Mystery. Part 38

"Chet Hamilton was there when they found it, and all three men knew it had to be you. There wasn't anybody around to tell them different, and they even had a beautiful motive. Which was that Jerry Hasek-well, you know. Hamilton wrote his story as soon as he got back to his office, and it will run in tomorrow's paper. As far as anybody knows, you're dead."

"It was Barbara Deane!" Tom burst out. "I forgot-she told me she was going to come over late at night.... Oh, G.o.d. She died-she was killed." He closed his eyes, and a tremor of shock and sorrow nearly lifted him off the bed. His body seemed to grow hot, then cold, and he tasted smoke deep in his throat. "I heard her screaming," he said, and started to cry. "When I got out-when you were with me outside-I thought it was her horse. The horse heard the fire, and..." He panted, hearing the screams inside his head.

He put his hands over his ears; then he saw her, Barbara Deane opening the door to the lodge in her silk blouse and her pearls, worried about what he had heard about her; Barbara Deane saying, I'm not sure any woman could have been what people think of as a good wife to your grandfather; I'm not sure any woman could have been what people think of as a good wife to your grandfather; saying, saying, I've always thought that your grandfather saved my life I've always thought that your grandfather saved my life. He put his hands over his eyes.

"I agree with you," the old man said. "Murder is an obscenity."

He reached out and wrapped his fingers around the old man's linked hands.

"Let me tell you about Jerry Hasek and Robbie Wintergreen." Von Heilitz gripped Tom's fingers in his gloved hands: it was a gesture of rea.s.surance, but somehow of rea.s.surance in spite of everything, and Tom felt an unhappy wariness awaken in him. "They stole a car on Main Street, and drove it into an embankment outside Grand Forks. A witness said he saw them shouting at each other in the car, and the driver took his hands off the wheel to hit the other man. The car hit the embankment, and both of them almost went through the winds.h.i.+eld. They're being held in the jail here in town."

"That's Jerry," Tom said.

"All this happened about eight o'clock yesterday night."

"No, it couldn't have. It must have been today," Tom said. "Otherwise, they couldn't have..."

"They didn't," von Heilitz said, and squeezed Tom's hand. "Jerry didn't set the fire. I don't think Jerry shot at you, either."

He let go of Tom's hand and stood up. "I'll be back in under an hour. Remember, you're posthumous now, for a day or two. Tim Truehart knows you're alive, but I was able to persuade him not to tell anyone until the time is right."

"But the hospital-"

"I gave your name as Thomas von Heilitz," the old man said.

He left the room, and for a time Tom did nothing but stare at the wall. Remember, you're posthumous now Remember, you're posthumous now. The second s.h.i.+ft nurse bustled into the room carrying a tray, smiled briskly at him, looked at his chart, and said, "I bet we're happy to be going home, aren't we?" She was a stout red-haired woman with orange eyebrows and two small protuberant growths on the right side of her face, and she gave him a comic frown when he did not respond. "Aren't you going to give me a smile, honey?"

He would have spoken to her, but he could not find a single thing to say.

"Well, maybe we like it here," she said. The nurse put down the chart and came up the side of the bed. A single long hypodermic needle, a cotton swab, and a brown bottle of alcohol lay on the tray. "Can you roll over for me? This is our last injection of antibiotics before we go home."

"The parting shot," Tom said. He rolled over, and the nurse separated the back of his robe. The alcohol chilled a stripe on his left b.u.t.tock, as if a fresh layer of skin had been exposed to the air; the needle punched into him and lingered; another cold swipe of alcohol.

"Your grandfather looks so distinguished," distinguished," the nurse said. "Is he in the theater?" the nurse said. "Is he in the theater?"

Tom said nothing. The nurse switched on the television set before she left the room, not with the remote but by reaching up and twisting the ON ON b.u.t.ton, almost brutally, as if it were a duty he had neglected. b.u.t.ton, almost brutally, as if it were a duty he had neglected.

As soon as she was out of the room, Tom pointed the remote at the blaring set and zapped it.

"Up here, our victims aren't usually so well dressed," said Tim Truehart, standing in his leather jacket by the open door of an old blue Dodge as Tom and von Heilitz came out of the hospital's front entrance.

