True Confessions (30 page)

“Tom Spellacy, who do you think killed Lois?” Barry Backer asked.

If I knew who killed her, one place I wouldn’t be is here, Tom Spellacy said to himself.

“I’d like to answer that for Tom,” Fuqua said.

“Hey, Fred, I can’t say you hate air time,” Barry Backer said. “Shoot, buddy. You don’t mind do you, Tom?”

Fuqua did not seem to notice the barb. “First, I think I can say without reservation that the murderer is one of two things . . .”

“We’re all ears, buddy,” Barry Backer said.

“The murderer is either a one-time pickup,” Fuqua said, “or an individual who was acquainted with the victim and knew she would not be missed.”

“That’s narrowing it down,” Barry Backer said. The director in the control booth made a signal for thirty more seconds.

“I think we can also say without reservation,” Fuqua said, “that the crime was perpetrated in a permanent abode in a remote area.”

“Hey, now we’re getting somewhere, Fred,” Barry Backer said. “When you say ... permanent abode . . . you mean a . . . house, right?”

“Right, Barry,” Fuqua said. “Not a hotel or a motel or an apartment or a rooming house. A permanent abode.”

“Because in an apartment, someone would have heard something or seen something, right?” Barry Backer said.

“Right,” Fuqua said.

“And it had to be in a remote area for the same reason, right?” Barry Backer said. The director said ten seconds.

“I call it the remote-area approach,” Fuqua said.

“That’s a swell thing to call it,” Barry Backer said. “Hey, gang, we got to go to five minutes of up-to-the-minute KFIM news. Stay tuned to the next half-hour of ‘Homicide Hotline’ with our special guests Fred Fuqua and Tom Spellacy, a couple of heavyweights. See you in five. Where’s my fucking coffee?”

Fuqua blanched, then when he saw Barry Backer’s smile realized they were no longer on the air. A young woman came into the studio and filled Barry Backer’s cup. He ran his hand up the inside of her leg until it disappeared into her skirt. A dreamy expression came over the girl’s face. She did not offer coffee to either Fuqua or Tom Spellacy.

“The next half-hour,” Barry Backer said, “let’s talk about the guy who did it.”

Fuqua’s eyes were riveted on Backer’s hand. “How do you know it’s a guy?” Tom Spellacy said finally.

Barry Backer removed his hand from the girl’s skirt and picked up his coffee cup. It was stenciled with the initials B.B. and a microphone in the shape of a woman’s breast. “You’re trying to tell me it’s a dyke?”

“I’m trying to tell you it’s a possibility,” Tom Spellacy said. “We haven’t found any clothes, we haven’t found any baggage, we haven’t found any cosmetics. She dropped out of sight two weeks before she was killed. She had to be staying somewhere. Somewhere where she could find clothes and cosmetics.”

“Another woman,” Barry Backer said.

“I always thought she was butch,” the girl said.

“Go get some sugar,” Barry Backer told the girl. She sighed petulantly and flounced out of the studio. “You’re going to say that on the air, she was lez?”

“No, he’s not going to say that,” Fuqua said quickly.

“Why not?” Tom Spellacy said.

“Because I’m doing the Cardinal’s fucking mass,” Barry Backer said. “Because it’s a family station. Because your brother does The Rosary Hour,’ that’s what kind of station it is. Because I got the highest Hooper in my time period and I didn’t get it talking about a bunch of dykes.”

Tom Spellacy was beginning to enjoy himself for the first time all morning. “We could check all the dyke doctors.”

“Look, I don’t give a shit if she licked every snatch in town.” Barry Backer’s voice was still rising. “Just don’t say it on my show.”

“And the dyke butchers,” Tom Spellacy said. “That’d explain how she got cut up so neat.”

“You’re dangerous is what you are,” Barry Backer said. “I let you on the air with that, I’ll be back sweeping out the studio at a 100-watter in Ponca City, Oklahoma, with Holly there.”

Fuqua twisted in his chair and stared at Tom Spellacy. “Barry’s doing a hell of a job and you’re trying to fuck him up.”

Tom Spellacy shook his head. “No, I just want to get things straight. What we’re looking for is a family killer for a family station, right?”

