Gary Alexander - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 86, No. 6. Whole No. 511, December 1985

“The kids picked up on the rumors. Why? Because they’d left their straight homes, most of them, looking for excitement, a heavy scene. That’s what I give them, what they relate to — a TV show.”

“You’re the star.”

“You got it, Mr. Weare.” He turned to look out the big window by the table, grinned fiercely and waved to someone out there, murmured, “That chick’ll spread around you’re grilling me about this latest murder. So the show goes on. I began it and the kids keep it running.”

Weare sipped coffee. “Why did you tell me this?”

“I guess I was in the mood.”

“What if I spread it around?”

“Wouldn’t matter. The kids would say I was running a con on you. They want TV, not reality.” He flipped a finger at Weare. “So do you — cops, I mean.”

“We’re in the show, too?”

“Aren’t you?”

Weare gave his slight smile. He touched the pocket where he had slid the drawing of the dead boy. “Him, too?”

“Don’t lay him on me. He’s your contribution, not mine.”

Weare had left on that note and hadn’t seen Reese since.

The body had never been identified. The boy might have been brought a long way from home, wherever home was. Vague word that he might have been with Reese in October was nothing Weare could build on.

Leaving Heine’s, he mulled on what Reese had said — that everyone on and around the scene, dopers and cops and deputies, were mixed up in a show starring Reese, which the dead boy and other corpses had been no part of until dragged in by Weare or other lawmen, providing new thrills for the star’s young doper fans.

He got his mind on the two classic movies he was heading for, much pleasanter to think about than that he might be a supporting stooge in The Frank Reese Show.

The next three hours were a trip in Hitchcock’s world of elegant wickedry, not crime as is or ever was but as should be. Just once Weare would like to be involved in a case like Dial M, clean and crisp and winding up in a neat package, all questions answered, no slop left over. In seventeen years that hadn’t happened, but after a Hitchcock evening he could indulge in a dream or two.

At the left-turn lane on Howard in San Carlos, waiting behind a car for the green arrow, something caught the comer of his right eye — an LTD, dead-black and lopsided, looming in the curb lane, sliding beyond him to the red light. If the lane immediately right hadn’t been vacant, he might have missed it, made his left, and proceeded on home with no further thoughts of Frank Reese.

The scrap of profile he could glimpse between beard and shaggy black hair was turned left and slightly down — Reese seemed to be scowling fixedly at the side mirror, unaware of Weare.

Weare made his left, turned right the first block, scurried down Laurel to San Carlos Avenue, right-turned again, and hung in the left-tum lane, as northbound cars piled by on El Camino, the LTD not among them.

Half a minute later, he was cruising north, playing a hunch based on no more than the way Reese had been fixed on the side mirror, like super-watchful if anyone was coming up behind him.

Starting down the slope into Belmont, he got on the brake as ahead to the right, in the wide parking area at CooCoo’s Nut Haven, he saw a cop cruiser’s amber light. Pulled up just beyond it was the LTD.

He slid the Pinto fifty feet beyond, got out, and sauntered over. Leaning against the rear door of his car with his arms folded was Reese, a San Carlos cop fronting him. The wind had stopped gusting but the air was cold.

Reese flashed his teeth at Weare, got back a slight smile. Weare showed the thin young cop his badge, asked what was up, and learned that Reese had made an illegal lane change, cutting in front of the cruiser.

Reese made a face. “First ticket in five years. Really stupid.” The brown eyes were murky.

The cop got his signature, gifted him with the ticket, looked a question at Weare, who asked Reese if he’d wait a minute and walked to the cruiser, nodded to the cop’s even younger partner at the wheel, waited until the cop had slid in, then leaned in and murmured, “Did you ask him to get out?”

“No, he got out on his own — why?”

Reese was leaning on the LTD, looking their way. He could have waited in the car but seemed to prefer outside in the cold.

Weare asked if they would hang around a few minutes, walked to Reese, and asked if they could talk in the car. Reese shrugged and moved to the door. Weare walked around and got in beside him, sat looking at him.

Reese asked after a while, “What’s up, Mr. Weare?”

Weare kept up his steady grey gaze. Reese tripped his tongue around his lips and the murky eyes flickered to the back of the car.

— A mess as always. On the floor some empty oil cans, tools, frayed skin mags, cans of food, wads of dirty clothes, empty wine bottles, general junk. A brown army blanket was heaped along the seat.

Weare studied it, reached over, fiddled with a chunk of it. Reese said, “It just happens to be lying like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like it is.”

“Like covering something?”

Reese got up a smile. “You thinking of a sawed-off shotgun?”

Weare got a grip on the chunk. Reese asked, “Don’t you have to have reasonable cause?”

“You mentioned a shotgun.” He supposed that as reasonable cause that was questionable, like just.about everything a cop does. He wanted a look under the blanket.

He pulled, but it was hooked on something. Twisting himself around, he got a knee on the seat, made a two-handed grab, and jerked hard.

— Gazed at a small girl in blue jeans and a plaid shirt lying on her side, knees aimed at him, heels behind her, the small thin white face under a pile of light-brown hair at the far end of the seat. The arm on top went behind her hip. Strapping-tape was wrapped around the lower half of her face. Shiny blue eyes stared back at him.

Dropping the blanket on the junk on the floor, he got out, waving to the San Carlos cops as he walked to Reese’s side of the car. Reese spread his hands and said in a jagged voice, “Not what it seems.”

Weare opened the door and Reese came out. As Weare gestured, he turned to the car, took a step back, and laid himself forward, hands against the top.

Weare went over him and found under the denim jacket a sheath with a six-inch Buck knife, more or less legal. He unclipped it and slid it into his coat pocket.

The cop had come up, his partner drifting behind. Weare asked if he would cuff Reese, who turned obediently, hands behind his back. Weare asked, “Who is she?”

“Gale something — one of the kids on the scene. She’s not hurt.”

Three or four cars had slid into the wide area and a few drinkers stood at the door of the Nut Haven, checking the doings.

Weare murmured that maybe the cop could put Reese in his cruiser. The cop said he’d call in. Weare nodded, turned to the LTD, and got in back, shoving junk with his legs until he had space to crouch at the girl’s head.

He saw how the tape was wrapped six or seven times around, lapping over itself, found the end, and, picking up her head, ripped the tape, changing hands, giving the last lap a fast rip from her lips, balling the tape, and dropping it on the wadded brown blanket. “What’s your name?”

She worked her mouth, stretching her cheeks. He started to unwind tape from her wrists.

“Is your name Gale?”

“No. Petunia.” He glanced. Her eyes were the same, wide and shiny. “That was Mother’s name, too. Mother was a frog. I started as a tadpole but grew into a swan.”

He had unbound her wrists, was down at her ankles. “Are you hurt?”

“Endlessly. I float on a lake of tears — like Alice. My name is Alice. Do you remember Alice, Ben Bolt? Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown? I have a beautiful long neck and bright swan eyes.” Bright doper eyes.