The Violet Hour

by Richard Montanari

  ‘No he wasn’t. You fuckin’ lied to me about that.’

  Nicky tried to stare him down, but all he got back was the fish-eye reflection of his own face in Willie’s wraparound sunglasses. It was useless. ‘Okay . . . he was like a cousin . . . close friend of the family, all right?’

  Willie T studied him for what seemed like a full minute. ‘It’s bad, Nicky.’

  ‘Bad. Bad how? Talk to me.’ Nicky held up his hands. He noticed that they were beginning to shake a little. ‘Look . . . no pencil. Eh?’ He unbuttoned his shirt. ‘No wire.’

  Willie T grabbed a napkin out of the bag and wiped his lips slowly, deliberately. He leaned forward, out the window, the sharp smell of just-eaten onions filling Nicky’s world. ‘I’m gonna tell you something that you’re not going to know. You hear me?’

  ‘I hear you.’

  ‘I ain’t fuckin’ with you, Nicky. I see a word of this in print before the investigation is over, I’ll find you and wax your ass myself. Birdman’ll hold you down. You rode with us. You know what I’m talkin’ about.’

  Nicky knew exactly what he was talking about. Every crack dealer in the Third District was scared shitless of Willie T. Nicky made a Boy Scout salute with his fingers. Then crossed his heart.

  Willie said: ‘The priest was fucked up. Big time.’

  ‘What do you mean, fucked up? Fucked up how?’

  ‘I mean he didn’t just die from the smack. It was no accident. He was cut up. Mutilated.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ugly scene, man.’ Willie held up a color photograph that showed a man’s body: naked, shredded flesh, a huge sticky pool of brownish blood. The man was hardly recognizable as John Angelino.

  Nicky felt the bile head north. ‘Wh-what happened to his eyes?’

  ‘Pulled out. Cut out, I should say. Somethin’ really sharp.’

  Willie T took a bite of his Whopper. The reddish brown meat juice ran down his chin, onto his hand, onto the crime-scene photo. Nicky gagged, looked away, found his wind, continued. ‘Yeah, but there’s something . . .’

  ‘Somethin’ stuffed into the eye sockets? Man, you could be a detective.’

  Willie T was clearly enjoying this, Nicky thought. There was some kind of street lesson in here somewhere. A be careful what you ask for kind of thing. Nicky looked back at the photo. There was something beige and wrinkled stuffed into the eye cavities. The texture and color reminded him of ginger root.

  ‘You ready for this?’ Willie T asked. ‘They’re daffodil bulbs.’

  ‘What?’ The word sounded so incongruous, so grotesque, next to the carnage of the crime scene that Nicky almost laughed. But he remained silent, stunned.

  ‘Daffodil bulbs,’ Willie T repeated, then let out a snort of dry laughter. ‘You gotta love this fuckin’ city, man.’

  Nicky composed himself, somewhat. This was way beyond anything he had ever tackled before, but he could do it, right? He should do it, right? Nobody deserved to end up like that, especially not a priest. ‘I don’t care, man. This makes it a better story. Ten times better.’

  ‘Okay, Nicky,’ Willie T said, placing the photos on the seat. ‘But I can’t get you any closer to the investigation than this. You’re a smart boy. You’ll figure out where to go next.’

  Nicky had no idea where to go next, but he didn’t want to tarnish his smart-boy image just yet. ‘So how come this information wasn’t in the paper?’

  ‘Nicky. Cops withhold shit from the public all the time. You know that. Your old man was a cop. Separates the real confessions from the professional assholes who call and confess to everything.’

  Over the next few minutes, Nicky tried to make small talk, hoping to keep Willie T chatting, hoping some ideas would spill over. ‘So, how is the Birdman these days?’

  ‘The Birdman’s cool, Nicky,’ Willie T said as he started the Ford. ‘The Birdman just flies. He’s Homicide now.’

  ‘No shit?’

  ‘None,’ Willie T said. He crumpled the greasy waxed paper his Whopper had come in. ‘Me? I still like the dope, man. I still like ropin’ the cowboys.’

  Nicky decided to ask. ‘Do I owe you that half of the C note for this little meeting?’

  Willie T put his car in drive, his foot on the brake. ‘You do.’

