The Dream of the Broken Horses (37 page)

I pause in the lobby. Am I imagining things? Investigating a twenty-six-year-old murder could hardly be a threat, especially as all my prime suspects—Jack Cody, Andrew Fulraine, Max Rakoubian, and Dad—are dead.

I open the door to Waldo's, check the room, survey the Monday night media crowd. Conversation seems more active than usual, perhaps because with the start of the defense presentation, the Foster trial is finally picking up.

I spot Foster's attorney sitting with Spencer Deval and an aggressive female reporter from
The Star.
Judge Winterson has forbidden the lawyers to talk about the case, but there's nothing to prevent them from socializing with journalists, then leaking information with little eyebrow moves and nods.

I take a seat at the bar, order a beer, ask Tony where Sylvie is tonight.

"She was here, then got bored. I think she went out to a jazz club with the guy from
Rolling Stone."

I ask him about Waldo Channing's demise, whether he was working the bar the day Waldo dropped.

Tony nods. "It was ten years ago. I remember like it was yesterday. I was standing right where I'm standing now. He was sitting in his usual spot, the table beneath the painting. 'Course the painting wasn't up there then. Anyhow, it was a little after 5 P.M. Mr. C was sitting there alone like he often did afternoons, finishing up his column on a yellow legal pad. That's how he wrote it, longhand right here in the hotel lounge, then he'd call
The Times-Dispatch
and they'd send over a runner to pick it up. Mr. C was nursing his usual, a dry vodka martini with a twist. Suddenly he calls out to me: 'Tony!' I look over at him, see him rise up out of his chair, then he drops there on the carpet. Died instantly. Heart attack. None of us could believe it. The man was so alive! You'd feel his energy whenever he walked into the room. I was the first one got to him. Was me who closed his eyes. A sad day, one I'll never forget. 'Course a month later we had a big party here like he said we should in his will. That's when management decided to rename the lounge to honor the memory of the man."

Tony squeezes shut his eyes. When he opens them, I detect a little moisture.

"You know, he left his entire estate to Spencer Deval, the house, cars, all his art and furniture, but he also left mementoes to all the people he liked—pens, watches, cufflinks, stuff like that. And not just to important people, to the little people, too, folks he loved and wrote about—copy boys, shoeshine boys, cabbies, ushers, doormen, even the restroom attendants here at the hotel. Me, I got what he used to call his lucky piece. I'll show it to you."

Tony reaches into his pocket, pulls out a gold coin about the size of a fifty-cent piece, and places it gently on the bar.

"That's a 1918 Double Eagle, year of Mr. C's birth."

I make a quick calculation. If Waldo was born in 1918, he was seventy-two when he died, fifty-six when Flamingo took place. It seems a stretch to imagine a man that age, no matter how angry or threatened, coldly executing Barbara and Tom.

Tony flips the coin in the air, calls out "heads," catches it, smacks it down on the back of his hand.

"Heads it is," he says. "Yeah, Mr. C's lucky piece." As Tony
repockets
it, he nods at the glowing portrait across the room. "Mr. C always had good luck. He lived a charmed life, he truly did."

T
om told Susan:
 
"I think there's going to be a fire."

I put in a full day's work at the Foster trial, produce four drawings, hand them off to Harriet, then walk swiftly to the Calista Public Library across from Danzig Park, arriving just an hour before closing.

In the periodicals room, I pull microfilm of issues
of The Times-Dispatch
from the week of the Flamingo shootings, take the spools to a microfilm reader, and start searching for news of fires.

In Tuesday's paper, I find two house fires—one in Covington, another on Thistle Ridge in Van Buren Heights—plus a three-alarm brewery fire in Iron City.

On Wednesday, there's mention of an explosion in a machine-tool factory on Danvers and 18th and a grease-trap fire that started in a neighborhood Italian restaurant on Torrance Hill.

Discouraged, I unroll down to the Thursday morning edition to read once again the first accounts of the Flamingo murders. Then it occurs to me that if a fire took place Monday night, it might not have been reported for several days, and even if it was the sort of fire that would have been significant on a normal news day, on that particular Thursday it would have been eclipsed by the huge scandal of Flamingo.

Fifteen minutes before closing, I start searching the single-paragraph stories that appear in vertical columns in the Metro section of Thursday's
Times-Dispatch.

A hit-and-run on Thorn Street; a man found dead in a parked car near the corner of Wales and Lucinda; a house fire on Tarkington near Tremont Park; another fire on Indiana; a street holdup on Gale and, a few minutes later, a similar holdup on Pear. None of these stories is promising, but then, just as the librarian flashes the ten-minute warning, I come across a follow-up on the Thistle Ridge fire:

Arson inspectors, examining the remnants of the house at 1160 Thistle Ridge Road that erupted in flames Tuesday night, told reporters that the charred bodies of two persons, a male and a female, were found bound to iron beds in the basement.

"There's clear evidence of arson," Fire Inspector James Halloran said. "And with the discovery of these bodies, a strong inference of murder."

Halloran said that the County Sheriff's Department had been brought into the case and that the Calista County Coroner's Office will autopsy the bodies.

"We're not in a position to say yet who these people are or what they were doing," Halloran said. "The faces of both victims were burned away."

The house, according to county records, is owned by Mr. Vincent
Callistro
of 1492 Laverne. When called for comment, Mr.
Callistro
stated that the house has been rented for the last four years through the Lee-Hopkins Agency in Van Buren Heights.

A person answering the phone at Lee-Hopkins said the agency, due to privacy concerns, would provide no information on the names of tenants, however, he did confirm that the house was rented and that it was fully insured.

