The Throat (38 page)

"Tim
Underhill," John said.

"Professor
Underhill," Joyce said. "And this here is Mrs. Ransom, Professor
Ransom's mother. My dad, William Trott."

"Just
call me Bill." The little man extended his already carnivorous smile
and grasped Marjorie's right hand in his left, so that he could squeeze
hands with both of us at once. "Thought it was a good obituary, didn't
you? We worked hard on that one, and it was all worth it."

None of
us had seen the morning paper.

"Oh,
yes," Marjorie said.

"Just
want to express our sorrow. From this point on the thing is just to
relax and enjoy it, and remember, we're always here to help you." He
let go of our hands.

Marjorie
rubbed her palms together.

Just
Call Me Bill gave a smile intended to be sympathetic and backed away.
"My little girl will be taking you into the Chapel of Rest. We'll lead
your guests in at the time of the memorial service."

By this
time he had moved six paces backward, and on his last word he abruptly
turned around and took off with surprising speed down a long dark
hallway.

Just
Call Me Joyce watched him fondly for a couple of seconds. "He's gonna
turn on the first part of the musical program, that's your background
for your private meditations and that. We got the chairs all set up,
and when your guests and all show up, we'd like you to move to the
left-hand side of the front row, that's for immediate family." She
blinked at me. "And close friends."

She
pressed her right hand against the mound of her belly and with her left
gestured toward the hallway. John moved beside her, and together they
stepped into the hallway. Organ music oozed from distant speakers. Alan
drifted into the hallway like a sleepwalker. Ralph stepped in beside
him. "So you keep on getting born over and over? What's the payoff?"

I could
not hear Alan's mumbled response, but the question pulled him back into
the moment, and he raised his head and began moving more decisively.

"I
didn't know you were one of John's professor friends," Marjorie said.

"It was
a fairly recent promotion," I said.

"Ralph
and I are so proud of you." She patted my arm as we followed the others
into a ballroom filled with soft light and the rumble of almost
stationary organ music. Rows of folding chairs stood on either side of
a central aisle leading to a podium banked with wreaths and flowers in
vases. On a raised platform behind the podium, a deeply polished bronze
coffin lay on a long table draped in black fabric. The top quarter of
the coffin had been folded back like the lid of a piano to reveal
plump, tufted white upholstering. April Ransom's profile, at an angle
given her head by a firm white satin pillow, pointed beyond the open
lid to the pocked acoustic tile of the ceiling.

"Your
brochures are right here." Just Call Me Joyce waved at a highly
polished rectangular mahogany table set against the wall. Neat stacks
of a folded yellow page stood beside a pitcher of water and a stack of
plastic cups. At the end of the table was a coffee dispenser.

Everybody
in the room but Alan Brookner took their eyes from April Ransom's
profile and looked at the yellow leaflets.

"Yay
Though I Walk is a real good choice, we always think."

Alan was
staring at his daughter's corpse from a spot about five feet inside the
door.

Joyce
said, "She looks just beautiful, even from way back here you can see
that."

She
began pulling Alan along with her. After an awkward moment, he fell
into step.

John
followed after them, his parents close behind. Joyce Brophy brought
Alan up to the top of the coffin. John moved beside him. His parents
and I took positions further down the side.

Up
close, April's coffin seemed as large as a rowboat. She was visible to
the waist, where her hands lay folded. Joyce Brophy leaned over and
smoothed out a wrinkle in the white jacket. When she straightened up,
Alan bent over the coffin and kissed his daughter's forehead.

"I'll be
down the hall in the office in case you folks need anything." Joyce
took a backward step and turned around and ploughed down the aisle. She
was wearing large, dirty running shoes.

Just
Call Me Joyce had applied too much lipstick of too bright a shade to
April's mouth, and along her cheekbones ran an artificial line of pink.
The vibrant cap of blond hair had been arranged to conceal something
that had been done at the autopsy. Death had subtracted the lines
around April's eyes and mouth. She looked like an empty house.

