"Did Max get the suck shot?"
O'Neill laughs. "Max couldn't see ‘em, so whatever he got was a matter of luck. Anyhow, after two tries, I finally persuade Walt to calm down. ‘Why go on with it? This is business,’ I tell him. ‘Forget your personal gripe. We got a lock.’ Walt gets my point. So now it's my turn. The plan's so devious we laugh ourselves sick figuring it out…"
As O'Neill recounts his role in the scheme, he again shows his sickly smirk. I decide to work it into my drawing. If I can capture that, I think, I'll have him down cold, pinned to my sketchpad like the sleazy cockroach he is.
"Next time Barbara and the teach check into the motel, I'm in my usual spot in the parking lot. There's another thunderstorm. I give them half an hour, time to have some fun, then when the sky clears I mosey over to this phone booth inside Moe's, dial the motel, and ring through to their room. The teach picks up. ‘Yeah?’ ‘Mrs. Fulraine, please.’ ‘Who is this?’ he asks, like who the hell would know she's even there. ‘This is about her kids, so put her on.’ As he passes her the phone, I hear him say something like ‘I don't know. Something about your kids.’ ‘Oh, God!’ I hear her say. Then, to me, ‘What happened? What?’ At this point, I'm starting to feel sorry for her. But beezeness eze beezeness, so I come on tough and deliver my spiel. ‘See the vent screen above the bed? We put a camera up there last week, got pictures of you fucking your brains out with your kids' teach. If you don't pay us a hundred grand, those pictures are going straight to your ex. Think about that, Mrs. Fulraine. Wanna lose two more of your kids? You'll get a sample photo in the mail.’ I'm about to tell her I'll be in touch, when she fuckin’ explodes. ‘Listen, whoever-the-hell-you-are, I know who you're working for. Tell the little creep if he dares play any more games with me I'll ruin him, so help me God!’ The she hangs up!"
O'Neill rubs his eyes, lights another cigarette. "Hangs up on me! I couldn’t fuckin' believe it! My hands were shaking so bad I dropped the phone. She wasn't broken, wasn't scared, instead she went crazy mad. I ask myself: What kind of blackmail can we do if the person isn't scared of what we got? The way she talked, she had far worse on us that we had on her. I go back to my car, light a cigarette, try to figure the thing out. What am I going to tell Walt? And what's he going to do when he hears? Send the pictures to Mr. Fulraine in return for a little bonus? Send them to Cody, a guy you don't mess with? Send them to both because he hates the broad? Maybe, I'm thinking, the smart move for me is to get the hell out of this while I can.
O'Neill takes a deep drag, then exhales in a long stream.
"That's when I heard the shots."
"How many?"
"Four big ones – boom-boom, a break, then two more. Something, I don't know what, tells me they're coming from that room. First thing I think is Shit! Either she's shot him or he's shot her. Maybe my call set them off! Then I see this guy come out, guy in a raincoat and hat. No gun, but later I figure he must have hidden it under his coat. He comes running down the outside stairs, crosses the street, then walks real fast toward my car. I don't want him to see me, so I slide down and stay still. He passes within fifteen feet. I get a look at him, not much, just a glimpse, then I watch him through my side mirror. He goes all the way through the lot, then turns toward Tremont Park. That's when I decide to get the hell out. I start my car and pull out fast. Later that night, when I meet Walt at his pub, news of the killings has been on TV for hours. As we're sitting there looking at the screen above the bar, some news bitch comes on with a guy who says he saw the shooter run into the parking lot, then a dark car comes roaring out. The somebody comes on and IDs the car as an Olds. Walt and I look at each other. We know we're in deep shit. Why? Guess what I drive? A dark blue Olds sedan."
"That's it?" Mace asks.
"That's it. We couldn't tell you guys. We were implicated; we hadn't told Fulraine what she was doing. The lady was dead so we couldn't blackmail her. We just figured if we kept quiet and nobody saw nothin’, you guys would think Cody ordered the hit… which was peachy fine with Walt."
"What happened to the pictures?" Mace asks.
"Max burned them, negatives, too. He was scared. I think he thought maybe Walt or I offed those people. I know he and Walt never worked together again."
"Will Maritz confirm your story?"
O'Neill shrugs. "It's true even if he doesn't."
"No special shadings or extra touches, Jerry, to make you look better than you were?"
"I don't think I look good at all in what I told you."
"Unless you or Maritz killed them."
Jerry shakes his head. He's tired now, out of juice. "Why the hell would we do that, Inspector? Mrs. Fulraine was going to be our meal ticket. If I'd seen this guy go in there with a gun, I'd have shot him myself to protect, you know, our investment."
"So what'd he look like, Jerry?" I ask.
"Just some guy. I barely caught a glimpse of him."
"How long a glimpse?" I glance over at Mace. He nods, sits back, his signal it's my turn to grill O'Neill.
"How long? How the hell should I know? Ten, fifteen seconds."
"That's a pretty long glimpse."
"What're you driving at?"
"You're going to describe him and I'm going to draw him. That's how the inspector's going to know whether you're telling the truth."
O'Neill laughs. "You gotta be kidding. This was twenty-six years ago. I can barely remember stuff from yesterday."
"That's what you think now," I tell him in as warm a tone as I can summon. "I'm going to help you remember. You're going to be surprised at how much comes back."
I start in on him, helpful, empathetic, treating him as if he's a totally reliable witness. I get him to tell me what it felt like sitting in his car through that thunderstorm. Also what it felt like to spy on people then try to scare them into submission by acting tough with them on the phone. I get him talking about his smoking, how he always lit up when he felt stressed, and the stress he felt that afternoon, and the guilt and remorse and second thoughts too, what it felt like trying to be a blackmailer when blackmailing wasn't really his gig. How he was a cop at heart, a hunter-tracker, master of the urban forest, and now Walt Maritz had dragged him into this squalid Peeping-Tom blackmailer role that hurt him in his pride.
He remembers more: the stink of the inside of his car from all the packs of Pall Malls he'd smoked in it through the years. Also the smell of old pizza boxes that littered the floor in back. The way the rain puddled on the tar surface of the motel lot and the red VACANCY / NO VACANCY sign on the Flamingo roof going all purple and weird when the sky darkened during the storm.
Memories flood in: the jolts he felt as the sounds of the shots reached him inside his car and the thoughts that went racing through his brain. The way he leaned forward as he raised his binoculars to his eyes just in time to make out the shooter rushing out of room 201. At first he thought it was the teach, but a second later knew it wasn't. The teach was tall, moved like an athlete; this man was smaller and thin. Both his hat and raincoat were dark gray or black, and he had his hat pulled down to just the level of his eyes.
He looked kinda funny too, absurd almost, like a figure in an old-fashioned gangster film, one of those furtive Peter Lorre or Elisha Cook, Jr. types acting as though if they slink around no one'll notice or remember them.