The Throat (71 page)

John's chest
and belly started jerking up and down again. He was laughing and crying
at the same time. "He said, 'Don't come back here again, pal, we don't
need your business.' " It took him a long time to get the sentence out.
He passed my handkerchief over his face. His mouth flickered in and out
of a crazy grin.

"I put a
fifty-dollar bill on the bar and walked out. April was gone, of
course—I hardly expected her to be waiting for me. It took about an
hour to walk home. I was making all these speeches in my head. When I
got here, her car was right out in front, and I thought, Oh God, at
least she's home. I went upstairs, but she wasn't in the bedroom. I
checked all over the house, calling her name. Finally I went back
outside to see if she was still sitting in the car. When I opened the
door, I almost fell over in a faint—there was blood all over both
seats. A
lot
of blood. I went
crazy. I ran up and down the block,
thinking I must have hurt her a lot worse than I had imagined. I could
see her getting out of the car and collapsing on someone's lawn. Jesus.
I went all over the neighborhood, twice, out of my mind, and then I
came back inside and called Shady Mount and said that I'd seen a dazed,
bleeding woman walking down Berlin Avenue, and had anyone brought her
to the Emergency Room? This very suspicious woman said she wasn't
there. I didn't think I could call the cops—my story would have sounded
so fishy! Down deep, Tim, down deep, I already knew she was dead. So I
put a towel over the driver's seat and took the car to Alan's and put
it in his garage. A couple of nights later, when I knew I'd really be
in trouble if anyone found it, I went back there in the middle of the
night and cleaned it up. That night, I went home and waited to hear
something. Finally I just went to bed—well, actually, I slept on this
couch here. I wasn't sober. But I don't suppose I have to tell you
that. The day before you came, I took her car out to this place in
Purdum."

He noticed
the handkerchief balled up in his hands and unfolded it and blew his
nose in it. Then he dropped it in the ashtray on top of the bloody one.

"At the time,
I thought, after Vietnam, this must be the worst night I'll ever have,
all my life. Little did I know."

"And the next
day, the police called."

"Just after
noon."

"When did you
learn about the slogan, or the signature, or whatever it is?"

"At Shady
Mount. Fontaine told me. He asked me if I had any idea what it meant."

"You didn't
tell him about April's project?"

He shook his
head. He looked stunned and resentful. "She wasn't sharing a lot with
me by that time." The resentfulness went up a notch. "All I knew was
that it was something that creep started her thinking about."

"Dorian's
father was one of Bill Damrosch's old partners."

"Oh? I
suppose that would be interesting, if you cared about that sort of
thing."

He grabbed
his drink, swallowed, moaned, and fell back against the cushions.
Neither of us spoke for a time.

"Tell me what
you think happened after you went into the bar."

John pressed
the cold glass against one cheek, then another. Then he rolled the
glass back and forth across his forehead. His eyes were slits. "First,
I have to know that you believe me. You know I couldn't have killed
April."

This was the
question I had been putting off. I answered the only way I could. "I
guess I do believe you, John." As soon as I spoke, I realized that I
had told him the truth—I guessed that I did believe him.

"I could have
sweetened it up, Tim. I could have said that I just got out of the car
and walked away as soon as she started crying. I didn't have to tell
you I hit her. I didn't make myself sound any better than I was."

"I know
that," I said.

"This is the
truth. It's ugly, but it's the truth."

"Do you think
you were right about being followed?"

"Sure I was
right," he said. "If I hadn't been so screwed up, I would have been
paying more attention." He shook his head and groaned again. "Here's
what happened. Someone parked about a block away from us and waited.
They must have been surprised when I got out of the car—maybe they even
thought I spotted them. That's why they started their car. They saw me
go into the bar. When I didn't come right out with a pack of cigarettes
or something, they went to the Mercedes and—and did what they did. So
if I hadn't hit her—if I hadn't been so stupid I had to leave her
alone—"

He clamped
his eyes shut and pressed his lips together in a tight line. I waited
for him to get back in control of himself. "There had to be two of
them, because—"

"Because one drove her car here before they took her to the St.
Alwyn."

