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With this in mind, my only fear is that Kutting-Blok knives will become linked in the public mind with a series of deeds that people might misunderstand.

Too many people will see my preference as a kind of endorsement. Like Jack the Ripper doing a television commercial.

Ted Bundy for Such & Such Brand rope.

Lee Harvey Oswald pitching Such & Such Brand rifle.

A kind of negative endorsement, true. Maybe even something that would hurt your market share and net sales. Especially in the upcoming retail Christmas season.

It's standard procedure at all major newspapers, the moment they hear about a big jetliner disaster—a midair collision, a hijacking, a runway crash—they know to pull all the big display advertisements for airlines that day. Because, within minutes, every airline will call to cancel their ad, even if it means paying full price for a space they won't use. A space filled at the last moment with a freebie promo ad for the American Cancer Society or Muscular Dystrophy. Because no airline wants to risk being associated with the day's bad, bad news. The hundreds dead. Being linked that way in the public mind.

It takes very little effort to recall what the so-called Tylenol Murders did for that product's stock. With seven people dead, just the 1982 recall of their product cost Johnson & Johnson $125 million.

That kind of negative endorsement, it's the opposite of an advertisement. Like what critics do with their snide reviews, printed only to show how clever and bitter they've become.

The details of each target, including the knife used, it's all still so fresh in my mind. It would take very little effort for the police to make me confess, to make it public record, the wide variety of your excellent knives I've used and for what purpose.

Forever after, people will refer to the “Kutting-Blok Knife Murders” or the “Kutting-Blok Serial Killings.” Your company is so much better known than anonymous little me. You have a knife in so many kitchens, already. It would be a horrible shame to see your generations of quality and hard work wrecked because of my project.

Please bear in mind, food critics don't buy many knives. Knock on wood, but industry sympathy in this case might well be with me. Me, a grass-roots hero. You never know.

Any small investment you can make, it will benefit us both.

The more resources you can provide me to evade capture, the less likely it will be that this unfortunate fact is ever known to the average knife-consumer. A gift of as little as five million dollars would allow me to emigrate and live unnoticed in another country, far, far outside your market demographic. That money will guarantee your company a steady rise into a bright future. For me, the money will allow me to retrain in a new field of work, a new career.

Or, for as little as one million dollars, I will switch to Sta-Sharp knives—and if arrested will swear I've used only their substandard products throughout my project . . .

One million dollars. How's that for brand loyalty?

To contribute, please run a display advertisement this upcoming Sunday, in your local daily newspaper. Upon seeing that ad, I will contact you about accepting your help. Until then, I must continue with my work. Otherwise, you can expect another target.

Thank you for considering my request. I look forward to hearing from you, soon.

In this world, where so few people will devote their lives to producing a product of lasting quality, I applaud you.

I remain, as always, your biggest fan,

Richard Talbott

15

Behind the lobby snack bar, the microwave oven dings, once, twice, three times, and the light inside shuts off. Chef Assassin pops open the door, and takes out a paper plate covered with a sheet of paper towel. He lifts the towel, and steam mushrooms into the cold lobby air. On the plate, a few long curls of meat still pop and spit, steaming in their pools of melted grease.

Chef Assassin sets the plate on the snack bar's marble countertop and says, “Who wants thirds?”

Standing around the lobby, here and there, tucked into the shadow of alcoves and niches, in the coat-check window and usher's stand, Mrs. Clark and Miss America, Countess Foresight and the Earl of Slander, all of us stand, chewing. Grease shines bright on our chins and the tips of our fingers. Each of us holds a damp paper plate in one hand. Chewing.

“Quick, before they get cold,” Chef Assassin says. “These have Cajun spices. It's to hide the flowery smell.”

It's the smell of Comrade Snarky's perfume or bath powder, maybe her lace handkerchief, something sweet with the smell of roses. Chef Assassin says two-thirds of your sense of taste is based on how a food smells.

Miss America steps over and holds out her plate. Chef Assassin puts a brown curl of meat in his own mouth, then plucks it out with his fingers, fast. “It's still hot,” he says, and blows on it. With his other hand, he drops little curls of meat on Miss America's plate.

Her plate full, Miss America disappears to stand, almost hidden, behind the coat-check counter. The wall and racks of wooden hangers behind her. The hangers all empty except for the little numbered brass tag on each one.

The lobby air is rich with cookout smells, fatty bacon smells, hamburger smells, burned-fat and grease-fire smells. And all of us stand here chewing. Nobody says: Should we go get more? Nobody says: We need to wrap what's left and haul it to the subbasement before it becomes a public-health issue . . .

No, we stand here, licking our fingers.

Each of us writing and rewriting our story of this moment. We're inventing how Mr. Whittier butchered Comrade Snarky. And what her ghost did, for revenge.

Nobody sees her come down the stairs. Nobody hears her walking down the carpet from the second-balcony foyer. Nobody looks up until she says, “You have food?”

It's Comrade Snarky. In her heaped layers of fairy-godmother ball gowns. Her piled-on layers of