“Barry, I just want to ask the killer to turn himself in,” Fuqua said. “We will listen to everything he has to say because it is a well-known fact that there are two sides to every story . . .”
Swell, Tom Spellacy thought. You cut her in two? Fuck it. She had it coming. It’s a well-known fact that there are two sides to every story and her side isn’t worth a shit.
“You know, Fred, I never thought of it that way,” Barry Backer said. “I think you ought to transcribe that and the gang here at KFIM should run it every half-hour over the 50,000-watt listening area. What do you think about that?”
“That would be swell, Barry,” Fuqua said. “I’ll transcribe it any time of the day or night the gang here at KFIM sets it up.”
“You’re one reasonable guy, Fred,” Barry Backer said.
“And if I may, Barry,” Fuqua said, “I’d like to explain to the people in the 50,000-watt listening area just what the systems approach and the definite-pattern approach are.”
“Do it,” Barry Backer said. “Take all the time you want.” “Well, I have asked Lieutenant Spellacy and Lieutenant Crotty of the Major Crime Section to go over every report made so far on this case. I have also asked officers in every division to report any unusual occurrences that happened the night of the murder. Not just crimes, but disturbances. Accidents, speeding arrests, public drunkenness, narcotics violations—”
“Let me get this straight, Fred,” Barry Backer said. He had a pocket comb in his hand and while he talked he shaped his hair. “You use ... the systems approach ... to try and find a ... definite pattern.”
Fuqua could not take his eyes off Barry Backer’s comb. After a moment he said, “I couldn’t put it better myself, Barry.”
“Hey, that’s some terrific approach,” Barry Backer said. “But can you get down to specifics, Fred ... if it doesn’t get into a confidential area of your investigation, I mean.”
“Barry, we are asking charwomen to report to us if they are missing any bristle scrub brushes,” Fuqua said.
“That sounds like a long shot,” Barry Backer said.
“Homicide investigations are a series of long shots,” Fuqua said.
“You buy that, Tom?” Barry Backer said. He examined his hair in a pocket mirror.
“Yes.” The Green Hornet will be chipping in with his two cents’ worth soon, Tom Spellacy thought.
“The reason we do that, Barry, is because the victim’s body was scrubbed with a bristle brush,” Fuqua said.
“The things you guys have to think of,” Barry Backer said. He pulled strands of hair from the teeth of his comb. “Hey, gang, we’re in good hands, take it from Barry. This is one dedicated bunch of guys I got here in the studio.”
“And Barry, we’re asking hatcheck girls to report to us if they saw the victim at any time the week before the murder,” Fuqua said.
“Let me play detective for a minute,” Barry Backer said. “The reason you’re doing that is ... she had to tip, right?”
“Right,” Fuqua said.
“And someone had to give her the tip, right?” Barry Backer said. “A sugar-daddy type, maybe . . .”
“Right,” Fuqua said. He had a broad smile on his face.
“And that sugar-daddy type just might have been the guy who ...” Barry Backer said.
“Barry, you ought to be a detective in the Major Crime Section,” Fuqua said.
“Swell,” Tom Spellacy said.
“Let me ask you guys something,” Barry Backer said. But first he leaned toward the microphone and whispered, “Hey, gang, I feel like Dick Grayson, also known as Robin, the Boy Wonder.” To Fuqua he said, “Okay, Batman . . .”
Fuqua laughed. “It’s a pleasure to be here with you, Barry.”
“Swell,” Tom Spellacy said.
“Seriously, guys,” Barry Backer said, “let me try to add up what we got.” On a piece of paper he wrote in large letters, “HAMBURGER SIDE OF FRIES COFFEE BLACK SUGAR,” and held it up for the engineers in the control booth to see. “All the places she lived, we got to assume this chick was a transient, right?”
“Right,” Fuqua said.
“And she liked guys, right? That’s a given. She liked guys a lot. A whole lot.” He whispered into the microphone, “I don’t know how she missed me, gang, but she did.” He held up another piece of paper on which he had written, “chop chop.” To his guests he said, “And no one has ever come up with any of her clothes, positively speaking . . . unless Linda out there in Monterey Park hit on something with those personals, right?”
“Right,” Fuqua said.
“And she was tied up, we know that because of the burns on her wrists and ankles,” Barry Backer said. “Gang, that spells captive to me; how do you spell it?”
