The Guilty Page 19

  “I must have missed something,” I said. “What exactly happened?”

  Largo sat back, as a pair of cats circled his legs. He steepled his fingers and smiled. Despite the superficial idiosyncrasies of this man, I could sense tremendous intelligence. He looked like a man who still held himself with great honor and respect, but had turned his back on the very institution he sought to help.

  “Ten years ago,” Largo said, “I attempted to dig up the grave of William H. Bonney, also known as Billy the Kid. For years I fought to do this, and fought to have the story covered in the press. I wanted to inform the public of the travesty and secrets that had been kept hidden for over a century. But when you threaten the very sanctity of a legend—a legend that goes right to the heart of an entire culture—you’re not going to make many friends.”

  I looked around, wondered if Tabby and Yorba Linda had replaced all those friends he’d lost.

  “Who tried to stop you?”

  “The name Bill Richardson ring a bell?”

  “As in governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson?”

  “As in presidential candidate Bill Richardson. You think he’d have a snowball’s chance in Albuquerque without the support of his fellow Southerners? You think anyone below the Mason-Dixon line would be happy to have one of their biggest legends—not to mention juiciest cash cows—proven bogus?”

  “I don’t imagine that would make a whole lot of people down there happy. But why did you want to exhume the body of Billy the Kid? What would that have proved?”

  Largo wet his upper lip with his tongue, slicked it back and forth, bristling the gray hairs. He looked at me as if debating whether to speak. “How much do you know about William H. Bonney? And by that I mean the methods in which he died.”

  “I know he was shot in the back by Pat Garrett, and that Garrett was a former riding mate of Bonney’s. He was not a member of the Regulators.”

  “No, Garrett was not a Regulator,” Largo said. “Garrett was a saloon keeper and small-time cattle rustler. To call him a former ‘mate’ of Bonney’s is patently false, another story cooked up to give the legend bigger tits.”

  “I also know Garrett became a minor celebrity after killing the Kid, and published a book about the chase and capture,” I said.

  At this moment Largo let out a deep belly laugh. The cats circling his legs scattered. “A minor celebrity, you say? Certainly nowhere near as much of a celebrity as this Athena Paradis, or David Loverne. Actually Patrick Garrett was one of this country’s very first victims of celebrity overexposure, as both his tawdry book and sketchy methods in which he dispatched Mr. Bonney left him disgraced and broke.”

  “What do you mean, sketchy?” I asked.

  “By sketchy, I mean that only a fool would believe that Patrick Floyd Garrett killed William H. Bonney on July 14, 1881. The real Billy the Kid lived for many years after his alleged death in Fort Sumner.”

  “Brushy Bill Roberts,” I said.

  Largo nodded. “The town of Fort Sumner would shrivel up and die without the legend of Billy the Kid to wet its whistle. As would most of the Southwest, considering how much of its prosperity is built upon the house of cards that is the legend of its outlaws. Billy the Kid is perhaps the single most important card in that house. Pull it out, and the entire edifice crumbles.”

  “And you tried to pull it out.”

  “Yes, and you can imagine the good folks of New Mexico did not take kindly to having their stock in trade jeopardized. Yes, I did try. And rightfully so. But those goddamn yellow bureaucrats in Washington and down South stopped me. Cowards are more afraid of the truth than they are of facing the fact that they’ve been lying for over a hundred and twenty-five years.”

  “You want to dig up the body of Billy the Kid,” I said, “and do what with it?”

  “Take a sample of the DNA contained in the so-called grave of Billy the Kid and compare it to DNA obtained from his birth mother, Catherine Antrim, who is buried in Silver City.”

  “And if you’re able to prove that the DNA from that grave site doesn’t match Catherine Antrim…”

  “Then we’ll know for sure that Billy the Kid was never buried in Fort Sumner, and Brushy Bill wasn’t the charlatan folks would like to have you believe.”

  “So why didn’t you go through with it?” I asked.

