The Throat (58 page)

Three
weeks after the murder of his mother, the child was released into the
first of the series of orphanages and foster homes that would lead him
in five years to Heinz Stenmitz, a newly married young butcher who had
recently opened a shop beside his house on Muffin Street in the section
of Millhaven long known as Pigtown.

At this
stage of his life, April wrote, Stenmitz was a striking figure who,
with his long blond hair and handsome blond beard, bore a great
resemblance to the conventional Christian portrait of Jesus; moreover,
he conducted informal church services in his shop on Sundays. Long
after, at his trial for child abuse, it was introduced as evidence of
the preacher-butcher's good character that he had often sought his
parishioners at the train and bus stations and had given special
attention to those frightened and confused immigrants from Central and
South American countries who were handicapped by an ignorance of
English as well as poverty.

April
Ransom was quietly making the case that Heinz Stenmitz had murdered
William Damrosch's mother. She believed that, on a dark cold night in
February, gullible and intoxicated witnesses had seen the butcher's
flowing hair and remembered the old stories of the persecuted angel.

I looked
up to see that Alan had returned from his nap. His hands were clasped
at his waist, his chin was up, and his eyes were bright and curious.
"Do you think it's good?"

"It's
extraordinary," I said. "I wish she had been able to finish it. I don't
know how she ever managed to get even this much together."

"Efficiency.
And she was my daughter, after all. She knew how to do research."

"I'd
like to be able to read the whole thing," I said.

"Keep it
as long as you like," Alan said. "For some reason, I can't seem to make
much headway on it."

For a
moment I was unable to keep from registering the shock of the
understanding Alan had just given me. He could not read his daughter's
manuscript, which meant that he could no longer read at all. I turned
to the television to hide my dismay. The screen showed a long view of
Illinois Avenue. People stood three and four deep along the sidewalks,
yelling along with someone chanting through a bullhorn.

"Oh, my
God," I said, and looked at my watch. "I have to meet John." I stood up.

"I knew
it'd be good," Alan said.

In
shirtsleeves, Ransom motioned me inside and went into the living room
to turn off the television, which showed the same roped-off stretch of
Illinois Avenue I had just seen on Alan's set. The books had been
pushed to the side of the coffee table, and loose pages of the Blue
Rose file lay over the rest of its surface. The green linen jacket was
draped over the back of the couch. Just before John reached the
television, a slightly breathless Isobel Archer appeared on its screen,
holding a microphone and saying, "The stage is set for an event unlike
any which has occurred in this city since the early days of the civil
rights movement, and which is sure to inspire controversy. As the
tensions in Millhaven grow more and more intense, religious and civic
leaders demand—"

John bent
over to turn the set off. "I thought you'd be back before this." He
noticed the thick folder in my hand. "What's that, the other part of
the file?"

I placed the
folder beside the telephone. "April's manuscript has been at Alan's
house all this time."

He lifted the
green jacket off the couch and slipped it on. "You must have taken a
look at it, then."

"Of course I
did," I said, opening the upside-down file to its last pages. I had
looked through only something like the first quarter of
The Bridge
Project,
and I wondered what April had written last. A
letterhead was
darkly visible through the paper on the top of the pile, and, curious,
I lifted up the sheet and turned it over. It was a sheet of April's
personal stationery, and the letterhead was her name and address. The
letter had been dated some three months ago and was addressed to the
chief of police, Arden Vass.

John came
toward me from the living room, adjusting the linen jacket.

The letter
explained that April Ransom had become interested in writing a paper
that would touch upon the Blue Rose murders of forty years before and
hoped that Chief Vass would give her permission to consult the original
police files for the case.

I turned over
the next letter, dated two weeks later, expressing the same desire in
somewhat stronger terms.

Beneath this
was a letter addressed to Sergeant Michael Hogan and dated five days
after the second letter to Arden Vass. April wondered if the sergeant
might assist her in her research— the chief had not responded to her
requests, and if Sergeant Hogan had any interest in this fascinating
corner of Millhaven history, Ms. Ransom would be most grateful.
Sincerely yours.

