by Ross Thomas
The doorman’s gray-blue eyes widened, then narrowed, as if he suddenly remembered something-or wanted it to appear that way. “Hey, is that what you brought down from his apartment this afternoon in that Hefty bag you tossed into your Mercedes trunk-the fish?”
“We had a good laugh,” Vines said.
“You and the judge, huh?”
“Right. And now we’d like to play one back on whoever dumped the fish on him.”
The doorman took off his Ruritania guards cap with the shiny black visor, examined the fifty-dollar bill he still held in his right hand and tucked it behind the cap’s sweatband. But instead of putting the cap back on, he held it waist-high and upside down, as if waiting for alms. When none was dropped in, he said, “You know, I seem to remember somebody that had a key to the judge’s place.”
Vines sighed, reached into a pocket, brought out another fifty and dropped it into the cap.
“I’m trying to remember if it was a real big package or a real little one.”
Vines put another fifty in the cap.
“Or if it was a man or a woman.”
When Vines’s hand came out of his pocket this time, it held three fifty-dollar bills. “You just bumped the ceiling,” he said, dropping them into the cap.
The doorman immediately covered his head with the cap and its treasure of $300 in fifty-dollar bills. “A short guy,” he said. “With what looked like a sack full of groceries. He had a key to the judge’s place and said the sack had legal documents the judge wanted dropped off. Funny-looking guy. Short-like I said. Five-two and chunky fat. He was also mud-ugly and had this funny nose with one hole twice as big as the other. That nose was something you couldn’t help noticing because it sort of turned up and took aim at you. Well, anyway, he had a key and slipped me a twenty, so I told him to go on up.”
“You didn’t ask for some ID?”
“Well, shit, Kelly, you don’t ask a priest for ID.”
Chapter 22
Sid Fork finally found what he had been searching for in the larger bedroom of his measle-white two-bedroom house up on Don Domingo Drive. The bedroom contained what he regarded as the Fork Collection of American Artifacts. Some of them-his sixty-two pre-1941 Coca-Cola bottles, for example-were preserved inside glass-door cabinets. Less fragile treasures, such as his 131 varieties of barbed wire, were neatly displayed on fiberboard panels that took up a third of one wall.
Among the other displays was a nicely mounted collection of the ninety-four varieties of “I Like Ike” buttons that were handed out during the presidential campaigns of 1952 and 1956. The political buttons, carefully arranged by size, were next to a dramatic display of the last copies ever printed of Collier’s, Look, Liberty, Flair, the old Saturday Evening Post, the old Vanity Fair, McClure’s and a half dozen other extinct magazines.
Much of the stuff Fork had collected over the years had yet to be sorted and catalogued and was stored in splintery wooden crates and stained cardboard boxes that were stacked to the ceiling in one corner of the bedless bedroom. But Fork’s special pride was his collection of glass insulators that once had graced electric powerlines, both rural and urban, from Florida to Alaska. The green, purple, brown and gray spool-like insulators were lined up on two long high shelves and illuminated by track lighting. It was behind the insulators on the top shelf that Fork finally found the snapshot album.
He took it over to his eighty-one-year-old rolltop oak desk, switched on the fifty-two-year-old gooseneck lamp, dusted the album’s black leatherette cover with a woman’s lace handkerchief, whose provenance escaped him, and went through the album page by page until he came to a large color photograph-a jumbo print-of two young men and two young girls, one of the girls scarcely more than a child.
Fork stared at the photograph for seconds before he removed it from the album and rummaged through the junk mail on his desk for the X-acto knife. He used the knife and a ruler to cut out the head and shoulders of one of the young men in the snapshot. After another brief search, he located the bottle of rubber cement and carefully mounted the cut-out head and shoulders on a plain three-by-five-inch index card. From the right pocket of his old tweed jacket, Fork took nine other index cards and slipped the new one among them. After shuffling all ten cards, he dealt them out on the desk.
