The label for the twenty-fifth bell, at the very bottom of the second column, was professionally made. It read SUPERINTENDANT, which looked wrong, but if you look at any word long enough it looks to be misspelled. I let my finger hover over the button, then withdrew it.
Outside, I walked the rest of the way to Third Avenue, crossed to the north side, and walked back to Cuppa, a non-Starbucks coffee bar I’d noticed earlier. There were three tables opposite the service counter, two empty and the third occupied by a young woman typing furiously on a laptop. There was also a butcher-block counter in the front window, with three unoccupied stools. I got a small black coffee from the mixed-race barista. A Vietnamese mother, I decided, and an African-American serviceman father. I carried my coffee to the counter in front, picked the stool farthest to the right, because that gave me the best view of Ellen’s building, though I’d have been hard put to tell you why I felt the need to gaze at it.
I decided it was probably sexist or racist or something of the sort to assume it was the mother who was Vietnamese, the father a black American. I ran possibilities through my mind, and I got as far as anyone could without sending the young woman’s DNA to a lab, and at that point I asked myself what the hell I thought I was doing.
I took out my phone. No texts, no messages. I opened the Google app and typed in superintendant, and Google confirmed what I’d suspected, that the correct spelling was superintendent. Then I typed in attendent, which didn’t look right, and it wasn’t. Attendant, Google told me.
How the hell is anyone supposed to learn this fucking language?
I took out the sketch, looked at it. Looked out the window, as if the son of a bitch would be there to be seen, skulking in doorways and eyeballing her building.
When I got to the bottom of my cup of coffee, I quit stalling. I showed the sketch to the barista, who wanted to know who he was and what he’d done. “We’ve had reports,” I said.
“Reports?”
“Complaints, you might say.”
She hadn’t seen him. I handed her a card, one that had only my name and cellphone number on it. Would she take another look at the sketch, just to fix it in her mind? And would she call me if she saw him?
The woman with the laptop had curly red hair and a pointed chin. She also had a lot of questions: Who was he? What had he done? And who was I, and what was my interest in the matter? He’d been bothering women, I admitted, and there was a good possibility he was dangerous.
“Well, I’m not afraid of him,” she said. She took my card, promised she’d call.
I worked both sides of the block, stopped in every commercial establishment. A dry cleaner, an Indo-Pak grocery, a bodega, a wine bar. At a corner diner, the cashier said he looked familiar, but she saw hundreds of people every day, and they all looked familiar. The counterman looked at the sketch, frowned, and said, “Oh, sure.”
“You know him?”
“I’m good at faces. Ask anybody.”
“I’ll take your word for it. When did you see him?”
“Dates and times,” he said, “I ain’t so good at. He was here twice, sat on that stool one time and that one the other. Or maybe it was the other way around.”
“But you don’t know when this was.”
“Well, I come on at noon, and I’m out of here by ten. As far as when, I’d say within the past week or so. Wasn’t today, wasn’t yesterday. I’m not much help, am I?”
“You’re doing okay.”
“I can tell you what he ordered,” he said. “Same thing both times. A tuna melt and well-done fries. That help?”
I knew what to do. And I knew I was stalling, because I was an old man with a bad knee and all I was fit for these days was thinking of things for other people to do.
Back in the day, I’d have given a copy of the sketch to TJ and posted him where he could keep an eye on Ellen’s building. When I’d chummed the waters enough to draw Paul, TJ could have followed him, learned who he was and where he lived and worked.
Then I could have set the hook and reeled him in.
Back in the day, once he was in the boat, once I’d landed him, I’d have had Mick with me to use the muscle I’d let go soft — and the mental resolve, which had just as irreversibly gone to fat.
Back in the day.
But that was then and this was now, and I could see what I had to do, and that I had to do it all by myself.
Back at Ellen’s building, I entered the vestibule and rang the super’s bell. I was about to ring it again when a voice over the intercom fought its way through the static to ask who I was and what I wanted. I matched the static myself with a garbled response that included the words your tenant and police matter. It was a legal way to say something without saying anything, and it drew in response a heavy sigh — clear as a bell, static or no — and, a beat later, “Be right up.”
A few minutes later he stepped through the door to join me in the vestibule. He was a black man, and I thought immediately of the barista and wondered if he’d left a Vietnamese wife in their basement apartment.
But he wasn’t old enough for Vietnam. He was around fifty, maybe fifty-five, my height, and he was balding and beginning to show the years. He was wearing medium-gray coveralls, and he had big shoulders, but he also had a gut on him, too, and the way he moved suggested this was a recent addition and he couldn’t figure out where it could have come from.
I showed him Ray’s sketch, asked him if he’d seen its subject.
He took a long thoughtful look, then shook his head. “Never seen him,” he said.
“You’re sure of that?”
“Absolutely.”
Good. I’d known halfway through the long look that he’d lie about it, and that Absolutely of his sealed the deal. “Mr. Simpson, how do you plead to the homicide charges?” “Absolutely positively one hundred percent not guilty.”
Right.
So he had something to lie about, and he was no good at lying. I couldn’t have had better news.
“Take another look,” I suggested. “It’s evident that he came here within the past few days asking about a tenant of yours.”
“I would remember,” he said.
“And I think you will, when I tell you the tenant in question was a young woman named Ellen Lipscomb.”
“I think she moved out.”
“Oh?”
“Her rent’s paid through the first of the month, so no problem, but I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“Why does that make you think she moved out?”
“Well, you know—”
“What happens when one of your tenants flies home to Ohio for Thanksgiving? Or heads out to the Hamptons for a week? Do you call the landlord, tell him to list the apartment?”
He let out a sigh a few pounds heavier than the one that had come through the intercom. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” he said. “Is she all right? Miss Lipscomb?”
“What makes you ask?”
“You, you’re what makes me ask. Showing me that picture.” He reached out, moved the sketch to see it better. “Is this a photograph? It looks like a drawing.”
“It’s a photocopy of a portrait,” I said, truthfully enough. “And you recognize it, don’t you?”
“It’s her brother.”
I didn’t say anything.
“That’s what he said. He was her brother, she’d gone missing, the family was worried about her. He’s not her brother, is he?”
“Not even close.”
“Did he—”
“What?”
“Hurt her?”