The Throat

by Peter Straub

  John lowered the gun. “What about the Green Woman Taproom?”

  “Used to be a pretty seedy place, I guess.” Writzmann pulled back his feet and shoved himself upright. “But I don’t want to talk about it very much.” John raised the gun waist-high and pointed it at his gut. “I don’t want to talk about anything with you two.” Writzmann stepped forward, and John moved back. I stood up from the rocking chair. “You’re not going to shoot me, you sorry piece of shit.”

  He took another step forward. John jerked up the gun, and a flash of yellow burst from the barrel. A wave of sound and pressure clapped my eardrums tight. Clean white smoke hung between John and Oscar Writzmann. I expected Writzmann to fall down, but he just stood still, looking at the gun. Then he slowly swivelled around to look behind him. There was a hole the size of a golf ball in the wall above the recliner.

  “Stay where you are,” John said. He had straightened his right arm and was gripping the wrist with his left hand. The ringing in my ears made his voice sound small and tinny. “Don’t tell anybody that we came here.” John backed up, holding the pistol on Writzmann’s head. “You hear me? You never saw us.”

  Writzmann put his hands in the air.

  John backed toward the door, and I went outside before him. Heat fell on me like an anvil. I heard John say, “Tell the man in the blue Lexus he’s finished.” He was improvising. I felt like grabbing him by the belt and throwing him into the street. So far, nobody had come outside to investigate the noise. Two cars rolled down the broad drive. My whole head was ringing.

  John walked backward through the door, still holding his arms in the shooter’s position. As soon as he was outside, he lowered his arms, turned toward the sidewalk, and began to run. We rushed across the sidewalk and John opened the back door and jumped in. Swearing, I dug the keys out of my pocket and started the Pontiac. Writzmann appeared in the frame when I pulled away from the curb. John was yelling, “Floor it, floor it!”

  I smashed my foot on the accelerator, and we moved sluggishly down the street.

  “Floor it!”

  “I am flooring it,” I yelled, and the car, though still moving with dreamlike slowness, picked up some speed. Writzmann began walking gingerly across his dry lawn. The Pontiac swayed like a boat, then finally began to charge. When I turned right at the next corner, the car heeled over and the tires squealed.

  “Whoo!” Ransom shouted. He leaned over the back of the front seat, still holding the pistol. “Did you see that? Did that stop the bastard cold, or what?” He started laughing. “He came toward me—I just lifted this sucker—and WHAM! Just like that!”

  “I could murder you,” I said.

  “Don’t be mad, it was too good,” John gasped. “Did you see that fire? Did you see that smoke?”

  “Did you mean to fire?” I took a couple more rights and lefts, waiting to hear the sirens.

  “Sure. Sure I did. That old thug was going to take it away from me. I had to stop him, didn’t I? How else could I show him I meant business?”

  “I ought to brain you with that thing,” I said.

  “You know what that guy was? He used to take guys apart with his bare hands.” He sounded hurt.

  “He worked in a paper mill for twenty-five years,” I said. “When he retired, they gave him a rocking chair.”

  I could hear John turning the revolver in his hands, admiring it.

  I took another turn and saw Teutonia two blocks ahead of me. “Why do you suppose he told us to go back to Livermore Avenue, where we belonged?”

  “No offense, but it’s not the classiest part of town.”

  I did not say another word until I turned into Ely Place, and then what made me speak was not forgiveness but shock. A police car was pulled up in front of John’s house.

  “He got your license number,” I said.

  “Shit,” John said. He bent over, and I heard him sliding the pistol under the passenger seat. “Keep going.”

  It was too late to keep going. The driver’s door of the police car swung open, and a long blue leg appeared. A giant blue trunk appeared, and then a second giant leg emerged from the car. It was like watching a circus trick—the enormous man could not have fit into the little car, but here he came anyhow. Sonny Berenger straightened up and waited for us to park in front of him.

  “Deny everything,” John said. “It’s our only chance.”

  I got nervously out of the car. I did not think denial would do much good against Sonny. He towered over his patrol car, watching us coldly.

