He was like a shadow, you never noticed he was there.
That could be a perfect description of Mr. Potato Head. You didn't notice O'Neill because he looked like everybody else, a guy with cop training, expert at following people. Johnny Powell figured him for a cop. ‘He had a cop's way about him. You know — a stache and a cheap suit.’ Except he didn't have a mustache, ‘Just seemed like the type. Said your name then showed me a picture.’
The night before I interviewed Kate, she tried to draw the face of the man she saw when she was a girl. Her drawings were childish, schematic. I attributed that to lack of skill. But maybe her drawings were accurate portraits of Mr. Potato Head, a man with a generic face who looked like everybody else.
He was like a shadow, you never noticed he was there.
Mr. Potato Head knows how to get into a hotel room without disturbing the electronic lock. Mr. Potato Head knows how to follow a man on the street without being noticed. Mr. Potato Head can do a U-turn-and-park maneuver when I try to track his car. All skills an old-time cop would have, an ex-cop, an operative.
Jerry O'Neill equals Mr. Potato Head? It adds up, could even be true.
I'm excited. Though it's the middle of the night, I tiptoe into Pam's bathroom to call Mace from my cell phone..
"That diary's really something," he says. "Can't put it out of my mind. And now Waldo... it's hard to believe, isn't it?"
"I don't know if it was Waldo or who the hell it was, Mace. I do know that all your Steadman-connected suspects are dead. Cody, the Torrance Hill mob, whoever. But Mr. Potato Head isn't dead and now I think I know who he is."
"Sure, I remember O'Neill," he tells me. "Just barely. He's not the kind of guy you remember all that well. Basically all I can recall about him is his name. He pauses. "Hmmm, that sounds like Mr. Potato Head, doesn't it? Gimme a couple hours. Soon as I get to the office I'll run him through the DMV."
* * * * *
Calista County Courthouse
11:50 a.m.
Kit Foster's defense attorney rests his case. When Judge Winterson asks if the State wants to put on rebuttal evidence, the prosecution team briefly confers, then announces that it rests as well. Excitement in the courtroom. The trial's now basically over. Winterson gavels for quiet, instructs counsel to prepare to make closing arguments in the morning, then dismisses the jury. The moment the judge leaves the courtroom, the media crowd, cell phones in hand, surge into the corridor.
"How long will it take you to get me drawings?" Harriet asks, panting at my side.
"I already have them," I tell her, handing off my sketches.
Her expression is priceless. "Who told you, David?" she demands. "How did you know?"
I smile at her, break loose, head for the elevators. Mace is waiting for me downstairs with the DMV photo of Jerry O'Neill.
* * * * *
Standing behind his counter, Johnny Powell nods. "Sure, that's the guy."
"No question, Johnny?"
"It's him, Mr. Weiss. Just lookin' at him I can smell the suit."
Mace and I thank Johnny, then retreat to the Flamingo courtyard.
"Your geezer's positive, so let's talk to him." Mace laughs. "Be pretty funny if he's tracking you now. He'll end up tracking you back to his own place."
* * * * *
O'Neill's place turns out to be an apartment in a crummy building on Tucker Avenue, a tenement with strange, dark, open porches lined two in a row up the façade.
There's an unpleasant pungency to the dark, ground-floor lobby, the smell of over-the-hill fish fried in cheap oil. A NO SOLICITORS sign, defaced by graffiti, is taped to the wall. A coin-operated laundry machine chugs away in a corner, a puddle of soapy water, leaking from beneath, spreading across the floor. No elevator, just a staircase brashly lit by buzzing fluorescent tubes attracting flies.
"2-B." Mace points to the left. The walls are dark brown and so is the woodwork. I can barely make out the number on the door.
Mace pushes the buzzer. No response. He motions me to stand out of sight, then knocks.
The sound of footsteps padding across the floor on the other side. "Yeah-yeah-yeah," a weary voice intones.
A little flash of light in the peephole. The sound of laborious breathing. "Whaduyuwant?"
"Sheriff's Department. Open up, O'Neill."
O'Neill coughs, a smoker's dry, hacking cough. The door opens a crack. A stream of cigarette smoke snakes out. "What's going on?"
Mace motions me to show myself. I step into O'Neill's sight line. He looks at me with little terrier eyes, then exhales and coughs again. Even through the haze of smoke, I see more character in his face than I expected.
