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“And he wore it all along. When he met her, when he went to your wife’s shop. Incidentally, forget what I said before about her going back to work. This prick’s too fucking clever.”
“My thought exactly.”
“I don’t know if we should change the sketch for TV and the papers.
It might just tip him off that we know what he’s doing. Besides, he could have a full beard by now.”
“If he found someone to sell it to him.”
“That’s a line of inquiry I was just thinking about. Theatrical supply houses, because somebody had to sell him that mustache. Matt, I’ve got to thank you for this one. I never even thought of a false mustache.
I’m not used to thinking that way. Maybe criminals were a shiftier lot back in the day, huh?”
“That must be it,” I said. “The guy’s a throwback.” TJ was on the computer and Elaine was reading a magazine, but they both took a break to hear about David Thompson. Elaine was bothered by the idea that Louise was going to break up with him. “So he hasn’t got a place to live. So what?”
“I think it bothers her that he didn’t tell her.”
“It’s like herpes,” she said. “You don’t tell anybody until they need to know. Besides, he did tell her his place was too small for company. He just didn’t tell her quite how small it was.”
“He said it was in Kips Bay.”
“Well, maybe he likes to park there, maybe there are lots of good spaces. I think she should buy a house in Montclair and let him park in her driveway.”
“You’re just a sucker for happy endings.”
“Well, you’re right about that.”
TJ remembered how, on the night we tried to tail him, Thompson had stopped to make a quick phone call as soon as he was out of Louise’s building.
“We figured he was calling a woman,” I said, “and we were right. He called Louise, to tell her what a good time he’d had. Then he took the 234
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route he did, over to West End and up to Eighty-eighth, because that’s where his car was parked. And when he got in it, well, that was how he gave us the slip, without even knowing we were there.”
“An’ he just got in it an’ didn’t start the engine or nothin’.”
“Why go anywhere? He had a space that was good until seven the next morning.”
Elaine said, “That’s men for you. After they make love, all they want to do is get in their car and go to sleep.”
“Least he got a car,” TJ said. “They could go for rides.”
“He could take her to drive-in movies,” she said. “If they still had them. Or he could park somewhere and lure her into the back seat.”
“An’ he fall right asleep.”
“Out of force of habit,” she agreed. “Oh, I love it.” They turned more serious when I told them about the mustache hairs Monica’s killer had left behind, and the inferences Sussman and I had drawn. I asked Elaine if the mustache had looked phony to her, and she said it hadn’t, that she’d have said something if it had.
“But you don’t expect a mustache to be a fake,” she said. “A certain kind of hairline, you take a second glance to see if you can spot any of the standard telltale signs of a rug. Even then, like we were saying the other day, if it’s a good one you can’t tell. A false mustache should be easier to get away with, because no one would be looking for it.” Something struck me, and I asked where the drawing was.
“Right there on the table, a whole stack of them.”
“I mean the original.”
“Oh,” she said. “Just a minute, I think I know where I put it.”
“Bring an eraser, will you?”
“An eraser? Why do you—oh, I get it. Okay.” She came back with Ray’s pencil sketch and a cube of Artgum and said, “Let me do it, okay? Now you want the mustache off but nothing else touched, am I right?”
“Right.”
“So I’ll do it, because my hands are better than yours at detail work.”
“And lettering.”
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“And lettering, and it’s all because I’m a girl. That’s the same reason I can’t throw a baseball.”
“Or understand the infield fly rule.”
“Except I could throw a baseball fine if I were a lesbian. I don’t know about the infield fly rule, though.” She leaned forward, blew away the shreds of Art Gum detritus. “There! What do you think?”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“What’s the matter? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. You look sick. What’s the matter?”
“I think I know him,” I said. “I think it’s Abie.”
“His name’s Abie. I’ve known him for, well, I don’t know. One, two months? He’s new in New York, but he’s been sober something like ten years. He comes to meetings at St. Paul’s and Fireside, and just the other night he turned up at a gay men’s meeting in Chelsea. I thought it was strange, running into him there. And there was something odd about his manner. I guess I thought he was gay but didn’t want me to know it. He wanted to talk, tried to get me to talk, but I just wanted to be alone that night.”
“He was stalking you.”
I couldn’t sit still. I was on my feet, walking around the room as I talked.
I said, “It just doesn’t make sense. He’s been in the program ten years, for God’s sake.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he said so, and why would anybody lie about something like that? It’s like a mustache, you don’t look at it closely.” I frowned.
“I’m the one he latched on to, aren’t I? I thought it was Monica and then you, or maybe the other way around, but it must have been me.
He tagged me to AA and started coming to meetings. I don’t know how he got to Monica.”
“She’s over here a lot. Was over here a lot.”
“Then he found a way to meet her, which probably wouldn’t have 236
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been too hard. And impressed upon her the need for secrecy, so she couldn’t tell us about him. Didn’t she buy Scotch for him?”
“Yes.”
“And he brought her a bottle of that Italian crap.”
“Strega.”
“Right, Strega. He came around and talked about his ten years of sobriety, he qualified at meetings, and then he went to her place and drank a little Scotch. And why shouldn’t he, if he wasn’t an alcoholic in the first place?”
I picked up the phone, looked up a number, made a call. It rang almost enough times for me to hang up before Bill picked up. I said, “It’s Matt, Bill. How’s it going? Say, you sponsor Abie, don’t you? Have you seen him at meetings lately? Well, why I’m asking, and I don’t want you to breach a confidence, but I’ve got a reason to suspect him of something serious. Pretty damned serious, actually. I think he may be running a game, that he might not be sober at all. That’s not the serious part, which I don’t want to say just yet. Uh-huh. That’s interesting.
What’s his last name, do you happen to know? Well, do you know where he’s been living? I see. Yes, sure, Bill. I will, and thanks.” I hung up and said, “He hasn’t seen him in several days, doesn’t know his last name, no idea where he lives. He smelled whiskey on him one time, and he didn’t say anything, and Abie must have sensed something, because he preempted the subject by saying how he’d had a drink spilled on him at a restaurant and it was driving him crazy, walking around smelling the booze on himself. But thinking back, Bill has the feeling that might have been crap, and the booze was on his breath, not his clothes.”
“You want a cup of tea, baby? Or something to eat? You’re all—”
“I’m all keyed up, and I damn well ought to be. Bill was his sponsor and Abie never told him his last name.”
“Abie’s an odd name to pick. Short for Abraham, I suppose.”
“You would think, but he corrected you if you called him that. Or if you shortened it to Abe, come to think of it. And people are so polite in AA, so fucking accepting. He could have called himself Dolores and everybody would have gone along with it.” All the Flowers Are Dying