The Throat

by Peter Straub

  I could not hear Alan’s mumbled response, but the question pulled him back into the moment, and he raised his head and began moving more decisively.

  “I didn’t know you were one of John’s professor friends,” Marjorie said.

  “It was a fairly recent promotion,” I said.

  “Ralph and I are so proud of you.” She patted my arm as we followed the others into a ballroom filled with soft light and the rumble of almost stationary organ music. Rows of folding chairs stood on either side of a central aisle leading to a podium banked with wreaths and flowers in vases. On a raised platform behind the podium, a deeply polished bronze coffin lay on a long table draped in black fabric. The top quarter of the coffin had been folded back like the lid of a piano to reveal plump, tufted white upholstering. April Ransom’s profile, at an angle given her head by a firm white satin pillow, pointed beyond the open lid to the pocked acoustic tile of the ceiling.

  “Your brochures are right here.” Just Call Me Joyce waved at a highly polished rectangular mahogany table set against the wall. Neat stacks of a folded yellow page stood beside a pitcher of water and a stack of plastic cups. At the end of the table was a coffee dispenser.

  Everybody in the room but Alan Brookner took their eyes from April Ransom’s profile and looked at the yellow leaflets.

  “Yay Though I Walk is a real good choice, we always think.”

  Alan was staring at his daughter’s corpse from a spot about five feet inside the door.

  Joyce said, “She looks just beautiful, even from way back here you can see that.”

  She began pulling Alan along with her. After an awkward moment, he fell into step.

  John followed after them, his parents close behind. Joyce Brophy brought Alan up to the top of the coffin. John moved beside him. His parents and I took positions further down the side.

  Up close, April’s coffin seemed as large as a rowboat. She was visible to the waist, where her hands lay folded. Joyce Brophy leaned over and smoothed out a wrinkle in the white jacket. When she straightened up, Alan bent over the coffin and kissed his daughter’s forehead.

  “I’ll be down the hall in the office in case you folks need anything.” Joyce took a backward step and turned around and ploughed down the aisle. She was wearing large, dirty running shoes.

  Just Call Me Joyce had applied too much lipstick of too bright a shade to April’s mouth, and along her cheekbones ran an artificial line of pink. The vibrant cap of blond hair had been arranged to conceal something that had been done at the autopsy. Death had subtracted the lines around April’s eyes and mouth. She looked like an empty house.

  “Doesn’t she look beautiful, John?” asked Marjorie.

  “Uh huh,” John said.

  Alan touched April’s powdered cheek. “My poor baby,” he said.

  “It’s just so damn … awful,” Ralph said.

  Alan moved away toward the first row of seats.

  The Ransoms left the coffin and took the two seats on the left-hand aisle of the first row. Ralph crossed his arms over his chest in a gesture his son had learned from him.

  John took a chair one space away from his mother and two spaces from me. Alan was sitting on the other side of the aisle, examining a yellow leaflet.

  We listened for a time to the motionless organ music.

  I remembered the descriptions of my sister’s funeral. April’s mourners had filled half of Holy Sepulchre. According to my mother, she had looked “peaceful” and “beautiful.” My vibrant sister, sometimes vibrantly unhappy, that furious blond blur, that slammer of doors, that demon of boredom, so emptied out that she had become peaceful? In that case, she had left everything to me, passed everything into my hands.

  I wanted to tear the past apart, to dismember it on a bloody table.

  I stood up and walked to the back of the room. I took the leaflet from my jacket pocket and read the words on the front of the cover.

  Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death,

  I shall fear no evil.

  I sat down in the last row of chairs.

  Ralph Ransom whispered to his wife, stood up, patted his son’s shoulder, and began wandering down the far left side of the chapel. When he got close enough to be heard if he spoke softly, he said, “Hey,” as if he just noticed that I had moved to the last row. He jerked his thumb toward the back of the room. “You suppose they got some coffee in that thing?”

  That was not the question he wanted to ask.

  We went to the table. The coffee was almost completely without taste. For a few seconds the two of us stood at the back of the room, watching the other three look at or not look at April Ransom in her enormous bronze boat.

