16
Two exits east of the stadium, I took Teutonia Avenue and slanted north, deep into Millhaven's wide residential midsection. I wasn't quite sure of the location of Fond du Lac Drive, but I thought it intersected Teutonia, and I drove along a strip of little shops and fast-food restaurants, watching the street signs. When I came to the traffic light at Fond du Lac Drive, I made a quick guess and turned right.
Fond du Lac Drive was a wide six-lane street that began at the lake before crossing central Millhaven on a diagonal axis. This far west, no trees stood along the white sidewalks, and the sun baked the rows of 1930s apartment buildings and single-family houses that stood on both sides of the street. As I had been doing since leaving Elm Hill, I looked in my rearview mirror every couple of seconds.
One of three identical poured concrete houses, 5460 had black shutters and a flat roof. All three had been painted the same pale yellow. The owners of the houses on either side of it had tried to soften the stark exteriors by planting borders of flowers along their walks and around their houses, but Oscar Writzmann's house looked like a jail with shutters.
Before I knocked on the door, I checked up and down the empty block.
"Who's there?" said a voice on the other side of the door.
I gave my name.
The door opened part of the way. Through the screen I saw a tall, heavyset bald man in his seventies taking a good look at me. Whatever he saw didn't threaten him, because he pulled the door open the rest of the way and came up to the screen. He had a big chest and a thick neck, like an old athlete, and was wearing khaki shorts and a tired blue sweatshirt. "You looking for me?"
"If you're Oscar Writzmann, I am," I said.
He opened the screen door and stepped forward far enough to fill the frame. His shoulder held the door open. He looked down at me, curious about what I was up to. "Here I am. What do you want?"
"Mr. Writzmann, I was hoping that you could help me locate one of the officers of a corporation based in Millhaven."
He rotated his chin sideways, looking skeptical and amused at once. "You sure you want Oscar Writzmann? This Oscar Writzmann?"
"Have you ever heard of a company called Elvee Holdings?"
He thought for a second. "Nope."
"Have you ever heard of an Andrew Belinski or a Leon Casement?"
Writzmann shook his head.
"The other officer was named Writzmann, and since you're the only Writzmann listed in the book, you're sort of my last shot."
"What is this all about?" He leaned forward, not yet hostile but no longer friendly. "Who are you, anyhow?"
I told him my name again. "I'm trying to help an old friend of mine, and we want to acquire more information about this company, Elvee Holdings."
He was scowling at me.
"It looks like the only genuine officer of Elvee Holdings is a man named William Writzmann. We can't go to the offices, because—"
He came out through the open door, stepped down, and jabbed me hard in the chest. "Does Oscar sound like William to you?"
"I thought you might be his father," I said.
"I don't care what you thought." He poked me in the chest again and stepped forward, crowding me backward. "I don't need tricky bastards like you coming around bothering me, and I want you to get off my property before I knock your block off."
He meant it. He was getting angrier by the second.
"I was just hoping you could help me find William Writzmann. That's all." I held my hands up to show I didn't want to fight him.
His face hardened, and he stepped toward me. I jumped back, and an enormous fist filled my vision, and the air in front of my face moved. Then he stood a yard from me, his fists ready and his face burning with rage.
"I'm going," I said. "I didn't mean to disturb you."
He dropped his hands.
He stayed on the lawn until I got into the car. Then he turned himself around and trudged back toward his house.
I went back to Ely Place and my real work.
PART EIGHT
COLONEL BEAUFORT RUNNEL
1
I let myself into the house and called out a greeting. The answering silence suggested that the Ransoms were all napping. For a moment I felt like Goldilocks.
In the kitchen I found the yellow flap of a Post-It note on the central counter beside a bottle of Worcestershire sauce and three glasses smeary with red fluid. Tim—Where are you? We're going to a movie, be back around 7 or 8. Monroe and Wheeler dropped in, see evidence upstairs. John.
I dropped the note into the garbage and went upstairs. Marjorie had arranged little pots and bottles of cosmetics on the guest room table. A copy of the AARP magazine lay splayed open on the unmade bed.
Nothing had been disturbed in John's bedroom, except by John. He had stashed his three-hundred-dollar vodka on the bedside table, no doubt to keep Ralph from sampling it. Shirts and boxer shorts lay in balls and tangles on the floor. Byron Dorian's two big paintings, powerful reminders of April's death, had been taken down and turned to the wall.
On the third floor, Damrosch's satchel still lay underneath the couch.
I crossed the hall into April's office. A pile of corporate reports had been squared away, and old faxes lay stacked on the shelves. I finally noticed that most of the white shelves were bare.
Monroe and Wheeler had packed up most of April's files and papers and taken them away. By nightfall, an Armory Place accountant would be examining her records, looking for a motive for her murder. Monroe and Wheeler had probably emptied her office at Barnett that morning. I pulled open a desk drawer and found two loose paper clips, a tube of Nivea skin cream, and a rubber band. I was a couple of hours too late to discover what April had learned about William Damrosch.
I went back to John's office and picked up Colonel Runnel's book. Then I stretched out on the couch to read until the Ransoms came back from the movies.
2
Happily unaware of the disadvantages of being a terrible writer with nothing to say, Beaufort Runnel had marshaled thirty years of boneheaded convictions, pointless anecdotes, and heartfelt prejudices into four hundred pages. The colonel had ordered himself to his typewriter and carved each sentence out of miserable, unyielding granite, and it must have been infuriating for him when no commercial publisher would accept his masterpiece.
I wondered how Tom Pasmore had managed to find this gem.
Colonel Runnel had spent his life in supply depots, and his most immediate problems had been with thievery and inaccurate invoices. His long, sometimes unhappy experiences in Germany, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, California, Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam had inexorably led him to certain profound convictions.
3
The finest fighting force on the globe is beyond doubt the Army of the United States of America. This is cold fact. Valorous, ready to dig in and fix bayonets at any moment, prepared to fight until the last man, this is the Army as we know and love it. Working on many bases around the world over a long and not undistinguished (though unsung) career, the Army has placed me in many "hot" spots, and to these challenges this humble Colonel of the Quartermaster Corps, with his best efforts, has responded. I have seen our fighting forces worldwide, at ease and under pressure, and never have they deserved less than my best and most devoted efforts.