  Nicky reached into his pocket, retrieved the half bill, handed it to Willie T. ‘And what about the other—’

  ‘That’s between you and the Birdman,’ Willie T said of Nicky’s remaining voucher. ‘But I’d advise you to wait and use it on somethin’ else. Because this is some dangerous jelly, Nicky. The coroner said this guy used a scalpel. You wanna get close to that?’

  ‘No,’ Nicky said, the image of John Angelino’s eyeless horror mask seared into his memory. He wondered if his cousin Joseph knew.

  ‘You see the Birdman, you tell him I said hello,’ Willie T said.

  Before Nicky could answer, Willie T swung out of his space and headed for the exit onto Euclid Avenue.

  The thick, moist smell of fatty meat lingered behind him, and for the first time in Nicky’s life, it didn’t make him hungry. For the first time in his life, it smelled like what it was.

  Dead flesh.

  The offices of Morris, Goldberg and Dodge, Court Reporters, were located in the sixth floor of the Leader Building at East Sixth and Superior. A reporter for fourteen years, Nicky’s sister Maria was one of the firm’s real assets. Hence her office was up front, near the reception area. Hence Nicky found it relatively easy to sneak in there sometimes and search Lexis/Nexis, the huge database of news stories and company information available to corporate accounts.

  He always dropped by at lunch.

  Today, as he had hoped, the offices were essentially deserted and they managed to slip into Maria’s office unseen. He closed the door, sat down at his sister’s computer, and got online.

  While he waited for the connection, he surveyed what he had.

  He was pretty sure that he was the only writer in Cleveland who had the information that John Angelino was mutilated. But why? Why hadn’t that been in the papers? Why hadn’t it leaked to the papers? Did the families know? He had done a quick Google search, and found nothing about it. He knew he couldn’t use that information in print, but if he could find some connection to another crime, and that source gave him the information . . .

  The initial Lexis/Nexis search screen appeared. Nicky navigated to the news story database, and requested all articles that contained the words red and tiger and heroin.

  Nothing.

  He figured he would start specific, then get general. Inputting a search for the word heroin would have given him thousands of references. Lexis/Nexis was huge.

  Next he punched in tiger and heroin and got fifty-four references, including his own short piece in the Chronicle. He scanned them. Most were Hollywood Reporter and Variety stories on a movie called White Tiger. One story was about a member of the Detroit Tigers going through rehab. No murders.

  He tried monkey and heroin.

  Nothing.

  He rummaged through Maria’s top drawer, found a half pack of stale Virginia Slims menthols and a fold-up ashtray. He wheeled over to the window, opened it, broke off the filter, fired up a Slim. It tasted like burning VapoRub.

  Next search. He typed priest and heroin.

  Eighty-eight hits. Mostly stories about inner-city rehab centers, DARE programs, and the like. Nothing local. Nothing about anyone overdosing on red-tiger brand smack.

  He was just about to begin a new search when his eyes landed on the day’s USA Today, opened to the sports section. The articles were about a variety of teams – the Vikings, the Blackhawks, the Cardinals, the Cavaliers, the Panthers, the Buccaneers, the—

  Wait a second. Panthers.

  He reached for his shoulder bag, extracted the manila file envelope. He took out the original Plain Dealer article, scanned it, found the reference. The article said the heroin packet had been marked with a ‘tigerlike’ animal. Not tige
r. Tigerlike.

  Nicky began a new search. Over the next five minutes, he tried panther, leopard, cougar, ocelot, lynx, bobcat, lion. At one-thirty he keyed in jaguar and heroin.

  There was one reference. A recent article from the Erie Times News, the daily paper in Erie, Pennsylvania, ninety miles away. The proximity sent a shiver through Nicky as he hit Enter, requesting the article.

  The shiver became an icy hand around his heart when he saw the headline. ERIE COUNTY DOCTOR FOUND STABBED TO DEATH; DRUGS INVOLVED.

  21

  THE DRIVE SOUTH was exhilarating. Amelia knew that she should have called first, but the sky had cleared completely and it was a perfect day. She had Roger’s car, an apple red Lexus. On certain days, in certain moods, on certain streets, it made her feel like Audrey Hepburn in Two for the Road. She passed through Bath and Hinckley, through Massillon, Zoar, and New Philadelphia. The trees were aflame with color, the air held a hint of woodsmoke and apples. Fall was in full, glorious burn in northeastern Ohio.

