The Goldfish Bowl (13 page)

“That you know of.”

“Right,” said Flora McCormick emphatically.

“What was Patterson doing here?”

“He only came two or maybe three times. I think he was trying to figure out which way the wind was blowing.”

“How’s that again?”

“I don’t think he was comfortable with his sexuality. I think he started coming here because it was an easy way to rub shoulders with a lot of women. He wanted to see if he could make it as a heterosexual.”

“Interesting theory.”

“Can you come up with a better one?”

“What about Alice Palm?” said Parker. “What was she doing here?”

Flora smiled wistfully. “Like most of my regulars, she was very nice and very shy. Except for the club, I don’t think she had much of a social life.”

“How often did she drop by?”

“We have a dinner and dance on Friday and Saturday nights. She almost always came on Fridays.”

“But not Saturdays?”

“Never.”

“Did she always come alone?”

“Always,” said Flora McCormick.

“What about the return trip?” said Willows. “Did she ever take anybody home with her?”

“Every once in a while.”

“How often, exactly?”

“I don’t know. Two, maybe three times a month.”

“What you’re saying is that this shy lady took someone home with her two and sometimes three Fridays out of four.”

“I don’t know where they went.”

“She’s been a member of your club almost five years,” said Willows. “That’s a lot of men. How many names can you give me?”

“None, not a single one.”

Willows stared coldly at her. “Don’t give me that shit,” he said softly. “I’ll run you in for obstruction, and I’ll have the vice squad shut you down.”

“It’s the truth! During all the time I knew her, she never left with a regular member.”

“Wait a minute,” said Parker. “What other kind of member is there?”

“Temporary, a one-time admission.” Flora McCormick smiled up at Willows. “Let’s say you were thinking about joining the club, but you wanted to find out what it was like before you spent your money. All you’d have to do is walk up to the door, fill out a registration card and pay me fifteen dollars. That’d cover dinner, and all the dancing you wanted. But no drinks.”

“How many people do that?” asked Parker.

“Quite a few. Over the course of a year, hundreds and hundreds.”

“How is it,” said Willows, “that out of all those faces, you managed to remember Andy Patterson’s even though he’d only come to a couple of dances?”

“I already told you, it was because he was homosexual.”

“Otherwise you’d have forgotten all about him, is that right?”

“Probably.”

“Maybe you don’t remember Phasia Palinkas because she only dropped by once or twice.”

“Her name isn’t in the files.”

“All that means is she wasn’t a regular member. Maybe she was just a casual, somebody who dropped in from time to time. Do you keep the registration cards your customers fill out when they pay fifteen bucks for a one-nighter?”

“I have to, because of the income tax. I’ve got them all the way back to 1961, when Harry and I bought the business.”

“Where are they?”

“In half a dozen big cardboard boxes in a storage room at the back of the building. You want to see them?”

“Not if I can help it,” said Willows. He turned to Parker. “Show her the picture, will you?”

“What picture?” said Flora. She sounded surprised, as if in covering the walls of her office she thought that she had cornered the market.

Parker opened her purse and took out a morgue snap of Phasia Palinkas. The dead woman’s eyes were closed, and her face had a peculiarly slack and boneless look. But the colour image was much truer than the grainy, blurred, outdated print that had appeared in the newspapers.

Flora sighed, and took a pair of bifocals out of her jacket pocket. She stared down at the still, quiet face for a long time. Then she took off her glasses and put them away and handed the picture back to Parker.

“I’ve never seen her before,” she said firmly.

“Christ,” said Willows, despairing. He gestured at the seven steel cabinets ranged along the walls. “How many files have you got in there?”

“Six thousand, give or take a few.”

“Christ,” said Willows again. He took the snap of Phasia Palinkas from Parker, and propped it up on the windowsill next to the weeping fig. “Unlock the rest of the cabinets,” he said to Flora McCormick.

“You still think she’s in there somewhere?”

“She better be.”

“You’ll be here all night,” said Flora. There was more than a hint of satisfaction in her voice, more than a trace of a smile in her eyes.

“You stick around until we’re finished,” said Willows.

*

They’d started at eleven o’clock in the morning. At three in the afternoon Willows sent out for chicken sandwiches and coffee. He cleared a small space on Flora McCormick’s desk and he and Parker sat down next to each other on the two folding metal chairs. The food was limp and tasteless, and Parker had no appetite. She drank a mouthful of the lukewarm coffee, stretched, and went back to work.

The air in the cramped little office was stale, and smelled of sweat and frustration. Parker’s wrists ached. Her fingers felt stiff and clumsy, and stung from paper cuts. She opened another file. A man old enough to be her grandfather smiled confidently up at her through the gap in his teeth. He had outsized ears and a shadowy, uneven moustache. Rimless glasses, hardly any hair. Parker shut his file and put it to one side, opened the next.