"I'm not usually so well dressed," Tom said, looking down at the suit the old man had brought for him. It was a grey and blue windowpane plaid, with the label of a London tailor, and except for being a little tight across the shoulders, fit him better than any of his own suits. Von Heilitz had also loaned him a white s.h.i.+rt, a dark blue figured tie, and a pair of well-s.h.i.+ned black shoes, also his size, that felt stiff and resentful on his feet. Tom had expected the detective to show up with cheap new clothes, not his own, and when he had looked at himself in the mirror that hung in his room's tiny bathroom, he had seen a well-dressed stranger in his mid-twenties. The stranger had stubby eyelashes and only a few bristles for eyebrows. The stranger's face looked peeled. If he had seen himself in the dark, he would have thought he was Lamont von Heilitz. not usually so well dressed," Tom said, looking down at the suit the old man had brought for him. It was a grey and blue windowpane plaid, with the label of a London tailor, and except for being a little tight across the shoulders, fit him better than any of his own suits. Von Heilitz had also loaned him a white s.h.i.+rt, a dark blue figured tie, and a pair of well-s.h.i.+ned black shoes, also his size, that felt stiff and resentful on his feet. Tom had expected the detective to show up with cheap new clothes, not his own, and when he had looked at himself in the mirror that hung in his room's tiny bathroom, he had seen a well-dressed stranger in his mid-twenties. The stranger had stubby eyelashes and only a few bristles for eyebrows. The stranger's face looked peeled. If he had seen himself in the dark, he would have thought he was Lamont von Heilitz.

Tom got in the back seat with the suitcases, and von Heilitz sat in the front with Truehart.

"I don't suppose you saw anybody around your lodge before the fire started," the policeman said.

"I didn't even know that Barbara Deane was there."

"The fire was started at both the front and the back of the lodge at roughly the same time-it wouldn't take more than a cup of gasoline and a match to get those old places going." Truehart sounded as if he were talking to himself. "So we know Tom didn't do it accidentally, and it didn't start in the kitchen, or anything like that. That fire was deliberately set."

For an instant Tom wished he were back in his bed in the kindergarten room, safe with his injections of antibiotics and the perpetual television.

Von Heilitz said, "Somewhere in Eagle Lake or Grand Forks, there's a man who is down on his luck. He probably has a prison record. He will do certain things for money. He lives off in the woods, and he doesn't have too many friends. Jerry Hasek learned this man's name by asking around in bars and making a few telephone calls. You ought to be able to do the same."

"There's probably fifty guys like that around here," Truehart said. "I'm not a famous private detective, Lamont, I'm a small-town Chief of Police. I don't usually play games like this, and Myron Spychalla is after my job. I'd hate to have to go to work."

Tom could not stop himself from yawning.

"You have Nappy LaBarre and Robbie Wintergreen in your jail," von Heilitz said. "That's all you really need. I think one of them will be happy to work out a little trade."

"If they know about it."

"Sure," von Heilitz said. "If they know about it. I'm not telling you anything new. I'm not a famous private detective, either. I'm a retired old man who has the leisure to sit back and watch things happen."

"And that's what you were doing up here, I guess." They pa.s.sed the airport sign, and Truehart flicked on his turn signal.

"Semi-retired," von Heilitz said, and the two men grinned at each other.

"All right," said Truehart, "but this boy's mother is going to go through h.e.l.l when she hears that her son died in a fire. That's the part that bothers me."

"She won't."

"She won't what?" what?"

"Won't hear. Her husband is off in Alabama for a couple of weeks, and she never watches television or reads the papers. She's an invalid. If her father finds out somehow, he won't tell her right away, and maybe he would never tell her. He has a history of protecting her from bad news."

That was right, Tom realized-if he had died in the fire, he would never have existed. His grandfather would never speak his name, and his mother would be forbidden to mention it. It would be the way his grandfather had wanted it all along. Her and her's Da.

Tim Truehart pulled up beside a long building with a grey metal skin, and Tom stepped out of the car after the men. The yellow light of a sodium lamp ate into everything like acid. Tom's hands were sickly yellow, and Lamont von Heilitz's hair turned a dead yellow-grey. Tom carried one of the old man's bags around the open front of the long metal building and saw a dismantled airplane on the yellow-grey concrete floor, a gla.s.s bubble rearing out of lifeless canvas, and an engine in parts like a diagrammed sentence, bolts like punctuation marks, the exclamation point of the propeller.

Von Heilitz asked him if he were all right.

"Pretty much," he said.

Truehart's plane had been pulled to the side of the hangar. The bags went through a narrow opening like an oven door. You climbed on the wing to get into the c.o.c.kpit, and Tom slipped downwards before Truehart clutched his wrist and pulled him up. He sat in a single back seat, and von Heilitz sat beside the pilot.

The engine sputtered and roared, and the plane rolled forward into the emptiness before lifting into the greater emptiness of the air.

In Minneapolis he trudged down a long hallway lined with shops alongside von Heilitz. People moving the other way cast amused looks at them, an erect old man and a tottering boy without eyelashes dressed like actors on a stage, both of them a head taller than anyone else.

