The Throat

by Peter Straub

  Less conspicuous, Fontaine poured coffee for himself and sat behind me. He dropped the satchel between his legs.

  “The places I run into you,” he said.

  I did not point out that I could say the same.

  “And the things I hear you say.” He sighed. “If there’s one thing the ordinary policeman hates, it’s a mouthy civilian.”

  “Was I wrong?”

  “Don’t push your luck.” He leaned forward toward me. The bags under his eyes were a little less purple. “What’s your best guess as to the time your friend Ransom got home from the hospital on Wednesday morning?”

  “You want to check his alibi?”

  “I might as well.” He smiled. “Hogan and I are representing the department at this municipal extravaganza.”

  Cops and cop humor.

  He noticed my reaction to his joke, and said, “Oh, come on. Don’t you know what’s going to happen here?”

  “If you want to ask me questions, you can take me downtown.”

  “Now, now. You know that favor you asked me to do?”

  “The lost license number?”

  “The other favor.” He slid the scuffed leather satchel forward and snapped it open to show me a thick wad of typed and handwritten pages.

  “The Blue Rose file?”

  He nodded, smiling like a big-nosed cat.

  I reached for the satchel, and he slid it back between his legs. “You were going to tell me what time your friend got home on Wednesday morning.”

  “Eight o’clock,” I said. “It takes about twenty minutes to walk back from the hospital. I thought you said this was going to be hard to find.”

  “The whole thing was sitting on top of a file in the basement of the records office. Someone else was curious, and didn’t bother putting it back.”

  “Don’t you want to read it first?”

  “I copied the whole damn thing,” he said. “Get it back to me as soon as you can.”

  “Why are you doing this for me?”

  He smiled at me in his old way, without seeming to move his face. “You wrote that stupid book, which my sergeant adores. And I shall have no other sergeants before him. And maybe there’s something to this ridiculous idea after all.”

  “You think it’s ridiculous to think that the new Blue Rose murders are connected to the old ones?”

  “Of course it’s ridiculous.” He leaned forward over the satchel. “By the way, will you please stop trying to be helpful in front of the cameras? As far as the public is concerned, Mrs. Ransom was one of Walter’s victims. The man on Livermore Avenue, too.”

  “He’s still unidentified?”

  “That’s right,” Fontaine said. “Why?”

  “Have you ever heard of a missing student of John’s named Grant Hoffman?”

  “No. How long has he been missing?”

  “A couple of weeks, I think. He didn’t turn up for an appointment with John.”

  “And you think he could be our victim?”

  I shrugged.

  “When was the appointment he missed, do you know?”

  “On the sixth, I think.”

  “That’s the day after the body was found.” Fontaine glanced over at Michael Hogan, who was talking with John’s parents. Her face toward the detective, Marjorie was drinking in whatever he was saying. She looked like a girl at a dance.

  “Do you happen to know how old this student was?”

  “Around thirty,” I said, wrenching my attention away from the effect Michael Hogan was making on John’s mother. “He was a graduate student.”

  “After the funeral, maybe we’ll—” He stopped talking and stood up. He patted my shoulder. “Get the file back to me in a day or two.”

  He passed down the row of empty chairs and went up to Michael Hogan. The two detectives parted from the Ransoms and walked a few feet away. Hogan looked quickly, assessingly at me for a long second in which I felt the full weight of his remarkable concentration, then at John. I still felt the impact of his attention. Rapt, Marjorie Ransom continued to stare at the older detective until Ralph tugged her gently back toward the gray-haired broker, and even then she turned her head to catch sight of him over her shoulder. I knew how she felt.

  Someone standing beside me said, “Excuse me, are you Tim Underhill?”

  I looked up at a stocky man of about thirty-five wearing thick black glasses and a lightweight navy blue suit. He had an expectant expression on his broad, bland face.

  I nodded.

  “I’m Dick Mueller—from Barnett? We talked on the phone? I wanted to tell you that I’m grateful for your advice—you sure called it. As soon as the press found out about me and, ah, you know, they went crazy. But because you warned me what was going to happen, I could work out how to get in and out of the office.”

  He sat down in front of me, smiling with the pleasure of the story he was about to tell me. The door clicked open again, and I turned my head to see Tom Pasmore slipping into the chapel behind a young man in jeans and a black jacket. The young man was nearly as pale as Tom, but his thick dark hair and thick black eyebrows made his large eyes blaze. He focused on the coffin as soon as he got into the big room. Tom gave me a little wave and drifted up the side of the room.

  “You know what I go through to get to work?” Mueller asked.

  I wanted to get rid of Dick Mueller so that I could talk to Tom Pasmore.

  “I asked Ross Barnett if he wanted me to—”

  I broke into the account of How I Get to My Office. “Was Mr. Barnett going to send April Ransom out to San Francisco to open another office, some kind of joint venture with another brokerage house?”

  He blinked at me. His eyes were huge behind the big square lenses. “Did somebody tell you that?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “It was more of a rumor.”