Her hair had been much longer when the picture was taken, failing to her shoulders and out of frame. She was smiling. The camera’s flash had left pinpoints of light in her dark and solemn eyes. A gold cross hung from a thin chain around her neck. Parker stepped away from the filing cabinet, savouring the moment. She waved the file at Willows. He looked up, and then came over to her.

“She registered under the name of Sharon Hopkins,” said Parker. She frowned. “Wasn’t that the name of one of the other tenants in her apartment block?”

Willows nodded. “The next-door neighbour.”

“I wonder why she didn’t use her own name.”

“That makes two of us,” said Willows. He went back to the desk, tossed the remains of their lunch into Flora McCormick’s wicker wastebasket, and laid the three files down on the desk in a neat row.

Alice Palm.

Phasia Palinkas.

Andy Patterson.

“All three victims were Caucasian,” he said. “They were under fifty years of age and their last names all started with the sixteenth letter of the alphabet. Now let’s find out what else they had in common.”

Parker picked up Andy Patterson’s file and began to read, taking it one word at a time.

Two hours later, she had memorized all three files and all she had to show for her labour was a five-star headache. Her purse was on top of the filing cabinet to the left of the window. She opened it and discovered that Bradley had helped himself to every last one of her aspirins.

Seething with anger, she stared at the picture on the wall directly in front of her.

This picture, unlike all the others, was mounted in an ornate oval frame. It had been taken in the dining room down the hall. Parker could see tiny sections of the parquet dance floor through a forest of ankles. The photographer, she thought as her rage gradually subsided, must have crouched and taken the picture from a height of no more than two or three feet. It was a very odd picture indeed, and as Parker studied it she became aware that it was much too small for the space allotted to it on the otherwise crowded wall. She examined it more carefully, and saw that it was the only picture in the room that didn’t have a fine coating of dust on top of the frame.

She willed herself to relax, to let her eyes wander over the print, to stop looking and start seeing. The photograph was dated 25th December 1966. The writing was scrawled right across a pair of white high-heeled shoes with decorative hearts stitched above the arches. They were, Parker immediately realized, a perfect mate for the shoe the killer had abandoned on Jervis Street less than twenty-four hours earlier. She’d check with Flora McCormick, but there was no doubt in her mind that the killer had planted the picture in the office, hung it there for her and Willows to find.

It was impossible, but undeniable. The .460 Magnum killer was playing with them, leading them on.

XIV

THE ROOM WAS small, filled with cigar smoke and a dozen dilapidated chairs, a portable projector and a screen that had been mended with wide strips of white adhesive tape filched from a first-aid kit. Mel Dutton finished threading film into the machine as Willows came in through the door.

“Douse the lights, will you, Jack.”

“Sure,” said Willows. He nodded a greeting to the trio of vice cops lounging in the front-row seats, and flicked the switch. A shaft of light cut through the smoke. Numbers flashed wildly across the screen, followed by the film’s credits. Willows didn’t recognize any of the names. Dutton adjusted the focus. They were in a house, in a large and modern kitchen. There was no sound track.

“This is genuine Art,” said Dutton to Willows. “Film as Literature. I know you’re going to be impressed.”

There were two girls in the kitchen, sitting opposite each other at a butcher’s block table, profiles to the camera. The table had been set for breakfast. There was a four-slice toaster, a loaf of sliced wholewheat bread, a large box of Nabisco Shreddies, glasses, plates and bowls, a salt and pepper set in the shape of windmills.

Willows guessed the girls’ ages at fifteen or maybe sixteen, although they had been made up to look even younger. Both girls were blonde, their hair styled in a severe military cut, and lightly streaked in red and green. They were identically dressed in skin-tight pastel sleeveless T-shirts, black satin bikini panties and translucent plastic sandals. Both were smoking.

Behind the table there was a door leading to the back porch, and every few seconds one of the girls would turn and look expectantly at it. Willows had the impression they’d been coached to try to look nervous and excited.

“Guess who’s coming to breakfast!” said Mel Dutton in a Bill Cosby voice. One of the vice cops chuckled briefly. Another yawned. The third seemed to have fallen asleep.

The camera dollied in, and Willows saw that the girls had their names glitter-printed on the T-shirts across their breasts.

Annie mashed her cigarette out in her cereal and was silently but vigorously chastised by Dewey.

The camera cut erratically to an electric clock on the wall above the sink. A dozen seconds ticked slowly by. Annie lit another cigarette and tossed her match into Dewey’s bowl. The cereal caught immediately, burning with a bright orange flame.

