The Dream of The Broken Horses

16

With the diary comes relief: Dad was not the killer and maybe Waldo was. But as relieved as I am, I'm still not satisfied.

As I walk to the courthouse, I ask myself why I still want to pursue Flamingo. Isn't it enough to know Dad didn't sleep with his patient, was not involved in her death. Why now go on with it?

The answer, of course, is Barbara. If after months spent studying her image in the Fesse photograph and reading and rereading Dad's case study, I became haunted by her bizarre dream, now that I've read her diary, I find myself even more drawn in. Now, like Dad, bewitched by her personality, I yearn to learn everything I possibly can, including who killed her and the precise manner of her death.

During lunch break, I take my copy of the diary to a photocopy shop to have an additional copy made for Mace. While I'm waiting, I dash off sketches that illustrate the end of the Foster trial, various views of each side resting its case. This is, admittedly, a lazy way to earn my keep, but at this point I'm so familiar with the principals I can draw most any possible courtroom scene out of my head.

On my way to the Sheriff's Department to drop off the diary, I once again have the feeling I'm being followed. Deciding to take action, I enter a shoe store, walk to the rear, then suddenly turned and stride back out while staring directly into the eyes of everyone I encounter. No sign of Mr. Potato Head… not that I'd even recognize him if her were there. But at least he's watching, he'll know I'm on to him. A couple minutes later, entering the Sheriff's Department, I enjoy the thought he may think I'm here to report him.

Mr. Potato Head: Sometime in the night, I suddenly open my eyes, turn to Pam snuggled against me, feel her warmth, inhale the aroma of her body, and listen as she breathes deeply in her sleep.

A phrase, ricocheting inside my brain, awakened me:

He was like a shadow, you never noticed he was there.

Jurgen said that the afternoon I drew his portrait.

Who was he talking about? Who was it you never noticed was there?

It was O'Neill, Jerry O'Neill, the crooked ex-cop with the alcohol problem who was Walter Maritz's operative. The guy Maritz brought in to track Barbara Fulraine because he couldn’t do it himself since she knew him from his having scammed her. The guy Maritz brought in, because, as he told the cops, ‘I knew O'Neill would fuck up good, and that's just what I wanted.’ Except, according to Jurgen, most everything Maritz told the cops was a lie.

He was like a shadow, you never noticed he was there.

That could be a perfect description of Mr. Potato Head. You didn't notice O'Neill because he looked like everybody else, a guy with cop training, expert at following people. Johnny Powell figured him for a cop. ‘He had a cop's way about him. You know – a stache and a cheap suit.’ Except he didn't have a mustache, ‘Just seemed like the type. Said your name then showed me a picture.’

The night before I interviewed Kate, she tried to draw the face of the man she saw when she was a girl. Her drawings were childish, schematic. I attributed that to lack of skill. But maybe her drawings were accurate portraits of Mr. Potato Head, a man with a generic face who looked like everybody else.

He was like a shadow, you never noticed he was there.

Mr. Potato Head knows how to get into a hotel room without disturbing the electronic lock. Mr. Potato Head knows how to follow a man on the street without being noticed. Mr. Potato Head can do a U-turn-and-park maneuver when I try to track his car. All skills an old-time cop would have, an ex-cop, an operative.

Jerry O'Neill equals Mr. Potato Head? It adds up, could even be true.

I'm excited. Though it's the middle of the night, I tiptoe into Pam's bathroom to call Mace from my cell phone..

"That diary's really something," he says. "Can't put it out of my mind. And now Waldo… it's hard to believe, isn't it?"

"I don't know if it was Waldo or who the hell it was, Mace. I do know that all your Steadman-connected suspects are dead. Cody, the Torrance Hill mob, whoever. But Mr. Potato Head isn't dead and now I think I know who he is."

"Sure, I remember O'Neill," he tells me. "Just barely. He's not the kind of guy you remember all that well. Basically all I can recall about him is his name. He pauses. "Hmmm, that sounds like Mr. Potato Head, doesn't it? Gimme a couple hours. Soon as I get to the office I'll run him through the DMV."

Calista County Courthouse

11:50 a.m.

Kit Foster's defense attorney rests his case. When Judge Winterson asks if the State wants to put on rebuttal evidence, the prosecution team briefly confers, then announces that it rests as well. Excitement in the courtroom. The trial's now basically over. Winterson gavels for quiet, instructs counsel to prepare to make closing arguments in the morning, then dismisses the jury. The moment the judge leaves the courtroom, the media crowd, cell phones in hand, surge into the corridor.

"How long will it take you to get me drawings?" Harriet asks, panting at my side.

"I already have them," I tell her, handing off my sketches.

Her expression is priceless. "Who told you, David?" she demands. "How did you know?"