  “I hear you knew my boy in Vietnam.”

  “I met him there a couple of times.”

  Now he could ask me.

  He looked at me over the top of his cup, swallowed, and grimaced at the heat of the coffee. “You wouldn’t happen to be from Millhaven yourself, would you, Professor Underhill?”

  “Please,” I said, “just call me Tim.”

  I smiled at him, and he smiled back.

  “Are you a Millhaven boy, Tim?”

  “I grew up about a block from the St. Alwyn.”

  “You’re Al Underhill’s boy,” he said. “By God, I knew you reminded me of somebody, and when we were in the car I finally got it—Al Underhill. You take after him.”

  “I guess I do, a little bit.”

  He looked at me as though measuring the distance between my father and myself and shook his head. “Al Underhill. I haven’t thought about him in forty years. I guess you know he used to work for me, back in the days when I owned the St. Alwyn.”

  “After John told me that you used to own the hotel, I did.”

  “We hated like hell to let him go, you know. 7 knew he had a family. I knew what he was going through. If he could have stayed off the sauce, everything would have worked out all right.”

  “He couldn’t help himself,” I said. Ralph Ransom was being kind—he was not going to mention the thefts that had led to my father’s firing. Probably he would not have stolen so much if he had managed to stay sober.

  “Your sister, wasn’t it? That started him off, I mean.”

  I nodded.

  “Terrible thing. I can remember it just like it was yesterday.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  After a moment, he asked, “How is Al these days?”

  I told him that my father had died four years ago.

  “That’s a shame. I liked Al—if it hadn’t been for what happened to your sister, he would have been fine.”

  “Everything would have been different, anyhow.” I fought the annoyance I could feel building in me—when my father was in trouble, this man had fired him. I did not want his worthless reassurances.

  “Was that kind of a bond between you and John, that your father worked for me?”

  My annoyance with this silver-topped country club Narcissus escalated toward anger. “We had other kinds of bonds.”

  “Oh, I can see that. Sure.”

  I expected that Ralph would go back to his seat, but he still had something on his mind. Once I heard what it was, my anger shrank to a pinpoint.

  “Those were funny days. Terrible days. You’re probably too young to remember, but around then, there was a cop here in town who killed four or five people and wrote these words, BLUE ROSE, near the bodies. One of the victims even lived in my hotel. Shook us all up, I can tell you. Almost ruined our business, too. This lunatic, this Dragonette, I guess he was just imitating the other guy.”

  I put down my cup. “You know, Ralph, I’m very interested in what happened back then.”

  “Well, it was like this thing now. The whole town went bananas.”

  “Could we go out in the hallway for a second?”

  “Sure, if you want to.” He raised his eyebrows quizzically—this was not in his handbook of behavior—and almost tiptoed out.


  3

  ICLOSED THE DOOR BEHIND ME. Two or three yards away, Ralph Ransom leaned against the red-flocked wallpaper, his hands back in his pockets. He still had the quizzical expression on his face. He could not figure out my motives, and that made him uneasy. The unease translated into reflexive aggression. He pushed his shoulders off the wall and faced me.

  “I thought it would be better to talk about this out here,” I said. “A few years ago, I did some research that indicated that Detective Damrosch had nothing to do with the murders.”

  “Research?” His shoulders went down as he relaxed. “Oh, I get it. You’re a history guy, a whaddayacallit. A historian.”

  “I write books,” I said, trying to salvage as much of the truth as possible.

  “The old publish or perish thing.”

  I smiled—in my case, this was not just a slogan.

  “I don’t know if I can tell you anything.”

  “Was there anybody you suspected, someone you thought might have been the killer?”

  He shrugged. “I always thought it was a guest, some guy who came and went. That’s what we had, mostly, salesmen who showed up for a couple of days, checked out, and then came back again for a few more days.”

  “Was that because of the prostitute?”

  “Well, yeah. A couple girls used to sneak up to the rooms. You try, but you can’t keep them out. That Fancy, she was one of them. I figured someone caught her stealing from him, or, you know, just got in a fight with her out in back there. And then I thought he might have known that the piano player saw it happen—his room looked right out onto the back of the hotel.”

