Name Games

by Michael Craft

  Spotting us at the far end of the hall, he shrugged a gesture of apology for his tardiness, unable (or unwilling) to extricate himself from the little throng of admirers. “Oh la la,” he singsonged to them, “I am late, my friends. Truly, I must take my leave,” at last shooing the crowd aside and crossing the room to meet us.

  “Morning, Majesty,” I told him wryly, extending my hand.

  “Yes, Mark? Good morning?” he said, pretending to be confused by my greeting. He shook my hand, then Pierce’s, telling him, “Do forgive my late arrival. I hope you did not begin to suspect that I had”—he paused, searching for the phrase—“skipped town.” He chortled.

  Grace cast both Pierce and me a visual jab, shaming us for the suspicion that Bruno had so colloquially nailed.

  Getting into his cop mode, Pierce replied flatly, “We’ve got a murder on our hands, Bruno. It’s our job to be suspicious.” His serious tone effectively quelled any instincts to keep our conversation lighthearted.

  Grace seemed irked by this, as if Bruno—a foreign visitor, her guest—were being treated rudely. She told Pierce, “I can tell that you gentlemen would prefer to be alone. Would you like to use the old office?”

  “Thank you, Grace. That might be best.”

  Wordlessly, Grace led us to a back corner of the exhibit space, where a door opened into the bygone drugstore’s office. A small, windowless room, it was clean but barren, containing only a card table and a few folding chairs, probably used as a lunchroom by the exhibitors. The lighting was too bright, the walls too white. Had the furniture been heavier, the setting could have passed for a police interrogation room in some forties-vintage gangster B movie. This imagery did not escape Bruno (had he seen a lot of old American films?), for his features dropped and he hesitated in the doorway before gingerly proceeding in, approaching one of the chairs as if on tiptoe. Grace excused herself, closing the door behind her with a hearty thud (I don’t think she meant to slam it—perhaps the jamb had warped), which made both Bruno and me jump. But Pierce was cool, suggesting, “Let’s all sit down.”

  Without carpet or drapes or upholstery to soften the room’s harsh acoustics, our metal chairs squeaked and scraped grimly as we settled around the table. It was a challenge for Bruno to perch his corpulence on the banged-up chair’s perforated seat. He squirmed to cross his legs, attempting an air of nonchalance, but the darting of his eyes revealed apprehension as well as physical discomfort.

  Pierce flipped open a folder and clicked his ballpoint. I readied both my steno pad and my Montblanc, but did not uncap the pen, recalling Pierce’s admonition that this meeting was off-the-record. Bruno, mimicking our actions but unsure of his purpose, riffled through the pages of his shabby notebook, marking one of them with his chewed pencil.

  Pierce calmly reviewed his notes, saying nothing as he read. I waited, as this was Pierce’s meeting—anything I might say would arise from my reporter’s instincts and could possibly run contrary to police procedure. But Bruno fidgeted, finding the lull unbearable. He broke the silence, asking, “Am I to be arrested? Shall I procure the services of an advocate, or perhaps phone the consul general? He is—where, Chicago?”

  He had punched precisely the hot button Pierce hoped to avoid—the prospect of a diplomatic incident. “Of course not.” Pierce gave Bruno a comforting smile, then hesitated, explaining, “Of course I presume your innocence in the matter of Carrol Cantrell’s murder, and we do not arrest the innocent. But because your rivalry with the victim was well known, it is my duty to question you about the possibility of your involvement with the crime. If you have any misgivings about how to answer these questions, or about the future consequences of your answers, then you would be well advised to have a lawyer present, which is your right.” Pierce skirted the issue of the consulate entirely, concluding, “Would you care to postpone this interview until you’ve secured representation by an attorney?”

  Under the circumstances, I certainly would have. But Bruno surprised both of us. His manner turned suddenly calm as he answered, “That will not be necessary, as I have nothing to hide. Let us proceed.”

  Pierce and I glanced at each other as he made note of Bruno’s decision. Was Bruno, our prime suspect, in fact innocent—and sufficiently confident to risk self-representation? Or was he bluffing, suspecting that his foreign citizenship would keep Pierce’s investigation at arm’s length, at least long enough for Bruno to weigh his next move, which could take him out of the country? Tough call.