The cards displayed full-face color photographs of ten men whose ages ranged from twenty to forty. None of the men was handsome or even good-looking and a few were actually ugly. All stared straight at the camera. None was smiling.
Fork gathered up the ten cards, stuck them back into his jacket pocket and left the room, pausing only to admire a framed four-color magazine advertisement, at least fifty-five years old, that portrayed a pretty young woman in a big shiny roadster somewhere west of Laramie. The ad’s illustration was Sid Fork’s favorite folk art; its copy his most beloved poem.
The chief of police found the whiskey priest at 3:13 P.M. on that last Saturday in June. He found Father Frank Riggins sitting on a bench under a eucalyptus tree not far from the bandstand in Handshaw Park. The priest wore old blue jeans, some new Nike walking shoes without socks and a green T-shirt with a line of yellow type that proclaimed: “There Are No Small Miracles.”
“Thought you might be here,” Fork said as he sat down on the bench, took a small white paper sack from his jacket pocket and offered it to Riggins. “Joe Huff’s wife made it. Calls it her Vassar recipe.”
Father Riggins stared at the paper sack, shook his head sadly and said, “I shouldn’t.”
“Got pecans in it.”
“Don’t tempt me, Sid.”
“One piece won’t hurt.”
“Substitutions are a cop-out,” Riggins said as his right hand dived into the sack and came up with an inch-thick, two-inch square of pecan-studded fudge. He took a large bite, chewed slowly, smiled gloriously and said, “It hurts my teeth more than my conscience.”
“Take the sack,” Fork said, offering it to Riggins.
“Aren’t you having any?”
“Never much cared for fudge.”
The priest took the sack, peered inside to count the remaining pieces and looked up at Fork with a faint smile. “Now that you’ve compromised me, what d’you want to know-more about what I told Joe Huff and Wade Bryant this morning?”
Fork nodded.
“I didn’t get a good look at him.”
“Why not? You don’t wear glasses.”
“It was dark.”
“Felipe keeps that pet shop window pretty well lit and there’s a street-lamp right out in front of the Blue Eagle.”
“He was dressed like a priest-or the way we all used to dress.”
“Can’t swear he wasn’t one though, can you?”
“Of course I can’t. There’ve been all kinds of priests-crazy ones, rapists, embezzlers, thieves, deviates and, of course, drunks. Lots and lots of drunks. So why not a killer?”
“We both know he wasn’t any priest, Frank.”
Riggins sighed. “I suppose we do.”
“Could you recognize him again?”
“Probably.”
“What’d he look like?”
“I can only tell you what I told Joe and Wade this morning.”
“That’ll do fine.”
Riggins thought about what he was going to say, then nodded, as if reassuring himself, and said, “Well, he was short. That’s what you noticed first. No more than five-one, if that. And very heavy-you know, almost round. And he had those very stubby legs and gray hair cut short. Not just a crew cut, but as if somebody’d grabbed a pair of scissors and just whacked it off. I was too far away to see the color of his eyes, but he was no beauty.”
“Why?”
“Well, he had this strange nose that looked a little like a pig’s snout with its bottom all turned up so you could see his nostrils even from across the street.”
“I brought some pictures I’d like you to look at.”
“A rogues’ gallery?”
“Something like that,” Fork said, removed the ten index cards from his jacket pocket and handed them to Riggins, who went through them slowly, stopped at the seventh one and said, “Well…I don’t quite know.”
“Don’t quite know what?”
“He looks so much younger here.”
The chief of police took the index card from the priest and glanced at the face of the man he had cut out of the jumbo print with the X-acto knife.
“That’s because he was younger then,” Fork said, still looking at the photograph. “Twenty years younger.”
Seated in the chocolate-brown leather chair in her living room, B. D. Huckins put down the glass of wine so she could go through the ten index cards Sid Fork had handed her.
“How am I supposed to know which one Frank Riggins picked?” she said.
“You’ll know,” Fork said, drank some of his beer and watched as the mayor glanced at seven of the index cards without expression. She stopped at the eighth, narrowed her eyes and clamped her lips into the thin grim line that helped form her pothole complaint look. Her expression remained grim when she looked up from the photograph and said, “It can’t be.”
