Entering 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 counteroffered 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 himself, 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.'
As 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 J u rgen 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 Jurgen, 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!'
Torrance 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 these hangouts. And though the ambience 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 specialities, 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.'
'Jurgen 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 it go, could you?'
'I guess not. Also I kept hoping I'd open the paper one day and read that they'd solved Flamingo. It was years before I realized that if that's what I wanted, I'd have to come back and make it happen myself.'
As we drive back downtown from Torrance Hill, I again check my rearview mirror. There are a lot of cars, it's difficult to tell, but one set of headlights seems to be sticking with us.
'Hold on tight,' I tell Pam. 'I'm going to make some moves.'
'What's going on?'
'I think we're being followed.'
I swerve into the right lane of Thurston, do a hard turn onto Lester, make another right onto Fairlane, then do a quick U-turn, pull in front of a paint store, and cut my headlights.
'Hey! Is this a joke?'
'the guy who was asking about me over at the Flamingo – I'm pretty sure he's been in my room poking through my drawings.'
'I can't believe-'
'Shhhh. Here he comes. Slide down in your seat.'
As the car, a dark, nondescript sedan, sails toward us, I can't decide whether its headlights show the same signature. As it passes, I try to get a look at the driver, but I can't make out anything except the silhouette of a hated figure hunched over the wheel. After he's gone, I try to make out his license plate, but by then he's too far
