“I don't… you mean he's a taxidermist?”
“Didn't you know? He's got all kinds of animals and birds and things in his house. I was there once to deliver groceries when my dad had the flu.” A mock shiver. “Creepy,” she said.
“How do you mean?”
“All those poor dead things with their eyes looking at you. And Mr. Bertolucci… well, if you've ever met him…”
“No, I haven't.”
“You'll see when you do.”
“Is he creepy too?”
“He's kind of, you know-” and she tapped one temple with the tip of her forefinger. “My mother says he's been like that for years. ‘Tetched,’ she says.”
“How old is he?”
“I don't know, seventy or more.”
“In what way is he tetched?”
“He hardly ever leaves his house. Everything he wants he has delivered. He's always shooting off his shotgun too. Some kids got in his yard once and he came out with it and threatened to shoot them.”
“Maybe he just likes his privacy,” I said.
“Sure,” she said dubiously, “if you say so.”
I asked her where Bertolucci lived, and she said on Hill Street and told me the number and how to get there: it was all of three blocks away, off Dillon Beach Road. I thanked her, went out, got into my car, and drove to Hill Street. Some street. An unpaved, rutted dead-end scarcely a block long, with four houses flanking it at wide intervals, two on each side. The first one I passed had a Confederate flag acting as a curtain over its front window; the second one, opposite-a sagging, once-white 1920s frame-was half-hidden by a wild tangle of lilac shrubs and climbing primroses. The second one belonged to Bertolucci.
An unpainted stake fence enclosed the yard; I bumped along and parked in front of its gate. On the gate was a warped sign that said TAXIDERMY in dull black letters. I put a hand against the sign, shoved the gate open, and went along an overgrown path to the porch. Another sign hanging from a nail on the front door invited, Ring Bell and Come In. I followed instructions.
The girl at the general store hadn't been exaggerating: the room I walked into was definitely creepy. For one thing it was dim and full of shadows; all the curtains were drawn and the only illumination came from a floor lamp in one corner. There was just enough light so the dozens of glass eyes arranged throughout caught and reflected it in faint, dark glints that made them seem alive. Half a dozen deer heads, one sporting an impressive set of six-point antlers. An elk's head mounted on a massive wooden shield. A game fish of some sort on another shield. On one table, a fat raccoon sitting up on its hind paws, holding an oyster shell between its forepaws. On another table, an owl with its wings spread and its taloned claws hooked around the remains of a rabbit. Dusty glass display cases bulging with rodents-squirrels, chipmunks, something that might have been a packrat. Two chicken hawks mounted on pedestals, wings half-unfolded and beaks open, glinty eyes staring malevolently at each other, as if they were about to fly into bloody combat. All of that, and a farrago of ancient furniture and just plain junk thrown about in no order whatsoever so that the effect of the place-and the smell that went with it-was of somebody's musty, disused attic.
I was standing there taking it all in when the old man came through a doorway at the rear. He was slat-thin and so stoop-shouldered he seemed to be walking at a low, forward tilt. Thick, knob-knuckled hands, a puff of fuzzy, reddish gray hair like dyed cotton, a nose that resembled the beaks of the two chicken hawks. Dressed in a pair of faded overalls and a tattered gray sweater worn through at both elbows. He was a perfect fit with the rest of the place: old, dusty, frail, and riddled with slow decay.
Or so it seemed until he spoke. When he said, “Yes?” his voice spoiled the impression. It was strong, clear, and more irascible than friendly.
“Mr. Bertolucci?”
“That's right. Help you with something?”
“Possibly. I'd like to-”
“Don't do deer anymore,” he said. “Nor elk nor moose nor anything else big. Too much work, too much trouble.”
“I'm not here about-”
“Birds,” he said, “that's my specialty. Hawks, owls-predators. Nobody does 'em better. Never have, never will.”
“I'm not here to have something stuffed and mounted, Mr. Bertolucci. I'd like to ask you a few questions.”
“Questions?” He moved closer to me in that crabbed way of his and peered up at my face. His own was swarthy and heavily creased; the lines bracketing his mouth were so deep they looked like incisions that had not yet begun to bleed. His rheumy old eyes were full of suspicion now, as glass-glinty as those of the stuffed animals and birds. “What questions?”
“About a man named Harmon Crane, a writer who died back in 1949. I wonder if you knew him.”
Silence for a time-a long enough time so that it seemed he might not answer at all. His gaze remained fixed on my face. There was a slight puckering of his mouth around badly fitting dentures; otherwise he was expressionless.
“How come?” he said finally.
“How come what, Mr. Bertolucci?”
“How come you're interested in Harmon Crane?”
“You did know him, then?”
“I knew him. Been dead a hell of a long time.”
“Yes sir. I'm trying to find out why he killed himself.”
“What for, after all these years?”
I explained about Michael Kiskadon. Bertolucci listened with the same lack of expression; when I was done he swung around without speaking, went over to the table with the owl on it, and began to stroke the thing's feathers as if it were alive and a pet. “Ask your questions,” he said.
“Did you know Crane well?”
“Well enough not to like him.”
“Why is that?”
“Stuck-up. Big-city writer, always tellin people what to do and how to do it. Thought we was all hicks up here.”
“You did get along with him, though?”
“We was civil to each other.”
“Did you know he used your name in one of his books?”
“Heard it. Didn't like it much.”
“But you didn't do anything about it.”
“Like what? Sue him? Lawyers cost money.”
“You rented Crane a cabin, is that right?”
“Stupidest thing I ever done,” he said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Told you. I didn't like him.”
“Where was this cabin?”
“Not far. Five miles, maybe,” Bertolucci said. Slowly, as if he were reluctant to let go of either the words or the information. “End of the big peninsula south of Nick's Cove.”
“The cabin still there?”
“Long gone.”
“Do you still own the property?”
“No. Sold it to an oyster company in '53, but they went out of business. Man named Corda bought it twenty years ago. Dairy rancher. Still owns it.”
The smell in there was beginning to get to me-a musty, gamey mixture of dust, fog-damp, old cooking odors,