Sudden anger
made me shout. "Why didn't you tell me the truth when I first got here?
All this subterfuge! Didn't you realize how it would look if the police
found the car?"

Ransom stayed
calm. "Well, they didn't find it, did they?" He drank again and swished
the vodka around in his mouth. "After you left town, I was going to
drive it to Chicago and leave it on the street with the keys in it. A
present for the hoodlums. Then it wouldn't matter if the police found
it."

He registered
my impatience. "Look, I know it was a dumb scheme. I was scared, and I
panicked. But forget about me for a second. Writzmann had to be one of
the men in the car. That's why he hung around the hospital. He was
waiting to see if April was going to wake up."

"All right,
but that makes twice you lied to me," I said.

"Tim, I
didn't think I could ever tell anyone what really happened. I was
wrong. I'm apologizing. Just listen to me. There was another guy in
that car, the cop you were talking about. And he must be the one who
killed Writzmann."

"Yes," I
said. "He met him in the Green Woman." John nodded slowly, as if this
was utterly new and fascinating.

"Go on," he
said.

"Writzmann
probably asked for the meeting. His father called him up and said,
Billy, I want you to keep your thugs away from me."

"Didn't I
tell you we'd get something moving?" John said. "It worked like a
charm."

"Is this
really the kind of thing you had in mind?"

"I don't mind
the bad guys bumping each other off. That's fine by me. Go on."

"Writzmann
said that two people had come to his father's house asking about Elvee
Holdings. That was all he had to say. The cop had to cut his
connections to everything that would lead us to him. I don't know what
he did. Probably he waited for Writzmann to turn his back and clubbed
him with the butt of his gun. He dragged him to that chair, tied him
up, and cut him to pieces. That's what he likes."

"Then he left
him there overnight," John said. "He knew we were in for a hell of a
storm, so yesterday morning he put him in the trunk of his car, waited
until it started to really come down, and dumped him in front of the
Idle Hour. Nobody'd be on the streets, and it was dark anyhow. It's
beautiful. He's got his third Blue Rose victim, and nobody can tie him
to Writzmann. He killed Grant Hoffman and my wife and his own stooge,
and he's completely in the clear."

"Except that
we know he's a cop. And we know he's the son of Bob Bandolier."

"How do we
know the part about his being a cop?"

"The names
given for the other two directors of Elvee Holdings were Leon Casement
and Andrew Belinski. Casement was Bob Bandolier's middle name, and
about ten years ago, the head of the homicide division in Millhaven was
a guy named Andy Belin. Belin's mother was Polish, and the other
detectives called him Belinski." I tried to smile at him, but the smile
didn't turn out right. "I suppose that's station house humor."

"Wow," John
said. He looked at me admiringly. "You're good."

"Fontaine
told me," I said. "I'm not so sure I should have asked."

"Goddamn,"
John said. He sat up straight and leveled his entire arm at me.
"Fontaine took his father's statements out of the Blue Rose file before
he gave them to you. He ordered you to stay away from the Sunchanas,
and when that didn't work, he hauled you all the way out to his
father's grave. See? he said. Bob Bandolier is dead and buried. Forget
this crap and go home. Right?"

"Basically.
But he couldn't have taken Writzmann's body to the Idle Hour. I was
with him when it started to rain."

"Think of how
the man works," John said. "He had one stooge, right? Now he's got
another one. He
paid
somebody
to dump the body. It's perfect. You're
his alibi."

It wouldn't
even have to be money, I thought. Information would be better than
money.

"So what do
we do?" John asked. "We can hardly go to the police. They love Fontaine
down there at Armory Place. He's Millhaven's favorite detective—he's
Dick Tracy, for God's sake!"

"Maybe we can
get him out in the open," I said. "Maybe we can even get him to put
himself out in the open."

"How do we do
that?"

