The Throat

by Peter Straub

  “How could he disappear?” I asked.

  “County’s a disorganized place. Maybe he walked out.”

  “That’s not what you think.”

  “I don’t think Ventura could have stood up by himself, much less walked away from the hospital.” The flat rage in his eyes seemed connected to the stink of ashes that floated out from his clothing, as if his body produced the smell. “Anyhow, that’s what I had to say. I’ll leave you alone now.”

  He pushed himself to his feet and looked grimly down at me. “It’s been real.”

  “A little too real,” I said, and he nodded and walked out of the room. The stench of his rage and frustration stayed behind, like a layer of ashes on my skin, the sheets, the book I had forgotten I was holding.

  6

  IWARNED YOU that something like this might happen,” Tom Pasmore said to me the next morning, after I had described my conversation with Hogan. “But I didn’t think it would be so complete.” That ashy layer of frustration still covered me so absolutely that I came close to being grateful for the distraction of the steady thudding into which my pain had retreated. Tom’s uncharacteristically discreet charcoal suit seemed like another form of it, unrelieved by any of the flashes of color, the pink tie or yellow vest or blooming red pocket cloth, with which he would normally have brightened his general aspect. Tom’s general aspect seemed as wan as mine.

  Both of us held copies of the morning’s Ledger, which was dominated by photographs of burned-out buildings and articles about volunteers engaged in the monumental cleanup necessary before rebuilding could begin. At the top of the third page, ordered like the pictures of Walter Dragonette’s victims, lay a row of photographs of the eight people killed during the rioting. They were all male, and seven were African-Americans. The white man was Detective Paul Fontaine. Beneath the square of his photograph, a short paragraph referred to his many commendations, the many successes in solving difficult homicide cases that had given him the nickname “Fantastic,” and his personal affability and humor. His death, like most of the others, had been due to random gunfire.

  On the second page of the next section, a column-length article headed FORTY-YEAR-OLD CASE SOLVED reported that recent investigations led by Lieutenant Ross McCandless had brought to light the identity of the Blue Rose killer, who had murdered four people in Millhaven in October of 1950, as Robert C. Bandolier, at the time the day manager of the St. Alwyn Hotel. “It is a great satisfaction to exonerate Detective William Damrosch, who has had an undeserved stain on his reputation for all this time,” said McCandless. “Evidence located in Mr. Bandolier’s old residence definitely ties him to the four killings. Forty years later, we can finally say that justice has been done for William Damrosch, who was a fine and dedicated officer, in the tradition of Millhaven’s Homicide Division.”

  And that was it. Nothing about Fielding Bandolier or Franklin Bachelor, nothing about Grant Hoffman or April Ransom. “It’s complete, all right,” I said.

  Tom dropped his copy of the newspaper to the floor, raised one foot to prop his ankle on a knee, and leaned forward with his elbow on the other knee. Chin in hand, his eyes bright with inward curiosity, he suggested an almost comic awareness of his own depression. “The thing is, if I knew what was coming, why do I feel so bad about it?”

  “They’re just protecting themselves,” I said.

  He knew that—it didn’t interest him. “I think you feel left out,” I said.

  “This certainly isn’t what I had in mind,” he said. “I don’t blame you in any way, but I sort of pictured that it would be you and me instead of you and John. And Alan should have been nowhere in sight.”

  “Naturally,” I said. “But if you hadn’t been insistent on keeping yourself out—”

  “I wouldn’t have been kept out, I know.” He jiggled his foot. “John put me off. He tried to buy one of my paintings, and then he tried to buy me.”

  I agreed that John could be off-putting. “But if you ever spent half an hour with his parents, you’d know why. And underneath it all, he’s a pretty good guy. He just wasn’t quite what I expected, but people change.”

  “I don’t,” Tom said, sounding disconsolate about it. “I guess that’s part of my problem. I’ve always got two or three things on the fire, but this was the most exciting one in years. We really did something tremendous, and now it’s all over.”

  “Almost,” I said. “Don’t you still have the two or three other things to take up the slack?”

