Identical (35 page)

He took both suits off the hanging arm and held them out in front of himself, trying to make out the difference. He moved them from hand to hand a few times and finally hung both on the stainless steel arm again, so the shoulders were fully aligned. Now he caught it. The second suit, the one in back now, was probably half a size larger at the shoulder, and the sleeve was a micrometer longer as well.

“Three weeks, huh?” he asked her.

“Yeah.” She showed him the receipt. Written on it in marker was “442,” but that show-and-tell exhausted her patience.

“You pay now,” she said. So he opened his wallet and went through the whole act, cussing himself out and asking her to point him to an ATM.

Monday was Memorial Day. Tim was going to his granddaughter’s for a picnic with her husband’s family later in the day, and he had looked forward to that all weekend, sharing the young couple’s excitement about Stefanie’s pregnancy, and getting congratulated for having hung around long enough to see some of his DNA arrive in another generation. With nothing better to do until then, he decided to park across from 345 for a few hours that morning. Cass’s Acura appeared close to 10 a.m. Just as on Friday, roughly five minutes after Cass arrived, Paul pulled out in the Chrysler. Tim followed Paul to his senatorial office, and then to a parade in his district.

On Tuesday, Tim was at 345 at 7:30 a.m., wearing the twill navy-blue uniform from the old heating and ventilation business he’d briefly been in with his brother-in-law twenty-five years ago. Both the waist-length jacket and the matching billed hat sported the shield of Bob’s company, which he’d sold off a decade ago. These days, the pants didn’t quite close over his belly, but he made it look OK with a belt and a safety pin.

He stood outside the 345 garage on the concrete divider that separated the incoming from the outgoing traffic. As soon as a car pulled out and sped into the street, he ducked under the closing door and continued down the ramp into the garage. A Cadillac heading up honked and Tim raised his hands in protest, pretending that he had every right to be here.

There were two floors, smelling unpleasantly of oil and engine fumes. The best he could do was lurk near the bottom of the ramp, sucked back against the cinder block wall. When the Acura came in, it circled straight down to the lower level. Tim took the stairs and waited until he saw the Chrysler head back up. He walked around the floor several minutes before finding the Acura, the engine still warm.

He was stationed on the bottom level of the garage Wednesday. He knew there was a fair chance he was going to get his elderly butt arrested for trespassing but curiosity had a serious grip on him. He had five hundred dollars cash on him for bail and had alerted Evon.

Cass pulled in at about 8:55, and spent a minute jogging cars. He moved the Acura into the space the convertible had been in, then returned with his briefcase to the Chrysler he’d left running across the row.

Inside the Chrysler, Cass disappeared from view. Tim walked by at about fifty feet. He didn’t risk more than a quick look, and thought Cass was peering down at a computer, his shoulders shifting slightly. Tim walked up to a meter on the wall, pretended to monkey with it, then limped back in the other direction at the leisurely pace of a man getting paid by the hour. This time, when he passed by he could see clearly that Cass had his face in his hand, gripping the bridge of his nose, as if he was suffering a sinus headache or had come to grief over something. Afraid to stare, Tim went up one floor and stood beside the garage door, thinking he’d get a better look at Cass in the break of light when the door rose. And he did. But the driver was Paul.

“There’s just one man,” he said as he sat in Evon’s office Thursday afternoon.

“Give me a break.”

“Cass leaves the house. And Paul goes to work. I’ve been down in the garage three times now. Cass is living with Sofia, but once he leaves the house, he’s pretending to be Paul. He’s putting a prosthetic over the bridge of his nose every morning.”

Evon couldn’t keep from laughing.

“Come on. A fake nose? Does it have a Groucho moustache attached, too?”

“That’s how he’s getting away with it. Because nobody would ever believe it.”

“I’ll say.”