Another
letter to Michael Hogan followed, regretting what might seem the
writer's bad manners, but hoping to make amends for them by her
willingness to spend her own time trying to locate a forty-year-old
file in whatever storage facility it was kept.

"Hogan knew
she was interested in the old Blue Rose case," I said. John was reading
the letter over my shoulder. He nodded. "He plays it pretty close to
the vest, doesn't he?"

John stepped
beside me and turned over the next sheet, also a letter. This was to
Paul Fontaine.

Dear
Detective Fontaine: I turn to you in something like desperation, after
failing to receive replies from Chief Vass and Sergeant Michael Hogan.
I am an amateur historian whose latest project concerns the history and
origins of the Horatio Street bridge, the Green Woman Taproom, and
among other topics, the connections of these sites to the Blue Rose
murders that took place in Millhaven in 1950. I would very much like to
see the original police file for the Blue Rose case, and have already
expressed my absolute willingness to search for this file myself,
wherever it may be stored.

Detective
Fontaine, I am writing to you because of your splendid reputation as an
investigator. Can you see that I too am talking about an investigation,
one back into a fascinating time? I trust that you will at least give
me the courtesy of a reply.

Yours in hope,

April Ransom

"She was
jiving him," John said. "Yours in hope? April would never say anything
like that."

"Do you think
she might ever have taken a look at the Green Woman?"

He
straightened up and looked at me. "I'm beginning to wonder if I was
ever qualified to answer questions like that." He threw up his arms. "I
didn't even really know what she was working on!"

"She didn't
either, exactly," I said. "It was only partly a historical paper."

"She couldn't
be satisfied!" John said, stepping toward me. "That's it. She wasn't
satisfied with being a star at Barnett, she wasn't satisfied with doing
the same kind of articles anybody else would write, she wasn't…" He
clamped his mouth shut and looked moodily at the manuscript file.
"Well, let's get downtown before the damn march is all over." He threw
open the door and stormed outside.

As soon as he
was in the car, he bent over, placed a hand on my thigh and his head on
my knee, and reached under my seat. "Oh, no," I said.

"Oh, yes."
John straightened up, holding the revolver. "I hate to say it, but we
might need this."

"Then count
me out."

"Okay, I'll
go alone." He leaned back, held in his stomach, and slid the gun into
his trousers. Then he looked back at me. "
I
don't think we'll need a
gun, Tim. But if we meet someone, I want to have something to fall back
on. Don't you want to take a look at the place?"

I nodded.

"This is just
backup."

I started the
car, but did not take my eyes off him. "Like at Writzmann's?"

"I made a
mistake." He grinned, and I turned the car off. He held up his hands,
palms out. "No, I mean it, I shouldn't have done that, and I'm sorry.
Come on, Tim."

I started the
car again. "Just don't do that again. Ever."

He was
shaking his head and hitching the jacket around the curved tusk of the
handle. "But suppose some guy walks in when we're there. Wouldn't you
feel easier if you knew we had a little firepower?"

"If it were
in my hands, maybe," I said.

Wordlessly,
John opened his jacket, pulled the gun out of his trousers, and handed
it to me. I put it on the seat beside me and felt it press
uncomfortably into my thigh. When I came to a red light, I picked it up
and pushed the barrel into the left side of my belt. The light turned
green, and I jerked the car forward.

"Why would
Alan buy a gun?"

John smiled
at me. "April got it for him. She knew he kept a lot of cash in the
house, in spite of her efforts to get the money into the bank. I guess
she figured that if someone broke in, all Alan had to do was wave that
cannon around, and the burglar would get out as soon as he could."

"If he was
just supposed to wave it around, she shouldn't have bought him any
bullets."

"She didn't,"
John said. "She just told him to point the gun at anyone who broke in.
One day last year when she was out of town, Alan called, all pissed off
that April didn't trust him enough to give him bullets, he could handle
a gun better than I could—"

"Is that
true?" Alan Brookner did not seem like a man who would have spent a
great deal of time firing guns.

