The Violet Hour

by Richard Montanari

  There was no coffee or cigarettes in the house and there was no way he could do any of this without them. He would catch a pack and a few cups on the way down to the Justice Center, figuring that there would definitely be someone downtown who could improve the quality of the digital image of Geoffrey and his visitor.

  This was no career-making article, Nicky thought, beside himself with excitement.

  This was a career-making book.

  It had started to rain, but Nicky couldn’t be bothered to run back upstairs for a raincoat. He sprinted to the car, started it, and drove to Denny’s.

  On the inside back cover of Roger St John’s yearbook, on the fancy green endpaper, were a dozen or so signatures, accompanied by the standard yearbook repartee. There was an inscription from John Angelino. ‘May God smile on your every endeavor,’ it read, portending, perhaps, Father John’s life in the clergy. There were more than a few from women, mostly suggestive. At the bottom left, written in a precise block style, was an inscription from a ‘GD.’ G. Daniel? Nicky wondered.

  The inscription. It was the poem Johnny Angelino was emailed.

  He flipped through the pages of the book of poetry, and when he turned to the page bearing the poem ‘Preludes,’ he didn’t have to scan at all to find what he was looking for. The passage was right there, halfway down the page. But what was more remarkable than the fact that he had managed to find it so quickly was another, now indelible image.

  The passage was circled.

  What?

  When the hell had he done that? Hadn’t he bought the book new? He couldn’t recall the answer to either question, but the evidence was right in front of his eyes. The same four lines of poetry that had been sent to these people – these dead people, he reminded himself – was circled in a book he owned.

  In the nick of time, he lowered the lid of his laptop as his waitress approached him with her coffee pot held high. That’s all I need, Nicky thought, to have some waitress catch me looking at naked guys on my laptop at Denny’s.

  She poured, oblivious, smiled, left.

  Nicky looked back at the photo, at the blurred face in the mirror. The man’s dark hair was parted on the left. He held up the various yearbook photos of the people involved. G. Daniel was almost a perfect match to the man in the mirror. The hairline had receded, but as he held the yearbook photo up to the laptop, as he placed the paper over the bright screen, he found that the images were about the same size, the basic shape of the two faces was identical.

  Nicky shot to his feet, dropped a tip on the table, paid his tab at the register by the door. He decided to stop home and make a copy of the Geoffrey Coldicott photos on a memory stick. He didn’t want to risk a hard drive crash and lose everything. He also had a pretty good idea that the cops would want the whole laptop, anyway.

  But for the second time in two days, when he turned onto Normandy Road he saw something odd – blue and red swirls, a gouache of violet in the crooked rain-rivers that streaked the windshield. He slammed on the brakes and counted.

  There were a half dozen police cars around his house.

  43

  WHAT A NIGHT, Amelia thought. What a crazy, scary night. And it wasn’t even Halloween yet. Although a quick glance at the bedside clock proved her wrong. It was now twelve-thirty.

  Regardless, she hadn’t been able to sleep a wink.

  Roger had called back and put her mind somewhat at ease. He recalled all the people on the list, made a few excuses for their lifestyle, but also added that he was not surprised that they were still doing hard drugs. He also said he’d be home in time to trick-or-treat with Maddie, and that he’d meet them at Dag and Martha’s. That, Amelia thought, in light of the evening’s rather spooky turn, was the best news of all.

  She got up, checked on Maddie for what had to have been the twentieth time, found her sleeping, dreaming, perhaps, of Snickers bars and Reese cups and Twizzler strawberry licorice.

  She sat down at her computer and dialed into World Online. And, for the second time in her life, she heard the cheerful cyber-voice say: ‘You’ve got mail!’

  This time she didn’t jump. She was getting good at this. She clicked the appropriate buttons and found that it was mail from the Cybernauts, Eddie and Andy. She had forgotten that they had promised to send her the poem they had found.

  What they hadn’t told her was that they were going to send her the complete poetical works of T.S. Eliot.

  The file was huge and took a few minutes to download, but once it arrived and Amelia began to read the poetry, she found herself moved, astounded, confused. She read ‘The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,’ something she had heard about for years, but never had actually read. She read the poems about cats.

