No, she wouldn’t. So that wasn’t it.
While anything might have led her to pick up the Pablo phone, even a simple desire to congratulate him further on a job well done, the second call meant trouble. It indicated not merely that she’d been unable to reach him but that she’d needed to reach him, and that wouldn’t have been to offer congratulations, or to pass the time of day. Something had gone wrong.
And he’d have to wait to find out what it was. Well, that was okay. He was good at waiting. And this time at least he wouldn’t need a wide-mouthed jar.
“The good news,” Dot said, “is that he thinks you did a hell of a job. In that respect he couldn’t be happier.”
“What’s the other respect?”
“I’ll get to that, Pablo. First let’s look on the bright side, okay?”
The bright side, he thought, was less of a pleasure to look at when you knew the dark side was coming. Still, he focused on it. He was home with his wife and daughter, both of whom seemed happy with what he’d brought them from Chicago. He’d done his work quickly and efficiently, and to the evident satisfaction of his employer. And now he was in his stamp room, talking on a safe phone with his best friend of many years standing. If there was bad news to come, he figured he could handle it.
“What I had to do,” Dot said, “is make it clear we’d done the job without telling him the name of the guy we’d done it on.”
“Because we didn’t know it.”
“And because it’s safer if he doesn’t know it, either. So what I did, I gave him a play-by-play of your investigation.”
“Oh?”
“I left out the wide-mouthed jar,” she said, “and the fedora. I told him you parked where you could keep an eye on the house, and at such-and-such a time the garage door opened, and a white van pulled in right next to the subject’s Lexus, and—”
“The subject?”
“That would be his wife, Pablo. Remember her?”
“Vividly. It was the word I was reacting to. ‘The subject.’”
“I was reporting to a client. I figured it was more businesslike to say ‘the subject’s Lexus’ than ‘that overpriced Japanese import you bought for your whore of a wife.’ May I continue?”
“Sorry.”
“I called the guy who got out of the van the unsub. That stands for—”
“Unidentified Subject.”
“I guess we watch the same TV shows. Other hand, Overmont must stick to PBS and the History Channel, because I had to translate the term for him. Anyway, Unsub exits vehicle, female subject meets and embraces him—”
“That didn’t happen,” he said. “Well, it probably did, but I never observed it.”
“I was embroidering, Pablo. Improving on the truth. The rest of it was straightforward enough. They’re in the house for whatever it was, half an hour, an hour, and then there’s another kiss and hug and a little canoodling as he gets in the van and drives off, and don’t tell me it didn’t happen, or that you didn’t see it, okay? I wanted to leave no doubt in his mind, and since you’re the only person who can swear you didn’t see it—”
“I get the point.”
“Well, good. Then you followed in close pursuit, and took your opportunity when it presented itself, bringing the proceedings to a satisfactory and permanent conclusion. You see what I did, Pablo? Lots of details early on, enough to sink the hook, and then nothing specific — no name, no location, no details on what you did or how you did it.”
“That was really clever of you.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Turns out we were both wrong.”
“How do you figure that?”
“What I did,” she said, “is I drew him a blueprint. And what he did, the son of a bitch, is he followed it.”
“I guess he was all excited,” he told Julia. “His rival was out of the picture, and his wife didn’t even know it, and he decided to celebrate his victory. So what he did, he left his office early and went home.”
“To Baker’s Bluff?”
“That’s right. He figured his wife would be home, waiting for her boyfriend, and instead of a man in a van she’d get a husband in a Mercedes.”
“It doesn’t rhyme,” she said.
“Not many things rhyme with husband. Or Mercedes, as far as that goes.”
“Hades, ladies, Rosie O’Grady’s. Nothing useful. Does he have children from a prior marriage? He could be a daddy in a Caddy, if you could get him to trade in the Mercedes. I’m sorry, I’m not letting you finish.”
“You’re not the only one. What he did, he drove home, got there around three in the afternoon. And he parked across the street, because he was on the early side, and he thought he’d give her a little time to wonder what happened to her lover.”
“And then what? ‘Ha ha, guess who’s not coming over?’”
“That would have been really stupid,” he said, “although I’d say it’s not out of the question. But we’ll never know what he would have done, because while he was waiting, you’ll never guess what happened.”
“The garage door opened.”
“Good guess.”
“And she backed out? No, somebody came in. Was he alive? The Marlboro Man?”
“The garage door went up,” he said, “just as a white van turned into the driveway.”
“Omigod. You smacked him twice with a hammer. He must have had a head made of cast iron.”
“And then—”
“To say nothing of his sex drive,” she went on, “and her irresistible animal magnetism, drawing him back from the brink of death. I’m sorry, I keep interrupting. What happened next? The garage door closed?”
He shook his head. “The door of the house opened,” he said, “and she came out, Melania, and the two of them met. And no, it wasn’t the Marlboro Man.”
“She gets around, this lady.”
“She does. The two of them met somewhere between his van and her door, and they talked, and Todd sat in his car and watched. And then they went into the house and the door closed, and a little later the garage door closed, too, and nothing happened for three quarters of an hour.”
“Nothing happened?”
“Well, nothing you could see from a Mercedes-Benz parked across the street. But he could certainly use his imagination.”
“And he waited there, like a good detective. Even if he didn’t have a fedora.”
“What he probably missed more was a wide-mouthed jar. Yes, he waited, and then the door opened and they walked out together, and I gather it was all he could do to stay where he was.”
“And she didn’t spot him? I mean, she’d recognize the car, wouldn’t she?”
“Only if she looked at it, and she only had eyes for the guy.”
“Who was not the Marlboro Man.”
“No, but he was definitely her type.”
“In that he had a Y chromosome?”
“Big, broad-shouldered, muscular. The two of them put on a little kiss-kiss show for the husband, and then Melania went back into the house and the guy got in his van and drove off.”
“And the husband followed him.”
“Tried to. Lost him almost immediately.”
“But I suppose he got the license plate number.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
“He didn’t?”
“Dot said he thinks there was a seven in it, but she may have made that up.”
She thought that over. At length she said, “If he thinks he deserves a refund—”
“No, he’s satisfied I did my job.”
“But she’s still got a lover, so he’s still got a problem. Don’t tell me he wants you to solve it.”
“He wants someone to solve it. I’m not sure he cares who it is. But he only knows one number to call, and he called it.”
“And got Dot. And what does she want?”
“What she wanted,” he said, “was to confirm that as far as I was concerned we were done. She’d tell him something — too risky to go back, the agent’s already booked through September, di dah di dah di dah. In other words thanks but no thanks, and anyway your wife’s the problem, and if big brawny guys stop showing up in vans, she’ll make do with skinny kids pushing grocery carts.”