Which was now precisely one half block from him, and growing increasingly redder as the day faded into evening. Which suddenly reminded him of a certain white dress, that day in East Brooklyn again, her dress, which had turned scarlet before his eyes as he did nothing but watch. Just like that other night outside the Par Central Motel, when he did nothing but watch either. Which meant that when you toted things up, he'd spent a lot of time watching-unlike Jean-Claude, say, who was nothing if not a man of action.
The light was failing quickly and taking whole sections of the street with it. The rose brick turned to brown, then gray, and staining darker by the minute reached a sort of poor man's indigo. If it had been winter, it would have been time, but being summer, the street was still throbbing with urban congestion. People stood around- against cars, on stoops, and on street curbs as if waiting for something to happen. And nothing did, so they sat around some more waiting for something else. Which didn't happen either. In fact, the only thing that actually happened was that William's leg began to ache something fierce, and everyone, but everyone, began to notice him. It might have been his occasional groans of pain that did it-yes, he would say that definitely got people's atten- tion-or it could have been the fact that he was leaning on a cane for hours on end without either sitting down or falling over. Maybe it wasn't hours-but to any casual observer, it would appear that way. Think about it. When they asked-Did anyone notice anyone unusual-everyone would have. It'd be unanimous.
Then, suddenly, deliverance. An ice cream truck rounded the corner a block away, belching out this monotonous jingle which seemed to hypnotize half the crowd into going after it. The other half-the woman in rollers, the two men playing chess across a lopsided bridge table, the man with three dogs-seemed perplexed by this sudden loss of community, and rather than wait for it to reappear, decided to forgo the night air altogether and withdraw en masse. And in the rose-brick town house-now as black and indistinct as rain clouds in a fog, the single light that had been shining brightly from an upstairs window went out abruptly as if snuffed.
Okay, Jean-Claude would definitely take this as the moment to act.
There were two basement windows set beneath the front steps. William had noticed them before; a large tabby had been licking its paws in one of them, staring out with a lazy indifference.
He shuffled over there now. Reaching the bottom of the town house steps, he turned left and stealthily slipped behind them. Translation: He made it there without tripping over his cane. It was cooler here than on the street, danker too, and he could feel moss in the spaces between the bricks. Suddenly, a large grotesque shape appeared in the window. He was this close to scramming, this close, when he realized the large grotesque shape was actually small grotesque him. Or rather, his reflection, staring him down like someone intent on doing him harm. And maybe he was-intent on doing him harm.
Now the reflection wasn't exactly grotesque anymore; more like pathetic. What was he doing? Even his state- of-the-art flashlight couldn't brighten his chances of success. He was out of his element, he was out of his mind. Seventy-year-old man kills self while breaking and entering-another headline for Mr. Brickman's collection. Old men enter houses the old-fashioned way-they wait to be asked in. He went back up the front stoop and knocked.
Dr. Morten didn't look particularly surprised. He didn't look particularly happy either. What he looked like was particularly resigned.
"You knew him," William said. "When I said his name, you knew him."
And Dr. Morten said yes. Yes. Oh yes. Yes he had. it it it
Fair was fair. Dr. Morten had a point. They'd both told stories to each other. Now it was time to tell other stories to each other. True ones.
First Dr. Morten asked him if Jean was really dead.
Yeah. Dead all right.
Dr. Morten sighed, the way you sigh at the end of a movie that's moved you to tears. Hard to believe it's over, but it is.
Then Dr. Morten said you go first. You're not here to settle the Goldblum estate, that's for sure.
So he did. He took a deep breath and jumped right in, and after a while he found the water wasn't too uncomfortable after all.
"I used to work with him," he began, the way he'd begun with Rodriguez and the hooker. "We were the Three Eyes Detective Agency. We were moderately successful, but Jean was the star. Definitely. When it broke up, we all went our separate ways. It wasn't like we had bowling nights when we did work together. So no one kept up with no one. We got old and I started reading the obituaries. I had death on the brain. One day I saw his obituary. I went to the funeral because I thought it was the least I could do. It would've been. Except I forgot to say rest in peace. I started learning things. Like the fact that he wasn't retired. Ready to join the shuf- fleboard league and he wasn't retired. I think that pissed me off. I was actually mad at him. I found out he'd been selling runaway kids back to their parents. Picture it- fourteen-year-old Minnesota kids stepping off the bus and there's Jean fighting the pimps and Covenant House priests for them. I imagine Jean played the sympathetic grandfatherly type-let me buy you a milk shake and you can tell old Jean all about it. Sure, I understand why you'd leave a home like that. Absolutely. Why don't you just give me your parents' number and I'll make it all right for you. Some of them did give him their parents' numbers. And then he'd get on the phone and play the concerned detective. I've found your daughter. Your son. Yes I have. Now if you just send me a money order to cover expenses I'll send them right back to… what, you don't want to pay expenses? Haven't hired me, you say? Low on cash? Click. Jean would give them the old fongul. Beat it, kid, he'd say. By the next week, they'd be out turning tricks. That was Jean. That was the Jean I knew and loved back in the good old days. So, big deal right? Go back to your apartment and pick up the obits again. Except I learned something else. That Jean had stopped selling kids. Honest. Given it up for a real case. Something, anyway, that was real to him. Real big. Real important. I don't know if I believed it. I didn't believe it. Not at first. I don't know why I bothered to find out if I should. Maybe because I'd retired a long time ago and he hadn't. Maybe because I got spit on on the way to his funeral and it felt like just another day at the office. Maybe I had survivor's guilt. Who knows-you're the psychiatrist. Okay, maybe I'm lying. Maybe it was the case. Unfinished- and cases are meant to be finished. After a while, I think it was that, the case, all these missing people I was turning up. So I thought I'd finish it for him. Why not-do the same for me, wouldn't he? And then somebody threw me down a deep dark hole. Tried to kill me-just like that. Came close to doing it too. So I thought, okay, maybe Jean wouldn't do the same for me. Maybe reading the obits isn't so dull after all. Maybe I'll re-retire. No such luck. Now I had this case on the brain. I found out other things. That Jean had this case on the brain too. That it had relieved him of something. That it had somehow balanced the books. He went and had his Mauthausen tattoo burnt off with acid because he said he'd earned it. Now what does that mean? Eighty years old and he's undergoing cosmetic surgery. Now here's what I start to think. I was following this case and everyone was saying he went that-a-way. Remember the old westerns? When they said that-a-way it always turned out to be the other way. The smart sheriffs knew that. So maybe I finally got smart. This case is about what was. It goes back. I don't think a client came out of the woodwork to give Jean a case. I think Jean was his own client. I think this was his own case. I think Jean was spanking himself for a long time, and that he was suddenly shown a way out. That-a-way. I think he saved his best case for last."