Dead Watch (25 page)

He kept probing at it, but finally gave up. “I don’t know how it opens. But if you went after it with a crowbar, I think you’d find something.”

“Maybe it opens remotely,” Jake said. “A button, or you think the TV remote?”

“There’d have to be an electric eye for a remote. Probably not that. Probably . . . Let’s see, they’d have to wire it, they probably wouldn’t want to run the wires all over the place, so it’d be close.”

They looked at the edges of the paneling, under the shelves, around the edges of the fireplace, groped behind the TV. Then Patzo said, “Huh,” put his foot out, and pressed a piece of base molding. A drawer slid silently out of the DVD case, and Jake said, “Holy shit,” and Patzo said, “Like one of them pyramid movies, where the tomb opens,” and they both went over to look.

A few worn pieces of paper on top. Jake lifted them out. Below them, they could see a jumble of leather, with the flash of gemstones. Peering in the drawer, Patzo said, “Your friend is a fagola. Or something. A freak.”

“My friend is the guy’s wife,” Jake said. He pointed. “What
is
that?”

“I used to know a fella in the adult novelty business, he had a whole caseful of this stuff,” Patzo said. “That thing is a dog collar for people, and that’s the dog chain. I don’t
know
what that thing is, but I ain’t gonna touch it.”

“Ah, Jesus,” Jake said.

“Other cultures,” Patzo said.

“What?”

“Other cultures. The fagola is other cultures. They do what they do.”

Jake looked at the paper he’d lifted out: three photographs, a hippie couple perhaps from the sixties, a young girl on a swing, a young boy. The photos were smooth, aged, but with a certain curve to them. They’d been in a wallet.

There was also a three-by-five card with a phrase written on it with a felt-tipped pen:
All because of Lion Nerve.
Nothing else.

“I never seen a dog collar with diamonds in it,” Patzo said. He was holding it up by the buckle. “But that’s what it is.”

“I doubt they’re real diamonds,” Jake said. “They’re too big.”

“In a place like this? They’re real. And that dog chain is eighteen-karat gold,” Patzo said. He looked at Jake. “Can I have them?”

“What?”

“The dog collar. The chains. And that other thing. I mean, it’s gonna be really embarrassing if your friend finds it, the wife. I couldn’t help noticing that the wife is Mrs. Lincoln Bowe and her husband is the dead senator, so if this stuff is his . . . I mean, I could get rid of it. Nobody would ever know. I couldn’t tell anybody, because they’d send me back to the joint.”

“How much is it worth?”

Patzo said, “Less than Bowe’s reputation.”

They finished combing the apartment, and Jake called Madison on her cell phone just after six o’clock.

“You okay?”

She’d been alone after the funeral. “I couldn’t stop crying. It got on top of me, Jacob.”

“But you’re okay now?”

“No. I’m pretty messed up,” she said.

“Ah, jeez,” he said. After a moment of silence, he said, “I need to brace Dr. Rosenquist. Would that cause you an endless amount of trouble?”

“No. He’s not my doctor,” she said. “I don’t even know him very well. What’d you find?”

“It’s what I didn’t find. Your husband seems to have prepared for his disappearance. He destroyed his personal e-mail, he wiped the history off the computer. All of his tax records and bank records are intact, though, and very neatly filed, as though he was getting ready for an audit—or an estate examination. The question is, Why did he remove the medical records, and why did the doctor deny seeing him? That’s one mystery we need to clear up.”

“Go ahead. Do it, Jake. But please, please, be careful.”

“Yes. I’ll figure out a way to keep you out of it. There’s one other thing. We found another hideaway in the apartment and there were some items related to your husband’s sexual life. Leather stuff, chains. I’m wondering, my consultant says they may have some value, maybe even substantial, but given their nature . . .”

“Get rid of them,” she said.

“There were three photos in the same drawer. They’re flat and warped, like they were in a wallet. There’s a picture of like a hippie couple back in the sixties or seventies, probably, the guy’s wearing plaid pants . . .”

“Oh, no,” she said. “There’s one of a young girl, and a young boy.”

“Yeah. Are they important?”

After a long silence, she said, “He’d never take those out of his wallet. Those are . . . If he left them behind, they’re a suicide note.”

“A suicide note?”

“Yes. He would have known that I would know. He was sending me a message. They’re pictures of his parents, his sister, and himself. They were personal icons. He never would have left them behind, anywhere. They’re a suicide note.”

