Out of the corner of his eye, Lucas saw the thin man casually lay his arm on top of the book that he and the owner had been looking at, then slip it off the counter and out of sight. "Just doing a check," Lucas said. "What time do you close?"
"Five, usually?"
"Yesterday?"
"Yeah, five o'clock. Nothing down here after five."
"Okay…" Lucas stepped back toward the door, then paused. Never hurt to ask the question. "What was the book you were looking at when I came in…if I might ask?"
The thin man was nervous. "Just a thriller." He flashed it up and down.
"Could I look at it?" Lucas asked. He put a little thug into his voice. "I like thrillers."
"Uhhh…" The thin man glanced at the store owner, who shrugged. The thin man said, reluctantly, "I guess."
He handed over the book: Lawrence Block, The Burglar Who Met O. "I read this guy," Lucas said, flicking a finger at Block's name. "Who's O?" He flipped through the book: Was there something hidden inside?
As he did it, there was a quick intake of breath by the thin man, who said, "Please… you'll break the binding. That'll cut the value in half."
"What's special about it?" Lucas asked, frowning at the book "It's just a commercial-"
"Please." The thin man took the book back, closed it carefully. His glasses had slipped down his thin nose, and he pushed them back up with a forefinger. He nearly whispered it: "Printed in France. An edition of five hundred in English, five hundred in French. A hundred dollars a copy at the press, they go for a thousand dollars now."
"Well, maybe," the store owner said. He was skeptical. "If you can find somebody to pay the thousand."
"In a big metropolitan area…"
"There's one right up north of us," the owner said."If you want to go try."
Lucas: "What? It's dirty or something?"
"No," the thin man said, offended. "It's sophisticated."
"Huh. Who's O?"
The thin man shook his head: "There was a famous book, The Story of O. If you haven't read it… well, I can't explain. You'd have to get into the literature."
The owner changed the subject: "So what's going on with the security camera?"
Lucas shrugged and let the book go. "We're trying to find somebody who might have taken a picture of that phone across the street. Guy we're looking for might have used it."
The owner snapped his fingers, then pointed a finger-pistol at Lucas: "I've seen you. You were on TV. You're looking for the killer, right? The crazy guy from Owatonna?"
Lucas nodded: "Yes."
The owner looked out the window, as though Pope might suddenly pop up in the window, like a Punch puppet. "You think he made a call from across the street?"
"We think he might have. Last night, about eleven."
The owner's eyes narrowed. "I wasn't here at eleven. Long gone. But have you talked to Mrs. Bird upstairs?"
"Mrs. Bird?"
"She sits up there and looks out the window all day and night," the store owner said. "Says she's waiting to die. If she didn't die last night, she might've seen something."
Lucas nodded: "Thanks. I'll go ask." As he went out the door, he looked back at the thin man with his Burglar book: "Sophisticated?"
The thin man nodded. "European."
MRS. BIRD WAS TOO OLD to look thin-she looked wasted; she looked like she was going away for good. Lucas thought she might be ninety-five. She peeked at him over the chain on her door, pale blue curious eyes over lightly rouged cheeks. When Lucas showed her his ID, she opened the door.
"I don't believe I've ever spoken to a policeman…" She was a small woman with narrow shoulders, wrapped in a polyester housecoat printed to resemble a quilt, with peacocks and cockatoos on the quilt squares. She had short curly hair, like a poodle's, but silvery white, and looked at Lucas through cat's-eye glasses that might have been briefly fashionable in the fifties. A television rambled in the background, a shopping channel selling used Rolexes.
But she'd seen a man by the telephone. "I do remember that; yes. A man in a white shirt. That phone is not used very much."
"Do you remember what he looked like?" Lucas asked. He edged inside the door; she apparently had three rooms, a living room overlooking the street, a bedroom, and a small kitchen. Lucas couldn't see a bath, but he could see a half-open door in the bedroom, and thought that might be it. The place smelled of Glade deodorizer.
She frowned, was uncertain. "Well, I don't know… He was only there for a minute or two."
"Would you mind if I looked out the window?"
"Please do," she said. He crossed her living room in three Steps, looked out the window. The phone was directly across the street and only fifteen feet from a streetlight.
"Did you see more than one man last night?" Lucas asked.
"No, not last night," she said.
"Did you see a car?"
Again she frowned. "Yes, I did. He got out of a car, he parked just over there…" She pointed a bony finger just up the street from the phone. "A white Oldsmobile."
"An Oldsmobile."
"I think so."
"New? Or old."
"New, I think."
"You say, you've said, you think. You've said it several times…"
"I was watching television. That's all I do now, watch television and look out the windows, except on Mondays and Wednesdays when the social lady comes and takes me to the store. But I wasn't paying too much attention to the telephone…"
"Okay… If we showed you some photographs, could you see if you recognize the man? Or the car?"
She smiled; she had improbably small, white, pearly teeth. "I could certainly try, but I'm pretty old."
"Mrs. Bird, I'll be back in a minute, okay?" Lucas said. "Just give me a minute or two."
"I'm not going any place. I hope."
WHEN LUCAS GOT back to the street, Sloan was just coming out of the bookstore, wiping his nose With a Kleenex: "They said you were upstairs."
"The woman upstairs said she saw a guy… I need your photo spread," Lucas said. "What else did she see?"
"She said he's driving a white Oldsmobile. A new one," Lucas said.
Sloan's eyebrows went up. "That could be something."
Sloan got his briefcase from the car and together they went back up the stairs. As they walked up the stairs, Lucas said; "Try not to get too close to her. You give her that cold, you could kill her."
"Goddamnit." Sloan was offended.
"No, no- I'm not kidding."
MRS. BIRD OPENED THE DOOR for them. She was more animated now than when Lucas had first knocked; excited.
"We need a place for you to sit and look at these and see them all at once," Sloan told her.
They all looked around. In the kitchen, a single wooden chair faced a small oval table the size of a pizza pan, and on the table, a paper rose poked out of a glass bud vase. Lucas and Sloan wouldn't fit at the table.
"Could I move your end table around in front of the couch, maybe?" Lucas asked.
"Of course."
Mrs. Bird sat in the middle of the three-cushion couch. Lucas took some old Reader's Digests off the table and moved it in front of the couch. Lucas and Sloan sat on either side of Bird, and Sloan spread out ten five-by-seven color photographs. One of the men was Charlie Pope. The other nine, all of whom met the general description of Charlie Pope, were cops.
She looked at them for a moment, then said to Sloan, "I saw this on television once."
"It's pretty important…"
She looked back at the pictures, and then reached out and touched Charlie Pope's face. "This is the man, I believe."
THEY SAT LOOKING at the pictures for a few seconds, then Sloan said to Lucas, "We need to make out an affidavit and bring it back here." Unspoken: the old lady might die in the next fifteen minutes.
"We'll get somebody with Rochester to do it, and we can bring it back here after the meeting."
They explained the procedure to Mrs. Bird, who nodded and said, "I'll wait for you. I was just going to watch TV anyway." Then she did a little dramatic, girlish shiver: "You don't think I'll be in any danger, do you?"