Dream of The Broken Horses, The Page 14

  The waiter takes our order. After he moves away, Mace lowers his voice.

  "Jürgen's the reason I brought you here. I always thought he was the key. He was close to Jack Cody, a lot closer than people knew. Cody left him some stuff in his will including his watch, an expensive gold jobbie — I saw it on his wrist when we came in. Twenty-five years and he's still wearing the damn thing."

  "Isn't he the one supposedly killed a man in Mexico?"

  "I think Cody started that rumor. Still I don't doubt Jürgen could've done it. Those Foreign Legion guys played rough. There's something grave about him, isn't there? Something in his eyes like he's seen stuff he doesn't want to talk about. He's a bachelor. Never had a live-in girlfriend far as I know. Dates classy black call girls. Interesting they're always black."

  "You seem to know a lot about him. What makes you think he's the key?"

  "If Cody ordered the killings, Jürgen knows. Maybe even carried them out."

  "If I recall, he had an alibi."

  "A call girl, Winnie something. She was probably lying. Actually I don't think Jürgen did it. But he could have. I wonder sometimes. With Cody dead and so many years gone by, I can't think why else he won't tell me what he knows?"

  "You've asked him?"

  "I ask him regularly. I'll ask him again tonight before we leave. He always gets a little nervous when I come in because he knows I'm going to ask. It's this game we play. I ask, he smiles and shrugs. What he wants is for me to think he doesn't know anything but that it amuses him to string me along."

  Now, studying Mace, I start seeing him in a different light.

  "I know what you're thinking," he says. "‘Hey Mace, get a life!’"

  "You do seem a little obsessed."

  "I am. I've had other cases that didn’t get solved, but this is the only one that still haunts me late at night."

  He eats several forkfuls of chicken, wipes his mouth.

  "There was this girl back in high school, Stephanie Beer. Great-looking kid, enigmatic, you never knew what she was thinking. I had a crush on her, but every time I asked her out, she'd smile mysteriously and shake her head. I've known a lot of girls since, married a couple too, but the only one I still think about it her... and to this day I don't know what she was about." He takes a sip of wine. "It's the same with Flamingo. It's the only case that still drives me nuts."

  Well, I think, we all have our ruling passions. But what I'm learning tonight is that though Mace and I share an obsession, we do so for entirely different reasons.

  "It'd probably be easy for you now to track her down."

  He chuckles softly. "Sure... and find a bloated-up cow with a hair salon called STEF'S. Tell you, David, far as Stephanie's concerned, it's better for me not to know. I get too much pleasure savoring my regret. That's what's different about Flamingo. I want to keep open the possibility of Stephanie, but I want closure on Flamingo, because the way that stirs me isn't fun. It's like an ache in a back tooth."

  We discuss the case through dinner. When I mention how struck I was by Susan Pettibone's account of Tom Jessup's agitation ten days before he was killed, Mace shrugs that off as just the telephone impression of a tangential witness.

  Over dessert, Mace asks if I brought along the whip picture. I pull it out of my sketchpack, hand it to him. He adjusts his granny glasses and studies it.

  "Yeah, it's her all right. Great tits." He shakes his head. "Amazing! Though I don't know why I think that... or what it really means." He looks at me. "Okay if I show this to Jürgen?"

  "Go ahead."

  Mace turns the picture face down on the envelope, summons the waiter, asks him to send Jürgen over.

  A couple minutes later, Jürgen appears. Mace invites him to sit down.

  "Just for a minute." Jürgen sits. "Busy night. Lots of clients requiring attention."

  Mace introduces me without mentioning my connection to law enforcement. "David's come up with an interesting artifact. I'd like to get you take."

  He pushes the picture, still face-down, toward Jürgen. Jürgen smiles slight, then turns it over. Mace and I watch him as he studies it. If Jürgen feels anything, he doesn't show it."

  "Very artistic," he says finally. "Looks like Max Rakoubian's work."

  "You knew Max?" I ask.

  Jürgen nods. "Max was one of the best." He turns to Mace. "Brings back lots of memories."

  "Of Barbara Fulraine?"

