I wouldn't have trouble drawing this guy. What's the big deal, why's he so hard to describe?
"How'd you guys find me?" he asks, sitting down on his unmade bed, faint smile playing on his lips.
"I'll be asking the questions," Mace says. "To start, why're you following Mr. Weiss?"
"Following a guy's a crime?"
"Yeah, if you're doing it to cover up a crime."
"I ain't covering nothin'. I was following him for a client."
"Who?"
"You know I don't have to tell you that."
"Yeah, but you will."
I like Mace's classical technique. It's as if, figuring O'Neill a certain way, he instinctively uses language he knows will reach the guy.
O'Neill stubs out his cigarette, lights another. "Okay, guy named Maritz asked me to find out what Weiss is up to."
"Walter M. Maritz who lives in Sarasota?"
O'Neill exhales toward me. "You seem to know a lot, Mr. Weiss. I'll pass that on to Walt. See, finding out what you know is what he wants to know… if you follow my meaning. He heard you were nosing around, pokin' your face into offices in the Doubleton Building, talking to Rakoubian's nutty widow, hangin' out with Cody's old maitre d'. So he asked me to check you out. That's the whole story."
"No, it isn't." Mace rises, walks up to O'Neill, stares at him with disdain. "Right now your client Maritz is looking at serious charges. He lied to us about Flamingo. From what I can tell, damn near everything he told us was a lie. Doesn't matter it was twenty-six years ago. No statute of limitations on murder. The investigation's still open. The means no limitations on hindering the investigation. So start talking, because the one who talks first, you or Maritz, is the one who's going to get credit for helping me out."
There's something almost old ladyish about O'Neill, and it's not his personal hygiene. It's his prissiness, I decide, the prim way he holds his hands together in his lap and the sickly smile that coats his face like a veneer. He's got wide hips, a plump ass, and smoking must have nearly rotted out his lungs. He looks like a guy with maybe a year or two left to live. The only part of him that appears tough is the squirrelly look of cunning in his eyes.
He gazes at Mace, then at me, stubs out his cigarette, then goes into a coughing fit. When finally he brings the cough under control, he looks again at Mace and shrugs.
"Sure," he says, "I'll tell you. Walt hasn't paid me, so he hasn't earned client privilege yet. Anyhow," he shows that sickly smile again, "my private investigator's license already expired."
"Was Maritz involved with the Flamingo killings?"
"No way!"
"So why does he care what I know?" I ask.
"Because like the inspector here said, Walt lied. He told the inspector he didn't know what happened, he didn't know about Mrs. Fulraine's affair with the teach. But he did know. I told him. I was full time on her butt. I was there in my car in the motel lot the day of the shootings. I even caught a glimpse of the shooter when he ran out."
As he starts talking, I start sketching him. He preens for me a little, blows a couple of smoke rings in my direction, smiles to himself, but never asks what I'm doing or why. Maybe because he knows he's difficult to describe, he thinks I won't be able to portray him. But I have my own motive, and it's not just to see if I can make a decent drawing of his generically ugly face. I want him to get used to me sketching as he speaks, because, though he doesn't know it yet, if he really did see the shooter, he's going to help me make an eyewitness drawing as soon as he finishes telling his story to Mace.
"This rich guy Fulraine hired Walt to follow his ex, catch her doing something untoward he could use against her to get back his kids."
"‘Untoward’?" Mace winces. "Give us a break, O'Neill."
Jerry blows a perfect smoke ring, then another, which passes through the first. "‘Sinful’ – how's that?"
"Go on."
"The pay was good so Walt took the assignment even though he knew he couldn't handle it on his own. Also seems he had a grudge. Couple years before, he and Mrs. Fulraine had a major falling out and Cody had him beaten up. Merciless beating. Put Walt out of commission nearly a year. So Walt hired me. I was just off the force. Maybe I wasn't the greatest cop this town ever had, but I was one helluva tracker. Walt knew that. So he tells me: ‘Follow the bitch, get everything you can on her. Nothin’ could be sweeter for me than seeing her lose her brats.’
"So I start following her. Two, three days into the job she leads me to a motel across from Tremont Park. One look and I go, ‘Whoa! This doesn't fit, she's up to something dirty in there.’"
"Something ‘untoward’?"
Jerry blows another perfect smoke ring. "She goes up to this room. Couple hours later she and this guy come out and get into separate cars. I jot down his plate number, then follow her home."
"When I report this to Walt, he gets excited. ‘Tasty!’ he says. So he runs the plate on the stud and it turns out he's a teacher at her kids' school. ‘Got her by her short hairs now,’ Walt says."
"I keep following her and every couple days it's the same routine. She drives over to the motel, she and the teach spend a couple hours, then each takes off in his own car. They're so sure of themselves they don't even try to cover up. I mean she drives a Jag for Christ's sake! Anyone could've followed her."
"One night Walt and I have a couple drinks and he tells me what's on his mind. ‘I can pass all this on to Fulraine like I'm supposed to,’ he says. ‘Then what? He nails her in court and throws us a little bonus for good work.’ Walk doesn't think much of that. A little bonus isn't going to cut it. ‘I'm gonna blackmail the bitch. She'll pay big time to keep this quiet. Trouble is she knows me so I can't approach her direct. That's where you come in. She doesn't know you, Jerry, so you'll be the cut-out, then you and me'll split the take.’ Sounds good to me. I tell him I'm in. ‘Okay,’ Walt says, ‘but we can't do blackmail without something to sell. We gotta get pictures.’ So we talk to Max. Max is game and Max is cheap. He even knows the broad, once took pictures of her holding a whip."
I'm shocked; Barbara thought Max was her friend.
"What about Waldo Channing?" I ask, contemplating Max's betrayal. "Did Maritz bring him in too?"
O'Neill shows his old lady's sickly smile. "Why split with Channing when Walt and I developed this on our own?"
"So then what?" Mace asks.
"Max stakes out the motel, sets up his telephoto, gets shots of them coming and going, snaps a kiss or two. But that's not good enough for Walt. ‘I want fucking,’ he says. ‘I want them bare-assed naked on the bed.’ So Max comes up with this plan. Since I'm used to her routine, I knew when she and the teach take a day off. We book their favorite room on one of the off-days, I sneak in a ladder, then help Max mount one of his remote-control miniature cameras and a transmitter mike behind the ventilation screen above the bed…"
Max knew a secret about those killings, Chip's mother told me, something he wouldn't tell no matter how many times I asked. But the worst part of this, I think, is Max's betrayal.
"That fuckin' Max. What a wizard! Couple days later we take a room a few doors down. The lady and the teach check in as usual, we listen till we hear them going at it, ‘oohs’ and ‘has.’ Then Max starts shooting blind. Every couple of minutes he uses this little radio device to take a picture. We're worried they'll hear the clicks, but we get lucky, there's a thunderstorm. Anyhow, to find the camera they'd have to unscrew the vent register. As it happens, they're so wrapped up in each other they don't suspect a thing. Soon as they leave, we go back in the room, Max takes out the film, and, in case he didn't gat enough, reloads the camera and puts it back. Good thing, too, because even though the pictures come out great, Walt still isn't satisfied. ‘I wanna crotch shot! I wanna see her snatch! I wanna see her suckin' his dick! Get me a suck shot and you get double pay,’ he tells Max. I think he had this idea he'd blackmail the lady, then, when he squeezed out all he could, he'd mail the pictures to Cody for spite. Like ‘fuck you, Cody, take a look at your bitch sucking off her new stud!’ Far as those two went, Walt had a hair up his ass…"