  “Musicians stayed at the St. Alwyn, too?”

  “Oh yeah, we used to get some jazz musicians. See, we weren’t too far from downtown, our rates were good, and we had all-night room service. The musicians were good guests. To tell you the truth, I think they liked the St. Alwyn because of Glenroy Breakstone.”

  “He lived in the hotel?”

  “Oh, sure. Glenroy was there when I bought it, and he was still there when I sold it. He’s probably still there! He was one of the few who didn’t move out, once all the trouble started. The reason that piano player lived in the hotel, Glenroy recommended him personally. Never any trouble with Glenroy.”

  “Who used to cause trouble?”

  “Well, sometimes guys, you know, might have a bad day and bust up the furniture at night—anything can happen in a hotel, believe me. The ones who went crazy, they got barred. The day manager took care of that. The man kept things shipshape, as much as he could. A haughty bastard, but he didn’t stand for any nonsense. Religious fellow, I think. Dependable.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  He laughed out loud. “You bet I do. Bob Bandolier. You wouldn’t want to go around a golf course with that guy, but he was one hell of a manager.”

  “Maybe I could talk to him.”

  “Maybe. Bob stayed on when I sold the place—guy was practically married to the St. Alwyn. And I’ll tell you someone else—Glenroy Breakstone. Nothing passed him by, you can bet on that. He pretty much knew everybody that worked at the hotel.”

  “Were he and Bob Bandolier friends?”

  “Bob Bandolier didn’t have friends,” Ralph said, and laughed again. “And Bob would never get tight with, you know, a black guy.”

  “Would he talk to me?”

  “You never know.” He checked his watch and looked at the door to the chapel. “Hey, if you find something out, would you tell me? I’d be interested.”

  We went back into the enormous room. John looked up at us from beside the table.

  Ralph said, “Who’s supposed to fill all these chairs?”

  John morosely examined the empty chairs. “People from Barnett and clients, I suppose. And the reporters will show up.” He scowled down at a plastic cup. “They’re hovering out there like blowflies.”

  There was a moment of silence. Separately, Marjorie Ransom and Alan Brookner came down the center aisle. Marjorie said a few words to Alan. He nodded uncertainly, as if he had not really heard her.

  I poured coffee for them. For a moment we all wordlessly regarded the coffin.

  “Nice flowers,” Ralph said.

  “I just said that,” said Marjorie. “Didn’t I, Alan?”

  “Yes, yes,” Alan said. “Oh John, I haven’t asked you about what happened at police headquarters. How long were you interrogated?”

  John closed his eyes. Marjorie whirled toward Alan, sloshing coffee over her right hand. She transferred the cup and waved her hand in the air, trying to dry it. Ralph gave her a handkerchief, but he was looking from John to Alan and back to John.

  “You were interrogated?”

  “No, Dad. I wasn’t interrogated.”

  “Well, why would the police want to talk to you? They already got the guy.”

  “It looks as though Dragonette gave a false confession.”

  “What?” Marjorie said. “Everybody knows he did it.”

  “It doesn’t work out right. He didn’t have enough time to go to the hospital for the change of shift, go to the hardware store and buy what he needed, then get back home when he did. The clerk who sold him the hacksaw said they had a long conversation. Dragonette couldn’t have made it to the east side and back. He just wanted to take the credit.”

  “Well, that man must be crazy,” Marjorie said.

  For the first time that day, Alan smiled.

  “Johnny, I still don’t get why the police wanted to question you,” said his father.

  “You know how police are. They want to go over and over the same ground. They want me to remember everybody I saw on my way into the hospital, everybody I saw on the way out, anything that might help them.”

  “They’re not trying to—”

  “Of course not. I left the hospital and walked straight home. Tim heard me come in around five past eight.” John looked at me. “They’ll probably want you to verify that.”

  I said I was glad I could help.

  “Are they coming to the funeral?” Ralph asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” John said. “Our ever-vigilant police force will be in attendance.”

