19

I reached for the switch and flipped it up.

Bare light bulbs dangling over the bottom of the stairs, near the furnace, somewhere near the crate of letters, and far at the front of the basement, threw out enough light to stab into my eyes. The entire basement came into being around us, larger and dirtier than I had expected. It was brightly lit around the hanging bulbs, shadowy in the corners, but entirely visible. Matted spiderwebs hung from the cords of the light bulbs. Tom Pasmore was nowhere in sight.

In a gray suit and a black T-shirt, Michael Hogan stood about twelve feet away, looking at me dryly. A long black flashlight tilted like a club in his right hand. He moved his thumb and switched it off. "Now that we can see, let's check out the place where he put the boxes." Hogan wheeled around and strode past the pillar and the furnace.

I walked across the basement and came around the side of the furnace. Hogan was standing near the boxes, staring down at the cement floor. Then he noticed my feet. "What did you do with your shoes?"

"Left them upstairs."

"Humph. Junior G-man."

The empty boxes lay on the dusty floor. Hogan scanned the area between the furnace and the wall to our right, then the long stretch of floor between the furnace and the dressing rooms. There were no crumpled pieces of paper. I looked back at the dressing rooms. The door of the first, the one farthest from us, hung slightly ajar.

"You notice something?"

"No," I said.

"Tell me about McCandless," he said.

"Some Millhaven policeman has been using a false identity."

Hogan's face hardened with anger, and I took a few steps away.

"I know you think it was Fontaine, I thought it was Fontaine, but not anymore."

"Why is that?"

"That piece of paper I found in the Green Woman was about a woman named Jane Wright. She was killed in May 1977, if those papers are what I think they are. The name of the town was partially destroyed, but it looked like Allentown. So I looked through all the Allentown newspapers for that month, but nobody of that name turned up."

"You think that proves anything?"

"I found a Jane Wright who had been murdered in a town called Allerton, Ohio, in that same month. When Paul Fontaine was a detective in Allentown."

"Ah," Hogan said.

"So it has to be someone else. Someone who used Billy Ritz as an informant and who came to Millhaven in 1979. And there are only three men who have those things in common. You, Monroe, and McCandless."

"Well, obviously, it isn't me," he said, "or you'd already be dead. But why did you rule out Monroe? And how on earth did you find out about Billy Ritz?"

"I kept my ears open. I talked to a lot of people, and some of them knew things."

"Either you're a born cop or a born pain in the ass," Hogan said. "What about Monroe?"

Since I'd already said that I had come inside the theater only fifteen minutes before he did, I couldn't tell him the truth. "I stood outside in the alley and watched the door for a long time before I came in. Monroe showed up about twelve, twelve-thirty, something like that, looked at the chain, and left. So it's not him." Hogan nodded, swinging the big flashlight, and started walking away from the furnace toward the dressing room side of the basement. "McCandless comes as kind of a shock."

"But when you first heard me, you thought I was someone you knew. Someone on the force."

"Monroe told a lot of people about that crazy phone call. I didn't know any of this stuff you just told me about the place in Ohio. Allerton?"

I nodded.

"I'll fax a picture of McCandless to the Allerton police, and that'll be that. It doesn't matter if he shows up here tonight or not. I'll take care of him. Let's go upstairs so you can get your shoes, and I'll take you to Ransom's, or wherever you're staying."

"I'm staying at the St. Alwyn," I said, hoping that Tom could hear me, wherever he was. "I'll walk there."

"Even better," Hogan said.

I walked away from him faster than he expected, uncertain why I had not trusted him completely. Why should it be better for me to be staying at a hotel than at John's? I moved toward the stairs, hearing Tom Pasmore telling me to remember what I knew about Fee Bandolier. It seemed that I knew a thousand things about Fee, none of them useful. Hogan came after me, moving slowly. I put my hand on the penlight in my pocket.

I got to the bottom of the stairs and said, "Would you just stay where you are for a second?"

At the worst, I thought, I'd just look like a fool.

"What?" Hogan stopped moving. He had been reaching toward the button that fastened his suit jacket, and he dropped his hand when he saw me turning to face him.

I slapped the light switch down with my left hand, and with the other turned the bright beam of the penlight on his face. He blinked.

"Lenny Valentine," I said.

Hogan's face went rigid with shock. Behind him, I saw Tom Pasmore move fast and silently out of the dressing room. I switched off my light and scrambled away from the stairs in the darkness. I had the impression that Tom was still moving.

