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For now, though, I chose not to exercise that freedoe, even as once in a while I felt the desire for a drink There is, I have been taught, all the difference in the world between the desire and the act The one is written on water, the other carved in stone

Glenn Holtz resisted the slenderest of teot almost to the corner of Ninth Avenue before the penny dropped I had been drea on Adrian Whitfield's ed to coax and tease the subject of that dream out of some dark corner of my mind It was Glenn Holtz he'd lived in withoutthe connection

Glenn Holtzto tell me? I'd hardly had time to consider the point when Will's latest letter drove the question clear out ofStar and sat at atable with a cup of coffee I took a sip and res I'd had with Holtz in that very , and perhaps at that very table, when he'd tapped on the glass to get my attention, then came inside and shared my table for a few minutes

He'd wanted to be friends Elaine and I had spent one evening with hi off-putting about hi it I couldn't recall everything he'd said that tih it seemed to me that hen he'd infore I'd felt sympathy for him then, but it hadn'tafter that he was dead Shot down on Eleventh Avenue whilea call from a pay phone That had been a case of h, I'd foundfor the brother of the chief suspect and theof the victim I don't knoell I served either client, but by the time it was over I'd learned who killed Glenn Holtzmann (It turned out he'd been killed by mistake, in what Elaine characterized as a perfect postmodern homicide I'm not sure what she meant)

Glenn Holtzmann, Glenn Holtzmann He was a lawyer, in-house counsel for a publisher of large-print books He'd floated the idea ofa book based on my experiences, but I'd been no more likely to write such a book than his fir expedition, perhaps in the hope that I'd drop soht prove profitable for him

Because, as I was to learn, information meant profit to Holtzmann He'd supple his start when he ratted out his uncle to the IRS It was a profitable enterprise, if high in risk and low in prestige, and when he died on the sidewalk on Eleventh Avenue he left behind a two-bedrooh-rise apartbox in which he'd stowed so about him? I let the waiter refill my coffee cup, stirred it, stared out theat , and tried to free-associate Glenn Holtz vision White cane, tap tap tap…

Glenn Holtzmann Blackmail Except it wasn't blackmail, not so far as I knew He wasn't a blackmailer, he was an infors, tits, ass Stop it

Glenn Holtzbox Money Too ht

Toolike a bell Glenn Holtzmann had had too much money, and that hat hadother than the act of random violence it appeared to be It was the money that led his wife to callbeneath the ordinary surface of his life for soht explain his death

I closedthe ie into focus

Too much money What the hell did that have to do with Will? How could there be a money motive behind the murders? How, really, could there be any kind of s, behind the particular hter of social wrongs?

Did anybody benefit froly or collectively? I considered the victiood news for whatever children he would have otherwise gone on to kill, but they couldn't knoho they were It was, I suppose, good news as well for all the rest of us, ere spared having to go on sharing a planet with Richie But nobody made a dime out of his death, except the people with newspapers to sell Richie died with nothing to leave and nobody to leave it to

Patsy Salerno? Well, if you took a proood news to whoever wound up in his shoes This particular fact of econoht and left over the years, and it still applied even when so But Patsy hadn't been on anybody else's list before he wound up on Will's, and when did his kind of people ever try to make their all-in-the-fa? For God's sake, they all but signed their work

I didn't do any better with the rest of Will's list I illing to believe that so a dollar or two out of the anti-abortiona buck on the other side, but I couldn't see a big financial payoff in wrapping a coat hanger around Roswell Berry's neck Soh I didn't kno or how much, but that particular case was cleared and Will hadn't done the killing, although he'd have gotten around to it if Scipio hadn't beaten him to the punch