The Horse You Came in On (27 page)

“Stepbrother. Alan's my stepbrother. I don't know about that night, but he certainly knew her.” He turned his head, rubbed at his neck. “His mother married my father. It was—difficult. Hard for Alan, I mean. Everyone else got on like a house afire. Not Alan. He doesn't like me much, see. For one thing, I have the money.”

“I see.”

“No, you don't. I mean
money
money. Old money.
Very
old money. Well-used money. A lot of—” He sketched a dollar sign in the air. He seemed defensive, slightly guilty.

“Yet, you teach.”

“Well, that's because I like it. And I don't do much.” He grinned. “Ask my students, they'll tell you.” The grin vanished. “There was a trust fund for Alan, but that soon went. And he hasn't got a head for business. He's clever, that's for certain. Nouveau Pauvre was his idea. But he can't seem to channel the cleverness into anything lasting. What he needs is an endless waterfall of money to indulge his fantasies. Trouble is, he hasn't got it, and I have, which doesn't endear me to him.”

“What about Beverly Brown?”

“What about her?”

“Did your relationship with her make him jealous?”

“Yes.” The syllable was curt. He offered no assistance.

The silence lengthened. Jury waited.

Muldare studied the football, then said, “I can't really say I blame Alan. After all, he saw her first.”

Jury laughed; he couldn't help himself—the statement was so reminiscent of arguments he remembered having in his adolescence, maybe earlier, with some other boy, school chum.
Hey! I saw her first!

Patrick Muldare grinned, as if he, too, remembered, and as if he, too, heard in his own words an echo of adolescence, the teenager still trapped inside the man. And he didn't seem to mind the joke being on him. “Well, you know what I mean.”

Jury nodded. “I get the impression the jealousy was rather violent?”

“Not
that
violent, Superintendent,” Muldare said, now very serious. “Alan's not the type.”

“I don't know if there is or isn't a type.”

“You see, the jealousy wouldn't have been just over a woman, a girl. It would have been another loss to me in what Alan must have thought a long line of losses. Even his mother seemed to like me more. He's not a happy person. It's too bad.”

There was another long silence. Jury looked at the bookcase. “You like football?”

Patrick Muldare threw back his head and laughed uproariously. “How'd you ever guess? Thought I'd covered my tracks pretty well.” The change in his expression was remarkable.

“Ellen Taylor was talking about you. Then I kind of worked it out for myself. I
am
a detective.”

“Brilliant.” He tossed the ball to Jury, who nearly fumbled it before tossing it back. Muldare grinned. “I like Ellen. She's not full of bullshit, like a few others. Have you read her book?” In an awkward acrobatic motion, rather like a man reaching back to catch a pass, he plucked a book down from a shelf behind him. “
Windows,
it's called.” He held up the cover for Jury's inspection, then opened it, grunted, snapped it shut, and held it against his chest, together with the ball, a kid with two teddy bears, as he studied the ceiling. “Weirdly compelling.”

“I don't think I understood it, exactly.”

“Aah, ‘understand' . . . Me either, but I kept on reading it, and that's the whole point, isn't it?” His look at Jury was wide-eyed and innocent. “Don't tell her I didn't understand it, will you?”

How Jury had come to know Ellen, Muldare didn't ask. Indeed, he didn't seem to question much, simply accepted things as they entered his life, as if life were just one long forward pass.

“Hardly,” said Jury, smiling. “I didn't tell her I didn't understand it. So I'll just say you kept on reading.” From his pocket he drew the catalog and opened it to the page he'd marked, reading, “ ‘The Psycho-socio Impact of the NFL in the Late Twentieth Century.' Speaking of not understanding—what does
that
mean?”

Patrick Muldare looked up at the ceiling and then around the office, lips moving slightly as if he were searching for laymen's language. “Nothing.” He flashed Jury another grin.

“Nothing.”

“It's supposed to sound academic and at the same time be a turn-off for guys who think I'm just going to talk about football.”

“So what
do
you talk about?”

“Football.” Now the grin split his face and stretched ear to ear.