"I told you
that Fee Bandolier has been slipping into his father's old house in the
middle of the night about once every two weeks. The woman who lives
next door catches glimpses of him. She promised to call me the next
time she saw him."

"To hell with
that. Let's break into the place."

I groaned.
"I'm too tired and sore to play cowboy."

"Think about
it. If it isn't Fontaine, it's some other guy at Armory Place. Maybe
there are family pictures in the house. Maybe there's, I don't know,
something with his name on it. Why did he keep the house? He's keeping
something in there."

"Something
was always in there," I said. "His childhood. I'm going to bed, John."
My muscles complained when I stood up.

He put his
empty glass on the table and touched the bandage on the side of his
head. Then he leaned back into the chair. For a second, we both
listened to the rain beat against the windows.

I turned away
to go toward the stairs. Gravity pulled at every cell in my body. All I
wanted in the world was to get into bed.

"Tim," he
said.

I turned
around slowly. He was getting up, and he fixed me with his eyes.
"You're a real friend."

"I must be,"
I said.

"We'll see
this thing through together, won't we?"

"Sure," I
said.

He came
toward me. "From now on, I promise, there'll be nothing but the truth.
I should have—"

"It's okay,"
I said. "Just don't try to kill me anymore."

He
moved up close and put his arms around me. His head pressed against
mine. He hugged me tight into his padded chest —it was like being
hugged by a mattress. "I love you, man. Side by side, all right?"

"
De Opresso
Libri
,"I said, and patted
him on the back.

"There it
is." He slammed his fist into my shoulder and gripped me tighter.
"Tomorrow we start fresh."

"Yeah," I
said, and went upstairs.

I undressed
and got into bed with The Nag Hammadi Library. John Ransom was moving
around in his bedroom, now and then bumping against the furniture. The
hard, steady rain pounded the window and rattled against the side of
the house. By the light of the bedside lamp, I opened the book to "The
Thunder, Perfect Mind," and read:

Before long,
the words swam together and became different words altogether, and I
managed to close the book and turn off the light before I dropped into
sleep.

At four
o'clock, I came irretrievably awake from a dream in which a hideous
monster searched for me in a dark basement, and lay in bed listening to
my heart thud against my chest. After a moment I realized that the rain
had stopped. Laszlo Nagy was a better meteorologist than most
weathermen.

For a while I
followed the advice I always give myself on sleepless nights, that rest
is the next best thing, and stayed in bed with my eyes closed. My heart
slowed down, and I breathed easily and regularly while my body relaxed.
An hour passed. Every time I turned the pillow over, I caught the
traces of some florid scent and finally realized that it must have been
whatever perfume or cologne Marjorie Ransom put on before she went to
bed. I threw back the sheet and went to the window. Black, oily-looking
fog pressed against the glass. The street lamp out on the sidewalk was
only a dim, barely visible yellow haze, like the sun in a Turner
painting. I turned on the overhead light, brushed my teeth and washed
my face, and went downstairs in my pajamas to work on my book.

For another
hour and a half I inhabited the body of a small boy whose bedroom walls
were papered with climbing blue roses, a boy whose father said he
struck him out of a great, demanding love, and whose mother lay dying
in a stink of feces and decaying flesh. We're taking good care of this
woman here, his father said, our love is better for her than any
hospital. Beneath Charlie Carpenter's skin, Fee Bandolier watched his
mother drifting out into blackness. I was in the air around him, Fee
and not-Fee, Charlie and not-Charlie, watching and recording. When the
sorrow became too great to continue, I put down the pencil and went
back upstairs on trembling legs.

It was about
six. I had this odd sense—that I was lost. John's house seemed no more
or less real than the smaller house I had imagined around me. If I had
still been drinking, I would have had two inches of John's hyacinth
vodka and tried to get to sleep again. Instead, I checked the
window—the fog had turned to a thick, impenetrable silver—took a quick
shower, dressed in jeans and Glenroy's black sweatshirt, put my
notebook in my pocket, and went back down to go outside.