devils, or demons, or the dragon that floats on its stinking reptile wings?’
‘I don’t know,’ Richler said.
‘I think most of them would look like ordinary accountants,’ Weiskopf said. ‘Little
mind-men with graphs and flow-charts and electronic calculators, all ready to start
maximizing the kill ratios so that next time we could perhaps kill twenty or thirty millions
instead of only seven or eight or twelve. And some of them might look like Todd Bowden.’
‘You’re damn near as creepy as he is,’ Richler said.
Weiskopf nodded. ‘It’s a creepy subject Finding those dead men and animals in
Dussander’s cellar … that was creepy, nu? Have you ever thought that maybe this boy began with a simple interest in the camps? An interest not much different from the
interests of boys who collect coins or stamps or who like to read about wild West desperados? And that he went to Dussander to get his information straight from the
horse’s head?’
‘Mouth,’ Weiskopf muttered. It was almost lost in the roar of another ten-wheeler
passing them. BUDWEISER was printed on the side in letters six feet tall. What an
amazing country, Weiskopf thought and lit a fresh cigarette. They don’t understand how
we can live surrounded by half-mad Arabs, but if I lived here for two years I would have
a nervous breakdown. ‘Maybe. And maybe it isn’t possible to stand close to murder piled
on murder and not be touched by it.’
29
The short guy who entered the squadroom brought stench after him like a wake. He
smelted like rotten bananas and Wildroot Cream Oil and cockroach shit and the inside of
a city garbage truck at the end of a busy morning. He was dressed in a pair of ageing
herringbone pants, a ripped grey institutional shirt, and a faded blue warmup jacket
from which most of the zipper hung loose like a string of pygmy teeth. The uppers of his
shoes were bound to the lowers with Krazy Glue. A pestiferous hat sat on his head. He
looked like death with a hangover.
‘Oh Christ, get out of here!’ The duty sergeant cried. ‘You’re not under arrest, Hap! I
swear to God! I swear it on my mother’s name! Get out of here! I want to breathe again.’
‘I want to talk to Lieutenant Bozeman.’
‘He died, Hap. It happened yesterday. We’re all really fucked up over it. So get out
and let us mourn in peace.’
‘I want to talk to Lieutenant Bozeman!’ Hap said more loudly. His breath drifted
fragrantly from his mouth: a juicy, fermenting mixture of pizza, Hall’s Mentholyptus
lozenges, and sweet red wine.
‘He had to go to Siam on a case, Hap. So why don’t you just get out of here? Go
someplace and eat a lightbulb.’
‘ I want to talk to Lieutenant Bozeman and I ain’t leaving until I do!’
The duty sergeant fled the room. He returned about five minutes later with Bozeman,
a thin, slightly stooped man of fifty.
‘Take him into your office, okay, Dan?’ The duty sergeant begged. ‘Won’t that be all
right?’
‘Come on, Hap,’ Bozeman said, and a minute later they were in the three-sided stall
that was Bozeman’s office. Bozeman prudently opened his only window and turned on his
fan before sitting down. ‘Do something for you, Hap?’
‘You still on those murders, Lieutenant Bozeman?’
‘The derelicts? Yeah, I guess that’s still mine.’
‘Well, I know who greased ’em.’
‘Is that so, Hap?’ Bozeman asked. He was busy lighting his pipe. He rarely smoked the
pipe, but neither the fan nor the open window was quite enough to overwhelm Hap’s
smell. Soon, Bozeman thought, the paint would begin to blister and peel. He sighed.
‘You member I tole you Sonny was talking to a guy just a day before they found him all
cut up in that pipe? You member me tellin’ you that, Lieutenant Bozeman?’
‘I remember.’ Several of the winos who hung around the Salvation Army and the soup
kitchen a few blocks away had told a similar story about two of the murdered derelicts,
Charles ‘Sonny’ Brackett and Peter ‘Poley’ Smith. They had seen a guy hanging around, a
young guy, talking to Sonny and Poley. Nobody knew for sure if Sonny had gone off with
the guy, but Hap and two others claimed to have seen Poley Smith walk off with him.
