to be in a hurry They just takin' their time"

"They'll have to do it without o out for a while"

"So, ed "You be thinkin' 'bout that coot onna join the twentieth century"

"I'd hate to onna catch Will, you know Computers"

"Is that a fact?"

"Put all the letters the fool writes into the coht keys, an' it'll analyze the words he uses and tell you the sucker's a forty-two-year-old white male of Scandinavian ancestry He be ers fan, an' when he a child his et all this fro "How you think they gonna get him?"

"Forensics," I said "Lab work at the crime scenes and on the letters he writes I'm sure they'll use co these days"

"Everybody does Everybody but us"

"And they'll follow up a ton of leads," I said, "and knock on a lot of doors and ask a lot of questions, most of theet lucky, or both And they'll land on hi is," I said, "I hope they don't let it go too long I'd like to see theuy"

2

One newspaper colu It was Marty McGraw's, of course, and it ran in the Daily News on a Thursday in early June McGraw's column, "Since You Asked," appeared in that newspaper every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday It had been a fixture in New York tabloid journalish not always on the same days, or even with the same paper McGraw had ju froain, with an intermediate stop at Newsday

"An Open Letter to Richard Vollmer" hat McGraw called this particular column, and that's what it was Voll sheet of arrests for minor sex offenses Then a few years back he'd been sent away for child molestation He did well in therapy and his counselor wrote a favorable report for his parole board, and Vollmer returned to society, sworn to behave hi others

He'd been corresponding with a woman on the outside She'd answered a personal ad of his I don't knohat kind of woe letters with a convict, but God seems to have made a lot of them Elaine says they combine low self-esteem with a messiah complex; also, she says, it's a way for theuy's locked ahere he can't get at theet out, however, and there was nothing in Albany he wanted to get back to, so he came to New York and looked her up Franny was a thirtyish nurse's aide who'd been living alone on Haven Avenue in Washington Heights since her mother died She walked to work at Columbia Presbyterian, volunteered her services at church and block-association fund-raisers, fed and fussed over three cats, and wrote love letters to upstanding citizens like Richie Vollmer