The Man Who Lived by Night (17 page)

I was there. It wasn’t squalor. But it didn’t swing, either.

Jay Weintraub released a brief statement to the press on Tristam Scarr’s behalf: “Tulip was the only woman I have ever loved. She was the mother of my only child. Although we spent our lives apart in recent years, our feelings for each other never changed. I will always love her, and miss her terribly.”

It was the only comment on her murder that T. S. made, and he didn’t make it. He was in no shape to do so. Her death had so severely jolted him that a doctor was keeping him sedated.

The statement came from me. All a part of the service. Just don’t ask me to do thank-you notes or windows. I get a little crabby.

Our editor phoned from New York to make sure I was on top of this sizzling new development. I assured him I was, right down to the bloodstains all over my trenchcoat.
Rolling Stone,
he disclosed, would pay dearly for my exclusive first-person account. It would, he suggested, give the book “monster topspin.” I said it was a great idea. I lied. I had no intention of exploiting Tulip’s death. But editors feel better about themselves and you if they think you agree with their suggestions. Especially editors who use words like “topspin.”

By all the press accounts, Tulip had walked in on a burglary taking place in her flat, and had gotten killed for it. Whatever she owned of value had been taken. The ransacking of the drugs in her medicine chest suggested that her murderer was an addict.

The police, however, had a problem with this theory. I learned about it from Farley Root, that same apologetic buck-toothed, redheaded investigator in that same nile green suit. He made the trip out to Gadpole two mornings later, joined by a strapping uniformed officer who didn’t speak. The three of us sat around the kitchen table. Pamela put on tea.

“Nice to see you again, Inspector,” I said.

“It’s kind of you to say so, Mr. Hoag.”

“Hoagy,” I said.

“Hoagy. Right. And while we’re at it, I’m not actually an—”

“Your neck looks much better. Try that talc?”

Root reddened, glanced self-consciously over at the uniformed officer, who was working hard at not smirking. “I did,” he replied. “Floris number eighty-nine. Very soothing, as you suggested. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

Pamela served us our tea as well as some hot scones. Then she returned to the laundry room, where she was in the process of removing the bloodstains from my trench coat. Don’t ask me how. I never press the masters for their secrets.

“Turn up any of those bullets yet?” I asked Root.

He bit into a scone, driving his long front teeth into it like a gopher. “No sir, we haven’t,” he replied, gnawing. “But that brings me to my business—Miss Tulip’s murder. It does seem rather straightforward on
the
surface. She returns home, discovers someone there in the act, and there we have it. Unfortunate timing. Break-ins are rather common in that district. Several have taken place in recent weeks, though none with so grievous an outcome.”

I sipped my tea and waited him out.

“I can find only one flaw in this reasoning,” Root said.

“Which is … ?”

“You, sir.”

“Me?”

“Yessir. I don’t wish to jump to erroneous conclusions, but this is the second bit of ugly business you’ve been party to in the past several days. I was inclined to classify the first incident as random street violence, and you as the victim of a bit of bad luck. But I’m afraid with this second incident … Well, you can see my point, can’t you?”

I tugged at my ear. “Yes, I believe I can.”

“Glad to hear that,” Root said, pleased. “Now then, Hoagy can you account for how you’ve found yourself at the scene of two violent attacks recently?”

“No, I can’t.”

Root stared at me, visibly disappointed by my answer. “I see,” he said at last. “You told the officers at the murder scene you had an appointment with Miss Tulip. What exactly was your business?”

“As I told you before, I’m helping Tris Scarr do his memoirs.”

Root asked me for the name of the publisher. I gave him topspin’s name. Then he told me to continue.

“Tulip played a big part in his life,” I said. “I’d met with her in reference to that. And I was supposed to meet with her again.”

“How did she seem to you?”

“Seem?”

“Her state of mind.”

“About as messed up as the rest of us. Maybe a little more.”

Root nodded. “Any idea what sort of people she knew?”

“Not really. She did tell me she was involved with her church.”

Root glanced through his notepad. “Yes. Fellow who operates it, called Father Bob, used to deal drugs. Been to jail for it, actually. There’s also some question as to the validity of his divinity school training.”

“Think he might be involved in it somehow?”

“No, I think you are, Hoagy,” Root said evenly.