I smile at her, break loose, head for the elevators. Mace is waiting for me downstairs with the DMV photo of Jerry O'Neill.

Standing behind his counter, Johnny Powell nods. "Sure, that's the guy."

"No question, Johnny?"

"It's him, Mr. Weiss. Just lookin' at him I can smell the suit."

Mace and I thank Johnny, then retreat to the Flamingo courtyard.

"Your geezer's positive, so let's talk to him." Mace laughs. "Be pretty funny if he's tracking you now. He'll end up tracking you back to his own place."

O'Neill's place turns out to be an apartment in a crummy building on Tucker Avenue, a tenement with strange, dark, open porches lined two in a row up the facade.

There's an unpleasant pungency to the dark, ground-floor lobby, the smell of over-the-hill fish fried in cheap oil. A NO SOLICITORS sign, defaced by graffiti, is taped to the wall. A coin-operated laundry machine chugs away in a corner, a puddle of soapy water, leaking from beneath, spreading across the floor. No elevator, just a staircase brashly lit by buzzing fluorescent tubes attracting flies.

"2-B." Mace points to the left. The walls are dark brown and so is the woodwork. I can barely make out the number on the door.

Mace pushes the buzzer. No response. He motions me to stand out of sight, then knocks.

The sound of footsteps padding across the floor on the other side. "Yeah-yeah-yeah," a weary voice intones.

A little flash of light in the peephole. The sound of laborious breathing. "Whaduyuwant?"

"Sheriff's Department. Open up, O'Neill."

O'Neill coughs, a smoker's dry, hacking cough. The door opens a crack. A stream of cigarette smoke snakes out. "What's going on?"

Mace motions me to show myself. I step into O'Neill's sight line. He looks at me with little terrier eyes, then exhales and coughs again. Even through the haze of smoke, I see more character in his face than I expected.

"Mr. Weiss here's made a complaint," Mace tells him. "Want to talk about it?"

"Hello there, Weiss. Sure, we can talk about it. Place is a mess. Wasn't expecting guests."

He gestures us into a large, dark, dusty room furnished with battered Salvation Army junk. An oversize refrigerator, door yellowing with age, occupies a corner. Several cheap aluminum ashtrays are overflowing with butts. The stench of exhaled tobacco is nearly overwhelming. When O'Neill steps back, he seems to disappear into the shadows.

He was like a shadow, you never noticed he was there.

"Wanna beer?" We shake our heads. O'Neill shrugs, then makes his way to the refrigerator. "Take a seat… if you can find one."

Mace perches on a torn, lopsided hassock. I sit on an old army footlocker covered with a fraying gray towel.

O'Neill's a pear-shaped guy with iron-gray hair and a big ass shown off by a pair of brown trousers held up by suspenders. White chest hairs peek through his shirt. His jowls are unshaven, and he's wearing a raggedy pair of brown slippers. He's got the kind of square-bottom face that reminds me of the bottom of a paper bag.

I wouldn't have trouble drawing this guy. What's the big deal, why's he so hard to describe?

"How'd you guys find me?" he asks, sitting down on his unmade bed, faint smile playing on his lips.

"I'll be asking the questions," Mace says. "To start, why're you following Mr. Weiss?"

"Following a guy's a crime?"

"Yeah, if you're doing it to cover up a crime."

"I ain't covering nothin'. I was following him for a client."

"Who?"

"You know I don't have to tell you that."

"Yeah, but you will."

I like Mace's classical technique. It's as if, figuring O'Neill a certain way, he instinctively uses language he knows will reach the guy.

O'Neill stubs out his cigarette, lights another. "Okay, guy named Maritz asked me to find out what Weiss is up to."

"Walter M. Maritz who lives in Sarasota?"

O'Neill exhales toward me. "You seem to know a lot, Mr. Weiss. I'll pass that on to Walt. See, finding out what you know is what he wants to know… if you follow my meaning. He heard you were nosing around, pokin' your face into offices in the Doubleton Building, talking to Rakoubian's nutty widow, hangin' out with Cody's old maitre d'. So he asked me to check you out. That's the whole story."

"No, it isn't." Mace rises, walks up to O'Neill, stares at him with disdain. "Right now your client Maritz is looking at serious charges. He lied to us about Flamingo. From what I can tell, damn near everything he told us was a lie. Doesn't matter it was twenty-six years ago. No statute of limitations on murder. The investigation's still open. The means no limitations on hindering the investigation. So start talking, because the one who talks first, you or Maritz, is the one who's going to get credit for helping me out."

There's something almost old ladyish about O'Neill, and it's not his personal hygiene. It's his prissiness, I decide, the prim way he holds his hands together in his lap and the sickly smile that coats his face like a veneer. He's got wide hips, a plump ass, and smoking must have nearly rotted out his lungs. He looks like a guy with maybe a year or two left to live. The only part of him that appears tough is the squirrelly look of cunning in his eyes.

