“I do, Molly. It’s got to be. Nothing else makes much sense.”
“I hate how this makes Paradise look.”
Jesse nodded. “I do, too, but if Stan White and Roscoe Niles are right about how much the missing tape is worth, no one will really be focused on the murders or on Paradise. The tape and the money will be what everyone is talking about. And that may even help us catch this guy. It’s what he’ll be thinking about, too.”
“I guess.” Molly, like Nita Thompson, seemed less than sold. “But if it’s about that, why kill Curnutt? Why not let him just disappear?”
“This Hangman guy, whether he was the one to actually kill Curnutt or not, is trying to get as much attention as he can and he doesn’t seem to care what he has to do to get it.”
“What’s he going to do with the media attention? I don’t see the point.”
“The Hangman, if he’s really got the tape, is whetting bidders’ appetites and driving up the price.”
“What do you mean, ‘if he has the tape’?”
“So far, he hasn’t proved a thing. He hasn’t even really claimed to have the tape, not yet, but he will. He’s going to have to prove he has it, or why go through all of this? There’s already a trail of bodies. If he didn’t have the tape, he’d get as far away from the press and the cops as possible instead of waving at us and calling attention to himself.”
“And he thinks he’s going to get away with this?”
“Seems so. This isn’t being done on the spur of the moment, Molly. It was planned out, and my guess is that if Maude Cain hadn’t died, the whole world would already know about it. Once she died, it complicated everything. It upped the stakes for Curnutt and Bolton because it went from B&E and assault to felony murder. They—Curnutt, at least—probably tried to blackmail the man who hired him and got whacked for his troubles. The killer figured that since he had to get rid of Curnutt, he might as well make good use of his body.”
Molly didn’t like it. “That’s twisted.”
“And practical.”
“You think it might be Bolton behind it?”
“I don’t think so. There’s a reason his nickname is Hump.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s too stupid to kill.”
“True, but I spoke to Lundquist this morning. He tells me he’s checked with prison officials and that Curnutt and Bolton were close. That if one was going to screw the other, it would be Curnutt. No, Molly, the guy we’re dealing with is smart. Smarter than Hump Bolton, at least. Let’s hope he thinks he’s a lot smarter than he actually is.”
“Another criminal mastermind. I know your opinion on the subject.”
“Overconfidence on the bad guy’s part never hurts us.”
“Never, Jesse?” Molly asked, immediately regretting it.
Jesse stood, threw some money on the table, and walked away. When he was almost to the door, he turned back to his officer and old friend.
“Almost never, Molly. Almost never.”
58
Jesse pulled his Explorer into the faceless office park that was home to the studios of WBMB-FM. As confident as he was about what was going on in Paradise, he realized he had climbed out onto a ledge based on supposition and very few facts. There was little doubt that Mayor Walker and Nita Thompson, in spite of her recent friendly overtures, would happily watch him slip off that ledge. Although Roscoe had said the value of the master tape would be in the millions even before Stan White had an inkling The Hangman’s Sonnet might reappear, Jesse needed to double-check the little he did have to go on. There was something about White he just didn’t trust and the man was a little too self-interested for Jesse’s taste. After all, he was Terry Jester’s manager and had a vested interest in making this bash on Stiles Island into much more than a birthday party. The plan had been for Roscoe to be waiting outside the studio and for Jesse to take him out for a few drinks. Problem was, Niles was nowhere in sight. That wasn’t like Niles, especially when free drinks were on the line.
“Roscoe Niles,” Jesse said, enunciating carefully so that his phone dialed the right number.
“Stone?”
“Where are you? I’m downstairs.”
“I think you better park your car and come in. Bring an evidence bag and gloves with you?”
“What the—”
“Just do it, Jesse.”
Ten minutes later, Jesse was standing at the reception desk at WBMB-FM.
“I’ll call back and tell him you’re here,” said the girl at the desk.