“It must be popular, once word gets around.”

“Oh, you bet.” Happily, he spun the ball on the tip of his index finger, let it fall in his palm. “We're hoping Baltimore's getting the franchise.”

“Your stepbrother mentioned that.”

“For an expansion team.”

Jury nodded toward the glass-fronted case. “You had one—”

Swiftly, Muldare shot his arms in the air, hands fisted. “Yes!” He might have been sitting in the bleachers. “The Colts.”

“Then the city's got to go through some kind of red tape to get another one?”

“It's more than red tape. The NFL only awards a certain number of franchises; we've got to prove we deserve one. That we had the Colts helps. But St. Louis had the Cardinals, too. The NFL hasn't expanded since ' 76. Now they appear to be willing to give out two franchises. Only two.
But
they could even call that off any time they want, because they left themselves legal loopholes. Say they do award them, though—in a couple of months, March, there'll be a short list. And that will cite three—” this time it was three fingers in the air—
“three
possibles. In October, they'll let us know the two out of three.” He shut his eyes tightly, looking pained, as if already seeing Baltimore in third place. “This expansion team thing has been going on for seven, eight years, ever since Isray—the Colts' owner—tossed the helmets and jerseys in a bunch of moving vans back in '84 and did what I think you guys call a ‘moonlight flit.' He was afraid the city would get an injunction to keep the team here. Bastard.”

“How good is Baltimore's chance?”

“Very. Not, though, as good as a lot of people want to believe. It's really complicated. A lot of money's involved, and, naturally, the city has to have a stadium.”

“You've got a new one.”

“Camden Yards is for the Orioles. Just for baseball. Oh, what a stadium that is! I go down there just to sit and look at it. But we've still got Memorial Stadium, so that's no problem. Baltimore will likely be one of the three, but it's the first two that count, and it's my bet Charlotte will head the list. That's in North Carolina,” he added helpfully. “And then there are all the wheels within wheels: the various people and groups who want to buy and manage a team and who have to convince the NFL they're the ones that can do it. People and groups with money and clout have been popping up, dropping out, forming, re-forming for years here. Financiers, hoteliers—even authors. Tom Clancy's one of them.”

“The writer?” When Muldare nodded, Jury said, “But surely you're talking about millions.”

“A
lot
of millions. Clancy has money, but not that kind. What he's got is marquee value. Like Barry Levinson. You know, the movie guy. The director. Trouble there is Levinson doesn't have the controlling interest in his particular group. Then there's me—” in mock self-congratulation, Muldare inclined his head, smiling—“who also paid my one hundred thousand to get my foot in the door.”

Ellen had said Muldare was rich. That rich? Jury's surprise showed in his face.

“Well, I've got backers, too. Yeah, I might be able to raise one or two hundred million, but then there's money to buy the players and so forth. What I'm doing right now is trying to buy the name back. The Colts name. If Isray will sell it. I need to do something, oh—” he squinted upwards, still turning, turning the football between his fingers—“glittery, something stagy, something—
Hollywood
. You know?” He let the football drop softly in his lap as he drew a banner-like stripe in the air.

Jury smiled. “Marquee value.”

“You bet,” said Muldare. “Thing is, if you were an owner, if you were sitting around the table with the other owners, who'd you rather chew the rag with? Clancy, Hollywood, or just some tweedy teacher type—a Colts devotee, sure, but still . . . ?” He shrugged, tossed the ball up, caught it.

And in his mind, ran it, Jury imagined. Marquee value. Jury frowned slightly as he studied the rim of light around the bookcase, then the shelves themselves, crammed with souvenirs of old games—miniature helmets, a couple of scruffy-looking pigskins, pens, ticket stubs, photos.

And he wondered: just how much marquee value would Edgar Allan Poe have?

He wondered this as Muldare's football got him right in the stomach. “Uh!”

“Reflexes—reflexes, Superintendent.” Pat Muldare grinned.

