The Poet (22 page)

But I found no match of the last words attributed to Beltran, the Sarasota detective, with any poem that Edgar Allan Poe had written. I began to wonder if through my fatigue I had simply missed it but knew that I had read too carefully, despite the lateness of the hour. There simply wasn’t a match. “Lord help my poor soul.” That was the line. I now thought that it had been the last true prayer of a suicidal man. I scratched Beltran from the list, thinking that his words of misery were truly his.

I studied my notes while fending off sleep and decided that the McCafferty case of Baltimore and the Brooks case of Chicago were too similar to be ignored. I knew then what I would do in the morning. I would go to Baltimore to find out more.

That night my dream came back. The only recurring nightmare of my entire life. As always, I dreamed I was walking across a vast frozen lake, the ice blue-black beneath my feet. In all directions I was equal distances from nowhere, all horizons were a blinding, burning white. I put my head down and walked. I hesitated when I heard a girl’s voice, a call for help. I looked around but she was not there. I turned and headed on. A step. Two. Then the hand came up through the ice and gripped me. It pulled me toward the growing hole. Was it pulling me down or trying to pull its way out? I never knew. In all the times I’d had the dream I never knew.

All I saw was the hand and slender arm, reaching up from the black water. I knew the hand was death. I woke up.

The lights and the television were still on. I sat up and looked around, not comprehending at first and then remembering where I was and what I was doing. I waited for the chill to pass and then got up. I flicked the TV off and went to the minibar, broke the seal and opened the door. I selected a small bottle of Amaretto and sipped it without a glass. I checked it off on the little list they give you. Six dollars. I studied the list and the exorbitant prices just to give myself something to do.

Eventually, I felt the liquor start to warm me. I sat on the bed and checked the clock. It was quarter to five. I needed to go back. I needed sleep. I got under the covers and pulled the book off the bed table. I turned to “The Lake” and read it again. My eyes kept returning to the two lines.

Death was in that poisonous wave, And in its gulf a fitting grave Eventually, troubled thoughts gave way to exhaustion. I put the book down and collapsed back into my bed’s shell. I slept the sleep of the dead after that.

17

It was against Gladden’s instincts to stay in the city but he couldn’t leave just yet. There were things he had to do. The wired-funds transfer would land at the Wells Fargo branch in a few hours and he had to get a replacement camera. That was a priority and that couldn’t be done if he was on the road, running to Fresno or someplace. So he had to stay in L.A.

He looked up at the mirror over the bed and studied his image. He had black hair now. He hadn’t shaved since Wednesday and already the whiskers were coming in thick. He reached to the bed table for the glasses and put them on.

He had dumped the colored contacts in the trash can at the In N Out where he’d eaten dinner the night before. He looked back up at the mirror and smiled at his new image. He was a new man.

He glanced over at the television. A woman was performing fellatio on one man while another was having sex with her in the position instinctively favored by dogs. The sound was turned down but he knew what the sound would be if it wasn’t. The TV had been on all night. The porno movies that came with the price of the room did little in the way of arousing him because the performers were all too old and looked world-weary. They were disgusting. But he kept the TV on. It helped him remember that everyone had unholy desires.

He looked back to his book and began to read the poem by Poe again. He knew it by heart after so many years and so many readings. But, still, he liked to see the words on the page and hold the book in his hands. He somehow found it comforting.

In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted Gladden sat up and put the book down when he heard a car pull to a stop outside his room. He walked to the curtains and peeked through at the parking lot. The sun hurt his eyes. The car was just somebody checking in. A man and a woman, they both looked drunk already and it wasn’t yet noon.

Gladden knew it was time to go out. He first needed to get a newspaper to see if there was a story about Evangeline. About himself. Then to the bank. Then to find the camera. Maybe, if there was time, he’d go searching after that.

He knew that the more he stayed inside, the better his chances were of avoiding detection. But he also felt confident that he had covered his tracks sufficiently. He had changed motels twice since leaving the Hollywood Star Motel. The first room, in Culver City, he used only to dye his hair. He cleaned up, wiped the place down and left. He then drove to the Valley and checked into the dump in which he sat now, the Bon Soir Motel on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. Forty bucks a night, three channels of adult films included.

He was registered under the name Richard Kidwell. It was the name on his last ID. He’d have to get on the net and trade for a few more. And he realized that would require him to set up a mail drop to receive the IDs and that was another reason to stay in L.A. At least for a while. He added the mail drop to his list of things to do.

As he pulled on his pants he glanced at the television. A woman with a rubber penis held to her abdomen with straps that went around her pelvis was having sex with another woman. Gladden tied his shoes, turned the TV off and left the room.

Gladden cringed at the sight of the sun. He strode across the parking lot to the motel office. He wore a white T-shirt with a picture of Pluto on it. The dog was his favorite cartoon animal. In the past, wearing the shirt had helped soothe the fears of the children. It always seemed to work.

Behind the glass windows of the office sat a frumpy-looking woman with a tattoo on what had been at one time the upper curve of her left breast. Her skin was sagging now and the tattoo was so old and misshapen it was hard to tell it wasn’t a bruise. She had on a large blond wig, bright pink lipstick and enough makeup on her cheeks to frost a cupcake or pass for a TV evangelist. She was the one who had checked him in the day before. He put a dollar bill in the pass-through slot and asked for three quarters, two dimes and a nickel. He didn’t know how much the papers cost in L.A. In the other cities they had ranged from a quarter to fifty cents.

