Laszlo Nagy, from my point of view a mass of dark curls erupting from the bottom of a brown tweed cap, began talking as soon as I got into his cab. Some guy got killed right there across the street, did I know that? Makes you think of that crazy guy Walter Dragonette, didn't it? What makes a guy do things like that, anyhow? You have to be God to know the answer to that one, right? Laszlo Nagy had arrived from Hungary eight years ago, and such terrible things never happened in Hungary. Other terrible things happened instead. Do I see this terrible rain? Do I know how long it will last, this terrible rain? It will last six hours exactly. And what will come next? A fog will come next. The fog will be equally terrible as the rain, because no driver will be able to see what is in front of him. We will have fog two days. Many accidents will take place. And why? Because Americans do not drive well in the fog.
I grunted in all the appropriate places, thinking about what I knew and what it meant. William Writzmann was the son of Oscar Writzmann—now I understood Oscar's remark to John and me about going back to Pigtown, where we belonged. As Billy Ritz, Writzmann had carried on an interesting criminal career under the protection of a murderous Millhaven policeman until the day after John and I had come crashing in on his father. Writzmann had been the front man for Elvee Holdings; Elvee's two fictitious directors had been named after Fee Bandolier's father and an old head of homicide named Andy Belin. Tom Pasmore had been right all along. And Fee Bandolier was a policeman in Millhaven.
I had no idea of what to do next.
Laszlo drew up in front of John's house. When I paid him, he told me that American money should be in different sizes and colors, like bills in England and France—and Hungary. He was still talking about the beauty of European money when I closed the door.
I ran up the walk and let myself into the dark house with the extra key. In the kitchen, I rubbed the rain off my face with a paper towel, and then I went upstairs to do some work until John came home.
PART ELEVEN
After I had showered, dressed in clean, dry clothes, and worked for an hour or so, I sat on the bed and called Tom Pasmore. No woman named Jane Wright had been killed in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in May or any other month of 1977, but there were lots of other Allentowns in the United States, and he was gradually working through them. He told me he was going to look into Tangent's history as soon as he found the right Allentown. Tom had a lot to say about Fee Bandolier. He also had a few ideas of how to proceed, all of which sounded dangerous to me. When we finished, I felt hungry again and decided to go downstairs to see if there was anything in the refrigerator except vodka.
As I was going toward the stairs, I heard a car splashing to a stop at the front of the house and went to the window at the front of the hallway. A dark green cab stood near the curb. Sheets of water washed down the street, and rain bounced crazily off the roof of the cab. Through the streaming water I could read the words MONARCH CAB CO. and a local telephone number on the front door. John Ransom was leaning over the front seat, wrangling with the driver. I ran back to the guest room and dialed the number on the cab door.
'This is Miles Darrow, the accountant for Mr. John Ransom. I understand that my client has used the services of your cab company within the past few hours. He has a problem saving his receipts, and I wonder if you could tell me where your driver picked him up, where he was going, and what the average fare would be to Ely Place on the east side from that location. No reason letting the IRS get it all.'
'Gee, you're a good accountant,' said the woman I was speaking to. 'I took the call from Mr. Ransom myself. Pickup was at his house and destination was the Dusty Roads Sunoco Service Station on Claremont Road in Purdum, then to return back to Ely Place. The average fare, that's kind of hard to say, but it would have to be about sixty-seventy dollars, except more on a day like this. And waiting time would add some more, but I don't know about that.'
'Dusty Rhoades?' I asked.
She spelled the name for me. 'Not like the baseball player,' she said. 'It's more like a kind of a cute kind of a name.'
That was about right. Purdum was an affluent town about twenty miles up the shoreline. There was a well- known boarding school in Purdum; a famous polo player, if you knew about things like that, owned a stable and a riding school there. In Purdum, every traffic accident involved at least two Mercedes. I thanked her for her help, hung up, and listened to John moving through the living room. I went to the head of the stairs. The television began to babble. A heavy body hit the couch.
I started down the stairs, telling myself that John would have stowed Alan's gun somewhere in his room.
He didn't say anything until he had given me a long, disapproving look from the couch. Streaks of moisture still dampened his scalp, and widening dark spots covered the shoulders of the dark green linen jacket. On the television screen, a beautifully dressed, handsome black family sat around a dining room table in what looked like a million-dollar house. John took a big mouthful from a glass filled with clear liquid and a lot of ice cubes, still giving me the full weight of his disapproval. Maybe it was disappointment. Then he looked back at the black family. The soundtrack told us that they were hugely enjoyable. 'I didn't know you were home,' he said, stressing the pronoun.
'I had a busy day,' I said.
He shrugged, still watching the television.
I walked behind the couch and leaned against the mantel. The bronze plaque with April's name on it still lay on the pink-and-gray marble. 'I'll tell you what I did, if you tell me what you did.'
He gave me a look of pure annoyance and turned theatrically back to the set. 'Actually, I thought I'd get home long before you came back. I had a little errand to get out of the way, but it look longer than I thought.' Loud, sustained laughter came from the television. The father of the black family was strutting around the table in an exaggerated cakewalk. 'I had to go to my office at Arkham to go over the curriculum for next year. What took so long was that I had to hand in Alan's reading list, too.'
'I suppose you called a taxi service,' I said.
'Yeah, and I waited an extra twenty minutes for the driver to find the place. You shouldn't be able to drive a cab until you know the city. And the suburbs, too.'
The Monarch driver hadn't known how to find Claremont Road. Maybe he hadn't even known how to find Purdum. 'So what did you do?' he asked.
'I discovered some interesting information. Elvee Holdings has owned Bob Bandolier's house since 1979.'
'What?' John finally looked up at me. 'Elvee has a connection to Bandolier?'
'I was coming back here to tell you when Paul Fontaine jumped out of an unmarked car, frisked me, and yelled at me because a cop in Elm Hill bugged him about Bandolier.'
John smiled when I said I had been frisked. 'Did you assume the position?'
'I didn't have much choice. When he was done yelling, he pushed me into his car and drove like a madman to the expressway, down the expressway, and finally got off at the stadium exit. He was taking me to Bob Bandolier.'
John stretched his arm along the top of the couch and leaned toward me.
'Bandolier is buried in Pine Knoll Cemetery. He's been dead since 1972. You know how much Elvee paid for his house? A thousand dollars. What must have happened was that he left the house to his son, who sold it to the company he set up as soon as he came home from Vietnam.'