It took some convincing to get Hughie to disgorge Melrose into Cider Alley, not because its prospect was somewhat dim and more than a little scruffy, but because it was so near the new ballpark. Camden Yards, home to the Baltimore Orioles, was a must-see on Hughie's tour list, second only to the Baltimore Aquarium. That Melrose would be stepping out of his cab within breathing distance of this spanking-new stadium and not into its glorious environs was something that left Hughie speechless—and that was saying a great deal. The cab did speed off, but only with a promise from Melrose that the tour would continue later.

Cider Alley was just what its name suggested, a short and narrow street, little more than a passage, connecting Eutaw and Paca streets. There was nothing here by way of commerce that Melrose could see, except for what appeared to be the rear of what might have been a bar or a club, through the glass doors of which a handful of people came and went. Further along, past several dark doorways, Melrose saw a small band of people, these appearing to be permanent residents of Cider Alley. Three men were smoking and tilting bottles in brown sacks to their lips; a fourth was warming his hands over the low flames of an oil drum. Melrose approached them, thereby igniting a thirst for charitable contributions that matched the thirst for hard drink. One and all they asked for a variety of handouts, ranging from a quarter (that ubiquitous quarter) to, after they had a better chance to inspect his clothes and up the ante, a dollar. Melrose was pleased to oblige and offered even more in return for information. He had often remarked that money could open mouths, eyes, and, occasionally, even hearts.

“Hey, m'
mahn
!” retorted the black man in mirror sunglasses. “You ain't the police, is you? We got the fuckin'
po
-lice up the ass.”

“It's been my experience police don't offer money in exchange for information. They just shoot you.”

A round of ribald laughter, and a fat man said, “It's about John-Joy, ain't it? They come round here asking questions after John-Joy got his-self smoked.”

“Yes. It's a personal, not a police, matter.”

“You fambly? Always said he had fambly,” said the androgynous mass of rags by the oil drum who Melrose had taken for a man and who turned out to be female, or at least Melrose thought so.

“Did he, then?” Doesn't everyone, more or less?

“John-Joy, he was on and on about his people,” said another black man, leaning against the wall. “ ‘I got the doin's!' John-Joy say. ‘I got the doin's!' ” And here he slapped at the area of his heart.

Melrose frowned. “ ‘The doin's'? What did he mean by that, do you think?”

The black shrugged, lifted his pint bottle, and, seeing that the line was dangerously low, shook it just a bit for their visitor's inspection. Melrose said he would be happy to buy him a drink and pressed a note into his hand. “That there,” said the man, hooking his thumb over his shoulder, indicating, apparently, a wire basket on wheels that Melrose thought might be the sort one pushes around in the enormous supermarkets of this country, supermarkets like small cities. It was piled high with the detritus of life on the streets.

The black man nodded and said, “Them's the doin's, we reckon.” He smiled broadly.

The “doings” consisted of a couple of blankets, a bundle of old clothes, shopping bags full of cast-off items probably garnered from rubbish bins, like the quarter-full green carton of Cascade dishwashing powder. Also books, and Melrose found that a little odd, given the man's position. And papers. “Why didn't the police take possession of these?”

“Dint know about it, mahn. Wouldn'ta cared if they
did
. John-Joy, he a
street
dude, mahn.”

“But they did question you, didn't they?” Melrose picked up one of the volumes, stained and fox-marked—an account of the Civil War, it appeared to be. Then there were pamphlets, notebooks, old ledgers, one of which looked like it might have come out of the St. James Hotel with its list of names.

The black man snorted. “They don't pay no attention to us, mahn. Ast us did we see anythin', hear anythin'. I say, ‘Yeah, mahn, we see the moon, we hear the rain.' ”

Melrose smiled. “Good answer. What's your name, if you don't mind my asking.”

“No, I don' mind. Estes. Easy, they call me. I'm Jamaican, mahn.”

“Well,
besides
the moon and the rain, did you see anything, Estes? Or any of you?”

“Only me and Carl was here. Twyla was gone.” He nodded towards the
woman. “So was Bernard.” Nod towards the fat man wearing a poncho. Estes shook his head. “Nope.”

“Hmm. Where did they find him?” Melrose looked down the alley.