Resurgence (33 page)
“The roof sighting can be explained, and in all probability, so can the late-arriving maintenance man. By any chance do you recall the date of those calls?” he says.
“Not offhand. But I do remember it was the same day Anthony Elliot’s scheme with the fax machine was discovered, so if you can come up with that date—”
“Saturday, April seventh. The reason
I
remember is because that story broke the same day I left for L.A. I have at least one dated receipt if ever needed.”
“So, as early as the first week of—”
“And that may not even be the starting point.”
“I’ll have to chart this,” she says.
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Plug in the date Brownie gave us for Jakeway’s last appearance in Michigan, the dates for Cliff Grant’s murder, Colin’s arrival in New York, and the Gibby Lester job—Sorry, I guess I don’t have to tell you what to do, do I.”
“This may sound a little simplistic, but it might be easier to put this together in a table format. Do you have a PC—a computer?” she says.
“Yeah, there’s one in the study.” He leads the way, somehow avoiding the burning question of where she’s going to sleep tonight.
“Here’s a thought,” she says at the doorway to the study. “Why don’t you go ahead and meet the investigator without me. By the time you’re back, I should have this stuff organized and be ready to correlate anything new you come up with.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Nate agrees and leaves her to her own very capable devices.
Harry Newblatt is waiting when Nate arrives at his midtown office a full ten minutes ahead of schedule. That can mean the PI is still sucking up to atone for the Chandler debacle, is impatient to report success, or both.
In one of the small conference rooms, the wolfish-appearing Newblatt is invited to display his discoveries. They turn out to be three photocopies that attest to Hoople Jakeway’s ownership of a 1975 Jimmy with Michigan vehicle plates matching the alphanumeric supplied by Mrs. Floss, possession of a valid Michigan driver’s license issued the first year of his eligibility, and a social security number assigned soon after his birth date in 1955.
“The vehicle tags are expired and the driver’s license is due for renewal first of next year,” Newblatt says. “Nothing yet on the ’eighty-six coupe utility vehicle you described, but I’m workin’ the DMV offices in Jersey, starting with Union, Essex, and Bergen counties, and I’ll branch out from there if I come up empty.” He repositions himself in his chair, clears his throat. “A word to the wise, if I may.”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“If this guy is such a threat you don’t want him approached, why not go to the cops. Lot quicker for them to run down a vehicle transfer statement and produce a current address. And a lot cheaper.” Newblatt produces an itemized bill to support that argument. “I’m not complainin’ or tryin’ to put myself outta work or anything, but—”
“I’m sure you’re not, and the police
will
be called in once I have enough to go on. Meanwhile, try to get a bead on this guy as soon as possible.”
Nate gets to his feet, signaling the end of the exchange. “My assistant will reimburse you for out-of-pocket and if you need an advance, let her know.”
“Oh, almost forgot.” Newblatt stops in the doorway. “You’ll be receiving a fax of the photo that appears on Jakeway’s driver’s license. It won’t be very good quality, but it’s the best I could do under the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“Let’s just say it involved some wining and dining and the mercy-fuck of a hefty record-keeper affiliated with an outpost of Michigan’s Secretary of State.”
“
Jesus
.” Nate laughs and strays way out of character to clap Newblatt on the back in congratulatory fashion. “You don’t happen to know Brownell Yates, the journalist, do you?”
“That gonzo guy who freelances for the celebrity rags?” Heard of him, don’t know him personally. Why?”
“He’s been known to employ unorthodox methods, but I think you may have topped him with this.”
“Hey, in my line of work—his, too—you have to grease a lotta palms so what’s the difference if you grease a few—”
“Okay,
okay
, I’ve got the picture. When will this hard-earned fax be transmitted?”
Newblatt looks at his watch. “Within the hour, if this broad holds up her end of the deal.”
“Any reason to think she won’t?”
“None whatsoever because she thinks I’ll be back.”
Newblatt leers his way out of the office and Nate settles down to wait.
Thirty minutes later the fax still hasn’t arrived. Newblatt’s not the swordsman he thinks he is, Nate concludes. The situation would be laughable if he weren’t so eager to see a photograph—any photograph—of Hoople Jakeway.
He gathers up the material Newblatt was able to supply and leaves word with Lillian that he can be reached at home, to forward any new faxes to that number. She reminds him to wear his pager; he ignores her and heads out.
Nate arrives home to find that Amanda has, of course, delivered on her promise. Charted in the simplest way, arranged in chronological order, facts take on weight, and theories look more like probabilities. Coordinated time elements show that nothing they’ve conjectured is outside the realm of possibility. All he would add to this is an unshakeable motive, and that’s about as likely to crop up as Aurora’s head—reminding him to show Amanda the Floss drawings.
“That’s quite lovely, isn’t it?” Amanda studies the sketch of the young girl. “I’d know this was Laurel even though we never met as kids.”
“
Really
,” he says, surprised and made hopeful by her perception. Maybe he was wrong to dismiss as inaccurate the sketch of the so-called foreigner just because the image of Laurel wasn’t current.
“Wow,” Amanda says when confronted with the unmistakably American Indian features of the other head study. “That’s almost stereotypical Cochise, but I can see why you said he could pass for Mexican—sorry, Hispanic.”
“By any other name,” he says just as the fax machine beeps, raising hopes even higher.
The fax he’s looking for doesn’t appear right away. Three, four, five transmissions from London print out before he sees what he wants. And then he’s disappointed. Not with the quality of the reproduction, but with the age of the original photograph.
“Shit,” he says as he separates it from the other faxes.
“Let me see.” Amanda joins him at the machine, Cochise drawing in hand.
