Mr. Weeks nodded this time. He understood.
"I was saying hello, fine. Only I had this weird feeling that it wasn't Jean in there. Yeah, I know it's crazy- I know it was Jean in there. But he didn't look like Jean. I couldn't figure out why. Not really. Not until today."
Mr. Weeks was looking down at his wrist. That's right, Mr. Weeks. That's right.
"You know, Jean never, ever, hid it. Just the opposite. He wore short sleeves in summer. Always. Even in winter he'd roll his sleeves up to the elbow-screw the temperature. So it was always there for anyone to see. Anyone did. If you met him, or talked to him, or hired him, you saw them. His numbers were out in the open, his souvenir from the Germans, yes? But here's what I remembered today. Here's why he looked funny to me. When I shook his hand at the funeral home, they weren't there. That's right. Gone, poof, not a sign of them. Okay, I admit it-the other funny thing was I didn't even notice it. Not at first, not then. Not until today. But today I did. Today I remembered. Jean burnt himself, sure he did-but he didn't burn himself broiling a fillet, did he? Did he, Mr. Weeks? He burnt off his numbers. Jean went somewhere. Jean went somewhere and had those numbers burnt off his arm."
Mr. Weeks remained silent, like his tomb of a room, dead quiet. But among the things he didn't say was you're wrong. You're mistaken. You're telling tales. Mr. Weeks was quiet, but Mr. Weeks wouldn't shut up.
"Okay," William said. "Okay. So where'd he go? The family doctor, the neighborhood dermatologist, the local tattoo parlor. Where?"
"A clinic."
So. Weeks speaks.
"A clinic? What kind of clinic?"
Mr. Weeks sighed, a good and heavy sigh, a sigh that sounded like the last gust of a passing thunderstorm.
"A bad kind," he said, "that's what kind. They did some job on him. They used acid-okay."
"Did he tell you he was going to do that?"
"No." Weeks shook his head. "It was just like I told you. I hadn't seen him for weeks. Then one night he knocked on my door. He was in a lot of pain. He showed me his arm and told me what he'd done. I was a medic in the war so I knew it was bad. Even if I hadn't been a medic, I'd have known. It was infected. They'd burnt his skin off but they'd left it exposed. He needed attention."
"So you gave it to him."
"I told him to go to a doctor. I told him to go to one immediately."
"But he didn't."
"No. He thought that was funny. I've already been to a doctor, he said. He thought everything was funny that night. He was… manic, possessed almost, you understand? He wanted me to fix him up, no one else."
"So you did."
"Yeah. As best I could. I have a first aid kit here, quite a large one. I don't go out, so I have to, you understand. Just in case."
Just in case the gumshoe gourmet had a cooking accident.
"I cleaned it out and put a salve on it. Then I wrapped it up good and gave him some penicillin. He was lucky, that's all. It worked."
"Yeah," William said. "He died, but not of that." Mr. Weeks didn't have the fans going today; it felt as if he were sitting inside a collapsed tent-that's what it felt like. "Okay, Mr. Weeks. He came to you screaming in pain and you fixed him up and you sent him on his merry way. Now bear with me-here's the sixty-four- thousand-dollar question. Why? Why, after all those years, did Jean go and do that?"
"He said he'd earned it. That's what he said."
He'd earned it.
"Okay-I give up. Earned it how?"
"He didn't say."
"What did he say? Don't tell a soul, Weeks? It's between you and me? Be a pal? Let's just say I burnt myself cooking?"
"He said he'd earned it. I thought he'd earned the right to keep it to himself."
So, William thought. It hadn't been Jean who'd made him promise. Weeks had made a promise to himself, and Weeks had gone and kept it.
"I don't know why he burnt his numbers off," Weeks said. "I don't know why after fifty years it was suddenly so important to him. He didn't ask me to understand him. He just asked me to listen to him."
Mr. Weeks was certainly odd and maybe even crazy, William thought, but he was loyal as they come. And in this world, at this time, that had to count for something. Sure it did. He couldn't imagine what Jean had done to deserve Mr. Weeks's loyalty, probably not much, other than to visit him occasionally and remain careful not to laugh at him. But it had been enough, more than enough for Weeks, who'd gone in like a faithful hound to bury his master's secrets. He'd taken the photos and he'd taken the file, and he would have taken this last secret to the grave with him. That too. The only thing more surprising than humanity, William thought, is the human beings it's wasted on.
He used the cane to lift himself up off the chair.
"Thanks, Mr. Weeks."
Weeks blinked at him. "What for?"
"When I find out, I'll tell you."
This time, the doorman didn't wave him through like a ticket-taker. This time he made him wait.
"Miss Coutrino has company," he said, with something resembling a sneer, then went back to his newspaper.
Okay, the sneer spoke volumes. Thin ones though, with titles like People I Am Better Than and People I Look Down On. People like Johns, and old Johns doubly so. And even though William was a William, and not a John, he had no intention of protesting today. He was tired, okay, he was tired and he was hot and he was old. Yes he was, no doubt about it, and getting older by the second.
His reflection sat directly across from him framed in gilt, like a still outside the old Bijou, from a horror matinee perhaps. The Creature from Astoria maybe, or the Phantom of Forest Hills. Okay, maybe he was being a bit too harsh here, he didn't look quite that bad. Not like the monster yet, just the monster's assistant-the one who limps after the mad doctor with a hump on his back. Only William was carrying something else on his back, a burden of a slightly different kind, although every bit as debilitating.
Among his burdens, in fact, was Mr. Brickman, who'd been dumped off again like an unwanted child. At an ice cream parlor this time, with instructions to wait, his suspicions only half mollified by William's insistence that he was simply visiting a shut-in who disliked company. Which described Mr. Weeks to a T, though not Miss Eat Your Heart Out at all. These things were getting pretty interchangeable though, his bag of lies, getting where one would do just as well as the other.
He waited over twenty minutes, or until a rather flushed-looking businessman came striding out through the lobby, or actually slinking through it, looking neither left or right, but more or less down at his shoes. Maybe business hadn't been good today, maybe he hadn't closed the deal quite the way he'd imagined, or maybe like any good businessman he was just wary of competitors.
The doorman let him through now, the sneer still amazingly intact, as if it were frozen on.
"Oh," was the very first thing she said. "It's you."
She was dressed for business too, which meant half dressed, black spike heels and a leather skirt up to there. Her blouse was unbuttoned to her navel, and the faintest sweat covered her cheeks.
"Back as a customer this time?" she said, half sarcastically, but half not. He had the impression she'd thrust just a little more white thigh out at him.
"Afraid not." Not as a customer, or as a drunken mourner, or as a new acquaintance here to talk about the latest developments in Chechnya. "This time I'm here as a detective." And if he'd shocked her with that simple declarative statement, just imagine how it sounded to him. Faintly ridiculous, is the way it sounded, especially given that reflection of someone light-years past his prime that he'd just torn himself away from-faintly ridiculous and more than faintly pathetic. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, he thought. Besides, he could be mistaken, but he didn't believe he'd actually heard her laugh.