"I gotta speak like Morelli, think like him, and know everyone he knows." Schultz’ lowered his voice and perfectly matched Morelli’s accent and raspy quality. He closed his makeup case and smiled into his mirror. Morelli’s double smiled back, complete with heavy eyebrows, black, graying hair, and his ever-present, wrap-around sunglasses. An added touch was a tattoo of a screaming eagle on his left forearm, something Morelli often displayed. "I really look like the bastard," exclaimed Schultz.

    Later, under a midnight thunderstorm, a heavier Schultz carefully scaled the high wall of Morelli’s compound. He pumped tranquillizer darts into two snarling guard dogs, disabled the mansion’s electronic alarm system, unlocked a basement door, and silently climbed a back staircase to the target’s third-floor bedroom.

    A second counterfeit key unlocked the door between Schultz and his kill. The rest had been easy. He knocked out his snoring prey with the butt of a stolen pistol bought from a back-alley thug, and, just to be sure of a long sleep, shoved a tranquilizer dart into Morelli’s fat neck.

    Under the beam of his tiny flashlight, Schultz quietly swapped his wet clothes for Morelli’s silk pajamas, shaved off the unconscious man’s mustache and hair, thinned his bushy eyebrows, and flushed the hair down the toilet. He slipped colored contacts into the gangster's eyes and covered his victim’s teeth with cheap plastic ones. He made Morelli's rings and watch his own, and slipped his gloves on Morelli. Applying theatrical makeup, he darkened the man's shaved head. Then clawed at Morelli’s face.

    Hiding Morelli’s eagle tattoo took time. Schultz bleached-out the tattoo and smoothed on more makeup to match the surrounding skin.

    Satisfied, he yelled and cursed, and knocked over the bedside lamp. Clamping the untraceable pistol into the unconscious Morelli’s hand, he squeezed two rounds into the headboard. Using Morelli's own bedside gun, Schultz fired two bullets point-blank into the man's forehead, and rolled him onto the floor.

    "Now your own mudder wouldn’t recognize ya," whispered Schultz, slipping into character. "Now, I’ll show them damn critics what real acting is!"

    Footsteps pounded up the stairs. Two sleepy guards with drawn pistols burst through the bedroom door. They stared at the bleeding body on the floor, and the man masquerading as their boss.

    Schultz kicked the dead man. "How’d this bastard get in here?" His rage mimicked Morelli’s.

    "I...I...d-don’t know, boss," muttered the wide-eyed first bodyguard, a bull-necked man with hairy arms and chest.

    "He tried to kill me!" screamed Schultz. "Where in the hell were you two idiots? You’re supposed to be my body guards."

    "In da kitchen, boss...drinkin’ coffee," replied the bull-necked gorilla.

    "We didn’t hear nothin’...till...till ya yelled," shrugged the second man, a baldheaded goon with cauliflower ears and grapefruit face.

    Schultz smashed his smoking pistol in the man’s face, breaking his nose, something Morelli would have done.

    The big man staggered, nose gushing blood. "Boss, we...we...didn’t hear nothin’. Honest."

    "Get this piece of crap outta here!" ordered Schultz, again kicking the cadaver.

    "You want we should call da police?"

    Schultz waived his pistol in the man’s bloody face. "Stupid!" he yelled.

    The guard cowered.

    "No, I don’t want youse callin’ the cops." His gravelly voice duplicated Morelli's.

    It was the performance of his life. He loved it. The only thing better would have been a standing ovation, and good reviews.

    The corpse was dumped under tons of wet concrete in what the broken-nose guard called "the tomb of the unknown assassin." It would rest beneath a 30-foot pillar supporting a new freeway span in the nearby mountains.

    Schultz stepped comfortably into his new role as Morelli, directing day-to-day criminal operations of the north side: drugs, gambling, loan sharking, prostitution, extortion and racketeering. Underlings and crime figures accepted his leadership without question. His one legitimate business, Morelli Construction was more involved with graft, union kickbacks and money laundering, than building.

    He smiled at a sign above Morelli’s desk, a sign rumored about for years. It read: THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET, IF TWO ARE DEAD!

    The actor never broke character as he lived out his fantasies: lavish parties, expensive foods, and imported cigars, wines and liquors.

    He had money and power...and loved it.

    Everything behind the proscenium footlights had been make-believe. Now, everything was real, from money, power and guns to the endless parade of beautiful young women he commanded. He had it all.

    It was the perfect crime.

    His only regret: he couldn't tell anyone he was playing the greatest role of his life. He deserved a Broadway Tony Award, or a Hollywood Oscar, or both.

    Then...

* * *

    "You Jake Morelli?" The burly questioner flashed a badge. "You're under arrest for the murder of Robert Schultz."

    "What ya talkin’ about?"

    "You have the right to remain silent..."

    A second officer twisted the suspect’s arms behind his back and snapped handcuffs on his wrists.

    "...and if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you."

"Don't know no Robert Schultz," protested the counterfeit Morelli, never breaking character.

* * *

    The jury's decision had been swift: conviction for first degree murder.

    The evidence: overwhelming.

    The penalty: death.

    The two bullets in the deceased’s head were traced to Morelli’s gun, found in his night stand. Morelli’s broken-nose bodyguard, eager to reduce his life sentence as an accomplice, confirmed the shooting.

    "You say he was a burglar, Mr. Morelli?" questioned the prosecutor. "Then why didn’t you call the police?"

    "You wouldn’t have believed me anyway," said the mock Morelli.

    The coroner testified the badly decomposed body was that of a long-missing character actor named Robert Schultz. The remains were traced through an obscure laundry mark on his jacket.

    The body had been found under the base of a support tower when a poorly constructed span of a new mountain freeway collapsed during a storm.

    The contractor was Morelli Construction.

    Months later Schultz was strapped on the metal table, a needle in his arm. Thin plastic tubes twisted through the wall to an unseen executioner.

    Nearby, behind closed curtains, a few reporters, prison guards and nervous witnesses quietly waited. It was near midnight.

    A priest whispered into the condemned man’s ear. "Any last words, Mr. Morelli? It's not too late to hear your confession, my son."

    Schultz laughed.

* * *

    "It was strange," the death-chamber priest confided later to a fellow cleric. "Morelli said over and over he wasn’t Big Jake Morelli. Said he was really actor Robert Schultz, and that he had killed Morelli. Had taken his place."

    "That doesn’t make sense," shrugged the second priest.

    "He just kept laughing and muttering as the lethal injection took hold: ‘I killed myself! I killed myself!'"

    "Maybe he was crazy?"

    The first priest paused and shook his head. "Maybe. But one thing’s for sure."

    "What's that?"

    "He wasn’t Robert Schultz. Couldn’t be. I saw Schultz many times on stage--and he wasn't very good. Didn't have the talent to play a killer like Big Jake Morelli. Not in a million years."