The Usual Suspects

   No, really, this is too much. Mortimer Zuckerman has been working overtime. On Friday, Mr. Zuckerman, publisher of The New York Daily News among other publications, real estate developer, longtime escort of brainy and beautiful women, and East Hampton man-about-the-benefit-circuit, was married, in Washington, D.C., to an expert on the works of Willem de Kooning. Friends of the eligible Mr. Zuckerman, having written him off as marriage material eons ago, could hardly credit it. In fact, his wedding was eclipsed in the have-you-heard department only by that of an even more famous bachelor with the initials J.F.K. Jr.

   Then came the news that Mr. Zuckerman is among a select clutch of celebrities to be featured next spring, as their real-life selves, in the pages of "Further Lane," a novel by James Brady, who lives guess where and is a former publisher of Women's Wear Daily.

   "Further Lane," which is said to open on the beach at the Maidstone Club, is a murder mystery, and Mr. Zuckerman, we hear, is one of the key suspects. The others include such Hamptons denizens as Martha Stewart, Donna Karan, Billy Joel, George Plimpton, Calvin and Kelly Klein, Peter G. Peterson, and Peggy Siegal.

   Did Mort Zuckerman do it? We'll have to wait till "Further Lane" is published to find out. It seems not at all unlikely, though, considering that on Monday, three days after his marriage, the bridegroom, described by The New York Times as a "ruthless businessman," unexpectedly fired The News's editor-in-chief - thus setting off a whole new round of talk and speculation in which his name is certain to figure prominently.