“WE’VE GOT ANOTHER STIFF. BRAND-NEW one … well, I take that back. I don’t know how new this one is. You want a viewing?” Bernstein sounded weary and hoarse, as if he were coming down with a cold. Too much campaigning. He coughed.
“Who is it?” It was still dark in my apartment. I’d heard the ringing as I got off the elevator.
“I want it to be a surprise, Paul. Fifteen minutes.” He slammed the telephone down and I threw my suitcase on the bed, brushed my teeth, drank half a can of beer, and went downstairs to wait. It took him eleven minutes. He was alone in an unmarked green Ford.
“Have a nice holiday?”
He looked at me grimly, dug a Sucret out of the wrapper, and popped it into his cheek.
“People who want to be mayor don’t have nice holidays,” he said. “They make speeches. They stand in the rain and eat beans and hot dogs. They get sore throats and wish they were dead. Where were you?”
“Up north.”
“Can you prove it?” He was only half joking.
“Yes. Kim was with me.” I liked that, the intimate implication. He looked at me, snorted.
I shut up. Bernstein was wearing a bright-red nubby sports coat, a pink shirt, pinkish plaid slacks, red-and-white shoes with a shiny gold buckle. He needed a new costumier. We hit the freeway at a gallop, took the University Avenue exit, and squirmed into the labyrinth of the crescents curling beneath the Witches’ Tower in Prospect Park.
There was a police car and a police ambulance pulled up at the bottom of the long stairway to the brooding, dark house, windows black and sightless.
Father Martin Boyle was sitting on his back patio, grass poking up through the cracked cement. A half-eaten sandwich had turned to stone on a plastic plate, a glass of flat beer looked like an enormous urine sample, a thick cigar had burned down to a bulging stub, leaving an ash collapsed behind it like a slug. His flesh looked like gray putty, his head draped forward on his chest like a scraggly, white-haired albatross. The front of his white shirt had blossomed like a blackish-red flower, petals of dried blood opening outward from a hole burned in the left side.
A police photographer was taking pictures in the light of bright, glaring portable lamps on stands. The coroner puffed on a cigarette and belched softly as I watched him. A couple of cops told me to keep my distance, presumably not to demolish clues and such. Bernstein leaned against the back of the house, blowing his nose. He pointed to a rusty, chipped lawn chair which was drawn up to the metal table, facing the corpse of Father Boyle.
“Somebody sat down in the chair,” Bernstein said softly, “and probably chatted with Father Boyle for a bit, then took out a gun and shot him through the pump. Bang. Father Boyle goes to Heaven.”
On a rickety tray table a few feet away a small black-and-white Sony flickered in the night. The Twins were playing baseball on Channel 11.
“TV’s been on ever since he died. But nobody in the neighborhood noticed. What a world …” He went off to have a word with the coroner and came back. “Looks like he died a few days ago, two, three days, maybe more. He’ll have to take him apart to get closer than that. Christ, what a job!”
Father Conrad Patulski was somewhat younger than Boyle, a small, delicately constructed man with thin red hair, freckles, and large pink ears. He seemed emotionally uninvolved, smelled of root beer, a bottle of Hires clutched in his tiny hand. He kept scratching his head and wiping foam off his upper lip. He’d come home from a holiday visit to this family, found the body—he called it “carnage,” as if the fact of it made him shrink inside himself—and called the police.
Bernstein asked him questions. I watched the technicians with their busywork, my mind centered on memories of Father Martin Boyle. I had enjoyed him because he went his own way, indulged his weaknesses, and looked at life slightly askew. I enjoyed him because I’d talked of evil with few men and Father Boyle I’d won over to my way of thinking, or to Conrad’s, at least partially. I remembered the way he’d reacted to the visit from the jolly boys in their flap over the mention of Carver Maxvill … Father Boyle hadn’t really given a god damn and there was something else he’d said … But it had slipped my mind.