"Mr. Weiss here's made a complaint," Mace tells him. "Want to talk about it?"
"Hello there, Weiss. Sure, we can talk about it. Place is a mess. Wasn't expecting guests."
He gestures us into a large, dark, dusty room furnished with battered Salvation Army junk. An oversize refrigerator, door yellowing with age, occupies a corner. Several cheap aluminum ashtrays are overflowing with butts. The stench of exhaled tobacco is nearly overwhelming. When O'Neill steps back, he seems to disappear into the shadows.
He was like a shadow, you never noticed he was there.
"Wanna beer?" We shake our heads. O'Neill shrugs, then makes his way to the refrigerator. "Take a seat... if you can find one."
Mace perches on a torn, lopsided hassock. I sit on an old army footlocker covered with a fraying gray towel.
O'Neill's a pear-shaped guy with iron-gray hair and a big ass shown off by a pair of brown trousers held up by suspenders. White chest hairs peek through his shirt. His jowls are unshaven, and he's wearing a raggedy pair of brown slippers. He's got the kind of square-bottom face that reminds me of the bottom of a paper bag.
I wouldn't have trouble drawing this guy. What's the big deal, why's he so hard to describe?
"How'd you guys find me?" he asks, sitting down on his unmade bed, faint smile playing on his lips.
"I'll be asking the questions," Mace says. "To start, why're you following Mr. Weiss?"
"Following a guy's a crime?"
"Yeah, if you're doing it to cover up a crime."
"I ain't covering nothin'. I was following him for a client."
"Who?"
"You know I don't have to tell you that."
"Yeah, but you will."
I like Mace's classical technique. It's as if, figuring O'Neill a certain way, he instinctively uses language he knows will reach the guy.
O'Neill stubs out his cigarette, lights another. "Okay, guy named Maritz asked me to find out what Weiss is up to."
"Walter M. Maritz who lives in Sarasota?"
O'Neill exhales toward me. "You seem to know a lot, Mr. Weiss. I'll pass that on to Walt. See, finding out what you know is what he wants to know... if you follow my meaning. He heard you were nosing around, pokin' your face into offices in the Doubleton Building, talking to Rakoubian's nutty widow, hangin' out with Cody's old maître d'. So he asked me to check you out. That's the whole story."
"No, it isn't." Mace rises, walks up to O'Neill, stares at him with disdain. "Right now your client Maritz is looking at serious charges. He lied to us about Flamingo. From what I can tell, damn near everything he told us was a lie. Doesn't matter it was twenty-six years ago. No statute of limitations on murder. The investigation's still open. The means no limitations on hindering the investigation. So start talking, because the one who talks first, you or Maritz, is the one who's going to get credit for helping me out."
There's something almost old ladyish about O'Neill, and it's not his personal hygiene. It's his prissiness, I decide, the prim way he holds his hands together in his lap and the sickly smile that coats his face like a veneer. He's got wide hips, a plump ass, and smoking must have nearly rotted out his lungs. He looks like a guy with maybe a year or two left to live. The only part of him that appears tough is the squirrelly look of cunning in his eyes.
He gazes at M
ace, then at me, stubs out his cigarette, then goes into a coughing fit. When finally he brings the cough under control, he looks again at Mace and shrugs.
"Sure," he says, "I'll tell you. Walt hasn't paid me, so he hasn't earned client privilege yet. Anyhow," he shows that sickly smile again, "my private investigator's license already expired."
"Was Maritz involved with the Flamingo killings?"
"No way!"
"So why does he care what I know?" I ask.
"Because like the inspector here said, Walt lied. He told the inspector he didn't know what happened, he didn't know about Mrs. Fulraine's affair with the teach. But he did know. I told him. I was full time on her butt. I was there in my car in the motel lot the day of the shootings. I even caught a glimpse of the shooter when he ran out."
As he starts talking, I start sketching him. He preens for me a little, blows a couple of smoke rings in my direction, smiles to himself, but never asks what I'm doing or why. Maybe because he knows he's difficult to describe, he thinks I won't be able to portray him. But I have my own motive, and it's not just to see if I can make a decent drawing of his generically ugly face. I want him to get used to me sketching as he speaks, because, though he doesn't know it yet, if he really did see the shooter, he's going to help me make an eyewitness drawing as soon as he finishes telling his story to Mace.
