“He was dead by the time I got to him,” I said. “Less than a minute. He’d hit his head badly. I think it killed him instantly. I don’t think he suffered.”
Her face went waxy pale and she ran for the bathroom door. She was sick.
I took the iPod out of the plastic bag and powered it up. Brought up the menu. The device had a 40 gigabyte memory, but only one song was listed on the screen. One song, when a machine like this can hold ten thousand. What was on the rest of the machine’s memory? What sort of files had Owl found?
I set the bag aside and looked around the apartment. I opened the writing desk’s drawer. Inside were pens, loose change, utility bills addressed to L. Andrews, pink parking garage ticket stubs probably belonging to the boyfriend.
Hanging over the desk’s chair was a pair of grease-stained coveralls with the name “Jeff” stitched on them. Through the open closet door I could see another couple pairs hanging. I turned to the bookshelf Elena had pointed to earlier. Not searching for any particular title, just allowing my eyes to take them all in. One book on the third shelf down stuck out half an inch farther than all the others in the same row. Its spine was brown.
I pulled it out the rest of the way. It was a tall book titled The Complete Guide to Tristan and Isolde. Isolde. As in Enterprises, as in… I opened the cover and there in the upper corner of the first endpage was the owner’s name written in blue ink: “Lawrence J. Addison.” Law Addison.
And Michael Cassidy was the woman Addison had run off with when he skipped out on bail. The same Michael Cassidy who’d had a key to this apartment…
I could almost feel the gears shifting into place.
Owl wouldn’t just have recognized her when she walked in on them—he’d have made the connection between her and her fugitive boyfriend. If Michael Cassidy is back here in New York, he’d have thought, Addison’s probably with her, or not far behind. Or at least she’d probably know where he was.
So Owl must’ve confronted her, told her he knew who she was, told her that if he’d recognized her other people would, too; he’d have convinced Michael Cassidy that if someone was trying to kill her and she wanted to stay out of sight she’d be better off going with him than trying to hide on her own. It was something people said Owl had always been able to do, persuading people, getting them to follow his lead. It had been one of his strengths as a private eye, and now that he was a harmless-looking old man it must’ve been even easier for him—he could play on people’s sympathy, and even the most beautiful young woman wouldn’t worry about his intentions, about going back to this nice old man’s hotel room.
I noticed that the sounds of Elena’s retching had ceased.
I went and looked into the bathroom. She was asleep on the bathroom floor, curled next to the porcelain toilet.
I looked at her cut arm. The blood-soaked t-shirt was brown now, not red.
I let her sleep.
With the black plastic bag in my hand and the hardcover copy of the Complete Guide to Tristan and Isolde under my arm, I walked out of the apartment, letting the door swing closed behind me.
I’d come looking for answers. I’d found some, but now I also had a heap more questions. That was life, the deck was stacked; always the questions outnumbering the answers.
The corridor to the vestibule and the street door looked marginally different than when I had gone into the apartment. The telephone directories had been pushed aside and both doors shut. It was relatively quiet cut off from the street noise.
Daylight from the partially open courtyard door still came from beneath the slant of the stairwell, but I no longer heard the sound of the garden hose rinsing out trash barrels.
Before I left, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to get some more information about Mr. Andrew from Luis. That’s what I thought.
I started for the courtyard door and reached out a hand to push it farther open, but from the corner of my eye I saw something that registered as completely wrong.
Under the stairwell were more stairs, in shadow, leading down to a storage basement. A man was on them, but he was neither ascending nor descending, he was lying prone.
His workboots were toes-up on the top step, his head was awkwardly bent back over the seventh step down. Below his chin was a vivid, frown-shaped welt across his throat. Blood on his lips and red drool in his chin stubble. He was looking up, only he wasn’t looking, not anymore. Nevermore.
It was disorienting for a second, like meeting someone face-to-face on an Escher staircase: going up/coming down? coming up/going down? Maybe he was really standing up and I was the one lying down.
Then, no maybe about it. The slant of daylight from the courtyard changed shape, the rhomboid widening. I turned, but not quick enough. Something crashed down on my head and I fell forward.
Last thing I was aware of: a steely sound, a sound like a roulette wheel at the moment when the croupier drops the ball in—No more bets, Mesdames et Monsieurs—and I was that shiny steel ball sent spinning in its narrow track, round and round and round, until finally I slowed and bounced and tumbled and landed in the double zero.
Chapter Eleven: INCH-HIGH PRIVATE EYE
I came to, not in darkness but gauzy half-light, wondering why my head hurt so much and why the mattress was so lumpy: what was it stuffed with, juice boxes and chicken bones?
I was lying on top of the dead man, the both of us in a heap at the bottom of the basement stairs. I scrambled off him. I must’ve landed on top and ridden him like a sled down the remaining flight of steps.
I crouched in a shadowy corner half-seated on a plastic rat trap, a black pentagon full of poison, staring up at the glare of daylight at the top of the stairs. No one was up there—whoever had hit me was gone—but I still gave it a minute or so before I moved again.
I looked over at the dead man. The super, Luis. The musty air of the chalky cellar was overlapped by the cloying vapor of alcohol. His bottle of tequila had broken, either in his fall or in cushioning mine.
Death has a stillness all its own, unmistakable for either stupor or sleep; by comparison the paint peeling off the walls was moving at a fast clip. All the same, I reached over and checked for a pulse just to make sure. Nothing.
I patted down his pockets and found a wad of bills in a money clip. A quick fan approximated it at eighty bucks. So not a robbery then, or at least not a successful one.
I tried to put the money back in the same pocket. It wouldn’t go. Just one of the reasons you’re not supposed to touch anything at a crime scene: things never go back the way they were. I slipped it into his breast pocket instead.
I stood, the wall at my back guiding me up.
I looked down at Luis. Another dead old man, my second that day, only this one wasn’t an accident, at least not in the strictest sense of the word; someone had crushed his windpipe. It made me consider again Owl’s accident and how strict that had been as well.
I brushed myself off. I touched the back of my pants. My gun was still tucked there in the waistband. As I climbed the stairs, halfway up I found the plastic bag I’d taken from Elena. The iPod was still inside it, so it wasn’t all bad news.
But the book I’d been carrying was gone. Whoever hit me had stolen The Complete Guide to Tristan and Isolde. Unless, of course, the book belonged to the person who hit me, then that wouldn’t be stealing.
I peered into the courtyard and the hallway but no one was around. I listened and thought and made a decision. I went back to apartment three. Though it had been closed when I left it, the door was open a crack now. With gun in hand—safety off—I opened it farther.