  “You didn’t say a word about any of this. We wouldn’t have known anything about it, if Alan hadn’t spoken up.”

  “The important thing is that April is gone,” John said. “That’s what we should be thinking about.”

  “Not who killed her?” Alan boomed, turning each word into a cannonball.

  “Alan, stop yelling at me,” John said.

  “The man who did this to my daughter is garbage!” Through some natural extra capacity, Alan’s ordinary speaking voice was twice as loud as a normal person’s, and when he opened it up, it sounded like a race car on a long straight road. Even now, when he was nearly rattling the windows, he was not really trying to shout. “He does not deserve to live!”

  Blushing, John walked away.

  Just Call Me Joyce peeked in. “Is anything wrong? My goodness, there’s enough noise in here to wake the know you what.”

  Alan cleared his throat. “Guess I make a lot of noise when I get excited.”

  “The others will be here in about fifteen minutes.” Joyce gave us a thoroughly insincere smile and backed out. Her father must have been hovering in the hallway. Clearly audible through the door, Joyce said, “Didn’t these people ever hear of Valium?”

  Even Alan grinned, minutely.

  He twisted around to look for John, who was winding back toward us, hands in his pockets like his father, his eyes on the pale carpet. “John, is Grant Hoffman coming?”

  I remembered Alan asking about Hoffman when he was dressed in filthy shorts and roaches scrambled through the pizza boxes in his sink.

  “I have no idea,” John said.

  “One of our best Ph.D. candidates,” Alan said to Marjorie. “He started off with me, but we moved him over to John two years ago. He dropped out of sight—which is odd, because Grant is an exce
llent student.”

  “He was okay,” John said.

  “Grant usually saw me after his conferences with John, but last time, he never showed up.”

  “Never showed up for our conference on the sixth, either,” John said. “I wasted an hour, not to mention all the time I spent going to and fro on the bus.”

  “He came to your house?” I asked Alan.

  “Absolutely,” Alan said. “About once a week. Sometimes, he gave me a hand with cleaning up the kitchen, and we’d gab about the progress of his thesis, all kinds of stuff.”

  “So call the guy up,” Ralph said to his son.

  “I’ve been a little busy,” John said. “Anyhow, Hoffman didn’t have a telephone. He lived in a single room downtown somewhere, and you had to call him through his landlady. Not that I ever called him.” He looked at me. “Hoffman used to teach high school in a little town downstate. He saved up some money, and he came here to do graduate work with Alan. He was at least thirty.”

  “Do graduate students disappear like that?”

  “Now and then they slink away.”

  “People like Grant Hoffman don’t slink away,” Alan said.

  “I don’t want to waste my time worrying about Grant Hoffman. There must be people who would notice if he got hit by a bus, or if he decided to change his name and move to Las Vegas.”

  The door opened. Just Call Me Joyce led a number of men in conservative gray and blue suits into the chapel. After a moment a few women, also dressed in dark suits but younger than the men, became visible in their midst. These new arrivals moved toward John, who took them to his parents.

  I sat down in a chair on the aisle. Ralph and one of the older brokers, a man whose hair was only a slightly darker gray than his own, sidled off to the side of the big room and began talking in low voices.

  The door clicked open again. I turned around on my seat and saw Paul Fontaine and Michael Hogan entering the room. Fontaine was carrying a beat-up brown satchel slightly too large to be called a briefcase. He and Hogan went to different sides of the room. That powerful and unaffected natural authority that distinguished Michael Hogan radiated out from him like an aura and caused most of the people in the room, especially the women, to glance at him. I suppose great actors also have this capacity, to automatically draw attention toward themselves. And Hogan had the blessing of looking something like an actor without at all looking theatrical—his kind of utterly male handsomeness, cast in the very lines of reliability, steadiness, honesty, and a tough intelligence, was of the sort that other men found reassuring, not threatening. As I watched Hogan moving to the far side of the room under the approving glances of April’s mourners, glances he seemed not to notice, it occurred to me that he actually was the kind of person that an older generation of leading men had impersonated on screen, and I was grateful that he was in charge of April’s case.