The Poet

36

The Wilcox Hotel, as I learned it was called, had room for one more-especially when the night clerk learned I was with the government people already staying there and was willing to pay the top price, thirty-five dollars a night. It was the only hotel I'd ever checked into where I felt a nervous sense of foreboding about giving the man behind the front counter my credit card number. This one looked like he was halfway through a bottle on this shift alone. It also appeared as though he had decided on the last four successive mornings that he wasn't quite ready for a shave yet. He never looked at me during the entire check-in-process-which took an unusually long five minutes as he hunted for a pen and then accepted a loan of one from me.

"What're you people doin', anyway?" he said as he slid a key with the stamped room number almost worn off it across the equally worn Formica counter.

"They didn't tell you?" I asked, feigning surprise.

"Nope, I'm just checkin' people in is all."

"It's a credit card fraud investigation. A lot of it going on around here."

"Oh."

"By the way, which room is Agent Walling in?"

It took him a half minute to interpret his own records.

"That'd be seventeen."

My room was small and when I sat on the edge of the bed it sank at least a half foot, the other side rising by an equal amount with the accompanying protest of old springs. It was a ground-floor room with spare but neat furnishings and the stale smell of cigarettes. The yellowed blinds were up and I could see a metal grate over the one window. If there was a fire, I'd be trapped like a lobster in a cage if I didn't get out the door fast enough.

I took the travel-size toothpaste tube and folding toothbrush I had bought out of the pillowcase and went into the bathroom. I could still taste the Bloody Mary from the plane and wanted to get rid of it. I also wanted to be ready for all eventualities with Rachel.

The bathrooms in old hotel rooms are always the most depressing. This one was slightly larger than the phone booths I used to see at every gas station when I was growing up. Sink, toilet and portable shower stall all complete with matching rust stains were set in a crowded configuration. If you were ever sitting on the toilet when somebody came in, you'd lose your kneecaps. When I was finished and had returned to the comparative spaciousness of the room, I looked at the bed and knew I didn't want to sit back down there. I didn't even want to sleep there. I decided to risk leaving the computer and my pillowcase full of clothes and left the room.

My light knock on the door of room seventeen was answered so quickly I thought Rachel had been waiting on the other side. She quickly ushered me in.

"Bob's room is across the hall," she whispered by way of explanation. "What is it?"

I didn't answer. We looked at each other for a long moment, each waiting for the other to act. I finally did, stepping close to her and pulling her into a long kiss. She seemed as into it as I was and this quickly calmed many of the worries I had allowed to simmer in my brain. She broke the kiss off and strongly pulled me into an embrace. Over her shoulder I surveyed her room. It was bigger than mine and the furniture was maybe a decade newer but it wasn't any less depressing. Her computer was on the bed and there were some papers spread over the worn yellow spread where a thousand people had lain and fucked and farted and fought.

"Funny," she whispered, "I just left you this morning and I found myself already missing you."

"Same here."

"Jack, I'm sorry, but I don't want to make love on that bed, in this room, or in this hotel."

"That's okay," I said nobly, though I regretted the words as I spoke them. "I understand. Looks like you got a luxury suite compared to mine."

"We'll have to wait but then we'll make up for it."

"Yeah. Why are we staying here, anyway?"

"Bob wants to be close. So we can move if they spot him."

I nodded.

"Well, can we leave for a little while? Want to get a drink? There's got to be someplace around."

"Probably no better than this. Let's just stay and talk."

She went to the bed and cleared the papers and the computer, then sat back against the headboard, propped on a pillow. I sat in the room's one chair, its cushion scarred by an ancient knife slash repaired with tape.

"What do you want to talk about, Rachel?"

"I don't know. You're the reporter. I thought you'd ask the questions."

She smiled.

"About the case?"

"About anything."

I looked at her for a long moment. I decided to start with something simple and then see how far I could go from there.

"What's this Thomas guy like?"

"He's fine. For a local. Not overly cooperative, but not an asshole."