A source close to the County Sheriff's Department, told
The Times-Dispatch
that there is preliminary evidence that the victims may have been tortured prior to the fire. This same source affirmed that the cause of the fire was arson, that empty gasoline cans were found behind the house, and also that there were items of a "sordid nature" found at the site. The source refused to describe these items or speculate further about the fire and apparent homicides.

The librarian approaches to tell me I must leave. I insert a dime into the built-in photocopier, print out the article, then walk back to the Townsend to wait for Pam, due in on the late afternoon flight from New York.

E
ntering Waldo's , I spot her right away deep in conversation with Tony. She looks good tonight, blond hair gleaming, eyes and face aglow, the confident flush of a winner.

"There he is!" She beckons. "Please, Tony, a margarita for the gentleman."

Tony grins, starts making me a drink. I kiss Pam on the lips, then perch on the bar stool to her right.

"I get the feeling, don't ask me why, that things worked out well for you today."

She shows me her warmest smile. "Oh, they
did."
She lowers her voice. "CNN's tripling my salary, I'll be based in L.A., and, best part, I'm going to have my own show, an afternoon interview show,
The L.A. Report with Pam Wells."

"Congratulations! We should order champagne."

Tony's delighted to make us a pair of champagne cocktails.

Pam fills me in. Monday morning Fox offered her great money for a political reporting job in the Washington bureau. She was tempted until this morning when CNN counter-offered with an even better package plus the concept for the new show.

"It'll be soft content mostly—celebrity interviews, West Coast lifestyle pieces. But I don't mind. A talking heads show's how you make your name."

She tells me she'll stay in Calista till there's a verdict, then relocate to L.A. It'll take her a couple of months to set the show up. She hopes to be on the air by Thanksgiving.

As we click glasses, I notice Deval, sitting beneath Waldo's portrait, speaking into a cell phone. I turn to Tony.

"Isn't that where Waldo used to sit?"

Tony raises an eyebrow. "He thinks he's Waldo reincarnated."

"How did he come to inherit the column?" Pam asks.

"He was Waldo's gofer, so it was a natural promotion."

"He's definitely got that gofer look," she says.

Tony grins. "Waldo used to call him 'lickspittle' behind his back. When he wanted Spence to feel good about himse1f, he'd call him 'my Man Friday.' "

"How 'bout that phony British accent?"

"Is that what it's supposed to be?" Tony conjures an ultra-haughty expression. "'How you
doin
' old boy, old boy, old boy?'"

We laugh. "Very good, Tony!" Pam tells him. "Excellent impersonation."

"He's not that hard to imitate," Tony says, moving away.

"Listen," Pam says, draining her glass, "I'm starved. Can we go to that Sicilian place? I feel like pasta. I think I need a carbohydrate fix."

A
s we drive over to Torrance Hill, I check my rearview mirror. In night traffic, I can't tell whether anyone's following or not.

En route I tell Pam about the extraordinary experiences I've had over the few days she's been away—the ambush on Riverwalk, my encounters with the Fulraine brothers, my meeting with a retired dominatrix, and last night's drawing session with Jürgen Hoff and Dove Hanks.

"I've got a new suspect, too," I tell her. "A sleazy ex-cop named Walter Maritz. Seems he and Waldo Channing had a little blackmail business going. Also, at the time of Flamingo, he was working as a private investigator for Andrew Fulraine, tracking Barbara to find evidence Andrew could use against her in their custody battle. But according to Jürgen, the story Maritz told the cops about not informing on Barbara because he liked her was a pack of lies. Seems a couple years before Flamingo, Maritz, playing on Barbara's obsession about her daughter, conned her out of a lot of money. When Barbara took up with Cody, the first thing Cody did was have Maritz beaten up. I'm talking multiple broken bones. So it's occurred to me that Maritz, on Barbara's trail, despising both her and Cody, could have decided to kill her to avenge the beating. He'd know Cody would suffer, too, when he found out his girlfriend was killed in a motel room with another lover. Maritz might even have counted on Cody becoming the prime suspect . . . which, in fact, he was."

Pam shakes her head. "Jesus, what a maze!"

T
orrance Hill is the oldest Italian section of the city, also geographically one of the city's highest points. Southern Italians, who came to Calista with the great waves of immigrants early in the twentieth century, clustered here, built houses, churches, stores, and restaurants. And as in other "Little
Italys
," along with the carpenters, masons, culinary, and construction artisans, there arrived a small number of underworld characters.

Calistians
loved hearing tales about these men, soon dubbed "The Torrance Hill Mob," tales that romanticized their influence and power. When I was a kid, I was excited to dine at restaurants where mobsters allegedly hung out, characters with monikers like Tony "Machete"
deCapo
, Johnny "The Priest" Romano, and Jimmy "Big Lips"
Franchetti
.

Enrico's
, the restaurant Pam likes, was one of those hangouts. And though the ambiance here is the same as when my parents took me, the food's now a good deal more sophisticated. Instead of gross platters of veal
parmigiana
accompanied by meatballs and spaghetti,
Enrico's
now serves genuine Sicilian specialties, Pasta
alla
Norma and Pasta
col
Nero
delle
Seppie
.

After we order, Pam turns to me with a question.

"You said Waldo and this ex-cop Maritz had a blackmail racket. Why would Waldo get involved in a thing like that? I thought he had lots of money."

"Jürgen thinks Waldo went into it for sport. He liked to play games, mess with peoples' heads."

I tell her all I know about Waldo, his career and also his decline, how he lost most of his influence near the end.

"How do you know all this?" Pam asks.

"For years I've been an out-of-town subscriber to
The Times-Dispatch."

She shakes her head. "Just couldn't let go, could you?"