The Marble Kite

by David Daniel

  We were silent the rest of the way to the fairgrounds. I pulled to the curb and he climbed out. “Thanks for the ride,” he said. He seemed eager to be gone.

  “If you like, I can drive you back. I’m in no rush.”

  “No. I appreciate it, but I’m going to stay here tonight.”

  “All right, then.”

  He shut the door.

  I drove off and a short distance up the boulevard pulled over and parked. I waited a few minutes, peering back at the mostly darkened cluster of trailers in the big field. I picked out Embry’s Airstream by its rounded contour and a light on inside and kept an eye on it. When I saw the trailer go dark a few minutes later, I wasn’t surprised. Embry emerged, looked around furtively, as if satisfying himself that he was alone, and set off on foot toward the highway. In a moment a cab slowed and drew over, and he got in.

  28

  Fifteen minutes later I had followed the cab across the state line into New Hampshire, and I found myself hoping he wasn’t headed for a clown convention in Montreal. But the cab got off at Exit I and we got over onto Daniel Webster Highway We cruised along with the endless traffic lights of Nashua, past the tax-free mishegas of malls, discount furniture showrooms, auto dealers, muffler replacement shops, and every chain restaurant you could think of and a lot you couldn’t, all the crap that the city had zoned into one area, like a postmodern paean to the free market. As the cab got beyond most of that, it slowed, then slowed some more, and I sensed that the driver was looking for an address. I kept back a distance, and soon the cab drew into a motel entry drive. The blue-and-yellow—lighted sign identified it as the Bamboo Court Inn. It was a two-story set of units that sat perpendicular to the highway, with a drop-off and reception loop in front and guest parking in the rear.

  I let the taxi have the loop, and I watched Embry get out before I pulled up into the drive and went past and stopped. I killed my lights and used the rearview mirror. Embry paid his fare and went into the lobby. The cabbie paused, looked around hopefully, then flicked off the IN SERVICE light and headed back to Massachusetts empty.

  I waited another minute, then got out and went into the tall, glass-fronted lobby. Embry was nowhere to be seen. To my left, opposite the front desk, was a fieldstone wall with a small waterfall running down among tropical plants and Polynesian tiki heads. It was an impressive design and probably would have been a success in a hotel in Cambridge circa 1960, but here, now, with a transient, motorized population who didn’t care squat about feng shui, it seemed an extravagance—a conclusion that upper management had evidently reached, too; the waterfall had been choked back to a trickle that ran over the stones in a rusty drizzle and gave the impression of a leaky roof more than an island Eden. On the wall behind the registration counter, a copper starburst clock showed the time to be 10:21. Beyond the desk, on the right, was the entrance to a lounge, with the sounds of Kenny G issuing forth. I hipped in close to the stone-topped counter, stealthily slipping my wallet from my back pocket as I did. The clerk, a sharp-featured youth in a tan blazer, looked up expectantly.

  “The gentleman who just came in,” I said, “he left this in my cab.” I held up my wallet for a quick view.

  “Oh … well, I can get it to him if you—”

  “I’m hoping there might be a little reward in it if I can take it to him myself. Hacking is no ticket to Easy Street.” The youth looked sympathetic. “If the reward’s more than a sawbuck,” I said, “I’ll cut you in for half.”

  He checked the ledger. “He went up to room two-oh-two.”

  “Is that his room?”

  “It’s registered to Mr. Lou Hackett.”

  Before I could compute that, Embry emerged from a stairwell near the lobby entrance, accompanied by a second man. One look at the man’s madras plaid sport coat over a pink shirt told me who he was. I asked the clerk to be sure.

  Embry and Hackett went through a door and disappeared. “How about another fellow?” I pressed the clerk. “A guy with funny ears and a neck like a nail keg? Is he here?”

  The kid grew suspicious. “The old wrestler—how’d you know that?”

  “I’m a huge fan.” I took a single from my wallet and slapped it on the counter. “Better luck next time.”

  Embry and the man I’d tagged as one half of Rag Tyme Entertainment had gone outside together. Keeping a row of potted trees between us, I followed. They walked away from the lighted entrance area and stood in the glow of the motel’s marquee. With a show of ceremony Hackett took something from his inside jacket pocket. I saw the brief, bright green of money as he handed several bills to Embry, who pocketed them. I couldn’t make out the denominations, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t cheaping Embry the way I had the desk clerk.

