Mr. X (41 page)

I had nearly forgotten my vow to protect Frenchy La Chapelle from the cowardice of his partner in crime, but when it came back to me, I repaired to the intensive care unit of St. Ann’s Community Hospital.

At the center of a network of wires and tubes, a Hatchtown weasel I knew of old sipped the steady doses of oxygen provided by a mechanical ventilator. Like all Hatchtown weasels, including Frenchy La Chapelle, Clyde Prentiss had dared speak of me only in whispers during his urchin-hood. (None of them have ever known my name—any of my names—and for decades have referred to me by a delightfully sinister sobriquet.) On a balmy evening twenty-five years in the past, happening to overhear the prepubescent Clyde Prentiss amusing his peers by a show of irreverence, I exploded into their clubhouse, grasped the little fellow by his ankles, carried the gibbering boy down the lanes to a little-noted structure, and suspended him head-down over the Knacker.

At a time when popular opinion dismisses every sort of nastiness as unacceptable, this eternal source of Hatchtown nightmares has not only been forgotten, its very existence has been denied. Accidentally or no, the Knacker’s location has slipped from public record, conveniently assisting its ascent into mythical status.

I held the wriggling boy above the pit until a fragrant evacuation stained his dungarees. Having made my point, I lowered him to the floor. From that day forth, neither the boy nor his fellows offered ought but obedience. The comatose husk of that child’s adult self lay before me.

I drew my knife to slice through the accordion folds of the ventilator tube. His spindly chest elevated and deflated. I threw back the sheet, punched the blade into his navel, and dragged it to his throat, which I laid open with a single lateral stroke. The guardian machines trilled, and Prentiss flopped up and down in lively consternation. I wiped the blade on the bottom of the coverlet and swept unseen around the nurse who had appeared at the front of the compartment.

I once again put the fear of God into Frenchy La Chapelle by seeming to materialize out of the refuse of a Word Street corner.
“Good morning, Frenchy,” I said. He levitated an inch or two off the pavement. “Time for your marching orders.”

Frenchy emitted a moan, about what I had expected. “I tried to find Dunstan, but if he ain’t here, it ain’t my fault.”

“I want to know where he’s staying.”

“How’m I supposed to do
that
?” Frenchy whined.

“Look for him. When you see him, follow him home. After that, return to this corner and wait for me.”

“Wait for you?”

“Pretend it’s a train station, and I’m the train.”

His mouth curved downward in a Frenchy-smile. “Lots of guys tryin’ to find Dunstan.”

He risked a peek beneath the brim of my hat. “The cops brought him in after that friend of Joe Staggers got his head bashed open, only they let him go. Staggers and his pals aren’t too happy.”

“You’d better find him before they do,” I said.

He rocked back and forth, gathering his courage. “Didn’t you say something about a favor?”

“You could always call the hospital.”

Frenchy stopped jittering, and a pulse beat in his temples.

“Step into Horsehair. I’ll explain what you are going to do Monday night.”

He held his breath as I moved in and blocked the opening. Frenchy had been one of the boys who had seen little Clyde’s brush with the Knacker.

55

Laurie, who had listened with only half an ear as I described Rinehart’s book and my conversation with Suki Teeter, came to life as we neared the expressway. “You solved everything in one day! Yesterday you didn’t know anything, and now you know more than you want to! You’re done! We have to celebrate.”

I asked if Cobbie had come home all right.

“Yes.” Her tone was dry and ironic. “Stewart brought him
home and then favored us with his company for several hours. That’s why I was late.” She swerved onto the westbound ramp. “He helped himself to gallons of Scotch and repeated the same things over and over.” Laurie glanced over her left shoulder and flattened the accelerator. We hit sixty before we shot out onto the expressway, and when we settled into the fast lane, the speedometer was climbing past seventy. “Most of them were about you.”

I blurted, “Me?”

Grenville Milton had called Le Madrigal to complain about a man of my description who had insulted him outside the restaurant, then gone in—on Milton’s recommendation! Vincent, the headwaiter, had identified me and informed Milton that I had joined Mrs. Hatch and Mrs. Ashton. Milton had reported to Stewart, who already knew, because his private detective had told him.

Laurie said, “This morning, some guy tailed me into town and watched us go to City Hall. After that, he followed us to the V.A. Hospital. When I got home, he hightailed it around the corner for a little chat with Stewart. Who of course shoved Cobbie into his car and burned rubber all the way to my house.”

I looked through the Mountaineer’s big rear window. “If Stewart thinks I’m working for Ashleigh, he must be going batty trying to figure out what we were doing at the V.A. Hospital.”