"This rich guy Fulraine hired Walt to follow his ex, catch her doing something untoward he could use against her to get back his kids."
"‘Untoward’?" Mace winces. "Give us a break, O'Neill."
Jerry blows a perfect smoke ring, then another, which passes through the first. "‘Sinful’ — how's that?"
"Go on."
"The pay was good so Walt took the assignment even though he knew he couldn't handle it on his own. Also seems he had a grudge. Couple years before, he and Mrs. Fulraine had a major falling out and Cody had him beaten up. Merciless beating. Put Walt out of commission nearly a year. So Walt hired me. I was just off the force. Maybe I wasn't the greatest cop this town ever had, but I was one helluva tracker. Walt knew that. So he tells me: ‘Follow the bitch, get everything you can on her. Nothin’ could be sweeter for me than seeing her lose her brats.’
"So I start following her. Two, three days into the job she leads me to a motel across from Tremont Park. One look and I go, ‘Whoa! This doesn't fit, she's up to something dirty in there.’"
"Something ‘untoward’?"
Jerry blows another perfect smoke ring. "She goes up to this room. Couple hours later she and this guy come out and get into separate cars. I jot down his plate number, then follow her home."
"When I report this to Walt, he gets excited. ‘Tasty!’ he says. So he runs the plate on the stud and it turns out he's a teacher at her kids' school. ‘Got her by her short hairs now,’ Walt says."
"I keep following her and every couple days it's the same routine. She drives over to the motel, she and the teach spend a couple hours, then each takes off in his own car. They're so sure of themselves they don't even try to cover up. I mean she drives a Jag for Christ's sake! Anyone could've followed her."
"One night Walt and I have a couple drinks and he tells me what's on his mind. ‘I can pass all this on to Fulraine like I'm supposed to,’ he says. ‘Then what? He nails her in court and throws us a little bonus for good work.’ Walk doesn't think much of that. A little bonus isn't going to cut it. ‘I'm gonna blackmail the bitch. She'll pay big time to keep this quiet. Trouble is she knows me so I can't approach her direct. That's where you come in. She doesn't know you, Jerry, so you'll be the cut-out, then you and me'll split the take.’ Sounds good to me. I tell him I'm in. ‘Okay,’ Walt says, ‘but we can't do blackmail without something to sell. We gotta get pictures.’ So we talk to Max. Max is game and Max is cheap. He even knows the broad, once took pictures of her holding a whip."
I'm shocked; Barbara thought Max was her friend.
"What about Waldo Channing?" I ask, contemplating Max's betrayal. "Did Maritz bring him in too?"
O'Neill shows his old lady's sickly smile. "Why split with Channing when Walt and I developed this on our own?"
"So then what?" Mace asks.
"Max stakes out the motel, sets up his telephoto, gets shots of them coming and going, snaps a kiss or two. But that's not good enough for Walt. ‘I want fucking,’ he says. ‘I want them bare-assed naked on the bed.’ So Max comes up with this plan. Since I'm used to her routine, I knew when she and the teach take a day off. We book their favorite room on one of the off-days, I sneak in a ladder, then help Max mount one of his remote-control miniature cameras and a transmitter mike behind the ventilation screen above the bed..."
Max knew a secret about those killings, Chip's mother told me, something he wouldn't tell no matter how many times I asked. But the worst part of this, I think, is Max's betrayal.
"That fuckin' Max. What a wizard! Couple days later we take a room a few doors down. The lady and the teach check in as usual, we listen till we hear them going at it, ‘oohs’ and ‘has.’ Then Max starts shooting blind. Every couple of minutes he uses this little radio device to take a picture. We're worried they'll hear the clicks, but we get lucky, there's a thunderstorm. Anyhow, to find the camera they'd have to unscrew the vent register. As it happens, they're so wrapped up in each other they don't suspect a thing. Soon as they leave, we go back in the room, Max takes out the film, and, in case he didn't gat enough, reloads the camera and puts it back. Good thing, too, because even though the pictures come out great, Walt still isn't satisfied. ‘I wanna crotch shot! I wanna see her snatch! I wanna see her suckin' his dick! Get me a suck shot and you get double pay,’ he tells Max. I think he had this idea he'd blackmail the lady, then, when he squeezed out all he could, he'd mail the pictures to Cody for spite. Like ‘fuck you, Cody, take a look at your bitch sucking off her new stud!’ Far as those two went, Walt had a hair up his ass..."