  The pair chatted a moment more, then shook hands. Hackett raised his arm, and a set of headlights came on. I faded back into shadows. A black SUV with tinted glass eased up a short distance away from the men. Hackett made a broad “here’s your ride” gesture, and Embry waved and opened the passenger door and got in. He rolled down the window and said something more to Hackett, who waved.

  I didn’t get a look at the driver until the SUV—a Toyota 4Runner, I noted—drew past, and then it was only for a second as it passed beneath the marquee light and Embry’s window went up. It wasn’t a face I’d ever seen before, but I wouldn’t mistake it in a million years.

  Conventional wisdom said follow the money, but this time I thought it might be more productive to backtrack it. I’d seen enough of Embry for one night, and I knew where I could probably find him if I needed to. As for trailing, and perhaps encountering Bud “the Squisher” Spritzer—that was a pleasure I’d forgo for this night.

  As Hackett passed me on his way back to the entrance to the Bamboo Court Inn, evidently in deep thought, I stepped from the shadows.

  “Mr. Hackett?”

  He did a quick half-turn, his high brow furrowing, one hand moving to his side pocket, leaving me to guess whether he was carrying or not. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  “My name’s Alex Rasmussen.”

  “So?”

  “If you’re handing out green, can I get in line after the clown?”

  He gave me the full frontal posture, which I took to mean that either I had his attention or he was going to shoot me. He wasn’t as big as his business partner—an inch or two shorter than I am—but he was my width again by half. Muscular or fat or both, it was hard to tell in the madras plaid. The ridges in his face certainly didn’t look pillowy soft. “What’s the deal?” he demanded. “And you better make it good.”

  I showed him my PI license. He looked at it, measured me a long moment, then said, “Let’s get a drink.”

  The Bamboo Court Inn’s cocktail lounge was small, though something short of cozy, more like an airport bar, a place for people on the move. At the moment, we were the only patrons. We sat at a corner table where an eager-faced young waitress appeared and started to recite a litany of exotic drinks. Hackett cut her off: “Bacardi and Coke.” I told her bourbon. Hackett put his elbows on the table, his palms flat, stubby fingers facing each other. There was some kind of blue stone in a gold setting on his left pinkie. Thick shoulders strained at the bright cotton fabric of his coat. In the glow of the mood lights strung through several indoor palm trees, Hackett appeared to be in his early sixties, his hair an improbable shade of brown and combed back from a pronounced widow’s peak. Bright dentures and rough-cut handsome features made him a cross between an aging soap actor and a ward heeler no longer content just to work behind the ballot. “Well?” he said.

  I explained how I had come to be there, starting with why I’d been hired in the first place. The waitress brought our drinks and stood there for a second, as though hoping for approval or a tip. Hackett gave her neither; I said thanks.

  “So when Embry got cute with you and called a cab,” Hackett recapped, “you got curious, that it?”

  “That’s it. I’m still curious, you la
ying green on him like that.”

  He tossed aside the swizzle stick, took a healthy knock of his drink and dabbed his lips with the cocktail napkin. “You got a beef with rewarding initiative?”

  “I guess dropping a dime for your outfit’s competitor is a kind of initiative.”

  “Call it a finder’s fee. We’d have heard about Warren Sonders’s troubles anyway. Soon as he missed the payment, bells would’ve been ringing. Embry letting us know just streamlines things, positions us maybe to be of help.”

  “By getting Sonders to sell you his show?”

  “Call it wiping out his debt.”

  “Will he see it that way?”

  “Probably not. He’ll just smell conspiracy … big bad collective out to backdoor the little guy. But some of Embry’s beefs are legit. The way Sonders has been running things is a crime.”

  “Why should that concern you, if he’s been making his payments?”

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t. Until he can’t. A democracy, for Christ’s sake. People with know-how ought to be calling the shots.”

  “Like Rogo the Klown?”

  “He knows his way around.”

  “As I understand it, he was a department store Santa when Pop hired him.”