  "Of Mrs. Fulraine, Jack Cody, The Elms, people and places from another time." He glances at the photo again, smiles solemnly, and pushes it back toward Mace. "We're all getting older, Inspector. The years pass... and, well... perhaps some things are best left behind."

  He smiles again, offers his hand. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Weiss." He stands. "Gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed your dinner. And please, Inspector, don't be a stranger here. We treasure our loyal clients."

  * * * * *

  We're on the interstate heading downtown.

  "Damn!" Mace slaps the steering wheel. "I played a good card and still he trumped me. I'll say this for Jürgen, he's quick on his feet."

  Mace is frustrated. He didn't even get a chance to ask Jürgen the usual question — whether Cody ordered the Flamingo killings. When I tell him I think it's interesting Jürgen knew Rakoubian, Mace says Maître d's know thousands of people, that's what the job's about.

  He turns to me when we reach the Townsend. "You in a rush?"

  I shake my head.

  "Let me show you where Barbara Fulraine was brought up. I think you'll find it interesting."

  He turns west on Proctor. "Everyone thought she was well-born. In fact, she had a plain background, certainly to Old Money. Her father deserted early. Her mother brought her up alone."

  Soon, I realize, we're going to pass the medical building where Dad kept his office, a block that so far I've carefully avoided on my various jaunts around town.

  "Barbara's mom's name was Doris Lyman," Mace continues. "Doris made her living as a gambler. A good enough living to give her only child the best of everything — nice clothes, private schools, tennis and riding lessons, fancy summer camps, Vassar College. Doris was a regular at Woodmere Downs. She liked to play the ponies. She also played cards like a demon — poker, bridge, gin, you name it. She had a fantastic memory and a computer-type mind, so she could remember long runs and rapidly calculate odds."

  He pulls up in front of a gray concrete apartment building in the Danvers-Torrington area, one of many in town constructed in the 1920s. This one has the name FAIRVIEW APARTMENTS cut into the stone above the door. Above that there's a molded escutcheon, an empty shield crossed by two long swords.

  "Neighborhood's the same," Mace says. "Ordinary, middle class, lots of elderly. In these buildings there's always an old crab who complains about the kids, and a faint smell of cabbage and cat piss in the halls."

  I gaze at the building, trying to imagine Barbara's childhood. What must it have been like for her to depart this place every morning for Ashley-Burnett, sister school to Hayes, where the girls all came from big houses in Delamere, Van Buren Heights, and Maple Hills? Her only choice would have been to outdo them, be smarter, prettier, more athletic, and display such savoir-faire that her classmates, rather than looking down on her, would vie for her favor.

  "Barbara's mom knew everybody out at the track," Mace says. "All the owners, trainers, jocks. Early on, she had Barbara up on horses. The kid was a natural. Started winning trophies when she was six. When we went into her house after she was killed, we found a room full of them, hundreds of blue ribbons and silver cups. It was her horsemanship that got her into society. It was at a Maple Hills Hunt Club Christmas dance where she met Fulraine. She was back on holiday from her junior year at Vassar. He was home from his senior year at Yale. He fell for her right away, but she didn't make it easy for him. There were lots of young men interested in Barbara Lyman. Took three years of courtship before she agreed to get engaged."

  So it was by her excellent ho
rseback riding that she won her station in life — wealth, social position, her magnificent house. By her charm too, no doubt, also her beauty, her intelligence, ambition, and, of course, her smoldering sexuality. Then tragedy! Her infant daughter was abducted. It's from that point, the point of the abduction, that her life started turning strange.

  "I met Doris Lyman at the funeral," Mace tells me.

  We're heading back up Gale now, passing antique shops, galleries, trendy bars.

  "She'd moved down to Florida. Barbara had bought her a little place in Coral Gables. She still looked pretty good. Had a few facelifts, no doubt. She told me she still played the ponies, got herself over to Hialeah two, three times a week. I gave her my typical homicide investigator's speech about how we weren't going to rest until we found her daughter's killer. Then she said, ‘I had a feeling it would end for Barb like this.’ I was so surprised I forgot to ask her what she meant. When I called her a couple days later, she played hard-ass, said she didn't remember saying that, I must've misheard or misunderstood."