  “Hello, Sonny,” I said, and his face hardened. I remembered that Sonny had good reason to dislike me.

  He looked from me to John and back. “Where is it?” he asked.

  John couldn’t help taking a quick look back at the Pontiac.

  “You have it in the car?”

  “There’s a reason for everything,” John said. “Don’t fly off the handle until you hear our side of the story.”

  “Get it for me, please. Sergeant Hogan wants it back today.”

  John started walking back to the Pontiac, and as Sonny’s last sentence sank in, his steps became slower. I thought he nearly staggered. “Oh, did I say it was in the car?” He stopped and turned around.

  “What does Sergeant Hogan want you to give him?” I asked.

  Sonny looked from me to John and back to me. He stood up even straighter. His chest looked about two axe handles wide. “An old case file. Will you get it for me, sir, wherever it happens to be?”

  “Ah,” John said. “Yes. You saw it last, didn’t you, Tim?”

  Sonny focused on me.

  “Wait right here,” I said, and started up the path with John right behind me. I waited by the door while John fumbled for his key. Sonny crossed his arms and managed to lean against the patrol car without folding it in half.

  As soon as we got inside, John let out a whoop of laughter. He was happier than I had seen him during all the rest of my stay in Millhaven.

  “After that speech about denying everything, you were all set to hand him the gun.”

  “Trust me,” he said. “I would have figured something out.” We started up the stairs. “Too bad Hogan didn’t wait another couple of hours before sending Baby Huey over. I wanted to look at the file.”

  “You still can,” I said. “I made a copy.”

  John followed me up to the third floor and stood in the door of his study while I reached under the couch and pulled out the satchel. I wiped off some of the dust with my hands and opened the satchel to take out the thick bundle of the copy. I handed this to John.

  He winked at me. “While I start reading this, why don’t you stop off and see how Alan is doing?”

  Sonny was still leaning against the car with his arms crossed when I closed the door. His immovability powerfully communicated the message that I was worth no extra effort. When I held the satchel out toward him, he uncoiled and took it from me in one motion.

  “Thank Paul Fontaine for me, will you?”

  Sonny’s reply consisted of getting into the patrol car and placing the satchel on the seat beside him. He pushed the key into the ignition.

  “In the long run,” I said, “you did everybody a favor by talking to me that day.”

  He regarded me from what seemed a distance of several miles. He didn’t even bother getting me into focus.

  “I owe you one,” I said. “I’ll pay you back when I can.”

  The expression in his eyes changed for something like a nanosecond. Then he turned the key and whipped the patrol car around into a U-turn and sped away toward Berlin Avenue.

  9

  TALKING SOFTLY, Eliza Morgan led me to the living room. “I just got him settled down with lunch in front of the TV. Channel Four is having a discussion with the press, and then they’re showing live coverage of the march down Illinois Avenue.”

  “So that’s where all the reporters went,” I said.

  “Would you like some lunch? Mushroom soup and chicken sa
lad sandwich? Oh, there he goes.”

  Alan’s voice came booming down the hall. “What the dickens is going on?”

  “I’m starved,” I told Eliza. “Lunch sounds wonderful.”

  I followed her as far as the living room. Alan was seated on the chesterfield, threatening to upset the wooden tray on his lap as he twisted to look at me. A small color television on a wheeled stand stood in the middle of the room. “Ah, Tim,” Alan said. “Good. You don’t want to miss this.”

  I sat down, taking care not to upset his tray. Beside the bowl of soup and a small plate containing the crusts of what had been a sandwich stood a bud vase with a pink, folded rose. A linen napkin was flattened across Alan’s snowy white shirt and dark red tie. He leaned toward me. “Did you see that woman? That’s Eliza. You can’t have her. She’s mine.”

  “I’m glad you like her.”

  “Splendid woman.”

  I nodded. Alan leaned back and started on his soup.

  Geoffrey Bough, Isobel Archer, Joe Ruddier, and three reporters I did not recognize sat at a round table under Jimbo’s kindly, now slightly uncertain gaze.

