“And you do okay?”
He shrugged. “What’s that thing you like to say? Woman falls off the Empire State Building, passes the thirty-fourth floor, what’s she holler out?”
“ ‘So far, so good.’ ”
“Only the last half-inch you got to worry about.” 162
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“That’s it,” I agreed.
“So far so good. I got more’n I started with, and time to time I been drawing some cash for expenses.”
“It must be nerve-racking.”
“Not too. Worst that happens, day’s a minus ’stead of a plus. You guess wrong on Lucent Technology, guy who guessed right don’t show up with a nine and start bustin’ caps at you. Lose a few dollars, is all.”
“You’re saying it beats selling product.”
“No comparison, Harrison.” He grinned, enjoying the rhyme. “Plus you’re not out on the street corner on rainy days. Big difference right there.” He called the waiter over, said he guessed he’d have another bagel. To me he said, “This David Thompson. Cops likely to find him?”
“I don’t think they’re going to make much of an effort. Sussman didn’t spell it out, but in his position I’d run a computer check of yellow sheets. I’d sort all the David Thompsons, screen for age and color, toss the ones that are currently locked up, and save the rest for some night when there’s nothing on TV.”
“You gonna give him Louise?”
“My guess is he’ll forget to ask. And what am I holding out? We know damn well they’re two different guys.”
“Ever since Monica got killed,” he said, “it don’t seem all that important finding out about David Thompson. Like is he married or not.”
“I know. What do we care?”
“But ain’t nothing changed far as Louise is concerned.”
“No,” I said, “and if he’s running a game, she ought to know about it.
And if he’s kosher she ought to know that, too, so she can relax and enjoy herself. I don’t want to give up on Thompson, but I can’t think of much we can do besides wait. Next time Louise sees him, we can take another shot at shadowing him. Or the mailbox lady could call me and give me a name.”
“I was thinking ’bout that last part. Seems like we ought to be able to hurry the process some.”
“How?”
“Say we sent him a letter, with the suite number on it and all. Soon as it gets there, she’s gonna call you.” All the Flowers Are Dying
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“If she remembers.”
“If she don’t, maybe you give her a call to remind her. Even run up there and remind her in person.”
“And?”
“And she looks at the letter, and—” He broke off, closed his eyes, put his head in his hands. “And nothing,” he said. “ ’Cause only way she gets the name is off the envelope, an’ we’d need to know it ourselves to put it down there. Good thing I ain’t in front of my computer, way my mind’s working today.”
The day trader grabbed the check, insisting he’d saved money by lin-gering in the Morning Star. I told him what he’d proposed wasn’t so bad. It showed he was thinking, if not very clearly. “And it would work fine,” I added, “if all we wanted to do was send him a letter bomb.”
“Solve our problems that way,” he said. “Until Louise goes and pulls another nicotine addict off of Craig’s List.” I went across the street. Elaine wasn’t there, but I found her gym clothes in the hamper and deduced that she’d come home to shower and change. It was the sharpest detection work I’d done in a while and I was proud of myself. I called her at the shop and the machine answered. I didn’t leave a message, and while I was trying to decide whether to try her again in ten minutes or walk over there myself, the door opened and she came in.
“I opened up,” she said, “and I looked around, and I said the hell with it. I locked up again and came home.”
“And here you are.”
“And here I am.” She caught me looking at her and said, “I look like hell, don’t I? Tell the truth.”
“In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never looked like hell. Not once.”
“Until now.”
“And not now, either.”
“You want to try telling me I’ve never looked better? I didn’t think so.”
“You look fine.”
I followed her as she walked to the mirror in the foyer and put her 164
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forefingers high on her cheeks. She pressed upward, then let go.
“Fucking gravity,” she said. “Who the hell asked for it? God damn it, I was going to be the one woman who never aged. Guess what? I’m the same as everybody else.” She turned to face me. “My God, will you listen to me? The only thing worse than the little lines around my mouth are the words coming out of it. Me me me, all the fucking time. Who cares if I show my age, and why the hell shouldn’t I, anyway? Just because I don’t act it.”
“It’s a rough day,” I said.
“I guess. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I could lie down now but I’d just be setting myself up for another night of staring out the window.
Guess what? The Towers aren’t coming back, and neither is Monica.”
“No.”
“It’s not a dream. Waking up won’t fix it.”
“No.”
“It’s gonna take time. It’s what, twenty-four hours since we heard? If I was all better I’d be disgusted with myself. Time takes time, isn’t that what they say?”
“That’s what they say.”
“I wish I could take a pill and wake up six months from now. Except I’d still feel the same way, because I wouldn’t have spent those six months dealing with it. Anyway, nobody’s invented a six-month pill yet.”
“Not that I’ve heard of.”
“They’ve got a permanent pill. You take it and you don’t wake up at all. I’m not ready for that yet.”
“Good.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “it’s not all that hard to understand why you used to drink.”
“It did shut things down.”
“I can see the appeal, I have to admit it. But the hell with all that, and the hell with me me me, as far as that goes. Did you talk to Sussman?”
“They haven’t made any progress,” I said, “or if they have he didn’t bother to report it to me.” I told her about TJ’s wild hunch, and how I’d tried it out on Sussman even though neither of us thought it stood much of a chance of being true.
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“If he smoked,” she said, “she’d have told me about it. She never would have hooked up with him in the first place, she didn’t even like to be around people with the smell of smoke on their clothes, but if he just plain charmed her so much she was willing to overlook the smoking, the one thing she’d have done is mention it. ‘I can’t tell you anything about him, but he smokes, can you believe it, and I still like him.’
Whatever. She’d have found a way to say something about it.”
“Eventually,” she said, “they’re going to rebuild. First everybody in the city gets to voice an opinion, and the relatives of the victims get to vote twice, and finally they’ll build something. And I wonder what it’s going to be like, standing here and looking out at it.” She was at the window, of course.
“I wish something would happen,” she said, and my cell phone rang.
It was the woman I’d given my card to, the mailbox lady. She was calling to tell me that the morning’s mail had held a letter for the holder of box 1217. “An’ I write down the name,” she said. “I think is the same name you say. David Thompson.”
“That’s the name,” I agreed. “Who sent the letter?”
“Who send it? How I know who send it?”
“In the upper-left corner of the envelope,” I said, “there’s usually a return address.”
“Maybe. I don’t remember.”
Jesus, it was like pulling teeth. “Could you get the envelope now and take a look?”
“Is gone.”
“It’s gone?”