"Doesn't
she look beautiful, John?" asked Marjorie.

"Uh
huh," John said.

Alan
touched April's powdered cheek. "My poor baby," he said.

"It's
just so damn… awful," Ralph said.

Alan
moved away toward the first row of seats.

The
Ransoms left the coffin and took the two seats on the left-hand aisle
of the first row. Ralph crossed his arms over his chest in a gesture
his son had learned from him.

John
took a chair one space away from his mother and two spaces from me.
Alan was sitting on the other side of the aisle, examining a yellow
leaflet.

We
listened for a time to the motionless organ music.

I
remembered the descriptions of my sister's funeral. April's mourners
had filled half of Holy Sepulchre. According to my mother, she had
looked "peaceful" and "beautiful." My vibrant sister, sometimes
vibrantly unhappy, that furious blond blur, that slammer of doors, that
demon of boredom, so emptied out that she had become peaceful? In that
case, she had left everything to me, passed everything into my hands.

I wanted
to tear the past apart, to dismember it on a bloody table.

I stood
up and walked to the back of the room. I took the leaflet from my
jacket pocket and read the words on the front of the cover.

Yea,
though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
        I shall fear
no evil.

I sat
down in the last row of chairs.

Ralph
Ransom whispered to his wife, stood up, patted his son's shoulder, and
began wandering down the far left side of the chapel. When he got close
enough to be heard if he spoke softly, he said, "Hey," as if he just
noticed that I had moved to the last row. He jerked his thumb toward
the back of the room. "You suppose they got some coffee in that thing?"

That was
not the question he wanted to ask.

We went
to the table. The coffee was almost completely without taste. For a few
seconds the two of us stood at the back of the room, watching the other
three look at or not look at April Ransom in her enormous bronze boat.

"I hear
you knew my boy in Vietnam."

"I met
him there a couple of times."

Now he
could ask me.

He
looked at me over the top of his cup, swallowed, and grimaced at the
heat of the coffee. "You wouldn't happen to be from Millhaven yourself,
would you, Professor Underhill?"

"Please,"
I said, "just call me Tim."

I smiled
at him, and he smiled back.

"Are you
a Millhaven boy, Tim?"

"I grew
up about a block from the St. Alwyn."

"You're
Al Underhill's boy," he said. "By God, I knew you reminded me of
somebody, and when we were in the car I finally got it—Al Underhill.
You take after him."

"I guess
I do, a little bit."

He
looked at me as though measuring the distance between my father and
myself and shook his head. "Al Underhill. I haven't thought about him
in forty years. I guess you know he used to work for me, back in the
days when I owned the St. Alwyn."

"After
John told me that you used to own the hotel, I did."

"We
hated like hell to let him go, you know.
I
knew he had a family.
I
knew
what he was going through. If he could have stayed off the sauce,
everything would have worked out all right."

"He
couldn't help himself," I said. Ralph Ransom was being kind—he was not
going to mention the thefts that had led to my father's firing.
Probably he would not have stolen so much if he had managed to stay
sober.

"Your
sister, wasn't it? That started him off, I mean."

I nodded.

"Terrible
thing. I can remember it just like it was yesterday."

"Me,
too," I said.

After a
moment, he asked, "How is Al these days?"

I told
him that my father had died four years ago.

"That's
a shame. I liked Al—if it hadn't been for what happened to your sister,
he would have been fine."

"Everything
would have been different, anyhow." I fought the annoyance I could feel
building in me—when my father was in trouble, this man had fired him. I
did not want his worthless reassurances.

"Was
that kind of a bond between you and John, that your father worked for
me?"

My
annoyance with this silver-topped country club Narcissus escalated
toward anger. "We had other kinds of bonds."

"Oh, I
can see that. Sure."

I
expected that Ralph would go back to his seat, but he still had
something on his mind. Once I heard what it was, my anger shrank to a
pinpoint.