He watched me for a reaction from across the table, bony, freckled hands folded in front of him, eyes impassive. Bashful he wasn’t, not when he felt he was being shut out.

I cleared my throat. “I appreciate your candor, Inspector.”

“I place great stock in candor. And I’m
not
actually an—“

“And I do understand how you feel. I wish I had an explanation for what’s been happening to me. Around me. But I don’t. I’m sorry.”

“As am I.”

“I will make a deal with you, though.”

Root glanced over at his uniformed colleague, then back at me. “A deal?”

“Yes. If I do come up with something, I’ll share it with you—if you’ll share something with me now.”

“I don’t make deals such as those, sir,” Root said firmly.

“Too bad.”

He swallowed, craned his neck. “Share what with you?”

“Have you inventoried the contents of Tulip’s apartment?”

Root turned to the other officer, who nodded.

“Could I get a copy of the inventory?” I asked.

Root frowned. “For what reason?”

“Let’s put it this way—I need it.”

He thought it over carefully. “Very well. You shall have it,” he said, draining his tea.

Pamela appeared instantly from the laundry room. “More tea, Inspector?”

“No thank you, madam,” he replied. “And I’m
not
an—”

“Another scone, perhaps?” she said.

“Thank you. No. But I would appreciate a word with Mr. Scarr, if that’s possible.”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid it isn’t. Mr. Scarr wasn’t strong to begin with, and the loss of Tulip has quite simply devastated him. The doctor insisted he not be disturbed.”

“Of course. Terribly sorry. Didn’t mean to seem insensitive.” Root lurched to his feet. “We’ll be going then.”

I showed them out, past the guards on the front door, and the surveillance cameras and the floodlights.

“Certainly believes in security, doesn’t he?” observed Root, as he climbed into his unmarked Austin Metro.

“He believes in feeling safe,” I said. “Can’t say I blame him.”

Root rolled down his window, stuck his head out, “One more question, Hoagy.”

“Yes?”

“What is a cheese steak?”

“A hero sandwich—thin strips of steak topped with sautéed onions, mushrooms, and melted cheese.”

“Good Lord, sounds wonderful.”

“If you want a good one you have to go to Philadelphia. The Liberty Bell is there. It’s not the worst place there is.”

“Can’t say I’ll be getting to Philadelphia soon.”

“Neither will W. C. Fields.”

Tris looked different to me. Partly it was his hair. Pamela, that woman of many talents, had trimmed it for him. But mostly, I realized, I’d Just never seen him in the daylight before. He looked even more cadaverous and ghoulish than he did in his dimly lit royal chamber. Flesh-toned he was not.

He and I rode together in the back seat of the Silver Cloud to Tulip’s funeral, which was at her church in London. He wore a chalk-striped navy blue suit, white shirt, dark striped tie, ankle boots, and the look of a lost, bewildered little boy. Jack and Violet were up front, Jack behind the wheel with his jaw set grimly. Violet had on a black dress. Her luxuriant black hair was tied tightly back, and she was sniffling. For the first time since I’d met her, she looked her age.

Four bodyguards rode in the car ahead of us.

“I intended to thank you, Hogarth,” Tris said softly.

“For what?”

“The statement you wrote. It was very sensitive. I couldn’t have said it so well myself.”

“Sure you could have. You just needed a little time to recover.”

He dragged deeply on a Gauloise, let the smoke out of his famous flaring nostrils. “Thank you. I mean it.”

“Forget it. We ear-wigglers have to stick together.”

“That we do.” He gazed out the window. “It’s true, Hogarth.”

“What’s true?”

“What Derek said—I have no mates. Not true ones. Not anymore. I-I don’t make ’em easily, and when I do, I make ’em for life. I make ’em for forever … It’s not as if she’s gone. Or Rory’s gone. They’re in here.” He tapped his head with his finger. “They’re still in here.”

“I understand.”

“Do you, mate?”

“Sure. I’m the same way.”

He smiled at me. I smiled back. Inwardly, I sighed. It was happening—he and I were getting emotionally involved. It was only natural. I’d gotten him to open up, share his secrets, his dreams, his hurts with me. That didn’t happen without feelings happening, too. From both directions. I didn’t know to do it any other way. How did the lunch-pail ghosts do it? I wondered. No, I didn’t. I didn’t ever want to know that.