"Got me.
Anyhow, he chewed me out until I gave up and took him to a shop down on
Central Divide. He bought two boxes of hollow points. I don't know if
he ever told April, but I sure didn't."

As I drove
down Horatio Street, distant crowd noises came to us from the direction
of Illinois Avenue and the other side of the river. Voices shouting
slogans into bullhorns rose above mingled cheers and boos.

I looked
south toward Illinois at the next cross street. A thick pack of people,
some of them waving signs, blocked the avenue. As gaudy and remote as a
knight in armor, a mounted policeman in a riot helmet trotted past
them. As soon as I got across the street, the march vanished again into
distant noise.

The tenements
along this section of Horatio Street looked deserted. A few men sat
drinking beer and playing cards in parked cars.

"You looked
through that file?" I asked.

"Funny, isn't
it?"

"Well, they
never did ask about who had been fired recently."

"You didn't
notice? Come on." He sat up on the car seat and stared at me to see if
I was just pretending to be unobservant. "Who is the one guy they
should have talked to? Who knew more about the St. Alwyn than anyone
else?"

"Your father."

"They
talked
to my father."

I remembered
that and tried another name. "Glenroy Breakstone, but I read his
statements, too."

"You're not
thinking."

"Then tell
me."

He sat there
twisted sideways, looking at me with an infuriating little smile on his
lips. "There are no statements from the famous Bob Bandolier. Isn't
that a little bit strange?"

"You must be
mistaken," I said. He snorted. "I'm sure I read about Bob Bandolier in
those statements."

"Other people
mention him from time to time. But he wasn't working in the hotel when
the murders took place. So for Damrosch—probably Bandolier never
crossed his mind at all."

With the
bridge directly before us, I turned left onto Water Street. Forty feet
away, the Green Woman Taproom sat on its concrete slab across from the
tenements. Pigeons waddled and strutted over the slashes of graffiti.

Ten feet
beyond the front of the bar, a fifteen-foot section of the concrete
sloped down smoothly to meet the roadbed. Pigeons ambled and flapped
away from my tires. I drove slowly up past the left side of the bar.
The second, raised section of the tavern ended in a flat frame wall
with an inset door.

I swung
around the back of the building and swerved in behind it. Tarpaper
covered the back of the building. Above the back door, two windows were
punched into the high blank facade. Ransom and I softly closed our
doors. Now nearly at the Illinois Avenue bridge, cut from view by the
curve of the river and the prisonlike walls of an abandoned factory,
the army advanced. An outsize, brawling voice bellowed, "
Justice for
all people! Justice for all people!"

Pigeons moved
jerkily across
SKUZ SUKS
and
KILL MEE DEATH
.

A blaze of
whiteness caught my eye, and I turned toward it —the harsh sunlight
poured down like a beam onto a dove standing absolutely still on the
concrete.

I looked at
Ransom's white, shadowless face across the top of the car. "Maybe
someone took those pages out of the file."

"Why?"

"So April
wouldn't see them. So we wouldn't see them. So nobody would ever see
them."

"Suppose we
try to get inside this place before the march breaks up?" Ransom said.

John pulled
open the screen door and fought with the knob. Then he banged his
shoulder against the door. I pulled out the revolver and came up beside
him. He was fighting the knob again. I got closer and saw that he was
pulling on a steel padlock. I pushed him aside and pointed the gun
barrel at the lock.

"Cool it,
Wyatt." John pushed down the barrel with a forefinger. He went back to
the car and opened the trunk. After an excruciating period that must
have been shorter than it seemed, he pushed down the lid and came
toward me carrying a jack handle. I stepped aside, and John slid the
rod into the shackle of the padlock. Then he twisted the rod until the
lock froze it and pulled down heavily on the top end of the rod. His
face compressed, and his shoulders bulged in the linen jacket. His face
turned dull red. I pulled up on the bottom of the rod. Something
between us suddenly went soft and malleable, like putty, and the
shackle broke.