'I'm in my car on Route 684,' she says. 'Just left Susan Pettibone. She really opened up. We talked four hours straight. It was like she'd been wanting to talk about all this for years.'
She tells me Susan has vivid memories of her phone conversations with Tom Jessup those final weeks, far more detailed than the summary I found in the police file.
'I got the impression,' Pam tells me, 'that in some way Tom was the love of her life. He was the first man she ever lived with, her first real long-term lover. She's led a full life since, been married, divorced, raised kids, and developed a high-powered career, but I think in her mind Tom's almost mythical, the handsome long-lost lover of her youth.'
'In their long phone conversations those last weeks, Tom told her he'd become involved with an older woman who was beautiful, wealthy, and socially prominent. He told Susan he was crazy about her, but that she had problems, was involving him in them, and this involvement had begun to frighten him.'
'He wasn't specific, but Susan got the impression that the deeper his involvement, the more frightened he became. By the time he called her and virtually begged her to come out to Calista, she thought he sounded desperate.'
'Tom also told her about the girl in his rooming house. When I asked if Tom ever characterized her as a stalker, Susan said no, Tom found her intelligent and sweet. He was only troubled because she made it clear she was attracted to him and he wasn't attracted to her at all. In fact, Susan said, Tom considered this girl and Hilda Tucker his only real friends in Calista, at least until he fell in love with Barbara Fulraine.'
'What about that last conversation when she called Tom and he thought she was someone else?'
'That was the most interesting part. You told me that in the police report Tom's quoted as saying: ‘Hi, did you really do it?’ Susan says that's not right, that Tom said, ‘Did he do it yet?’ When I asked her how she could be positive after twenty-six years, she said she's never forgotten his words, that she can still hear them in her head as if he spoke them yesterday.'
'There's definitely a difference between ‘Did you do it?’ and ‘Did he do it?’'
'Right! And later in that same conversation, Susan asked Tom what he'd meant. She says he mumbled something about ‘putting an end to some really bad business,’ and that he was expecting a call that night that would tell him it was ‘finally done with.’ Then he said something like ‘I think there's going to be a fire.’'
'Fire?'
'Yeah.'
'I don't get it. Why didn't she tell any of this to the cops?'
'I asked her that. She said that at the time she didn't think it was connected to the murders. Also that the detective who called her told her their interview was pro forma, that the Sheriff's Department already knew who'd ordered the killings, that it was Barbara's gangster boyfriend and that very soon he'd be arrested.'
'You did great,' I tell her. 'How're things going with the job offers?'
'I'm sticking around tomorrow morning for the finish. I'll fly into Calista tomorrow afternoon. Let's meet in Waldo's at seven, hoist a margarita or two, celebrate my deal however it turns out.'
Downstairs, discovering it's raining, I step into Waldo's for a quick lunch and a beer. While I'm eating, I ask Tony if he knew that Waldo Channing may have done a little blackmailing on the side.
'There're rumors about everyone,' Tony says. 'It's a regular wasp's nest, this town. But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. C had more class in his little finger than the whole bunch of ‘em put together.'
'And Spencer Deval – does he have class?'
'Now that's another story,' Tony says. 'Let's put it this way – he'd like you to think he does. He and Mr. C were always afraid someone would find out they met.' Tony smiles, brings his mouth close to my ar. 'Spence used to work the DaVinci strip.'
He's referring to the strip of porn shops and cheap whore's hotels on DaVinci Road where it runs along the edge of Gunktown.
'Deval was a hustler?'
Tony nods. 'For years, Mr. C kept it quiet. In his set, it was okay to be gay. You sowed your wild oats in Europe or New York, then met someone from your own class and settled down. But if people found out Mr. C'd picked up his boyfriend on DaVinci – well, that would've been something else. Now, of course, everything's different. A thing like that can even be a plus. After Waldo died, Spence told a couple of his friends and they spread it around. Now people are fascinated he hast that in his past.'
Which leaves me with no clear answer to my original question, whether Waldo, with his arch manner, malicious wit, and flaunted superficiality, was, beneath it all, a bit of a cheap crook. And though my first impression, upon hearing this from Chip's mother, was that if it were true it made Waldo scum, I now take a gentler view. In fact, I decide, it's the first thing I've heard about Waldo that makes him truly interesting… as does the fact that his boyfriend was a hustler. And perhaps, I think, since Waldo obviously didn't need to blackmail people for money, perhaps he did it as a kind of social service, his way of ripping the masks off the people he wrote about, a confirmation also of his world view – that everyone was some kind of hypocrite.
8:00 p.m.
The rain's stopped so I decide to walk to Jurgen's girlfriend's place. The address seems odd for a residence, a 1930s-era office building ten blocks from Calista Center. A uniformed doorman admits me to a restored art deco lobby embellished by contrasting slabs of marble and alabaster.
She I express surprise that people live here, the doorman tells me several upper floors have been converted to apartments.
'Very private, one residence to a floor,' he says. 'Ms. Hanks is expecting you. You're to go right up.'
A high-speed elevator whisks me to the penthouse. Stepping off into a small foyer, I hear the wonderful old Ella Fitzgerald/Cole Porter album playing behind the facing door.
When Jurgen lets me in, the vision before me is so stunning I pause to draw my breath. We're on a balcony overlooking a double-story living room with a gracefully curving staircase leading down. The room below has been done up with a studied absence of color – black leather upholstery, black and white rug, black and white framed photographs on the walls. The wall opposite is a broad expanse of glass revealing a spectacular view: the entire Calista Valley from Irontown to Delamere Lake caressed by the light of the setting sun. The Calista River, a soft buff red, snakes its way through the ruins of the mills, while Lindstrom's twin glass towers catch and reflect the pink mackerel sky.
It's a drop-dead view from a drop-dead room in a drop-dead apartment. I'm amazed. If this is who a high- class call girl can live in Calista, I wonder why any girl in ‘the life’ would stick around L.A. or New York.
'What a fabulous place!'
Jurgen nods. 'Dove inherited it from a client. He liked her, set her up here, then he died here, heart attack ‘in the saddle,’ as they say. His wife and children were pissed when they discovered Dove was in his will. Tried to buy her off cheap. I got her a good lawyer. Now she owns it free and clear.'
As if on cue, Dove Hanks appears. Jurgen introduces us and we formally shake hands.
I smile and Dove giggles – we both know why I'm here. She's a lovely, tall, willowy black woman, mid- twenties, with rich, dark skin so silken smooth I'm tempted to reach out and touch it just to see how nice it must feel. Her features are cover-girl gorgeous and there's nothing at all call girl avaricious in her eyes. On the contrary, they convey a tender dreaminess. She's wearing strappy sandals and a simple white dress looped over her bare shoulders by spaghetti straps. Glossy, precision-cut black hair surrounds her face like a helmet.
'Been looking forward to meeting you, David. I've posed for plenty of photographers. You'll be my first real artist.'
'I'm more an illustrator than an artist.'
She smiles again. 'I saw your drawing of Jurgy. Caught him just right, I thought.'
She's well-spoken and knows how to flatter. I find her immensely likeable.
'I brought along some large sheets of paper,' I tell her. 'I thought we'd work on a bigger scale tonight.'
