Andy Candy could see the troubled look on Moth’s face.
“Moth,” she said briskly, an idea occurring to her. “We should watch a movie.”
“What?”
“Well, maybe not the movie. Do you remember what the assignment in Mrs. Collins’s tenth-grade English class was?”
“What?”
“The main reading for the fall semester. I know it was the same for you even if you were ahead of me, because she never changed a thing, year in, year out.”
“Andy, what are you…”
“I’m serious, Moth.”
“Okay, but what has it got to do-”
She interrupted him with a wave of her hand.
“Come on, Moth. The book that fall…”
Moth lifted his small cup, smelled the aroma, and smiled.
“The Count of Monte Cristo. Alexandre Dumas.”
“Right,” Andy replied, with a small grin. “And what’s it about?”
“Well, lots of things, but mainly revenge that is exacted years later.”
“And your uncle’s death?”
“Revenge that was exacted years later.”
“That’s what it seems.”
“Right. That’s what it seems.”
“So, the next step is we get a name from medical school way back then. The fifth student in that study group. Then we track that person down.”
“Edmond Dantès,” Moth said.
Andy Candy smiled at the literary reference. “Kind of,” she said. “Shouldn’t be that complicated. The schools keep records. But we just find him. Heck, Moth, we could just subscribe to one of those Find Your Classmates websites and they’d do most of the work for us. I know we can do that.”
“I’ve always thought those sites exist so that people can reconnect with some crush they had in high school and have adult sex,” Moth said. “But you’re right. Let’s get that name. That’s the obvious next step. And then…”
He stopped.
Andy Candy nodded, but said:
“And then we have a choice to make.”
“What’s that?” Moth asked.
“Either we’re finished… or we’re just starting.” This was a question wrapped in a statement.
Moth took the time to sip more coffee before responding. “I get the impression that this is not the sort of case a Miami cop is eager to handle,” he said. “But, hell, what do I know? Maybe. I’ll bundle it all together and take it to Susan Terry. Put it on a platter and serve it up like barbecue. She’ll know what to do…
“Except why do I still get the feeling she will just laugh at me if I try to explain it to her?”
And then Moth laughed. False laugh.
Andy Candy joined him. The same false laugh.
But in that moment they both realized that nothing was really humorous about their situation. It was more a moment of intense irony, overcoming the two of them as quickly and efficiently and totally as the strong coffee hitting their bloodstreams.
She had said we but in reality she meant I, as Andy Candy had perfected her telephone style with registrars and alumni offices. Moth listened to her work the phones, inquiring, pleading, and finally cajoling. He watched her face, as it changed from smiles to frowns and back to a satisfied grin. He thought she was a performer on a stage, a one-person show, able to run through and express emotions with speed and accuracy.
When she got the name, she first wore a smug That was easy look. But then, as she wrote down details, Moth saw her look change. It wasn’t precisely fear that crept back into her eyes, nor was it anxiety that began to make her voice quaver. It was something else.
He wanted to reach out for her, but did not.
She hung up the phone.
For a moment she looked down at a scratch pad, where she’d taken some notes. “I have the name,” she said. Her voice seemed thin. “Study Group Alpha. Student number five. Asked to take a leave from school in the middle of his third year. Never went back. Did not graduate.”
“Yes. That’s the guy. Name?” Moth knew he sounded eager and that this enthusiasm was somehow inappropriate.
“Robert Callahan Jr.”
Moth breathed in sharply. “Well. There we go. Now we get started on where…”
Moth stopped. He saw Andy Candy shaking her head.
“He’s dead,” she said.
26
Before heading for the South, Student #5 rode the subway down to the Lower East Side of Manhattan and took a long walk. He ended near Mott Street, at the edge of Chinatown where it blends into Little Italy, creating a confusing mishmash of cultures on streets crowded with delivery trucks, open-air markets, and tidal flows of people. It was a fine morning, sunny and mild-a turned-up collar on his suit coat and a white silk scarf were all he needed to stay warm. He stood out a bit-in his expensive suit and tie, he looked like a hedge fund manager. He was surrounded by folks wearing jeans, work boots, and hooded sweatshirts with sports teams’ logos, but he enjoyed this distinction. I’ve come a long ways. This was a nostalgic walk for Student #5. It was where he’d first moved years earlier after being released from the hospital, and where instead of trying to return to medical school he’d performed the identity legerdemain he enjoyed now.
A horn blasted. High-pitched Asian voices argued over the price of live fish swimming in dingy gray tanks. A yuppie couple with two children in a high-tech stroller pushed past him.
Lots of life, he thought. Vibrancy everywhere. But it was where I went to die.
This sort of sentimentality was unusual for Student #5-but not unheard-of. He sometimes felt weepy when watching a trite rom-com. Some novels pitched him into spells of depression, especially when favorite characters were killed off. Poetry often made him pensive in an uncomfortable way-although he continued to read it, and actually subscribed to Poets & Writers magazine at his Key West house. He had developed techniques to rid himself of unwanted emotions when they occurred-changing Love Actually or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington on his Netflix queue to 300 or The Wild Bunch. He would replace misty eyes with gore. With novels and poetry, whenever he felt bubbling emotions he would set the words aside and exercise furiously. With sweat running down his eyes and his biceps aching from exertion, he was less likely to think about Elizabeth Bennet’s nineteenth-century problems with Mr. Darcy and instead focus on his own death designs.
He stopped outside a nondescript redbrick building on Spring Street-one of seemingly millions of similar buildings in the city. A part of him wanted to go up and ring the buzzer for number 307, and ask whoever was living there now what they had done with his furniture, his clothes, and every knickknack, kitchen item, and art piece he’d put in that apartment-and then abruptly left behind. He doubted that the tenants were the same after decades-but curiosity threatened to consume him.
Leaving his artwork had distressed him a little, but he had known how critical this was. He’d always been handy with a pencil or paintbrush as a child and it was something he’d returned to in the hospital. Express yourself, they’d told him. It’s part of getting better.
It was also a window into who he was. Every brushstroke, every penciled line on a page makes a statement. Draw a flower, and maybe they think you’re getting better. Draw a knife dripping blood, and you were likely to be locked up another six months. Or until you were smart enough to start drawing flowers.
Because he understood these things, he had made absolutely sure that everyone in the hospital-doctors, therapists, ward nurses, and security personnel-and everyone in his family knew how important his drawings and paintings were to him. That way, when he abruptly left those things behind, it would say something critical to the people who came to search for him-whether they were family, police, or even some dull and dogged private eye. “He’d never leave his artwork behind.”