“Everything’s driving Stewart batty. Stewart is especially batty when it comes to you.” Her eyes flashed at me. “Going places with a Dunstan is like associating with Charles Manson. After destroying the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and introducing the Black Death to Europe, your family got
really
awful. They settled in Edgerton, where they practiced voodoo and cheated at cards. They made the Kennedys look like the Reagans!”

Gleaming with mockery, Laurie’s eyes slid to meet mine. “He actually said that.
They made the Kennedys look like the Reagans
. It was very impressive.”

“We always were a little peculiar,” I said.

The tiles on the roof of the big house on Blueberry Lane were made of rubberized plastic, and its design mismatched a Tudor manor with a Georgian townhouse. Stewart Hatch had probably fallen in love with the place the moment he had seen it.

“Who built this house?” I asked Laurie.

She grimaced. “It’s one of Grennie Milton’s masterpieces. To feel at home in it, you have to wear a pink blazer and green pants.”

We went into a vast space in which islands of furniture seemed to float a few inches off a pale carpet. Footsteps clattered on a staircase. Cobbie hurtled around a corner, charged toward us, and wrapped his arms around his mother’s legs. A dark-haired young woman in blue jeans and a loose cotton sweater appeared in his wake.

“Ned, Posy Fairbrother, my savior.”

Posy gave me a crisp handshake and a smile that would have warmed a corpse. “The famous Ned Dunstan.” From the mass of hair gathered behind her ears, wisps and tendrils escaped to fall about her face. She was about twenty-four or twenty-five and the sort of woman who wore lipstick only under duress. “Cobbie’s been talking about you all afternoon.” Posy turned to Laurie. “Feed him in about half an hour?”

Cobbie let go of his mother and tried to drag me away.

“After we get him in bed, how about helping me in the kitchen?”

Posy looked down at Cobbie doing tug-of-war on my hand and smiled at me. “The price of adoration.” She knelt in front of him. “Give Ned some time to talk to your mother before asking him to listen to your music.”

“Ned and I can both listen to the music.” Laurie bent toward her son. “Cobbie, Ned likes that same Monteverdi piece.”

Cobbie stepped into the space Posy Fairbrother had vacated. “You do?” His eyes held no trace of humor.

“ ‘Confitebor tibi,’ ” I said. “Emma Kirkby. I love it.”

His mouth fell open. I might as well have said that Santa Claus lived on one side of me and the Easter Bunny on the other. He wheeled around and raced toward one of the floating islands.

Laurie and I sat on an oatmeal-colored sofa as Cobbie loaded a CD into a rank of sound equipment beneath a big, soulful self-portrait by Frida Kahlo. I couldn’t take my eyes from it. I looked for the other painting she had inherited from her father, and above the fireplace to our left saw a slightly smaller Tamara de Lempicka of a blond woman at the wheel of a sports car.

“What astounding paintings,” I said to Laurie.

Cobbie was exploding with impatience. “Sorry,” she said. “We’re ready now.” He pushed the
PLAY
button.

Emma Kirkby’s shining voice sailed out of invisible speakers, translating the flowing, regular meter into silvery grace. Cobbie sat cross-legged on the carpet, his head lifted, drinking in the music while keeping one eye on me. His whole body went still. The meter slowed down, then surged forward at
“Sanctum et terrible nomen eius,”
and he braced himself. We reached the “Gloria patri,” where Emma Kirkby soars into a series of impassioned, out-of-time inventions that always reminds me of an inspired jazz solo. Cobbie fastened his eyes on mine. When the piece came to an end, he said, “You
do
like it.”

“You do, too,” I said.

Cobbie picked himself up from the carpet. “Now hear the piano one.”

Laurie said, “I’ll mess around in the kitchen for a while,” and disappeared around the corner. Cobbie inserted another CD and pushed buttons until he reached Zoltán Kocsis playing “Jardins sous la pluie,” the last section of Debussy’s
Estampes
.

He closed his eyes and cocked his head in unconscious imitation of almost every musician I have ever met—even I do that when I’m listening hard. I could see the harmonies shiver along his nervous system. “Jardins sous la pluie” ends with a dramatic little flourish and a high, percussive E. When it had sounded, Cobbie opened his eyes and said “That’s on our piano.” He pointed across the room to a white baby grand angling out from a far wall, raced across the carpet, raised the fallboard, and struck the high E. I don’t know what I felt most like doing, giggling in delight or applauding, but I think I did both.

“See?” He struck it again, percussively, and lifted his finger to cut off the note.

“Do you remember the big note before that?”

He spun back to the keyboard and hit the high B. “It’s five down and five up, it’s
funny.”

The B was a five-step down from the E, so after all the previous harmonic movement, the E came as an almost comic resolution. It was no wonder Cobbie could imitate voices perfectly. He had perfect pitch, or what we call perfect pitch, anyhow—the ability to hear precise relationships between sounds.