“A quality production,” said Dutton. “Absolutely first-class values. You notice the lighting?”

“I noticed it right away,” said Willows.

Dutton grinned, teeth flashing in the light from the projector.

Dewey used her spoon to extinguish the burning Shreddies. Suddenly she and Annie jumped up and ran to the back door.

“Knock, knock,” said Dutton.

Annie got to the door first, yanked it open. A huge black in a milkman’s uniform smiled down at her. He was carrying a dozen quarts of milk in a metal rack. Grinning, he allowed himself to be pulled into the kitchen.

Willows noticed he had to duck his head when he came through the doorway.

“The guy’s name is LeRoy Johnson,” said Dutton. “A failed basketball player. Almost made centre for the Sonics. The club said they couldn’t sign him because he was too tall to play, but I hear drugs might have had something to do with it.”

On the screen, Annie unbuttoned LeRoy’s uniform jacket and discovered to her surprise that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. LeRoy tore the cap off a quart of milk, brought the bottle to his mouth and drank thirstily, white rivulets pouring down his muscular, hairless chest.

Dewey was on her knees, working on the wide studded leather belt holding up LeRoy’s twill pants. Drops of milk fell across her face. She licked her lips, her eyes sparkling with simulated lust.

Willows squinted through the smoky gloom at the feeder reel on the projector.

“Another twenty minutes,” said Dutton, his sharp photographer’s eye missing nothing.

Willows held up his little package, and pointed at the door leading to Dutton’s darkroom.

“What’s the matter,” said Dutton, “you don’t want to find out what happens next?”

“I have a feeling I already know.”

Dutton nodded. “Art imitates Life, and Life imitates Art. But most of all, Art imitates Art.”

None of the vice cops looked up when Dutton and Willows left the room. Slouching ponderously in the gutted ruins of the upholstered chairs, heavy-lidded, consumed by their own dark and formless shadows, they stared bleakly at the screen and the mute tangle of bodies that squirmed and wriggled on the milk-slippery kitchen floor.

There was an old round-top fridge in the darkroom, used by Dutton to store undeveloped film. He opened the door and reached deep inside, came up with two bottles of Kokanee beer. He popped the electric blue caps and handed a bottle to Willows. “What are we drinking to this time, Mel?”

“Reincarnation. The possibility that next time around I’ll be a seven-foot hunk with a full head of hair.”

“Instead of an aphid?”

“Listen, if I’m a nice guy during my current life, there’s no problem with regression. So what can I do for you that’ll improve my Karma?”

Willows showed him the photograph Claire Parker had found in Flora McCormick’s office.

“I heard you fellas did an awful lot of leg work,” Dutton cracked, “but I had no idea I was supposed to take the job description so literally.”

“Can you enlarge that for me?”

“How many times?”

“I’d like about a dozen copies.”

“No, I mean how big do you want it?”

“As big as possible.”

Dutton sank half his beer. “You looking for something in particular?”

“Whatever I can find.”

Dutton frowned. “To maintain any degree of clarity, I’m going to have to make an interneg. That means photographing your picture, developing the negative and using it to make a series of prints at various exposure levels.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“Everything’s complicated. Until you break it down into its component parts. Then everything all of a sudden becomes ridiculously simple. Which is why we do our best to lead such complicated lives.” He tapped the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph. “These shoes with the little hearts, they’re the same as the shoe that was left on Jervis, am I right?”

“Could be, Mel.”

“This guy you’re after, he’s killed what, four people?”

“So far,” said Willows.

“Point taken,” said Dutton, and drained his beer.

A little over an hour later, Dutton pulled the last of the enlargements out of the flatbed drier. Willows went over the print inch by inch while Dutton stood anxiously by.

“You find anything, Jack?”

“No, not yet.”

Dutton scowled. His good deed for the day appeared to have been wasted, he hadn’t racked up a single Karma point on that big scoreboard in the sky. Who was it that had said the road to being an aphid was paved with good intentions? Shit, he was no closer to a perfect rematerialization than if he’d spent the morning watching drool movies with his pals from vice.

*

Inspector Bradley stuck his cigar in his mouth and used the flat of his hands to push open the metal fire door. He hurried down a short flight of concrete stairs, bubbling grey paint sloughing off under his heels. Parker, a little out of breath, managed to stay right behind him. A counterweight rattled on the end of a length of rusty chain. The door slammed shut.

Parker’s irises shrank before her advancing pupils as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. They were somewhere in the basement of 312 Main, following a sparse string of naked low-wattage bulbs that dwindled into the distance in a perfectly straight line. Off to her left, somewhere in the darkness, water dripped on metal.