  “—extraordinary number of brutal murders in a community of this size,” Isobel purred, “and I wonder at the sight of Arden Vass parading himself in front of television cameras during the funerals of persons whose murders may as yet be unsolved, despite—”

  “Despite what, get your foot out of your mouth,” Joe Ruddier yelled, his red face exploding up from his collar without the usual buffer provided by the neck.

  “—despite the ridiculous readiness of certain of my colleagues to believe everything they’re told,” Isobel smoothly finished.

  Eliza Morgan handed me a tray identical to Alan’s, but without a rose. A delicious odor of fresh mushrooms drifted up from the soup. “There’s more, if you’d like.” She crossed in front of me to sit in a chair near Alan.

  Jimbo was trying to wrestle back control of the panel. Joe Ruddier was bellowing, “If you don’t like it here, Miss Archer, try it in Russia, see how far you get!”

  “I guess it’s interesting to imagine, Isobel,” said Geoffrey Bough, but got no further.

  “Oh, we’d all imagine that, if we could!” yelled Ruddier.

  “Miss Archer,” Jimbo desperately interposed, “in the light of the widespread civic disturbance in our city these days, can you think it is responsible to bring further criticism against—”

  “Exactly!” Ruddier bellowed.

  “Is it responsible not to?” Isobel asked.

  “I’d shoot myself right now if I thought it would protect one good cop!”

  “What an interesting concept,” Isobel said, with great sweetness. “More to the point, and for the moment setting aside the two recent Blue Rose murders, let’s consider the murder of Frank Waldo, a local businessman with an interesting reputation—”

  “I’m afraid you’re getting off the subject, Isobel.”

  “We’ll get ’em and put ’em away! We always do!”

  “We always put somebody away.” Isobel turned, grinning Geoffrey Bough into a smoking ruin with a glance.

  “Who?” I asked. “What was that?”

  “Are you done, Alan?” Eliza asked. She stood up to remove his tray.

  “Who did she say was killed?” I asked.

  “A man named Waldo,” Eliza said, returning to the room. “I read about it in the Ledger, one of the back pages.”

  “Was he found dead on Livermore Avenue? Outside a bar called the Idle Hour?”

  “I think they found him at the airport,” she said. “Would you like to see the paper?”

  I had read only as far as the article about the fire in Elm Hill. I said that I would, yes, and Eliza left the room again to bring me the folded second section.

  The mutilated body of Francis (Frankie) Waldo, owner and president of the Idaho Wholesale Meat Co., had been found in the trunk of a Ford Galaxy located in the long-term parking garage at Millhaven airport at approximately three o’clock in the morning. An airport employee had noticed blood dripping from the trunk. According to police sources, Mr. Waldo was nearing criminal indictment.

  I wondered what Billy Ritz had done to make Waldo look so happy and what had gone wrong with their arrangement.

  “Oh, Tim, I suppose you’d be interested in that thing April was writing? The bridge project?”

  Alan was looking at me hopefully. “You know, the history piece about the old Blue Rose murders?”

  “It’s here?” I asked.

  Alan nodded. “April used to work on it in my dining room, off and on. I guess John hardly let her work on it at home, but she could always tell him she was coming over here to spend time with the old man.”

  I remembered the dust-covered papers on Alan’s dining room table.

  “I plain forgot about the whole thing,” he said. “That cleaning woman, she must have thought they were my papers, and she just picked ’em up, dusted underneath, and put ’em back. Eliza asked me about them yesterday.”

  “I’ll get them for you, if you like,” Eliza said. “Have you had enough to eat?”

  “Yes, it was wonderful,” I said, and lifted the tray and hitched forward.

  In seconds, Eliza returned with a manila folder in her hands.

  10

  THE MANUSCRIPT was not the chronological account of the Blue Rose murders I had assumed it would be, given my stereotypical preconceptions concerning the sorts of books likely to be written by stockbrokers. April Ransom’s manuscript was an unclassifiable mix of genres. The Bridge Project was the book’s actual title, not merely a convenient reference. It was clear that April intended this title to mean that the book itself was a bridge of sorts—between historical research and journalism, between event and setting, between herself and the boy in the painting called The Juniper Tree, between the reader and William Damrosch. She had taken an epigraph from Hart Crane.

