The Throat

'No, it's because of the new murders—the woman left in James's old room, and the other one, downstairs in the alley.'

'I knew he'd see that,' Breakstone said. 'I knew it. The police don't see it, but Tom Pasmore does. And you do.'

'And April Ransom's husband. He's the one who called me first.'

Glenroy Breakstone asked about that, and I told him about John and The Divided Man and wound up telling him about my sister, too.

'So that little girl was your sister? Then your father was that elevator man, Al.' He looked at me wonderingly.

'Yes, he was,' I said.

'Al was a nice guy.' He wanted to change the subject, and looked toward the bright windows. 'I always thought your sister was part of what happened afterward. But when Bill wound up dead, they didn't care if it was right, as long as it was neat.'

'Damrosch thought so, too?'

'Told me that right downstairs in the bar.' He finished off his juice. 'You want me to think about who got fired way back then? First of all, Ralph Ransom never fired anybody directly. Bob Bandolier and the night manager, Dicky Lambert, did that.'

So maybe it had been Blue Rose who had forced Bandolier to change his telephone number a couple of times.

'Okay. I remember a bellhop name of Tiny Ruggles, he got fired. Tiny sometimes used to go into empty rooms, help himself to towels and shit. Bad Bob caught him at it and fired him. And there was a guy named Lopez, Nando we used to call him, who worked in the kitchen. Nando was crazy about Cuban music, and he had a couple Machito records he used to play for me sometimes. Bob Bandolier got rid of him, said he ate too much. And he had a friend called Eggs—Eggs Benson, but we called him Eggs Benedict. Bob axed him too, and him and Nando went to Florida together, I think. That happened a month or two before James and the others got killed.'

'So they didn't kill anybody.'

'Just a lot of bottles.' He frowned at his empty glass. 'Drinking and stealing, that's what most of 'em got fired for.' He looked embarrassed for a moment, then tried to soften it. 'Truth is, everybody who works in a hotel helps themselves to stuff now and then.'

'Can you think of anyone else who would have had a grudge against Ralph Ransom?'

Glenroy shook his head. 'Ralph was okay. The man never had enemies or anything like that. Dicky and Bob Bandolier, they might have made some enemies, because of letting people go and playing a few angles here and there. I think Dicky had a deal going with the laundry, stuff like that.'

'What happened to him?'

'Dropped dead right at the bar downstairs twenty years ago. A stroke.'

'What about Bandolier?'

Glenroy smiled. 'Well, that's the one who should have had the stroke. Dicky was easygoing, but old Bob never relaxed a day in his life. Most uptight guy I ever knew. Heart attack and Vine! Bad Bob, that's right. He had the wrong job—they should of put Bad Bob in charge of the toilets, man, he would of made them sparkle and shine like Christmas lights. He never should of been in charge of people, 'cause people are never gonna be as neat as Bob Bandolier wanted them to be.' He shook his head and lit a fresh cigarette. 'Bob kept his cool in front of the guests, but he sure raised hell with the staff. The man acted like a little god. He never really saw you, the man never really saw other people, he just saw if you were going to mess him up or not. And once he got going on religion—'

'Ralph told me he was religious.'

'Well, there's different ways of being religious, you know. Church I went to when I was a little boy was about being happy. Everybody sang all the time, sang that gospel music. Bob, Bob thought religion was about punishment. The world was nothing but wickedness, according to Bob. He came up with some crazy shit, once he got going.'

He laughed, genuinely amused by some memory. 'One time, Bad Bob thought everybody on days ought to get together for a prayer meeting at the start of the shift. They had to get together in the kitchen five minutes before work started. I guess most showed up, too, but Bob Bandolier started off telling how God was always watching, and if you didn't do your job right, God was gonna make you spend eternity having your fingernails pulled out. He got so wound up, the shift started ten minutes late, and Ralph told him there wouldn't be any more prayer meetings.'

'Is he still alive?'

'Far as I know, the man was too nasty to die. He finally retired in nineteen seventy-one or 'two, sometime around there. 'Seventy-one, I think. Probably went somewhere he could make a whole new lot of people feel miserable.'

Bandolier had retired a year before he had vanished and left his house to the Dumkys. 'Do you have any idea where I could find him?'

'Travel around until you find a place where you hear the sound of everybody grinding their teeth at once, that's all I can say.' He laughed again. 'Let's put on some more music. Anything you'd like to hear?'

I asked if he would play his new CD with Tommy Flanagan.

'I can take it if you can.' He jumped up and pulled a disc from the shelf, put it in the player, and punched a couple of buttons. That broad, glowing sound floated out of the speakers, playing a Charlie Parker song called 'Bluebird.' Glenroy Breakstone was playing with all of his old passionate invention, and he could still turn long, flowing phrases over in midair.

I asked him why he had always lived in Millhaven, instead of moving to New York.

'I can travel anywhere from here. I park my car at O'Hare and get to New York in less than two hours, if I have something to do there. But Millhaven's a lot cheaper than New York. And by now I know most of what's going on, you see? I know what to stay away from—like Bob Bandolier. Just from my window I see about half the action in Millhaven.'

That reminded me of what I had seen in the restaurant downstairs, and I asked him about it.

'Those guys at the back table? That's what I was talking about, the stuff you want to stay away from.'

'Are they criminals?'

He narrowed his eyes and smiled at me. 'Let's say, those are guys who know things. They talk to Billy Ritz. He might help them or not, but they all know one thing. Billy Ritz can make sure their lives'll take a turn for the worse, if they hold out on him.'

'He's a gangster? Mafia?'

He grinned and shook his head. 'Nothing like that. He's in the middle. He's a contact. I'm not saying he doesn't do something dirty from time to time, but mainly he makes certain kinds of deals. And if you don't talk to Billy Ritz, so he can talk to the people he talks to, you could wind up taking a lot of weight.'

'What happens if you don't play the game?'

'I guess you could find out you were playing the game all along, only you didn't know it.'

'Who does Billy Ritz talk to?'

'You don't want to know that, if you live in Millhaven.'

'Is Millhaven that corrupt?'

He shook his head. 'Someone in the middle, he helps out both sides. See, everybody needs someone like Billy.' He looked at me, trying to see if I was as naive as I sounded. Then he checked his watch. 'Tell you what, there's a chance you can get a look at him, you're so curious. Around this time, Billy generally walks across Widow Street and does a little business in the Home Plate Lounge.'

He stood up, and I followed him to the window. We both looked down nine stories to the pavement. The shadow of the St. Alwyn darkened Widow Street and fell in a harsh diagonal across the brick buildings on the other side. A dwarf man in a tiny baseball cap walked into the grocery store down the block, and a dwarf woman pushed a stroller the size of a pea toward Livermore Avenue.

'A man like Billy has to be regular,' Glenroy said. 'You have to be able to find him.'

A police car came up from the bottom of Widow Street and parked in front of the old redbrick apartment building on the other side of the pawnshop. One of the uniforms in the car got out and walked up the block to the grocery store. It was Sonny Berenger, the cop who looked like a moving blue tree. The door of the Home Plate swung open, and a barrel of a man in a white shirt and gray trousers stepped outside and leaned against the front