"What do you mean not overly cooperative? He's letting you use him as human bait, isn't that enough?"

"I guess. Maybe it's me. I never seem to get along with the locals."

I moved from the chair onto the bed with her.

"So what? It's not your job to get along with anybody."

"That's right," she said, smiling again. "You know, there's a soda machine in the lobby."

"You want something?"

"No, but you said something about getting a drink."

"I was thinking of something stronger. It's all right, though. I'm happy."

She reached over and did her finger drag through my beard. I caught her hand as she dropped it away and held it for a moment.

"Do you think the intensity of what we're doing and what we're involved with is causing this?" I asked.

"As opposed to what?"

"I don't know. I'm just asking."

"I know what you're saying," she said after a long moment. "I have to admit I've never made love to anybody thirty-six hours after the first time I'd ever seen him in my life."

She smiled and it sent a beautiful thrill through me.

"Me neither."

She leaned toward me and we kissed again. I turned and we rolled into a from-here-to-eternity kiss. Only our beach was the old bedspread in a ratty old hotel room three decades past its prime. But all of that didn't matter anymore. Soon I was moving my kisses down her neck and then we made love.

We couldn't both fit in the bathroom or the shower so she went first. As she showered I lay in bed thinking about her and wishing for a smoke.

It was hard to tell because of the sound of the shower but at one point I thought I heard a light knock on the door. Alerted, I sat up on the edge of the bed and started pulling on my pants as I stared at the door. I listened but heard nothing again. Then, I distinctly saw the doorknob move, or thought I did. I got up and moved to the door, pulling up my pants, and tilted my head to the jamb to listen. I heard nothing. There was a peephole but I was reluctant to look through it. The light was on in the room and if I looked through the peephole I would block it, possibly letting whoever was out there know that someone was looking at him.

Rachel cut the shower off at that point. After a few moments of no noticeable sound from the hallway I moved to the peephole and looked. There was nothing out there.

"What are you doing?"

I turned. Rachel stood by the bed, attempting to show modesty with the tiny towel that came with the room.

"I thought I heard someone knock."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know. There was no one there when I looked. Maybe it was nothing. All right if I take a shower?"

"Sure."

I stepped out of my pants and while walking past her stopped. She dropped her towel, exposing her body. She was beautiful to me. I stepped over and we held each other for a long moment.

"Be right back," I finally said and then headed into the shower.

Rachel was dressed and waiting when I came out. I looked at my watch, which I had left on the bed table, and saw it was eleven. There was a battered old television in the room but I decided not to suggest watching the news. I realized I hadn't eaten dinner but still wasn't hungry.

"I'm not tired," she said.

"Neither am I."

"Maybe we could find a place for a drink after all."

After I dressed, we quietly left the room. She looked out first to make sure Backus or Thorson or anybody else wasn't lurking about. We encountered no one in the hallway or the lobby and outside the street seemed deserted and dark. We walked south to Sunset.

"You got your gun?" I asked, half kidding and half serious.

"Always. Besides, we've got our people around. They probably saw us leave."

"Really? I thought they were just keeping an eye on Thomas."

"They are. But they should have a good idea who is on the street at any given time. If they're doing their job."

I turned and walked backward for a few steps, staring back up the street at the green neon sign for the Mark Twain. I surveyed the street, the cars parked along both sides. Again, I saw no shadows or silhouettes of the watchers.

"How many are out there?"

"Should be five. Two on foot in fixed positions. Two in cars, stationary. One car roving. All the time."

I turned back around and pulled the collar of my jacket up. It was colder outside than I had expected. Our breath came out in thin clouds, mingled together and then disappeared.

When we got to Sunset I looked both ways and saw a neon sign over an archway a block to the west that said CAT amp; FIDDLE BAR. I pointed that way and Rachel started walking. We were silent until we got there.