She looked about fifteen years old but was probably a college kid. Then Jesse remembered the last conversation he’d had with Niles and how Roscoe claimed the owners of WBMB-FM were in the process of selling the station.
Niles appeared out of the shadows of the hallway, his big belly straining the worn fabric of his ancient Emerson, Lake, and Palmer T-shirt. Still, Jesse was impressed by how gracefully the fat man moved. He wasn’t exactly catlike, but he was athletic for a man his age and size.
“Come on back to my office.”
Jesse followed Niles down the hallway, a pair of latex gloves and an evidence bag in hand. They passed the studios and went into Roscoe’s cubbyhole of an office. Jesse was surprised at the sight of it. The last time he’d been in this office, its walls were covered in framed vintage posters, a guitar signed by Stevie Ray Vaughan, photos of a thinner, younger Roscoe Niles in his Marine uniform. The shelves of his bookcases full of records, CDs, knickknacks from a hundred concerts and appearances. But now the walls were bare, the shelves empty. Niles laughed, seeing the expression on Jesse’s face.
“I’m outta here next month,” he said.
“You were right? They sold?”
“I’m the Teacher, Jesse, man. The Teacher always knows best.”
“I have an acquaintance in town who’s going to be pretty upset you won’t be on the air anymore.”
Niles laughed again, joylessly. “Yeah, your friend and about fifteen other people.”
Jesse got lost in his own head for a second. What was Vinnie Morris to him?
“Yo, Jesse!” Roscoe Niles snapped his fingers.
“Yeah, sorry. So what’s all this about? Why do I need gloves and an evidence bag?”
“For this.”
Niles pulled an eight-by-twelve-inch brown envelope out of his top drawer and slid it across the desktop to Jesse. By then Jesse was already slipping into the gloves. As he was putting the gloves on, he noticed there was a computer-generated white label on the envelope. Printed on the label in black ink were Roscoe Niles’s name and the station’s address.
“What’s in it?”
Roscoe Niles smiled a crooked smile, one Jesse had trouble reading. There was something feral about it, something angry in it, too. Jesse guessed he understood the anger. Roscoe Niles had been a fixture on FM radio for decades and was now being shown the door. No one was going to give someone Roscoe’s age a job, not in this environment. Roscoe was a fellow alcoholic, and alcoholics didn’t deal very well with big changes in their lives, though big changes, negative ones in particular, opened the self-pity spigot and nothing gave an alcoholic carte blanche like a healthy dose of self-pity. Jesse was well familiar with the mechanics of how that worked.
“Hey, man, you mind if I have one while you do that?” Niles asked, pulling two glasses and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label out of his bottom drawer. “Want one?”
“No, you go ahead.” Jesse repeated his question. “What’s in the envelope?”
“A myth realized,” Niles said, pouring himself his usual half-glass of scotch.
“Uh-huh. C’mon, Roscoe.”
“I’m not yanking your chain, Jesse. I swear. You’ll see.”
Jesse flipped the envelope over, undid the two-pronged clasp, lifted up the edge of the flap with his pinkie, and reached his right thumb and i
ndex finger inside.
“Careful, man. It’s pretty old and fragile, though it’s in plastic.”
Jesse felt the corner of the plastic and carefully pulled it out of the envelope. What it was was a very yellowed, almost brown sheet of unlined paper in a thick, clear plastic folder. There were fifteen handwritten lines on the paper. The handwriting was a beautiful, flowing cursive. The line at the top of the page read: The Hangman’s Sonnet.
THE HANGMAN’S SONNET
By my own hand I have murdered love
And by so doing have thus murdered me.
Neither Devil below nor God above
Led me into my somber destiny.
My fair viper Jane May played well her part
For what she gave as love was a fiction.
Ice made nest where should have beaten her heart.
In lieu of her soul, a cold affliction.
So the rope and gallows are sturdy built
Sandbags dangling to counter my dead weight.