“Cut the smart crap,” Barry Backer said. “I make the jokes on this show.”

The joke on this show, Tom Spellacy thought, is the way Fuqua’s going to become chief. With Barry Backer and Dan Campion as his two leading supporters.

“You got something else we could fill up the time with?” Barry Backer asked Fuqua. “Besides a lot of dirty talk about lezees.”

Fuqua glared at Tom Spellacy. “We could use the green cards, Barry.”

“What green cards?” Tom Spellacy said sharply.

“It’s a new clue.” Fuqua ignored Tom Spellacy and addressed his answer to Backer. “Hasn’t been in the papers yet.”

“And you’ve been sitting on it?” Tom Spellacy said. “Should I tell the gang downtown to tune in? Or let them read it in the papers? Maybe Dan Campion can fill them in.”

“I don’t need your cheap shit, Spellacy,” Fuqua said. “And why aren’t you wearing your tiepin?”

Barry Backer banged his cup down on the table, splashing coffee all over himself. “What the fuck are you talking about? I got a show going back live in another two minutes, for Chrissake, and you’re talking about tiepins and green cards. Why not blue cards, for Chrissake? Mauve cards. What the fuck are green cards?”

“They’re the work papers Mexicans need to get across the border, Barry,” Fuqua said.

“A simple question,” Barry Backer said. He was trying to be calm and reasonable. “And maybe you can answer it in the next ninety seconds before we go back live.” He took a deep breath. “There was this cunt cut in two, right? Now all of a sudden, I find myself up to my ass in lezees and Mexicans.
No habla Espanol. No comprende
what the Mexicans got to do with this broad.”

“The cards were in her suitcase, Barry,” Fuqua said.

“Where?” Tom Spellacy said.

“At the railroad station.”

“I checked baggage claim myself.”

“Well, you did a lousy job,” Fuqua said. “It was in Lost and Found. The bag fell off a shelf this morning and cracked open. The cards were in it and some letters, clothes . . .”

“Sixty seconds, guys,” Barry Backer said, checking the studio clock.

“Sixteen thousand green cards,” Fuqua said. “All forged. Not a bad job, but you find 16,000 cards, you got to figure forgery.”

“What do they go for, forged?” Barry Backer kept his eye on the clock.

“What the traffic will bear,” Tom Spellacy said. Forged green cards. Where had he heard them mentioned. “Ten dollars, twenty, maybe more, you don’t flood the market with them down south.”

“In other words, there’s a couple of hundred grand in that suitcase,” Barry Backer said. “How did she get it?”

“She could’ve been a courier,” Tom Spellacy said. “She had nice tits. They check the tits, not the bag at the border.”

“Then she stiffed somebody,” Barry Backer said.

“Or maybe she just lost the bag,” Fuqua said.

“Somebody stood to make a killing,” Barry Backer said. “And maybe that somebody knocked her off, when that dumb broad decided to pull a fast one . . .”

“We’ll find that somebody, Barry,” Fuqua said.

“Ten seconds,” the director said from the control booth.

Barry Backer could hardly contain himself. “Nobody knows this, right?”

“Right, Barry,” Fuqua said. “You’re going to break it first.”

Suddenly Tom Spellacy started to laugh. Now it came back to him. Turd Turner. If. If. If. He must be having a good laugh someplace, Turd, telling me about the green cards.

“What’s so funny, Spellacy?” Fuqua demanded.

“Nothing, Captain.”

“. . . four, three, two, one,” the director said.

“Hi, gang,” Barry Backer said. “Backer’s back, and clean the wax out of your ears, because you got some heavy listening coming your way the next half-hour ...”