  Pierce began, “I’m sure, Mr. Hérisson, that you share the sadness felt by everyone else in Dumont regarding Mr. Cantrell’s tragic and untimely death.”

  Bruno eyed him skeptically. “You have made this observation as a statement, Sheriff Pierce, but I sense that you have posed it as a question. Is it your intent to ask me how I ‘feel’ about the murder?”

  “Actually,” Pierce admitted, “yes.”

  Bruno responded with one of those characteristically French isn’t-it-obvious shrugs. “Murder is wrong, and one must mourn the victim. Cantrell and I were not good friends, as you know. I cannot even say that I liked the man—but he did not deserve the garrote.”

  “I understand that you’ve developed plans to open”—Pierce checked his notes—“a Los Angeles miniatures museum and showroom that would go into direct competition with Cantrell’s establishment, the Hall of Miniatures.”

  “Competition is the American way, no?”

  “Yes,” said Pierce, allowing himself a laugh, as did I, “but some people might get the idea that Cantrell’s death works to your professional advantage.”

  Again that shrug. “Indeed it does. I do not deny it—Cantrell’s misfortune comes as a great blessing to me. Does that aspect of this tragedy please me? But of course!” He leaned back to assume a self-satisfied pose, but the rickety chair would not cooperate, and Bruno almost lost his balance. Heaving himself forward again, he barely managed to avoid toppling. The image of the chair’s near collapse, which would have landed Bruno on his ass, legs wagging, lent a note of absurd humor to the dry dialogue, and I suppressed a nascent laugh.

  With laudable discretion, Pierce pretended not to notice Bruno’s mismove, focusing instead on his words. “What we’ve established, then, Mr. Hérisson, is this: You and Mr. Cantrell were professional rivals, and his demise has proved advantageous to you. Some might conclude that you had sufficient motive for murder. Further, Mr. Cantrell was probably strangled to death, possibly with a silk scarf that was found at the crime scene. He was a tall and able-bodied man, and it would take someone of your size, Mr. Hérisson, to subdue him. What’s more, you have often been seen wearing a scarf much like the one found on the premises. In other words, some might conclude that you had sufficient means for murder…”

  I realized, as Pierce spoke of the scarf, that Bruno was not wearing the patterned gold cravat today; it was the first time I’d seen him with a bare neck. Surely this detail was as evident to Pierce as it was to me, for he casually made note of something while speaking. I expected Bruno to react nervously to Pierce’s mention of the scarf—perhaps he would fuss with his shirt collar or rub his chin in an attempt to conceal his neck—but he made no move at all, letting the comment pass. Indeed, there was almost a smugness to his expression, as if he knew exactly where Pierce’s discourse was leading.

  Pierce continued, “You may have had a motive to want Cantrell dead, and you may have had the means to kill him, but—”

  “But,” Bruno interrupted, concluding the thought, “I could not have committed the crime if I was not here to do it.” He crossed his arms.

  “Correct, of course. So it’s vitally important that we establish—I’m not sure if you know the word—a firm alibi.”

  Bruno nodded. “Yes, it is the same in French, alibi,” he repeated the word, but pronounced it with a soft a and with e sounds instead of i’s.

  Pierce again referred to his notes. “You told several people last week that you planned to visit Milwauke
e over the weekend, leaving Dumont by car early Saturday and returning late Sunday.”

  “Precisely,” said Bruno, flipping both hands in the air, as if that settled the matter. “Cantrell was murdered, I understand, early yesterday morning, and you witnessed my return to Dumont late last night.”

  “But can you prove you were not in Dumont at the time of the murder?”

  Bruno puffed himself up. “Do you call me a liar?”

  “Certainly not. But someone will eventually be charged with this murder. Though it is not incumbent upon you to prove innocence—it’s the responsibility of the state to prove guilt—a case could never be brought against you or anyone else who could demonstrate up front that he’d had no opportunity to commit the crime.”