It struck me as a scene from another planet, as if the accompanying baseball game on television were part of a mysterious ritual for the dead. In the end they unfolded Father Boyle, as best they could, plopped him awkwardly onto a stretcher, and struggled away with him. A man dusted for fingerprints, someone else peered at the earth around the patio for footprints, another was depositing everything from the sandwich’s remains to dust from the second lawn chair in a variety of envelopes. It looked a lot like something on television with everyone waiting for Peter Falk or Telly Savalas to come upon the scene.
Bernstein finally beckoned to me. The night had begun thundering and a breeze had risen in the treetops.
“Look, I’m going to have to get hold of the members of this goddamn club. Just to be on the safe side. Two of them are murder victims.” He looked into my eyes and behind the weariness I could see the seedling of panic putting out its feelers. “Paul, the only reason you’re here is because I like you in spite of my better judgment, because you’ve been sort of involved in this mess from day one—sort of, Christ—and because you’re not on the police beat.
“You’re a private citizen, not a newspaperman. Because we’re gonna have to go easy on this one.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “Homicidim seriatim—that mean anything to you?”
“Serial murders,” I said.
“Right. In this case, members of this ridiculous hunting and fishing club who are getting killed. Throw out the suicide, forget that. We’ve got two murders, men in a small group … Once this gets out, the membership part of it, the media can make a real dog-and-pony show of it. Who will be next? That sort of crap. It’ll become better than the comic strips. Now, I don’t want that to happen, Paul … but I’m going to have to warn all these old farts. Will you tell your daddy?”
“Of course,” I said.
“He’ll understand, of all of them, he’ll be the one who understands it …” He sighed. “Good, I feel awful … he probably wrote a novel just like it.” He waved me away with his hand. “He probably knows who did it already. Go ahead, use the phone, call him, get outa here. Go to bed, you shouldn’t catch what I got …” He went away into the mob of waiting cops and I called my father.
“Archie,” I said. “Siddown. I’ve got some bad news.”
“Your mother’s in town,” he said sourly. Archie wasn’t an alarmist. “It cannot be worse than that, sonny.”
“Well, depends on your point of view.”
“So what is it? You’ve got cancer? I’ve got cancer? What?”
“Somebody murdered Father Boyle.” There was a long pause.
“Ah … how? Wait, don’t tell me. He was pushed from his pulpit and plummeted to his death three feet below?”
“I’m not kidding,” I said. “Somebody shot him on his patio. Just found him … he’s been dead for days. Just sitting out there watching television.”
“Marty … well, you’d better come out. How was your trip? You been talking to people, as suggested?”
“Look, I’ll tell you when I get there.”
“Put on your thinking cap, Paul.”
Julia was doing needlepoint, curled in one corner of the airy flowered couch in Archie’s study. Her presence was acting as a calming influence on Archie, who was bubbling over with enthusiasm. It was that sense of excitement which surprised me, but I should have known Archie better than that. He was standing in the doorway watching lightning crackle and pop across the lake. He turned to face me as I went in, his pink face split with a grin, white brush of mustache dancing on his upper lip, hands jammed in the hip pockets of his seersucker slacks, rocking on his heels.
I slumped in a soft chair, stretched my legs, yawned impolitely, and told Archie I thought he wasn’t showing much respect for the dead.
“Balderdash!” he said succinctly. “You’re a sentimentalist. At my age you’re an idiot to whimper about things like this. Marty could just as easily have wheezed himself to death, or choked on one of his endless eating orgies, or fallen dead drunk down his front steps … He’d given up on life years ago, he was a shadow man. He’s gone. Good-bye, Marty. See you soon.” Julia smiled into her needlepoint, a startlingly beautiful representation of a 1920 Vogue magazine cover, all peacock feathers and a daring lady who appeared to be ten feet taller than her Bugatti roadster. Archie had begun to pace, Patton addressing his troops.
“I know …” He watched us, setting us up, and I imagined Fenton Carey doing his number in The Dog It Was That Died, one of Archie’s best. “I know … there will be more murders.”
