The Poet (45 page)

I turned and walked backward for a few steps, staring back up the street at the green neon sign for the Mark Twain. I surveyed the street, the cars parked along both sides. Again, I saw no shadows or silhouettes of the watchers.

“How many are out there?”

“Should be five. Two on foot in fixed positions. Two in cars, stationary. One car roving. All the time.”

I turned back around and pulled the collar of my jacket up. It was colder outside than I had expected. Our breath came out in thin clouds, mingled together and then disappeared.

When we got to Sunset I looked both ways and saw a neon sign over an archway a block to the west that said CAT & FIDDLE BAR. I pointed that way and Rachel started walking. We were silent until we got there.

Going through the archway we entered an outdoor garden with several tables below green canvas umbrellas but they were all empty. Past these and through the windows on the other side we could see what looked like a lively and warm bar. We went in, found an empty booth on the opposite side from the dartboards and sat down. It was an English-style pub. When the barmaid came around Rachel told me to go first and I ordered a black and tan. Rachel then did the same.

We looked around the place and small-talked until our drinks arrived. We clinked glasses and drank. I watched her. I didn’t think she’d ever had a black and tan before.

“The Harp is heavier. It always stays at the bottom, the Guinness on top.”

She smiled.

“When you said black and tan, I thought that was a brand that you knew. But it’s good. I like it but it’s strong.”

“One thing the Irish know is how to make a beer. The English have to give them that.”

“Two of these and you’ll have to call for backup to get me back.”

“I doubt it.”

We lapsed into a comfortable silence. There was a fireplace in the rear wall and the warmth from its fully engulfed fire extended across the room.

“Is your real name John?”

I nodded.

“I’m not Irish but I always thought Sean was Irish for John.”

“Yes, it’s the Gaelic version. Since we were twins my parents decided … actually my mother.”

“I think it’s nice.”

After a few more drinks from my glass I started asking questions about the case.

“So, tell me about Gladden.”

“There isn’t a whole lot to tell yet.”

“Well, you met him. Interviewed him. You must have a feeling for him.”

“He wasn’t exactly cooperative. His appeal was still pending and he didn’t trust us not to use what he said to disrupt that. We all took turns trying to get him to open up. Finally, I think it was Bob’s idea, he agreed to talk to us in the third person. As if the perpetrator of the crimes he was convicted of was somebody else.”

“Bundy did that, too, right?”

I remembered that from a book I had read.

“Yes. And others as well. It was just a device to assure them that we were not there to make cases against them. Most of these men have tremendous egos. They wanted to talk to us but they had to be convinced they were safe from legal reprisals. Gladden was like that. Especially since he knew he had a valid appeal still pending.”

“It must be a rare thing that you have a prior relationship, no matter how small, with an active serial killer.”

“Yes. But I have a feeling that if any one of the people we interviewed was set loose like William Gladden, we’d end up hunting for them as well. These people don’t get better, Jack, and they don’t get rehabbed. They are what they are.”

She said it like a warning, the second such intimation she had made. I thought about it a few moments, wondering if there was more she was trying to tell me. Or, I thought, was she really warning herself?

“So what did he say? Did he tell you about Beltran or Best Pals?”

“Of course not, or I would have remembered when I saw Beltran’s name on the victim list. Gladden didn’t mention names. But he did give the usual abuse excuse. Said that he was assaulted sexually as a child. Repeatedly. He was at the same age as the children he later victimized in Tampa. You see, that’s the cycle. It’s a pattern we often see. They become fixated on themselves at the point in their own lives when they were … ruined.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything, hoping she would continue.

“For a three-year period,” she said, “from ages nine to twelve. The episodes were frequent and included oral and anal penetration. He didn’t tell us who the abuser was other than to say it was a nonrelative. According to Gladden, he never told his mother because he feared this man. The man threatened him. He was a figure of some authority in his life. Bob made some follow-up calls about it but never got anywhere with it. Gladden wasn’t specific enough for him to track it. Gladden was in his twenties by then and the period of abuse had been years earlier. There would’ve been statute-of-limitations problems even if we had pursued it. We couldn’t even find his mother to ask her about it. She left Tampa after his arrest and all the publicity. We, of course, can now surmise that the abuser was Beltran.”

I nodded. I had finished my beer but Rachel was nursing hers. She didn’t like it. I signaled the barmaid and ordered an Amstel Light for her. I said I’d finish her black and tan.

“So how did it end? The abuse, I mean.”

“That’s the irony you so often see. It ended when he became too old for Beltran. Beltran rejected him and went on to his next victim. All the boys he sponsored through Best Pals are being located and will be interviewed. I’ll bet they all were abused by him. He’s the evil seed to all of this, Jack. Make sure you get that across in whatever you write about this. Beltran got what he deserved.”

“You sound like you sympathize with Gladden.”

Wrong thing to say. I saw the anger flare in her eyes.

“You are damn right I sympathize. It doesn’t mean I condone a single thing he’s done or that I wouldn’t drop him with a bullet if I got the chance. But he didn’t invent the monster that is inside of him. It was created by someone else.”

“Okay, I wasn’t trying to suggest-“

The barmaid came with Rachel’s beer and saved me from walking down the wrong path any further. I pulled Rachel’s black and tan across the table and took a long drink, hoping we were past my misstep.

“So, aside from what he told you,” I asked, “what was your take on Gladden? Did he seem to have the smarts that everyone around here is attributing to him?”

She seemed to compose her thoughts before answering.