  Mace turns to me. "But I hadn't. No mistake. I'd heard her perfectly. I can even remember the expression on her face."

  * * * * *

  I stop at Waldo's, find the usual crowd of journalists and network people. No sign of Pam. I'm about to leave when I notice Tony standing in his usual meditative position behind the bar.

  "How's it going, Tony?"

  "Same as usual," he says.

  I take a stool across from him. "You've been around, Tony. You know this town pretty well."

  "Well as any barman, I'd say."

  "Over the years ever hear of a guy named Max Rakoubian?"

  Tony grins. "Sure, I remember Max. Been a while. He kicked the bucket a few years back."

  "What'd you know about him?"

  Tony strokes his chin. "Max was kinda slimy as I recall. Took pictures, some of ‘em nice, some not — now what I mean?"

  "He did porn?"

  "Not porn exactly. More like bust-in stuff."

  "‘Bust-in’?"

  "You know, say a gentleman's looking to divorce, he doesn't want to get taken to the cleaners, so he needs proof his spouse is shacking up. Pictures make good proof. To get pictures he needs a bust-in guy, guy who'll bust in on the spouse and lover, take a few shots. That's bust-in stuff."

  "Max did that?"

  "His specialty. This'll probably surprise you — he and Mr. C. were fairly tight. I think they had some deals going. Max'd tip Mr. C off on stuff. There was also talk Max did bust-ins freelance, busted in on folks without being hired to. Then he'd try to sell the pictures back. Those were the rumors anyway."

  "Blackmail photographs?"

  "You could call them that."

  "Jesus!"

  "Don't think badly of him, Mr. Weiss. Max was a gent. Knew how to talk to the ladies. Could sweet-talk ‘em into taking off their clothes, not for any reason but to let him record their God-given beauty — or so he used to put it."

  "Doesn't sound like much of a gent to me, Tony."

  "Well, each to his own I always say."

  * * * * *

  But in guy, bust-in stuff — seems to me that's exactly what the shooter did at the Flamingo Court, burst in on Barbara and Tom, not with a camera but with a gun. I'm thinking about that, working myself toward sleep, when I hear knocking at my door. I open up to find Pam looking sexy, swaying in the doorway.

  "Hi, loverboy!" she purrs in her sexiest voice. "Mind if I come in?"

  * * * * *

  This morning, after Pam goes up to the gym for her workout, I phone Kate Evans, ask if she's made a decision.

  "I've given it a lot of thought," she says. "I don't know if I can help, but I'm willing to try."

  Great!

  We agree to meet at the Flamingo at 2:00 p.m.. She'll leave her kids at her mother's for the afternoon. I'm to come directly to her suite above the office.

  "I'm a little nervous about this," she tells me, "but I guess it's something that's gotta be done."

  * * * * *

  For me, an ID interview is an exploration into another person's mind. I don't do so-called cognitive interviews or employ standard forensic techniques. I also don't put such techniques down. They work well for most forensic artists. However, I'm interested in probing deep, plumbing the unconscious of my informants. In this respect, I'm following in the footsteps of my dad. As I often remind myself, plumbing the unconscious is the family trade.

  At exactly two o'clock, sketchbook in hand, I climb an exterior staircase on the Dawson side of the Flamingo, then follow a narrow walkway to the owner's apartment. One side of this walkway is demarcated by the back of the large neon Flamingo image that proclaims the name of the motel to passing cars.

  It's another hot, humid Calista summer afternoon. Standing before Kate Evans's door, I feel my shirt sticking to my back. I knock, then hear footsteps. The door opens and Kate peers at me out of the gloom. She's wearing sandals, tight shorts, and a skinny, ribbed tanktop. The blinds in the room have been pulled.

  Her eyes seem to glow in her face. They're large eyes alive with curiosity, perhaps some trepidation, too. I've been made uneasy by her scrutiny before — on my first visit to room 201 and two days ago when we spoke. I like the fact that she makes strong eye contact; that's usually a lifelong trait. If her vision was as direct when she was a girl, she may have seen the shooter clearly.

