“JUST GETTING DONE,” Bob Whitaker said from the doorway of the Sun’s darkroom. He pointed to a desk, where I saw a batch of black-and-whites. “Something to keep you occupied.” I knew by the quiet way he said it that they were his personal work. He ducked back into the darkroom and shut the door. It was seven-thirty A.M.
The prints were of a girl whom it took me a few seconds to recognize as the young cashier at the Owl Diner. So they had gotten together after all. The shots had been taken around the city, though everything in the backgrounds was wisely understated, the camera having found its true subject in the girl. Without the cigarette-smoke pall and china-plate clatter of the Owl, there was just the radiance of her face, framed by the clocksprings of Botticelli hair. Both of them should be doing it for a living, I thought.
There was a second pile of photos on the desk, which I realized had been taken the previous day, at Joel Castle’s burial. These too were Bob’s own, not the official stuff the paper had used last night. I flipped through them. Crowd studies, character shots. The great American way of death.
“How’s this?” Whitaker asked.
The print was still tacky from the fixer, and without a negative to work from, the clarity was not crisp, but the picture was a leap over what John Potter had handed me. Bob had cropped Suoheang Khoy from the group of refugees at San Francisco Airport, and he had enlarged the print. I studied Khoy’s face with more scrutiny now.
“I did up half a dozen for you,” he said. He never would have fished for my reaction to the other work he had let me see, but I gave it anyway. He took the praise modestly, though I sensed his pride. My opinion mattered to him, so I never offered it lightly. As he got the other prints of Khoy into an envelope, he said, “Who is he, anyway?”
“Nobody you’d want to know.”
* * *
I drove with my four-window AC on. The sun was back in force: drier, hotter, baking tar and brick and the vinyl upholstery I sat on. On Lawrence Street someone had opened a hydrant and a multicolor flock of kids was sporting in the thick gout that washed flattened beer cans and trash toward the storm drains. At the DSS office the sunburned receptionist told me Ada had not been in today, would not be until tomorrow. I wanted to ask her if Ada was in New York, but the taste of last night was still on my tongue like dirt. She let me go back to Ada’s cubicle, where I left one of the prints face-down on her desk with a yellow stickum note asking her to call me as soon as she got back.
On the chance of catching St. Onge, I drove down to JFK Civic Center, where the locust pods hung limp and wasted-looking in the heat. I pulled into the lane behind the library and the police station, past a buzzing Dumpster to where I could scope the window of Ed’s office. The lights were off, the door closed. As I was about to back out, Gus Deemys and a man I did not recognize came out of the station, heading for a car. As always Deemys was immaculate, two-tone shoes, his snappy attire so wrinkle-free I could almost picture him sitting at his desk in his underwear until the intercom tipped him, then bustling into his clothes. I called to him.
He stopped and squinted. “Rasmussen,” he said, making it a long slow sound. The guy with him was looking too, as if putting a face to a name he had heard.
“Seen St. Onge?” I said.
Ignoring the question, Deemys strolled a few steps nearer, but not too many. He had not forgotten our last encounter. Castle jokes would be in bad taste now, so he got inventive, pointing at the Dumpster. “Looking for lunch?”
I thought about just giving him the photo of Khoy to give to St. Onge, but I was tired of explanations. I put the car in reverse and slowly backed up.
“You can eat shit, man,” Deemys called, growing brave.
I stopped and turned to meet his gaze. “What’ll I do when I get to your bones, Gus?”
“Come out here and say that,” he said.
I put the car in park and got out and shut my door. I walked over and stopped. “Here I am,” I said.
His feet shifted, but he didn’t take the shot—as I had known he wouldn’t. Guys like him get their bravery from groups. The clothes were his way of telling the world to keep its distance. Shaking his head, muttering something too low to hear, he headed for the parking lot. The other guy followed. Big man, Rasmussen, I told myself, feeling diminished by cheap victory, withered all of a sudden by the heat. How long would it go on, this undeclared war? Attrition, with the occasional skirmish. Wouldn’t life be easier someplace else?
I crumpled that idea fast and pitched it away. This was my territory. I got in my car. I backed out of the lane and drove away.
From my office I left a phone message for St. Onge to call me. I spread the Tran case notes on my desk and sat there in a funk. Information overload. It was the antithesis of boredom, yet in its effect it was the same: a dulling of the mind, a glazing of the eyes, a vast indifference to the world at large. The Sunday newspaper could do it, or a visit to a large museum. I was feeling it now. There were too many loose threads, and somehow the one I was most interested in tying up was the one which spooked me a little too. I needed to speak with Ada.
I might have let it ride. I might have called on George Dickel. But sometimes doing the little task when the big one is weighing on you restores balance. I returned the call I had received on the condominium matter. The number had a New Hampshire area code.
“Artificial Intelligence,” a young woman said.
“Some days I think so too,” I winged it.
“Sorry?”
I gave her my name and glanced at the note. “Karen Dubay, please.”
The next voice was older. “Hi. Thanks for calling back. I wasn’t sure of the protocol. I got your name out of the book. I’ve never dealt with an investigator before.”
“This is a first for me, too. Artificial intelligence?”
She laughed. She was with a high-tech project, she said. Hush hush. On the home front, she went on, she was a trustee of her condo association in Nashua, a small one, ten units, which had self-managed for a few years before deciding to hire a pro. Now, after six months, they suspected the manager was skimming their accounts.
“Do you have evidence?” I asked.
She didn’t. Mostly it was a vague unease that had them all nervous. Lately the manager was not returning calls, and they had just learned that his P.O. box hadn’t been cleared in two weeks. I got details and said I would be in touch. I made a few calls and by leaning on the manager’s message service got the name of a relative. That earned me the news that the manager had been in an accident while on vacation and was in a hospital in Denver. I called the hospital to discover the man was in guarded but stable condition, expected to recover—slowly. I did not talk with him. Next I contacted his bonding agency and explained the situation. The person I spoke to gave me a profile of the manager as an honest guy who unfortunately kept slipshod accounts. The agent agreed to meet with the condo trustees to reassure them. I called Ms. Dubay again and gave her the score.
“I’m amazed at what you’ve learned so quickly,” she said.
“It’s all there for the asking. The good news is your money’s safe. The bad news is that for all practical purposes you don’t have a manager.”
“What would you advise us to do?”
“You’re not buying advice,” I said, “but your contract does call for thirty days’ written notice. If you’re unhappy, buy his month and can him and go back to running the show yourselves, or get someone else. At any rate, meet with the agent and see what he says.”
She thanked me excessively, and when we had talked fee she thanked me some more. How much are you going to sell a half hour of phone hassling for? “You can send the bill to me,” she said.
“You won’t forward it to the manager?”
After I hung up I could not help mulling Pascal’s quip about the world’s problems coming from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room. I was saved by the bell.
“Hello, Mr. Rasmussen? This is Walt.”
The voice was familiar but different somehow. “Walt.”
“Rittle,” he said.
“Got you, Walt. What’s up?”
“I’d like to see you if I could.” I realized what sounded different: the exuberance was gone. He sounded like he was talking so no one would overhear him.
“All right.”
“Is twenty minutes too soon? At your office?”
“It’s fine. What’s it about, Walt?” I asked, but he had already hung up.