But it's the gate itself that's burned into my memory. As I look at it now the old television images flood back: Barbara and Andrew Fulraine begging for the return of their kidnapped daughter, Belle, s microphones are thrust toward them and cameras mercilessly strobe their tear-streaked cheeks.
I feel my own eyes grow wet as I recall those impromptu press conferences. I will never forget something my father said to my mother as we watched.
"People love this kind of thing. It shows them that even the rich and powerful feel pain."
Oh, yes, I think, Dad was right.. for what happened before this gate was the very substance of tragedy – the anguished bellowings of great lords rolling in the dust.
Once past the great Fulraine place, I pick up speed, arriving a few minutes later at a cluster of apartment towers where Tremont Park once stood.
It was one of the great amusement parks of its era, a complex embracing dance halls, lovers' lanes, penny arcades, cotton candy stands, and numerous rides: Flying Ponies, Flying Scooters, Mill Chute, Roller Coaster, Over the Falls, and the inimitable Laf-in-the-Dark, where, alone in a boat in total blackness on a murky canal, between the barrel of stars and the enormous sliding spider, I imagine Barbara Fulraine and Tom Jessup kissing for the first time.
My destination today is the Flamingo Court Motel situated on the other side of Dawson. It was shabby then and still is today, but not by any means repulsive – a decent enough place for a family to spend the night or a pair of lovers to while away a hot summer afternoon.
The two-story powder-blue facade sports a fading mural of pink flamingos caught in mid-flutter between the trunks of lime-green palms. Looming above is a neon sign depicting a flamingo and, beneath that, another informing weary travelers and./or randy lovers that vacant rooms are still available within.
I pull into the lot across the street between Moe's Burgers and the Shanghai Sapphire Restaurant, then cross the street on foot and enter the motel courtyard. There's a rectangular pool here, its aquamarine interior fading, rust stains on the surrounding concrete, and water that appears less than perfectly clean. Two small boys splash happily at the shallow end. Nearby a woman in the skimpiest possible yellow bikini reads a magazine while taking the sun on an angry orange plastic-strap chaise lounge.
Not many clients at this hour. Perhaps a slew will appear at dusk. I note the configuration of the court – a two-story U-shaped building with exterior staircases and covered open porticos providing access to room doors running along the courtyard sides.
The office is to the right of the entrance. I'm about to turn toward it when I notice the woman on the chaise observing me over the top of her magazine.
"Hi," I greet her.
"Hi, yourself. Help you?"
"I'm looking for Johnny."
"You'll find him in the office," she says, then turns back to her magazine.
I find Johnny Powell leaning on the reception counter gazing at the TV set across the room. A Calista Forgers-Boston Red Sox game's in progress, the score 5-2 in favor of the Sox.
I introduce myself.
"Oh, sure," he says, "been expecting you. You picked a good time. Nothing going on now ‘cept the baseball. Forgers playing like fools today."
"If I've ever seen a person to whom one could apply the moniker ‘geezer’ it would be the old man grinning at me now. He's stooped, thin, gaunt, unshaven, a pair of bright blue eyes in a tanned, cracked-leather face. His voice is cracked too, with a nasal twang. He looks the type who play wily old prospectors in westerns, spouting cracker-barrel philosophy about the lure of gold and how it's akin to the lust stirred by a wicked woman.
He mutes the TV with a remote.
"So you're here to see old two-oh-one?" he said. "Been a couple of years since anyone asked. First year after the killings they came in all the time, curiosity seekers wanting to take pictures and snatch up souvenirs. Mr. Evans – he's dead now, that's his daughter sunning herself outside – he decided not to let the room out or even paint it up. ‘Just leave it be, Johnny,’ he told me. Didn't even want me to scrub the bloodstains off the walls, though of course I did. We charged ‘em five dollars for a five-minute look. Made a bushel of money that way. When stuff started getting swiped – ashtrays, lamps, even one of the pictures on the wall – he had me screw everything down. For a couple years old two-oh-one was our top-producing room. Biggest thing ever happened here at the Flamingo. Biggest thing ever will happen, I betcha."
I ask Johnny if he was here the day of the murders.
"Sure was," he says. "Was afternoon man then, same as now. Knew the couple too, since they were regulars. Knew Mr. Jessup actually. Not the lady. Never exchanged two words with her. He'd come in, register, then wait for her up in the room. Or, if Mrs. Fulraine got here first, she'd wait out in her car till he registered, then follow him up. He always asked for an end room near the parking. That meant one-oh-one or two-oh-one depending on which was occupied.
"He was a nice fella. Soft spoken. Private schoolteacher, you know. Taught out at the Hayes School. Later I heard that's where they met. Seems she sent her two boys there. One day she goes out to meet the teachers. Then – pop! Wow! Flyin' sparks! That whole summer they met here three, four times a week. They say she's the one actually paid since she was rolling in moolah and he barely had a pot to piss in…"
After a brief negotiation, I hand him fifty bucks for a one-hour rental, plus an extra ten for himself.
"Hour's kinds odd length of time," he says, handing over the key. "Won't take you but a couple of minutes to get the feel. ‘Less you're planning on takin' a snooze…"
No napping, I tell him, I'm going to be sketching and that's a slow process, a lot slower than taking photographs.
"You'll find it pretty much the way it was. Furniture and bed frames still original. New mattress, of course. New carpeting. New TV. Maybe nine or ten paint jobs and seventy or eighty changes of shower curtains, but otherwise just the same."
The woman in the yellow bikini watches me as I ascend the exterior stairs. When I pause on the balcony, she raises herself from the chaise and marches authoritatively to the end of the diving board. As she does, I notice endearing pink marks on her back form lying against the plastic straps. After another quick glance at me, she makes a beautiful swan dive into the water. If I were an Olympic judge I'd give her a 9.5.
Two-oh-one is a decent-sized room, not a confining shoe box the way they build them today. The moment I enter I feel like an intruder. Since I know sketching will calm me, I go to the bed, sit on it, set the pillows behind my back, then prop my sketchpad against my knees. I check my watch. 3:30 P.M.. It was a little before four in the afternoon when the killings took place, just this time of year.
I gaze around, look carefully at everything, then close my eyes trying to imagine how it happened that day, what it was like.
I've been sketching for an hour. I finish up my drawing: the open doorway filled with light, the broken figures on the bed lost in shadow. I set down my sketchpad, lie back, my heart beating wildly in my chest.
I'm exhausted. Perhaps, I think, this project will prove to be a mistake. Then I tell myself: It's no mistake. Difficult at times, sure; fraught with the pain that often accompanies necessity, but that's the point, it is necessary if I'm ever to obtain peace of mind.
I get up from the bed, go to the open door, and peer down over the balcony at the pool. The two boys are now playing in the shade, while their mother, once again on the chaise, bikini top untied, bare back to the sun, turns her head slightly to engage my eyes.