  She invites me in, offers me a beer. I opt for a Coke. While she fetches it, I check out her living room: basic furniture with tough fabric upholstery, the kind of indestructible stuff one expects to find in a residence inhabited by a couple of rowdy kids. The carpeting's wall-to-wall, the pictures are conventional. The only striking characteristic, the single feature that differentiates the room from American Motel, are the shelves crammed with paperback editions of self-help books — books about how to get along, make money, build self-esteem, find success, analyze your own dreams, become your own best friend. Books too about wicca, tarot, astrology, and the occult.

  This tells me that she's a troubled soul in search of easy remedies. It will be my task not to let her stray into the mystical, keep her in the here and now.

  "I see you're a New Ager," I tell her, gesturing toward the books.

  "Can't seem to get enough of that stuff."

  "Are you a witch, Kate?"

  "Not quite." She lights a cigarette, perches on her couch, then draws her tanned legs beneath her like a swami. "I'm an aspirant goddess. Not so easy with two boys roughhousing all the time."

  She's a single mother. Her sons' father lived with them for a while, left when things didn't work out. "And I think now we're the better for it," she says.

  To relax her, I ask about her boys, where they go to school, what their interests are. Then I ask her what's it like being owner-manager of a motel, the joys, pains, special problems of the job. We chat about the old amusement park, the rides and games, especially the Fun House, how weird and spooky it was. We talk about Calista, the changes that've taken place, the new Natural History Museum, and how the old stuff, like Lindstrom's magical twin towers, still look good as ever. As we gab, I realize we're fairly close in age — she was seven the summer of the killings; I was twelve.

  I tell her about my work, my ID sketches of the Zigzag Killer, the Kansas City kidnapper, and the serial murderer dubbed the Saturn Killer because he drew wide concentric rings around the bodies of his victims. In each case, I emphasize that I worked with my witnesses. Rather than taking personal credit for my portraits, I make it clear I regard them as collaborations. In each case, I give her a little background so she'll understand that the amount of time between a sighting and production of a sketch varies greatly and needn't be an issue.

  "In your case," I tell her, "the fact that you were seven at the time probably works in your favor. Often kids engrave their early memories, especially when they're traumatic. Also the fact that afterwards you saw his face in dreams tells me it registered pretty well."

&n
bsp; "I don't know," she says, squashing out her cigarette. "I tried to draw him myself last night. Didn't get too far."

  Damn! I should have told her not to try that. Now it's too late. I'll have to play along.

  "Still have the sketches?"

  She nods, uncurls herself from the couch, retreats to another room, returns with a child's sketchpad. I move to the couch, sit beside her so we can look at what she drew together.

  She shows me a pair of drawings on facing pages. Soon as I see them, I start feeling better: Her sketches are rudimentary egg-shaped outlines of a man's head with the features schematically portrayed in a childlike hand.

  "As you can see, I'm no artist."

  "You don't have to be," I assure her. "That's my job."

  I suggest we use her sketches as a base from which we'll develop more refined portraits as we go along.

  "First," I tell her, "I want you to set the scene. Close your eyes, imagine yourself back then, recall what you were doing before you heard the shots."

  She starts by describing the heat. "It was like today...," she says.

  A hot, humid summer afternoon, the kind of sweaty, buggy afternoon typical of a Calista August.

  The noises around were also typical: the hurdy-gurdy sounds of Tremont Park drifting from across the road; the high pitch of kids whooping it up out on the sidewalk in front.

  She spent a lot of afternoons that summer playing in the pool, splashing around, meeting kids whose parents were motel guests, forging new friendships that would flourish over a couple of hours then dissolve the following morning when the visiting family checked out and drove away.

  Even back then Johnny Powell manned the desk weekday afternoons. He was in his cubicle watching a ball game just like he probably is today. She could hear the sounds of the game, the commentary of the announcers, the roar of the crowd when there was a hit. She was also conscious that her father was around, probably doing maintenance and repairs, and that every so often her mother appeared in the window of the owner apartment to check up on her, make sure she was all right.