  “Sure, but they’re not like this one. In your terms, they’re just short stories. This was a whole novel. And now, nobody will ever read it but you and me and John.”

  “Don’t forget Ross McCandless,” I said.

  “Ross McCandless always reminded me of the head of the secret police in a totalitarian state.” Realizing that he could pass on a fresh bit of gossip, he brightened. “Have you heard that Vass is probably on the way out?”

  I shook my head. “Because of Fontaine?”

  “Fontaine’s probably the real reason, but the mayor will imply that he’s resigning because of the combination of Walter Dragonette, the riot, and the boy who was shot in City Hall.”

  “Is this public yet?”

  “No, but a lot of people—the kind of people who really know, I mean—have been talking about it as though it’s a foregone conclusion.”

  I wondered whom he meant, and then remembered that Sarah Spence spent her life among the kind of people who really know.

  “How about Merlin?”

  “Merlin’s a gassy liquid—he takes the shape of whatever container he puts himself into. I think we’ll be seeing a lot of the elder statesman act for a while. What he’ll probably do is find a good black chief in some other part of the country, sing lullabies to him until he loses his mind, and then announce the appointment of a new chief. Right up until that moment, he’ll be behind Vass a thousand percent.”

  “Everything is politics,” I said.

  “Especially everything that shouldn’t be.” He gloomily regarded the stack of books on my table without seeming to take in the individual titles. “I should have protected you better.”

  “Protected me?”

  He looked away. “Oh, by the way, I brought some of those computer reconstructions of the last photograph, if there’s any point in looking at them anymore.” He reached into his jacket pocket, brought out three folded sheets of paper, and then met my eyes with a flash of embarrassment at what he saw there.

  “That was you—you followed me back to John’s that night.”

  “Do you want to look at these, or not?”

  I took the papers without releasing him. “It was you.”

  The red dots appeared in his cheeks. “I couldn’t just let you walk nine blocks in the middle of the night, could I? After everything I’d just said to you?”

  “And was that you I saw out in Elm Hill?”

  “No. That was Fontaine. Or Billy Ritz. Which proves that I should have stuck to you like a burr.” He smiled, at last. “You weren’t supposed to see me.”

  “It was more like I felt you,” I said, troubled by the evil I had sensed dogging me that night, and the memory of the Minotaur’s knowledge of a hidden shame. From where had I dredged that up, if not out of myself? Cloudy with doubt, I flattened the pages and looked at each of the computer images in turn.

  They were of buildings that had never existed, buildings with recessed ground floors beneath soaring blank upper reaches like pyramids, oblongs, ocean liners. Empty sidewalks devoid of cracks led up to boxy windows and glassed-in guardhouses. They looked like an eccentric billionaire’s vision of a modern art museum. I spread the papers out between us. “This is it?” I asked.

  “The other ones were even worse. You know what they say—garbage in, garbage out. There just wasn’t enough information for it to work with. But I guess we know what it really is, anyhow, don’t we?”

  “Stenmitz’s shop had a kind of triangular sign over
the window. That must be what suggested all this—” I pointed at the rearing structures of the upper floors.

  “I guess.” Tom swept the pages together in a gesture of disappointment and disgust. “It would have been nice if …”

  “If I recognized some other building?”

  “I don’t want it to be over yet,” Tom said. “But boy, is it over. You want to keep these? Bring a souvenir home with you?”

  I didn’t say that I already had a souvenir—I wanted to keep the computer’s hallucinations. I’d fasten them to the refrigerator, beneath the picture of Ted Bundy’s mother.

  7

  TOM CAME BACK THE NEXT DAY with the news that Arden Vass had offered to resign as soon as a suitable replacement could be found. He had expected the mayor to refuse his offer, but Merlin Waterford had immediately announced that he was accepting the resignation of his old friend, albeit with the greatest sorrow, and the Committee for a Just Millhaven would be given a voice in the selection of the new chief. The officer who had killed the teenage boy was under suspension, pending a hearing. Tom stayed for an hour, and when he left, we promised to stay in touch.

