Done. He put the pad back in the wall, screwed it in place, and Carlow said, “There’s some over here.”
Wheelchairs.
It was a deep broad dark shop, with a counter facing forward near the back, and two doors in the wall beyond it leading to what must be storage areas. Here in the front part, there were shelves and bins down both sides, behind lines of wheelchairs, motorized and not, plus scooters for the handicapped and wooden barrels with forests of crutches standing in them.
Parker found a switch for the overhead fluorescents, turned it on, and they went over to see what was available. A lot of different kinds, it turned out, but what they wanted was a non-motorized wheelchair with handles that extended back so someone could push it. There were different kinds of those, too, so next they were interested in what was under the seat of each kind.
“Take a look at this,” Carlow said.
He’d found one with an enclosed black plastic box built in beneath the seat, curved across the front and angled where the sides met the back. There was a chrome handle in the middle of the back, and when Carlow had tugged on it the whole box slid back. It had no top except the seat, against which it made a tight fit, though the seat didn’t move with the box, and the inside was filled almost completely by a white plastic bowl with an arced metal rod attached to it. When stashed, the metal rod lay flat in a grove on top of the bowl, but when the box was pulled out the rod could be lifted into a carrying handle, and the bowl would lift out.
They looked at this thing. Carlow lifted the bowl out of the box and looked at the blank black space inside it, shaped to fit the bowl. He put the bowl back. Meantime, Parker looked at the seat and saw the cushion was a donut, with a hole in the center, and a round panel in the plastic seat itself could be swiveled out of the way, revealing a hole above the bowl. “It’s so whoever’s in the wheelchair can go to the can,” he said. “There’s probably tubes and such, somewhere around here.”
“Jesus,” Carlow said. He pushed the box back under the seat, where it clicked into place. “What a life,” he said.
“You’d get used to it,” Parker told him. “People get used to everything but being dead.”
Carlow went on to look at other wheelchairs, but Parker stayed with the one with the bowl. He studied the way the parts were put together, the wheels and the frame and the seat and the back and the foot supports and the handles.
After a while, Carlow came over again. “This one, you think?”
“Is there another one like it?”
“Yeah, same gray. Over there.”
“We’ll take them both,” Parker said.
“What do we need two for?”
“Because I want the second box. If we walk out of here with two wheelchairs, no signs of entry, nothing fucked up, they’ll think their records are wrong. And if they don’t, the cops will. But if we take just the box and leave the chair, they’ll knowsomebody was in here. I don’t want a lot of cops looking for a hot wheelchair.”
“Okay.” Carlow gave the wheelchair a critical look. “You sure that’s big enough down there?”
“We can move the seat up, dick around with it a little. There’ll be room.”
Carlow was still not sure, although Parker was already walking one of the wheelchairs toward the door. Carlow called after him, “Won’t they pull that handle? Won’t they look in there?”
“Not twice,” Parker said over his shoulder, and Car-low laughed and went to get the other wheelchair.
5
Normally, Parker would stay as far as he could from any civilian that might be involved with a piece of work, and he’d prefer to stay away from Cathman, too, but he couldn’t. The man bothered him, he rang tin somehow. Was he a nutcase all of a sudden, after all those years running in the squirrel cage, liking it? If so, what kind of nutcase was he, and how much trouble could he cause if he flipped out the rest of the way? And if not, if Cathman actually had some sort of idea or plan behind what he was doing, Parker needed to know that, too. No civilian agendas allowed.
According to Claire, Cathman had owned his home, a single-family house in an Albany suburb called Delmar, for twenty-seven years. Mortgage all paid up, his free and clear. His three daughters grew up there and married and moved out. His wife died there, seven years ago. He was still in the house. It ought to know everything about him by now.
Parker drove the Subaru down that block at three-thirty in the afternoon. Small two-story clapboard houses dating from the late forties’ building boom lined both sides, each with a neat lawn in front and a neat driveway to one side. They’d started out looking all the same, cookie-cutter tract houses, but owners had altered and adapted and added to them over the years, so that by now they looked like relatives but not clones.
Cathman’s was number 437, and his additions had been an attached garage at the top of the driveway and the enclosing of the front porch with windows that bounced back the spring sun. Shades were drawn over those windows and over the front windows upstairs.
Parker took the next left and drove two blocks back out to the main shopping street, where there was a supermarket on the near right corner. He left the Subaru there, put on the dark blue jacket that read Niagara-Mohawk Electricacross the back, picked up the clipboard from the passenger seat, and walked away down the sidewalk, the only pedestrian in miles.
In front of Cathman’s house, he stopped to consult the clipboard, then walked up the driveway. A narrow concrete path went around the garage, and he followed it to the back yard, which was weedy and shaggy and uncared for. Chain-link fence separated it from the better-kept yards to both sides, and a tall wooden fence had been built for privacy by the neighbor at the rear. Some kids were playing with toy trucks in a yard half a block down to the right; they never glanced Parker’s way.
The lock on the kitchen door was nothing. He went through it without damaging it, and spent the next hour tossing the house, careful but thorough. He moved furniture so he could roll up carpets to look for trapdoors to hiding places. He checked the ceilings and back walls of closets, and removed every drawer from every dresser and table and desk and built-in in the house. He stuck a knife in the coffee and in the flour, he took the backs off both TVs, he took off and then replaced every light switch and outlet plate. At the end, he put everything back the way it had been.
Nothing was hidden, nothing here changed the idea of Cathman as a solid citizen, predictable and dull. The only thing new Parker learned was that Cathman was looking for a job. He’d written more or less the same letter to about twenty government agencies and large corporations, listing his qualifications and stating his availability. The answers he got and he always got an answer were polite and respectful and not interested.
Clearly, he did this stuff at home, in this office upstairs at the back of the house that must originally have been a daughter’s bedroom, because he didn’t want his Rosemary Shields to know he was on a job hunt. That consulting business was just a face-saver, it cost him money instead of making money. He wasn’t strapped yet, but how long could he keep up the fake show? Was that reason enough to turn to the heisters?
Parker finished with the house at ten to five. There was no beer in Cathman’s refrigerator, but an open jug of Italian white wine was in there, cork stuck partway back in the bottle. Parker poured himself a glass, then sat in the dim living room and thought about the things that needed to be done. Noelle. The wheelchair. An ambulance or some kind of van that could take the wheelchair with a person in it. The limo for Lou. The chauffeur uniform. The guns. And Cathman’s part: ID.
He heard the garage door motor switch on, and got up to go to the kitchen, where the side door connected with the garage. He refilled his glass, and poured a second, and when Cathman walked in, slope-shouldered and discouraged, Parker was just turning with a glass in each hand. “You look like you could use this,” he said.