Going through the archway we entered an outdoor garden with several tables below green canvas umbrellas but they were all empty. Past these and through the windows on the other side we could see what looked like a lively and warm bar. We went in, found an empty booth on the opposite side from the dartboards and sat down. It was an English-style pub. When the barmaid came around Rachel told me to go first and I ordered a black and tan. Rachel then did the same.

We looked around the place and small-talked until our drinks arrived. We clinked glasses and drank. I watched her. I didn't think she'd ever had a black and tan before.

"The Harp is heavier. It always stays at the bottom, the Guinness on top."

She smiled.

"When you said black and tan, I thought that was a brand that you knew. But it's good. I like it but it's strong."

"One thing the Irish know is how to make a beer. The English have to give them that."

"Two of these and you'll have to call for backup to get me back."

"I doubt it."

We lapsed into a comfortable silence. There was a fireplace in the rear wall and the warmth from its fully engulfed fire extended across the room.

"Is your real name John?"

I nodded.

"I'm not Irish but I always thought Sean was Irish for John."

"Yes, it's the Gaelic version. Since we were twins my parents decided… actually my mother."

"I think it's nice."

After a few more drinks from my glass I started asking questions about the case.

"So, tell me about Gladden."

"There isn't a whole lot to tell yet."

"Well, you met him. Interviewed him. You must have a feeling for him."

"He wasn't exactly cooperative. His appeal was still pending and he didn't trust us not to use what he said to disrupt that. We all took turns trying to get him to open up. Finally, I think it was Bob's idea, he agreed to talk to us in the third person. As if the perpetrator of the crimes he was convicted of was somebody else."

"Bundy did that, too, right?"

I remembered that from a book I had read.

"Yes. And others as well. It was just a device to assure them that we were not there to make cases against them. Most of these men have tremendous egos. They wanted to talk to us but they had to be convinced they were safe from legal reprisals. Gladden was like that. Especially since he knew he had a valid appeal still pending."

"It must be a rare thing that you have a prior relationship, no matter how small, with an active serial killer."

"Yes. But I have a feeling that if any one of the people we interviewed was set loose like William Gladden, we'd end up hunting for them as well. These people don't get better, Jack, and they don't get rehabbed. They are what they are."

She said it like a warning, the second such intimation she had made. I thought about it a few moments, wondering if there was more she was trying to tell me. Or, I thought, was she really warning herself?

"So what did he say? Did he tell you about Beltran or Best Pals?"

"Of course not, or I would have remembered when I saw Beltran's name on the victim list. Gladden didn't mention names. But he did give the usual abuse excuse. Said that he was assaulted sexually as a child. Repeatedly. He was at the same age as the children he later victimized in Tampa. You see, that's the cycle. It's a pattern we often see. They become fixated on themselves at the point in their own lives when they were… ruined."

I nodded but didn't say anything, hoping she would continue.

"For a three-year period," she said, "from ages nine to twelve. The episodes were frequent and included oral and anal penetration. He didn't tell us who the abuser was other than to say it was a nonrelative. According to Gladden, he never told his mother because he feared this man. The man threatened him. He was a figure of some authority in his life. Bob made some follow-up calls about it but never got anywhere with it. Gladden wasn't specific enough for him to track it. Gladden was in his twenties by then and the period of abuse had been years earlier. There would've been statute-of-limitations problems even if we had pursued it. We couldn't even find his mother to ask her about it. She left Tampa after his arrest and all the publicity. We, of course, can now surmise that the abuser was Beltran."

I nodded. I had finished my beer but Rachel was nursing hers. She didn't like it. I signaled the barmaid and ordered an Amstel Light for her. I said I'd finish her black and tan.

"So how did it end? The abuse, I mean."

"That's the irony you so often see. It ended when he became too old for Beltran. Beltran rejected him and went on to his next victim. All the boys he sponsored through Best Pals are being located and will be interviewed. I'll bet they all were abused by him. He's the evil seed to all of this, Jack. Make sure you get that across in whatever you write about this. Beltran got what he deserved."

"You sound like you sympathize with Gladden."

Wrong thing to say. I saw the anger flare in her eyes.

