He had a midmorning appointment he’d failed to mention to his partner, but there was still enough time to check out one lead ahead of that. He started the engine, turned the car around, and headed east. He’d seen those socks at the Strand Bookstore. That didn’t mean their homicide victim had bought them there, but he might find out who distributed them, and how widely.
The truth was, he just wanted an excuse to go to the bookstore.
He headed for Broadway and Twelfth and left the unmarked cruiser half on the sidewalk, half on the street. One of the few benefits of being a cop. You never had to hunt for a parking spot. He entered the store, went past the front counter and tables stacked with new releases, then took a left into the clothing section. It wasn’t as though one could pull an entire wardrobe together here, but the store carried novelty T-shirts and hats and plenty of pairs of offbeat socks.
He’d dragged a date in here one night a couple of months ago. Wendy was her name. A waitress from a diner up on Lex in the Seventies. She’d bought a pair of socks imprinted with a library card design, nicely ruled with a “Date Due” stamp and everything. They’d been displayed right next to the ones with the shark images. Bourque hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the socks, having wandered off to the section with books on architecture. At the cash register, Bourque offered to pay for the socks, which came to ten bucks, and she let him. “Just for that,” she whispered to him as they headed back out onto Broadway, “I’ll model them for you.” A sly smile. “Just the socks.”
And so she had.
Bourque had not spent the night. He had to be up early, and so did she. The following morning, he went to a different diner. He hadn’t seen her since.
On this morning’s visit to the bookstore, he checked out the sock display and quickly found the Jaws-inspired design. He took one pair off the rack and compared it to the picture he’d taken of the dead man’s foot. The socks were a match. He took them to the counter, where a young man with frizzy hair smiled and said, “Yeah?”
Bourque said, “I got an email that a book I ordered was in.”
“What’s the name?”
“Bourque.”
“And the book?”
“Changing New York, by Berenice Abbott.”
“Give me a sec. And you want those socks?”
“Can you check on the book first?”
The clerk slipped away. Bourque leaned against the counter, killed some time looking at his phone.
The man returned, set the book on the counter for Bourque’s inspection. It was art book sized, nine by twelve inches and an inch thick, with a crisp, black-and-white cover photo of downtown New York. “It’s used but in nice shape. Couple of pages are slightly creased.”
“That’s okay,” Bourque said, thumbing quickly through the book, scanning the hundreds of photos of New York from the 1930s. “It’s great. I’ll take it.”
“Have you seen the book on Top of the Park? Came out last week. Thought you might be interested.” He pointed to one of the new release tables. “Over there.”
Bourque walked over to the table, found what the man had been pointing to. Another large book, an artist’s rendering on the cover of a gleaming skyscraper soaring upward above a park. “I didn’t know they were doing a book on this,” he said, flipping through the pages, looking at more architectural drawings, floor plans, comparisons to other buildings, around the world, of similar height. There weren’t many.
He brought it over to the counter. “Nice book. They’ve documented everything. Early concepts, final plans, bio on the architect.” Bourque slowly nodded his head. “Gorgeous book.” He flipped the book over, looking for a price. “Jesus,” he said.
“Yeah,” said the clerk. “But you’re getting the other one for only fifteen bucks. And we can take five off the forty for the other one.”
While Bourque considered that, the clerk tapped the cover of the more expensive book and said, “I think it officially opens this week. Supposed to be the tallest residential tower in the world, or just the U.S. I’m not sure. Only thing I know is I won’t be going up it. I got a heights thing. I’ve never even been to the top of the Empire State.”
Bourque had reached a decision. “I’ll take both of them.”
“And the socks?”
“Just a question about them. How many places in the city other than you sell these?”
The man shrugged. “I’d guess all kinds. Why? You want us to match a price?”
Bourque shook his head. At this point, he displayed his badge and put it away. “Do you remember a guy coming in here buying a pair like this?”
The clerk blinked. “You kidding? We sell lots of those. And there’s lots of others work the checkout.”
Bourque was not deterred. “Every item in this store has a different UPC number, right?”
The young man shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”
“So then if you enter that UPC number, up will come all the purchases of this particular sock. And if they were paid for with a credit card, you’d know who made the purchase.”
“Maybe, yeah.”
Bourque smiled. “That’s what I’d like you to do for me.”
The clerk grinned. “So let me see if I understand this. You want to find a guy who bought a pair of these socks.”
“Right.”
“If I did sell a pair to your guy, maybe I’d recognize him. You got a picture?”
“No,” the detective said.
“Okay, so, I’d need one of the managers to okay looking through our records, but I’ve already got your email.”
Bourque handed him a card. “That’s got my phone number on it, too.”
“I don’t have a lot of time,” the detective said, dropping into the plastic chair in the small examining room. “I need a new scrip.”
The doctor, a short, round man in his midsixties with a pair of glasses perched atop his forehead, sat at a small desk with a computer in front of him. He lowered the glasses briefly so he could read something on the screen. He tapped at the keyboard, slowly, with two fingers.
“I hate these goddamn computers,” the doctor said. “Whole clinic has changed over to them.”
“So just write me one the old-fashioned way,” Jerry Bourque said. “On a piece of paper, Bert. With your illegible handwriting.”
“That’s not how it works anymore,” Bert said, squinting at the screen. He paused. “Hmm.”
“What, hmm?”
“You’re going through these inhalers pretty fast,” he said.
“Come on, Bert.”
Bert perched the glasses on his forehead again and turned on his stool to face his patient. “Inhalers aren’t the answer.”
“They work,” the detective said.
The doctor nodded wearily. “In the short term. But what you need is to talk—”
“I know what you think I need.”
“There’s no physiological reason for your bouts of shortness of breath. You don’t have, thank God, lung cancer or emphysema. I don’t see any evidence that it’s an allergic reaction to anything. It’s not bronchitis. You’ve identified plainly what brings on the attacks.”
“If there’s nothing physiological, then why do the inhalers work?”
“They open up your air passages regardless of what brings on the symptoms,” Bert said. “Has it been happening more often, or less?”
Bourque paused. “About the same.” Another pause. “I had one this morning. I got called to a scene, and I was okay, but then I had this... flash... I guess you’d call it. And then I started to tighten up.”
“Is it almost always that one memory that brings it on? The drops—”
Bourque raised a hand, signaling he didn’t need his memory refreshed. “That does, for sure. But other moments of stress sometimes trigger it. Or a tense situation brings back the memory, and it happens.” He paused. “There doesn’t always have to be a reason.”