  But the poem that frightened her was one called ‘Whispers of Immortality.’ There were lines about mutilation, it seemed. Something about replacing someone’s eyes with daffodil bulbs, something about lipless grins. She didn’t finish that one. She didn’t need to be any more spooked than she was.

  She printed out some of the file, made a pot of tea, took them both to the bedroom, got under the comforter, and began to read.

  44

  NICKY TURNED AROUND in Joe Metzger’s driveway, five houses north of his own, and hightailed it back to Chagrin. What the hell was this about? The fact that he had seen at least three guns drawn meant it was no social call.

  They were there to arrest him.

  They were ready to shoot him.

  He drove downtown in a fog, checked into the Holiday Inn Lakeside, under the name Louie Starr.

  He hadn’t officially run from the police, had he? It’s not like any of them had seen him and told him to stop. He simply hadn’t gotten home yet.

  Right?

  He checked into his room, then took the stairs back down, exited a side door. He drove across the bridge, where he parked near a pay phone, across from St Malachi’s. He dialed his home phone number, feeling certain that there would be some kind of message from the police. Instead, on the third ring, someone answered.

  It was Ivan Kral. And Nicky’s silence gave him away. ‘Nicky?’ Kral said. ‘Nicky . . . listen to me. You’ve got to come in. Hear me?’

  ‘Are you going to tell me what this is about?’

  ‘We’ll talk about it when you come in.’

  ‘I thought the Rat Boy thing had been settled. I thought you believed me.’

  ‘This isn’t about Rat Boy, Nicky. Just drive to the Justice Center now, walk in the front door like a man. We’ll talk. Every second that goes by, the fucking hole gets deeper for you. Don’t you realize that?’

  ‘But I swear to God I don’t—’

  ‘Sebastian Keller, Nicky.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘We just found his body in the Art Museum lagoon.’

  ‘But I don’t—’

  ‘Where are his fucking hands, Nicky?’

  Nicky’s stomach did a pirouette. He was speechless with horror.

  ‘What did you do with his goddamn hands, you sick fuck?’

  ‘I swear to God I—’

  ‘Your name is on his appointment calendar,’ Kral continued. ‘His secretary remembers the call.’

  Nicky’s mind reeled. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Come on, Nicky. Who the fuck do you think you’re dealing with?’ Kral said, his voice picking up volume. ‘The office has Caller ID. We checked.’

  ‘What do you mean, checked? Checked what?’

  ‘The call came from your phone.’

  ‘What?’ Nicky screamed, loud enough for the parking lot attendant across the street to raise his eyes from his paper for a moment.

  ‘On the other hand, don’t come in,’ Kral said. ‘Let me find you, Nicky. Okay? Do me a favor. Let me find you, and when you see me, I want you to make a move.’ Kral lowered his voice. ‘I want you to make a move for your pocket. Okay? Because you know what’s in there, Nicky? Do you know what’s in that pocket? I’ll tell you. It’
s the twenty-five-caliber semiautomatic pistol I have in my hand right now. I’ve carried it for ten years, just waiting for the right piece of shit. You qualify. You hear me?’ Ivan Kral now began to scream. He sounded unhinged. ‘You made a fucking asshole out of me, Nicky.’

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ Nicky began as he tore out a few pages from the telephone book, put them near the mouth of the phone, and began to crumple them. Old trick. Sounded like static at the other end. Kral, he knew, wouldn’t buy it. But he couldn’t think of anything else to do at the moment.

  They had not had time to trace the call, he thought, as long as real technology had not exceeded what he saw in the movies. Besides, that’s why he had driven over the bridge to make the call in the first place. But just to be on the safe side, he reached into a tiny patch of mud that bordered the parking lot and smeared it over his rear license plate.

  The man in the yearbook picture. He had to find him.

  And there was only one place to begin.

  After only two rings, Amelia answered. She sounded wide-awake. It also sounded like she was on a cordless phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Amelia, it’s Nicky.’

  ‘Hi. Are you—’

  ‘Listen,’ Nicky began, not knowing how much he should say on the phone. He had checked the phone book, found no listings for Woltz. He continued. ‘You have a World Online account, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know your way around it?’

