Frederick Delius and the stuffed alligator, the Florida Suite. 'I don't think I could go to sleep,' I said.
'Keep me company, then.' He dumped ice cubes in a glass, covered them with malt whiskey, and sipped from the glass, watching me. 'Are you okay?'
'I'm okay,' I said. 'But we can't just let him lie there, can we? For the church people to find?'
'I don't think the church people ever go into the basement. The only thing they use down there is the organ, and they raise that from the stage.'
I poured water into a glass and drank half of it in one long swallow.
'I have some ideas,' Tom said.
'You want people to know, don't you?' I swallowed most of the rest of the water and refilled the glass. My hands and arms seemed to be functioning by themselves.
'I want everybody to know,' Tom said. 'Don't worry, they won't be able to bury it this time.' He took another sip. 'But before we start shouting from the rooftops, I want to get those papers. We need them.'
'Where are they? Hogan's apartment?'
'Come on upstairs with me,' Tom said. 'I want to look at a photograph with you.'
'What photograph?'
He did not answer. I trailed along behind him as he went into the vast, cluttered downstairs room, walked past the couch and the coffee table, and went up the stairs to the second floor, turning on lights as he went.
Inside his office, he walked around the room, switching on the lamps. He sat down at his desk, and I fell into his chesterfield. Then I unzipped the holster and placed it on the glass table before me. Tom had pulled out the top drawer of his desk to remove a familiar-looking manila envelope.
'What I don't understand,' he said, 'is how Hubbel identified Paul Fontaine. Hogan was in that picture, standing right next to Fontaine. So how could Hubbel make a mistake like that?'
'He had lousy eyesight,' I said.
'That bad?'
'He had to put his eyes right up to what he was looking at. His nose practically touched the paper.'
'So he actually examined the photograph very carefully.' Tom was facing me, leaning forward with the envelope in his hands.
'It looked to me like he did.'
'Let's see if we can solve this one.' He opened the flap and drew the newspaper photograph out of the envelope. Tom set the envelope on his desk and carried the photograph and his drink to the couch and sat beside me. He leaned forward and placed the photograph between us on the table. 'How did he identify Fontaine?'
'He pointed at him.'
'Right at Fontaine?'
'Right at him,' I said. 'Dead bang at Paul Fontaine.'
'Show me.'
I leaned over and looked at the picture of Walter Dragonette's front lawn crowded with uniformed and plainclothes policemen. 'Well,' I said, 'it was right in front of him, for one thing.'
'Move it.'
I slid the photograph before me. 'Then he pointed at Fontaine.'
'Point at him.'
I reached out and planted my finger on Paul Fontaine's face, just as Edward Hubbel had done in Tangent, Ohio. My finger, like Edward Hubbel's, covered his entire face.
'Yes,' Tom said. 'I wondered about that.'
'About what?'
'Look at what you're doing,' Tom said. 'If you put your finger there, who are you pointing at?'
'You know who I'm pointing at,' I said. Tom leaned, lifted my hand off the photograph, and slid it across the table so that it was directly in front of him. He placed his finger over Fontaine's face exactly as I had. The tip of his finger aimed directly at the next man in the picture, Michael Hogan. 'Whose face am I pointing at?' Tom asked.
I stared down at the photograph. He wasn't pointing at Fontaine, he was obliterating him.
'I bet it wasn't Ross McCandless who canceled the trip to Tangent,' Tom said. 'What do you think?'
'I think—I think I'm an idiot,' I said. 'Maybe a moron. Whichever one is dumber.'
'I would have thought he meant Fontaine, too. Because, like you, I would have
'Yes, but…'
'Tim, there isn't any blame.'
'Fontaine must have looked into Elvee Holdings. John and I led Hogan straight to him, and all he wanted to do was get my help.'
'Hogan would have killed Fontaine whether you and John were there or not, and he would have blamed it on random violence. All you did was confirm that another shooter was present that night.'
'Hogan.'
'Sure. You just gave them a nice convenient eyewitness.' He took another swallow of his drink, seeing that he had succeeded in banishing most of my guilt. 'And even if you hadn't seen some indistinct figure, wasn't McCandless intent on making you say that you had? It made everything easier for him.'
'I guess that's right,' I said, 'but I still think I'm going to retire to Florida.'
He smiled at me. 'I'm going to bed, too—I want us to get those papers as soon as possible tomorrow morning. This morning, I mean.'
'Are you going to tell me where they are?'
'You tell me.'
'I don't have the faintest idea,' I said.
'What's the last place left? It's right in front of us.'
'I don't appreciate this,' I said.
'It starts with E,' he said, smiling.
'Erewhon,' I said, and Tom kept smiling. Then I remembered what we had learned when we first began looking into Elvee. 'Oh,' I said. 'Oh.'
'That's right,' Tom said.
'And it was only a couple of blocks from the Beldame Oriental, so he probably moved them around five or six yesterday evening, right after he got off shift.'
'Say it.'
'Expresspost,' I said. 'The mail drop on South Fourth Street.'
'See?' Tom said. 'I told you you knew.'
Shortly afterward, I went upstairs to Frederick Delius and the alligator, undressed, and crawled into bed to get four hours of restless, dream-ridden sleep. I woke up to the smell of toast and the knowledge that the most difficult day I was to have in Millhaven had just begun.
PART SEVENTEEN