"You are damn right I sympathize. It doesn't mean I condone a single thing he's done or that I wouldn't drop him with a bullet if I got the chance. But he didn't invent the monster that is inside of him. It was created by someone else."

"Okay, I wasn't trying to suggest-"

The barmaid came with Rachel's beer and saved me from walking down the wrong path any further. I pulled Rachel's black and tan across the table and took a long drink, hoping we were past my misstep.

"So, aside from what he told you," I asked, "what was your take on Gladden? Did he seem to have the smarts that everyone around here is attributing to him?"

She seemed to compose her thoughts before answering.

"William Gladden knew his sexual appetite was legally, socially and culturally unacceptable. He was clearly burdened by this, I think. I believe he was at war within himself, attempting to understand his urges and desires. He wanted to tell us his story, whether it was third person or not, and I think he believed that by telling us about himself he would in some way help himself as well as maybe somebody else down the road. If you look at these dilemmas he had, I think it shows a highly intellectual being. I mean, most of these people I interviewed were like animals. Machines. They did what they did… almost by instinct or programming, as if they had to. And they did it without much thought. Gladden was different. So, yes, I think he is as smart as we are saying he is, maybe smarter."

"It's strange what you just said. You know, that he was burdened. Doesn't sound like the guy we're chasing now. The one we're chasing seems to have about as much of a conscience about what he is doing as Hitler had."

"You're right. But we've seen ample evidence of these types of predators changing, evolving. Without treatment, whether it was drug therapy or not, it is not without precedent that someone with William Gladden's background could evolve into someone like the Poet. Bottom line is, people change. After the interviews he was in prison another long year before winning his appeal and copping the deal that got him out. Pedophiles are treated the most harshly in prison society. Because of that they tend to band together in knots-just as in free society. That's why you have Gladden being the acquaintance of Gomble as well as other pedophiles in Raiford. I guess what I am saying is that I am not surprised that the man I interviewed so many years ago became the man we call the Poet today. I can see it happening."

A loud burst of laughter and applause broke out near one of the dartboards and distracted me. It looked like the night's champion had been crowned.

"Enough about Gladden for now," Rachel said when I looked back at her. "It's depressing as hell."

"Okay."

"What about you?"

"I'm depressed, too."

"No. I mean, what about you. You talk to your editor yet, tell him you're back inside?"

"No, not yet. I'll have to call in the morning and tell him there's no follow coming from me, but that I'm back inside."

"How will he take that?"

"Not well. He'll want to follow anyway. The story's moving like a locomotive now. The national media's on it and you've got to keep throwing stories into the fire to make the big train move. But what the hell. He's got other reporters. He can put one of them on it and see what they get. Which won't be much. Then Michael Warren will probably crack another exclusive in the L.A. Times and I'll really be in the doghouse."

"You are a cynical man."

"I'm a realist."

"Don't worry about Warren. Gor-whoever leaked to him before isn't going to do it again. It would be risking too much with Bob."

"Freudian slip there, right? Anyway, we'll see."

"How did you get so cynical, Jack? I thought only those rundown middle-aged cops were like that."

"I was born with it, I guess."

"I bet."

It seemed even colder on the walk back. I wanted to put my arm around her but I knew she wouldn't allow it. There were eyes on the street and I didn't try. As we got close to the hotel I remembered a story and told her.

"You know how when you're in high school and there's always this grapevine that passes information on about who likes whom and who's got a crush on whom? Remember?"

"Yes, I remember."

"Well, there was this girl and I had a thing, a crush on her. And I was… I can't remember how but the word went out on the grapevine, you know? And when that happened what you usually did was wait and see how the person responded. It was one of those things where I knew that she knew that I had this desire for her and she knew I knew she knew. Understand?"

"Yes."

"But the thing was I had no confidence and I was… I don't know. One day I was in the gym, sitting in the bleachers. I think I was in there early for a basketball game or something and it was filling up with people. Then she comes in, she's with a friend, and they're walking along the bleachers looking for a place to sit. It was one of those do-or-die moments and she looks right at me and waves… And I froze. And… then… I turned and looked behind me to see if she was waving to somebody else."

