The Throat (87 page)

"Once we had
him tied up"—this was the image I'd had of the conclusion of our attack
on Fontaine—"I was going to tell him that I knew who he really was. I
could prove it. There wouldn't be any way out for him—he'd have to know
he was trapped."

"The proof
would be this man Hubbel?"

"That's
right. Hubbel identified him immediately."

"Imagine
that," Hogan said, meaning that it was still almost too much to
imagine. "Well, we'll be sending someone out there tomorrow, but don't
expect to be reading much about Franklin Bachelor in the
New York
Times
. Or the
Ledger
,
for that matter." The look in his eyes got even
smokier. "When we got in touch with the army, they stonewalled for most
of the day, and finally some character in the CIA passed down the word
that Major Bachelor's file is not only closed, it can't be opened for
fifty years. Officially, the man is dead. And anything printed about
him that isn't already a matter of public record must be approved first
by the CIA. So there you are."

"There we all
are," I said. "But thanks for telling me."

"Oh, I'm not
done yet. I understand you met Ross McCandless."

I nodded. "I
understand what he wants."

"He doesn't
tend to leave much doubt about that. But probably he didn't tell you a
couple of things you ought to know."

I waited,
fearing that he was going to say something about Tom Pasmore.

"The old
man's gun is at ballistics. They move slow, over there. The report
won't come back for about a week. But the bullet that killed our
detective couldn't have come from the same gun as the one that hit you."

"You're going
too far," I said. "I was there. I saw Alan fire, twice. What's the
point of this, anyhow?" And then I saw the point—if Allen had not
killed Fontaine, then our whole story disappeared into a fiction about
the riot.

"It's the
truth. You saw Brookner fire twice because his first shot went wild.
The second one hit you—if the first one had hit you, you'd never have
seen him fire the second one."

"So the first
one hit Fontaine."

"Do you know
what happened to him? His whole chest blew apart. If you'd been hit by
the same kind of round, you wouldn't have anything left on your right
side below the collarbone. You wouldn't even be alive."

"So who shot
him?" As soon as I had spoken, I knew.

"You told
McCandless that you saw a man between the houses across the street."

Well, I had—I
thought I had, anyhow. Even if I hadn't, McCandless would have
suggested that I probably had. I'd conveniently given him exactly what
he wanted.

"We still
have a police department in this town," Hogan said. "We'll get him,
sooner or later."

I saw a loose
end and seized it. "McCandless mentioned someone named Ventura, I
think. Nicholas Ventura."

"That's the
other thing I wanted you to know. Ventura was operated on, put into a
cast, and given a bed at County. Not long after the riot started, he
disappeared. Nobody's seen him since. Somehow, I don't think anybody
ever will."

"How could he
disappear?" I asked.

"County's a
disorganized place. Maybe he walked out."

"That's not
what you think."

"I don't
think Ventura could have stood up by himself, much less walked away
from the hospital." The flat rage in his eyes seemed connected to the
stink of ashes that floated out from his clothing, as if his body
produced the smell. "Anyhow, that's what I had to say. I'll leave you
alone now."

He pushed
himself to his feet and looked grimly down at me. "It's been real."

"A little too
real," I said, and he nodded and walked out of the room. The stench of
his rage and frustration stayed behind, like a layer of ashes on my
skin, the sheets, the book I had forgotten I was holding.

"I warned you
that something like this might happen," Tom Pasmore said to me the next
morning, after I had described my conversation with Hogan. "But I
didn't think it would be so complete." That ashy layer of frustration
still covered me so absolutely that I came close to being grateful for
the distraction of the steady thudding into which my pain had
retreated. Tom's uncharacteristically discreet charcoal suit seemed
like another form of it, unrelieved by any of the flashes of color, the
pink tie or yellow vest or blooming red pocket cloth, with which he
would normally have brightened his general aspect. Tom's general aspect
seemed as wan as mine.