Julia said, “I knew it,” and didn’t miss a stroke.
“God, that’s a relief, Arch,” I said.
“There will be more murders,” he repeated weightily liking the sound of it. “You must see that we’re on to something, the kind of thing that almost never comes along in the banality of … real life. Sequential murders are very, very rare outside the underworld. And I’d wager almost anything—my reputation if it came to that—that there will be more murders. Possibly several murders if the killer is working his way through the entire club … That has occurred to you, hasn’t it, Paul?”
I nodded. “Thinking cap,” I said, tapping my forehead.
“Well, it is precisely this kind of occurrence which is irresistible for the amateur, that’s us. By applying my experience as a writer and reporter, Julia’s good sense, and Paul’s … er … stout back and willingness to do the legwork, there’s no telling—”
“My God, you’re making us sound like an Ellery Queen novel,” I said.
“You scoff but you will stay to wonder at it all,” he said. His mind was racing, as if he were overdosing on an actual murder case after creating so many in his mind and on paper. “I can tell you for certain that the police are absolutely lost. They have none of the special knowledge we have of the club, the relationships which exist between the victims and the victims-to-be.” He blew a stiletto-thin blade of smoke before him and pointed in our general direction with the cheroot. “The police are not particularly good on cases like this, exotic cases. They have so little experience of them, they are untrained to deal with what you might call the esthetic brand of murder … It is extremely unlikely that an informant will come forward in this case unless, of course, the killings of Tim and Marty were hired murders by professionals—then, for whatever reason, one of the police sources may come up with something and lead the cops to the hit man. But, good gracious, these seem very unlike the work of professionals—”
Julia interrupted. “Why not let Paul give us the details, Archie?”
“In a minute,” he said, pushing on. “I’m trying to convince you two that I’m not being foolish, grinning and babbling my way into senility over this. Be patient, Paul. I’m in mid-point …”
“Right,” I said.
“Without a tip, then, the police investigation almost assuredly will run into heavy going. When they are driven to fall back on deductive reasoning—rather than prints, MO’s, clues, names on file, and so on—then the poor devils begin to come undone. They’re not trained to be psychologists or historians, both of which are required here, and they are trained to weed out whatever imagination they have … I’ve known only one cop in my entire life who had imagination, real creativity, a man named Olaf Peterson, used to work here in Minneapolis but he married rich and cleared out to a little place called Cooper’s Falls, but that’s another story—anyway, the police are just trained away from using their imagination, from indulging in luxuriant hypotheses, because technology has tyrannized them, they’re slaves to all their machines and to their stool pigeons … not much romance in it anymore. But still, once in a while there comes a case like this one, which I believe will prove to be impenetrable, a thicket of complexity and brambles which will drive the machines back in confusion and will not yield to science!” He stumped over to his desk in search of a match.
“You should be taping all this,” Julia said reasonably, “it surely belongs in a book. I’m not so sure about real life, but a book, definitely.”
“I don’t think they’re going to have any luck,” Archie said, lighting up again, pouring himself a cup of coffee from a pot on the bookcase, “because they’re going to be looking for a killer. That’s what they’re trained for, find a fingerprint, check an alibi, do ballistics, find a gun, hit the street and shake down the hoods, rattle the underworld until something falls out … We are not, however, dealing with the underworld, the criminal element. There’s something very personal in these killings and the only way we’re going to find out who’s doing them, barring an unforgivable lapse by the killer, the only way is to pinpoint the motive … Going from motive toward the act of murder is not scientific, it’s intuitional, hunch playing, and cops seldom indulge themselves in guessing—which is why I’ve never written a police procedural novel. They tend to leave out the fun, if you see my point.”
