by Noel Hynd
But he really didn't have too much time to think about it.
“Just as I feared, Pete,” O'Hara said. “You've taken up an interest in national politics.”
“That's my own business.”
“Sure. You and all your moronic new buddies. Clean as fairy whistles, all of you. Strong as bulls and almost as smart.”
“Eat me, O'Hara! Somebody got to look out for the white man.”
“Yeah. And who better than you and your skinhead friends? Or may I use the word, 'knuckleheaded'? It's more appropriate.”
Lavalliere breathed anger at O'Hara, but intimidated easily. He didn't dare follow his displeasure with anything physical. Nor did he say anything. Through a dining-room window, O'Hara caught a glimpse of a tree in Lavalliere's backyard. From it hung a deer carcass, partially butchered, its stomach slit open and one haunch removed. Now frozen and coated with snow. Another mutilated corpse, of which this case had an overabundance.
O'Hara turned back to the living room, looking for a seat. He selected one of the metal chairs, figuring there was a reduced chance of lice.
“Listen, O'Hara,” Lavalliere said, following. “I'm clean and I ain't done nothing. I got this job as a Yard Jockey at the dairy in Stonington.”
“Yeah? That's great. The kids get milk and ice cream from a neo-Nazi. Does the owner of the dairy know he's got a fascist in his parking lot, dispatching his trucks to the schools?”
“I can't be fired for political beliefs. White men got Constitutional rights, too.”
“Yeah, I know. You're a legal scholar these days, aren't you?” Lavalliere took the insult as a compliment. “Sit down,” O'Hara said. “Let's brood over it, instead.”
Lavalliere settled into the seedy armchair, which gave sort of a wheezing hiss when he landed in it.
O'Hara studied his host.
Lavalliere was some piece of work. For the past few years, Lavalliere had played Santa at the Christmas party for the county middle school. Thick glasses, black hair, a white beard clipped on top of a black one, lean with a sofa cushion tucked under his Santa suit, and with those eyes. A walleyed Santa, the floater staring off into opposite directions from the kids on his lap. Presumably Santa was keeping an eye-literally-on the fantasy reindeer.
Santa like no one had ever seen him before. Only the very brightest kids gave a thought to the similarity between Santa's eyes and those of low-rent Mr. Lavalliere, the ex-con warehouse man who lived up the hill past the Grange hall. O'Hara was gambling that Vernon Frealy, the truck driver whose nose got rearranged during the botched hijacking in Hillsboro, might be more perceptive than the next generation of citizens.
O'Hara, leaning back, finally answered. “So you're pushing delivery trucks around a parking lot. Big deal.”
“It's an honest job, and I'm clean.”
“Yeah? You're still on parole, aren't you, Pete?”
“Yeah, I'm on parole.”
“You'd be on your way back to the can if you got rearrested, wouldn't you?”
A pause, then, “So? What of it?”
“Someone knocked off a booze wagon in Hillsboro over the weekend. Truck belonged to the Sainsbury Stores.”
Again, “So?”
“The dopes who did it were so dumb that we already have a suspect.”
Lavalliere was set to bluff. At least initially.
“How 'bout that?” Lavalliere asked. “Well, I hope you sewer-crawler cops didn't hurt yourself finding the other two.”
“I never said there were three, Pete. How did you guess? And thank you for your concern.”
Then O'Hara waited. Finally, Lavalliere hunched his shoulders. “So what's that mean to me?”
“The truck driver had a set-to with the guy in charge of driving the heist away. They went cheek to jowl, Pete. Close enough for the honest guy to smell the liverwurst on the geeky guy's breath.”
“So?”
“Our prime suspect is a big, tall asshole with thick glasses and a floater on the right side. Now, Pete, damned if I didn't think of you right away. Then I come here for a pleasant talk, to assure myself that you couldn't possibly have been stupid enough to go back to prison thanks to a chump change booze heist, and I see that this year you're mixing Adolph Hitler with Santa Claus. Which explains your association with the bald guys. And how you knew there were three of them.”
After a nervous pause, “Doesn't mean nothing,” Lavalliere answered. “Three was a guess. And there's a lot of bald guys. And there's a lot of guys with bad eyes. You know why? The goddamned Red Russians were putting stuff in America's water supply in the 1950s, and so a lot of us got born with bad eyes.”
“Yeah. But there's maybe only one of you around who's six five with a black beard and hangs out with the local Bund. And I say that's the dickhead who helped pull the Sainsbury heist.”
Some wood crackled in one of the potbellied stoves. The wind huffed outside, and a billow of smoke backed down the chimney and seeped into the living room. The timing punctuated the necessary pause that O'Hara wanted before plunging in the knife.
“Care to drive over to Hillsboro?” O'Hara asked. “The truck driver said he'd recognize the thug who punched him out. Or I can just let your parole officer check it out.”
The neo-Nazi was downcast, his sad eyes begged. “Come on, O'Hara. . . .”
“No. I mean it. Who's your parole buddy?”
A reluctant admission: “A woman named Deborah Meyner.” Lavalliere was reporting to a skirt to keep his freedom every month and obviously hating every second of it.
