The Throat

'That's the other thing I wanted you to know. Ventura was operated on, put into a cast, and given a bed at County. Not long after the riot started, he disappeared. Nobody's seen him since. Somehow, I don't think anybody ever will.'

'How could he disappear?' I asked.

'County's a disorganized place. Maybe he walked out.'

'That's not what you think.'

'I don't think Ventura could have stood up by himself, much less walked away from the hospital.' The flat rage in his eyes seemed connected to the stink of ashes that floated out from his clothing, as if his body produced the smell. 'Anyhow, that's what I had to say. I'll leave you alone now.'

He pushed himself to his feet and looked grimly down at me. 'It's been real.'

'A little too real,' I said, and he nodded and walked out of the room. The stench of his rage and frustration stayed behind, like a layer of ashes on my skin, the sheets, the book I had forgotten I was holding.

6

'I warned you that something like this might happen,' Tom Pasmore said to me the next morning, after I had described my conversation with Hogan. 'But I didn't think it would be so complete.' That ashy layer of frustration still covered me so absolutely that I came close to being grateful for the distraction of the steady thudding into which my pain had retreated. Tom's uncharacteristically discreet charcoal suit seemed like another form of it, unrelieved by any of the flashes of color, the pink tie or yellow vest or blooming red pocket cloth, with which he would normally have brightened his general aspect. Tom's general aspect seemed as wan as mine.

Both of us held copies of the morning's Ledger, which was dominated by photographs of burned-out buildings and articles about volunteers engaged in the monumental cleanup necessary before rebuilding could begin. At the top of the third page, ordered like the pictures of Walter Dragonette's victims, lay a row of photographs of the eight people killed during the rioting. They were all male, and seven were African- Americans. The white man was Detective Paul Fontaine. Beneath the square of his photograph, a short paragraph referred to his many commendations, the many successes in solving difficult homicide cases that had given him the nickname 'Fantastic,' and his personal affability and humor. His death, like most of the others, had been due to random gunfire.

On the second page of the next section, a column-length article headed FOURTY-YEAR-OLD CASE SOLVED reported that recent investigations led by Lieutenant Ross McCandless had brought to light the identity of the Blue Rose killer, who had murdered four people in Millhaven in October of 1950, as Robert C. Bandolier, at the time the day manager of the St. Alwyn Hotel. 'It is a great satisfaction to exonerate Detective William Damrosch, who has had an undeserved stain on his reputation for all this time,' said McCandless. 'Evidence located in Mr. Bandolier's old residence definitely ties him to the four killings. Forty years later, we can finally say that justice has been done for William Damrosch, who was a fine and dedicated officer, in the tradition of Millhaven's Homicide Division.'

And that was it. Nothing about Fielding Bandolier or Franklin Bachelor, nothing about Grant Hoffman or April Ransom. 'It's complete, all right,' I said.

Tom dropped his copy of the newspaper to the floor, raised one foot to prop his ankle on a knee, and leaned forward with his elbow on the other knee. Chin in hand, his eyes bright with inward curiosity, he suggested an almost comic awareness of his own depression. 'The thing is, if I knew what was coming, why do I feel so bad about it?'

'They're just protecting themselves,' I said.

He knew that—it didn't interest him. 'I think you feel left out,' I said.

'This certainly isn't what I had in mind,' he said. 'I don't blame you in any way, but I sort of pictured that it would be you and me instead of you and John. And Alan should have been nowhere in sight.'

'Naturally,' I said. 'But if you hadn't been insistent on keeping yourself out—'

'I wouldn't have been kept out, I know.' He jiggled his foot. 'John put me off. He tried to buy one of my paintings, and then he tried to buy me.'

I agreed that John could be off-putting. 'But if you ever spent half an hour with his parents, you'd know why. And underneath it all, he's a pretty good guy. He just wasn't quite what I expected, but people change.'

'I don't,' Tom said, sounding disconsolate about it. 'I guess that's part of my problem. I've always got two or three things on the fire, but this was the most exciting one in years. We really did something tremendous, and now it's all over.'

'Almost,' I said. 'Don't you still have the two or three other things to take up the slack?'

'Sure, but they're not like this one. In your terms, they're just short stories. This was a whole novel. And now, nobody will ever read it but you and me and John.'

'Don't forget Ross McCandless,' I said.

'Ross McCandless always reminded me of the head of the secret police in a totalitarian state.' Realizing that he could pass on a fresh bit of gossip, he brightened. 'Have you heard that Vass is probably on the way out?'

I shook my head. 'Because of Fontaine?'

'Fontaine's probably the real reason, but the mayor will imply that he's resigning because of the combination of Walter Dragonette, the riot, and the boy who was shot in City Hall.'

'Is this public yet?'

'No, but a lot of people—the kind of people who really know, I mean—have been talking about it as though it's a foregone conclusion.'

I wondered whom he meant, and then remembered that Sarah Spence spent her life among the kind of people who really know. 'How about Merlin?'

'Merlin's a gassy liquid—he takes the shape of whatever container he puts himself into. I think we'll be seeing a lot of the elder statesman act for a while. What he'll probably do is find a good black chief in some other part of the country, sing lullabies to him until he loses his mind, and then announce the appointment of a new chief. Right up until that moment, he'll be behind Vass a thousand percent.'

'Everything is politics,' I said.

'Especially everything that shouldn't be.' He gloomily regarded the stack of books on my table without seeming to take in the individual titles. 'I should have protected you better.'

'Protected me?'

He looked away. 'Oh, by the way, I brought some of those computer reconstructions of the last photograph, if there's any point in looking at them anymore.' He reached into his jacket pocket, brought out three folded sheets of paper, and then met my eyes with a flash of embarrassment at what he saw there.

'That was you—you followed me back to John's that night.'

'Do you want to look at these, or not?'

I took the papers without releasing him. 'It was you.'

The red dots appeared in his cheeks. 'I couldn't just let you walk nine blocks in the middle of the night, could I? After everything I'd just said to you?'

'And was that you I saw out in Elm Hill?'

'No. That was Fontaine. Or Billy Ritz. Which proves that I should have stuck to you like a burr.' He smiled, at last. 'You weren't supposed to see me.'

'It was more like I felt you,' I said, troubled by the evil I had sensed dogging me that night, and the memory of the Minotaur's knowledge of a hidden shame. From where had I dredged that up, if not out of myself? Cloudy with doubt, I flattened the pages and looked at each of the computer images in turn.

They were of buildings that had never existed, buildings with recessed ground floors beneath soaring blank upper reaches like pyramids, oblongs, ocean liners. Empty sidewalks devoid of cracks led up to boxy windows and glassed-in guardhouses. They looked like an eccentric billionaire's vision of a modern art museum. I spread the papers out between us. 'This is it?' I asked. 'The other ones were even worse. You know what they say—garbage