  “Well, there was some talk a while ago about moving into San Francisco.” He looked worried now.

  “That wasn’t what you meant about the ‘bridge deal’?”

  “Bridge deal?” Then, in a higher tone of voice: “Bridge deal?”

  “You told me to tell your secretary—”

  He grinned. “Oh, you mean the bridge project. Yeah. To remind me of who you were. And you thought I meant the Golden Gate Bridge?”

  “Because of April Ransom.”

  “Oh, yeah, no, it wasn’t anything like that. I was talking about the Horatio Street bridge. In town here. April was nuts about local history.”

  “She was writing something about the bridge?”

  He shook his head. “All I know is, she called it the bridge project. But listen, Ross”—he looked sideways and tilted his head toward the prosperous-looking gray-haired man who had been talking with Ralph Ransom—“worked out this great little plan.”

  Mueller told me an elaborate story about entering through a hat shop on Palmer Street, going down into the basement, and taking service stairs up to the fourth floor, where he could let himself into the Barnett copy room.

  “Clever,” I said. I had to say something. Mueller was the sort of person who had to impose what delighted him on anyone who would listen. I tried to picture his encounters with Walter Dragonette, Mueller bubbling away about bond issues and Walter sitting across the desk in a daze, wondering how that big schoolteacher head would look on a shelf in his refrigerator.

  “You must miss April Ransom,” I said.

  He settled back down again. “Oh, sure. She was very important to the office. Sort of a star.”

  “What was she like, personally? How would you describe her?”

  He pursed his lips and glanced at his boss. “April worked harder than anyone on earth. She was smart, she had an amazing memory, and she put in a lot of hours. Tremendous energy.”

  “Did people like her?”

  He shrugged. “Ross, he certainly liked her.”

  “You sound like you’re not saying something.”

  “Well, I don’t know.” Mueller looked at his bo
ss again. “This is the kind of a person who’s always going ninety miles an hour. If you didn’t travel at her speed, too bad for you.”

  “Did you ever hear that she was thinking of leaving the business to have a baby?”

  “Would Patton quit? Would Mike Ditka quit? To have babies?” Mueller clamped a fat hand over his mouth and looked around to see if anyone had noticed his giggle. He wore a pinky ring with a tiny diamond chip and a big college ring with raised letters. Puffy circles of raised fat surrounded both rings.

  “You could call her aggressive,” he said. “It’s not a criticism. We’re supposed to be aggressive.” He tried to look aggressive as all get-out for a second and succeeded in looking a little bit sneaky.

  People had been coming into the room in twos and threes while we talked, filling about three-fourths of the seats. I recognized some of John’s neighbors from the local news. When Mueller stood up, I left my seat and carried the heavy satchel to the back of the room, where Tom Pasmore was drinking a cup of coffee.

  “I didn’t think you’d come,” I said.

  “I don’t usually have the chance to get a look at my murderers,” he said.

  “You think April’s murderer is here?” I looked around at the roomful of brokers and teachers. Dick Mueller had sidled up to Ross Barnett, who was angrily shaking his head, probably denying that he’d ever had any intention of moving April anywhere at all. Because you never know what you’ll be able to use, I stepped sideways and took out my notebook to write down a phrase about a broker so feeble that he used his college ring to get business from other people who had gone to the same college. A combination of letters and numbers was already written on the last page, and it took me a moment to remember what they represented. Tom Pasmore was smiling at me. I put the notebook back in my pocket.

  “I’d say there’s an excellent chance.” He looked down at the case between my legs. “The Blue Rose files wouldn’t be in that thing, would they?”

  “How did you work that out?”

  He bent down and picked up the case to show me the dim, worn gold of the initials stamped just below the clasp: WD.

  Fontaine had given me William Damrosch’s own satchel—he had probably used it as a suitcase when he went on trips, and as a briefcase in town.

  “Would you mind bringing this over to my place tonight, so I can make copies?”

  “You have a copy machine?” Like Lamont von Heilitz, Tom often gave the impression of resisting technological progress.

  “I even have computers.”

  I thought he was being playful: I wasn’t even sure that he used an electric typewriter.

  “They’re upstairs. These days, most of my information comes through the modem.” The surprise on my face made him smile. He held up his right hand. “Honest. I’m a hacker. I’m tapped in all over the place.”

  “Can you find out someone’s name through their license plate number?”

  He nodded. “Sometimes.” He gave me a speculative look. “Not in every state.”

  “I’m thinking of an Illinois plate.”

  “Easy.”

  I began to tell him about the license number on the piece of paper I thought I had given to Paul Fontaine. At the front of the room, the young man who had come into the room behind Tom turned away from April Ransom’s coffin and made a wide circle around John, who turned his back on him, either by chance or intentionally. The music became much louder. Mr. Trott appeared through a white door I had not noticed earlier and closed the coffin. At the same time, everybody in the room turned around as the big doors at the back of the chapel admitted two men in their early sixties. One of them, a man about as broad as an ox cart, wore a row of medals on the chest of his police uniform, like a Russian general. The other man had a black armband on the sleeve of his dark gray suit. His hair, as silvery as Ralph Ransom’s, was thicker, almost shaggy. I assumed that he must have been the minister.