“A suicide note only works if somebody finds it,” Jake said.

“There’ll be something in his papers, somewhere, that’ll tell me where to look. Or maybe his mother knows, she’s still alive. But Jake: he knew he was going to die. Either he was being stalked, or he’d do it himself. But he knew.”

He opened his mouth to tell her about the three-by-five card, and then stopped. He’d rather see her face-to-face for that. If
all this
meant his disappearance, he wanted to see her face when he gave her
Lion Nerve
. To see if it registered . . .
What’s this, Jake? You don’t trust her?

They talked for another two minutes, and Jake said, “I’m going to see Rosenquist.”

“Call me tonight. Tell me what he says.”

When he got off the line, he said to Patzo: “Your lucky day. I’d like to see your buddy’s face when you ask him to get rid of a diamond-studded dog collar.”

Patzo’s face broke into a beauteous smile. “Jesus, man. I mean, this is my
life
, right here. This dog collar . . .” He held it up, half wrapped in a piece of toilet paper. “I got a
retirement.
”

“You think you can get back to Baltimore on your own?” Jake asked.

“Sure. Lemme make a few calls, maybe take a train back. Could you gimme a couple hundred bucks? I don’t like those fuckin’ airplanes,” Patzo said. “What are you going to do?”

Patzo made his calls, gave the antique table a long, lingering look, patted it good-bye, and left Jake alone in the apartment.

When he was gone, Jake found the most comfortable chair, pulled it over to a window, where he had a clear view down Park Avenue, and thought it all over. All of it, from the circumstances of Bowe’s disappearance, to Schmidt and the poorly hidden gun, to Barber, to the mystery call that led him to Patterson, to the missing medical files.

To that morning’s kiss.

Everything that had happened ended in a mystery. He had almost no resources to solve any of them . . . with one exception.

He sat until it was dark, working it out. And when it was dark, the red taillights streaming up Park Avenue, electronic salmon on the way to spawn, he pushed himself out of the chair, turned on a single light, went into the master bedroom, and got the gun and holster from the back of the headboard.

He pulled the gun out, checked it, ejected the five .38 shells from the cylinder.

When they’d gone through the apartment, they’d found a toolbox in a kitchen drawer. Jake used a pair of pliers to pull the slug out of one of the .38s, dumped the powder down the sink, washed it away.

He loaded the empty case back in the pistol, turned it until it was under the hammer, found a knee-high woman’s boot in the closet of the second bedroom—part of Madison’s New York clothing cache—shoved his hand in the boot, holding the gun and the boot between two pillows, and pulled the trigger. There was a muffled crack, and the smell of burning primer.

“Hope the cops don’t do any forensics up here,” he muttered to himself, as he was putting the boot back in the closet. He opened a couple of drawers in Madison’s dresser, took out a pair of black panty hose. He pulled them over his head, asked the mirror, “How do I look?” He considered himself for a moment, then said, “Like some moron with a pair of underpants on his head.”

He took them off, refolded them, put them away. He couldn’t wear them past a doorman anyway.

He went back to Madison’s dresser, sat down, looked at himself in the mirror. He looked all right, he thought. Like a bureaucrat or a college professor just back from vacation, who hadn’t had a chance to get his hair cut, who stayed in shape with handball.

There was nothing he could do, without a makeup expert, to make himself look like a thug. He didn’t have the scars under the eyes, he didn’t have the oft-broken nose, he didn’t have the shiny forehead. He did have the scalp cut. If he combed his hair just so . . .

He could definitely go for the insane look, he decided. He half smiled, thinking that he should have kept the
Hello Kitty
hat.

He went through Madison’s drawers, then through Lincoln Bowe’s, found a comb and a tube of hair gel. Went to the bathroom, gelled his hair, swept it straight back. Gelled it some more. The gel made his face look thinner, his head smaller, like a Doberman’s. And it made him look a little trashy. Expensive trashy, a street guy who’d lucked into a thousand-dollar suit. Better.

Stared at himself in the mirror again, took a quarter out of his pocket, put it between his upper right gum and his cheek. Talked to himself in the mirror, while holding the quarter in place with cheek and lip pressure: “Hi. I’m a killer for the CIA, and I’m crazy. I’m here to put a bullet in your head . . .”