coffeehouse appropriately named Cafe Noir. As soon as we sit down, I show him the Thistle Ridge fire story I photocopied at the library. As he reads it, I explain how I believe it fits with Susan Pettibone's account of her final call to Tom and now Shoshana's account of Tom's confession.
Mace stares at me quizzically. 'You think Cody burned these people out?'
'Jurgen says he thinks Jack knew about Barbara's affair with Tom, that he may even have been all right with it. He also says Jack was working hard on finding out what happened to Belle Fulraine and that around the time of Flamingo he told Jurgen he was finally getting close. Suppose Barbara passed on Tom's information to Cody, who then administered what Jurgen calls ‘Jack's own kind of justice.’ Make sense?'
Mace shakes his head. 'I'll look into this fire story, see what we got on it.' He squints at me. 'Gotta hand it to you, David, you're quite the investigator… even if it turns out you're wrong. But suppose you're right, what then? How does this connect with Flamingo? Were Fulraine and Jessup killed for revenge by the porn couple's backers?' He runs a hand through his hair. 'I'll tell you, I'm having trouble with all this. A possible connection to some other horrible crime committed just a couple days before – how the hell did that get by me?'
'Flamingo was so big it obscured everything else that week.'
'That month, that year… the whole fuckin' decade. Just thinking about it makes me crazy.'
'Well, what's making me crazy is that someone's following me.'
'Oh, yeah, Mr. Potato Head,' Mace says.
He wakes me with a call at seven in the morning.
'Shoshana signed the release. I got through to Dr. Barloff last night. She confirmed Shoshana's story, remembers the child porn angle very well. Also that she and Shoshana discussed the pros and cons of coming forward. So Shoshana was telling the truth.'
I tell him I'm not surprised.
'Me neither, but I had to be sure. I've been up most of the night going through the file on that old fire/homicides case on Thistle Ridge. The victims' names were George and Doris Steadman. The zinger – they ran a little industrial film company out of a building on Bailtown Road. After the fire, there wasn't much left up at the house, but our guys found some film cans containing porn in the garage. Not child porn, just the regular kind. No one made too much out of that. As for the fire/homicides, they were never solved. Our guys chalked it up to the mob, the theory being that the Steadmans were producing porn films and the people who controlled the porn market didn't like them infringing on their territory.'
'Follow what I'm saying, David? Catch the drift? Suppose Cody, like you said, brings down a torture/hit on the Steadmans, who have special ‘friends’ who know how to collect a debt. Now let's say those same ‘friends’ live up on Torrance Hill. Six months later Jack Cody gets whacked. There's been a falling out between him and the Torrance Hill boys. So our guys were wrong, it wasn't the mob who killed the Steadmans, it was Cody, who tortured them first to make them tell what they new about the Belle Fulraine kidnapping. Later the mob found out and whacked Cody for messing in their business. See how it comes full circle?'
'I see all right… but something's missing.'
'Yeah, Flamingo. But suppose the Torrance Hill boys ordered the Flamingo murders as retaliation three days after the Steadmans were killed, targeting Tom Jessup because they figured he was responsible for the Steadman massacre?'
'In that case, Tom was the target and Barbara was killed just ‘cause she was there.'
'Or because the Torrance Hill guys knew Barbara was Cody's mistress. What better way to retaliate than kill her and Tom-the-squealer at the same time?'
'They would have known about Tom since he'd ordered the film, then stalled making the final payment. They could easily have followed him to the motel, seen Barbara and figured out the connection to Cody.' I pause. 'Is that what you think happened?'
'Could be.' Mace laughs. 'Maybe so-and-so did such-and-such to whomever, and then what's-his-name did whatever-it-was to you-know-who. It's too complicated. Been too many years. It's a fuckin' ball of snakes. How the hell can I ever unravel it?'
Mace is right, he can't unravel it, there are too many variables, too many supposes, too big a cast of characters, most of whom now are dead. A hitman acting for the Torrance Hill mob – sure, that could be. As good an explanation as any I guess. But in no way conclusive.
So what does this all mean? That the Flamingo killings must forever remain unsolved? That it will become one of those old murder-mystery puzzles like the Black Dahlia case in L.A.; the ‘Il Mastra’ sex killings in Florence, Italy; the Zodiac killings in San Francisco; and a hundred cases more – turning up from time to time as filler in the back pages of newspapers, there to be pored over by obsessives, amateur criminologists, and adolescent boys?
'Interesting idea, maybe a little too complicated, too conspiratorial. But, hey! don't sweat it, Mace.'
'Thanks, David, but I'm sure I will. So… see you around the courthouse,' he says.
15
Mr. Potato Head: Something about him rings a bell. But how could that be since I have no idea what he looks like?
Waiting for Pam in Waldo's, I draw several empty head-shaped ovals. Then, sick of that, I turn on my stool and start sketching faces of people in the room, portrait studies of my colleagues – exuberant, cynical, jabbering, tongues loosened by liquor, faces animated by bonhomie.
'You make it look like fun,' says Tony, standing behind me, peering at my heads.
In fact, having negotiated a fee with Sophie's editor, I'm delighted to have something to keep me busy at the bar.
Pam shows up. 'Sorry I'm late. I had a meeting with a source.' She leans toward me, whispers into my ear: 'Don't tell Harriet, but defense presentation's going to be quick. This whole shooting match should be over in a week.'
'Good! Finally we'll be getting out of here.'
'Up to the jury, but if I were you, David, I'd stick closer than usual to the court.'
She scans my sheet of media faces. 'What a bunch of clowns. I think you’re a cartoonist at heart.'
'Cartoonist, courtroom sketch artist, forensic artist, all-around hack. Sometimes I think I'd be happy illustrating children's books.'
'Yeah, kiddie noir. How ‘bout getting some dinner? I hear there's a good Thai place out near Indiana Circle.'
On the way, I tell her Mace's ultra-complicated theory about Tom being the Flamingo target. Pam's skeptical, but she likes the way Shoshana's tale fits so perfectly with Susan's.
I tell her Thistle Ridge is only five miles or so out of our way. 'Mind if we head over there? I'd like to find the site of that burned-out house.'
I find Thistle Ridge Road after a few wrong turns. It's twilight by the time we get there. It's a classic suburban street with mailboxes at the entries to driveways leading up to nice-looking contemporary houses set back on one-acre lots. There aren't any streetlamps, just ambient light from the rapidly darkening sky and light cast out through the windows of the homes.
1160 Thistle is at the crest, last lot on the street. A hedge screens the house and yard. There's a carriage lantern atop a post and a sign on the mailbox, THE HERRONS.
I pull a little past, then back my car into the driveway so we can scan the residence. It's a single-story ranch that looks like a rebuild, not surprising since, according to The Times-Dispatch, the original house nearly burned to