  “I see,” Bruno said in a conciliatory tone that served as apology for his brief show of indignation. With eyes cast toward the ceiling, he whirled a hand, recalling, “I left Dumont early Saturday, perhaps eight o’clock, arriving in Milwaukee well before noon. I could not yet check into my hotel there, the Pfister, because the room was not yet ready. So I spent some time downtown, took lunch, and returned to the hotel after one. It was then that I registered, as I am sure the hotel records will verify. That afternoon, I napped in my room and also phoned friends whom I planned to see that evening—that was the purpose of my visit. Several well-known miniatures artisans had arrived in Milwaukee and were staying in the city prior to the convention’s opening in Dumont. I wanted to meet with them in order to present my proposal regarding exclusive representation in this country by the Petite Galerie Hérisson. We met that night for dinner, and any of these colleagues will be able to verify that I was there, in Milwaukee, as I have claimed. My mission was a complete success, and I returned with signed contracts granting me exclusivity.”

  Pierce was recording details of this story in his notebook. He looked up to ask Bruno, “And Sunday morning?”

  “What about it?”

  With a tinge of exasperation, Pierce explained, “We can vouch for your whereabouts on Saturday afternoon and evening, but the period we need to nail down is Sunday morning, the time of the murder.”

  “I was asleep,” Bruno told him, as if the answer should be self-evident. “I arose late, then left the hotel just before noon.”

  “Can you remember who you spoke to at the desk when you checked out?”

  Now it was Bruno who sounded exasperated. “I spoke to no one. One may simply sign a card and leave it in the room with the key.”

  “Did you order room service that morning—or speak to a maid in the hall?”

  “No, I simply left. Had I known that this action would be deemed culpable, I would have arranged to have witnesses.” He sniffed.

  Pierce reminded him, “You left the hotel around noon, but you didn’t arrive back in Dumont until after midnight. That’s twelve hours, and the drive takes about three. What did you do with the rest of the day?”

  “I enjoyed the city—there was a festival at the shore of the lake. I saw thousands of people, and they saw me, but there was no one I knew, no one who could swear I was there.”

  “You must have parked your car somewhere. Do you have a stub from the lot?”

  Bruno thought. “I am not certain. I can check my things.”

  “Good,” said Pierce, underscoring a word on his pad, “try to find it—or anything that places you in downtown Milwaukee during the day yesterday.”

  Bruno nodded, making a note of his own.

  There was a moment’s silence before Pierce continued, “It would be useful, Mr. Hérisson, if you could recall anything distinctive or peculiar about your trip, anything that we could independently verify that would help prove where you were over the weekend. Does any incident spring to mind?”

  “No…” He shook his head gently, his brow furrowed in thought. Then he froze momentarily as something occurred to him. He looked Pierce in the eye, telling him tentatively, “There was…the dog.”

  Pierce looked at me, then back at Bruno. “Yes? What dog?”

  “A large dog, a brown dog, the breed sometimes used by police.”

  I suggested, “A German shepherd?”

  “Yes, Mark,” said Bruno, “exactly. Shortly after I left town on Saturday, I drove onto the highway, going south. It was still quite early, and I was not quite awake, and my thoughts were perhaps not so much on the road as on my mission. I had driven no more than a mile from the edge of town, when a dog, a German shepherd, appeared on the roadway, perhaps chasing a small animal—a rabbit? Seeing the dog just in time, I turned the car and managed not to hit it. But behind me there was another car, an odd car like a Jeep, that had not seen the dog because I was in front.”

  Bruno paused, mopping his brow, agitated by the recollection. “Watching through my mirror, I then saw the Jeep hit the dog, which was pushed into the air before falling by the roadside. It disappeared into the, uh…trench, the ditch.”

  Neither Pierce nor I said a word, silenced by Bruno’s upsetting story. With sticky mouth, he continued, “I thought to turn back, but I noticed that the Jeep had already stopped, and I was certain that the poor dog was beyond helping. So I drove on, trying to shake the unfortunate incident from my mind. When I drove home last night, I slowed my car there, wondering what I might see, but of course it was too dark.”

  Pierce asked, “Can you be more specific as to where this happened?”

  Bruno nodded without hesitation—the scene was apparently still vivid to him. “At the edge of town, there are a few shops on the highway. Further south, on the right, there is a farm—there are many after that, but this is the first one. In a field, beyond the barn, there is a moulin à vent”—he whirled a hand in the air, searching for the word—“a windmill. At the point where the road comes closest to the mill, that is where the poor dog flew into the ditch.”

  The story, while touchingly told, did nothing to confirm that Bruno had not killed Carrol, but it revealed a quiet facet of the man that neither Pierce nor I had yet seen.