Bradley paused under the third lightbulb in the string. His breathing was fast and shallow, and the film of perspiration on his forehead made his skin look freshly lacquered. Ever since they’d left his office, they’d been walking so fast that Parker had been forced at frequent intervals to break into a trot in order to keep up. She was pleased to see that the rapid pace had also taken its toll on Bradley.

Leaning towards her, he took her gently by the arm. They were so close that she could smell the thin scent of his aftershave under the burly pungency of his cigar. He smiled, but even in the dim and murky light she could see that his eyes were not twinkling.

“You know where I’m going?” he said quietly.

Parker shook her head.

“City Hall. Superintendent Foster and I have an appointment with His Honour the Mayor. And to tell you the truth, I’m not looking forward to it at all. Because voices are bound to be raised. Many rhetorical and some pointed questions will be asked. And if I don’t want to get my shoes scuffed, I’m going to have to come up with some hard answers.”

They started walking again, into alternating pools of darkness and light.

Bradley indicated the green plastic folder Parker was carrying under her arm. “Franklin tells me you’ve been a very busy lady. Does that contain the fruits of your labour?”

“Mine and everybody else’s,” said Parker. There were a dozen clerks working on Flora McCormick’s files, putting together a master list of the more than six thousand past and present members of the singles club. The names were being fed into the department’s IBM mainframe computer in blocks of one hundred. So far, about two thousand names had been processed. Of these, fifty-three men and eight women had been found to have previous convictions. Parker explained to Bradley that only twelve of the men and one of the women had been involved in crimes of violence.

“That’s fine,” said Bradley. “Thirteen is a number the Mayor can understand, it’s a number he can deal with.” He held out his hand and Parker gave him the green file. “These people are our primary suspects,” said Bradley. “I want all thirteen of them brought in for questioning, and I want it done right this minute. See Franklin about it. Tell him it’s a top priority item.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bradley tapped the file with a tobacco-stained finger. “Exactly what have I got in here?”

“Names, rap-sheets and mug shots. A selection of crime-scene photographs. A list of the physical evidence.”

Bradley nodded, apparently satisfied. “I’ll never know why, but His Honour always gets a big kick out of looking at mug shots.” As he spoke, Bradley abruptly veered left, down a narrow, dimly lit corridor. “You got anything else for me, or is that it?”

“That’s it for now,” said Parker. As far as she knew, Willows was still up in the lab with Mel Dutton. Until she found out if they’d come up with something, she saw no point in telling Bradley about the photograph they’d taken from Flora McCormick’s office.

They turned left again. Parker smelled burning oil, steam. Bradley stopped in front of another metal fire door. He fiddled with a steel bolt. The bolt was rusty and made a harsh grating sound as he pulled it back. The door swung open, flooding them in soft grey light.

They stepped outside, into cooler air, a sloping, feathery rain. They were in the alley at the rear of 312 Main, standing opposite the police parking lot. Bradley jumped a puddle, strode across an open expanse of asphalt and past an untidy row of police vehicles. The squad car Furth had shot up two days earlier was parked at the far end of the lot. Next to it was Bradley’s shiny white Chrysler. He unlocked the car and got in, tossing the green folder on the seat beside him.

Parker stood in the rain, waiting to be dismissed.

Bradley started the Chrysler’s engine. He leaned forward in the seat, his chin propped on the steering wheel, and listened intently to the sound of the motor. After a moment he turned to Parker and said, “Automatic choke’s giving me a little trouble. Won’t run steady when it’s cold. I keep meaning to take it in, but where am I going to find the time?”

Parker smiled sympathetically, and turned up the collar of her jacket against the rain.

“You ought to realize,” said Bradley, “that at the moment you happen to be in a unique and enviable position. This is your first homicide, and its turned into a real headline grabber. Very high profile, the sort of case that could make your career.”

Parker nodded but said nothing, knowing there was more to come.

“But you’re going to have to watch your every step,” said Bradley, “because somebody’s going to be watching every step you take.”

“I understand,” said Parker.

“The lowest rung on the ladder is the one that gets stepped on the most,” said Bradley. He gave the Chrysler some gas, and frowned. “A police department is a lot like an automobile engine. To make it run efficiently, you have to have all the parts working together to the maximum of their potential. Jack Willows is a hell of a talented cop, but that’s something he tends to forget, that we all have to work together.” Bradley revved the engine again. It idled smoothly and quietly.

“I appreciate your concern,” said Parker.

“Good,” said Bradley. He leaned across the seat towards her, reaching out, and for a moment Parker thought his intention was to shake hands. But all he’d wanted was to shut the Chrysler’s door. Parker retreated a step as the big car lurched forward. She watched it pick up speed as Bradley drove diagonally across the lot towards the exit.