Free Kissing the Beehive by Jonathan Carroll

remember him. Real little guy? Hung around with Terry Walker and John Lesher?"
    I thought about it until a picture from our high school yearbook came to mind: three boys standing stiffly around a 16 mm movie projector, all wearing white shirts buttoned to the top and thick black Clark Kent eyeglasses. "The worms! Sure I remember."
    Frannie sat down on the couch next to Cass. "Back when we were in school, any guy who carried around a slide rule, was good in math or science and didn't take many baths was considered a jerk. We called them _worms_."
    Cass rolled her eyes. "Worms? God, you guys were so mean."
    "And proud of it. But look, Cassandra, you kids got your own terms for them now. How about _geeks? Nerds_? Call 'em what you like, for us they were _worms_.
    "But I found out something I bet you didn't know, Sam: David Cadmus's father was Gordon Cadmus. _The_ Gordon Cadmus."
    "No! The _gangster_?"
    "That's right, bud. Crane's View's very own Mafia man. We just didn't know it then. We thought he was a business guy. He owned some companies in the city. We wouldn't have teased that kid so much if we'd known who his dad was."
    Cass looked at me, then Frannie. "Who was Gordon Cadmus?"
    "Eleven years ago in a New York restaurant three men were having dinner: Gordon Cadmus, Jerry Kargl and George Weiser. Two men in raincoats walked into the restaurant and shot all three. Nobody in the place remembered what the shooters looked like of course, only that they were both wearing raincoats.
    See no evil, hear no evil. Story has it that after they finished shooting, one of the guys walked over to Cadmus's body and stuck a chocolate eclair in his eye. Then they Page 30

    walked out and that was that. You had something like it in one of your books, right, Sam?"
    "_The Tattooed City_. That's how the damned story ends! My God, if I'd known one of the real victims was Cadmus's father . . . But what did he have to do with Pauline's death?"
    "_Pauline_ knew who he was back then. She had been seeing him on and off for two years."
    "Frannie, she was nineteen years old when she died!"
    He shrugged. "Some kids start young. Especially ones like Pauline."
    The room was silent awhile. Frannie tipped his empty glass up to get the last drops. To my surprise, Cass was first to speak.
    "Dad, remember the girl I told you about, Spoon? The one with the tattoo? She sounds like Pauline in a lot of ways. Her motto is 'Do it now because you might not get a chance later.'"
    Frannie laughed strangely. "Exactly! When you start looking into Pauline's life, you'll see she was either fearless or totally nuts. I've never been able to figure out which."
    I looked around the room where I'd spent so much time as a kid. In that corner we'd always put the Christmas tree. Over there our dog Jack used to stand on his hind legs and look out the window. Frannie had been here too.
    Sitting uncomfortably on the edge of a chair, utterly ill at ease talking to my parents while waiting for me to come downstairs so we could go out and make trouble.
    "This is serious business, Frannie. Why haven't you done something about it? Talked to people?"
    "I have! I've talked to a lot of people. I'll tell you about it sometime."
    "Now you're suddenly getting mysterious on me? Where's David Cadmus now?
    Do you know?"
    "Hollywood. Runs an independent film company. They put out that big hit recently, _The Blind Clown_?"
    "Sounds like your worm turned, huh?"
    Frannie pointed his finger at Cass. "Touche."
    "Why would Gordon Cadmus kill Pauline if she was his mistress?"
    "Because Edward Durant's father was a federal attorney investigating racketeering. Guess whose case he was assigned to three weeks before Pauline died?"

    Unfortunately I had to go out on a book tour to promote the paperback edition of _The Magician's Breakfast_, so I wasn't able to return to Crane's View for a while. Before leaving, I asked if I could rent a room in Frannie's house so I could set up shop and not worry about bringing