“Deborah's a by-the-book hard-ass, isn't she, Pete?”
“She's a Jew bitch.”
“I happen to like Deborah,” O'Hara said. “I think she's an intelligent woman. She does her job very thoroughly. But I'd bet she's going to be unsympathetic to your problems. She's going to march you over to Hillsboro herself when she sees that jackboot Kraut flag in there.”
“She ain't going to see it.”
“Maybe she'll hear about it.”
“What do you want, O'Hara?”
“Cooperation. If I get it, I might forget to bring you by the truck depot where Vernon Frealy might get overanxious and identify you as one of the thugs who hoisted his truck. I might forget to offer the two dicks over in Hillsboro any insights I might have into this case. You got lucky on one thing, Pete. You and your skinhead pals drew a couple of real local lugs to gumshoe this case. They might not be capable of finding you.”
“Very funny.”
“It's not meant to be.”
“What kind of cooperation are we talking about?”
“I'm looking for a murderer, Pete,” O'Hara said. “A real bluebeard sicko who likes to carve up ladies.” He paused. “Since you're the nosiest son of a bitch in this state, as well as a first-class snitch, I naturally thought you might want to help.”
Lavalliere thought about it.
“This sicko,” Lavalliere asked, “does he diddle the girls before he ices them?”
“Does it matter?”
“Just asking.”
“Don't know. Can't tell yet. But I'll ask when I catch him. Just so I can let you know.”
Somewhere in Lavalliere's mind there was a directory of New Hampshire lowlife. It was probably as dimly lit as everything else in his head, but it was a working directory, nonetheless. He consulted it.
“Don't know no one like that,” Lavalliere said. “The only killers I know are pro. Drug niggers from New York and pizza boys from North Boston. I don't mess with them.”
“The guy I'm looking for has a similar MO to Gary Ledbetter.” A moment passed as Lavalliere placed the name. Then he asked, “The dude they fried in Florida last summer?”
“The one and only.”
Lavalliere pondered it. “Don't ring no bell,” he said.
“You ever hear anything about Gary working with someone?” Did he have a partner?”
“Why would I know that?”
“What about an 'S. Cla
y'? That name mean anything?”
“Should it?”
“I'm asking the questions, Pete. I'm looking for someone with the same MO completely. Everything matches,” said O'Hara.
“So maybe crazy Gary's coming back as a fucking mean-assed ghost,” the Frenchman said.
“Why do you suggest that?”
“It's a joke.”
“It's not a very funny joke. I'm extremely upset, Pete. I got a case that doesn't make any sense: two recently decapitated women and my best suspect was executed five months ago.”
“What are you crying to me for? Maybe you pigs fried the wrong guy.”
“Not funny, either.”
“What other kind of explanation you got?”
“I don't know. This is where you come in.”
“Where?” Lavalliere asked uneasily. “How?”
“Peter, you're one of the most singularly disreputable people I know. And you've got no loyalty other than to yourself.”
“So?”
“I want to know who might have been involved in a pair of copycat murders. I wouldn't mind knowing the how and why, also.”
“You expect me to find out?” As the Frenchman growled, one eye burned at O'Hara, the other rolled in its socket, trying to find a mark in outer space.
“I expect you to find some leads for me, Lavalliere. Otherwise I whisper to your parole officer. About your stolen booze. And about your repulsive Adolph Hitler flag. You got a week to find something, Pete, or I talk to Debbie Meyner.”
A pause as it sank in. Then, “You're a top drawer bastard, O'Hara.”
O'Hara rose from the metal chair. “Good. I'm glad you finally understand,” he said. He glanced at the kitchen door. “You can release your mutt, but keep him away. If he nuzzles me in the ass or tries to hump my leg, I'll blast him.”
But Rudolph was out like a kayoed middleweight. LaValliere had fixed the animal a canine cocktail to keep him mellow while there was a badge-and-pistol present: a Seconal wrapped in beer baloney. Rudolph would be cutting doggy Zs until midnight, then would be lurching around bumping into all the classy furniture until dawn. Tomorrow would be a woozy day, too.
A moment or two later, O'Hara found the door. He didn't have the heart to bust the dog for substance abuse. And as he walked back to his car, as the cold wind clawed at his face like fingernails on an invisible hand, O'Hara thought back on how easily Lavalliere had first become an informer.
It had been Carl Reissman who had first flipped Pete into a professional snitch six years earlier. And O'Hara never forgot how easily Reissman had turned the trick.
It had been a love-at-first-sight thing, Reissman marking Lavalliere immediately as a low-intellect, backwoods goon, susceptible to the crudest sort of head games. So while Lavalliere was freshly arrived in the state cage on an armed robbery charge, Reissman had sent a pair of cops each day to take Pete from his cell for interrogation.
Nothing much had happened. But on the fourth day, Reissman had asked if Lavalliere was willing to inform on any of his compatriots. Lavalliere answered with an unimaginative torrent of obscenities. Reissman smiled graciously and rewarded the Frenchman with better jail conditions.