On Thursday Mary Margaret Spellacy arrived on the 2:31 bus
from Camarillo. Tom Spellacy met her at the Greyhound Terminal, picked up her suitcase, kissed her on the cheek and remarked on how well she looked. She wore a dress she had bought with clothing stamps in 1943, her hair was bobbed and she had taken to wearing rimless glasses. Her face was pleasant and unlined, as if it had been sculpted from a loaf of damp bread, and her square, somewhat squashed figure looked, as always, like a cake about to fall. Mary Margaret said that Tom looked peaked. They drove to the house in the Valley, where Mary Margaret proceeded to open all the windows, air the linen, change the beds, vacuum the living room, clean the stove, rinse out the toilets, do the laundry and dust the statue of the Infant of Prague. She never mentioned that the house seemed scarcely lived in. That evening in honor of her homecoming and at her request Tom Spellacy spent three minutes on top of his wife. Friday morning he drove her to the Safeway where she bought eggs, bacon, milk, butter, coffee, sugar, oil, vinegar, bread, ketchup, mustard, a pint jar of mayonnaise, a leg of lamb, two pounds of ground round, three pieces of haddock, watermelon, sweet corn, gelatin, marshmallows, carrots, a cucumber, spinach, a package of Ivory Snow, six bars of Cashmere Bouquet and a box of Oxydol. Friday evening Tom Spellacy said he had to work late. He worked through the night watch and into the lobster trick and by the time he returned home shortly before dawn Saturday he knew the name of Lois Fazenda’s killer. He did not entrust this information to anyone. Saturday night he also worked late. On Sunday Desmond Spellacy arrived for dinner.

“You remember my pa, Monsignor,” Mary Margaret Spellacy said as she dished out the vegetables. “Mister Maher, you always called him. Eugene Maher is what his name was, but everyone called him Mister Maher. Except Monsignor Shea over to Saint Anatole’s. My pa used to take the collection at the ten and every Sunday the monsignor would say, ‘How’d we do this morning, Eugene?’ And my pa would always tell him. You never kept anything back from Monsignor Shea. ‘Shake the basket at them, Eugene,’ if they wasn’t big enough, the collections. He’d send my pa back up again if they wasn’t big enough. That’s how he got the job at the ten, my pa. The monsignor told Owen Curry to go up one Sunday and Owen was too embarrassed, and the monsignor said, That’s the last time you’ll ever take up a collection in this parish, Owen Curry.’ Loud, you know, so that everyone at the ten could hear. ‘Eugene Maher, take up the collection again.’ And so there was my pa every Sunday at the ten, shaking the basket to see if there was anything but coins in it. Nickels, dimes and quarters, you know. And if that’s all he heard, the jingling of coins, back up he’d go. The center aisle first, so everyone could see him. Then the side aisles. He did a grand job at the ten, my pa. Mr. Maher, he was a bookkeeper, you know. At the Water Company. He had grand penmanship. The Palmer method is what he used. Palmer penmanship it was called. It’s a grand asset, good penmanship, if you’re going to be a bookkeeper, and that’s a well-known fact. The Italians don’t have good penmanship. It’s all those vowels their names end in, I think. It’s hard to have good penmanship when you’re making vowels all the time, A, E, I, O, U.”

Desmond Spellacy nodded.

“And sometimes y,” Mary Margaret Spellacy said. “Like in pygmy. There’s no vowels in a word like pgymy, so they use y. There’s a lot of short Italians they could call pygmies if they wanted to . . .”

Tom Spellacy stifled a cough for fear it would interrupt Mary Margaret’s monologue. He did not want her to address her conversation to him. She’s nuttier than the day she went in, he thought. a, e, I, o, u. And sometimes y. Des looks like he’s been hit on the head with a hammer. He wasn’t bargaining on an Italian pygmy, I bet.

“. . . cancer of the rectum is what she had,” Mary Margaret Spellacy said. The segue from short Italians to a malignant rectum had escaped Tom Spellacy. Nor was he about to ask who was so afflicted. He picked up the rhythm of Des’s nodding and in perfect synch began to bob his head up and down vigorously. “When she came out from under the ether, she said she was going to offer it up. She had that little bag, you know, which is what you get with cancer of the rectum. I don’t know if that would be such a grand thing to offer up, the little bag. Although you offer up what you have, I suppose. And never a complaint out of her. I remember when the doctor said he was going to take out the stitches the following Sunday. ‘Goody, goody,’ she said, Trinity Sunday . . .’”