But I am troubled not by bloody guilt
Nor relive I Jane’s agony or fate.
In death’s black-lined womb I seek her grace.
The mirror has revealed my hangman’s face.
59
Jesse read it and reread it. He wasn’t much for poetry. He wasn’t even sure he knew what distinguished a sonnet from any other kind of poem, but there was something about the verse in front of him that hit a raw nerve. So many times in his career he’d heard the confessions of the guilty, of men who had brutally murdered their wives, girlfriends, or lovers. Men who inevitably blamed it on their victims. Still, he wasn’t sure what to make of the poem or his reaction. He’d worry about that later. For now, he slid the envelope and the poem into the evidence bag.
“There it is,” Niles said, gunning down his scotch. “The genuine article. The actual ‘Hangman’s’ fuckin’ ‘Sonnet.’ I never quite believed the myth about the poem. I guess I’m going to have to readjust my chronic cynicism.”
“What’s the myth?”
Niles shrugged, poured himself another. “Story goes that Terry Jester took a motorcycle trip out west after he went into his funk. He was in some trading post on an Indian rez in Wyoming and he came across this poem stuck between the pages of a horse soldier’s diary. The diary was in a different hand, so Jester knew it hadn’t been written by the soldier. Apparently, he went nuts over it and spent the rest of his time out west writing a song cycle inspired by the poem, imagining who wrote it, thinking about this Jane May woman, and contemplating how the poet killed her and why. Like I said, I always thought it was a crock, some story dreamed up by Stan White to market the album. I mean, he never released the text of the poem. All anyone ever knew was that it was written by a condemned man forgiving his executioner. Turns out that it’s way more complex than that.”
“What is it you don’t like about Stan White?”
“Ah, man, where to begin? We were pals once, but . . . I’d rather not relive the bad old days, not when I’ve got the unemployment line staring me in the face.” Roscoe took a big gulp of scotch. “Sure you don’t want one?”
Jesse refused. His next questions were the kinds cops were supposed to ask, not questions about myths or music. He asked about who had delivered the envelope. Somebody said a messenger dropped it at the reception desk. What did the messenger look like? The girl wasn’t at the desk and the guy who saw him barely noticed. The girl found it there when she got back from lunch. How many people had handled the envelope? The messenger, the girl, and me.
Niles leaned across the desk and looked Jesse in the eye. “Jesse, we’ve been friends a few years now. What the hell’s going on?”
“I’ll answer that, but we need to talk about something else first.”
“Shoot.”
“What if I were to tell you that I think the missing master tape is about to reappear?”
“Holy shit, man!” Roscoe stood up out of his chair, banging his knee against his desk. “Ow!” He bent over and rubbed his knee. “Are you making conversation, Jesse, or are you telling me that’s what this is about?”
Jesse didn’t answer him directly. “Last time I was here I asked you how much it would be worth and you said millions. That was then, two friends shooting the breeze. Now I’m asking for real. How much?”
Niles stopped rubbing his knee, rubbing his fleshy, gray-stubbled cheek instead.
“Five million. Six, maybe. Ten. Twenty. More. Depends.”
“That much?”
“Every time some putz finds an acetate or reel-to-reel of a Beatles song or performance, it goes for big money.”
“Jester isn’t the Beatles.”
“No, but the shroud of mystery surrounding Jester, the secretive recording of this album, the disappearance of the tape almost makes it better. Plus it’s Baby Boomer music. Baby Boomers hate new stuff, but they will flock to buy anything from the old days. They spend millions on Dylan box sets, Elvis box sets, even Monkees box sets, for chrissakes! Material from the old days sells like mad. It would be like some yahoo discovering an unknown van Gogh in his basement. There’d be a bidding war for it, no doubt. iTunes might snap it up for the exclusive rights or the legacy record labels might flex their tired old muscles. A private collector with billions might want it for his or her own. And you know what happens when there’s only one of a thing and more than one person wants it.”
