Vermilion by Aldyne Nathan

Author:Aldyne, Nathan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781937384890
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
Published: 2014-02-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

SEARCY’S TAXI LET him off at the Trailways terminal. He walked, a little unsteadily, through the parking lot, craning his head to make sure that his unmarked car hadn’t been stolen from its place on Carver Street. The half a joint he’d smoked left him depressed and uncoordinated; he wondered sullenly if it had been treated with something.

As he approached his car, he had his keys out of his pocket. But with his hand on the door, he changed his mind, thrust the keys back into his pocket, and hurried past Herbie’s Ramrod Room up to Tremont Street. He turned in the direction of the Combat Zone and Nexus.

Searcy was angry, with himself and with the entire confused investigation. For an insignificant teenager, who probably wasn’t any colder in his grave than he would be on the streets tonight, William A. Golacinsky certainly had caused the police force a great deal of trouble.

The papers had by no means downplayed the murder, and this was certainly because of Scarpetti’s involvement in the case. The representative, in a muddleheaded way that was characteristic of his entire life, public and private, had not yet determined for himself whether it was a good thing or a bad that little Billy’s corpse had been discovered beneath his hemlocks. In general, corpses of hustlers couldn’t help but be an embarrassment when they were strewn over the landscape, but Scarpetti dimly reckoned that he might turn the circumstance to his political advantage. He decided to take it as a personal affront. He first accused the homosexual community of murdering one of their number, and leaving the corpse upon his lawn in order to discredit him. There was a homosexual in his very neighborhood, he said indignantly, who might well have engineered the entire thing. He had also hinted that liberal legislators in the House had stolen the body from the morgue and planted it in retaliation against his having worked to defeat so many of their precious bills. He even dug in a little at Mr. Golacinsky himself, just in case it turned out that the teenager had committed suicide in obscure protest.

Because his mind was entirely fastened to the notion of putting the corpse to account, Scarpetti had been surprised by the attacks that had been leveled against him. The Gay Community News and Esplanade, the weekly gay newspapers in Boston, published extensive accounts of the crime on Wednesday, and included long interviews with mindless hustlers who had known Golacinsky. The papers suggested that some zealous adherents to Mr. Scarpetti’s political beliefs had run out, murdered a hustler in an excess of admiration, and brought the corpse to Scarpetti’s doorstep, as it were—rather after the fashion of a faithful but stupid dog that kills rodents and lays them as devoted offerings at the foot of its master’s bed. The daily papers, on their editorial pages on Thursday morning, had reprinted these speculations without comment.

Scarpetti suddenly found himself on the defensive, and was very angry. Thursday noon, he made a personal appearance at District 2.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.