  “Oh Lord, where to begin,” Largo said, kicking away a cat who’d begun scratching at the couch. “First off, Billy Bonney’s alleged grave site has been robbed so many times that nobody knows for sure just who’s buried under that tombstone. Plus the man who bought Catherine Antrim’s cemetery plot in Silver City claims he moved the headstone years ago and isn’t a hundred-percent sure just where Antrim’s body is actually buried. He said he’d die and come back as Christ himself before we marched in there and accidentally dug up somebody’s poor dead grandmother.

  “It didn’t matter, though,” Vance continued. “The fact is if the government wanted to conduct the tests, they would have bent over backward to do so. When it comes to proving a live man’s guilt or innocence, there’s no limit to what our government will do. But when it comes to proving the life and death of one of the biggest legends in human history, and in the process possibly destroying one of the most enduring American myths of all time, well, they’d rather discredit an honest old man, call him a loon, get his tenure revoked and make him live out his days miles from where he might crack their wall of lies.

  “The truth is Pat Garrett did not kill Billy the Kid. William H. Bonney died under the assumed name of Oliver P. Roberts, in Hamilton, Texas.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Let me give you an example of the idiocy—or just plain ignorance—of those wishing to protect the legacy. As I was trying to have the bodies exhumed, both the mayor of Fort Sumner and the governor of Texas claimed that Brushy Bill and William H. Bonney could not be one and the same person, for the following reason. When Ollie Roberts died, it was a well-known fact that he was right-handed. The most famous photo of Billy the Kid depicts him holding his beloved Winchester 1873 model in his right hand, with his single action Colt revolver in a holster by his left hip. By this photo you would deduce that Bonney was, in fact, left-handed.”

  “So they claimed that Bonney was left-handed but Brushy Bill was right-handed.”

  “That was their claim.” Largo stood up and pulled a book off his shelf. He flipped to a page on which there were two photographs. Both depicted the famous photo of Billy the Kid, standing slightly awkwardly, holding his Winchester rifle, a mischievous grin on his face.

  “If you look at this picture, the Colt is by his left hip.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “But what the blue bloods in their marble castles failed to realize is that this photograph is actually a ferrotype. In other words, a mirror image of the actual subject.”

  “So in real life, Billy the Kid had the Colt by his right hip. Meaning he was right-handed.”

  “Just like our friend Brushy Bill.”

  “Would you be willing to go on record?” I asked.

  Largo seemed taken aback. Another cat jumped onto his lap. He was too distracted to scratch it, so it simply nuzzled against his chest and closed its eyes.

  “On record? You mean like in the newspaper? Would I be willing? Boy, I’ve been waiting for years for somebody to ask me that.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Let me put it this way. If I’m not on the record enough, I’m coming down to that paper of yours and shoving a cat up your keester.”

  “That’s fair,” I said, pulling the tape recorder from my bag. “Now let’s get started. Tell me everything you know about Brushy Bill Roberts, why you believe he was Billy the Kid, and leave nothing out.”

  CHAPTER 36

  When I arrived at the Gazette, the newsroom was abuzz in a way I’d never seen it before in my brief tenure at the paper. The stringers seemed a little louder, the phone calls a little more urgent. A palpable electr
icity ran through the place. The whole organization seemed galvanized, charged, like a black cloud had been dragged away to let the sun back in.

  It wasn’t a minute after I stepped off the elevator when Wallace came jogging up to me. His hair was slightly askew and his right ear was red as though he’d been pressing a phone to it the whole morning.

  “Henry, glad you’re here,” he said, catching his breath. “Come with me. And don’t say a word unless I tell you to.” I opened my mouth to ask what was happening, but Wallace held up a finger and said, “Not one word.”

  I followed Wallace, quickly realizing that he wasn’t leading me toward his office or my desk, but to the conference room at the end of the floor. The Kemper Room. In over a year working at the paper I’d never set foot in it.