They had the idea that the ‘guy’ was underage and willing to spring for a bottle of musky
in exchange for some juice. Several other winos claimed to have seen a ‘guy’ like that
around. The description of this ‘guy’ was superb, bound to stand up in court, coming as it
did from such unimpeachable sources. Young, blond, and white. What else did you need
to make a bust?
‘Well, last night I was in the park,’ Hap said, ‘and I just happened to have this old
bunch of newspapers -‘
‘There’s a law against vagrancy in this city, Hap.’
‘I was just collectin’ ’em up,’ Hap said righteously. ‘It’s so awful the way people litter. I was doin’ a public surface, Lieutenant A friggin’ public surface. Some of those papers
was a week old.’
‘Yes. Hap.’ Bozeman said. He remembered – vaguely being quite hungry and looking
forward keenly to his lunch. That time seemed long ago now.
‘Well, when I woke up, one of those papers had blew onto my face and I was
looking right at the guy. Gave me a hell of a jump, I can tell you. Look. This is the guy. This guy right here.’
Hap pulled a crumpled, yellowed, water-spotted sheet of newspaper from his
warmup jacket and unfolded it Bozeman leaned forward, now moderately
interested. Hap put the paper on his desk so he could read the headline: 4 BOYS
NAMED TO SOUTHERN CAL ALL-STARS. Below the head were four photos.
‘Which one, Hap?
Hap put a grimy finger on the picture to the far right ‘Him. It says his name is
Todd Bowden.’
Bozeman looked from the picture to Hap, wondering how many of Hap’s brain-
cells were still unfried and in some kind of working order after twenty years of being
sauteed in a bubbling sauce of cheap wine seasoned with an occasional shot of
sterno.
‘How can you be sure, Hap? He’s wearing a baseball cap in the picture. I can’t
tell if he’s got blond hair or not’
‘The grin,’ Hap said. ‘It’s the way he’s grinnin’. He was grinnin’ at Poley in just
that same ain’t-life-grand way when they walked off together. I couldn’t mistake that
grin in a million years. That’s him, that’s the guy.’
Bozeman barely heard this last; he was thinking, and thinking hard. Todd
Bowden. There was something familiar about that name. Something that bothered
him even worse than the thought that a local high school hero might be going around
and offing winos. He thought he had heard that name just this morning in
conversation. He frowned, trying to remember where.
Hap was gone and Dan Bozeman was still trying to figure it out when Richler and
Weiskopf came in … and it was the sound of their voices as they got coffee in the
squadroom that finally brought it home to him.
‘Holy God,’ said Lieutenant Bozeman, and got up in a hurry.
30
Both of his parents had offered to cancel their afternoon plans – Monica at the market
and Dick golfing with some business people – and stay home with him, but Todd told
them he would rather be alone. He thought he would clean his rifle and just sort of think
the whole thing over. Try to get it straight in his mind.
‘Todd,’ Dick said, and suddenly found he had nothing much to say. He supposed if he
had been his own father, he would have at this point advised prayer. But the generations had turned, and the Bowdens weren’t much into that these days. ‘Sometimes these things
happen,’ he finished lamely, because Todd was still looking at him. ‘Try not to brood
about it.’
‘I’ll be all right.’ Todd said.
After they were gone, he took some rags and a bottle of Alpaca gun oil out onto the
bench beside the roses. He went back into the garage and got the .30-30. He took it to the
bench and broke it down, the dusty-sweet smell of the flowers lingering pleasantly in his
nose. He cleaned the gun thoroughly, humming a tune as he did it, sometimes whistling a
snatch between his teeth. Then he put the gun together again. He could have done it just
as easily in the dark. His mind wandered free. When it came back some five minutes later,
he observed that he had loaded the gun. The idea of target shooting didn’t much appeal,
not today, but he had still loaded it. He told himself he didn’t know why.
Sure you do, Todd-baby. The time, so to speak, has come.