Fuqua said smoothly, “That’s exactly how I spelled it to the Major Crime Section, Barry . . .”
The only thing you spelled, Tom Spellacy thought, was c-h-i-e-f when you looked at yourself shaving this morning. The only other thing you said was get to the station a half-hour before the broadcast, because you can’t go to the bathroom while you’re on the air.
“Tom Spellacy, who do you think killed Lois?” Barry Backer asked.
If I knew who killed her, one place I wouldn’t be is here, Tom Spellacy said to himself.
“I’d like to answer that for Tom,” Fuqua said.
“Hey, Fred, I can’t say you hate air time,” Barry Backer said. “Shoot, buddy. You don’t mind do you, Tom?”
Fuqua did not seem to notice the barb. “First, I think I can say without reservation that the murderer is one of two things . . .”
“We’re all ears, buddy,” Barry Backer said.
“The murderer is either a one-time pickup,” Fuqua said, “or an individual who was acquainted with the victim and knew she would not be missed.”
“That’s narrowing it down,” Barry Backer said. The director in the control booth made a signal for thirty more seconds.
“I think we can also say without reservation,” Fuqua said, “that the crime was perpetrated in a permanent abode in a remote area.”
“Hey, now we’re getting somewhere, Fred,” Barry Backer said. “When you say ... permanent abode . . . you mean a . . . house, right?”
“Right, Barry,” Fuqua said. “Not a hotel or a motel or an apartment or a rooming house. A permanent abode.”
“Because in an apartment, someone would have heard something or seen something, right?” Barry Backer said.
“Right,” Fuqua said.
“And it had to be in a remote area for the same reason, right?” Barry Backer said. The director said ten seconds.
“I call it the remote-area approach,” Fuqua said.
“That’s a swell thing to call it,” Barry Backer said. “Hey, gang, we got to go to five minutes of up-to-the-minute KFIM news. Stay tuned to the next half-hour of ‘Homicide Hotline’ with our special guests Fred Fuqua and Tom Spellacy, a couple of heavyweights. See you in five. Where’s my fucking coffee?”
Fuqua blanched, then when he saw Barry Backer’s smile realized they were no longer on the air. A young woman came into the studio and filled Barry Backer’s cup. He ran his hand up the inside of her leg until it disappeared into her skirt. A dreamy expression came over the girl’s face. She did not offer coffee to either Fuqua or Tom Spellacy.
“The next half-hour,” Barry Backer said, “let’s talk about the guy who did it.”
Fuqua’s eyes were riveted on Backer’s hand. “How do you know it’s a guy?” Tom Spellacy said finally.
Barry Backer removed his hand from the girl’s skirt and picked up his coffee cup. It was stenciled with the initials B.B. and a microphone in the shape of a woman’s breast. “You’re trying to tell me it’s a dyke?”
“I’m trying to tell you it’s a possibility,” Tom Spellacy said. “We haven’t found any clothes, we haven’t found any baggage, we haven’t found any cosmetics. She dropped out of sight two weeks before she was killed. She had t
o be staying somewhere. Somewhere where she could find clothes and cosmetics.”
“Another woman,” Barry Backer said.
“I always thought she was butch,” the girl said.
“Go get some sugar,” Barry Backer told the girl. She sighed petulantly and flounced out of the studio. “You’re going to say that on the air, she was lez?”
“No, he’s not going to say that,” Fuqua said quickly.
“Why not?” Tom Spellacy said.
“Because I’m doing the Cardinal’s fucking mass,” Barry Backer said. “Because it’s a family station. Because your brother does The Rosary Hour,’ that’s what kind of station it is. Because I got the highest Hooper in my time period and I didn’t get it talking about a bunch of dykes.”
Tom Spellacy was beginning to enjoy himself for the first time all morning. “We could check all the dyke doctors.”
“Look, I don’t give a shit if she licked every snatch in town.” Barry Backer’s voice was still rising. “Just don’t say it on my show.”
“And the dyke butchers,” Tom Spellacy said. “That’d explain how she got cut up so neat.”
“You’re dangerous is what you are,” Barry Backer said. “I let you on the air with that, I’ll be back sweeping out the studio at a 100-watter in Ponca City, Oklahoma, with Holly there.”