Tris punched the leather seat between us hard with his fist. “Damn them!”

“Damn who?”

“The fates. I mean, why Tulip? Why
her
?”

I glanced over at him. Quietly I said, “It wasn’t the fates, Tristam.”

He narrowed his pouched eyes at me. Then he reached for a button on the door panel next to him, and said, “Excuse us for a moment, people.” The glass divider to the front seat slid shut. Jack and Violet couldn’t hear us now. “What are you talking about, Hogarth? What is this?”

“It’s trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“That break-in wasn’t what it appeared to be. The use of the pry bar, the theft of the valuables, the ransacking of the medicine chest—all that was just done to cover up what really happened.”

“Which was?”

“Which was that somebody Tulip knew dropped by to visit her, and kill her, and take something. Something that was very valuable to them, but not to anybody else.”

“Such as what?”

“Her photo album. I saw the police inventory of the apartment contents this morning. No photo album. It’s gone.”

He put out his cigarette and lit another. “Right … Pammy said you’d phoned, and were planning to go see this album of Tu’s.” He scratched his head. “Can’t seem to recall anything about it though.”

“She took pictures.”

He let out a short laugh. “That I recall. Always in m’face with her bleedin’ Nikon camera, she was.”

“And she kept them. Pictures of you guys on tour, on stage, at home. Pictures of London, pictures of Paris, New York, L.A., everywhere.”

An odd look flickered across his face, like he’d just taken a pan of ice water down his pants. It was gone in an instant.

“There must have been a photo in the album that I couldn’t be allowed to see,” I went on. “A photo that would have told me who killed Puppy, and who shot at me. But it’s gone now, and so is she. She must have been able to tie it all together. That’s why she had to die. Now we’ll never—” I stopped myself short. “Unless …”

“Unless what, Hogarth?”

“Nothing. Just a thought.”

“You’ve told the police all of this?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Why not? It seems to me they—”

“It’s part of the past. Your past. That’s not their area. It’s mine.”

He grinned at me crookedly. “And you’re still bleedin’ mad about your dog getting shot.”

“And I’m still bleedin’ mad about my dog getting shot.”

At least she used to be my dog. I wasn’t so sure anymore. I was still waiting to hear from Merilee. And trying not to think about her and Zack.

Tris put his hand on my arm. “Who is it, Hogarth? Who’s doing these things?”

“I don’t know yet.”

I had ideas though. Plenty. I’d asked Pamela if she’d told anybody besides Tris that I’d be checking out Tulip’s album. She had. She’d told Jack—the very same Jack who, once again, was away from Gadpole running errands when a certain violent shooting incident was taking place. There was no question that Jack looked mighty fine for it. After all, he had the biggest personal ax to grind against Puppy. He had shown the most resistance to talking about the past with me. He was good with a shotgun. And there was his relationship with Violet to consider. Maybe she was somehow involved in it with him. She did like to shoot. And to steal. Yeah, Jack looked mighty fine. But he wasn’t the only one. The others could have known I was going to look at Tulip’s album. Tulip could have mentioned it to them herself. Told Derek. Told Marco. It could have been one of them. It could have been any of them.

Yeah, I had ideas. Too many.

The Church of Life was housed in a shabby storefront down the street from Tulip’s flat. Boisterous reporters, photographers, and TV cameramen were crowded onto the sidewalk and into the street out front, waiting anxiously for this rare public glimpse of the great T. S. He put on a pair of cool-cat wraparound shades when we pulled up. Then he tensed and took a deep breath. Jack jumped out first and opened his door for him.

They barraged him with questions the instant we stepped out of the Rolls. T. S. answered none of them. He had already made his one statement. His phalanx of guards somehow cleared a path through the crowd and we headed inside, T. S. with his arm protectively around Violet, who was about six inches taller than he in her heels.

Inside, the Church of Life looked a lot like a Bowery soup kitchen. There were long, scarred tables with benches on either side, a coffee urn, a bulletin board, the pungent smell of commercial disinfectant. Derek Gregg and Marco Bartucci, the human teapot, sat across from each other at one of the tables. No one else had come to see the Mod Bod off. Her parents were dead. The press were kept out.