  ‘Not really. I just started using computers recently.’

  ‘Okay,’ Nicky said. ‘Do you know about the chat rooms there?’

  ‘Kind of. Although I’ve never actually—’

  ‘Do you remember our teacher’s name?’

  ‘Our teacher?’

  ‘Our writing teacher.’

  ‘Oh yes, sure.’ It was Mr Price he was talking about, Amelia thought. ‘It was—’

  ‘I’ll name the chat room after him and I’ll be there in ten minutes. Have that other yearbook with you.’

  Mac listened in with his scanner. Amelia was on the cordless.

  He heard ‘chat rooms.’ He heard ‘ten minutes.’ He heard ‘yearbook.’

  This was not good.

  He picked up a WiFi signal and connected to World Online.

  In room 616 of the Holiday Inn Lakeside, Nicky plugged his laptop into the ethernet port, got on World Online, created the chat room – PriceIsRight, he called it – and waited. Within a few minutes Amelia confirmed what he had suspected. She was very sharp. The screen showed:

  RAS has entered the room.

  ‘RAS’ must have been her husband’s default on-line nickname at World Online. STARR99 was Nicky’s.

  STARR99> Hi. U there?

  He waited a few seconds. Nothing. He typed:

  STARR99> Type your response . . . then hit Enter.

  RAS> I’n here . . .

  RAS> I’m, I mean . . . sorry

  STARR99> Have the yearbook?

  RAS> Yes. But are you going to tell me what this is all about?

  STARR99> I will. I promise. Go to page 154.

  RAS> Promise?

  STARR99> Yes. 154.

  RAS> Okay. hangf on.

  RAS> hang

  RAS> Okay. I’m there now.

  STARR99> Do you know the guy in the bottom row, second from the right?

  RAS> No. G. Daniel? No.

  At that moment Nicky decided he would tell Amelia the whole truth. Everything. Because, he thought, if the police thought he was guilty of these killings, it meant they weren’t looking for the real killer. And that meant that Amelia might be in danger.

  He couldn’t risk talking about it on the phone, but the chat room was safe, he imagined.

  He glanced at the upper right corner of the screen, the corner that lists who is in the room. RAS and STARR99. It was safe to talk here.

  But before he could even begin to type, there came two system messages in succession. Standard messages for chat rooms, but two messages that troubled Nicky.

  RAS has left the room.

  PRUFROCK has entered the room.

  This can’t be a coincidence, Nicky thought. Plus, he knew that you can’t change nicknames on the fly on World Online. You had to log off. He reached out.

  STARR99> Hi pruf

  It was a standard chat-room greeting. Nicky waited a full minute. Nothing. No response. Nicky glanced at the upper right-hand corner of the screen again and saw their two nicknames. RAS was definitely gone. PRUFROCK was still in the room.

  Then, with two words, the intruder responded:

  PRUFROCK> Walk away.

  STARR99> What do you mean?

  PRUFROCK> Walk away.

  STARR99> I’m not sure I know what you mean. Walk away from what?

  PRUFROCK> Walk away. Speak to no police officers. Not one.

  STARR99> Police?

  PRUFROCK> Or I will hurt you every day for the rest of your life.

  STARR99> Who is this???

  PRUFROCK> Okay. Then I’ll go. Maybe I’ll send you a postcard.

  STARR99> A postcard?

  PRUFROCK> I can mail it at any time. Remember that.

  STARR99> A postcard from where?

  There was a pause of nearly thirty seconds before Nicky saw a response.

  PRUFROCK> The front of the card will show a brilliant blue sky, a red brick building, green trees.

  PRUFROCK> And at the top . . .

  PRUFROCK> In festive yellow . . .

  RUFROCK> Greetings from Villa Corelli.

  PRUFROCK> Walk away, Nick.

  By the time Nicky reached 105th Street he was driving nearly seventy miles an hour.