From Minneapolis they flew to Houston. Tom awakened once, choking on wood smoke, and saw the dark tubular shape of a jet cabin before him. For a second he thought he was flying toward Eagle Lake again, and fell instantly back into sleep.

Between Houston and Miami Tom came awake with his head on the Shadow's bony shoulder. He straightened up in his seat and looked across at his father, who slept on, his head tilted and his mouth open. He was breathing deeply and regularly, and his face, smoothed by the darkness of the cabin, was that of a young man.

A stewardess who looked like Sarah Spence's older sister walked past, looked down, saw that Tom was awake, and knelt beside him with an expectant, curious smile. "The other girls are wondering about something-well, I am too," she whispered. Her Texas voice put a slow, bottom-heavy spin on every vowel. "Is he somebody famous?" famous?"

"He used to be," Tom said.

In Miami they had to run to their gate, and minutes after they had strapped themselves into their seats, the plane rolled down the runway and picked itself into the air to fly south across hundreds of miles of water to Mill Walk. A group of nuns filled the seats in front of them, and whenever the pilot announced that they were flying over an island, they all crowded into the seats on that side of the plane, to see Puerto Rico and Vieques, and the specks named St. Thomas and Tortola and Virgin Gorda, and the little afterthoughts of Anguilla, St. Martin, Montserrat, and Antigua.

"Am I going to stay with you?" Tom asked.

Another stewardess placed trays with scrambled eggs, bacon, and fried potatoes before them. Von Heilitz made a face and waved his away, but Tom said, "Keep it, I'll eat that one too," and the stewardess replaced the tray and gave them the usual curious look. "I love the way you guys dress," she said.

Tom began devouring his eggs.

"No, I think you shouldn't," von Heilitz said. "I don't think you should go home, either."

"Then where should I go?"

"The St. Alwyn." Von Heilitz smiled. "Which Mr. Goetz claimed to own. I've already booked you a room, under the name Thomas Lamont. I thought you'd be able to remember that."

"Why don't you want me to stay at your place?"

"I thought you'd be safer somewhere else. Besides, the St. Alwyn is an interesting place. Do you know anything about it?"

"Wasn't there a murder there once?" Tom could remember some story from his childhood-lurid headlines in newspapers his mother had s.n.a.t.c.hed away. Kate Redwing had mentioned it too.

"Two," von Heilitz said. "In fact, it was probably the most famous murder case in the history of Mill Walk, and I had nothing to do with it at all. A novelist named Timothy Underhill wrote a book called The Divided Man The Divided Man about it-you never read it?" about it-you never read it?"

Tom shook his head.

"I'll loan it to you. Good book-good fiction fiction-but misguided about the case, exactly in the way that most people were. A suicide was generally taken as a confession. We have about twenty minutes left up in this limbo, why don't I tell you the story?"

"I think you'd better!"

"The body of a young prost.i.tute was discovered in the alley behind the hotel. Above her body, two words had been chalked on the wall. Blue Rose." Blue Rose."

The nuns in the seats in front of them had ceased talking to each other, and now and then glanced over the top of their seats.

"A week later, a piano player who worked in some of the downtown clubs was found dead in a room at the St. Alwyn. His throat was slit. The murderer had printed the words Blue Rose Blue Rose on the wall above his bed. In the early days, he had played with Glenroy Breakstone and the Targets-the on the wall above his bed. In the early days, he had played with Glenroy Breakstone and the Targets-the Blue Rose Blue Rose record is a kind of memorial to him." record is a kind of memorial to him."

Tom remembered his mother and von Heilitz playing the record-the soft, breathy saxophone making compelling music out of the songs mangled by Miss Gonsalves at dancing cla.s.s.

"So far, the victims were marginal people, half-invisible. The police on Mill Walk couldn't get excited about a wh.o.r.e and a local jazz musician-it wasn't as though respectable citizens had been killed. They just went through the motions. It seemed pretty clear that the young man had been killed because he'd witnessed the girl's murder-even Fulton Bishop could work that one out, because the piano player's window in the St. Alwyn was on the second floor overlooking the brick alley. A short time after that, a young doctor was attacked, same thing, Blue Rose Blue Rose, but when it turned out that he was h.o.m.os.e.xual-"

The pilot asked all pa.s.sengers to fasten their seat belts in preparation for landing on the island of Mill Walk, where the skies were cloudless and the temperatures in the low nineties. The nuns pulled the belts taut and craned their necks.

"Well, Fulton Bishop's patron, your grandfather, asked that he be a.s.signed to a more salubrious case, and-"

"My grandfather?"

