The Witchfinder (22 page)

“You weren’t suspicious?”

“I was curious, but not enough to ask questions that might blow a sale I needed. I’ve asked them of myself, and I’ve come up with an answer. I think he came to atone.”

“For the picture?”

“For everything. His conscience wasn’t clear.”

“It came cheap,” I said. “He cost you millions.”

“That was just a start. If you’d asked me straight out instead of going to Jean behind my back, I’d have told you he asked for estimates to commission high-quality prints to be displayed in all of Imminent Visions’ offices nationwide and in its show houses on the West Coast. We were discussing a half-million-dollar order.”

“How far did it get?”

“It was still going on when he—died. His secretary was supposed to call me last week with his choices from the catalogue I sent. Obviously she was distracted by her employer’s murder.”

I flicked ashes on the redwood boards at my feet. “He never brought up your past association?”

“Never. I wasn’t going to mention it if he didn’t. In retrospect, it was his whole attitude that makes me think he felt guilty. He stammered and seemed unsure of himself. Not at all what you’d expect in a high-powered young shark. I think”—she pulled her robe closer and tightened the sash—“well, now I’m projecting.”

“Projecting what?”

“What happened to him, his murder. Projecting it onto his behavior at the gallery. No, damn it, I’m not either. I thought the same thing at the time.”

I waited while she took another hit from the watery stuff in her glass.

“All the time he was in the gallery he reminded me of someone who was finally getting around to something he’d been putting off for a long time. It seemed to explain why he didn’t want to take time discussing a discount. Like he was cleaning out his desk.”

“Getting his affairs in order?”

The doorbell rang. The chimes drifted back toward us like something happening in someone else’s life. She tugged down the kimono.

“That will be my sculptor. Will you leave quietly, or do I have to rough you up some more?”

I held up my palms.

“How is Jay?”

I lowered them. “Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s still at the Marriott.”

“I started to go see him,” she said. “I had my car keys in my hand. I didn’t use them. I couldn’t think of anything to say when I got there.”

“That’s what hello is for.”

“So then he says hello back. Then what?”

“The heat. The Tigers. The flight from California. Who played Dobie Gillis’ father. What do I look like, the president of a singles club? Punt.”

The doorbell rang again. It was part of her life now. She picked up her towel and folded it.

“This bird thing,” she said. “What happens if the crocodile closes its mouth?”

“I was a little slow getting my head out the last time.”

B
ARRY
S
TACKPOLE WAS WORKING
the sabbath at the cable station on Southfield Road, editing videotape with the aid of two monitors in a small room packed with electronic gizmos and strange life forms mutating in the bottoms of polystyrene cups. I found him perched on a turning stool with both hands occupied and a ham-and-cheese sandwich clamped between his teeth.

“Be wiv oo inamint,” he said through the ham and cheese.

“A minute’s all I need.” I transferred a stack of scripts bound with colored construction paper from a plastic scoop chair to the floor and sat down. My back started sweating as soon as it touched the plastic. Most commercial buildings don’t run their air conditioners weekends.

Barry had on pleated khaki slacks and an open-weave shirt that showed the lean musculature in his chest. His empty pants-leg dangled off the end of the stump. The prosthesis leaned in a corner, its harness hanging and a blue-and-white-striped Reebok laced on its fiberglass foot.

With a triumphant grunt, he punched a button, snapped a dial, and took the sandwich from his mouth—all but one bite, which he swallowed and chased with whole milk from a tall glass.

“I’m brilliant,” he said, leaning back against the console on the other side. “Useless to deny it. What do you think?”

“What do I think of what?” I was looking at freeze-frames on the monitors. The one on the right showed a middle-aged man hemmed in by reporters and camera operators on the steps of the City-County Building. The one on the left showed a different middle-aged man flanked by two men half his age crossing a sidewalk.

“You need to keep up on current local events. Don’t you know the guy on the right?”

I looked again at the man on the steps. “Candidate for city gaming commissioner. I saw his picture in the paper this morning.”

“Just a second.” He clattered some keys on the computer board in front of him. The other monitor zoomed in past the shoulder of the middle-aged man on the sidewalk and closed in on the face of one of the younger men with him. “Now what do you see?”

I looked from one monitor to the other. The family resemblance was hard to miss. “Father and son.”

“Uh-uh. The footage on the left is historical, thirty years old. It’s the same guy. Look at this.” He clattered some more keys. The young man moved out of the frame and I got a closer look at the older man on the sidewalk.

