The answer, of course, is Barbara. If after months spent studying her image in the Fesse photograph and reading and rereading Dad's case study, I became haunted by her bizarre dream, now that I've read her diary, I find myself even more drawn in. Now, like Dad, bewitched by her personality, I yearn to learn everything I possibly can, including who killed her and the precise manner of her death.
During lunch break, I take my copy of the diary to a photocopy shop to have an additional copy made for Mace. While I'm waiting, I dash off sketches that illustrate the end of the Foster trial, various views of each side resting its case. This is, admittedly, a lazy way to earn my keep, but at this point I'm so familiar with the principals I can draw most any possible courtroom scene out of my head.
On my way to the Sheriff's Department to drop off the diary, I once again have the feeling I'm being followed. Deciding to take action, I enter a shoe store, walk to the rear, then suddenly turned and stride back out while staring directly into the eyes of everyone I encounter. No sign of Mr. Potato Head… not that I'd even recognize him if her were there. But at least he's watching, he'll know I'm on to him. A couple minutes later, entering the Sheriff's Department, I enjoy the thought he may think I'm here to report him.
Mr. Potato Head: Sometime in the night, I suddenly open my eyes, turn to Pam snuggled against me, feel her warmth, inhale the aroma of her body, and listen as she breathes deeply in her sleep.
A phrase, ricocheting inside my brain, awakened me:
He was like a shadow, you never noticed he was there.
Jurgen said that the afternoon I drew his portrait.
Who was he talking about? Who was it you never noticed was there?
It was O'Neill, Jerry O'Neill, the crooked ex-cop with the alcohol problem who was Walter Maritz's operative. The guy Maritz brought in to track Barbara Fulraine because he couldn’t do it himself since she knew him from his having scammed her. The guy Maritz brought in, because, as he told the cops, ‘I knew O'Neill would fuck up good, and that's just what I wanted.’ Except, according to Jurgen, most everything Maritz told the cops was a lie.
He was like a shadow, you never noticed he was there.
That could be a perfect description of Mr. Potato Head. You didn't notice O'Neill because he looked like everybody else, a guy with cop training, expert at following people. Johnny Powell figured him for a cop. ‘He had a cop's way about him. You know – a stache and a cheap suit.’ Except he didn't have a mustache, ‘Just seemed like the type. Said your name then showed me a picture.’
The night before I interviewed Kate, she tried to draw the face of the man she saw when she was a girl. Her drawings were childish, schematic. I attributed that to lack of skill. But maybe her drawings were accurate portraits of Mr. Potato Head, a man with a generic face who looked like everybody else.
He was like a shadow, you never noticed he was there.
Mr. Potato Head knows how to get into a hotel room without disturbing the electronic lock. Mr. Potato Head knows how to follow a man on the street without being noticed. Mr. Potato Head can do a U-turn-and-park maneuver when I try to track his car. All skills an old-time cop would have, an ex-cop, an operative.
Jerry O'Neill equals Mr. Potato Head? It adds up, could even be true.
I'm excited. Though it's the middle of the night, I tiptoe into Pam's bathroom to call Mace from my cell phone..
"That diary's really something," he says. "Can't put it out of my mind. And now Waldo… it's hard to believe, isn't it?"
"I don't know if it was Waldo or who the hell it was, Mace. I do know that all your Steadman-connected suspects are dead. Cody, the Torrance Hill mob, whoever. But Mr. Potato Head isn't dead and now I think I know who he is."
"Sure, I remember O'Neill," he tells me. "Just barely. He's not the kind of guy you remember all that well. Basically all I can recall about him is his name. He pauses. "Hmmm, that sounds like Mr. Potato Head, doesn't it? Gimme a couple hours. Soon as I get to the office I'll run him through the DMV."
Calista County Courthouse
11:50 a.m.
Kit Foster's defense attorney rests his case. When Judge Winterson asks if the State wants to put on rebuttal evidence, the prosecution team briefly confers, then announces that it rests as well. Excitement in the courtroom. The trial's now basically over. Winterson gavels for quiet, instructs counsel to prepare to make closing arguments in the morning, then dismisses the jury. The moment the judge leaves the courtroom, the media crowd, cell phones in hand, surge into the corridor.
"How long will it take you to get me drawings?" Harriet asks, panting at my side.
"I already have them," I tell her, handing off my sketches.
Her expression is priceless. "Who told you, David?" she demands. "How did you know?"
I smile at her, break loose, head for the elevators. Mace is waiting for me downstairs with the DMV photo of Jerry O'Neill.
Standing behind his counter, Johnny Powell nods. "Sure, that's the guy."
"No question, Johnny?"
"It's him, Mr. Weiss. Just lookin' at him I can smell the suit."
Mace and I thank Johnny, then retreat to the Flamingo courtyard.
"Your geezer's positive, so let's talk to him." Mace laughs. "Be pretty funny if he's tracking you now. He'll end up tracking you back to his own place."
O'Neill's place turns out to be an apartment in a crummy building on Tucker Avenue, a tenement with strange, dark, open porches lined two in a row up the facade.
There's an unpleasant pungency to the dark, ground-floor lobby, the smell of over-the-hill fish fried in cheap oil. A NO SOLICITORS sign, defaced by graffiti, is taped to the wall. A coin-operated laundry machine chugs away in a corner, a puddle of soapy water, leaking from beneath, spreading across the floor. No elevator, just a staircase brashly lit by buzzing fluorescent tubes attracting flies.
"2-B." Mace points to the left. The walls are dark brown and so is the woodwork. I can barely make out the number on the door.
Mace pushes the buzzer. No response. He motions me to stand out of sight, then knocks.
The sound of footsteps padding across the floor on the other side. "Yeah-yeah-yeah," a weary voice intones.
A little flash of light in the peephole. The sound of laborious breathing. "Whaduyuwant?"
"Sheriff's Department. Open up, O'Neill."
O'Neill coughs, a smoker's dry, hacking cough. The door opens a crack. A stream of cigarette smoke snakes out. "What's going on?"
Mace motions me to show myself. I step into O'Neill's sight line. He looks at me with little terrier eyes, then exhales and coughs again. Even through the haze of smoke, I see more character in his face than I expected.
"Mr. Weiss here's made a complaint," Mace tells him. "Want to talk about it?"
"Hello there, Weiss. Sure, we can talk about it. Place is a mess. Wasn't expecting guests."
He gestures us into a large, dark, dusty room furnished with battered Salvation Army junk. An oversize refrigerator, door yellowing with age, occupies a corner. Several cheap aluminum ashtrays are overflowing with butts. The stench of exhaled tobacco is nearly overwhelming. When O'Neill steps back, he seems to disappear into the shadows.
He was like a shadow, you never noticed he was there.
"Wanna beer?" We shake our heads. O'Neill shrugs, then makes his way to the refrigerator. "Take a seat… if you can find one."
Mace perches on a torn, lopsided hassock. I sit on an old army footlocker covered with a fraying gray towel.
O'Neill's a pear-shaped guy with iron-gray hair and a big ass shown off by a pair of brown trousers held up by suspenders. White chest hairs peek through his shirt. His jowls are unshaven, and he's wearing a raggedy pair of brown slippers. He's got the kind of square-bottom face that reminds me of the bottom of a paper bag.