  Through the bound cable strands, the arching path

  Upward, veering with light, the flight of strings,—

  ........................................................................

  As though a god were issue of the strings …

  April had begun by examining the history of the Horatio Street bridge. In 1875, one citizen had complained in the columns of the Ledger that a bridge connecting Horatio Street to the west side of the Millhaven River would carry the infections of crime and disease into healthy sections of the city. One civic leader referred to the bridge as “That Ill-Starred Monstrosity which has supplanted an honest Ferryman.” Immediately upon completion, the bridge had been the site of a hideous crime, the abduction of an infant from a carriage by a wild, ragged figure on horseback. The man boarded the carriage, snatched the child from its nurse, and then remounted his horse, which had kept pace. The kidnapper had spun his mount around and galloped off into the warren of slums and tenements on the east side of the river. Two days later, an extensive police search discovered the corpse on a crude altar in the Green Woman’s basement. The abductor was never identified.

  April had uncovered the old local story of the ancient man with battered white wings discovered in a packing case on the riverbank by a band of children who had stoned him to death, mocking the creature’s terrible, foreign cries as the stones struck him. I too had run across the story, but April had located old newspaper accounts of the legend and related the angel figure to the epidemic of influenza which had killed nearly a third of the Irish population that lived near the bridge. Nonetheless, she reported, an individual known only as M. Angel had been listed in police documents from 1911 as a death from stoning and had subsequently been buried in the city’s old potter’s field (now vanished beneath a section of the east-west freeway).

  The Green Woman Taproom, originally the ferryman’s shanty, made frequent appearances in the police documents of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Apart from being the scene of the occasional brawls, stabbings, and shootings not uncommon in rough tav
erns of the period, the Green Woman had distinguished itself as the informal headquarters of the Illuminated Ones, the most vicious gang in the city’s history. The leaders of the Illuminated Ones, said to be the same men who as children had killed the mysterious M. Angel, organized robberies and murders throughout Millhaven and were said to have controlled criminal activity in both Milwaukee and Chicago. In 1914, the taproom burned down in a suspicious fire, killing three of the five leaders of the Illuminated Ones. The remaining two appeared to divert themselves into legal activity, bought vast houses on Eastern Shore Drive, and became active in Millhaven politics.

  It was from the steps of the rebuilt Green Woman Taproom that a discharged city clerk shot and wounded Theodore Roosevelt; and the psychotic city employee who shot at, but failed to hit, Dwight D. Eisenhower, stepped out from the shadows of the Green Woman when he raised his pistol.

  The god who had issued from these strings, April Ransom implied, spoke most clearly through the life and death of William Damrosch, originally named Carlos Rosario. As an infant, he had been carried to the foot of the Horatio Street bridge by his mother, who had been summoned there by her murderer.

  For weeks after the discovery of the living baby and the dead woman on the frozen riverbank beneath the Green Woman, wrote April, the old legend of the winged man resurfaced, changed now to account for the death of Carmen Rosario: this time the angel was robust and healthy instead of weakened by age, his golden hair flowed in the dark February wind, and he killed instead of being killed.

  How did April know that the old legend had returned? On the second Sunday following the discovery of the infant, two churches in Millhaven, Matthias Avenue Methodist and Mt. Horeb Presbyterian, had advertised sermons entitled, respectively, “The Angel of Death, A Scourge to the Sinful” and “The Return of Uriel.” An editorial in the Ledger advised residents of Millhaven to remember that crimes of violence have human, not supernatural, origins.

  Three weeks after the murder of his mother, the child was released into the first of the series of orphanages and foster homes that would lead him in five years to Heinz Stenmitz, a newly married young butcher who had recently opened a shop beside his house on Muffin Street in the section of Millhaven long known as Pigtown.