'I want to see who owns that bar. Suppose it's—'
The screen went blank for a half-second, and RECEIVE flashed on and off. Tom whooped and clapped his hands.
THE GREEN WOMAN TAPROOM 21B HORATIO STREET
PURCHASED 01/07/1980, ELVEE HOLDINGS CORP
PURCHASE PRICE $5,000
PURCHASED 05/21/1935, THOMAS MULRONEY
PURCHASE PRICE $3,200
Tom combed his fingers through his hair so that it looked like a haystack. 'Who are these people, and what are they doing?' He wrenched himself away from the screen and grinned at me. 'I don't have the faintest idea where we're going, but we're certainly getting somewhere. And you certainly saw our friend in the blue Lexus, you sure did, and I take back every bad thing I ever said about you.' He returned to the screen and disarranged his hair a little more. 'Elvee bought the Green Woman Taproom, and look how little they paid for it. Maybe, do you think, we could even say he, meaning William Writzmann? Writzmann laid out a paltry five thousand. It was nothing but a leaky shell. What good is it? What could he use it for?'
'It looked like he was moving things into it,' I said. 'There were cardboard boxes next to the car.'
'Or taking something out,' Tom said. 'The place was a shed. The only thing it's good for is storage. Our boy Writzmann bought a five-thousand-dollar shed. Why?'
All this time, Tom was looking back and forth from the screen to me, torturing his hair. 'There's only one reason to buy the place.
'Maybe he was Mulroney's nephew, and he was helping out the starving widow.'
'Or maybe he was very, very interested in the Blue Rose case. Maybe our mysterious friend Writzmann has some connection to Blue Rose himself. He can't be Blue Rose himself, he's too young, but he could be—'
Tom was looking at me, a wild speculative delight shining out from his entire face.
'His son?' I asked. 'You think Writzmann is the son of Blue Rose? On the evidence that he bought a rundown bar and stored boxes in it?'
'It's a possibility, isn't it?'
'Writzmann was two years old at the time of the murders. That's pretty young, even for Heinz Stenmitz.'
'I'm not so sure about that. You don't like thinking about someone molesting a two-year-old child, but it happens. All you need is a Heinz Stenmitz.'
'Do you think this Writzmann murdered April because he found out about her research? Maybe he even saw her looking around the bridge and the taproom.'
'Maybe,' Tom said. 'But why would he murder Grant Hoffman?' He frowned and ran his hand through his soft blond hair, and it fell back into place. 'We have to find out what April was actually doing. We need her notes, or her drafts, or whatever she managed to get done. But before that—'
He left the desk, picked up one of the neat white stacks of copied pages and handed it to me. 'We have to start reading.'
So for another hour I sat in the comfortable leather chair, leafing through the police files on the Blue Rose case, deciphering the handwriting of half a dozen policemen and two detectives, Fulton Bishop and William Damrosch. Bishop, who was destined for a long, almost sublimely corrupt career in the Millhaven police department, had been taken off the case after two weeks: his patrons had been protecting him from what they saw as a kind of tar baby. I wished that they had let him investigate for another couple of weeks. His small, tight handwriting was as easy to read as print. His typed reports looked like a good secretary's. Damrosch scribbled even when he was relatively sober and scrawled when he was not. Anything he wrote after about two in the afternoon was a hodgepodge in which whole words disappeared into wormy knots. He typed the way an angry child plays piano. After ten minutes, my head hurt; after twenty, my eyes ached.
By the time I had gone through all the statements and reports, all I had come up with was a sense that very few people had liked Robert Bandolier. The only new thing I learned was that the killings had not been savage mutilations, like the murder of Grant Hoffman and Walter Dragonette's performances: Blue Rose's victims had been stabbed once, neatly, in the heart, and then their throats had been cut. It was as passionless as ritual slaughter.
'Well, nothing jumped out at me, either,' Tom said. 'There are a few minor points, but they can wait.' He looked at me almost cautiously. 'I suppose you're about ready to go?'
'Well, your coffee is going to keep me awake for a while,' I said. 'I could stay a little longer.'
Tom's obvious gratitude at my willingness to stay made him seem like a child left alone in a splendid house.
'How about a little music?' he said, already getting up.
'Sure.'
He pulled a boxed set from the rows of CDs, removed one, and inserted the disc in the player. Mitsuko Uchida began playing the Mozart piano sonata in F. Tom leaned back into his leather couch, and for a time neither of us spoke.
Despite my exhaustion, I wanted to stay another half hour, and not merely to give him company. I thought it was a privilege. I couldn't banish Tom's sorrows any more than he could banish mine, but I admired him as much as anyone I've ever known.
'I wish we had discovered some disgruntled desk clerk named Lenny Valentine,' he said.
'Do you really think there's some connection between Elvee Holdings and the Blue Rose murders?'
'I don't know.'
'What do you think is going to happen?'
'I think a dead body is going to turn up in front of the Idle Hour.' He reached for his drink and took another sip. 'Let's talk about something else.'
I forgot I was tired, and when I looked at my watch I found that it was past two.
After we had gone over what I was going to do the next day, Tom went to his desk and picked up the book with the plain gray binding. 'Do you think you'll have time to look through this over the next few days?'
'What is it?' I should have known that the book wasn't on his desk by accident.
'The memoirs of an old soldier, published by a vanity press. I've been doing a lot of reading about Vietnam, and there are some questions about what John actually did during his last few months in the service.'
'He was at Lang Vei,' I said. 'There aren't any questions about that.'
'I think he was ordered to say he was there.'
'He wasn't at Lang Vei?'
Tom did not answer me. 'Do you know anything about a strange character named Franklin Bachelor? A Green Beret major?'
'I met him once,' I said, remembering the scene in Billy's. 'He was one of John's heroes.'
'Read this and see if you can get John to talk about what happened to him, but—'
'I know. Don't tell him you gave me the book. Do you think he's going to lie to me?'
'I'd just like to find out what actually happened.'
Tom handed me the book. 'It's probably a waste of time, but indulge me.'
