The Dream of the Broken Horses (51 page)

He parks, we get out of the car, then wander on foot deeper into the ruins. Indeed, I think, this venue couldn't be better chosen. What better stage for recounting terrifying acts? The deserted ruins of Fulraine Steel—crumbling brick smokestacks, shattered ceilings, blasted concrete floors, a virtual theater of
ravagement
and perdition. What better place for one man to open his heart to another, confess terrible past deeds. But will Spencer confess? Or is this all part of a game? Here amidst fogbound ruined furnaces and broken Bessemer converters, old brick walls blackened by accretions of fire and smoke, does he intend to reveal himself or does he have something else, something unexpected in mind?

"As we were saying—"

"As
you
were saying, old boy. It was you, remember, who broached the subject back in the hotel bar."

He stops, inserts a cigarette into a holder, lights it, draws in the smoke, exhales, then crooks his elbow against his side, archly holding out the holder—his signal that he's now in play.

"Now let's suppose," he says smoothly, "that a certain Gentleman did something similar to what you describe . . . killed a couple in a motel, something ever-so-bad such as that? Someone hearing that story might conclude: 'Oh, he did the awful deed for his Lover . . . who was having a bit of a tiff with the Lady at the time.' This same someone might think that he, the Lover, I mean, hated the Lady sufficiently to wish her dead. And perhaps that would be true, perhaps the Lover did wish that. But he, the Lover, would never have had the
cajones
to realize such a wish. Wasn't his style, as they say. No, not the style of the type of man we're talking about, the Lover, I mean. His style would be far more devious. He might, for instance, send vicious letters containing old clippings, used condoms, pubic hairs, that sort of thing. So when you say—and, remember, we're spinning a tale here—when you say, 'Oh, the Gentleman did it in return for a promise of a gossip column from his Lover,' well then, old boy, I'm afraid you'd be way off the mark."

"Why did he do it then?" I ask, entering into the game, intrigued that he's opening up to me, repelled too by his arrogance, his apparent belief he can spin his tale harmlessly by concealing it within a stylized fiction. Still, I know, I must appear to believe him.

"Well, old boy—for money, of course!" Spencer chuckles. "Helluva lot of money, too!"

"His Lover paid him?"

"No, damnit! Not
his Lover! You're still missing the point."

"Set me straight."

"Oh, I shall, old boy, I shall! Suppose someone else paid him, someone who truly had a lot to lose if the Lady actually did as she had threatened."

"I'd think the Lover would've had a lot to lose."

"You mean a besmirching of his reputation? You're right, that wouldn't have been pleasant, but the Lover could have finessed it well enough. Couple months vacation on the Riviera, then home to resume his column with a vengeance. No, not the Lover, decidedly not. You see, vicious as he was, the only way he knew how to hurt was with words."

"Then who?"

"Clever whippersnapper like you should be able to figure that one out."

And then it comes to me, and I feel like a fool for not having seen it. "Andrew Fulraine." Spencer smiles. "But how? I mean—I didn't even know you knew him."

"Knew him? I
fucked
him! And, believe me, it wasn't all that exciting either. He picked me up on
DaVinci
, gave me my start, introduced me to what one might laughingly call 'some of the finer things in life.' On that subject, by the way, Waldo could be most amusing. 'Yes,' he'd say, 'it's true, the best things in life
are
free, but I prefer the second best things . . . and they are very expensive.' Andrew introduced me to Waldo. Waldo specialized in Andy's 'leavings.' But, remember, we're not talking about me here. We're talking about the Gentleman. We're weaving a hypothetical yarn about—what do you call them?—archetypes, I think."

Yes, archetypes. . .

"So Fulraine wanted Barbara dead because of the custody case?"

"I believe it cut a good deal deeper than that. But first let's get our characters straight. So far we have: the Gentleman, the Lover, and the Lady. Now we introduce: the Husband. Which brings us to the matter of the Husband's peccadilloes, as they used, so charmingly, to call them. Now the Husband, as you can imagine, did not wish his private habits known. He wanted custody of his kids, but even more he wanted his secret kept."

"The secret of his peccadilloes?"

"Yes! Those irresistible desires that sent him regularly to the most sordid sections of our fair city. He most decidedly did not want that exposed. He was, after all, a family man."

"And he knew someone who would take care of the matter."

"Let's say he knew someone willing to take care of the matter if he were paid handsomely enough."

"The Gentleman?"

"Good! Now we're back into our story. And yes, indeed, the Gentleman did do the nefarious deed. A whore, after all, is accustomed to performing special personal services for pay."

"Without remorse?"

"Not much really. A year on
DaVinci
has a way of toughening a boy up. Live that life for a while, you learn to do what you have to
to
survive. Of one thing the Gentleman was certain: He wasn't going back where he came from . . . no matter what."

"Did the Lover know?"

"The Lover did
not
know! In fact, he found the Lady's demise quite inconvenient. It spoiled all the delicious plans he had in mind, all the ingenious ways he was going to torment her. But, if truth be told, the Lover was a bit of a horse's ass. And the Gentleman was smart enough not to trust him. Not that his untrustworthiness was any kind of secret. The Lover was often heard to say: 'Never tell me anything you don't want the whole world to know.' Silly people who didn't take the Lover at his word nearly always came to regret it."

Spencer would like, he tells me, there to be no misunderstanding—personally the Gentleman had nothing against the Lady or her Friend. It was simply a dirty job that had to be done. And the payment was commensurate with the difficulty.

Suddenly a bolt of lightning tears the night sky. For a moment, it casts a sharp, crisscross pattern on the concrete floor, shadow of the network of rusted girders above. A moment later the shadow fades, then the sky lets loose.