  Jimmy Corelli’s face changed completely when Nicky put the ten one-hundred-dollar bills on the desk. In fact, his entire body suddenly assumed the posture of a friendly, drunken uncle, in spite of the fact that he had not five seconds earlier threatened to throw Nicky bodily into the street. Jimmy was the youngest of the brothers and still maintained a suite on the top floor of Villa Corelli, was still point man for any problems that would occur at the home. Nicky knew that if he made enough noise at the front desk, he would get Jimmy out of bed. He also knew what the sight of the cash would do to Jimmy Corelli’s demeanor. Jimmy could mess around with his grandfather’s account and the grand would never show up in the Corelli, Inc., ledger.

  The money disappeared from the desk in a motion almost too quick for the human eye to scan.

  Jimmy Corelli, clad in a ridiculous bright red paisley kimono and eel-skin slippers, then picked up the receiver from one of the three phones on the desk and punched a few numbers, gleefully throwing his considerable bulk around in the middle of the night, setting Nicky’s plan in motion.

  After Nicky watched them wheel his grandfather’s bed onto the elevator and then down the second-floor hallway, he found an empty room, where he flipped on the TV, scanned the channels. No all-points bulletin on him yet. No shots of his high-school senior picture. He turned off the TV and walked to the orderlies’ station at the end of the hall, where he found his first talisman of good luck. Sandy McCall was black, in his late thirties, lean and muscular, an ex-Marine and Desert Storm vet. And, best of all, he was on duty. He and Nicky had spent more than a few nights in the basement at Villa Corelli, playing poker with the other orderlies, swigging Kentucky bourbon. Sandy McCall made sure that Louie Stella always had plenty of blankets, plenty of ice water.

  ‘Sandy.’

  ‘Nicky!’ Sandy offered in a loud whisper; his trained, institutional, late-night voice.

  ‘How’s everything?’

  ‘You got it,’ Sandy said. ‘What’re you doing here in the wee? Louie all right?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s fine. But I need a favor from you,’ Nicky replied, slipping a hundred-dollar bill into Sandy’s palm as they shook hands. ‘Big time.’

  Sandy looked up and down the hallway, then glanced at his hand. He thrust the bill into his pocket. ‘Lay it out.’

&nb
sp; Twenty minutes later, as Nicky drove back into town in Sandy’s Impala, Sandy McCall slid a fresh nameplate into the door of room 220, Louie Stella’s new digs at Villa Corelli.

  The nameplate read: Henry K. Piunno.

  She came around the corner at six-fifteen, her makeup still in place. She looked like a kabuki actress in a miniskirt, leather jacket, and high heels. In the morning light, Nicky could see that the butterfly tattoo near her right eye was a vibrant yellow.

  Gumball colors, Nicky thought, crazily. Her skirt was red, her jacket a royal blue. She was very young and she was partial to gumball colors.

  Nicky, on the other hand, realized that when he stepped in front of her on the corner of St Clair and East Thirtieth Street, he must have looked like a wino – two-day beard, a big purple bruise where Frank Corso had punched him. Mickey Rourke in Barfly.

  But something registered in the girl’s eyes when she looked into his. Something that said. ‘I know who you are, I know what this is about, I had a feeling I would see you soon.’ All of that in a single second.

  Still, they played the street games as they knew them.

  ‘Hi,’ Nicky said. ‘Could I—’

  ‘Get lost, asshole. It’s late.’

  She skirted him, kept walking up St Clair. He drew up to her right side.

  ‘Actually, it’s really early,’ Nicky said, trying, and failing, to float some charm.

  Taffy stopped, grimaced. ‘Wow. Haven’t heard that one in about nine seconds. You think you’re the first to come up with that?’

  Nicky had to suppress a laugh. ‘You think you’re the first woman to call me an asshole?’

  A half smile. Partial victory.

  ‘I bet I’m not,’ Taffy said.

  ‘But I bet I’m the most desperate asshole to come up with that line, all things considered.’

  And consider him, Taffy did. But only for a few seconds before her resolve, and ice, broke. ‘Oh yeah? You’re in big trouble, then? A desperado of some sort?’

  ‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’

  She stopped, looked him up and down. ‘Okay . . . you look familiar. That’s the only reason I’m talking to you. Maybe we’ve met before. If you had roughed me up, I’d remember. So that puts you in the safe-guy category.’