  Isobel Archer and her crew pushed themselves into the room, followed by a dozen other reporters. Isobel waved her staff to a point six feet from Tom Pasmore and me, and the other reporters lined up along the sides of the room, already scribbling in notebooks and talking into their tape recorders. The big silver-haired man marched up to Ross Barnett and whispered something.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Tom.

  “You don’t know Merlin Waterford? Our mayor?”

  The uniformed man who had come in with him pumped John’s hand and pulled him toward the first row. Bright lights flashed on and washed color from the room. The music ended. The pale young man in the black jacket bumped against a row of knees as he fought his way toward a seat. Isobel Archer held up a microphone to her face and began speaking into the camera and the floodlights. John leaned forward and covered his face with his hands.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, fellow mourners for April Ransom.” The mayor had moved behind the podium. The white light made his hair gleam. His teeth shone. His skin was the color of a Caribbean beach. “Some few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the dinner at which a brilliant young woman received the financial community’s Association Award. I witnessed the respect she had earned from her peers and shared her well-earned pride in that wonderful honor. April Ransom’s profound grasp of business essentials, her integrity, her humanity, and her deep commitment to the greater good of our community inspired us all that night. She stood before us, her friends and colleagues, as a shining example of everything I have tried to encourage and represent during the three terms in which I have been privileged to serve as the mayor of this fine city.”

  If you cared for that sort of thing, the mayor was a great speaker. He would pledge, in fact he would go so far as to promise, that the memory of April Ransom’s character and achievements would never leave him as he worked night and day to bring good government to every citizen of Millhaven. He would dedicate whatever time was left to him to—

  This went on for about fifteen minutes, after which the chief of police, Arden Vass, stumped up to the microphone, frowned, and pulled three sheets of folded paper from an inside jacket pocket. The papers crackled as he flattened them onto the podium with his fist. He was not actually frowning, I saw. That was just his normal expression. He tugged a pair of steel-rimmed glasses from a pocket below the rows of medals and rammed them onto his face.

  “I can’t pontificate like my friend, the mayor,” he said. His hoarse, bludgeoning voice slammed each of his short sentences to the ground before picking up the next. We had a great police department. Each man—and woman—in that department was a trained professional. That was why our crime rate was one of the lowest in the nation. Our officers had recently apprehended one of the worst criminals in history. That man was currently safe in custody, awaiting a full statement of charges and eventual trial. The woman whose life we were celebrating today would understand the importance of cooperation between the community and the brave men who risked their lives to protect it. That was the Millhaven represented by April Ransom. I have nothing more to say. Thank you.

  Vass pushed himself away from the podium and lumbered toward the first row of seats. For a second everybody sat frozen with uncertainty, staring at the empty podium and the bleached flowers. Then the lights snapped off.

  4

  APRIL’S COLLEAGUES were moving in a compact group toward the parking lot. The pale young man in the black jacket had disappeared. Below the crest of the front lawn, Isobel and her crew were pulling away from the curb, and the Boughmobile was already moving toward the stop sign at the end of the street. John’s neighbors stood near a long line of cars parked across the street, wistfully watching Isobel and the officials drive away.

  Stony with rage, John Ransom stood with his parents at the top of the steps. Fontaine and Hogan stood a few yards from Tom Pasmore and me, taking everything in, like cops. I was sure I could detect in Hogan’s face an extra, ironic layer of impassivity, suggesting that he had thought his superiors’ speeches ridiculously self-serving. He spoke a few words
without seeming to move his lips, like a schoolboy uttering a scathing remark about his teacher, and then I knew I was right. Hogan noticed me looking at him, and amusement and recognition briefly flared in his eyes. He knew what I had seen, and he knew that I agreed with him. Fontaine left him and moved briskly across the dry lawn toward the Ransoms.

  “Are you going with us to the crematorium?” I asked Tom.

  He shook his head. In the sunlight, his face had that only partially smoothed-out parchment look again, and I wondered if he had ever been to bed. “What is that detective asking John?” he asked me.

  “He probably wants him to see if he can identify the victim from Livermore Avenue.”

  I could almost see his mind working. “Tell me more.”

  I told Tom about Grant Hoffman, and a little color came into his face.

  “Will you go along?”

  “I think Alan Brookner might come, too.” I looked around, realizing that I had not yet seen Alan.

  “Come over any time you can get away. I want to hear what happens at the morgue.”

  The front door opened and closed behind us. Leaning on Joyce Brophy’s arm, Alan Brookner moved slowly into the sunlight. Joyce signaled to me. “Professor Underhill, maybe you’ll see Professor Brookner down to the car, so we can start our procession. There’s deadlines here too, just like everywhere else, and we’re scheduled in at two-thirty. Maybe you can get Professor Ransom and his folks all set?”