He gazes at Mace, then at me, stubs out his cigarette, then goes into a coughing fit. When finally he brings the cough under control, he looks again at Mace and shrugs.

"Sure," he says, "I'll tell you. Walt hasn't paid me, so he hasn't earned client privilege yet. Anyhow," he shows that sickly smile again, "my private investigator's license already expired."

"Was Maritz involved with the Flamingo killings?"

"No way!"

"So why does he care what I know?" I ask.

"Because like the inspector here said, Walt lied. He told the inspector he didn't know what happened, he didn't know about Mrs. Fulraine's affair with the teach. But he did know. I told him. I was full time on her butt. I was there in my car in the motel lot the day of the shootings. I even caught a glimpse of the shooter when he ran out."

As he starts talking, I start sketching him. He preens for me a little, blows a couple of smoke rings in my direction, smiles to himself, but never asks what I'm doing or why. Maybe because he knows he's difficult to describe, he thinks I won't be able to portray him. But I have my own motive, and it's not just to see if I can make a decent drawing of his generically ugly face. I want him to get used to me sketching as he speaks, because, though he doesn't know it yet, if he really did see the shooter, he's going to help me make an eyewitness drawing as soon as he finishes telling his story to Mace.

"This rich guy Fulraine hired Walt to follow his ex, catch her doing something untoward he could use against her to get back his kids."

"‘Untoward’?" Mace winces. "Give us a break, O'Neill."

Jerry blows a perfect smoke ring, then another, which passes through the first. "‘Sinful’ – how's that?"

"Go on."

"The pay was good so Walt took the assignment even though he knew he couldn't handle it on his own. Also seems he had a grudge. Couple years before, he and Mrs. Fulraine had a major falling out and Cody had him beaten up. Merciless beating. Put Walt out of commission nearly a year. So Walt hired me. I was just off the force. Maybe I wasn't the greatest cop this town ever had, but I was one helluva tracker. Walt knew that. So he tells me: ‘Follow the bitch, get everything you can on her. Nothin’ could be sweeter for me than seeing her lose her brats.’

"So I start following her. Two, three days into the job she leads me to a motel across from Tremont Park. One look and I go, ‘Whoa! This doesn't fit, she's up to something dirty in there.’"

"Something ‘untoward’?"

Jerry blows another perfect smoke ring. "She goes up to this room. Couple hours later she and this guy come out and get into separate cars. I jot down his plate number, then follow her home."

"When I report this to Walt, he gets excited. ‘Tasty!’ he says. So he runs the plate on the stud and it turns out he's a teacher at her kids' school. ‘Got her by her short hairs now,’ Walt says."

"I keep following her and every couple days it's the same routine. She drives over to the motel, she and the teach spend a couple hours, then each takes off in his own car. They're so sure of themselves they don't even try to cover up. I mean she drives a Jag for Christ's sake! Anyone could've followed her."

"One night Walt and I have a couple drinks and he tells me what's on his mind. ‘I can pass all this on to Fulraine like I'm supposed to,’ he says. ‘Then what? He nails her in court and throws us a little bonus for good work.’ Walk doesn't think much of that. A little bonus isn't going to cut it. ‘I'm gonna blackmail the bitch. She'll pay big time to keep this quiet. Trouble is she knows me so I can't approach her direct. That's where you come in. She doesn't know you, Jerry, so you'll be the cut-out, then you and me'll split the take.’ Sounds good to me. I tell him I'm in. ‘Okay,’ Walt says, ‘but we can't do blackmail without something to sell. We gotta get pictures.’ So we talk to Max. Max is game and Max is cheap. He even knows the broad, once took pictures of her holding a whip."

I'm shocked; Barbara thought Max was her friend.

"What about Waldo Channing?" I ask, contemplating Max's betrayal. "Did Maritz bring him in too?"

O'Neill shows his old lady's sickly smile. "Why split with Channing when Walt and I developed this on our own?"

"So then what?" Mace asks.

"Max stakes out the motel, sets up his telephoto, gets shots of them coming and going, snaps a kiss or two. But that's not good enough for Walt. ‘I want fucking,’ he says. ‘I want them bare-assed naked on the bed.’ So Max comes up with this plan. Since I'm used to her routine, I knew when she and the teach take a day off. We book their favorite room on one of the off-days, I sneak in a ladder, then help Max mount one of his remote-control miniature cameras and a transmitter mike behind the ventilation screen above the bed…"

Max knew a secret about those killings, Chip's mother told me, something he wouldn't tell no matter how many times I asked. But the worst part of this, I think, is Max's betrayal.