Julia put aside her needlepoint. “End of lecture. Paul, let me get you some coffee. I’m dying to hear what you have to say. Archie, stop pacing, sit down, relax … you’ll have a fit, imminently, if you’re not careful.” She poured coffee for me and got Archie settled behind the cluttered desk. Lightning popped like flashbulbs and the trees and the lawn furniture materialized for a moment like stealthy figures caught in the act, then were gone. “So, what about Boyle? How did you find out? Give us a report.” She settled back on the couch but didn’t resume the needlepoint. Archie sipped his coffee, watched me, his pen ready to jot down notes on the recital. And I began, giving them the full treatment, everything since I’d last seen them; the interviews, a brief once-over of my relationship with Kim, the trip north, Ted and Billy and Kim and the Chat and Chew Cafe. It took me nearly two hours to get it all in and there were almost no interruptions; they paid attention, Archie’s pen scratching steadily. When I finished it was past midnight and rain was beginning to patter in the trees. But we were all wide awake, recipients of a kind of adrenaline rush, the excitement that comes when you know you’re breaking a code, or solving the Times crossword, or creating something that just may be remembered next season.
Finally Archie got up and came around the desk, sat on the corner, looked at his pad of notes, looked up at us.
“The problem is,” he said, “as it always is, the problem is to decide on which of the facts and observations is important, which offal. Solve that, solve the case. But here are some aspects, some components, which strike me as possibly crucial.” He ticked them off on his fingers.
“The behavior of Crocker and Goode when you set Maxvill loose among them. They clam up, quick run bitching to poor Marty, who had himself not wanted to discuss Maxvill, then they go tattling to Hub Anthony with the request that he get you to lay off … and instead of telling them to go to hell, as you’d think he’d do, he quick takes you to lunch at the Minneapolis Club and tells you to drop Maxvill … without giving you any rational explanation. You don’t have to be Ellery Queen to see that there’s something about Carver Maxvill that scares hell out of them. Now, that’s interesting to me … and Mark Bernstein and his flatfoots aren’t going to get anywhere near the truth of it.
“Second, you, Paul, true to your father’s genes, go immediately from lunch to the newspaper’s morgue to find out what more you can about Carver Maxvill and his strange disappearance. And what happens? Nothing could be more extraordinary than what you found—absolutely nothing. The file has been stolen, a unique occurrence, according to their keeper … but it is gone. Obviously someone else is tremendously interested in Carver Maxvill. It fits. The man himself disappears and incredibly enough thirty years later his file is also gone. Someone is trying to erase him. Very strange.
“Which leads us to a third point. The stealing of the file marks the third instance of bizarre theft in this case. First Larry Blankenship’s apartment is cleaned of personal matters. Then Tim Dierker’s scrapbook is stolen by his murderer. Now Maxvill’s file …” He beamed at us. “I’ll be interested to know if Father Boyle’s picture collection is gone, as well. It would seem a likely bet, wouldn’t it? Why? Why is all this stuff being snatched up? The answer would tell us the name of the murderer. Absolutely.”
Julia said, “There’s another point which fascinates me. How many people have you ever known, or known of, who actually disappeared? Just phffft, were gone? Not a great many. In my life no one until I became aware of Carver Maxvill. Now, within the same general grouping there’s another utterly inexplicable, untraced disappearance—Rita Hook’s. One day she’s there, the next day she’s gone. Duplicate of Maxvill. Coincidence? Possibly … but think of the possibility of their disappearances being somehow linked. Then it would count as only one disappearance on a statistical frequency table … and it wouldn’t be quite so astonishing. But to have to swallow two stories like that? I have a hard time doing it. Think I’m crazy if you like, but I say there’s a connection between the two disappearances, Carver’s and Rita’s …”
Archie had been jotting more notes, looked up. “Excellent!” he exclaimed, face pink with joy. “Now we’re thinking, we’re trying out conclusions.”
“Way to go, Julia,” I said. She smiled. “As a matter of fact,” I went on, “I keep going back to something Father Boyle said … Let me see if I get it right now … It was something to the effect that Rita was somehow the woman that Maxvill had gotten entangled with up at the lodge. It wasn’t that he said it, I think he said something in the I-can’t-remember line, as if it weren’t important—he said she was a loose woman, morals in question, but there was a look on his face, a look that made me think he was implying that Maxvill was in fact screwing around with Rita … It’s just a feeling on my part but Boyle put it there, made me feel it.”