  “Why don’t we get down to the situation at hand, Mr. Rasmussen? The show’s got a problem. It can’t operate. Sonders can’t pay his bills, and I hear his health isn’t too good. The outfit I represent is in a position to liquidate his debt, eliminate his liability.”

  “And then what? Shut the show down?”

  “Where’d you get that idea?”

  “I think Pop gave it to me.”

  “We’d scrap sentiment and make an impartial business decision, I can tell you that. The carny market has been dying for years. Nowadays small owners are lying around with their feet in the air.”

  “Sonders seems to be making a go of it. At the very least, he’s got a crew of workers who are willing to pitch in and work hard.”

  “It’s more complicated than that. And my heart goes out. Hell, I’m in the business, too. But someone wants a guarantee, I tell ’em buy a savings bond. I’m not the government, not even close.”

  “You hold the note. Why not just extend his credit?”

  “Give him some grace?”

  “He’s good for it.”

  “You aren’t a businessman, are you?”

  My silence was his answer.

  “Then let’s not have this conversation,” he said. “Okay?”

  I guess from one point of view he was right. Anyway, I told him, I was there strictly because curiosity had led me, and now that it didn’t appear to be anything I was officially involved in, I was ready to go. Now Hackett had questions.

  “This guy they arrested for the murder,” he said, “you’re looking to find ways to save his sorry ass because he may be innocent?”

  “If he is, it’d be a shame for him to go up for it. And for Pop to lose his show over it.”

  Hackett’s face darkened. “And if he killed that broad? I’m sick of stories about people wrongly accused, wrongly convicted.” He gave the words a mocking twist. “Okay, I got tears for ’em. But what about all the assholes rightly accused?”

  “It happens,” I said.

  “You’re damn tootin’.” He bared his teeth, but I didn’t offer him anything to sink them into. “Either way, it’s none of my concern. That’s for justice to deal with. My interest is strictly business. Now,” he said, more equably, “I can see how you strayed in here tonight. It’s understandable, and now that we’ve huddled, I’m not even sore that you nosed into my business. One time.” He rapped his pinkie ring on the lacquered bamboo arm of his chair for emphasis. “It shows initiative and gave us a chance to have this talk. But understand, we’ve got different concerns. I don’t care to have you straying over into mine again. Because when I get momentum, I don’t always look at the little things in front of me. I’m liable to roll right over them.”

  “And vice versa,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I meant, but neither was he, and I made it my exit line. He’d promised to buy the round, but I covered it. It was the second time that night someone had offered me a drink and I’d picked up the tab. A hotshot businessman I wasn’t.

  On the way back along Daniel Webster Highway, I looked for something interesting to catch my eye—a lavender neon martini glass or a knotty pine roadhouse facade, something besides the Japanese noodle shops, discotheques, and sports bars, each no doubt licensed to serve whiskey, though it always seemed like an afterthought at such places, a sideline to the more important business of pushing food, sports, or romantic encounters, so I drove back to Lowell, to turf that I knew. I considered my usual spots—Evos Arts, the Copper Kettle, and the Old Worthen, where Poe is said to have watered on his visits to the city and been inspired to pen “The Raven”—but I wasn’t in a mood for history or company. There were joints to choose from along Gorham Street and on Middlesex, but I wanted a drink, not the lush life. I settled for a pub on Jackson near Central, a quiet cave with few customers and an impressive array of bottles on the back-bar, not that I planned to sample them all. “George Dickel, neat,” I told the high-colored brunette who put down a cocktail napkin.

  She poured it full. “Are you and Mr. Dickel old drinking buddies?”

  “Thinking buddies.”

  I commented on her brogue, which she said was Galway. “D’you hear the one about the Dublin lawyer who passed the bar?” She leaned close to give me the punch line. “No one has.”

  When she went off to dish with one of her regulars, I thought of my new house, where I could go and it would certainly be quiet. But it wasn’t the same. Too quiet, maybe; with a different timbre of solitude. I had a desire to telephone Phoebe, see what she was up to, but it was almost eleven. Where had the evening gone? I envisioned her asleep; she was an early to bed, early to rise, makes a girl healthy, wealthy, and wise type. Benjamin Franklin was her guru. We were different, as she reminded me on occasion. She’d also said that she was trying, and I respected it.