“William Gladden knew his sexual appetite was legally, socially and culturally unacceptable. He was clearly burdened by this, I think. I believe he was at war within himself, attempting to understand his urges and desires. He wanted to tell us his story, whether it was third person or not, and I think he believed that by telling us about himself he would in some way help himself as well as maybe somebody else down the road. If you look at these dilemmas he had, I think it shows a highly intellectual being. I mean, most of these people I interviewed were like animals. Machines. They did what they did … almost by instinct or programming, as if they had to. And they did it without much thought. Gladden was different. So, yes, I think he is as smart as we are saying he is, maybe smarter.”

“It’s strange what you just said. You know, that he was burdened. Doesn’t sound like the guy we’re chasing now. The one we’re chasing seems to have about as much of a conscience about what he is doing as Hitler had.”

“You’re right. But we’ve seen ample evidence of these types of predators changing, evolving. Without treatment, whether it was drug therapy or not, it is not without precedent that someone with William Gladden’s background could evolve into someone like the Poet. Bottom line is, people change. After the interviews he was in prison another long year before winning his appeal and copping the deal that got him out. Pedophiles are treated the most harshly in prison society. Because of that they tend to band together in knots-just as in free society. That’s why you have Gladden being the acquaintance of Gomble as well as other pedophiles in Raiford. I guess what I am saying is that I am not surprised that the man I interviewed so many years ago became the man we call the Poet today. I can see it happening.”

A loud burst of laughter and applause broke out near one of the dartboards and distracted me. It looked like the night’s champion had been crowned.

“Enough about Gladden for now,” Rachel said when I looked back at her. “It’s depressing as hell.”

“Okay.”

“What about you?”

“I’m depressed, too.”

“No. I mean, what about you. You talk to your editor yet, tell him you’re back inside?”

“No, not yet. I’ll have to call in the morning and tell him there’s no follow coming from me, but that I’m back inside.”

“How will he take that?”

“Not well. He’ll want to follow anyway. The story’s moving like a locomotive now. The national media’s on it and you’ve got to keep throwing stories into the fire to make the big train move. But what the hell. He’s got other reporters. He can put one of them on it and see what they get. Which won’t be much. Then Michael Warren will probably crack another exclusive in the L.A. Times and I’ll really be in the doghouse.”

“You are a cynical man.”

“I’m a realist.”

“Don’t worry about Warren. Gor-whoever leaked to him before isn’t going to do it again. It would be risking too much with Bob.”

“Freudian slip there, right? Anyway, we’ll see.”

“How did you get so cynical, Jack? I thought only those rundown middle-aged cops were like that.”

“I was born with it, I guess.”

“I bet.”

It seemed even colder on the walk back. I wanted to put my arm around her but I knew she wouldn’t allow it. There were eyes on the street and I didn’t try. As we got close to the hotel I remembered a story and told her.

“You know how when you’re in high school and there’s always this grapevine that passes information on about who likes whom and who’s got a crush on whom? Remember?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, there was this girl and I had a thing, a crush on her. And I was … I can’t remember how but the word went out on the grapevine, you know? And when that happened what you usually did was wait and see how the person responded. It was one of those things where I knew that she knew that I had this desire for her and she knew I knew she knew. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“But the thing was I had no confidence and I was … I don’t know. One day I was in the gym, sitting in the bleachers. I think I was in there early for a basketball game or something and it was filling up with people. Then she comes in, she’s with a friend, and they’re walking along the bleachers looking for a place to sit. It was one of those do-or-die moments and she looks right at me and waves … And I froze. And … then … I turned and looked behind me to see if she was waving to somebody else.”

“Jack, you fool!” Rachel said, smiling and not taking the story to heart as I had done for so long. “What did she do?”

“When I turned back around she had looked away, embarrassed. See, I had embarrassed her by setting the whole thing into motion and then turning away … snubbing her … she started going out with somebody else after that. Ended up marrying him. It took me a long time to get over her.”

We took the last steps to the hotel door silently. I opened the door for Rachel and looked at her with a pained, embarrassed smile. The story could still do that to me all these years later.

“So that’s the story,” I said. “It proves I’ve been a cynical fool all along.”

“Everybody has stories from growing up like that,” she said in a voice that seemed to dismiss the whole thing.

We crossed the lobby and the night man looked up and nodded. It seemed as if his whiskers had grown even longer in the few hours since I had first seen him. At the stairs Rachel stopped and in a whispered voice designed to leave the night man out of earshot told me not to come up.

“I think we should go to our own rooms.”

“I can still walk you up.”

“No, that’s okay.”

She looked back at the front desk. The night man had his head down and was reading a gossip tabloid. Rachel turned back to me, gave me a silent kiss on the cheek and whispered good night. I watched her go up the stairs.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Too many thoughts. I had made love to a beautiful woman and spent the evening falling in love with her. I wasn’t sure what love was but I knew acceptance was part of it. That’s what I sensed from Rachel. It was a quality that had been a rarity in my life and I found its nearness thrilling and disquieting in the same instant.

As I stepped out to the front of the hotel to smoke a cigarette the feeling of disquiet grew and then infected my mind with other thoughts. The ghost story intruded and my embarrassment and thoughts of what might have been still grabbed me so many years after that day on the bleachers. I marveled at the hold of some memories and at how well and precisely they can be relived. I hadn’t told Rachel everything about the high school girl. I hadn’t told her the ending, that the girl was Riley and that the boy she went out with and then married was my brother. I didn’t know why I had left that part out.