Fuqua twisted in his chair and stared at Tom Spellacy. “Barry’s doing a hell of a job and you’re trying to fuck him up.”
Tom Spellacy shook his head. “No, I just want to get things straight. What we’re looking for is a family killer for a family station, right?”
“Cut the smart crap,” Barry Backer said. “I make the jokes on this show.”
The joke on this show, Tom Spellacy thought, is the way Fuqua’s going to become chief. With Barry Backer and Dan Campion as his two leading supporters.
“You got something else we could fill up the time with?” Barry Backer asked Fuqua. “Besides a lot of dirty talk about lezees.”
Fuqua glared at Tom Spellacy. “We could use the green cards, Barry.”
“What green cards?” Tom Spellacy said sharply.
“It’s a new clue.” Fuqua ignored Tom Spellacy and addressed his answer to Backer. “Hasn’t been in the papers yet.”
“And you’ve been sitting on it?” Tom Spellacy said. “Should I tell the gang downtown to tune in? Or let them read it in the papers? Maybe Dan Campion can fill them in.”
“I don’t need your cheap shit, Spellacy,” Fuqua said. “And why aren’t you wearing your tiepin?”
Barry Backer banged his cup down on the table, splashing coffee all over himself. “What the fuck are you talking about? I got a show going back live in another two minutes, for Chrissake, and you’re talking about tiepins and green cards. Why not blue cards, for Chrissake? Mauve cards. What the fuck are green cards?”
“They’re the work papers Mexicans need to get across the border, Barry,” Fuqua said.
“A simple question,” Barry Backer said. He was trying to be calm and reasonable. “And maybe you can answer it in the next ninety seconds before we go back live.” He took a deep breath. “There was this cunt cut in two, right? Now all of a sudden, I find myself up to my ass in lezees and Mexicans. No habla Espanol. No comprende what the Mexicans got to do with this broad.”
“The cards were in her suitcase, Barry,” Fuqua said.
“Where?” Tom Spellacy said.
“At the railroad station.”
“I checked baggage claim myself.”
“Well, you did a lousy job,” Fuqua said. “It was in Lost and Found. The bag fell off a shelf this morning and cracked open. The cards were in it and some letters, clothes . . .”
“Sixty seconds, guys,” Barry Backer said, checking the studio clock.
“Sixteen thousand green cards,” Fuqua said. “All forged. Not a bad job, but you find 16,000 cards, you got to figure forgery.”
“What do they go for, forged?” Barry Backer kept his eye on the clock.
“What the traffic will bear,” Tom Spellacy said. Forged green cards. Where had he heard them mentioned. “Ten dollars, twenty, maybe more, you don’t flood the market with them down south.”
“In other words, there’s a couple of hundred grand in that suitcase,” Barry Backer said. “How did she get it?”
“She could’ve been a courier,” Tom Spellacy said. “She had nice tits. They check the tits, not the bag at the border.”
“Then she stiffed somebody,” Barry Backer said.
“Or maybe she just lost the bag,” Fuqua said.
“Somebody stood to make a killing,” Barry Backer said. “And maybe that somebody knocked her off, when that dumb broad decided to pull a fast one . . .”
“We’ll find that somebody, Barry,” Fuqua said.
“Ten seconds,” the director said from the control booth.
Barry Backer could hardly contain himself. “Nobody knows this, right?”
“Right, Barry,” Fuqua said. “You’re going to break it first.”
Suddenly Tom Spellacy started to laugh. Now it came back to him. Turd Turner. If. If. If. He must be having a good laugh someplace, Turd, telling me about the green cards.
“What’s so funny, Spellacy?” Fuqua demanded.
“Nothing, Captain.”
“. . . four, three, two, one,” the director said.
“Hi, gang,” Barry Backer said. “Backer’s back, and clean the wax out of your ears, because you got some heavy listening coming your way the next half-hour ...”