Both of us
held copies of the morning's
Ledger,
which was dominated by photographs
of burned-out buildings and articles about volunteers engaged in the
monumental cleanup necessary before rebuilding could begin. At the top
of the third page, ordered like the pictures of Walter Dragonette's
victims, lay a row of photographs of the eight people killed during the
rioting. They were all male, and seven were African-Americans. The
white man was Detective Paul Fontaine. Beneath the square of his
photograph, a short paragraph referred to his many commendations, the
many successes in solving difficult homicide cases that had given him
the nickname "Fantastic," and his personal affability and humor. His
death, like most of the others, had been due to random gunfire.

On the second
page of the next section, a column-length article headed
FOURTY-YEAR-OLD
CASE SOLVED
reported that recent investigations led by
Lieutenant Ross McCandless had brought to light the identity of the
Blue Rose killer, who had murdered four people in Millhaven in October
of 1950, as Robert C. Bandolier, at the time the day manager of the St.
Alwyn Hotel. "It is a great satisfaction to exonerate Detective William
Damrosch, who has had an undeserved stain on his reputation for all
this time," said McCandless. "Evidence located in Mr. Bandolier's old
residence definitely ties him to the four killings. Forty years later,
we can finally say that justice has been done for William Damrosch, who
was a fine and dedicated officer, in the tradition of Millhaven's
Homicide Division."

And that was
it. Nothing about Fielding Bandolier or Franklin Bachelor, nothing
about Grant Hoffman or April Ransom. "It's complete, all right," I said.

Tom dropped
his copy of the newspaper to the floor, raised one foot to prop his
ankle on a knee, and leaned forward with his elbow on the other knee.
Chin in hand, his eyes bright with inward curiosity, he suggested an
almost comic awareness of his own depression. "The thing is, if I knew
what was coming, why do I feel so bad about it?"

"They're just
protecting themselves," I said.

He knew
that—it didn't interest him. "I think you feel left out," I said.

"This
certainly isn't what I had in mind," he said. "I don't blame you in any
way, but I sort of pictured that it would be you and me instead of you
and John. And Alan should have been nowhere in sight."

"Naturally,"
I said. "But if you hadn't been insistent on keeping yourself out—"

"I wouldn't
have been
kept
out, I know."
He jiggled his foot. "John put me off. He
tried to buy one of my paintings, and then he tried to buy me."

I agreed that
John could be off-putting. "But if you ever spent half an hour with his
parents, you'd know why. And underneath it all, he's a pretty good guy.
He just wasn't quite what I expected, but people change."

"I don't,"
Tom said, sounding disconsolate about it. "I guess that's part of my
problem. I've always got two or three things on the fire, but this was
the most exciting one in years. We really did something tremendous, and
now it's all over."

"Almost," I
said. "Don't you still have the two or three other things to take up
the slack?"

"Sure, but
they're not like this one. In your terms, they're just short stories.
This was a whole novel. And now, nobody will ever read it but you and
me and John."

"Don't forget
Ross McCandless," I said.

"Ross
McCandless always reminded me of the head of the secret police in a
totalitarian state." Realizing that he could pass on a fresh bit of
gossip, he brightened. "Have you heard that Vass is probably on the way
out?"

I shook my
head. "Because of Fontaine?"

"Fontaine's
probably the real reason, but the mayor will imply that he's resigning
because of the combination of Walter Dragonette, the riot, and the boy
who was shot in City Hall."

"Is this
public yet?"

"No, but a
lot of people—the kind of people who really know, I mean—have been
talking about it as though it's a foregone conclusion."

I wondered
whom he meant, and then remembered that Sarah Spence spent her life
among the kind of people who really know. "How about Merlin?"

"Merlin's a
gassy liquid—he takes the shape of whatever container he puts himself
into. I think we'll be seeing a lot of the elder statesman act for a
while. What he'll probably do is find a good black chief in some other
part of the country, sing lullabies to him until he loses his mind, and
then announce the appointment of a new chief. Right up until that
moment, he'll be behind Vass a thousand percent."

"Everything
is politics," I said.

