The Throat

'What are you saying? That he was an informant for more than one detective?'

'That was the word.' He was deeply uncomfortable.

'You don't have to tell me any names. Just nod when I say the name of anyone who used Billy as a source.'

He chewed on it for a time and finally nodded.

'Bastian.'

He did not react.

'Monroe.'

He nodded.

'Fontaine.'

He nodded again.

'Wheeler.'

No response.

'Hogan.'

He nodded.

'Good God,' I said. 'What about Ross McCandless?'

Glenroy pursed his lips, and then nodded again.

'Any more?'

'Someone like Billy keeps his business to himself.'

'You didn't tell me a thing,' I said. This was far truer than I wished it to be. At least Glenroy had nodded when I said Paul Fontaine's name, but he had not given me the confirmation I wanted.

'What was that thing you wanted me to do?' he asked. 'Throw myself in front of a bus?'

'I want you to show me room 218,' I said. 'Shoo,' he said. 'Is that all? Show me what you got in your pocket.'

I took out the four packets and put them on the table in front of him. Glenroy picked up each in turn and hefted it for weight, smiling to himself. 'Guess I was his first stop of the night. This is a double eightball. Nick was gonna eyeball it down into packets, probably cut off a little for himself every time he did it.'

'Congratulations,' I said. 'Nick still out there?'

'I called 911. He's in a hospital by now. He'll have to stay there for a couple of days.'

'Maybe you and me will both stay alive for a while, after all.'

'To tell you the truth, Glenroy, it could have gone either way.'

'Now I know you're dangerous.' He pushed himself away from the table and stood up. 'You said you want to see James's old room?'

Before we left, he scooped up the plastic envelopes and put them in the wooden box.

10

Glenroy pushed the button marked 2 on the panel and leaned back on the wooden bar. 'What did you find out?'

'Bob Bandolier had a son,' I said. 'After Bob's wife died, he sent him away to live with relatives. I think he started killing people when he was a teenager. He enlisted under a phony name and went to Vietnam. He worked in a couple of police departments around the country and finally came back here.'

'Lot of detectives here were in Vietnam.' The elevator came to a stop, and the doors slid open. A corridor painted a dark, gloomy shade of green stretched out before us. 'But only one of them looks like he takes after Bad Bob.'

We stepped out, and Glenroy looked up at me speculatively, beginning to get worried again. 'You think this guy killed your friend's wife?'

I nodded.

'Which one?'

Glenroy motioned me down the hallway. He did not speak until we came around a corner and came up to the door of room 218. Yellow police tape was strung tautly across the frame, and a white notice on the door announced that entrance was a crime punishable by a fine and a jail term. 'All this trouble, and they never bothered to lock the door,' Glenroy said. 'Not that the locks would stop you, anyhow.'

I bent down to look at the keyhole in the doorknob. I didn't see any scratches.

Glenroy didn't even bother to look up and down the corridor. He just put his hand on the knob and opened the door. 'No sense in hanging around.' He bent under the tape and walked into the room.

I crouched down and followed him. Glenroy closed the door behind us.

'I was thinking of Monroe,' Glenroy said. 'He looks like Bob Bandolier. Monroe is a mean son of a bitch, too. He got a few people alone, you know, and they didn't look so good, time he got through with them.'

He was looking at the floor as he spoke. I couldn't take my eyes off the bed, and what he was telling me fought for space in my mind with the shock of what was before me. The bed reminded me of the chair in the basement of the Green Woman. Whoever had brought April Ransom into this room had not bothered to pull back the long blue quilt or uncover the pillows. A dark stain lay like a shadow across the bed, and runners and strings of the same dark noncolor dripped down the sides of the quilt. Brown splashes and spatters surrounded the words above the bed. BLUE ROSE had been written in the same spiky letters I had seen in the alleyway behind the hotel.

'A cop like that turns up, every now and then,' Glenroy said. He had wandered over to the window, which looked down into the passage behind the hotel.

'Goddamn, I hate being in this room.' Glenroy drifted off to the dresser unit that ran along the wall opposite the bed. Cigarette butts filled the ashtray on top of the dresser. 'Why did you want me to come here, anyhow?'

'I thought you might notice something,' I said.

'I notice I want to get out.' Glenroy finally glanced at the bed. 'Your buddy has a lot of those pens.'

I asked him what he meant.

'The words. They're blue. That makes three. Red, black, and blue.'

I looked at the wall again. Glenroy was right—the slogan was written in dark blue ink.

'If it's all the same to you, I'm going back upstairs.' Glenroy went to the door, cracked it open, and glanced back at me. His face was tight with impatience. I took in the slanting words for as long as I thought he could stand it, tingling with a recognition that would not come into focus.

I followed Glenroy back under the tape. 'You better not come back here for a while,' he said, and started toward the elevator.

I wandered down the hall until I came to a pair of wide metal doors. They led down to another pair of doors that must have opened into the lobby, and then continued down another few steps to the back entrance. I walked outside into the narrow alley behind the hotel, half-expecting a couple of policemen to come toward me with drawn guns. Cold fog moved up the alley from the brick passage, licking against the back of the pharmacy that had taken over the old annex. Up to my left, I could see the crumpled nose of Nick Ventura's car poking past the rear of the hotel.

I hurried through the passage. A few gunshots came from Messmer Avenue, a little more orange tinted the sky. A long smear of blood lay across the sidewalk. I walked around it and plodded through the fog until I got to the Pontiac. I kept seeing room 218 in my mind without understanding what had been wrong up there.

When I got close enough to the car to see it clearly, I groaned out loud. Some wayward child had happened along with a baseball bat and clubbed in the rear window. The Pontiac looked like it had been driven away from a junkyard. I didn't think John was going to react very gracefully to the sight of his car. I was surprised that I still cared.