“But he works as a specialist, or has worked as a specialist with film development.”
“Workhorse stuff in this arena. He was no photographer, and certainly no writer/director.”
“So he failed to complete your course?”
“Dropped out, at my urging, you see. He and I both knew he was heading straight for an F. I do remember one strange thing he told me once, but I thought it a mere affectation, so I paid it little attention.”
“Until now?” asked Parry. “What strange thing did he tell you?” Said he had been the first young person ever to disrobe and show a poem emblazoned on his back as so many do now in the pubs on Second Street; said he started the trend in a South Street pub and coffeehouse called Charlie's or Charles's Manse or something of the sort.”
“That clinches it,” said Sturtevante. “He's got to be our man.”
Goldfarb looked stricken. “Do you actually think him capable of murdering people?”
“Did you believe him? About his starting this fad in the coffeehouses and pubs?” asked Jessica, startled at this news.
“I chalked it up to bravado, talk, you know.”
“And that's the last you saw of him?” asked Sturtevante, her eyes locked onto the professor.
“Well, yes, we had no further reason for contact.”
“Thanks for your help, Professor Goldfarb. I think we've got all we came for.”
“I'm sorry I could be of no more help,” finished the pompous little man before disappearing through the door.
“Little weasel,” said Sturtevante in his wake.
A quick check in the phone book showed no Charlie's or Charles's Manse, but there was a listing for Charlemagne's. The trio of detectives headed directly for the coffeehouse, the oldest in the area, according to its sign. Tucked away on a dead-end street off Second, it was out of the way of the normal flow past such places as Starbucks.
It had not been overlooked in the police sweep of the coffeehouses, but it had produced no leads, and so, like the others, it had ceased to be of interest, until now. When they got to the door, Sturtevante begged off, telling the others to work the place. 'Two detectives are unwanted company,” she said, “three's a police action.” But I was going to suggest a bite to eat, Leanne, at Sitale's,” Parry said.
“Not for me.”
Parry protested. “A late-afternoon lunch/dinner before rendezvousing with Desinor and Vladoc back at headquarters. Come on, you haven't eaten all day.”
She didn't go into any details but claimed she had an urgent private matter to deal with. “Something I must take care of.”
Jessica imagined it had something to do with her broken relationship with Donatella Leare.
At Charlemagne's they learned very little. No one working the day shift had any recollection of Gordonn, and when they flashed his photo, hastily taken by the detectives who'd been watching the man and forwarded to them, everyone in the establishment drew a blank. Either that or they were good actors. They weren't particularly interested in cooperating with authorities. This much was clear.
Jessica and Parry left feeling unhappy with the continued lack of results, cheering each other with the fact that Goldfarb could be called in to testify to what Gordonn had said to him about starting the back-poetry fad. “Another nail in his coffin,” Parry, using his favorite figure of speech, commented.
Parry located a small Italian restaurant in the heart of Philadelphia, a place that had become his favorite among the downtown eateries.
The restaurant turned out to be splendid, the dishes authentic old-world cuisine. Over wine and food, James Parry opened up to Jessica, telling her how he had lost his post in Hawaii, and how much it had devastated him. “It was all a lot of hogwash, but hogwash that had been accumulating since… well, before I met you.”
“Hogwash in the FBI has a way of accumulating to the point where you find yourself drowning in it,” she replied, commiserating with his situation. “If I had a dime for every time some BS-stuffed official in the ranks came into my lab and made demands, well… go on, Jim.”
“It was based on my not following proper procedure during just such a case as we have today.”
“Really?”
“A murder conviction on a mobster had been thrown out of court, and the resulting fallout rained down on me. It had been a case the Bureau had been building for years.”
“So they needed a scapegoat.”
“In the islands it's known as a sacrificial pig. You know how they like to roast pigs in Hawaii.”
“Funny, Jim, but I'm sorry for what happened to you.”
“I'll be a damned sight more careful in the future, and that's got to be the case with Gordonn.”
“Are you suggesting that we can only arrest him with the deadly pen in his hand?”
“Something like that, yes. If we want an airtight case against the freak.”
“God, I wish we'd had more time at his place to locate his stash of photos of the victims, assuming he had any- something beyond his collection of news clips of his parents' deaths.”
“Even if we'd found such evidence, if you'd walked out of there with them, they would have been inadmissible in a court of law. Besides, we couldn't disturb the place. Like I said before, if Gordonn caught on… I mean if he somehow figured out that we were in his pad, he'd know it's bugged. We've got to get him to incriminate himself in one fashion or another.”
“All right,” she said, relenting, “but I still wonder if we won't both regret the decisions we made back there at his place.”
“Are you referring to Sturtevante? Has she a hidden agenda?” Something like that. She's kinda closed off, or hadn't you noticed?”
“Holds her cards close to her chest, yeah,” he agreed.
“Do you trust her, Jim?”
“I do, and you can as well.”
“Fine… good to hear it.”
“Does that mean you trust me, too?”
“I trust that you're at my back.”
“Yeah… you can bank on that, Jess.”
“I haven't forgotten how you saved my life in the Cayman Islands,” she told him.
He stabbed at his fettuccini. “We'd best get out of here and to that meeting with Vladoc and Desinor. See if they've come up with anything useful on Gordonn.”
Sturtevante was late for the meeting. “Gordonn is on the prowl, heading down Second Street as we speak,” she told them as she entered the meeting room. “Surveillance is on him, but I think we ought to get out in the field.”
“I want to know what Dr. Vladoc and Dr. Desinor have to say first,” Parry told her.
Jessica remained silent. Vladoc, who had been speaking when Leanne arrived, picked up where he had left off.
“Further investigation into Gordonn's past and parents reveals much to us,” he declared, twirling his glasses as he spoke. “Dr. Desinor has unearthed all the local newspaper articles from the various papers, including those she found at the Philadelphia Inquirer's, microfiche library.”
“There's sufficient detail in the stories,” said Kim, “to link what happened to Gordonn as a child with what is going on today.”
Jessica stared at the array of articles Kim had collected, squinting in order to follow the fuzzy microfiche copies. In the days before computers, microfiche had seemed a miracle of an invention, but today it seemed about as advanced as chiseling on stone tablets. The images and words on the poor-quality copy she held in her hand were hard to see, but the headline was easy enough to read: family suicide pact ends life of poet lydia byron and artist husband harold gordonn-child survives.
The story summarized the macabre little family suicide pact that became as powerful an urban legend as any in Philadelphia artistic circles, in addition to being the great motivating force of George Gordonn's life, the origin of the living-poem fad and the reason he was on the prowl that very night.
The phone rang, breaking everyone's intense concentration. Jessica picked it up and heard Marc Tamburino's voice, sounding loud and shaken. “Dr. Coran, I have some information you might like to know about.”