"Especially
everything that shouldn't be." He gloomily regarded the stack of books
on my table without seeming to take in the individual titles. "I should
have protected you better."

"Protected
me?"

He looked
away. "Oh, by the way, I brought some of those computer reconstructions
of the last photograph, if there's any point in looking at them
anymore." He reached into his jacket pocket, brought out three folded
sheets of paper, and then met my eyes with a flash of embarrassment at
what he saw there.

"That was
you—you followed me back to John's that night."

"Do you want
to look at these, or not?"

I took the
papers without releasing him. "It was you."

The red dots
appeared in his cheeks. "I couldn't just let you walk nine blocks in
the middle of the night, could I? After everything I'd just said to
you?"

"And was that
you I saw out in Elm Hill?"

"No. That was
Fontaine. Or Billy Ritz. Which proves that I should have stuck to you
like a burr." He smiled, at last. "You weren't supposed to see me."

"It was more
like I felt you," I said, troubled by the evil I had sensed dogging me
that night, and the memory of the Minotaur's knowledge of a hidden
shame. From where had I dredged that up, if not out of myself? Cloudy
with doubt, I flattened the pages and looked at each of the computer
images in turn.

They were of
buildings that had never existed, buildings with recessed ground floors
beneath soaring blank upper reaches like pyramids, oblongs, ocean
liners. Empty sidewalks devoid of cracks led up to boxy windows and
glassed-in guardhouses. They looked like an eccentric billionaire's
vision of a modern art museum. I spread the papers out between us.
"This is it?" I asked. "The other ones were even worse. You know what
they say—garbage in, garbage out. There just wasn't enough information
for it to work with. But I guess we know what it really is, anyhow,
don't we?"

"Stenmitz's
shop had a kind of triangular sign over the window. That must be what
suggested all this—" I pointed at the rearing structures of the upper
floors.

"I guess."
Tom swept the pages together in a gesture of disappointment and
disgust. "It would have been nice if…"

"If I
recognized some other building?"

"I don't want
it to be over yet," Tom said. "But boy, is it over. You want to keep
these? Bring a souvenir home with you?"

I didn't say
that I already had a souvenir—I wanted to keep the computer's
hallucinations. I'd fasten them to the refrigerator, beneath the
picture of Ted Bundy's mother.

Tom came back
the next day with the news that Arden Vass had offered to resign as
soon as a suitable replacement could be found. He had expected the
mayor to refuse his offer, but Merlin Waterford had immediately
announced that he was accepting the resignation of his old friend,
albeit with the greatest sorrow, and the Committee for a Just Millhaven
would be given a voice in the selection of the new chief. The officer
who had killed the teenage boy was under suspension, pending a hearing.
Tom stayed for an hour, and when he left, we promised to stay in touch.

John Ransom
came in half an hour before the end of visiting hours and told me that
he had decided what he wanted to do— buy a farmhouse in the Dordogne
where he could work on his book and rent an apartment in Paris for
weekends and vacations in the city. "I need a city," he said. "I want a
lot of quiet for my work, but I'm no country mouse. Once I'm set up, I
want you to come over, spend some time with me. Will you do that?"

"Sure," I
said. "It'd be nice. This visit turned out to be a little hectic."

"Hectic? It
was a nightmare. I was out of my mind most of the time." John had
stayed on his feet during his visit, and he jammed his hands in his
pockets and executed a hesitant half-turn, clocking toward the sunny
window and then back to me again. "I'll see you tomorrow when you come
around to get your things. Ah, I just have to say how much I appreciate
everything you did here, Tim. You were great. You were fantastic. I'll
never forget it."

"It was quite
a ride," I said.

"I want to
give you a present. I've been giving this a lot of thought, and while
nothing could really repay you for everything you did, I want to give
you that painting you liked so much. The Vuillard. Please take it. I
want you to have it."

I looked up
at him, too stunned to speak.

"I can't look
at the thing anymore, anyhow. There's too much of April in it. And I
don't want to sell it. So do me a favor and take it, will you?"