“No, listen.” Tim waved at her with both hands. He was quite excited and pleased with himself for figuring this out. “What does Sofia do for a living? She remakes faces all the time, and uses all kinds of prosthetics as part of it. You can go on the U Hospital website for the Reconstructive Surgery Department and see them-prosthetic noses and ears and chins and jaws and cheeks. Whole features or a piece of them for people who’ve lost, say, their nose to disease or accident or surgery or gotten it shot up or blown off. She’s been doing it twenty-five years. There’s a gal they call an anaplastologist who actually fabricates the prosthesis to Sofia’s specifications. I’ve been reading all about it. The prosthetic is silicone and hand-painted with all kinds of pigments to be an exact match for the skin-freckles, veins, whatever is on the rest of the nose, and the edges are feathered so thin it blends right in, especially under those glasses Paul wears. I mean they use 3-D cameras and computers to make an exact casting. Look on the Internet. Close-ups like you were kissing the person and you can’t tell. It’s amazing.”

“Come on,” Evon said again.

“Yesterday when I saw him put it on, he must have been late, and he did it in the car. I figure he was painting on the surgical adhesive they use, cause it’s got to cure in the air a little before it works. Today he had more time and went up to the men’s room on the first floor. I’d put on a wig and a dress so I could follow him close and got in the elevator with him when he headed back down to the garage. He’d recombed his hair so the part was on the other side, and put on black frames like Paul, and fixed up his nose. I was standing right next to him. I’m telling you, you absolutely couldn’t tell.”

“A dress? How much do I have to pay for a picture?”

“It’s not in the budget,” he answered.

Evon looked down at her desk.

“How could that possibly work, Tim? I thought you said you followed him to court yesterday.”

“I did.”

“A man spends twenty-five years in prison and then knows how to practice law?”

“You think it’s that hard? Most of it’s just common sense.”

“Never seemed that way to me,” Evon answered. “OK. And where’s Paul?”

“There is no Paul. I’m telling you Cass is being Paul.”

“So there never were twins? I was just seeing things when the two of them were standing side-by-side at pardon and parole?”

“Well obviously there used to be two. I just don’t know about now.”

“And where did the real Paul go?” Evon asked.

“I’m trying to figure this out. There were identical twins in California. Sisters. Good seed and bad seed. And the bad seed started living her sister’s life. Hired a hit man to kill the good sister, but the hit man narced her out and the bad seed is in San Quentin for life.”

“So Cass covets Paul’s wife, kills Paul and takes over his life. Right?”

“He’s already been convicted on one murder,” Tim said.

“And he committed this one with Sofia’s agreement? This is the Sofia you’ve known since she was born?”

“It’s just one idea.”

“And why bother announcing that Paul and Sofia have split up? Why doesn’t Cass just go around with his fake nose pretending to be Paul?”

“Cause there’s supposed to be two of them.”

“So say Cass has gone to Iraq. Or Alaska.”

“I don’t know. He needs to air his face out with that adhesive. You can’t wear it too long. So maybe that’s why he wants to play both of them. It’s just crazy is all.”

“And what about Brünnhilde?” Evon asked.

“Beata? Maybe Paul’s hiding with her.”

“You said it was Cass who drove her away. Right? You took pictures. And why would a man who’s spent the last decade in the public eye want to hide from anything?”

Nothing ever added up in this case. Cass was sentenced to prison, but Paul entered the facility and was standing in the courthouse rotunda twenty-five years later. Lidia had been with Dita the night of the murder, bled all over the room, but her son pled to the murder.

“And not that Hal will care about paying these expenses,” Evon said, “but what does any of this have to do with who murdered Dita?”

Tim’s mouth soured as he thought.

“Something,” he finally said. “I can’t tell you how exactly, not yet. But if we figure this out, we’re going to get to the bottom of Dita’s murder, too. I have that feeling.”

“OK, but how are we going to do that, Tim? You can’t just go up to the guy and yank on his nose. What if you follow him into the men’s room and confront him?”

“It’s a single pew, for one thing. And he’d probably have me arrested for stalking, call me crazy, and lob a couple of mortar shells at Hal, too.” Tim sat thinking. “Maybe there’s another way to smoke them out. You think you still remember how to follow somebody?”

She straightened indignantly in her large desk chair. The stuff you learned on the job, in situations when lives were on the line, was etched onto the fibers of your nerves. The skills were always there.

“Brodie, I could get inside your jock and you wouldn’t know it. Especially if I got a little assistance.”

He answered, “Let’s see.”

