Name the Killer

Hello, Felix. Thank you for coming.

You'll have noticed I'm not here — and the man I threatened to kill isn't here either. Don't be angry; you can still save him. Just listen to the end.

For a year I followed these men across the world, meaning to end it the way you'd expect — me, in handcuffs. But something changed. Watching their small, comfortable lives, I found I no longer yearned for an end to my life as I knew it. I wanted, for the first time, to live — to have the life that was taken from me. Stolen. Let me tell you what was stolen.

You know St. Clement's. How we sat up straighter when a motorcar came through the gate — every one of us thinking, this time they have come for me.

I had almost given up hope. Then one day she came, all the way from England. A green coat, and gloves the color of butter. At each boy she crouched down and looked, really looked, as though he were the only child in the yard. And when she came to me, she stopped longest of all. Her eyes filled. And I knew. She had chosen me. Me. Her husband would collect me on his way through Vienna, in a few days. I had only to wait.

The man I have hunted all this year has a name. Ralphie Coyle. The biggest of the orphans at St. Clement's, and the cruelest. Perhaps you remember him.

The morning the husband was to come, I waited in the corridor in my little pressed suit, too happy to eat, ready for the life that was finally coming for me. And Ralphie saw his chance. He tied me up, forced a handkerchief across my mouth, and locked me in the linen closet in the dark.

When the husband came, Ralphie surely stepped forward and said, I am the one you have come for. And the busy man must've decided one boy was the same as another. He took Ralphie to England. And he gave him to her.

Here is the part I have never been able to hold in my mind, Felix. She knew me. She had crouched in the dirt and chosen me. Me. A woman like that does not mistake a loud stranger for the child she chose. She knew it was not me. And she did not come back.

After that, the street raised me. A man who controlled every pickpocket and petty thief in the neighborhood took me in. I learned to move through a crowd like water and leave it lighter. Pockets, watches, the trusting hands of strangers. So yes, Felix — I am a criminal.

Which brings me to the man in the hotel. Ralphie Coyle, grown now — but still a despicable, overgrown child. You'll find him in the Cavalieri Nero, on Via delle Ombre. Room nine. He's alive, for now. Hours ago he swallowed a poison. But it works slowly, and you have time, if you don't waste it.

I'm sorry — truly — for the first death; that one I can't take back. But this one I'm handing to you. The antidote is behind the stone to your left. Take it. Give it to him. I won't carry him on my conscience when I finally begin to live.

One more thing, Felix. Don't follow me. I am still, when provoked, a very lethal man.

Goodbye, Detective. Live well. I intend to.

— Cosimo Amato