Ed Gorman - Several Deaths Later

Oh, there were plenty of teasers scattered throughout the section headed "Celebrity Circle."

Jere Farris end/Cassie McDowell up/Ken Norris rich (see banker Beverly Hills)/Susan Richards "belle"

Obviously, the key words were "end" and "up" and "banker Beverly Hills" and "belle" but what the hell could they possibly mean to anybody but Iris Graves?

He paused for a time, rubbing his eyes, cat-lazy, and viewed a few frames of New York Ripper, about which nothing further needed to be said. It was one of those flicks where the title pretty much wrote your review for you, especially after you saw the first thirty seconds in which a gigantic knife appeared to plunge downward into a gigantic breast.

Yessir.

So he went back to his reading, forming a picture of beautiful, red-haired Iris as his eyes scanned the pages. She'd been a regal one, Iris had, and he'd wondered how she'd ever wound up working for a cheesy rag like Snoop.

Then near the end of the journal he found it-a single word. "Payday."

Actually, it was contained in a sentence that went: "Wonder how Ken Norris' loyal fans will appreciate his payday? Ask BV banker how long been going on."

BV presumably meant Beverly Hills again.

But what the hell was "payday" all about?

By the time he got to unloading the cardboard box of items belonging to Everett Sanderson, Tobin had begun to feel something like a grave robber. He recalled moving into an apartment near Central Park where the previous occupant, a painter, had died of a heart attack on the living room floor. One day, tucked in the back of a closet, Tobin had found a packet of letters from the painter to his daughter, and much as he'd been moved by what he read, Tobin had always felt obscene about it, as if he'd window-peeked or something.

He had something of the same feeling as he lifted things from the box. There was a Louis L'Amour paperback western, a package of Chesterfield cigarettes unopened, a Sony cartridge tape recorder, a few dozen of the brochures Captain Hackett had shown him, a. 38 Smith and Wesson, a wallet filled with pictures of Sanderson's grandchildren and a very faded photo of Sanderson standing in front of a trailer with another man who was holding an infant lovingly in his arms; beside him was the body of a woman. Sanderson, or somebody, had taken a Magic Marker and obliterated her face. The violence of this intrigued Tobin. He slipped the photo from its cellophane and then clipped on his bed lamp and looked at it more carefully. He could see nothing of her face beyond the Magic Marker. She wore a tie-dyed shirt and he could see a peace symbol painted on the shabby house trailer behind them so he assumed the photograph dated back to the mid-to-late sixties. Sanderson, standing on the far right of the photograph, looked somber.

Tobin took the photograph to the bathroom. He wet Kleenex, then gently daubed the soaked paper over the Magic Marker. But the black ink was indelible. He could not see the face of the woman.

After a quick glance at the TV-"the New York Ripper" was slashing his sixteenth or seventeenth victim- Tobin picked up the wallet and started going through the money compartment. There was $400 in various denominations and then three folded-up, yellowed newspaper clippings.

The first clipping made him smile. "Sanderson Bowls Perfect Game," and then a brief account of how a Louisville, Kentucky, policeman had rolled 300 in a policeman's league bowling tournament. The story brought the man alive to Tobin and for the first time he found himself wondering about Sanderson as a human being-the way, he supposed, archaeologists wondered about Egyptians on the site of digs. What had made Sanderson happy or sad? What had he liked to watch on TV? What failures had he endured and triumphs enjoyed (aside from that one perfect bowling game)?

The next two clippings were more like Iris Graves's notes-virtually meaningless because they had no context.

HARBURT MAN PERISHES IN TRAILER FIRE

Twenty-six-year-old William K. Kelly was found burned to death yesterday in his house trailer on Puckett Road.

Preliminary investigation indicates that Kelly fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. Fire authorities believe the blaze started in a couch on which Kelly slept.

The second clipping read:

SANDY CUMMINGS WINS MISS INDIANA

Sandy Cummings, a twenty-three-year-old doctor's receptionist from Muncie, was crowned Miss Indiana last night in an event that was telecast statewide for the first time.

The clipping went on to detail runners-up and all the usual hype put forth by officials, one of whom said, "This shows you that not all our young people are out hurling rocks and picketing."

Tobin had the sense that the clipping-like the photo-dated from the sixties.

But what the hell did it mean?

The next tape Tobin watched was a Roger Corman movie called The Man With the X-Ray Eyes, a very good remake of the Ray Milland original.

He was about halfway through it-real time; no fast forward with a film like this-when Don Rickles (in what was apparently his movie debut) tells the Milland character that he knows all about him and could turn him in for a reward.

It was that last word, "reward," that gave Tobin the idea.

He called collect.

When you call New York from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, you tend to run up a bill rather quickly.

He asked for the entertainment editor and just hoped that the man or woman-Tobin was not a reader of the rag and so had no idea which-would recognize Tobin's name from his various TV appearances.

A receptionist put the operator through to a second person and then a male voice said, "Conroy."

"I have a collect call from a man who says he's Tobin, the TV critic. Will you accept charges? He's calling from aboard a cruise ship."

"Is this a gag?"

The operator sounded irritated. "I'm too busy for gags, sir." Ma Bell might have learned to grovel for business following deregulation, but she had yet to get herself a sense of humor.

"Is this really Tobin?" Conroy said.

"It's really Tobin," Tobin said.

"You are not permitted to speak, sir," the operator said, "until Mr. Conroy accepts the charges."

"All right, for God's sake, I accept the charges." When the woman rang off, Conroy said, "Bitch." Then, "So what can I do for you, Tobin?"

"I'm on the same cruise ship where Iris Graves was murdered."

"Say, that's right. Poor Iris. She was one hell of a woman-and I don't mean just looks-wise, either. Good reporter."

"That's one of the things I wanted to ask you about."

"What?"

"What she was working on."

"Can't tell you because I don't know and wouldn't tell you if I did."

"You still pay $10,000 for your lead story?"

"Yep. They can call us what they want but they can't say we don't pay our writers."

"Writers" was stretching it where Snoop was concerned. Generally, Snoop got its stuff from waiters, parking lot attendants, and hospital officials-its Liber-ace AIDS story had been leaked by an orderly, for example-and then one of the staffers just "worked it up," doing a little what they liked to call "enhancing" along the way.

Other less genteel folks called it lying.

Tobin couldn't resist. "Do you pay twice as much if the story happens to be true?"

Conroy surprised him by laughing. "Everybody I know who knows you says you're an asshole and, boy, they're right."

"Thanks."

"So in other words you've got a story you want to sell?"

"Well, I can't write the story without some help from you but if you go along, I think I can piece together something you'd really like."

"You think you can find out who killed Norris as well as Iris and this guy Sanderson?"

"Yes."

"You got any hunches right now?"

"Not right now. But speaking of Sanderson-that would be my first question."