(“Will’s probably not a chef,” Elaine told me. “You have to hand-dry knives like that. They’re not stainless, and they’ll rust. A chef would have known that.” Maybe he knew, I said, and didn’t care. A chef would have cared, she said.)
I don’t know that the knife had time to rust, but I do know there were traces of blood still on it, which nailed it down as the murder weapon. There were no prints on it, though, or prints other than Kilbourne’s and Melba Rogin’s anywhere in the apartment.
Kilbourne was found fully dressed, wearing the slacks and sweater he’d donned to put Melba in a cab. (She said he’d worn a brown suede baseball jacket as well, and that garment had been found slung over the back of a chair.) Either Will had arrived before his victim had gone to bed, or Kilbourne had dressed again in the same clothes before answering the door. According to Melba, he’d been wide awake when she left him, so he might have stayed up to read or watch television, or even to write his review.
If he’d done any writing, he’d left no sign of it. He still used a typewriter, an ancient Royal portable that evidently had some sort of totemic status in his eyes. There was no work-in-progress in his typewriter, no notes alongside it. Some reporter asked Melba Rogin how he’d liked the play — he’d probably have asked the same question of Mary Lincoln — and she claimed not to know. According to her, he would never say anything about a play until he’d written his review. “But I don’t think he loved it,” she admitted.
That opened up a new vein of speculation. Some wit got his name in Liz Smith’s column by theorizing that Kilbourne had hated the play and written a withering review, and that his late-night visitor was the playwright himself, P.J. Barry, who’d struck down his tormentor before taking home the offending review and consigning it to the flames. “But I know P.J. Barry,” Smith wrote, “and I’ve seen Poor Little Rhode Island, and I can no more imagine P.J. doing such a thing than I can believe anyone could find a bad word to say about his play.”
There were no calls to or from Kilbourne’s apartment around the time the murder would have occurred, no reports of strangers entering or lurking around the brownstone. Sooner or later, though, they would turn up a witness, someone who’d seen someone coming or going, someone who’d heard a shout or a cry, someone who knew something.
It was just a matter of time.
Toward the end of the week, I got a call from Ray Gruliow. His had been one of the names I’d given to William Havemeyer, and Hard-Way Ray had agreed to represent him. “The poor son of a bitch,” he said. “He’s the last person you’d figure to commit murder. It’s not my kind of case at all, you know. He’s not poor, he’s not black, and he hasn’t tried to blow up the Empire State Building.”
“He’ll ruin your image.”
“Right, he’ll unbesmirch it. You know, if it weren’t so clearly contrary to his own wishes, I’d kind of like to try the case. I think I could get him off.”
“How, for God’s sake?”
“Oh, who knows? But you could start by putting the system on trial. Here’s a poor mutt who works hard all his life, never saves a dime, and his company shows its gratitude by forcing him out. Then you’ve got his wife’s death, years of pain and suffering, all of which can’t help but impinge on his emotional state. Of course the first thing I do is get that confession ruled inadmissible.”
“Which one? After I got him on tape, he walked into the Sixth Precinct and told them the same story all over again. After they’d given him the Miranda warning. And they videotaped the whole thing, including Miranda.”
“Fruit of the poisoned tree. The first confession was improperly obtained—”
“The hell it was.”
“—so that makes all further confessions suspect.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, probably not, but I’d think of something. The point is that’s not what he wants, but I think I can carry on enough when I sit down with the DA’s guy to strike a pretty good deal for him.” He speculated some about that, and then said, “I wonder what happens to the money.”
“What money?”
“The hundred and fifty thousand. Integrity Life paid the claim, double indemnity and all, and the money’s sitting in Havemeyer’s savings account in Lakewood. He hasn’t spent a penny of it.”
“I don’t suppose he gets to use it to pay his attorney.”
“He doesn’t get to do anything with it. You can’t legally profit as the result of the commission of a crime. If I’m convicted of killing you, I can’t inherit your property or collect on your life insurance. Basic principle of law.”
“And a reasonable one, from the sound of it.”
“I don’t think anybody’s likely to argue the point, though it’s had a few unfortunate effects. There was that dame who killed the diet doctor a few years back. Her lawyer could have pleaded her guilty with extenuating circumstances, and just about got her off with time served and community service, but she had no money of her own and she stood to inherit under the terms of the doc’s will. But she had to be found not guilty for that to happen, so the lawyer gambled and lost, and his client wound up with long prison time. Now was his decision colored by the knowledge that she had to inherit for him to get paid? No, absolutely not, because we attorneys are never influenced by such considerations.”
“Thank God for that,” I said.
“Havemeyer’s going to plead,” he said, “so the money’s not going to be his. But what happens to it?”
“The insurance company gets it back.”
“The hell they do. They collected premiums all those years, they accepted the risk, and they owe the money. The full amount, too, because murder fits the definition of accidental death. They’ve got to pay it to somebody, but to whom?”
“To Byron Leopold’s estate, I guess. Which means a couple of AIDS charities.”
“That would be true,” he said, “if Leopold still owned the policy. In that case Havemeyer would be excluded as beneficiary and Leopold’s estate would receive the funds. But Leopold transferred ownership of the policy for value received. He’s out of the picture.”
“What about Havemeyer’s heirs?”
“Uh-uh. Havemeyer never has title to the money. He can’t pass on what’s never been his in the first place. Never mind the fact that nobody can inherit anything from him while he’s still alive. But that does bring up a question. Havemeyer owned the policy and named himself as beneficiary. But did he name a secondary beneficiary, in the event that he might predecease Leopold? He might not have bothered, figuring that if he died before Leopold did, the money payable to him on Leopold’s death would simply be paid to his estate.”
“Havemeyer’s estate, you mean.”
“Right. In other words, why bother to designate a secondary beneficiary if the money’ll go to him anyway? There are reasons, as it happens. The money doesn’t have to wait until the estate goes through probate. But he might not have been so advised, or he might not have bothered. But if he did, can the secondary beneficiary benefit?”
“Why not? He wouldn’t be excluded because he wasn’t a party to the murder.”
“Ah, but did Havemeyer enter into the viatical transaction with the prior intent of killing Leopold?”