"We're not going to go through this all over again, are we?" Hogan said. He hadn't moved an inch.

From somewhere near the pillar, Tom's light shot out and outlined his head. Hogan turned to face the light and said, "Would you mind explaining what you think you're doing, Underhill?" He could not have seen any more than the bright dazzle of the flashlight, but he did not raise his hands.

I reached into my jacket, pulled out the revolver, thumbed the safety, and aimed it at his head.

Hogan smiled. "What was that name you said?" He tilted his head, still smiling at Tom, and raised his right hand to unbutton the jacket of his suit. I remembered seeing him make the same gesture just before I had surprised him by turning off the light. He would have shot me as soon as I got to the top of the stairs. I realized that I was holding my penlight along the barrel of the revolver, aiming it at Hogan like another gun as if I had been planning my next act all along, and when Hogan's hand reached his jacket button, I switched it on. Tom instantly extinguished his own light.

"Lenny Valentine," I said.

Hogan had already turned to face into my light, and he was not smiling anymore. A shadow moved into his eyes, and he opened his mouth to say something. The thought of hearing his next words sent a wave of pure revulsion through me. Almost involuntarily, I pulled the trigger and sent a bullet down the bright, hot beam of light.

There was a red flash and a loud, flat crack that the cement walls amplified into an explosion. A black hole appeared just beneath Hogan's hairline, and the light illuminated a bright spatter from the back of his head. Hogan rocked back out of the beam and disappeared. His body hit the floor, and the stench of blood and cordite filled the air. A twist of white spun in the beam of light and disappeared.

"You took a while to make up your mind," Tom said, shining his light on me. My stiff, outstretched arms were still aiming the revolver at the place where Hogan had been. I let them drop. I could not remember what I'd seen in Hogan's face. Tom shone his light downward. Hogan lay sprawled on the cement with most of his weight on his shoulder and hip, his legs bent and his arms flopped on either side. Blood flowed steadily out of the back of his head and pooled beneath his cheek.

I turned away and wobbled toward the wall. I groped around on the cinderblocks until I found the switch. Then I turned on the lights and looked back at him. A narrow line of red trickled out of the hole at his hairline and slanted across his forehead.

Tom came forward, holstering his automatic, and knelt beside Hogan's body. He rolled him onto his back, and Hogan's right arm landed softly in the growing pool of blood. The odor lodged in my stomach like a rotten oyster. Tom thrust his hands into one of the pockets of the gray suit coat

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Looking for a key." He moved to the other side of the body and slid his hand into the other pocket. "Well, well." He brought out a small silver key and held it up.

"What's that for?"

"The papers," he said. "And now…" He put his hand into the inner pocket of his own jacket and came out with a black marker pen. He uncapped the pen and looked up at me as if daring me to stop him. "I'm no policeman," he said. "I'm not interested in justice, but justice is probably what this is." He duck-walked a step away from the body, brushed a layer of dust off the cement, and wrote BLUE ROSE in big slanting letters. He spun himself around and looked at me again. "This time, it really was the detective," he said. "Give me that gun."

I came toward him and handed him the .38. Tom wiped it carefully with his handkerchief and bent over to place it in Hogan's right hand. Then he wrapped the fingers around the handle and poked the index finger through the trigger guard. After that, he raised the front of the suit jacket and pulled Hogan's own .38 out of its holster. He stood up and came toward me, holding out Hogan's gun. "We'll get rid of this later."

I slid the revolver into the little wallet clipped to my belt without taking my eyes off Hogan's body.

"We'd better get out of here," Tom said.

I didn't answer him. I stepped forward and looked down at the face, the open eyes, the slack, empty face.

"You did the right thing," Tom said.

"I have to make sure," I said. "You know what I mean? I have to be sure."

I knelt beside the body and gathered the material at the waist of the black T-shirt. I pulled the fabric up toward Hogan's neck, but could not see enough. I yanked up the entire shirt until it was bunched under his arms and leaned over to stare at the dead man's chest. It was pale and hairless. Half a dozen circular scars the size of dimes shone in the white skin.

A wave of pure relief went through me like honey, like gold, and the reek of blood suddenly smelled like laughter.

"Good-bye, Fee," I said, and yanked the shirt back down.

"What was that about, anyhow?" Tom asked behind me.

"The body squad," I said. "Old habit."

I stood up.

Tom looked at me curiously, but did not ask. I switched off the light, and we went up the stairs in the dark.

Less than three minutes later, we were outside in the alley, and five minutes after that, we were back in the Jaguar, driving east.