"Jack, you fool!" Rachel said, smiling and not taking the story to heart as I had done for so long. "What did she do?"

"When I turned back around she had looked away, embarrassed. See, I had embarrassed her by setting the whole thing into motion and then turning away… snubbing her… she started going out with somebody else after that. Ended up marrying him. It took me a long time to get over her."

We took the last steps to the hotel door silently. I opened the door for Rachel and looked at her with a pained, embarrassed smile. The story could still do that to me all these years later.

"So that's the story," I said. "It proves I've been a cynical fool all along."

"Everybody has stories from growing up like that," she said in a voice that seemed to dismiss the whole thing.

We crossed the lobby and the night man looked up and nodded. It seemed as if his whiskers had grown even longer in the few hours since I had first seen him. At the stairs Rachel stopped and in a whispered voice designed to leave the night man out of earshot told me not to come up.

"I think we should go to our own rooms."

"I can still walk you up."

"No, that's okay."

She looked back at the front desk. The night man had his head down and was reading a gossip tabloid. Rachel turned back to me, gave me a silent kiss on the cheek and whispered good night. I watched her go up the stairs.

I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. Too many thoughts. I had made love to a beautiful woman and spent the evening falling in love with her. I wasn't sure what love was but I knew acceptance was part of it. That's what I sensed from Rachel. It was a quality that had been a rarity in my life and I found its nearness thrilling and disquieting in the same instant.

As I stepped out to the front of the hotel to smoke a cigarette the feeling of disquiet grew and then infected my mind with other thoughts. The ghost story intruded and my embarrassment and thoughts of what might have been still grabbed me so many years after that day on the bleachers. I marveled at the hold of some memories and at how well and precisely they can be relived. I hadn't told Rachel everything about the high school girl. I hadn't told her the ending, that the girl was Riley and that the boy she went out with and then married was my brother. I didn't know why I had left that part out.

I was out of cigarettes. I stepped back into the lobby to ask the night man where I could get a pack. He told me to go back to the Cat amp; Fiddle. I saw he had an open pack of Camels on the counter next to his stack of tabloids but he didn't offer me any and I didn't ask for one.

As I walked Sunset alone I thought about Rachel again and became preoccupied with something I had noticed during our lovemaking. Each of the three times we had been together in bed she had been fully giving of herself, yet I would say she was decidedly passive. She deferred control to me. I waited for the small nuances of change on the second and third times we made love, even hesitating in my own movements and choices in order to allow her to take the lead, but she never did. Even at the sacred moment when I entered her, it was my hand fumbling at the door. Three times. No woman that I had been with before on that number of occasions had done the same.

There was nothing wrong with this and it did not bother me in the least, but still I found it to be a curiosity. For her passivity in these horizontal moments was diametrically opposed to her demeanor in our vertical moments. When we were away from the bed she certainly exercised or sought to exercise her control. It was the sort of subtle contradiction that I believed made her so enthralling to me.

As I stopped to cross Sunset to the bar, my peripheral vision picked up movement to the far left as I glanced back to check traffic. My eyes followed the movement and I saw the form of a person ducking back into the shadowed doorway of a closed shop. A chill raced through me but I didn't move. I watched the spot where I had seen the movement for several seconds. The doorway was maybe twenty yards from me. I felt sure it had been a man and he was probably still there, possibly watching me from the darkness while I watched for him.

I took four quick, determined steps toward the doorway but then stopped dead. It had been a bluff but when no one ran from the doorway, I had only bluffed myself. I felt my heartbeat rising. I knew it might only be a homeless man looking for a spot to sleep. I knew there might be a hundred explanations. But just the same I was scared. Maybe it was a transient. Maybe it was the Poet. In a split second a myriad of possibilities took over my mind. I was on TV. The Poet saw TV. The Poet had made his choice. The dark doorway was on the path between me and the Wilcox Hotel. I could not go back. I quickly turned and stepped into the street to cross to the bar.

