Unknown - The Genius

And another question poked at me: how had he connected the crimes? Not all of the articles referred to one another. Henry Strong wasn’t described as a murder, because at the time of his disappearance, no body had been found. To know that both he and Eddie Cardinale had been the work of one person, and that the same person had gone on to kill three more boys, a reader would have to be able to match up the victim profiles as well as similarities in the cases: the fact that all the boys had been strangled, for example. A person casually leafing through the paper would be unlikely to take notice unless he was particularly astute—or already aware of the common thread.

Either of those conditions potentially applied to Victor, whom I imagined sitting alone in his cell of a room, afraid of going outside, brimming with conspiracy theories, tracing connections between the boys and himself, the boys and the federal government… . Maybe, by putting the boys around his central star, he hoped to insulate himself from whatever had taken them: a kind of burnt offering to a faceless killer … rocking himself to sleep, clutching his talismans, haunted by the notion that he could be the next victim … no matter that he was not ten years old, that he never left the building … no matter … he is frightened, so frightened …

Far-fetched? Absolutely. But I badly wanted to believe he was innocent.

Now I have another confession to make: while it’s true I wanted to protect Victor, this had more to do with me than with him. I felt for him, yes;

wanted to shield his good name, yes. But my most pressing concern was that he become too real. When he had been nothing but a name, I could exert my creative power over the art, control how people read it. The more he made his presence felt, however—the realer he became—the more he excluded me. And I didn’t especially like the Victor who had begun to emerge: a frantic scribbling pervert, a cloistered maniac. Pure evil isn’t very interesting; it has no depth. Frankly, it conflicted with my vision.

Not to mention that I was worried about the impact on sales. Who’d want to buy a drawing by a serial killer?

AS IT TURNS OUT, a lot of people. My phone began ringing off the hook. Collectors I knew, others I knew of but had never met, and an assortment of unsavory types began leaving me messages or showing up to talk to me about Victor Cracke. At first I was pleased at the spike in interest, but after the first few calls I understood that they were less interested in the art than the sordid tale behind it. Apparently, having “sociopathic sex offender/ murderer” on your resume was worth more than an MFA from RISD.

Is it true he raped them, one man wanted to know. Because he had just opened up the perfect wall space in his dining room.

I knew things had gotten out of hand when I started hearing from Hollywood. A well-known director of independent films called to ask if I would loan some of the pieces out for use as a backdrop in a music video.

I called Marilyn.

“Oh, relax,” she said, “I’m just having a little fun.”

“Please stop spreading rumors.”

“It’s called creating buzz.”

“What did you tell people?”

“As much as you told me. If folks get overexcited, that says much more about them than about you, me, or the art.”

“You’re letting the story get away from me,” I said.

“I didn’t realize you had a copyright.”

“You know as well as I do the importance of managing the discourse, and—”

“That’s precisely what I’m trying to demonstrate, darlin: you need to stop trying to manage the discourse. Loosen up.”

“Even if,” I said, “even if that’s true, I don’t need you spreading rumors.”

“I told you, I—”

“Marilyn. Marilyn. Shhhhh. Stop. Just stop doing it, okay? Whatever you want to call it, knock it off.” And I hung up on her, much angrier than I’d realized.

From across the room, Nat gave me a look.

“She told everyone that he was a pedophile.”

He snickered.

“That’s not funny.”

“Well,” said Ruby, “it kind of is.”

I threw up my hands and walked to my computer.

ABOUT A WEEK AFTER MY MEETING with McGrath, I still hadn’t sent him a copy of the drawing. When he called, I had Ruby and Nat stonewall him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Muller isn’t available right now. Can I take a message? Right. We have your number here already. I’m sure he’ll call you when he has a free moment. Thank you.” I felt nervous putting him off; I didn’t want to give the impression that I was scared. I wasn’t. Let me make that plain: McGrath didn’t scare me at all. He was old, he was retired, and he wanted to get Victor, not me; to him I was nothing more than a source of information. And since I had nothing to be ashamed of, not really, I might have decided to play along.

Just because he hadn’t threatened me, though, that didn’t mean I had to go out of my way to help him. I decided that if he wanted to look at the drawing he could come to the gallery, like everyone else.

All that changed when I opened the mail that afternoon. Tucked in with the bills and postcards was a plain white envelope bearing a New York postmark, addressed to E. Muller, the Muller Gallery, fourth floor, 567 West Twenty-fifth Street, NY, NY 10001.

I opened it up. Inside was a letter. It said, five hundred times,

STOP

The handwriting—cramped, uniform, shaky—I recognized as I might my own. Although it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to notice that the very same handwriting hung all around the gallery, calling out the names of rivers, roads, nations, landmarks—thousand of examples by which to confirm that Victor Cracke had written to me.

And Solomon Mueller rebegat himself, Solomon Muller.

And Solomon Muller begat daughters, who married into other firms.

And his brother Bernard, lazy as always, wed late and had no children. His chief interests—horses, parties, tobacco—kept him occupied until he died at the ripe old age of ninety-one, having outlived all three of his industrious brothers.

And the third brother, Adolph, begat two boys, Morris and Arthur, neither of whom proved financially adept. At first Solomon extended them a long leash. “People must make mistakes to learn,” he told Adolph. But soon enough the elders came to understand that the only lesson the boys had taken from their mistakes was that they could make mistakes without consequence. Adolph turned his hair white trying to find them jobs worthy of their surnames yet that did not imperil the family fortune.

And the youngest brother, Simon, begat Walter, who became like a son to Solomon, and who inherited the crown when his cousins proved worthless. Walter had an old-world quality to him, a refinement and slyness that spoke of the noble European roots the Mullers now boasted.

That Solomon had come penniless, that he had begged seed money, that he had pushed a cart for ten thousand miles—all effaced from the family history. Everyone came together to decide that no, contrary to popular opinion, the Mullers came from regal stock. They hired a genealogist, in whose hands Jewish paupers (Hayyim, Avrohom, Yonason) became German aristocracy (Heinrich, Alfred, Johann). A coat of arms appeared on the company letterhead. Churches were joined, clubs established. Loans to the Union cause, extended by Solomon, came due, leading to dinners eaten at the White House, the signing of lucrative government contracts, the passing of motions on the Senate floor, declaring the Mullers First Citizens of the United States of America.

Isaac Singer spoke the truth. You became your claim.

And Walter, fashioned in his uncle’s form, begat Louis.

And Louis begat consternation when he was discovered receiving fellatio from a kitchen boy. What was wrong with the scullery maids? They had suited Bernard just fine. What was wrong with women, with the debutantes falling all over themselves for the handsome young millionaire, swooning at their cotillions, competing to see who could stand longest in his presence, by silent consensus electing him the most eligible bachelor in Manhattan—if not the entire Eastern Seaboard—what was wrong with them? What was wrong with women? Daughters of partners to strengthen bonds, daughters of competitors to forge new ones, daughters of foreign dignitaries and of city politicians and of state senators, daughters from the old country; what was wrong with any of them? What was wrong with a woman, a polite and pretty and proper and sturdy-hipped heir-bearing woman, what was wrong? What? What in the world could be wrong with women?