"Did Max get the suck shot?"
O'Neill laughs. "Max couldn't see ‘em, so whatever he got was a matter of luck. Anyhow, after two tries, I finally persuade Walt to calm down. ‘Why go on with it? This is business,’ I tell him. ‘Forget your personal gripe. We got a lock.’ Walt gets my point. So now it's my turn. The plan's so devious we laugh ourselves sick figuring it out..."
As O'Neill recounts his role in the scheme, he again shows his sickly smirk. I decide to work it into my drawing. If I can capture that, I think, I'll have him down cold, pinned to my sketchpad like the sleazy cockroach he is.
"Next time Barbara and the teach check into the motel, I'm in my usual spot in the parking lot. There's another thunderstorm. I give them half an hour, time to have some fun, then when the sky clears I mosey over to this phone booth inside Moe's, dial the motel, and ring through to their room. The teach picks up. ‘Yeah?’ ‘Mrs. Fulraine, please.’ ‘Who is this?’ he asks, like who the hell would know she's even there. ‘This is about her kids, so put her on.’ As he passes her the phone, I hear him say something like ‘I don't know. Something about your kids.’ ‘Oh, God!’ I hear her say. Then, to me, ‘What happened? What?’ At this point, I'm starting to feel sorry for her. But beezeness eze beezeness, so I come on tough and deliver my spiel. ‘See the vent screen above the bed? We put a camera up there last week, got pictures of you fucking your brains out with your kids' teach. If you don't pay us a hundred grand, those pictures are going straight to your ex. Think about that, Mrs. Fulraine. Wanna lose two more of your kids? You'll get a sample photo in the mail.’ I'm about to tell her I'll be in touch, when she fuckin’ explodes. ‘Listen, whoever-the-hell-you-are, I know who you're working for. Tell the little creep if he dares play any more games with me I'll ruin him, so help me God!’ The she hangs up!"
O'Neill rubs his eyes, lights another cigarette. "Hangs up on me! I couldn’t fuckin' believe it! My hands were shaking so bad I dropped the phone. She wasn't broken, wasn't scared, instead she went crazy mad. I ask myself: What kind of blackmail can we do if the person isn't scar
ed of what we got? The way she talked, she had far worse on us that we had on her. I go back to my car, light a cigarette, try to figure the thing out. What am I going to tell Walt? And what's he going to do when he hears? Send the pictures to Mr. Fulraine in return for a little bonus? Send them to Cody, a guy you don't mess with? Send them to both because he hates the broad? Maybe, I'm thinking, the smart move for me is to get the hell out of this while I can.
O'Neill takes a deep drag, then exhales in a long stream.
"That's when I heard the shots."
"How many?"
"Four big ones — boom-boom, a break, then two more. Something, I don't know what, tells me they're coming from that room. First thing I think is Shit! Either she's shot him or he's shot her. Maybe my call set them off! Then I see this guy come out, guy in a raincoat and hat. No gun, but later I figure he must have hidden it under his coat. He comes running down the outside stairs, crosses the street, then walks real fast toward my car. I don't want him to see me, so I slide down and stay still. He passes within fifteen feet. I get a look at him, not much, just a glimpse, then I watch him through my side mirror. He goes all the way through the lot, then turns toward Tremont Park. That's when I decide to get the hell out. I start my car and pull out fast. Later that night, when I meet Walt at his pub, news of the killings has been on TV for hours. As we're sitting there looking at the screen above the bar, some news bitch comes on with a guy who says he saw the shooter run into the parking lot, then a dark car comes roaring out. The somebody comes on and IDs the car as an Olds. Walt and I look at each other. We know we're in deep shit. Why? Guess what I drive? A dark blue Olds sedan."
"That's it?" Mace asks.
"That's it. We couldn't tell you guys. We were implicated; we hadn't told Fulraine what she was doing. The lady was dead so we couldn't blackmail her. We just figured if we kept quiet and nobody saw nothin’, you guys would think Cody ordered the hit... which was peachy fine with Walt."
Dream of The Broken Horses, The Page 34