“Sam Lucy. I’ll be damned. Hello, Sam. I thought you were dead.”

“You know he is. I got this last week from the FBI under Freedom of Information. Sixteen seconds out of four hours shot outside the Flamingo in Vegas, where Lucy attended a summit conference with the heads of the five biggest mob families in America under Johnson. What do you suppose our would-be casino watchdog was doing hanging all over dear old Sammy the Hammer back when the world was young?”

“Conducting his own independent investigation, no doubt.”

“Oh, no doubt.” He hit two keys simultaneously. Both screens went dark. You wouldn’t have known from the way he manipulated his fingers that Barry was missing two. He was luckier than Hurricane Bob Lester, but more sensitive about the condition, and wore a white cotton glove on the injured hand in public. “I got a tip from an old snitch I thought was long dead. He’s running a used car lot in Tecumseh and wants me to plug it on the air. What he doesn’t know is I’d buy out his stock for something half this good.”

“When do you go to air?”

“My producer would want me to wait for the August sweeps, but that’s like asking to get scooped. Worse, city council may reject his appointment on whatever grounds, in which case the story turns into a pumpkin. We go tomorrow. This could mean an Emmy
and
a Pulitzer.”

“Congratulations.”

“I went into mourning when the old mayor stepped down. I thought it was the end of the gravy train for thug-spotters like me. Then the new gang rammed casino gambling through. The station signed me to a new five-year contract the day after the election.”

He spun to face me. He had all his hair and it was still sandy. That color never changes until it turns white overnight. He was lucky enough to fit into his old uniform if I hadn’t helped him burn it in a stateside ritual. “What’s with the head?” he asked. “Trust me, the little light goes off when you slam the refrigerator door.”

“This from a man with a metal plate under his scalp.” I leaned forward and placed a paper bag in his lap. Inside the bag were two smaller bags. Inside each of them was a pint bottle of Haig & Haig.

He took a look, then swiveled and stood the package on top of one of the VCRs. “I do like a man who pays his debts. Was Randy Quarrels the photographer you were looking for?”

“No, but he gave me the name of the one who was.”

“Anything for me?”

“Not yet.”

He smiled his matinee idol’s smile. The dynamite charge that had blown him and his car to pieces had denied Hollywood a younger, taller Robert Redford. He was humming. It took me a couple of bars to identify the tune: “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?”

“Whom,” I corrected.

“Dead word. Like
incarnadine
.” He went on humming.

“When did I ever hold out on you?”

“Let’s see; when was the last time you asked that question?”

“I don’t look good on camera, Barry. I come off like a lox.”

“We can computer-scramble your face, give you a falsetto.”

“I get to be a state-of-the-art Deep Throat?”

He stopped smiling.

“There never was a Deep Throat. Guys like Woodward and Bernstein use that saw to cover up sloppy investigative work. A quote’s worthless without a source.”

Sore point. I changed the subject. “I may owe you another pint before I leave.”

He shook his head. “Spoiling the sponsors with too much good whiskey is counterproductive, and I can’t afford to keep the stuff around. Gimme a lead.”

“How many mikes does this room have?”

He stretched an arm and threw a knife switch. “Main breaker,” he said. “The walls are soundproof.”

“You’ve got to sit on it until I say go.”

He waved his good hand.

“Jay Bell Furlong.”

“He dead yet?”

“Not yet. And not in California. He’s in town.”

“I should’ve guessed. He was taking longer to die than
Saturday Night Live
.”

“He’s dying all right, but on his clock.” I spelled it out: the job, the Arsenault kill, Nate Millender’s disappearance, my shooting in his apartment. I held one thing back for use later. Barry remembered his sandwich and finished it while I spoke.

“You’re even luckier than I was,” he said over his milk. “How’s your vision?”

“I’ve been seeing single all day.”

“Enjoy it while you can.” He sucked mustard off his index finger. “This starts to sound like
King Lear
. How big is the inheritance?”

“It can’t be small. ‘How much’ isn’t in his vocabulary.”

“What’s Millender’s physical description?”

“Why?”

“Detectives. Jesus. Because I asked.”

I ran it for him. He threw the breaker back on and played the computer keyboard with his left hand, boogie-woogie style. The white console was on a swivel. He turned it my way. “That him?”

I stared at the bilious green letters.