  I desperately wanted to ask Wallace what was so important that he’d grant me access to such hallowed ground, but on the off chance he’d change his mind I stayed quiet.

  The room was named after Peter Kemper, the Gazette’s editor-in-chief from 1978 to 1984, but was more commonly known among the Gazette staff as the War Room. Every morning the editors from each department would gather in the War Room to go over the next day’s stories. Each section editor would fight, scratch and claw for page one space, better coverage for their department. Each day every editor left the room either thrilled or disappointed. Then they would return the next day to keep up their good run, or dig their way out of the hole. Had they been shafted the day before they’d use pity points. If they’d been granted better placement, they’d claim sales were up due to them.

  The War Room was where other bureaus such as Washington and Los Angeles would call in to battle for their share of the table scraps, often frustrated with their perceived lack of respect from the New York home office.

  Jack would fill me in on War Room gossip from time to time. He took a little too much pleasure in recalling the greatest stories ever, like the time Metro editor Jacquelyn Mills had a story negged and threw a glass of pomegranate juice in the editor-in-chief’s face. The time Wallace himself told an editor that his stories showed as much life as Jimmy Hoffa, and smelled worse. Between New York and outside bureaus there was a natural conflict; reporters in Washington felt the ebb and flow of the political arena was the spark of the journalistic world, while the reporters in New York felt they were the center of the information universe. Los Angelenos felt their coverage of red-carpet shenanigans trumped all, that popular culture and celebrity scandal whet readers’ appetites. They didn’t win the battles very often.

  As the War Room came into sight, I counted a dozen or so editors already seated, cups of coffee and bottles of water in various stages of being sipped or ignored. Far as I could tell, I would be the youngest person in the room by a good ten years.

  When Wallace threw open the door, a dozen pairs of eyes focused on me. Not to mention the speakerphone in the middle of the conference table whose red “on” light meant another half dozen were listening in. And the guy in the corner with a pen and pad who was presumably there to take minutes. I coughed into my hand. Smiled meekly. The editors in attendance didn’t seem to care much about meek smiles.

  Wallace stated, “Henry, you know everyone here.” I didn’t, but remembered Wallace’s “shut the hell up” rule. “Folks, this is Henry Parker. As you know Henry’s been the lead on the Paradis murder story and the subsequent victims of this killer as well. He was attacked in his home yesterday, but as you can see he’s alive and well.”

  “And glad to be here,” I added. Wallace nodded his approval.

  “Terrific scoops so far,” said a man I believed to be the Arts editor. He had a neatly trimmed beard and thin glasses, a polite ink stain at the bottom of his shirt pocket. I’d only met him once, at the holiday party last year, the details of which ended up being reported on every gossip website between here and Mumbai. It’s well known that the arts editors always offered exclusive scoops to gossip rags in exchange for the rags making the Gazette seem like a hip place to work. If the definition of hip was Jack warbling Kenny Rogers while Wallace played acoustic guitar, both men having consumed their body weight in JD, then yes, I suppose you could call the Gazette a hip place to work.

  I took an empty seat, trying hard not to meet any of the stares directed my way. I noticed several people staring at my bandaged hand, which I self-consciously tucked underneath the table. Wallace sat down at the head, and finally the eyes left me for more succulent meat.

  “As I’m sure you’re aware of this morning,” Wallace said, “the reaction to Henry’s story about the link between this killer and Billy the Kid has been off the charts. Based on our website traffic, it is the Gazette’s most e-mailed article since we expanded our web capabilities three years ago. We’ve received dozens of phone calls, many supportive, many not so much, not to mention queries from at least three film scouts inquiring about film rights to the story. Needless to say we’ve struck a nerve with this article, and considering the demand I’d like each section to consider reporting on the phenomenon from a different societal perspective.”

  After a quick tug at his goatee, the arts editor piped in. “We can do an overview of the most famous movies, music, television shows and books to explore the legend of Billy the Kid. An IMBD search came back with at least two dozen films where the Kid was either a main or substantial supporting character. And you’d be surprised how often his name is dropped in contemporary music and literature.”

