The Throat

'It sounds like a mob killing.'

'Yeah, maybe it's supposed to look that way.' He hesitated, then decided not to say any more.

'You mean it had something to do with Billy Ritz?'

'Frankie just got out of line, that's all. That day we saw him, he was one worried man.'

'And Billy reassured him that everything was going to be okay.'

'Looked that way, didn't it? But we weren't supposed to see that. If you don't get in Billy's way, everything's cool. Someday, they'll nail somebody for Waldo's murder.'

'Paul Fontaine has a great arrest record.'

'He sure does. Maybe pretty soon he'll get whoever killed your friend's wife.' There was an odd smile on his face.

'I have an idea about that,' I said.

Glenroy refused to say any more. He was casting glances at his box again, and I left a few minutes later.

18

The clerk asked me if Glenroy was feeling any better, and when I said that I thought he was, he said, 'Will he let the maids in there tomorrow?'

'I doubt it,' I said, and went back to the pay phone. I could hear him sighing to himself while I dialed.

Twenty minutes later, I pulled up in front of Tom Pasmore's house on Eastern Shore Drive. Tom had still been in bed when he answered, but he said he'd be up by the time I got there.

On the telephone, I'd asked Tom if he would like to know the name of the Blue Rose murderer.

'That's worth a good breakfast,' he told me. My stomach growled just as Tom opened the door, and he said, 'If you can't control yourself better than that, get in the kitchen.' He looked resplendent in a white silk robe that came down to a pair of black slippers. Under the robe, he was wearing a pink shirt and a crimson necktie. His eyes were clear and lively. The smell of food hit me as soon as I reached the table, and saliva filled my mouth. I walked into the kitchen. In separate pans on two gas rings on the range, diced ham, bits of tomatoes, and a lot of whitish cheese lay across irregular circles of egg. Two plates had been set out on the counter, and four brown pieces of toast jutted up out of a toaster. I smelled coffee.

Tom rushed in behind me and immediately picked up a spatula and experimentally slid it under each of the omelettes. 'You butter the toast, if you want some, and I'll take care of these. They'll be ready in a minute.'

I took out the hot slices of toast, put two on each plate, and smeared butter over them. I heard one of the omelettes slapping into its pan and looked sideways to see him fold over the edges of the second one and toss it neatly into the air and field it with the pan. 'When you live alone, you learn to amuse yourself,' he said, and slid them onto the plates.

I had finished a quarter of my omelette and an entire piece of toast before I could speak. 'This is wonderful,' I said. 'Do you always flip them like that?'

'No. I'm a show-off.'

'You're in a good mood.'

'You're going to give me the name, aren't you? And I have something to give you.'

'Something besides this omelette?'

'That's right.'

Tom took the plates into the kitchen and brought out a glass cylinder of strong filtered coffee and two cups. I leaned back into the sturdy, comfortable chair. Tom's coffee was another sort of substance from Byron Dorian's, stronger, smoother, and less bitter.

'Tell me everything. This is a great moment.'

I started with the man who had followed me back to John's from his house and finished with Glenroy Breakstone's final remark. I talked steadily for nearly half an hour, and all Tom did was to smile occasionally. Every now and then he raised his eyebrows. Once or twice he closed his eyes, as if to see exactly what I was describing. He read the fragment from the taproom and handed it back without comment.

When I had finally finished, he said, 'Most of Glenroy's clothes come from festivals or jazz parties, have you noticed that?'

I nodded. This was what he had to say?

'Because he almost always wears black, those outfits always look pretty good on him. But their real function is to declare his identity. Since the only people he sees at all regularly, at least while he's at home, are the desk clerk, his dealer, and me, the person to whom he's announcing that he is Glenroy Breakstone, the famous tenor player, is mostly Glenroy Breakstone.' He smiled at me. 'Your case is a little different.'

'My case?' I looked at the clothes I had on. They mainly announced that I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about what I wore.

'I'm not talking about your clothes. I mean, the child who appears to you from time to time—from what you call the imaginative space.'

'That's work.'

'Of course. But a lot of children are scattered through your whole story. It's as though you're fitting everything that happens to you into a novel. And the main element of this novel isn't Bob Bandolier or April Ransom, but this nameless boy.'

So far Tom had said nothing at all about Bob Bandolier, and all of this seemed like an unnecessary indirection. I had mentioned the boy, maybe vaingloriously, to give Tom some insight into the way I worked, and now I had begun feeling a bit impatient with him, as if he were ignoring some splendid gift I had laid before him.

'Do you know what movie was playing at your old neighborhood theater during the last two weeks of October in 1950?'

'I don't have any idea.'

'A film noir called From Dangerous Depths. I looked back at old issues of the paper. Isn't it interesting to think that everyone we're talking about might have seen that movie over those two weeks?'

'If they went to the movies, they all did,' I said.

He smiled at me again. 'Well, it's a minor point, but I'm intrigued that even when you're doing my job for me, going around and investigating, you're still doing yours—even when you're in the basement of the Green Woman.'

'Well, in a way they're the same job.'

'In a sense,' Tom said. 'We just look through different frames. Different windows.'

'Tom, are you trying to let me down gently? Don't you think Bob Bandolier was the Blue Rose killer?'

'I'm sure he was. I don't have doubt about that. This is a great moment. You know who killed your sister, and I know the real name of Blue Rose. Those people who knew him, the Sunchanas, are finally going to tell the police what they've been sitting on for forty years, and we'll see what happens. But your real mission is over.'

'You sound like John,' I said.

'Are you going to go back to New York now?'

'I'm not done yet.'

'You want to find Fee Bandolier, don't you?'

'I want to find Bob.' I thought about it. 'Well, I'd like to know about Fee, too.'

'What was the name of that town?'

I was sure he remembered it, but I told him anyhow. 'Azure, Ohio. The aunt was named Judy Leatherwood.'

'Do you suppose Mrs. Leatherwood is still alive? It would be interesting to know if Fee went off to college, or if he, what, killed himself driving a stolen car while he was drunk. After all, when he was five years old, he all but saw his father beat his mother to death. And at some level, he would have known that his father went out and killed other people.' He interrogated me with a look. 'Do you agree?'

'Children always pick up on what's going on. They might not admit it, or acknowledge it, but they