  “Thank you, Mr. Hérisson,” Pierce told him. “If you need to be going, feel free. And do see if you can locate a parking stub for me.” Pierce smiled, rose, and shook Bruno’s hand.

  Rising, Bruno told him, “Thank you, Sheriff Pierce. I shall search for this evidence.” Bruno turned to me. “Good day, Mark.”

  I rose to shake his hand, and without further discussion, he left the room.

  Pierce glanced over his notes in silence for a moment.

  Closing his file, he told me, “Let’s find that dog.”

  Since the incident had occurred on the outskirts of Dumont, nowhere near our downtown offices, we decided to ride together in my car, which was bigger and more comfortable than Pierce’s. From Bruno’s description of the area, Pierce knew exactly where to look.

  Still something of a newcomer to Dumont, I needed directions. “South on the highway, right?”

  Pierce nodded at the turn. “Just as if you were hopping on the interstate toward Chicago.” I’d done that often enough.

  We weren’t going far, but the trip gave us a few minutes to recap the meeting with Bruno. “Do you still consider him a suspect?” I asked.

  “You bet.” Pierce turned in his seat to face me as I drove. “Bruno’s trip to Milwaukee sounds almost as if it was invented to give him an alibi. The problem with his story, of course, is that he can’t account for the critical hours when Cantrell was killed. Since there’s no clear record of when he checked out of the Pfister, he could have left Milwaukee at, say, six yesterday morning, arriving back in Dumont by nine. That would put him at the crime scene at the time of the murder. Then he could have simply left town again, hanging out somewhere—even Milwaukee—till his return at midnight.”

  My eyes were on the road, but my mind was absorbed by the possibilities raised by Pierce. I added a theory of my own: “Even if Bruno is able to produce some evidence that he was in Milwaukee when Cantrell died, he could have arranged for some third party to do the di
rty work during his planned, well-announced absence.”

  “That would fit,” agreed Pierce, turning his own gaze back to the road. Thinking aloud, he added, “Since Bruno is such a conspicuous figure, he’d have a tough time sneaking into and out of town unnoticed, especially on a morning when everyone presumed he was in Milwaukee. If in fact Bruno was savvy enough—or sinister enough, or stupid enough—to put a hit on Cantrell, it should be easy to trace the arrangements. After all, this guy’s milieu is dollhouses, not organized crime.”

  We shared a laugh at the image conjured by Pierce’s words: Bruno squeezing into a phone booth with a satchel of loot, placing a clandestine call, lamely disguising his voice but not his accent as he whispers through a silk scarf wrapped over the receiver. It was absurd. And yet, it was a workable theory.

  Something had been troubling me. “I’m curious—what are we doing out here? The Pfister’s records can easily verify whether Bruno was in Milwaukee on Saturday, as claimed. But his story about the dog being hit that morning, whether true or false, does nothing to prove that he was in Milwaukee on Sunday morning. So why check out the dog story?”

  “Because,” Pierce stated simply, “if there’s no dead dog, Bruno lied to us.”

  “Aha.”

  We had passed the city limits and traveled into the sparser environs of Dumont County, along the highway that led to the interstate, an area ripe for development. Under consideration for annexation to the city, this stretch of land was the subject of the study just completed by the County Plan Commission. Not far ahead, scattered on either side of the road, were the “few shops” that had been noted by Bruno. These were in fact the adult bookstores (i.e., porn shops) that so nettled certain factions within the community—including fundamentalists of every stripe, feminists like Miriam Westerman, and politicians like Harley Kaiser.

  Even on an overcast Monday morning, the porn shops were open, mongering their selection of videos, magazines, peep shows, and novelties to motorists who had hopped off the interstate, few from the town itself. The stores themselves were windowless, spartan structures converted from a mechanic’s garage, a long-defunct road-house, a barn or two. Helium balloons and wheeled marquees lured drivers from the highway with promises of SEX TOYS FOR HIM AND HER! and TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR VIDEO ARCADE! and EXOTIC LINGERIE FANTASIES! The largest of these emporiums, Star-Spangled Video, one of the defendants named in the impending obscenity trial, was located in a barn painted pink. A banner across its entire width hyped the latest in sizzling CD-ROMs. I wondered aloud, “When did smut go high-tech?”