'You're always welcome here, you know that, Mr. Deval. Just give me a minute to open up.'
The watchman, a thin, crusty, unshaven old coot, hobbles toward the gate.
'You're known here.'
He smiles. 'Oh, I am, old boy. I come here regularly to ponder my past.'
He gestures toward the watchman now clumsily working the locks.
'Paul was a steelworker. Worked for the Fulraines since he was a boy. Seventy-six now, long past retirement age, but he can't tear himself away. You don't often find such loyalty these days.'
'Tell me something, Deval – why are we going in here?'
He grins. 'Because it's dark and spooky, a perfect place to dump a body.' He pauses, turns serious. 'Actually, can you think of a more appropriate venue for what we have to talk about?'
When Paul pulls the gates open, we drive through, then make our way through the fog into the ruins of the steelworks. The broken buildings loom above us like the skeletons of dinosaurs. Spencer drives directly into an old smelting furnace area, roof now reduced to a girder frame open to the sky.
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 fog-bound 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 cojones 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, dammit! 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 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.
'Early 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