Two days later, Reissman summoned him again, again asked him if he wanted to inform. Same tough-guy response. Reissman reciprocated by removing Lavalliere's cell mate, giving the wannabe Nazi a single cell. Two days later, Reissman gave Lavalliere his own television in the clink.
Rewards for noncooperation continued for ten days. LaValliere, thanks to his improved jail conditions, was eventually marked as an informer. So there he was, a hateful, tough-as-nails Aryan hard-ass afraid to leave his cell. Somewhere out there in the general population of the slammer, Pete knew, there was a shiv with his name on it.
After a few more days, Reissman gave him a choice. Return to the general population with five black cell mates, all violent long-termers. Or start talking.
Lavalliere warbled like a six-foot-five, walleyed wren. He'd been singing ever since, beating small-time misdemeanors with each concert.
O'Hara struggled with the lock on his car door. It had partially frozen. Then the lock gave. As O'Hara stepped into his car, he caught the reflection of the twinkling Christmas lights in the rearview mirror. The lights and the Styrofoam snowman.
He smiled.
Lavalliere had been singing ever since Carl Reissman had first turned him. And not Christmas carols. And it further intrigued O'Hara, as he slammed the door and gunned the engine, how the late Carl Reissman was emerging as a minor player in this case, haunting it only a bit more distantly than Gary.
Driving home that evening, O'Hara stopped again in Bennington, presenting himself for the second time in as many weeks at the door of Rose Horvath.
Rose was entertaining. Several small, banged-up, compact cars, the type women drive, were banked in the snow on Rose's street. The epicenter of the cars was Rose's doorstep.
It was a cat show. Or a perverse variation on one.
Rose, her special friend Donna, and four very masculine female friends had all brought their kitties over for the evening. The ladies called it “Cats Night Out,” a distant cousin of human transvestism. Rose's dog Nixon had been dispatched to the kennel for the evening, and even the Nixon pictures on the mantel had been turned toward the wall.
There was a supply of doll clothing, to which all the girls had contributed. Rose and her guests took turns dressing up their cats in anything from little evening dresses for the female kitties to suits and ties and-in one case that didn't last too long-a top hat for one of the two neutered males. The fashion show was in progress when O'Hara arrived.
“I want to borrow something,” he explained in a whisper. “Don't let me disturb anyone.”
“Wouldn't dream of it, Franklin,” Rose answered, looking particularly butch in black jeans and a Franconia College sweatshirt. “And borrow anything you want except a kitty.”
O'Hara didn't want a kitty.
Instead he led Rose to her bookshelves. He stood before them. On the top were Women's Studies and on the bottom a selection on beekeeping. Rose, he recalled, put up dozens of pints of honey every autumn and used to sell them for a dollar a pint at work. That had lasted a couple of years until some prick from the state department of taxation sent her a summons alleging two hundred sixty dollars of undeclared income.
But then O'Hara knelt down and explored what he wanted: Rose's collection on the occult and supernatural.
“Seen a ghost, Franklin?” Rose asked, watching him.
“Maybe, Rose. Who knows?”
“Want to get in touch with someone who's departed?” she teased next.
“Maybe again, Rose,” he said, making three or four selections. “Who knows? I sure don't.”
“Is this a case you're working on?”
“Uh huh.” O'Hara read the titles on the spines of Rose's books, his head turned at an angle.
“Donna knows,” Rose said. O'Hara had five books on hauntings balanced on his right arm. He looked at his hostess. “What?” he asked.
“My roommie. My Donna,” Rose said. “Donna knows, that's who knows. She's a psychic. She can also be a medium.”
O'Hara blinked. Then his eyes shifted past Rose and found Donna in the next room, surrounded by cats dressed up for their evening meal. Donna looked up, making eye contact with O'Hara.
“Donna can get in touch with the dead for you, Franklin, if that's what you want. She's done it for me.”
As if on cue, Donna came over. Completing the lamb-and-wolf motif, Donna wore a dainty, little yellow party dress to complement Rose's sweatshirt and jeans.
“I contacted Rose's mother once,” Donna said. “She died in 1984. I'd be happy to try anyone you want. Just ask me.”
“Not now.”
“Franklin's a skeptic,” Rose teased. “Typical male mentality: won't accept anything he doesn't understand.”
“Give me a break, Rose,” O'Hara said.
“Just tryin
g to help. You got anything that belongs to your victim? Let Donna catch the karma. Does that cost you anything, Franklin? You said yourself that you're stumped on this case.”
“I want to do some background reading first,” O'Hara said, standing. “Then I’ll let you know what I need.”
“Any item,” said Donna sweetly.
O'Hara was about to dismiss the idea again. He turned to the young girl, prepared to answer with another polite refusal. His eyes settled into hers. Up close, she was very, very pretty. Dark eyes. A younger Dana Delany. Her smile implored him.
“Whatever you want,” Donna said.
On an impulse, he reached in his inside pocket. He found the evidence envelope that he had been carrying. Abigail Negri's gold necklace.
“Try it,” O'Hara urged.
Donna opened the envelope as Rose stood guard. The chain and turtle pendant slid into her hand. Donna made a production of letting it settle in her palm, then gently closing both hands around it.