  By the time she arrived in Walden, just west of Sugarcreek, she was hungry. She found a spot on Route 36 called Emma’s. The waitress told her the lunch specials: country meat loaf, fried Lake Erie perch, and spaghetti with meat sauce. And that they were out of the perch. Amelia glanced around and saw absolutely none of the customers eating the meat loaf.

  ‘I’ll have the spaghetti,’ she said. ‘And coffee.’

  The waitress retreated to the kitchen just as a blue van pulled into the parking lot across the street from the restaurant.

  ‘Well, first of all, this is encrypted. See all this information at the top?’

  Amelia nodded. She had handed the memory stick to the taller of the two young men she had found huddling over a computer terminal at Cybernauts, Inc., a disheveled storefront computer store on Gulliver Street, next to the one and only barber shop in downtown Walden, Ohio. The librarian at the Walden Community Library had told her that Edward Pankow had not worked there in a few months, that he had struck out on his own and started a telecommunications company.

  Amelia, for some reason, had expected a high-tech office with a dozen employees scurrying about on expensive carpeting. When she stepped through the door and saw that the ‘cybernauts’ were really a couple of grunge rockers in their early twenties, she relaxed. She’d find out what she wanted to know.

  ‘This is the routing information,’ Eddie continued, clearing his long, dirty-blond hair from his eyes, pointing to his twenty-one-inch monitor. ‘As in, these are the locations of all the computers this had to go through to get to yours. I can tell you right now, this did not come from someone on World Online.’

  ‘We can tell you that,’ Andy Bencek said. He was the shorter one, the dark-haired one, the one standing inches away from Amelia.

  ‘Okay,’ Amelia said, barely hanging on to the thread. ‘But is there any way you can tell me what it says? Is there any way to, well, decode it?’

  ‘Dr Bencek here is our resident encryption expert,’ Eddie said, standing up, gesturing toward Andy, giving up the chair.

  ‘Is that right?’ Amelia said with a smile.

  Andy sat down, hit a few keys, and brought the encoded message onto the screen in what may have been twenty-four-point type. ‘Initial analysis, Dr Pankow?’ he asked.

  Eddie leaned in, looking over Andy’s shoulder. ‘I’d say it was a jpeg, Dr Bencek.’

  ‘Watch and learn.’ Andy tapped a few keys.

  Amelia looked at the screen and saw it slowly reveal, from top to bottom, a photograph of a piece of paper – specifically, the bottom half of a torn sheet of paper from a legal pad. On it was a poem written in a pretty handwriting, a woman’s handwriting, that was for sure. For a moment it looked like calligraphy, but Amelia looked more closely and saw that it was just that the woman’s writing was nearly perfect – fluid, delicate, yet still confident and forthright. A young woman’s handwriting, Amelia thought.

  She did not recognize the poem, but then again, her know ledge of poetry was limited to what she had been made to sit through in high school English. But there was something about the tone of the brief verse, something so sad, it filled her for the moment with a liquid sorrow. She thought of how Maddie dealt with the world, her daughter’s quiet, gentle nature.

  On the other hand, if this was a love poem from Shelley Roth to her husband . . .

  ‘Mystery solved,’ Andy said as he turned to his partner and high-fived him.

  ‘The doctor is in,’ Eddie replied, fiving him back.

  ‘Well,’ Amelia began, ‘do either of you recognize this poem?’

  The two young men looked at each other, then at the screen, then at the floor, then out the windows, as if they had just been cornered by a hostile English teacher. ‘No.’

  ‘Okay,’ Amelia said. ‘No problem.’

  Eddie looked at his watch. ‘Look, we have to do a setup over the board of elections, but we can Google this for you when you get back.’

  ‘How long will that be?’

  ‘Maybe an hour or so.’

  Amelia didn’t want to wait. ‘Can you call me with that information later?’

  ‘Sure,’ Eddie said. ‘If you give us your email addy, we can also get you the names of the other people who received this email if you like.’

  ‘You’d do that for me?’

  The co-owners of Cybernauts, Inc., Edward James Pankow and Andrew Martin Bencek, looked at each other, at the computer screen, then at Amelia.

  They nodded solemnly.