  The TV news came on with a story about the carnival murder case, a windblown junior varsity reporter floodlit against JFK Plaza, remarking that threats against the members of a carnival troupe had been reported to police, who were assuring the public that the threats were probably from cranks but nevertheless were taking them seriously and putting on extra patrols. My glass was empty for the videotape of the Pats prepping for Sunday’s game, and a look back to Monday night, the clip of Brady getting intercepted late in the fourth, with a man deep and all alone, yoohooing in the end zone. The sportscaster couldn’t let it go, anymore than the meteorologist could the tropical storm. Gus was in the alley between the Bahamas and the U.S. mainland, evidently trying to make up his spiraling mind as to where and when to come ashore. “Should we have quit giving them women’s names?” the fifty-something white male anchor joked to his twenty-something Eurasian black female co-anchor. I refocused.

  I thought about Rag Tyme’s sudden appearance on the scene. Pop Sonders had hinted it could happen, though he’d hoped his problems wouldn’t be noticed before they could be resolved. Now they had been noticed. Was it a case of a disgruntled employee dropping a dime, a competitor paying off Embry for the information, as Louis Hackett said? Or was the payment for something else? Had Embry killed the girl in order to make trouble for Pop, and soften the beachhead for Rag Tyme, and set it up for Pepper to take the fall? It was too over-the-top for me. There were too many uncertainties that couldn’t be controlled, and Hackett had struck me as someone who liked control. Besides, I didn’t make Embry for a killer; a whiner, a hassler, maybe, but not a killer. I supposed I should tell Sonders that Rag Tyme was here, but I worried that his reaction might set off another ulcer attack. I’d wait and see what else I could learn. Meanwhile I needed something that would help Pepper. I felt like the deep receiver: They’d sent me long, but I wasn’t catching much. I thought of Pop, lying there in All Saints, probabl
y asleep, too. I wished him well.

  When I got outside, the night had grown misty. At my back, a neon shamrock fizzed insistently, like a bee behind glass. On the other side of Jackson, half a block down, a factory in its graveyard shift hummed. For some reason I thought of Flora Nuñez. Some streets away, the lights of an ambulance splashed jittery colors on the nocturnal facades of buildings. A late bus floated past on Central, bearing a cargo of weary souls. A city created an illusion that beyond the avenues and the buildings, the bridges, power lines, highways, and rivers, the lives in it were connected somehow, too. A death broke a connection, set other forces in motion. I stood on the sidewalk, trying for a moment to imagine what those forces might be, but the inner fog of weariness wouldn’t lift. Drifting from a distance came the sound of a clock-tower bell. Midnight. Another day tipping toward dawn. I waited for the tolling to fade, then drove home as cautiously as a judge.

  29

  I slept for eight straight hours, interrupted once by the dog barking to go out and the cat scratching to be let in, but since I have no pets it was obviously a dream, from which I awoke with a final distillation of last night’s whiskey throbbing in my brain. A shower and a pot of coffee had me feeling halfway real again, until I fetched the morning newspaper and caught the front page. Sometime overnight one of the amusements at the carnival had burned to the ground, possibly the result of faulty wiring, though the fire inspector wasn’t ruling out arson. The story carried a photo of firefighters hosing down the scorched ruin of Castle Spookula.

  I called Fred Meecham’s office, and Courtney told me that Meecham was over at superior court, at a hearing in a different case, but that he wanted to speak with me. He expected to break around noon. I said I’d try to meet him at the courthouse, or phone him at least, and Courtney said she’d get a message to him.

  Although last night hadn’t brought any “Aha!” moments, the appearance on the scene of Rag Tyme Shows had opened a new front for exploration. I wasn’t optimistic that another visit with Troy Pepper would be fruitful; still, it was a logical place to start. As I’d tried to explain to Courtney, when you didn’t have a road map, often the only approach was to go in whatever direction drew you, eliminating destinations as you went, and hope that eventually you got somewhere. If Pepper was being set up for the killing as part of some weird takeover attempt by Hackett and Spritzer—although frankly, the concept seemed weak—he might have some idea why.