  John Ransom came in half an hour before the end of visiting hours and told me that he had decided what he wanted to do—buy a farmhouse in the Dordogne where he could work on his book and rent an apartment in Paris for weekends and vacations in the city. “I need a city,” he said. “I want a lot of quiet for my work, but I’m no country mouse. Once I’m set up, I want you to come over, spend some time with me. Will you do that?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’d be nice. This visit turned out to be a little hectic.”

  “Hectic? It was a nightmare. I was out of my mind most of the time.” John had stayed on his feet during his visit, and he jammed his hands in his pockets and executed a hesitant half-turn, clocking toward the sunny window and then back to me again. “I’ll see you tomorrow when you come around to get your things. Ah, I just have to say how much I appreciate everything you did here, Tim. You were great. You were fantastic. I’ll never forget it.”

  “It was quite a ride,” I said.

  “I want to give you a present. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, and while nothing could really repay you for everything you did, I want to give you that painting you liked so much. The Vuillard. Please take it. I want you to have it.”

  I looked up at him, too stunned to speak.

  “I can’t look at the thing anymore, anyhow. There’s too much of April in it. And I don’t want to sell it. So do me a favor and take it, will you?”

  “If you really want to give it to me,” I said.

  “It’s yours. I’ll take care of the paperwork and have some good art handlers pack it up and ship it to you. Thanks.” He fidgeted for a while, having run out of things to say, and then he was gone.

  8

  FOUR HOURS BEFORE MY FLIGHT was scheduled to take off, John called to say that he was in a meeting with his lawyers and couldn’t get out. Would I mind letting myself in with the extra key and then pushing it through the mail slot after I locked up again? He’d get the painting off to me as soon as he had the time and be in touch soon to let me know how his plans were developing. “And good luck with the book,” he said. “I know how important it is to you.”

  Five minutes later, Tom Pasmore called. “I tried to wangle a ride out to the airport with you, but Hogan turned me down. I’ll call you in a day or two to see how you’re doing.”

  “Tom,” I said, suddenly filled with an idea, “why don’t you move to New York? You’d love it, you’d make hundreds of interesting friends, and there’d never be any shortage of problems to work on.”

  “What?” he said in a voice filled with mock outrage. “And abandon my roots?”

  Officer Mangelotti stood beside me like a guard dog as I signed myself out of the hospital, drove me to Ely Place, and trudged around the house while I struggled with the problem of one-armed packing. The curved blue splint covering my right arm from fingers to shoulder made it impossible for me to carry downstairs both the hanging bag and the carryon, and Mangelotti stood glumly in the living room and watched me go back up and down the stairs. When I came down the second time, he said, “These are real paintings, like oil paintings, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t put this crap in a doghouse.” He watched me pick up both bags with my left hand and then followed me out through the door, waited while I locked up, and let me put the bags in the trunk by myself. “You don’t move too fast,” he said.

  I looked at my watch as he turned onto Berlin Avenue—it was still an hour and a half before my flight. “I want to make a stop before we get to the airport,” I said. “It won’t take long.”

  “The sergeant didn’t say anything about a stop.”

  “You don’t have to tell him about it.”

  “You sure get royal treatment,” he said. “Where’s this stop you want me to make?”

  “County Hospital.”

  “At least it’s on the way to the lousy airport,” Mangelotti said.

  9

  ANURSE IN A PERMANENT STATE of rage took me at quick-march tempo down a corridor lined with ancient men and women in wheelchairs. Some of them were mumbling to themselves and plucking at their thin cotton robes. They were the lively ones. The air smelled of urine and disinfectant, and a gleaming skin of water had seeped halfway out into the corridor, occasionally swelling into puddles that reached the opposite wall. The nurse flew over the puddles without explaining, apologizing, or looking down. They had been there a long time.