Tom Spellacy tuned her out again. An occasional nod was all that Mary Margaret would need to make her think he was still listening. It was funny how things turned out sometimes. Fuqua and Mary Margaret. In a way, they were responsible for him putting it all together. The last two people in the world, he would have thought.

The green cards. That was a laugh on Fuqua. Fuqua who had not wanted him to go to San Quentin for Turd Turner’s execution.

Who had insisted that Turd Turner was a nobody.

The implication being that a nobody deserved to die alone.

He remembered the holding cell down the corridor from the gas chamber.

And the cheap rye in the paper cup.

And the way Turd Turner tried to make himself out a desperado instead of the fuckup he was.

That bank job in Inglewood, Turd Turner had said. That was me.

And the hit in North Hollywood.

And the green cards.

The forged green cards.

I bet you didn’t know that, Turd Turner had said.

No.

I was running them down to Mexico for Jack A.

Is that right?

Good stuff. The best. Jack was getting a hundred clams each for them from the Mexicans in Tijuana is what I hear. You got to hand it to Jack. He’s got a real nice thing going with those taco heads. First he sells them the phony papers and then he gives them a job shoveling shit to pay for them. A dollar a day and a lifetime to pay. That’s a Mexican’s idea of heaven.

Then the rye was gone and they had embraced and eight hours later in the presence of fourteen witnesses, Horace Turner had died in accordance with the laws of the state of California and he had not thought of the green cards again until Barry Backer refused to talk about lesbians on the family radio station that was going to broadcast the Cardinal’s midnight mass at Christmas.

He should have told Fuqua, but he didn’t. Fuqua was too busy telling everyone in the 50,000-watt listening area how smart he was, and Barry Backer was saying, Listen, gang, this is an exclusive, like he was Front Page Farrell. Fuck them both. One thing he was not going to do if he could help it, and that was make Fuqua chief. Sit on the green cards, check out Turd Turner’s story, Jack wasn’t going anywhere. There was the other side, too. With the history he and Jack had together, he had better be sure Jack was involved, a lot more sure than he was now. Brenda had said Jack was clean, and Brenda didn’t owe Jack any favors. Sure Jack knew the girl and sure he was probably hip deep in the green cards—that was the sort of operation that would appeal to him—but the two together didn’t necessarily add up to Murder One. Only that he liked to fuck and that he liked to make money and he wasn’t too choosy about how he made it. Killing the girl was stupid and Jack had never drawn a stupid breath in his life. Nor had he ever confused a fuck with grand passion. This whole business was too neat, too much like a story on the radio, and it had been from the start. There were no loose ends, everything seemed to be connected, and that was what bothered him. Usually you locked your desk and you went home and you worried about the termites in the ceiling or the dry rot in the avocado trees or whether your medical insurance covered the piles. The hemorrhoids growing like acorns in your ass had nothing to do with a cute little number who had a rose tattooed above her bush and who just happened to be cut in two. Not this time. Everything was mixed in together. You talked about Turd Turner, then you had to talk about Corinne. You talked about Jack, you were probably talking about Des, too. Knock on Brenda’s door and there was Mickey Gagnon, watch Fuqua take a leak and there was Dan Campion shaking Fuqua’s dick. Crotty’s Chinamen were probably in there, too, you looked hard enough.

No. That wasn’t how things worked. He knew there were those who would say he was trying to cover his own ass. Fuqua, for one. Maybe he was. It would be nice to roust Jack, to make him sweat, to watch the Cardinal drop him like he was a mortal sin, but let someone else stick his neck out. Not me, not yet. A hint here, a hint there and the green card story would come out. When that time comes, sit back and enjoy it. Until then, be cautious, move slow.

All things considered, the way it turned out, a wise choice.

“. . . he’s sucking his skim milk through a straw, Monsignor, is what they tell me,” Mary Margaret Spellacy said. Someone else at death’s door, Tom Spellacy mused. She was always the first to know when the bladder didn’t work or the bowels didn’t move. “The arteries are so hard the blood goes banging through like he’s a pinball machine. A ballroom dancer is what he wanted to be. With a roomful of gold cups from the Harvest Moon Ball. The waltz was always his favorite. But he had a hard time getting partners, with the cock eye. If it wasn’t for the cock eye, the arteries would be soft as spaghetti, I bet. Because dancing is good for the veins. Blood like marbles, and you can blame it all on the wall eye. Which comes from Scully side of the family . . .”