  Deborah Gotkowski, the business editor, said, “I have a call in to the tourism bureau at Fort Sumner. I’d like to know how much revenue they take in on a yearly basis from their various museums and tourist attractions, then analyze that data and compare it to the ten cities who receive the largest percentage of their revenue from one specific tourist attraction.”

  Jonas Levinson, the science editor, said, “We can do a comprehensive look at the DNA techniques Professor Vance was attempting to use, and determine whether they could actually tie Catherine Antrim to the alleged remains. That would have to have been some groundbreaking stuff.”

  I heard a loud grunt from the corner. It came from a large man wearing a rumpled sports jacket and a white shirt with a moon-shaped mustard stain. Frank Rourke was the Gazette’s sports editor, a man I’d never met, though I did enjoy his recent articles about steroid abuse in baseball. Unlike most city sportswriters, Frank wrote from a fan’s perspective rather than writing as if he was the moral axis of the sports universe. He never chided athletes for their faults. That would have been the pot calling the kettle black, considering Frank had written two books—one about his marriage as a full-time sportswriter, the second about his divorce as a full-time sportswriter.

  “I think the Knicks are looking to acquire a backup point guard for a playoff push. Maybe I can claim this Bonney guy is coming up in trade talks.”

  “You should do that,” Jonas said. “I bet most of your readers would believe it, too.”

  “My readers could beat your readers to death with one arm tied behind their back.”

  “I could throw your readers a tube steak and they’d forget all about it.”

  Frank leaned forward, half his body over the table. “Are you calling my readers stupid?”

  Jonas shrugged. “If the GED fits.”

  “Fuck you, and fuck this kid, Parker,” Rourke spat. “I’ve been at this paper twelve years, I ain’t never been so much as given a handkerchief by you assholes. Now we’re sucking his dick about all this ‘groundbreaking’ reporting? Please. Once this twelve-year-old milk monitor earns his stripes he can come in here. Until then I’m not listening to this shit.”

  Rourke stood up and made a grand spectacle of tucking in his shirt, shooting his cuffs and storming out. There was silence for a moment. Jonas’s face showed a combination of pride and white-as-a-ghost fear, as though Rourke might be waiting for him at his desk with a pair of brass knuckles.

  “Are we through?” Wallace said. “Because time is wasting and every other
paper in town is looking for us to trip so they can pass us. I want a push on all fronts. Our early morning newsstand numbers are our highest in six months. Henry, I want you to stay on the murders. Jonas, I want you to look into the attempts made by Largo Vance and others to test the DNA contained in Billy the Kid’s grave. Deborah, you look into the effects it could have on the present day economics of Fort Sumner and other towns such as Hamilton that are supported by this industry. I want all discoveries to be shared directly with the office of Chief Carruthers.” Wallace paused a moment. “Most importantly, there’s still a killer out there. If we can, in any way, aid the investigation and incarceration of this sick man, we owe it to the citizens of New York to do so. Err on the side of caution. If you think you have something that would be of use to investigating officers, run it by me and I’ll make the final call. But get out there and report your asses off, and have your staff do the same. This is a story that reaches back over a century. And if you’re like me, you all have that feeling, your pulses are racing a bit, you have that zing in your step because you know you’re on the verge of a great discovery. Grab it. Let’s make a great paper. Good luck.”

  And with that, Wallace dismissed us. I walked out with him. He put his arm around my shoulders, made it clear so the newsroom could see. This public display of solidarity was to let the newsroom know he was on my side.

  “You’re the lead dog on this,” Wallace said, soft enough so only I could hear it. “But stay the hell out of the battle zone. The job of a journalist is to report the news, not become it. I’ve read too many briefs regarding your run-ins and injuries this past year.”

  “That’s not my fault,” I said, agitation in my voice, my blood pressure rising. “What happened last year was out of my hands. What happened yesterday won’t happen again.”