I said, "Read the letter."
"From Frank? I don't know whether I can handle that right now."
"No, the one from your parents."
"I can handle that one even less."
"I've read it," I said. "You'll be interested."
He looked at the letter warily, then at me. I nodded. He reached to the foot of the bed where the letter lay, picked it up, opened it, and read. He lay back and stared at the ceiling, the letter still in his hand. "They win the prize, Stuart and Jane," he said. "They win the fucking grand prize." He dropped the letter on the bed beside him.
Throughout our two-hour conversation-or rather Blount's extended monologs-the pieces had been arranging themselves and falling into place. There was one to go. I said, "Did Eddie Storrs ever hurt anyone? On purpose?"
Blount sat up straight and gazed hard at me. He said, "No-I mean, yes. Not after we'd become lovers. With me, Eddie really calmed down. But before that, yes. 'Eddie had a reputation for getting into playful kinds of fights-dorm scuffles and all-and then doing things that really hurt or were dangerous. Once he had a kid down and kicked him in the neck. Another time Eddie grabbed a nail file and-stuck a kid in the thigh with it."
We looked at each other.
"Was Eddie Storrs ever jealous of your friendships with other guys? Or didn't you have any?"
"Not after, but before, yes. When Eddie and I were just becoming friends, but before we'd figured out what was really going on, he always gave me a hard time about other guys I hung around with, and he'd act pretty rotten toward those people. In fact, one kid I sort of felt comfortable with sometimes-I think now that he was probably gay-he was the one Eddie stabbed with the nail file." Blount's eyes got big, and he said, "No"
"Yes. Probably yes."
My mind went back to Albany. Huey Brownlee was at my place. Margarita Mayes was staying with a friend. Mark Deslonde was, as far as I knew, with Phil.
I said, "The phone."
Blount handed it to me across the bed. I dialed Timmy's number. It was 12:40 A.M. in Denver, 2:40 in Albany. He answered on the second ring.
"It's Don. I want you to go see Frank Zimka right away and get him over to your place for the night, no matter what it takes. Are you awake enough?"
"Listen, I haven't slept at all. Where the fuck have you been? I've been calling your motel every ten minutes since midnight. A bad, bad thing has happened."
I said, "Zimka is dead."
A silence. Then, "How did you know? It just happened earlier tonight."
I said, "Wait a minute." I asked Blount for a cigarette, and he lit one for me. My hands were shaking, and the first drag on the Marlboro was like inhaling a medicated Brillo pad. I handed it back to Blount. I said, "Was he stabbed?"
Timmy said, "Yes. It happened at his place around eleven. Calvin was heading over to the park and saw the cops and commotion and checked it out and called me. They think it happened in the apartment, but Zimka managed to crawl out onto Lexington before he died. He must have been spaced out. He told the old woman who found him that a ghost had done it-the ghost of his own youth, or some crazy shit."
I said, "That's what he must have looked like to Zimka. Christ."
"Who must have looked like?"
"Eddie Storrs."
I summed it up for Timmy, then got Sergeant Ned Bowman's home number from Albany Directory Assistance. The operator said, "Have a nice evening." I woke Bowman up and told him where I was and who I was with. He said I was under arrest. Then I summed it up for him, and he replied that my story was pure fantasy and he wanted to see me first thing in the morning. I told him maybe later in the day, or century.
I called Continental and made two reservations through to Albany on a flight leaving Denver at 7:50 A.M. Blount heard me make the second reservation, for him, and he didn't object. Finally I called Timmy back with our flight number and arrival time.
Blount packed and wrote a note for Chris Porterfield, who was asleep on the living-room daybed.
Kurt Zinsser was snoring beside her.
We took the Bobcat back to my motel, left word for a six A.M. wakeup, crawled into bed, rolled together, and slept.
22
Blount traveled as Bill Mezereski, thinking the airline manifests were still being monitored. This was smart of him. For purposes of keeping Ned Bowman out of my hair, and to act cute, I traveled as Alfred Douglas-I figured Bowman had given up on that phantom-and as soon as we landed in Albany at 2:27 in the afternoon, I was taken into custody.
When the plane halted on the parking apron, the captain asked that passengers remain in their seats for just a moment; everyone sullenly obeyed. Two bulky lads in blue entered the aircraft and walked directly to seat 9-C. One said, "Would you come with us, please, Mr. Douglas?
Detective Bowman would like to speak with you for a moment."
"Why, certainly," I said, shrugging cheerfully to the passengers around us. Blount sat frozen in his seat. I said to one and all, "Ah, what would Timmy say." As I got up, I kicked Blount's ankle.
"Ah, Timmy"
They led me down the ramp and into the terminal wing. As we passed Timmy standing wide-eyed at the gate, I shook my head and rolled my eyes back toward the plane.
My escorts and I trudged up the corridor, past the metal detector, through a doorway, and up a concrete stairwell. In the airport security office I was shown a metal chair and instructed to sit in it. I smiled, and sat. Bowman arrived twenty minutes later.
"His name's not Douglas! That's Strachey! That's the asshole who-!"
Bowman turned and told a man in a gray suit and blue tie that he wanted the airport sealed off immediately.
"Sealed off?" the man said. "Why?"
"I'll explain later, Pat. There's a murder suspect who came in on that American flight from Chicago. I'll bet my mother's sweet name on it. He came in with this guy. Al Douglas!" He shoved at my chair with his foot and it scraped a few inches across the floor.
I said, "As I explained to you last night, Ned, the killer is in Loudonville. Or in Albany. Stuart Blount knows where, and so do the killer's parents. Their name is Storrs. Billy Blount was with me in Denver last night. We can both prove it; we were both seen there by a Denver police officer. Frank Zimka was killed in Albany last night by the same man who attacked Huey Brownlee and killed Steve Kleckner. His name is Eddie Storrs."
The man in the gray suit said, "Ned, we can't just seal this place off-not just like that. There's just me and two officers here. We'll need help from the sheriffs office or from your department. Jeez, I'm sorry, but____________________ " He made an apologetic face.
Bowman had been watching me. I was trying to look confident and earnest but not too smug. He said, "Then let me use your phone, Pat. Can you do that this week, or will you have to make arrangements with the governor's office?"
The gray-suited man nodded toward the phone, turned, and stomped off.
Bowman phoned the DA's office and made noises about a "possible break in the Kleckner case" and asked that the assistant in charge of the case remain on call for the next twenty-four hours.
Bowman said, "The Blount kid is back in town."
Then he called Stuart Blount and asked for a meeting. One was set up for half an hour later at the Blount abode on State Street. I was instructed to accompany him. I didn't object.
During the ride into Albany I repeated in detail what I'd told Bowman on the phone the night before, as well as everything else I'd found out over the past seven days and the conclusions I had drawn.
He said, "You misled me. You held out on me. You've committed a number of very serious offenses."