“So they both evaporate without a trace,” Julia said, “and Father Boyle implies they were sexually involved … Now, that’s what I call food for thought. Which reminds me that I’m hungry—anybody for chicken sandwiches?”
We trooped to the kitchen and sat around a butcher-block table eating sliced chicken, fresh bread, sweet pickles, potato salad, and cold baked beans, a feast, fueling us for the night. It was raining harder, splattering on the open windows’ screens. A cool breeze ruffled the kitchen curtains; coffee perked.
“All right,” Archie said, munching steadily. “We’ll add that into our formula. Rita and Maxvill disappear, may have been lovers. Very nice, that, I like it. Opens up all sorts of avenues. As does the Running Buck-Billy Whitefoot connection. I mean, the connections are exquisite. Running Buck joined Rita the night she vanishes, Billy marries Rita’s niece … and Billy clams up on the subject of the disappearance. Hell, he must know something—he wasn’t deaf and Running Buck wasn’t mute. Chances are they talked about it. They must have. So why does Billy play dumb?
“Now, Paul, we’ve discussed the idea of the web of apparently unconnected human beings, with Miss Roderick or Mrs. Blankenship or whatever the devil she calls herself at the center. And it’s true, in a peculiar way, I admit, that everyone seems to have one kind of connection or another with her. But that seems to be stretching a point, the links are not strong, not emotionally compelling … And I rather doubt that this young woman is dashing about in the dark of night pushing people off skyscrapers and shooting old men at dinner! I doubt it.”
“Well, obviously so do I,” I said. “But I was trying to describe a pattern. And she does seem to tie them all together … the only person who does …”
“No,” Archie said, “There is someone else in the web, at another center or moving deliberately around the edge, stepping softly and carefully so as not to be trapped. And that person, whoever it is, has a motive for wanting Tim, Marty, and the victims-to-come dead. And that person is a murderer … And tonight, I daresay, we’re closer to the solution than we can possibly imagine.
“And I would remind you of another triangle we must consider. The triangle of classical motivation. Money, jealousy, revenge. One of these, at least, I insist, comes into play. Think on’t.”
We concluded the evening back in the study, where Archie rolled his schoolteacher’s blackboard into the space between his desk and the couch where Julia and I sat.
The words went up on the blackboard, staccato, exact, like nails being whacked into a casket.
A square with four sides: TIM, LARRY, KIM, BOYLE, but a question mark following Kim’s name and WHY? scrawled to the side.
Then a web radiating out from Kim’s name in another diagram: LARRY, HARRIET DIERKER, TIM, RITA, TED, BILLY, OLE, HELGA, CROCKER, GOODE, BOYLE, DARWIN MCGILL, ANNE, PAUL, ARCHIE, MAXVILL … all caught in the web. I didn’t like that diagram. It was Kim’s web and that made no sense. She wasn’t controlling anyone.
And a similar web but a nameless spider in the center. In this web: LARRY, TIM, BOYLE, OLE, GOODE, CROCKER, ARCHIE, RITA, and MAXVILL. They were all either dead, candidates for murder in Archie’s mind, or gone, lost, vanished. It was his general projection of what might be.
Finally he wrote:
STOLEN: LARRY’S EFFECTS, TIM’S SCRAPBOOK, CARVER’S NEWSPAPER FILE, ANYTHING OF BOYLE’S?
DISAPPEARED: RITA AND CARVER
WHY DOES MAXVILL SCARE THE LADS?
AN AFFAIR: RITA AND CARVER?
Covered in a rainbow of chalk dust, Archie stood away and stared at the list.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Somewhere in there, there ought to be an answer. The answer.” He grinned wryly and stroked his mustache, babying it, sneezed on the dust. “But it doesn’t just jump out at you, does it?”