  Unasked, Mangelotti had refused to leave the car and told me that I had fifteen minutes, tops. It had taken about seven minutes to get someone to tell me where Alan was being kept and another five of jogging along behind the nurse through miles of corridors to get this far. She rounded another corner, squeezed past a gurney on which an unconscious old woman lay covered to the neck by a stained white sheet, and came to a halt by the entrance to a dim open ward that looked like a homeless shelter for the aged. Rows of beds no more than three feet apart stood in ranks along each wall. Dirty windows at the far end admitted a tired substance more like fog than light.

  In a robot voice, the nurse said, “Bed twenty-three.” She dismissed me with her eyes and about-faced to disappear back around the corner.

  The old men in the beds were as identical as clones, so institutionalized as to be without any individuality—white hair on white pillows, wrinkled, sagging faces, dull eyes and open mouths. Then the details of an arched, beaky nose, a crusty bald head, a protruding tongue, began to emerge. The mumbles of the few old men not asleep or permanently stupefied sounded like mistakes. I saw the numeral 16 on the bed in front of me and moved down the row to 23.

  Flyaway white hair surrounded a shrunken face and a working mouth. I would have walked right past him if I hadn’t looked first at the number. Alan’s thrusting eyebrows had flourished at the expense of the rest of his body. I supposed he had always possessed those branchy, tangled eyebrows, but everything else about him had kept me from noticing them. Even his extraordinary voice had shrunk, and whatever he was saying vanished into a barely audible whisper. “Alan,” I said, “this is Tim. Can you hear me?”

  His mouth went slack, and for a second I saw something like awareness in his eyes. Then his lips began moving again. I bent down to hear what he was saying.

  “… standing on the corner and my brother had a toothpick in his mouth because he thought it made him look tough. All it did was make him look like a fool, and I told him so. I said, you know why those fools hang around in front of Armistead’s with toothpicks in their mouths? So people will think they just ate a big dinner there. I guess everybody can recognize a fool except one of its own kind. And my aunt came out and said, You’re making your brother cry, when are you ever going to learn to control that mouth of yours?”

  I straightened up and rested my left hand on his shoulder. “Alan, talk to me. It’s Tim Under
hill. I want to say good-bye to you.”

  He turned his head very slightly in my direction. “Do you remember me?” I asked.

  Recognition flared in his eyes. “You old son of a gun. Aren’t you dead? I shot the hell out of you.”

  I knelt beside him, the sheer weight of my relief pushing me close to tears. “Alan, you only hit me in the shoulder.”

  “He’s dead.” Alan’s voice recovered a tiny portion of its original strength. Absolute triumph widened his eyes. “I got him.”

  “You can’t stay in this dump,” I said. “We have to get you out of here.”

  “Listen, kiddo.” A smile stretched the loose mouth, and the shrunken face and enormous eyebrows summoned me nearer. “All I have to do is get out of this bed. There’s a place I once showed my brother, over by the river. If I can watch my big motormouth, uh, …” He blinked. Fluid wobbled in the red wells of his eyelids. “Curse of my life. Talk first, think later.” Alan closed his eyes and sank into the pillow.

  I said, “Alan?” Tears leaked from his closed eyelids and slipped into the gauze of his whiskers. After a second, I realized that he had fallen asleep.

  When I let myself back into the car, Mangelotti glowered at me. “I guess you don’t have a watch.”

  I said, “If you bitch one more time, I’ll ram your teeth down your throat with this cast.”

  PART

  FIFTEEN

  LENNY VALENTINE

  1

  WHEN I GOT BACK to New York, I did my best to settle back into my abnormal normal life, but settling was exactly what I couldn’t do. Everything had been taken away while I was gone and replaced with other objects that only appeared to resemble them—the chairs and couches, my bed and writing table, even the rugs and bookshelves, were half an inch narrower or shorter, the wrong width or height, and subtly shifted in a way that turned my loft into a jigsaw puzzle solved by forcing pieces into places where other pieces belonged. Part of this sense of dislocation was the result of having to type with only the index finger of my left hand, which refused to work in the old way without the assistance of its partner, but all the rest of it, most of it, was simply me. I had returned from Millhaven so disarranged that I no longer fit my accustomed place in the puzzle.