Twenty-two
On Thursday Mary Margaret Spellacy arrived on the 2:31 bus from Camarillo. Tom Spellacy met her at the Greyhound Terminal, picked up her suitcase, kissed her on the cheek and remarked on how well she looked. She wore a dress she had bought with clothing stamps in 1943, her hair was bobbed and she had taken to wearing rimless glasses. Her face was pleasant and unlined, as if it had been sculpted from a loaf of damp bread, and her square, somewhat squashed figure looked, as always, like a cake about to fall. Mary Margaret said that Tom looked peaked. They drove to the house in the Valley, where Mary Margaret proceeded to open all the windows, air the linen, change the beds, vacuum the living room, clean the stove, rinse out the toilets, do the laundry and dust the statue of the Infant of Prague. She never mentioned that the house seemed scarcely lived in. That evening in honor of her homecoming and at her request Tom Spellacy spent three minutes on top of his wife. Friday morning he drove her to the Safeway where she bought eggs, bacon, milk, butter, coffee, sugar, oil, vinegar, bread, ketchup, mustard, a pint jar of mayonnaise, a leg of lamb, two pounds of ground round, three pieces of haddock, watermelon, sweet corn, gelatin, marshmallows, carrots, a cucumber, spinach, a package of Ivory Snow, six bars of Cashmere Bouquet and a box of Oxydol. Friday evening Tom Spellacy said he had to work late. He worked through the night watch and into the lobster trick and by the time he returned home shortly before dawn Saturday he knew the name of Lois Fazenda’s killer. He did not entrust this information to anyone. Saturday night he also worked late. On Sunday Desmond Spellacy arrived for dinner.
“You remember my pa, Monsignor,” Mary Margaret Spellacy said as she dished out the vegetables. “Mister Maher, you always called him. Eugene Maher is what his name was, but everyone called him Mister Maher. Except Monsignor Shea over to Saint Anatole’s. My pa used to take the collection at the ten and every Sunday the monsignor would say, ‘How’d we do this morning, Eugene?’ And my pa would always tell him. You never kept anything back from Monsignor Shea. ‘Shake the basket at them, Eugene,’ if they wasn’t big enough, the collections. He’d send my pa back up again if they wasn’t big enough. That’s how he got the job at the ten, my pa. The monsignor told Owen Curry to go up one Sunday and Owen was too embarrassed, and the monsignor said, That’s the last time you’ll ever take up a collection in this parish, Owen Curry.’ Loud, you know, so that everyone at the ten could hear. ‘Eugene Maher, take up the collection again.’ And so there was my
pa every Sunday at the ten, shaking the basket to see if there was anything but coins in it. Nickels, dimes and quarters, you know. And if that’s all he heard, the jingling of coins, back up he’d go. The center aisle first, so everyone could see him. Then the side aisles. He did a grand job at the ten, my pa. Mr. Maher, he was a bookkeeper, you know. At the Water Company. He had grand penmanship. The Palmer method is what he used. Palmer penmanship it was called. It’s a grand asset, good penmanship, if you’re going to be a bookkeeper, and that’s a well-known fact. The Italians don’t have good penmanship. It’s all those vowels their names end in, I think. It’s hard to have good penmanship when you’re making vowels all the time, A, E, I, O, U.”
Desmond Spellacy nodded.
“And sometimes y,” Mary Margaret Spellacy said. “Like in pygmy. There’s no vowels in a word like pgymy, so they use y. There’s a lot of short Italians they could call pygmies if they wanted to . . .”
Tom Spellacy stifled a cough for fear it would interrupt Mary Margaret’s monologue. He did not want her to address her conversation to him. She’s nuttier than the day she went in, he thought. a, e, I, o, u. And sometimes y. Des looks like he’s been hit on the head with a hammer. He wasn’t bargaining on an Italian pygmy, I bet.
“. . . cancer of the rectum is what she had,” Mary Margaret Spellacy said. The segue from short Italians to a malignant rectum had escaped Tom Spellacy. Nor was he about to ask who was so afflicted. He picked up the rhythm of Des’s nodding and in perfect synch began to bob his head up and down vigorously. “When she came out from under the ether, she said she was going to offer it up. She had that little bag, you know, which is what you get with cancer of the rectum. I don’t know if that would be such a grand thing to offer up, the little bag. Although you offer up what you have, I suppose. And never a complaint out of her. I remember when the doctor said he was going to take out the stitches the following Sunday. ‘Goody, goody,’ she said, Trinity Sunday . . .’”
Tom Spellacy tuned her out again. An occasional nod was all that Mary Margaret would need to make her think he was still listening. It was funny how things turned out sometimes. Fuqua and Mary Margaret. In a way, they were responsible for him putting it all together. The last two people in the world, he would have thought.
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