“You know better’n that, B. D.”
She tapped the man’s face on the index card with a forefinger. “Where’d you get a picture of Teddy?”
“Remember the day we all moved into that shack he’d rented out on Boatright?”
The mayor nodded reluctantly, as if she found the memory disturbing.
“And the landlord, old man Nevers, came by to see if he could bum a drink and Teddy lined all four of us up-you, me, him and Dixie-and made Nevers take our picture with your Instamatic before he’d give him a drink?”
“I don’t remember any of that,” she said.
“Well, I do. And I also remember getting jumbo prints made of that roll and pasting them in my album.”
“I don’t understand why.”
“Why what?”
“Why you’d even think of Teddy or show his picture to Frank Riggins.” She grimaced, as if at some bad taste. “Teddy. Jesus.”
“What’d I use to call him?”
“Teddy? Snout.”
“And if I didn’t call him Snout, I called him Porky. So this morning, those two ace homicide detectives of mine came up with an eyewitness-Father Frank-who claimed he saw some real short guy of around forty who looked like Porky Pig go into the Blue Eagle and come out just about the time poor old Norm got shot. So I started thinking about whether I knew any short mean guys with piggy noses who might go around shooting people for money or just for the hell of it and I came up with Teddy. I mean, he just popped into my mind.”
“After twenty years?” she said.
“Teddy sort of sticks in the mind-even after twenty years.”
The mayor closed her eyes and leaned back in the leather easy chair. “We should’ve drowned him.” When she spoke again several seconds later her eyes were still closed and her voice sounded weary. “Was Teddy dressed up like a priest?”
“I just told you that.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Fork replayed the last few minutes of conversation in his mind. “You’re right. I didn’t. So who did?”
“Kelly Vines-indirectly.”
“When?”
“Today. Out at Cousin Mary’s.”
“Let’s hear it,” Fork said. “All of it.”
Huckins’s account of the lunch was condensed yet comprehensive and included Kelly Vines’s recollection of his conversation with the doorman who was reluctant to ask a priest for identification. When she had finished, Sid Fork’s first question was, “What’d you all have for lunch?”
“Trout,” Huckins said and quickly recited the rest of the menu, knowing Fork would ask if she didn’t.
“How was it-the trout?”
“Very good.”
“Who paid?”
“Vines, I think.”
“Tell me again what Vines said the doorman said about the short guy in the priest suit.”
“You mean what he looked like?”
Fork nodded impatiently.
“Let me think.” Huckins closed her eyes again, kept them closed for at least ten seconds, opened them and said, “The doorman told Vines the priest was short and mud-ugly and had one nostril twice as big as the other one. He said the nose turned up and aimed what he called the two holes right at you.”
“And that didn’t make you think of Teddy right off?”
“No.”
The nod that Fork had intended to be sympathetic was betrayed by its condescension. “Well, you’re not a cop.”
“But since you are, tell me this. What’ll the cops do about Teddy?”
“Whatever’s within the law.”
“And Sid Fork? What’ll he do?”
“Whatever’s necessary.”
Chapter 23
The fifty-one-year-old Durango detective, who had once worked bunco and fraud in Dallas, looked up from his copy of People magazine when the tall elderly white-haired man with the neat tar-black mustache strode into the lobby of the Holiday Inn and headed for the shallow alcove where the house phones were.
Marking his place in People by turning down a page corner, Ivy Settles placed the magazine on the table next to the couch and rose, not taking his eyes off the man who stood, pine-tree straight, the phone to his ear, waiting for his call to be answered.
Settles studied the man’s muted brown plaid jacket, deciding it was a silk and wool blend that had cost at least $650-maybe even $700. The deeply pleated fawn gabardine slacks, he guessed, would go for $400, even $425. And those two-tone brown and white lace-up shoes with the moccasin toes-a style Settles hadn’t seen in twenty years-were probably handmade and cost as much as the jacket. Including socks, shirt and underwear, Settles figured the man was wearing close to a couple of thousand dollars on his back and feet.