"That fuckin' Max. What a wizard! Couple days later we take a room a few doors down. The lady and the teach check in as usual, we listen till we hear them going at it, ‘oohs’ and ‘has.’ Then Max starts shooting blind. Every couple of minutes he uses this little radio device to take a picture. We're worried they'll hear the clicks, but we get lucky, there's a thunderstorm. Anyhow, to find the camera they'd have to unscrew the vent register. As it happens, they're so wrapped up in each other they don't suspect a thing. Soon as they leave, we go back in the room, Max takes out the film, and, in case he didn't gat enough, reloads the camera and puts it back. Good thing, too, because even though the pictures come out great, Walt still isn't satisfied. ‘I wanna crotch shot! I wanna see her snatch! I wanna see her suckin' his dick! Get me a suck shot and you get double pay,’ he tells Max. I think he had this idea he'd blackmail the lady, then, when he squeezed out all he could, he'd mail the pictures to Cody for spite. Like ‘fuck you, Cody, take a look at your bitch sucking off her new stud!’ Far as those two went, Walt had a hair up his ass…"

"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.

What does he remember about the guy? The posture first, the stiffback way he held himself. He picked up on that even before the guy crossed the street. Then the way he hesitated a second on the motel side. Then the way he ran – no, not ran but loped across and into the parking lot.

He remembers the feel of the vinyl seat against his sweaty back as he slipped down a little so as not to be seen. He remembers how he worried the guy might spot him. He remembers noticing a vertical bulge in the guy's raincoat as if he were hiding a gun there, not a sidearm but a shotgun maybe, because that's what the shots sounded like they were from.

There was a moment when the guy stopped cold in the lot, actually froze for a second between a Chevy and a Buick, and Jerry wondered which car he'd get into. That's when he saw the guy's eyes. They weren't the eyes of a pro killer or the cool eyes of a veteran who'd seen combat in Korea or ‘Nam, rather they were wild, frightened, the eyes of an amateur, a guy who'd never shot anyone before, and now he'd done it and now the only thing on his mind was to get away, hide, not get caught.

Jerry approves of the set of eyes I've drawn. He recognizes them, he says. Now, he says, all we gotta do is fill in the rest of the face.

I like the sound of that. Jerry thinks he's the one making the drawing and I'm just there to lend a trained artistic hand. In fact he's right, my drawing hand's now connected to his brain. The planchette effect has taken hold. With each stroke of my pencil, the shooter's face comes more clearly into view.

Jerry remembers how the guy's eyebrows were arched, that his eyelashes were long, that his chin and lips were delicately modeled. Yeah, there was something sensitive and boyish, even pretty about the guy… if you can use a word like that. Kinda funny, since, as it turned out, he'd just blasted two people, spattered their brains and guts all over the motel room walls.

Jerry remembers more: The guy had a narrow nose. You couldn't see the top of his eyebrows on account of his hat, couldn't see the tops of his ears either. The ear bottoms were small, evenly rounded. But the eyes and chin are what stick most in Jerry's mind. And the mouth – yeah, that's coming more clearly now. A longer mouth than most peoples', and the lips thin and delicate. And when the guy opened his mouth – ‘cause he was breathing hard, breathing from his mouth when he paused there between the cars like a scared deer looking for a place to hide – you could see his teeth weren't in good shape. Surprising for a guy that young. Yeah, he was young, twenty-five, twenty-six at most. The skin under his eyes was smooth like a kid's.

I draw, refine, fill in. Jerry watches amazed as a face slowly comes clear on the paper the way a photographic image will slowly emerge in a tray of developer.

"Yeah!" he says when I set down my pencil. "Yeah, that's him! I can't believe it! That's the guy I saw!"

"Do you know him?"

Jerry shakes his head. "I don't think I've seen him in all the years since. But he's the shooter, I'm sure of it."

Mace comes over, stands behind me.

"Interesting… I think I may have seen this man."

"We've all seen him," I tell him. "He was young back then. He's changed a lot since. Back then he was lean, wiry, had a full head of hair – not that Jerry could see his hair what with that stupid, slouchy hat he wore. There was a hunger in his eyes back then, a wildness like Jerry says. But I don't think it was fear, more like a lust for power and success. He looks different now, but if you look carefully, you can see the underlying structure, the set of the bones beneath the flab. Now he's sleek, bald, middle-aged, plump, content. But every once in a while, his eyes flash and you can see that old hunger in them still."

Mace is getting annoyed. "Quit stalling, David. What's his name?"

"You know him, Mace. You too, Jerry. Everyone in Calista knows who he is. He's Waldo Channing's old flunky… toady… lap dog… lickspittle. His name's Spencer Deval, and this is how he looked twenty-six years ago."