  The only reason Eddie Pankow noticed the blue van was because he was trying to buy one. Cheap. And this one had potential. It looked around ten years old, clean but not perfect. When it rolled to a stop out front, about five minutes after the lady with the poetic e-mail had left the store, he could see a few fair-sized rust spots, and that meant if the van was for sale, there was bargaining room.

  But while the van was cool, the guy who got out of it and stepped in front of the store was another story altogether. Tall, dark coat, tinted glasses. He had his hands in his pockets and stood there looking at the window display for what had to be ten minutes. The only things in the display were some empty, sun-faded boxes of Halo and Grand Theft Auto, along with a couple of outdated video cards arranged on some cheesy red velvet. Yet the man stood there and stared at the stuff for the longest time.

  Eddie was just about to go get his partner and get his take on the lurker when something totally unexpected happened. Davey and Clete stopped in. Davey and Clete Sutar were twins, both Ohio state troopers, both standing around six two, both weighing in around two ten of muscle, gristle, and attitude. They were Eddie’s first cousins and Eddie loved it when they stopped by. It always gave the place an air of security.

  After the usual family small talk, Clete said they needed a couple of patch cords for the computer in their cruiser. Luckily, the X-650s were in stock. ‘You want the gold ends?’ Eddie asked, rhetorically.

  Clete gave him his patented Waddayathink? look. Eddie smiled, stepped into the back to get their order. When he returned to the front of the store he was greeted with a flash of sunlight, sunlight thrown through the front window, the unobstructed front window, which meant—

  Eddie looked.

  The man in the overcoat was gone. So was the van.

  Shit, Eddie thought. Another potential love chariot gone down the road. He bagged the patch cords and tossed the bag to Davey, the slightly bigger of the two huge police officers.

  ‘On the house, gents,’ Eddie said. ‘Stop by anytime.’

  Amelia sat at her kitchen table and looked at the printout of the email she had gotten from Eddie and Andy. In the message they said they would do a search for the lines of the poem, and call her as soon as they had something.

  Five names and e-mail addresses.

  Four of them were complete strangers.

  Benjamin Matthew Crane bcranemd@wol.com

  John Angelino praise@wol.com

  Geoffrey Coldicott hardman@t
tk.net

  Jennifer Schumann jenny5@wol.com

  Roger St John ras@wol.com

  What did Roger have to do with these people? she wondered.

  Was this some kind of computer mailing list he was on?

  Why was it all so hush-hush secretive?

  And who the hell was Jennifer Schumann?

  22

  BENJAMIN CRANE’S WIDOW was a classic beauty: long-limbed and graceful, a former dancer with the Cleveland Ballet. She wore the standard uniform of the young, grieving rich. A Versace black dress, no jewelry.

  The house, an imposing colonial in Wolf Run, near Erie, Pennsylvania, told more of the tale. Dr Benjamin Matthew Crane had had a very lucrative career as a plastic surgeon, reconstituting a fair number of the sagging rich and near rich between Cleveland and Buffalo, right up until his untimely death and subsequent mutilation at the age of forty-three.

  Nicky knew that he couldn’t talk to the reporter who had written the original piece in the Erie Times News – a staff reporter named Timothy C. Galvin – without arousing suspicion. A city desk reporter at a fairly large daily newspaper was the kind of person who thought that the gas pump had a hidden agenda when it flashed Have a Nice Day! at the end of the transaction. For some reason, Galvin referred to the tigerlike stamp as a jaguar in his article, having gotten, Nicky figured, a look at the actual GemPac. But Galvin, too, referred to the animal on the other side as a plain old monkey. It seemed his zoological expertise ended with the big cats.

  Nicky thought about calling the media relations officer at the Erie Police Department but ruled that out too. They didn’t know him, he wasn’t a local, so any inquiries from Cleveland would tip a hand somewhere, Nicky was sure of it. And he didn’t want any other writer anywhere to get even the faintest whiff of this story. So he decided to try to contact the deceased’s widow on his own. Surprisingly, she had agreed almost immediately to an interview.

  He had only been able to con Erique Mars out of a three-hundred-dollar advance, and that, combined with the fact that his checking account balance was balanced precariously around the one-hundred-dollar mark, led Nicky to decide that breakfast would consist of a pair of yesterday’s crullers he’d picked up at Unger’s on Taylor before the trip, and a thermos full of homemade coffee, brewed with a double pass of yesterday’s grounds.