"Oh, Glen was very important to Captain Bishop, still is. Took an interest in his career from the beginning. Anyhow, Bishop was promoted, and a detective named Damrosch got the case. By now it looked like a curse. The Eyewitness Eyewitness was full of it, and the people were in the condition newspapers like to call 'up in arms.' What that really means is that they were t.i.tillated-they felt a kind of awful fascination. Now Damrosch was a talented detective, but an unstable man. Professionally, he was completely honest, and if he'd been a real straight arrow in every way, he could have gathered a nucleus of other honest policemen around him, the way David Natchez seems to have done. But he was a blackout drinker, he beat people up now and then, he'd had a very troubled youth, and he was a closet h.o.m.os.e.xual. None of this side of his life emerged until later. But even so, he had no friends in the department, and they gave him the case to make him the scapegoat." was full of it, and the people were in the condition newspapers like to call 'up in arms.' What that really means is that they were t.i.tillated-they felt a kind of awful fascination. Now Damrosch was a talented detective, but an unstable man. Professionally, he was completely honest, and if he'd been a real straight arrow in every way, he could have gathered a nucleus of other honest policemen around him, the way David Natchez seems to have done. But he was a blackout drinker, he beat people up now and then, he'd had a very troubled youth, and he was a closet h.o.m.os.e.xual. None of this side of his life emerged until later. But even so, he had no friends in the department, and they gave him the case to make him the scapegoat."

"What happened?" Tom asked.

"There was another murder. A butcher who lived near the old slave quarter. And when that happened, the case virtually closed itself. No more Blue Rose murders."

The nuns were listening avidly now, their heads nearly touching in the gap between their seats.

"The butcher had been one of Damrosch's foster fathers-a violent, abusive man. Worked the boy nearly to death until young Damrosch finally got into the army. Damrosch hated him."

"But the others-the doctor, and the piano player, and the girl."

"Damrosch knew two of them. The girl was one of his informants, and he'd had a one-night stand with the piano player."

"What do you mean, the case virtually closed itself?"

"Damrosch shot himself. At least, it certainly looked that way."

The plane had been moving steeply down as von Heilitz talked, and now the palm trees and bright length of ocean alongside the runways whizzed and blurred past their windows: the wheels brushed against the ground, and all of the plane's weight seemed to strain backwards against itself.

A stewardess jumped up and announced over the loudspeaker that pa.s.sengers were requested to remain in their seats, with seat belts fastened, until the vehicle had stopped moving.

"You could say that his suicide was a sort of wrongful arrest."

"Where were you during all this?"

"In Cleveland, proving that the Parking Lot Monster was a gentleman named Horace Fetherstone, the regional manager of the Happy Hearts Greeting Card Company."

The airplane stopped moving, and most of the pa.s.sengers jumped into the aisle and opened overhead compartments. Tom and the Shadow stayed in their seats, and so did the nuns.

"By the way, was it clear that one of the victims survived? In Underhill's book they were all killed, but the real case was different. One of them made it. He'd been attacked from behind in the dark, and he didn't even get a glimpse of his attacker, so he was no use in the case, but he knew enough medicine to stop his bleeding."

"Medicine?"

"Well, he was a doctor, wasn't he? You met him this summer," said von Heilitz. "Nice fellow." He stood up, stooping, and moved out into the aisle. "Buzz Laing. Did you notice? He always wears something around his neck."

Tom looked straight ahead of him and saw the brown right eye of one nun and the blue left eye of another staring at him through the gap between their seats.

"Oh, one little thing." Von Heilitz leaned down beneath the overhead compartments. "Damrosch shot himself in the head at a desk in his apartment. There was a note saying Blue Rose Blue Rose in front of him on the desk. Case closed." in front of him on the desk. Case closed."

He smiled, and all the fine horsehair lines around his mouth cut deeper into his skin. He turned away and started moving up the aisle toward the front of the plane. Tom scrambled out of his seat.

"Occasionally," von Heilitz said, "what you have to do is go back to the beginning and see everything in a new way."

They pa.s.sed through the open door of the airplane and entered the annihilating sunlight of the Caribbean, pouring down from a hazy sun in an almost colorless sky.

"Occasionally," von Heilitz said, "there are powerful reasons why you can't or don't want to do that."

The stewardess who had told them she liked the way they dressed stood at the bottom of the metal staircase, handing white printed cards to the pa.s.sengers. A long way away, goats pushed their heads through a wire fence. The smell of salt water mingled with the airport smell of jet fuel.

"The handwriting on the note in front of Damrosch," Tom said.

"Printed in block letters." He accepted one of the cards from the stewardess.