The blast of a car horn greeted me and I jumped back. I had not been in any danger. The car that sped past trailing the laughter of teenagers was two lanes away but maybe they had seen my face, seen the look, and known I was easy prey for a scare.

I ordered another black and tan at the bar along with a basket of chicken wings, and got directions to the cigarette machine. I noticed the unsteadiness of my hands as I lit the match after finally getting a cigarette into my mouth. Now what, I thought as I exhaled the stream of blue smoke toward my reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

I stayed until last call at two and then left the Cat amp; Fiddle with the exodus of die-hards. There was safety in numbers, I had decided. By loitering behind the crowd, I was able to identify a group of three drunks walking east toward Wilcox and fell in a few yards behind them. We passed the doorway in question from the other side of Sunset and as I looked across the four lanes I could not tell if the darkened alcove was empty. But I didn't linger. At Wilcox I broke away from my escort and trotted across Sunset and up to the hotel. I didn't breathe normally until I entered the lobby and saw the familiar, safe face of the night man.

Despite the lateness of the hour and the heavy beer I had filled myself with, the scare I had submitted myself to robbed me of any fatigue. I could not sleep. In my room I undressed, got into bed and turned off the light but I knew as I was doing it that it was fruitless. After ten minutes I faced the facts of my situation and turned on the light.

I needed a distraction. A trick that would allow my mind to rest easily and for me to sleep. I did what I had done on countless prior occasions of similar necessity. I pulled my computer up onto the bed. I booted it, plugged the room's phone line into the modem outlet and dialed long distance into the Rocky's net. I had no messages and wasn't really expecting any but the motions of doing it began to calm me. I scrolled the wires a little bit and came across my own story, in abbreviated form, on the AP national wire. It would hit the ground tomorrow and burst like a shell. Editors from New York to here in L.A. would know my byline. I hoped.

After signing off and shutting down the connection, I played a few hands of computer solitaire but became bored with losing. Looking for something else to distract me, I reached into the computer bag for the hotel receipts from Phoenix but couldn't find them. I checked every pocket of the bag but the folded sheaf of papers wasn't there. I quickly grabbed the pillowcase and frisked it like a suspect but there were only clothes.

"Shit," I said out loud.

I closed my eyes and tried to envision what I had done with the pages on the plane. A sense of dread came over me as I remembered at one point stuffing them into the seat pocket. But then I recalled that, after talking to Warren, I had retrieved them to make the other calls. I conjured a vision of putting the pages back into the computer bag as the plane was on final approach. I was sure I had not left them on the plane.

The alternative to this, I knew, was that someone had been in my room and taken them. I paced around a little bit, not sure what I could do. I had had what could be construed as stolen property stolen from me. Who could I complain to?

Angrily, I opened the door and walked down the hallway to the front desk. The night man was looking at a magazine called High Society which had a cover photo of a nude woman skillfully using her arms and hands to strategically cover enough of her body to allow the magazine to be sold on the newsstand.

"Hey, did you see anybody go down to my room?"

He hiked his shoulders and shook his head.

"Nobody?"

"Only ones I seen around was that lady that was with you, and you. That’s it."

I looked at him for a moment, waiting for more, but he had said his piece.

"Okay."

I went back to my room, studying the keyhole for signs of a pick before going inside. I couldn't tell. The keyhole was worn and scratched but it could have been that way for years. I wouldn't know how to identify a picked lock if my life depended on it but I looked anyway. I was mad.

I was tempted to call Rachel and tell her about the burglary of my room but my dilemma was that I couldn't tell her about what had been taken in the burglary. I didn't want her to know what I had done. The memory of that day on the bleachers and other lessons learned since went through my mind. I got undressed and got back into bed.

Sleep eventually came but not before I had visions of Thorson in my room going through my things. When it finally came, the anger had not left me.