He took both suits off the hanging arm and held them out in front of himself, trying to make out the difference. He moved them from hand to hand a few times and finally hung both on the stainless steel arm again, so the shoulders were fully aligned. Now he caught it. The second suit, the one in back now, was probably half a size larger at the shoulder, and the sleeve was a micrometer longer as well.
“Three weeks, huh?” he asked her.
“Yeah.” She showed him the receipt. Written on it in marker was “442,” but that show-and-tell exhausted her patience.
“You pay now,” she said. So he opened his wallet and went through the whole act, cussing himself out and asking her to point him to an ATM.
Monday was Memorial Day. Tim was going to his granddaughter’s for a picnic with her husband’s family later in the day, and he had looked forward to that all weekend, sharing the young couple’s excitement about Stefanie’s pregnancy, and getting congratulated for having hung around long enough to see some of his DNA arrive in another generation. With nothing better to do until then, he decided to park across from 345 for a few hours that morning. Cass’s Acura appeared close to 10 a.m. Just as on Friday, roughly five minutes after Cass arrived, Paul pulled out in the Chrysler. Tim followed Paul to his senatorial office, and then to a parade in his district.
On Tuesday, Tim was at 345 at 7:30 a.m., wearing the twill navy-blue uniform from the old heating and ventilation business he’d briefly been in with his brother-in-law twenty-five years ago. Both the waist-length jacket and the matching billed hat sported the shield of Bob’s company, which he’d sold off a decade ago. These days, the pants didn’t quite close over his belly, but he made it look OK with a belt and a safety pin.
He stood outside the 345 garage on the concrete divider that separated the incoming from the outgoing traffic. As soon as a car pulled out and sped into the street, he ducked under the closing door and continued down the ramp into the garage. A Cadillac heading up honked and Tim raised his hands in protest, pretending that he had every right to be here.
There were two floors, smelling unpleasantly of oil and engine fumes. The best he could do was lurk near the bottom of the ramp, sucked back against the cinder block wall. When the Acura came in, it circled straight down to the lower level. Tim took the stairs and waited until he saw the Chrysler head back up. He walked around the floor several minutes before finding the Acura, the engine still warm.
He was stationed on the bottom level of the garage Wednesday. He knew there was a fair chance he was going to get his elderly butt arrested for trespassing but curiosity had a serious grip on him. He had five hundred dollars cash on him for bail and had alerted Evon.
Cass pulled in at about 8:55, and spent a minute jogging cars. He moved the Acura into the space the convertible had been in, then returned with his briefcase to the Chrysler he’d left running across the row.
Inside the Chrysler, Cass disappeared from view. Tim walked by at about fifty feet. He didn’t risk more than a quick look, and thought Cass was peering down at a computer, his shoulders shifting slightly. Tim walked up to a meter on the wall, pretended to monkey with it, then limped back in the other direction at the leisurely pace of a man getting paid by the hour. This time, when he passed by he could see clearly that Cass had his face in his hand, gripping the bridge of his nose, as if he was suffering a sinus headache or had come to grief over something. Afraid to stare, Tim went up one floor and stood beside the garage door, thinking he’d get a better look at Cass in the break of light when the door rose. And he did. But the driver was Paul.
“There’s just one man,” he said as he sat in Evon’s office Thursday afternoon.
“Give me a break.”
“Cass leaves the house. And Paul goes to work. I’ve been down in the garage three times now. Cass is living with Sofia, but once he leaves the house, he’s pretending to be Paul. He’s putting a prosthetic over the bridge of his nose every morning.”
Evon couldn’t keep from laughing.
“Come on. A fake nose? Does it have a Groucho moustache attached, too?”
“That’s how he’s getting away with it. Because nobody would ever believe it.”
“I’ll say.”
“No, listen.” Tim waved at her with both hands. He was quite excited and pleased with himself for figuring this out. “What does Sofia do for a living? She remakes faces all the time, and uses all kinds of prosthetics as part of it. You can go on the U Hospital website for the Reconstructive Surgery Department and see them-prosthetic noses and ears and chins and jaws and cheeks. Whole features or a piece of them for people who’ve lost, say, their nose to disease or accident or surgery or gotten it shot up or blown off. She’s been doing it twenty-five years. There’s a gal they call an anaplastologist who actually fabricates the prosthesis to Sofia’s specifications. I’ve been reading all about it. The prosthetic is silicone and hand-painted with all kinds of pigments to be an exact match for the skin-freckles, veins, whatever is on the rest of the nose, and the edges are feathered so thin it blends right in, especially under those glasses Paul wears. I mean they use 3-D cameras and computers to make an exact casting. Look on the Internet. Close-ups like you were kissing the person and you can’t tell. It’s amazing.”
“Come on,” Evon said again.
“Yesterday when I saw him put it on, he must have been late, and he did it in the car. I figure he was painting on the surgical adhesive they use, cause it’s got to cure in the air a little before it works. Today he had more time and went up to the men’s room on the first floor. I’d put on a wig and a dress so I could follow him close and got in the elevator with him when he headed back down to the garage. He’d recombed his hair so the part was on the other side, and put on black frames like Paul, and fixed up his nose. I was standing right next to him. I’m telling you, you absolutely couldn’t tell.”
“A dress? How much do I have to pay for a picture?”
“It’s not in the budget,” he answered.
Evon looked down at her desk.
“How could that possibly work, Tim? I thought you said you followed him to court yesterday.”
“I did.”
“A man spends twenty-five years in prison and then knows how to practice law?”
“You think it’s that hard? Most of it’s just common sense.”
“Never seemed that way to me,” Evon answered. “OK. And where’s Paul?”
“There is no Paul. I’m telling you Cass is being Paul.”
“So there never were twins? I was just seeing things when the two of them were standing side-by-side at pardon and parole?”
“Well obviously there used to be two. I just don’t know about now.”
“And where did the real Paul go?” Evon asked.
“I’m trying to figure this out. There were identical twins in California. Sisters. Good seed and bad seed. And the bad seed started living her sister’s life. Hired a hit man to kill the good sister, but the hit man narced her out and the bad seed is in San Quentin for life.”
“So Cass covets Paul’s wife, kills Paul and takes over his life. Right?”
“He’s already been convicted on one murder,” Tim said.
“And he committed this one with Sofia’s agreement? This is the Sofia you’ve known since she was born?”
“It’s just one idea.”
“And why bother announcing that Paul and Sofia have split up? Why doesn’t Cass just go around with his fake nose pretending to be Paul?”
“Cause there’s supposed to be two of them.”
“So say Cass has gone to Iraq. Or Alaska.”