“Miller, is there something you’re dying to tell me?”
“I don’t know, Jack. It’s old rebop.”
“This mess _goes_ back. You know Patchett, don’t you?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Educated guess. And the captain’s file said Patchett bankrolled some old Dieterling films.”
Stanton checked his glass–empty. “Okay, I know Patchett from way back. It’s some story, but I don’t see how it applies to what you’re interested in.”
Jack heard the side door scrape carpet. “All I know is that you’ve been dying to tell me ever since I said the word ‘Patchett.”‘
“Damn, I don’t feel like a cop around you. I feel like a fat actor about to lose his series.”
Jack looked away-cut the man slack. Stanton said, “You know I was the chubby kid in Dieterling’s serials way back when. Willie Wennerholm, Wee Willie, he was the big star. I used to see Patchett at the studio school, and I knew he was some kind of Dieterling business partner, because our tutor had a crush on him and told all the kids who he was.”
“And?”
“And Wee Wiffie was kidnapped from the school and chopped up by Dr. Frankenstein. You know the case, it was famous. The police picked up this guy Loren Atherton. They said he killed Willie and all these other children. Jack, this is the hard part.”
“So tell it fast.”
Very fast. “Mr. Dieterling and Patchett came to me. They gave me tranquilizers and told me I had to come along with this older boy and visit a police station. I was fourteen, the older boy was maybe seventeen. Patchett and Mr. Dieterling coached me, and we went to the station. We talked to Preston Exley, he was a detective back then. We told him just what Patchett and Mr. Dieterling told us to-that we’d seen Atherton prowling around the studio school. We identified Atherton and Exley believed us.”
An actor’s pause. Jack said, “Goddammit, _and?_”
Slower. “I never saw the older boy again, and I can’t even remember his name. Atherton was convicted and executed, and I wasn’t asked to testify at his trial. It got to be ’39, right in there. I was still in the Dieterling stable, but I was a boy ingenue. Mr. Dieterling had this little studio contingent go out to the opening of the Arroyo Seco Freeway, just a publicity appearance. Preston Exley, he was a big-shot contractor now, and he cut the ribbon. I heard Mr. Dieterling, Patchett and Terry Lux, you know him, talking.”
Pins and needles. “Miller, come on.”
“I’ll never forget what they said, Jack. Patchett told Lux, ‘I’ve got the chemicals to keep him from hurting anybody and you plasticked him.’ Lux said, ‘And I’ll get him a keeper.’ Mr. Dieterling, I’ll never forget the way his voice sounded. He said, ‘And I gave Preston Exley a scapegoat he believes in beyond Loren Atherton. And I think the man owes me too much now to hurt me.”‘
Jack touched himself–he thought he’d stopped breathing. Breathing behind him–strained. Eyes on Exley and White in the doorway–up close to each other frozen.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Now all his lines crossed in ink.
Red ink mutilations. An inkwell spilling blood. Cartoon characters on a marquee with Raymond Dieterling, Preston Exley, an all-star criminal cast. Ink colors: red, green for bribe money. Black for mourning–the dead supporting players. White and Vincennes knew, they’d probably tell Gallaudet–he kicked them out of the hotel knowing it. He could warn his father or not warn his father and the end would be the same. He could keep going or sit in this room and watch his life explode on television.
Long hours down–he couldn’t reach for the phone. He turned on the TV, saw his father at a freeway ceremony, stuck his gun in his mouth while the man mouthed platitudes. The trigger half back–fade to a commercial. He emptied four rounds, spun the cylinder, put the barrel to his head. He squeezed the trigger twice, empty chambers, he couldn’t believe what he’d done. He threw his piece out the window–a wino grabbed it off the sidewalk, shot up the sky. He laughed, sobbed, punched himself out on the furniture.