“You know a reporter named Ed Selko?”
“Asshole at The Globe? Yeah, man, I know him. Started back in the day at Rolling Stone as an investigative reporter. Guy makes me look sober and you like a nun.”
“That explains it,” Jesse said to himself, but loud enough for Niles to hear.
“Explains what?”
“Never mind. And to answer your question, yes, I think the master tape is about to resurface.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Niles said, pouring himself a glass.
“You’ll drink to anything.”
“But this isn’t just anything, man. This is history. The music world has something to celebrate.”
“Not yet, Roscoe.”
Niles put his glass back down on his desk. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means we have to keep this under wraps for now. There’s been two murders committed in connection with this, and that’s what I’ve got to focus on.”
Niles held his right thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Man, I came this close to reading that damned sonnet on the air. Instead, I played a set of Jester tunes every hour. You can’t keep this thing quiet forever and, truth be told, if the new owners were keeping me on, I probably would’ve read it on-air. As it is, I didn’t want to give those fuckheads the satisfaction.”
“Don’t worry, Roscoe, it won’t be too much longer before the world knows,” Jesse said, removing the gloves from his hands. “It’s already taking on a life of its own.”
After confirming with the girl at the front desk and the people in the office that no one had gotten a good look at the messenger, Jesse headed to his next stop in Boston.
60
For the second time in a week, Jesse found himself in the parking lot of the bowling alley out of which Vinnie Morris ran his operation. Of course Vinnie’s name didn’t appear on the deed to the building or the corporation papers. His name didn’t appear on any of the buildings or businesses that he owned. It had been the same with Gino Fish. Any smart man knee-deep in organized crime made sure never to leave a paper trail. Vinnie’s favorite four-letter word was cash. It’s why he’d lasted as long as he had. There were other reasons, too, like doing the occasional favor for the cops. That was the reason for Jesse’s visit. This time, he’d called ahead. So when Jesse asked for Vinnie at the front desk, he didn’t get the usual I’m-too-stupid-to-breathe routine from the counterman.
“He’s waiting for you at the
bar,” the dull-eyed guy said, nodding toward the bar.
He hadn’t lied. Vinnie Morris was sitting at the bar, swirling a glass of ice cubes around with a splash of some amber alcohol or other.
“Stone.”
“Vinnie. What are you playing with?”
“Some flavored bourbon crap my liquor guy dropped off a sample of. Horrible stuff, but he tells me the kids like it. You want to try some?” Jesse shook his head at Morris. “I didn’t think so. Tony,” he said to the barman, “two Black Labels, rocks.”
Jesse thought about turning it down, but he didn’t think about it too long. It had been a hard day that wasn’t yet over. If this turned out to be the last stop of the night, which he hoped it wouldn’t be, he still had the drive back to Paradise to deal with. Vinnie had hinted to him over the phone that he might have some information for him, but like with everything else, Vinnie had been careful not to say too much over the phone.
“Cheers,” Vinnie said, raising his glass.
Jesse just nodded and drank. Sometimes scotch went down better than it did at other times. This was one of those times. It was magic, the way the chilled liquid burned at the back of his throat, how it warmed his whole body on the way down, and how it seemed to warm his face only when it reached his belly. It would have been so easy for him to have another and another and to lose himself, but no, that was his plight. That’s what no one else saw, not Molly or Tamara, not Suit, not anyone. Maybe only Dix knew. And what he knew was that because of the way Jesse was built, because of his self-containment, he couldn’t lose himself. That on the occasions he’d tried diving deep down into the bottle, like he had the other night, it never worked, and that the relief was only temporary and came at too high a price.
“So,” Jesse said, after the initial warmth had receded. “You mentioned you had something for me.”
“I said I might.”
“That’s what you said. You win.”
“This Bolton strunz you’re looking for.”
The Hangman's Sonnet Page 19