Tom Spellacy wondered who the wall-eyed Scullys were but nodded at Mary Margaret anyway. There was a shrewdness beneath that chatter somewhere. I think we should have relations, Mary Margaret had said Thursday night. Relations. It had been two years since he heard that word and he had almost forgotten the dread it made him feel. When Corinne said “relations,” she was talking about an uncle or a cousin. Someone whose name he did not have to remember. What you did in bed was fuck. It had nothing to do with relating. Maybe Corinne was the reason Mary Margaret wanted to have relations. The house obviously had not been much occupied the two years she was in Camarillo. I had to be living somewhere. Somewhere I was probably having relations. Perhaps Mary Margaret just wanted to establish that she was home. And the best way to establish it was to have relations.

The idea wasn’t bad, he supposed. Just the execution.

For one thing, when he was on top of her, he thought of Corinne. Not that thinking of someone else was unusual. Often when he was on top of Corinne, he had thought of Brenda, or the girl in the Ponds ad. But when he thought of them he only thought how nice it would be to have them there, telling him how terrific he was, the best they ever had. Especially the girl in the Ponds ad, in her strapless formal. He never even wanted the girl in the Ponds ad to take off her gardenia corsage. When he thought of Corinne, in the three minutes he was on top of Mary Margaret, he remembered he had not picked up the clothes at her apartment. There was a pair of blue slacks and a brown suit and a couple of shirts and the Jockey shorts she had bought at the mid-month men’s furnishings sale at Bullock’s and he remembered that he had not tried to find out where she had moved or whether she had had the scrape or what she was doing or how she was getting along and he remembered how relieved he was when she said she always cut her losses and first it made him feel badly that he was relieved and then he felt guilty and then he came and then he said to himself, Fuck it, never again.

It was a performance he did not want to repeat. Better to work late than to repeat it.

And so he stayed late Friday night. Stayed until he was sure Mary Margaret was asleep, lost somewhere in the folds of her flannel nightgown. The bullpen cleared out, the telephones did not ring, the teletype machine was silent except for an occasional clatter. A code 8 on West 57th Place. A 415 on the 2700 block of Hoover. A 211 on Arlington. A 447 on Devonshire. He opened the file drawers and took the manila folders back to his cubicle. The fluorescent lights made the flimsy partitions an even more sickly green than they were in the daytime. He spread the first pile of folders on his desk and stacked the others on the floor, each pile sagging under its own weight: interrogation reports, psychiatric reports, telephone logs, field investigations, confessions, statements, watch reports, end-of-tour reports, yellow sheets, fingerprint records, incident reports, arrest records, photographs, tip files, lead files, M.O. jackets, nickname files, witnesses, suspects, informers, snitches, paper, paper and more paper. The systems approach. A search for a definite pattern. Although it was not exactly what Fuqua had in mind. The systems approach to pass the time until Mary Margaret was asleep and he would not have to raise the flannel nightgown over her thighs and think about Corinne.

Let Fuqua worry about the green cards. That was a story he already knew. Let Fuqua find the thread of connections and sew them all together like buttons on a suit. He would read and not fuck his wife. The language in the reports was restful, so anonymous that it removed personality. Suspect. Perpetrator. Vehicle. Apprehended. Weapon. Surveillance. Residence. Caucasian. Male. Female. The murderer was a well-built male who hated women, said the first police psychiatrist. The murderer was a well-built female who hated women, said the second police psychiatrist. The murderer was impotent. The murderer was potent. He read on. The murderer was a midget. The murderer was a twin. He ordered coffee. The murderer was a lesbian. The murderer was a child molester. He ordered a ham and cheese on rye, but when the sandwich came on whole wheat he did not eat it. The cheese curled and hardened and the bread went stale. A chief petty officer confessed, a Negro waitress accused, a deputy sheriff in Riverside County arrested. Charges dismissed.