“Sorry, babe, I don’t have change,” she said in a voice that begged for another cigarette.

“Ah shit,” Gladden said angrily. He shook his head. There was no service in this world anymore. “What about in your purse? I don’t want to have to walk down the fuckin’ street for a paper.”

“Let me check. And watch that mouth. You don’t have to get so testy.”

He watched her get up. She wore a short black tube skirt that embarrassingly displayed a network of varicose veins running down the back of her thighs. He realized he had no idea how old she was, a used-up thirty or an over-the-hill forty-five. It seemed that when she bent over to get her purse out of a lower file drawer, she was intentionally giving him the view. She came up with the purse and dug around in it for change. While the large black bag swallowed her hand like an animal she looked at him through the glass with appraising eyes.

“See anything you like?” she asked.

“No, not really,” Gladden replied. “You got the change?” She pulled her hand out of the maw of the bag and looked at the change.

“You don’t have to be so rude. Besides, I only got seventy-one cents.”

“I’ll take it.”

He shoved the dollar through.

“You sure? Six of it is pennies.”

“Yes, I’m sure. There’s the money.”

She dropped the change into the slot and he had a difficult time getting it all up because his fingernails were bitten away to nothing.

“You’re in room six, right?” she said, looking at an occupancy list. “Checked in a single. Still by yourself?”

“What, now is this twenty questions?”

“Just checking. What are you doin’ in there alone, anyhow? I hope you’re not jerkin’ off on the bedspread.”

She smirked. She had gotten him back. His anger boiled up and he lost it. He knew he should keep calm, not leave an impression, but he couldn’t hold back.

“Now who’s being rude, hmmm? You know what you are, you are fucking disgusting. Those veins running up your ass look like the road map to hell, lady.”

“Hey! You watch your-“

“Or what? You kicking me out?”

“Just watch what you say.”

Gladden got the last coin up, a dime, and turned to walk away without replying. Out on the street, he went to the newspaper box and bought the morning edition.

Safely back inside the dark confines of his room, Gladden dug through the newspaper until he found the Metro section. The story would be here, he knew. He quickly scanned through the eight pages of the section and found nothing about the motel murder case. Disappointed, he guessed that maybe the death of a black maid wasn’t news in this town.

He tossed the paper down on the bed. But as soon as it landed a photograph on the front page of the section caught his attention. It was a shot of a young boy on his way down a sliding board. He picked the section back up and read the caption that went with the photo. It said that swing sets and other children’s amusements had finally been replaced at MacArthur Park following the long period of their removal while a subway station construction project caused the closure of most of the park.

Gladden looked at the photo again. The boy on the slide was identified as seven-year-old Miguel Arax. Gladden wasn’t familiar with the area where the new park was located but he assumed that a subway station would be approved only for a low-income area. That meant most of the children would be poor and with dark brown skin like the boy in the photo. He decided that he would go to the park later, after taking care of his chores and getting situated. It was always easier with the poor ones. They needed and wanted so much.

Situated, Gladden thought. He knew then that getting situated was his real priority. He couldn’t stay in this motel or any other, no matter how well he had covered his tracks. It wasn’t safe. The stakes were constantly rising and they would be looking for him soon. It was a feeling not based on anything other than his gut instinct. They would be looking soon and he needed to find a safe place.

He put the paper aside and went to the phone. The smoke-cured voice that answered after he dialed zero was unmistakable.

“This is, uh, Richard … in six. I just wanted to say I’m sorry about what happened earlier. I was rude and I apologize.”

She didn’t say anything and he pressed on.

“Anyway, you were right, it’s getting pretty lonely in here and I was wondering if that offer you sort of made before was still out there.”

“What offer?”

She was going to make it difficult.

“You know, you asked if I saw anything I liked. Well, I did, actually.”

“I don’t know. You were pretty testy. I don’t like testy. Whatcha got in mind?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve got a hundred bucks to make sure it’s a good time.”

She was silent for a moment.

“Well, I get outta this dump at four. Then I got the whole weekend. I could come over.”

Gladden smiled but kept it out of his voice.

“Can’t wait.”

“Then I’m sorry, too. About being rude and the things I said.”

“That’s nice to hear. See you soon-oh, you still there?”

“Sure, baby.”

“What’s your name?”

“Darlene.”

“Well, Darlene, I can’t wait till four.”

She laughed and hung up. Gladden wasn’t laughing.

18

In the morning I had to wait until ten before Laurie Prine was at her desk in Denver. By then I was anxious to get on with the day but hers was just starting and I had to go through the greeting and questions about where I was and what I was doing before finally getting to the point.

“When you did that run on police suicides for me, would that have included the Baltimore Sun?”

“Yep.”

I assumed it would have but had to check. I also knew that computer searches sometimes missed things.

“Okay, then can you run a search of the Sun using just the name John McCafferty.”

I spelled it for her.

“Sure. How far back?”

“I don’t know, five years would be good.”

“When do you need it by?”

“Last night.”

“I guess that means you’re going to hold.”

“It does.”

I listened to the tapping of keys as she conducted the search. I pulled the Poe book onto my lap and reread some of the poems while I waited. With daylight coming through the curtains, the words did not have the same hold on me as the night before.

“Okay-whoa-we’ve got a lot of hits here, Jack. Twenty-eight. Anything in particular you’re looking for?”

“Uh, no. What’s the most recent?”

I knew that she could scan the hits by having just the headlines print out on her screen.