FLATROCK 6/16

COMPLAINANT JULIUS MELROSE NO MIDDLE DOB 4/9/60 UNEMPLOYED 4102 EMPIRE TAYLOR REPORT DECEASED FOUND WEST BANK DETROIT RIVER 1100 6/15 WELL DEVELOPED MALE CAUCASIAN BLONDE/BLUE EARLY THIRTIES 5 FEET 5 130 MOLE UPPER LEFT ARM SCAR ONE CENTIMETER RIGHT FOREHEAD COAGULATED BLOOD BONE SPLINTERS BACK OF HEAD BELOW CROWN BELLY DISTENDED WHITE SHORTS NO OTHER CLOTHING

He’d lost his long-billed fisherman’s cap, probably when the sail boom struck him from behind.

I sat back. “You’re patched into the police computer?”

“Just the blotter. The stuff on the upper floors has alarms and tracers hooked up to the access codes. The kid who empties the wastebaskets here did the hacking for me. He starts at Redford High this fall.”

“You wonder why he’d bother.”

“The squeal came over this morning. I took note. You never know what might connect to the Right and Honorable Exalted Paterfamilias of Palermo and Vegas. I’ve been following the Arsenault burn too. The Feds and RICO have busted up the old gang pretty good, but just when you think they’re six feet under they bounce back up on their pointy alligator shoes and kick you in the boccie balls.”

“Colorful.”

“Thank you. I used it last week.”

“The boccie balls part is a little much.”

“Fuck you. Halberstam loved it.”

“If it is Millender—and it sounds like him right down to the wardrobe—you can count them out this time.”

“Could be they’re taking on indy work. They’ve had a bad decade.”

“That’s the trouble with you mob watchers. You see guys in fedoras under every bed. They don’t hold exclusive franchise on murder for hire.”

“You sound like a man with a hole card.”

“I didn’t tell you about Millender’s close chum,” I said. “The light of his last days.”

He scratched the end of his stump. “I’m all ears and a yard wide.”

“Royce Grayling.”

He blinked. Then he beamed all over.

I crossed my legs. “Thought you’d like it.”

“God, I love my job. I’d give my remaining leg to keep it forever. Who needs two when you’ve got floppy disks? R-O-Y-C-E G-R-A-Y-L-I-N-G.” He punched each letter on the board as he recited it. “Speak to me, Silicone Valley.”

It spoke.

And spoke.

G
RAYLING
R
OYCE
BORN T
ADEUS
R
OSCOE
G
RODNO
H
AMTRAMCK
MI 3/31/49

“Tadeus?” I asked.

Barry grunted. “Hebrew, with a Polish spin. Thaddeus was one of the Twelve Apostles. Saint Jude to you.”

“I didn’t know you were up on the New Testament.” “I burned my share of candles at St. Boniface when I was twelve.”

“He’s older than he looks.”

“These sons of bitches age on a sliding scale. Most of them ferment twice as fast as the rest of us. The ones that don’t must like what they’re doing.”

“He seemed pretty contented.”

“Psychopath,” he said. “The world’s largest minority.”

GRADUATED UNIVERSITY OF DETROIT BA BUSINESS/ROMANCE LANGUAGES 4/10/70 HARVARD UNIVERSITY MA POLITICAL SCIENCE 6/11/76 SERVICE RECORD 101ST AIRBORNE RANGERS VIETNAM 1970–71 CAMBODIA 1972 PURPLE HEART BEN SUC 9/23/71 PURPLE HEART PHNOM PENH 1/2/72 BRONZE STAR KAMPUCHEA 10/15/72

I said, “I’m surprised we didn’t see him over there.”

“Who would, in the glare from all that metal?”

CIVILIAN AWARDS AND HONORS FIRST RUNNER UP NATIONAL PISTOL CHAMPIONSHIP OUTDOOR CONVENTIONAL 1976 FIRST PLACE STANDARD PISTOL US NRA INTERNATIONAL SHOOTING CHAMPIONSHIP 1978 TIE FIRST PLACE NATIONAL INDOOR RIFLE CHAMPIONSHIP 1982 POLISH AMERICAN CITIZEN OF THE YEAR POLISH CONSTITUTION CELEBRATION BELLE ISLE DETROIT MI 1986 MARRIED DAWN MARIE ZAEMMLER 6/19/82 DIVORCED 2/10/84 NO CHILDREN

“She probably came out and asked him what he did when he wasn’t competing in shooting matches and kissing Polish babies,” Barry said.

“At least he didn’t breed.”