Friday morning, Tim arrived at U Hospital. At the information desk, he asked directions to the office of Dr. Michalis. He knew she’d be here; her voice mail said she booked patient appointments Monday afternoons and all day Friday. The reconstructive surgery group had a little alcove of its own on the surgical floor. Tim took a seat in the sunny reception room. Sooner or later, Sofia would emerge. He was hoping it would be by lunchtime.

About two hours later, she swung out the rear exit in her long white coat, heading a few steps down the corridor to the ladies’ room. He was waiting for her when she reappeared.

Sofia stopped dead and gasped and covered her heart with her hand. She spoke to him slowly, her face averted.

“Mr. Brodie. Tim. You know how fond of you I’ve always been, but if this continues, I’m going to follow my husband’s wishes and get a restraining order.”

“Your husband,” said Tim. “Which one would that be? The one you’re divorcing or the one you’re going to marry? Although, so far as I can tell, the same fella’s playing both parts.”

Sofia, God love her, would never make any kind of liar. Her head whipped up, pretty much as it had when he suggested she’d stitched Lidia’s arm. But this time, she was angry. He could see a hardness in her he’d never witnessed. Not that it was a surprise. Sawing off wrecked limbs required some flint.

“Hon, we don’t mean you any harm,” Tim said. “Or the rest of your family. Hal, he wants to know who killed his sister. Me, too. The rest of this costume party-I don’t care why Cass is sticking a phony bump on his nose every morning, I really don’t. Hal doesn’t know about that. Nor does he need to. Just sit down with me and tell me what happened when Dita was killed. I know you wouldn’t lie to me.”

She seemed to consider the offer for one second, then her small cut-off chin shook minutely.

“Excuse me,” she said, and shoved past him.

“He’ll be moving any second.” Evon saw the text pop up on the screen of her handheld. It was a few minutes before eleven in the morning.

From 345, she had followed Cass, disguised as Paul, as he drove in the blue Chrysler to the parking lot across from LeSueur. She slid into a space a floor above him. After trailing Cass into the office building, she spent two hours in a coffee shop off the lobby, getting some work done. On sight of Tim’s message, she headed back to the garage. While she was still paying for parking at the automatic machines, she saw Cass push out of the LeSueur’s revolving doors, with their brass fleur-de-lis grilles. He had a cell phone pressed to his ear, and a vexed narrow look on his face.

Tim had taken Cass’s measure well. He was in a blue suit, as Tim had predicted. Brodie had discovered that was the only attire the Gianises wore on business occasions. Far more important, Tim had correctly foreseen that as soon as he confronted Sofia, Cass would run. He had to. He couldn’t wait for the police to show up and ask him for fingerprints. Impersonating a lawyer was still a crime that the bar associations, with their influence, insisted be prosecuted.

In her Beemer, Evon was waiting for Cass as he ran to the Chrysler. She let one car get between them on the ramp down and called Tim’s cell to tell him they were on the move. He was six blocks away.

The Chrysler exited onto Marshall Avenue and headed north in the thick Center City traffic, where the buses and double-parked trucks and jaywalkers created an obstacle course. She’d always been great at the follow, in her own humble opinion. At forty miles per hour, she could fit her car between two others with no more than four inches’ leeway, and she’d always relished the occasional need for speed. Stock car racing went on the long list of things she wished she had tried.

Nonetheless, given what Tim had just told Sofia, Cass would realize he’d been shadowed, despite his morning evasions, and he’d respond accordingly. When he’d driven six blocks, he pulled into the valet area at the Hotel Gresham, and stood outside his car for a good ten minutes. As Evon passed him, Cass was chatting with the valet and checking his cell phone. When she looked back in her side view, she realized that Cass was photographing the traffic with his phone. Given that, she did not double back. Instead, she let Tim settle into position around the corner. He called in a few more minutes to say that Cass was under way again.

When she took over the tail, Cass was circling blocks. She and Tim alternated until Cass pulled into another parking structure by the Opera House. While Tim continued driving around, Evon stopped in a loading zone, left her flashers on, and hiked back to the parking lot. She took the elevator to the second floor, then walked down. Crouched on the ramp above, she saw the Chrysler pulled over in a handicapped space, right past the gate where entrants drew tickets. Cass had his cell phone out. She figured he was comparing the incoming cars with the photos he’d taken earlier.