"No, I didn't," I said. "I came here to tell you how James Treadwell was killed."
"You found that bitch!" His whole face brightened. He took his chair again, picked the burning cigarette out of the ashtray, and squinted at me through the smoke as he inhaled. "Tell me about it."
"If Bob Bandolier came to James's room late at night, would James have let him in?"
Nodding, he said, "Sure."
"And if Bandolier wanted to get in without knocking, he could just have let himself in."
His eyes widened. "What are you trying to tell me?"
"Glenroy, Bandolier murdered James Treadwell. And the woman, and Monty Leland, and Stenmitz. His wife was dying because he beat her into a coma, and he got angry because Ransom fired him when he had to take extra time to care for her. He killed all of them to ruin the hotel's business."
"You're saying Bob killed all these people, and then afterward, he just came back here like nothing happened?"
"Exactly." I told him what I had learned from Theresa Sunchana, and I watched him take it all in.
When I was done, he said, "Roses?"
"Roses."
"I don't know if I can believe this." Breakstone shook his head slowly, smiling. "I saw Bob Bandolier every day, almost every day, when I was here at home. He was a miserable bastard, but outside of that, he was normal, if you know what I mean."
"Did you know he had a wife and a son?"
"First I ever heard of it."
For a time we said nothing. Glenroy stared at me, shaking his head now and then. Once or twice he opened his mouth and closed it without saying anything. "Bob Bandolier," he said, but not to me. Finally, he said, "This lady heard him going out every night someone was killed?"
"Every night."
"You know, he could have done it. I know he didn't give a damn about anybody but himself." He frowned at me for a little time.
Glenroy was changing an idea he had held firmly for forty years. "He was the kind of man who'd beat a woman, that's right." He gave me a sharp look. "I tell you, what I think, Bob would sort of like his woman helpless. She wouldn't walk around, messing things up. That kind of guy, he could go for that."
He was silent for another couple of seconds, and then he stood up, walked away a couple of steps, turned around and sat back down again. "There isn't any way to prove all this, is there?"
"No, I don't think it can be proved. But he was Blue Rose."
"Goddamn." He smiled at me. "I'm starting to believe it. James probably didn't even know Bob was fired. I didn't know for maybe a week, when I asked one of the maids where he was. You know, they didn't even uncover his meat scam—he was back in time to switch back to Idaho."
"Speaking of the meat business," I said, and asked him if he'd heard about Frankie Waldo.
"We better not talk about that. I guess Frankie got too far out of line."
"It sounds like a mob killing."
"Yeah, maybe it's supposed to look that way." He hesitated, then decided not to say any more.
"You mean it had something to do with Billy Ritz?"
"Frankie just got out of line, that's all. That day we saw him, he was one worried man."
"And Billy reassured him that everything was going to be okay."
"Looked that way, didn't it? But we weren't supposed to see that. If you don't get in Billy's way, everything's cool. Someday, they'll nail somebody for Waldo's murder."
"Paul Fontaine has a great arrest record."
"He sure does. Maybe pretty soon he'll get whoever killed your friend's wife." There was an odd smile on his face.
"I have an idea about that," I said.
Glenroy refused to say any more. He was casting glances at his box again, and I left a few minutes later.
18
The clerk asked me if Glenroy was feeling any better, and when I said that I thought he was, he said, "Will he let the maids in there tomorrow?"
"I doubt it," I said, and went back to the pay phone. I could hear him sighing to himself while I dialed.
Twenty minutes later, I pulled up in front of Tom Pasmore's house on Eastern Shore Drive. Tom had still been in bed when he answered, but he said he'd be up by the time I got there.
On the telephone, I'd asked Tom if he would like to know the name of the Blue Rose murderer.
"That's worth a good breakfast," he told me. My stomach growled just as Tom opened the door, and he said, "If you can't control yourself better than that, get in the kitchen." He looked resplendent in a white silk robe that came down to a pair of black slippers. Under the robe, he was wearing a pink shirt and a crimson necktie. His eyes were clear and lively. The smell of food hit me as soon as I reached the table, and saliva filled my mouth. I walked into the kitchen. In separate pans on two gas rings on the range, diced ham, bits of tomatoes, and a lot of whitish cheese lay across irregular circles of egg. Two plates had been set out on the counter, and four brown pieces of toast jutted up out of a toaster. I smelled coffee.
Tom rushed in behind me and immediately picked up a spatula and experimentally slid it under each of the omelettes. "You butter the toast, if you want some, and I'll take care of these. They'll be ready in a minute."
I took out the hot slices of toast, put two on each plate, and smeared butter over them. I heard one of the omelettes slapping into its pan and looked sideways to see him fold over the edges of the second one and toss it neatly into the air and field it with the pan. "When you live alone, you learn to amuse yourself," he said, and slid them onto the plates.
I had finished a quarter of my omelette and an entire piece of toast before I could speak. "This is wonderful," I said. "Do you always flip them like that?"
"No. I'm a show-off."
"You're in a good mood."
"You're going to give me the name, aren't you? And I have something to give you."
"Something besides this omelette?"
"That's right."
Tom took the plates into the kitchen and brought out a glass cylinder of strong filtered coffee and two cups. I leaned back into the sturdy, comfortable chair. Tom's coffee was another sort of substance from Byron Dorian's, stronger, smoother, and less bitter.
"Tell me everything. This is a great moment."
I started with the man who had followed me back to John's from his house and finished with Glenroy Breakstone's final remark. I talked steadily for nearly half an hour, and all Tom did was to smile occasionally. Every now and then he raised his eyebrows. Once or twice he closed his eyes, as if to see exactly what I was describing. He read the fragment from the taproom and handed it back without comment.
When I had finally finished, he said, "Most of Glenroy's clothes come from festivals or jazz parties, have you noticed that?"
I nodded. This was what he had to say?
"Because he almost always wears black, those outfits always look pretty good on him. But their real function is to declare his identity. Since the only people he sees at all regularly, at least while he's at home, are the desk clerk, his dealer, and me, the person to whom he's announcing that he is Glenroy Breakstone, the famous tenor player, is mostly Glenroy Breakstone." He smiled at me. "Your case is a little different."
"My case?" I looked at the clothes I had on. They mainly announced that I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about what I wore.
"I'm not talking about your clothes. I mean, the child who appears to you from time to time—from what you call the imaginative space."
"That's work."
"Of course. But a lot of children are scattered through your whole story. It's as though you're fitting everything that happens to you into a novel. And the main element of this novel isn't Bob Bandolier or April Ransom, but this nameless boy."