It's a summer thunderstorm much like the one that broke the afternoon of the Flamingo killings. As the rain crashes down, Deval and I exchange a look. Then, drenched, we seek out shelter, finding it in the alcove of a furnace where, crouching to escape the rain, we find ourselves but inches apart.

More brilliant zigzag tears against the night, cracks of thunder following ever more swiftly. But Deval doesn't stop, he continues to declaim, spewing out his story against the storm.

"You see, it wasn't the money per se, old boy. It was what so much money could
do!
What you've got to understand is that what the Husband offered the Gentleman was far more than a mere bundle of cash. He offered him a magnificent living. He offered him a
life!"

Spencer extracts the wet cigarette from his holder. He turns boastful as he tosses it away.

"Earlier you proposed the notion that the Gentleman received his Lover's column in payment for the deed. To set you straight, the Gentleman did
not
receive the column as a gift. Rather he
bought
it. That's right,
bought
the column, first receiving a byline in smaller print beneath the Lover's, then little by little making the column his own. Through study and emulation, he learned which knobs to turn, levers to pull, in order to enter society. And, over time, his tongue became tarter, more sharply honed than the Lover's. People found his
bon
mots
more amusing. By the last year of the Lover's life, the old man wore a look of defeat. His sources dried up. People considered him passé. Now they looked to the Gentleman for approval, turned to him for counsel, confided secrets into
his
ear."

The rain slacks off, the lightning passes, the storm quells as quickly as it came.
Deval's
voice falls too. We crawl out of our shelter. Now his tone turns brittle.

The Gentleman, he tells me, before agreeing to do the deed, pondered what to do if he were caught. He knew one thing: He would not fall upon his sword. If it became clear he was going down, he'd bring the Husband down with him. And so, clever boy that he was, he took steps to ensure proof of the Husband's complicity. It wasn't just the possibility that the Husband would disavow their bargain that drove him; rather something far more serious. For if the Husband was so evil as to employ the Gentleman to slaughter the mother of his children, what insurance did the Gentleman have that the Husband wouldn't later employ another to slaughter him?

Thus certain steps were taken, and a good thing, for over the years the Husband tried several times to renege. Whenever this happened, the Gentleman would remind the Husband of the hold he had, the means to send him to prison. Then as punishment, he'd require even larger payments.

As expected, the Husband would always relent, in the end making the huge final payment as demanded. So in that sense, at least, their pact was not Faustian, not one in which the Gentleman sold his soul to the Devil and then one day the Devil came by to collect his note. Rather it was a case in which the Gentleman performed a service for the Devil (i.e., the Husband), then used proof of their bargain to extract ever larger sums.

"You're wondering what that proof was, aren't you?" Spencer's eyes gleam in the night, "Remember how I patted you down? If the Husband had patted the Gentleman down, there would have been no proof. Perhaps even, for that matter, no crime. But in the story I'm telling, the scheme between them was recorded."

"
Why're
you telling me this?"

He shrugs. "It's just a story after all."

He stops speaking then as suddenly as he began. Storytelling time, it seems, is over. He turns, starts back toward his car. I watch him as he gets inside, then beckons me to the driver's window.

"Well, that's it, old boy." He smiles. "Time now for me to bow out." He starts the engine. "I'm sure you'll manage to find your way home." And then, feigning an afterthought, he hands me an envelope. "A souvenir. I know you'll make good use of it. Well . . . so long, old boy. . . ." And, with that, he raises his window, switches on his headlights, then drives off slowly into the fog.

I stand there staring after him, amazed at what he's told me, the cool manner in which he's told it, his strange, cool departure too. What is he up to? Why has he left me here? Why has he told me so much? Is this all some kind of complicated taunt?

When he's out of sight, I tear open the envelope, find a tape cassette inside.

If this is the recording he made of his deal with Andrew, why give it to me now? Why go to all the trouble of patting me down, telling me what happened in the guise of a story, then hand me what appears to be hard evidence of his guilt?

In the post-storm silence, I can hear the throbbing engine of his car as it makes its way through the ruins, then a short, sharp honk when it reaches the steelworks gate. I move out of the furnace area toward the river, hoping to catch sight of the Jag as it crosses the flatlands then mounts the road to the bluffs above.

I make it out finally, its perfect profile, as, headlights gleaming, it ascends River Street toward the Stanhope Bridge. A fine black shape moving smoothly upward through the night. Then, at the crest above the riverbank, it stops.

Good! Maybe he'll come back for me.

Hearing the roar of the engine revving up across the water, I get a feeling that's not what's going to happen. Then with mounting terror, I watch as the big car suddenly leaps forward toward the railing, crashes through, soars out into space, hangs in the air for a moment like a great falcon poised before attack, then plunges down-down-down toward the Calista River, finally splashing in the water, then sinking slowly into the iron-red muck.

C
alista County Courthouse, 12:30 P.M. Closing arguments in the Foster trial are done, the prosecution having methodically summed up its case, the defense having emotionally cast "reasonable doubt."

I've spent the morning distracting myself from last night's trauma by producing a dozen drawings, half of defense counsel ridiculing the evidence, half of the prosecutor pounding home his points. As soon as Judge Winterson completes instructions and sends the jury off to deliberate, all of us in the media circus troupe our way back to the Townsend to wait in Waldo's for the verdict.

Lots of rumors circulate around the barroom as to possible dispositions of the case. But as the afternoon wears on, another rumor snakes its way in, not about the Foster trial but about local society columnist Spencer Deval.

3:00 P.M. The first glimmer reaching Pam and me as we sit with Sylvie at the bar is that
Deval's
car was fished out of the Calista River at dawn.

A few minutes later,
Starret
stops by to tell Pam he hears Deval was involved in an old local murder case.