'His parents hired me to locate him. But my interest goes beyond that. Billy has been charged with murder, and I think he's probably innocent. Also, Billy is someone whose difficulties in life are ones for which I hold a special sympathy.'
She looked at me, then at Timmy, then back at me. 'I hope you don't mind my asking, but-are you gay?'
I glanced at Timmy and caught him looking at me sappily. I said, 'Yes, Timmy and I are lovers.'
He started to move toward me, and I thought, Oh Christ, but he swung around and just shifted position in his chair.
Margarita Mayes caught this and smiled. Timmy said, 'He's very straitlaced.'
'Good,' she said. 'So am I. I think I'd better have Chris get in touch with you. She'll call you.
Why don't you give me your number again.'
I handed her my business card. 'Please have her call as soon as she can. There's a certain urgency in all this, as you can imagine. Have Chris and Billy been friends for a long time?'
'Oh, yes. Ages.'
'College?'
'No. I mean, they met around that time. But at another place.'
'A mental institution?'
She blanched. Timmy stiffened and gave me an indignant look.
'You'd better talk to Chris,' Margarita Mayes said. She stood up. 'I don't know what she wants you to know and what she doesn't want you to know.' She looked put out and resentful at having been left with a lot of useless, incomplete instructions. 'I'll ask her to call you, and then you two can work it out. I don't even know if Chris would want me to be talking to you like this.'
'If I could see her, it would be easier.'
'She'll call you.' She moved toward the open door. 'Or I'll call you.' She was panicking. I'd pushed too hard.
I said, 'Impress on her the fact that if Billy is going to come through this, he'll need a skilled, full-time friend working on his behalf-to clear him, and to find out who the real killer is. The police are harried, overworked, underpaid, generally not too smart, and they can't be relied on to do that. I can be. But I'm going to need Billy's help, and first Chris's.'
She nodded, played with the cowl on her pretty sweater.
'All right. Thank you. We'll be in touch soon.' She walked quickly to the front door, and we followed.
'Sorry again about the rude phone call,' I said. 'It was just a dumb misunderstanding on my part.'
'Oh, that's all right. I was mixed up, too. I'm half-afraid to pick up the phone these days. I've been getting crank calls since yesterday morning, so I've been uptight about the phone ringing.'
'You have?'
'Someone calls and then just listens, doesn't say anything. I can hear the person breathing. But it'll stop soon, I'm sure. You'd better go now. Chris will be in touch.'
I said, 'Do you have a burglar alarm in this house?'
'Yes, as a matter fact we do. Chris set it off accidentally once, and it makes a horrible racket.
Why do you ask that?'
'Well, it's just that-that's an MO burglars sometimes use. They'll call to see if you're home, and if you're not home, they may try to bust in and clean you out before you get back. No one's tried to break in recently, though, right?'
'No. But of course I've been home every night.'
'Right. And you're sure the alarm is working?'
'Yes, that little red light by the door there goes on when it's activated. I set it every night.'
'Good idea.'
'I like your Ken Edwards Tonala,' Timmy said. 'I can see why you wouldn't want those stolen.
There are some lovely things here.'
'Yes,' she said, 'It's not the Ken Edwards stuff, though, it's Armando Galvan.'
'Oh. Right. Did you bring them back from Mexico yourself?'
'Yes. We did. Good night now. Chris will be calling you soon, okay?'
The cold wind was rushing in the open door.
We drove down Lancaster, then swung right on Dove. 'What was that 'mental institution' crap? I thought you'd lost her with that one.'
'I guessed. Blount's difficult, painful secret. I knew he'd been locked up and hated it, but where? He'd told Huey Green-Brownlee-that it hadn't been jail or reform school. Which wouldn't have been the Blount family's style, anyway. A little nuttiness, though, would not have been out of character among the Blounts. And Margarita didn't deny it. She seemed to confirm it.'
'Or maybe he'd been locked in a room a lot as a kid or something. That would have left scars.'
'No. I've hit on something else. For what it's worth.'
'Is all this necessary? All this probing around in Blount's psyche and his past? It seems like there should be an easier way. It's not pleasant.'
'I don't know. I'm finding out what I can. Then I'll see where it points. A murder charge is not pleasant. Nor a murder.'
We turned onto Madison. Timmy said, 'Maybe it points to Mexico.'
'Unlikely. He could get into the country easily enough with just a voter's card or some other proof of citizenship. But there'd be a record of his entry, and I think he'd have thought of that.
My guess is, he's in this country. Wherever.'
'If Blount was in a mental institution, I wonder what particular variety of mental problem he had?'
'I was wondering that, too.'
'Margarita was showing the strain of it all. I felt bad for her. And the crazy phone calls can't be making it easier.'
'Yeah, everybody seems to be getting them these days. Somebody called Blount's apartment while I was there Friday evening and hung up after a few seconds, and Huey Brownlee got two of the same kind of calls several hours before somebody came through his window with a knife early Saturday morning.'
'So-it's the full moon. Or something.'
'Yeah. Or something.'
8
On Monday morning I went to the office and checked my service-no calls-and my mail-no check from my 'check is in the mail' former client. I made an appointment to meet the Blounts at one, then phoned Margarita Mayes to find out if she'd had a safe, uneventful night. Irritated, she told me she had, and that Chris would be in touch. I explained that patience was not one of my two or three virtues, rung off, then drove down to police headquarters on Arch Street in the Old South End.
Division Two headquarters looked like an Edward Hopper painting of an American police station in the twenties, plain and solemn in the sunlight, with tall windows set in a heavy brick facade and a sign hanging out over the street corner that said POLICE. It sat back to back with and was connected to the newer Albany Police Court building on lower Morton, presumably to facilitate the speedy dispensation of justice or its South End equivalent.
I was directed to a second-floor office, where I found Detective Sergeant Ned Bowman typing out forms on an old Smith-Corona. He had on a black sport coat and brown slacks, and his face, which had the usual human features placed here and there on it, was roughly the color of the institutional green walls around him.
Bowman lost no time in showing me his winning personality. 'Yeah, I've heard of you,' he said after I'd introduced myself. 'You're the pouf.'
'What ever happened to 'pervert'?' I said. 'I always liked that one better. It had a nice lubricious ring to it. 'Faggot,' too, I was comfortable with. The word had a defiant edge that I liked. 'Fairy' wasn't bad-it made us seem