"Those
were funny days. Terrible days. You're probably too young to remember,
but around then, there was a cop here in town who killed four or five
people and wrote these words,
BLUE ROSE
, near the
bodies. One of the
victims even lived in my hotel. Shook us all up, I can tell you. Almost
ruined our business, too. This lunatic, this Dragonette, I guess he was
just imitating the other guy."

I put
down my cup. "You know, Ralph, I'm very interested in what happened
back then."

"Well,
it was like this thing now. The whole town went bananas."

"Could
we go out in the hallway for a second?"

"Sure,
if you want to." He raised his eyebrows quizzically —this was not in
his handbook of behavior—and almost tiptoed out.

I closed
the door behind me. Two or three yards away, Ralph Ransom leaned
against the red-flocked wallpaper, his hands back in his pockets. He
still had the quizzical expression on his face. He could not figure out
my motives, and that made him uneasy. The unease translated into
reflexive aggression. He pushed his shoulders off the wall and faced me.

"I
thought it would be better to talk about this out here," I said. "A few
years ago, I did some research that indicated that Detective Damrosch
had nothing to do with the murders."

"Research?"
His shoulders went down as he relaxed. "Oh, I get it. You're a history
guy, a whaddayacallit. A historian."

"I write
books," I said, trying to salvage as much of the truth as possible.

"The old
publish or perish thing."

I
smiled—in my case, this was not just a slogan.

"I don't
know if
I
can tell you
anything."

"Was
there anybody you suspected, someone you thought might have been the
killer?"

He
shrugged. "I always thought it was a guest, some guy who came and went.
That's what we had, mostly, salesmen who showed up for a couple of
days, checked out, and then came back again for a few more days."

"Was
that because of the prostitute?"

"Well,
yeah. A couple girls used to sneak up to the rooms. You try, but you
can't keep them out. That Fancy, she was one of them. I figured someone
caught her stealing from him, or, you know, just got in a fight with
her out in back there. And then I thought he might have known that the
piano player saw it happen—his room looked right out onto the back of
the hotel."

"Musicians
stayed at the St. Alwyn, too?"

"Oh
yeah, we used to get some jazz musicians. See, we weren't too far from
downtown, our rates were good, and we had all-night room service. The
musicians were good guests. To tell you the truth, I think they liked
the St. Alwyn because of Glenroy Breakstone."

"He
lived in the hotel?"

"Oh,
sure. Glenroy was there when I bought it, and he was still there when I
sold it. He's probably still there! He was one of the few who didn't
move out, once all the trouble started. The reason that piano player
lived in the hotel, Glenroy recommended him personally. Never any
trouble with Glenroy."

"Who
used to cause trouble?"

"Well,
sometimes guys, you know, might have a bad day and bust up the
furniture at night—anything can happen in a hotel, believe me. The ones
who went crazy, they got barred. The day manager took care of that. The
man kept things shipshape, as much as he could. A haughty bastard, but
he didn't stand for any nonsense. Religious fellow, I think.
Dependable."

"Do you
remember his name?"

He
laughed out loud. "You bet I do. Bob Bandolier. You wouldn't want to go
around a golf course with that guy, but he was one hell of a manager."

"Maybe I
could talk to him."

"Maybe.
Bob stayed on when I sold the place—guy was practically married to the
St. Alwyn. And I'll tell you someone else—Glenroy Breakstone. Nothing
passed
him
by, you can bet on
that. He pretty much knew everybody that
worked at the hotel."

"Were he
and Bob Bandolier friends?"

"Bob
Bandolier didn't have friends," Ralph said, and laughed again. "And Bob
would never get tight with, you know, a black guy."

"Would
he talk to me?"

"You
never know." He checked his watch and looked at the door to the chapel.
"Hey, if you find something out, would you tell me? I'd be interested."

We went
back into the enormous room. John looked up at us from beside the table.

Ralph
said, "Who's supposed to fill all these chairs?"

John
morosely examined the empty chairs. "People from Barnett and clients, I
suppose. And the reporters will show up." He scowled down at a plastic
cup. "They're hovering out there like blowflies."