Once comparisons are made, Amanda sees definite resemblance between the subjects of the drawing and the faxed photo. He does not; he sees little if any. But she’s at her convincing best when she reminds him that she identified the young Laurel without prompting and goes on to point out similarities in the two exhibits he missed at first glance.
“I know what,” she says, “let’s show the fax to Mrs. Floss and let her be the judge. If she goes ‘voila, that’s the guy,’ we’ll know.”
He can’t argue with that, especially not when Amanda’s giving off her trademark glow of enthusiasm.
“I’ll call down for the car. Fifteen minutes, say?”
At the Floss place, Nate pulls into the driveway. No luring the old lady out of the bushes this time. “Wait in the car, this shouldn’t take a minute,” he says. Amanda agrees.
The side door into the kitchen is wide open and appears to have been for quite a while because water from yesterday’s rain is puddled on the floor inside. That’s the first sign something may be wrong; the second is the presence of an odor he picks up when he enters the kitchen without knocking. It’s not the odor of accumulated lunch plates gone bad, say; this is a different kind of decay he smells. Putrefaction. Rot.
“Hello . . . Mrs. Floss?” he calls out at intervals as he moves into the hallway. “It’s me, Nate Isaacs,” he calls out pointlessly because she doesn’t know his name. He scopes out the downstairs rooms, continues calling her name in the interest of sparing her a sudden fright.
The repulsive odor becomes a stink as he works his way upstairs. The odor is a full-blown stench in the upper hallway. He has only to follow his nose now to determine the origin—the bedroom he estimates to be above the kitchen—the bedroom from which Mrs. Floss was overheard wheedling her imaginary mate last Saturday.
He expects something nasty when he steps into the brightly lit interior. He’s looking for a dead and decomposed rodent—one of Laurel’s infamous squirrels that got in and couldn’t get out—or similarly trapped birds, or even the accumulation of spoiled food he wanted to rule out earlier.
“No!” he shouts when he confronts nastiness a hundred times worse than expected.
“No . . . No . . .
No
!”
Mrs. Floss is on her knees in front of the window, where she can readily be imagined leaning out to survey her jurisdiction when the sash cord of the old fashioned double-hung window snapped, thereby freeing the sash weight and sending the lower part of the heavy wood-framed window down on her neck like a bladeless guillotine.
Her head is outside the window; her eyes bulged, her tongue extended and swollen, her sparse hair plastered to her skull by the elements. On this side of the window, her torso is bloated, her arms extended at odd angles. Evidence that her sphincters let loose at time of death stain the floor around her.
“No, goddammit!” he roars, protesting both the horrible indignity of her death and the loss of his witness. He holds a handkerchief over his nose and fights off a wave of nausea as he examines the ragged ends of the sash cord, then looks around the room for a phone.
If there is one it will be next to the bed, he reasons, but the only thing on the bedside table is a plate holding two potato latkes, a helping of flanken, and small portions of sour cream and applesauce. The food is fuzzed over with mold, the smell of its deterioration masked by the dominant odor.
“Nate?” Amanda calls from downstairs. “I heard you shouting. Is everything all right?”
“Don’t come up here!” he yells, counterpoint to the sound of her hurried footfalls coming up the stairs. “No, go back!” he yells, although she’s already in the doorway.
“Omigod . . . Oh
god
. . . Oh the poor thing.” Amanda takes in the scene, pales to the point her freckles stand out in bold relief, but she doesn’t falter. “Police,” she says and runs for the stairs, three steps ahead of him as usual.
After calling from the period piece wall phone in the kitchen, they wait outside for the police to come. Within minutes, sirens herald the approach of emergency vehicles. This would be good news if the patient were still alive. Nate hears it as bad news because he hasn’t had time to invent a credible reason for his and Amanda’s presence here.
“Wait in the car.” He tosses her the keys when the sirens wind down, indicating arrival at the entrance to Old Quarry Court.
“Are you sure?” Amanda says as an ambulance and two squad cars heave into view.
“I’ll handle it, but I may have to pass you off as my live-in secretary again.”
“Go for it if it will get us out of here,” Amanda says and shuts herself in the car.
Leading the first responders to the accident scene is revolting, to say the least, and made worse when the already fetid room fills with sweating police and ambulance personnel. He’s mercifully excused to wait downstairs when the medical examiner crowds in, along with a pair of robbery-homicide investigators.
In this calmer, better-smelling atmosphere, Nate struggles to think of an explanation for his presence that won’t require mention of Laurel, or make questionable Amanda’s involvement, and there isn’t one. Given three days of seclusion and an extended aromatherapy session to sooth his olfactory nerves, he still wouldn’t be able to come up with what’s needed to shield both women. So when a uniformed police officer joins him at the kitchen table to take his statement, he passes himself off as Laurel Chandler’s emissary—which he is, in a way—and Amanda off as an employee without elaborating further.
The better part of an hour is then consumed explaining and re-explaining various relationships and purposes, and emphasizing and re-emphasizing that as far as anyone knows, the deceased has no next of kin.
The single-minded officer barely pauses when the body is taken out through the front door, and he doesn’t even look up when a paramedic detours through the kitchen to say that a preliminary assessment indicates the victim was partially disabled when the window initially slammed down on her back, and subsequently asphyxiated when she struggled to get free.
“In your capacity as intermittent monitor of the Chandler property and courtesy caller on Chandler’s former retainer and neighbor, are you authorized to act on behalf of the deceased?” the officer drones on.
“No. Nor is Ms. Chandler. She is simply an interested party.”
“I may have to get in touch with the Chandler woman if social services can’t get anywhere with this. You got a number for her?”
“
I’ll
get in touch with her,” Nate says. “She’s out of the country and may be difficult to reach.”