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girl," I said. "You told us last week you didn't know he was referring to
Aurora Tait then, is that right?"
"Absolutely. I had no reason to then."
"But when, exactly when, did that occur to you?"
"Oh, I don't know, Ms. Cooper. I hadn't thought about Aurora in years, until
I read the story and saw those initials in the newspaper. The approximate time
of her disappearance, the fact that the building where the skeleton was found
was owned by the university-and frankly, it reminded me of Monty's
story-another addict, another rich boy like me who'd screwed up his life."
"You mentioned he talked about boarding school in some of your sessions. Do
you remember where? What school or even what part of the country?" I asked.
Guidi shrugged and held his hands in the air, palms up. The sun gleamed off
the gold on his cuff links. "Maybe New England. Either Andover or Exeter.
Could have been St. Paul's. In the boonies, it was. I remember he talked about
how he liked being near the woods and the peacefulness of the more remote
countryside."
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"He was orphaned, you told us. Do you know how or when? Any details about his
family that would help us figure out who he is?"
Guidi looked at me. "That's mostly what he talked about in the meetings.
Typical junkie's denial, blaming all his problems on everyone else. He never
knew his father. I think his mother had a menial job, working as a
servant-maybe even the housekeeper- for the scion of an old industrial family.
When she died-some blood disease, it was-he was still a kid, taken in by the
fat cat who'd been her employer. Richest man in town, that's who sent him off
to boarding school and paid for his education."
"This man who adopted him, didn't Monty talk about him at all?"
"That was part of his resentment. He was never adopted."
Neither was Edgar Poe, I remembered. The Allans wouldn't give him their name.
I had to wonder whether Monty knew the parallels between his own life and the
tormented poet's.
"Was he bitter about it?" I asked.
Guidi checked with Kirby, who must have given him a green light to keep
talking.
"Remember when I said that Monty told me he had killed a girl for betraying
him?"
Ellen and I both said, "Yes."
"I-uh-I guess after I left the station house last week I began to think more
about it. I thought of a few other things I-uh, I guess I asked him at the
time. Sorry I didn't press myself a little harder that night." He tried to
muster an earnest smile.
"That's all right, Mr. Guidi," Ellen said. "Anything you give us now will be
helpful."
I wanted to kick her under the table to keep the pressure on him rather than
try to use her short supply of charm to stroke him, but I restrained myself.
"I know I asked what he meant by betrayal, by what this girl had done to him
to make him fantasize about killing her," Guidi said, focusing his attention
back on me. "You must understand that at the time I heard his story, Ms.
Cooper, I assumed it was a fantasy, a product of his dope-induced
hallucinations. We all had them."
I looked away from his face and while he continued to talk, gesturing to me
with his left hand, I noticed the thin shape of a rifle barrel forged out of
gleaming eighteen-karat gold in the fold of his French cuffs.
"He knew I came from a wealthy family. For me, starting over after I screwed
myself up meant getting a job in a mail room in a fancy firm, as I think I
mentioned. For Monty, it was out on the street doing physical labor, some kind
of construction work. Here was this guy who came to every meeting with a book
of poetry jammed in his back pocket, quoting everything from the classics to
Philip Larkin and James Wright-but meanwhile his hands looked like he'd been
sentenced to dig ditches ten years earlier."
"But the girl," I asked, "Aurora-what did she do to him?"
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"Monty's benefactor had given him one last chance. He'd flunked out of
boarding school, managed to get into college from public school, but then hit
the skids with drugs and booze once he got here to the city. When Aurora found
out who had been supporting Monty, who had enabled his lifestyle-not knowing
all the money was going down the toilet-she got on a bus and went up to his
home, wherever that was, and spilled the beans."
"Why?"
"To try to shake down the old man. She'd guessed wrong, was the problem. She
thought if she told him the truth about Monty's addiction, she could score
enough money-pretending it would go for private rehab and readmission to
school-that she could take off and leave Monty in the dust," Guidi said. "With
the rest of us."
"The straw that broke the camel's back?" Ellen asked.
"Exactly. The old guy had been threatening to disinherit Monty anyway. Even
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