The detective stuck his hands down into the slash pockets of the Taiwanese-made windbreaker he had paid $16.83 for, including tax, at Figgs’ department store and crossed the lobby on feet shod in penny loafers from Lands’ End. The rest of him was clad in chinos by Sears, a white short-sleeved shirt by Arrow and underwear by Fruit of the Loom. Settles liked cheap clothes and guessed that everything he wore, including his white drugstore socks, hadn’t cost as much as the black lizard strap that bound the thin gold watch to the white-haired man’s left wrist.
With his hands still stuck down into the windbreaker’s pockets, Settles stopped just behind the man, as if the pair of them were forming a line. The man was now talking into a house phone in a crisp and pleasant voice that sounded far too young for his age. Settles thought of it as the man’s up-North voice and remembered how easily it could slide into soft southern tones that sounded remarkably like Charleston.
“Yes, in the lobby,” the man said into the phone. “I thought I might pop up for a minute or two with something that should interest you.”
Finally sensing someone behind him, the man turned to face Settles, who stood, hands still inside the slash pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels. The man frowned and pointed to the other house phones. Settles smiled slightly, shaking his head.
The man turned his back on the detective and again spoke into the phone. “Let’s make that five minutes instead of right away. I have another call to make.”
The man hung up, turned to face Settles again and said, “You queer for this particular phone, friend?”
“It’s been a while, Soldier,” Settles said.
The man frowned again, this time trying to look puzzled. He might have succeeded were it not for the glittering green eyes that could never quite conceal their slyness. “Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” he said in the nicely chilled up-North voice.
“Dallas,” Ivy Settles said. “February of ’seventy-three. I took you down and put you on the Greyhound to Houston after the stockbroker’s widow refused to press charges.”
“My fiancée,” the ma
n said. “Edwina Wickersham.”
“Who you gave the money back to.”
“Repaid the loan, you mean.” The white-haired man studied Settles carefully, taking his time, starting with the penny loafers and working his way up to the round face, where a delicate nose and a hesitant chin clashed with a pair of know-it-all gray eyes and a thin wiseacre mouth.
“You got fat, Ivy,” the man said. “And you appear to have fallen on hard times-although with you it’s always been kind of hard to tell. What are you now-a Holiday Inn house dick?”
“Who was the call to, Soldier?” Settles asked.
“That’s really none of your fucking business, is it?”
Settles nodded, as if in agreement, picked up one of the house phones and tapped three numbers. When the call was answered he said, “This is Settles down in the lobby. You just get a call from Soldier Sloan?” He listened, glanced back at Sloan and said, “No, no trouble. Just checking. I’ll send him on up.”
After Settles hung up, Soldier Sloan smiled a warm, almost cozy smile and asked, “How d’you like working for Sid Fork, Ivy?”
“It’s nice and quiet and that’s how Sid and I like it.”
Sloan looked around the almost empty lobby. “Graves aren’t this quiet.”
“Well, we got the Fourth of July parade coming up next week.”
“Doubtless a day of revelry and madness.”
“I’ll see you to the elevator, Soldier. Make sure you punch the right button and all.”
As they waited for an elevator, Settles said, “Hear you promoted yourself to brigadier general.”
“And high time, too, don’t you think?”
Settles smiled and nodded happily, not in response to Sloan’s question, but as if he had just arrived at some welcome conclusion. “I sure like that new mustache, Soldier. Reminds me of the one Cesar Romero used to wear before his went white. Now there was a mustache-not like those floppy cookie-dusters Selleck and all the Highway Patrol kids wear nowadays. I bet yours grew in coal-black. Bet you don’t even have to dye it. All that white hair. Black eyebrows. Matching mustache. I’ve gotta say it sure makes you distinguished-looking, Soldier, and how long do I tell Sid you’re gonna be with us this time?”
