“That’s it?”
“That’s the message.”
“Meet me in the breadbox. Whatever that is. At midnight, when? What night?”
“Whatever night,” he said. “Guy’s probably just going there every midnight until the man he wants to see shows up.”
It occurred to me as I gave them their money that they could have just made up this message. They might be hopping on the train and laughing about it for the next few hundred miles, but then the silent partner finally spoke up.
“The message was for TK,” he said. “If that’s any help.”
“Oh yeah,” the other one said. “For TK.”
TK. Tremont King.
I thanked the two of them and wished them well. I was tempted to ask them a lot more questions about life on the rails, but they had a train to catch, and I had to go figure out just what the hell the breadbox was, so I could be there at midnight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It was going on ten o’clock at night when I pulled up at Mrs. King’s house. Too late for polite company to knock on her door, but I figured this was important enough to bend the rules.
Then I stopped myself, just as I was about to get out of the truck. I was working with the gut feeling that one of her sons might be a killer, after all. I was still trying to find her other son, but in doing that it felt more and more like I might eventually end up finding them both. Could I really ask her to help me do that?
I thought about it for a few seconds. That’s really all it took. Then I got out and went to knock on the door.
“Alex!” she said as she opened it. “I thought you were going back home!”
“Yeah, I thought so, too, but then I thought better of it.”
“I don’t understand. You said there was nothing left for you to do.”
“There really isn’t,” I said, “but there is something for you to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Tell me where the breadbox is.”
She looked at me for a long moment.
“It’s in the kitchen,” she finally said. “Where else would a breadbox be?”
“I don’t think that’s the breadbox I’m looking for.”
“Come sit down,” she said. “I’ll make some coffee. You can tell me what in heaven’s name you’re talking about.”
I was about to protest, but a cup of coffee sounded perfect at that point. I sat in the kitchen and watched her make it. I tried not to show my disappointment, because I had just seen my angle disappear. Her intimate knowledge of her two sons, that was my advantage, after all. My only advantage. The FBI had a national organization with agents spread out across the country. They had the technology. They had satellites in space, for God’s sake. All I had was Mrs. King.
“You’re the only one who can figure this out,” I said to her. “If Darryl wanted to meet Tremont at the breadbox, where would that be?”
She put the two mugs of coffee on the table and sat down.
“I never heard them use that term before,” she said. “Neither one of them.”
“Are you sure? Think back.”
She sat there and worked it over.
“No, Alex, I’m sorry. I’ve never heard either one of my boys call anything a breadbox, except the one we’ve got right here in the kitchen.”
“Well, I suppose they could always meet here,” I said, looking over at the wooden box on the counter, “but that just doesn’t make sense. Why would you say it that way? You might as well say, ‘Meet me at the toaster.’”
“Maybe they’re going to meet at a bakery,” she said. “Somewhere they make bread.”
“Do you know of a place like that? Maybe even called the Breadbox?”
“No, I don’t, but that bakery where they made the Wonder Bread, that was just a few blocks over.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Was that still open when Darryl was still…”
I did the math in my head.
“I think it was,” I said. “The big Wagner Bakery, with the WONDER BREAD sign out front. On Grand River.”
“Which isn’t there anymore.”
“He has to know it’s not there anymore, right? It’s been closed for years. In fact…”
“The casino,” she said. “They used that building for the casino.”
I tried to imagine Darryl King meeting his brother at the Motor City Casino. Maybe the most camera-dense environment in the entire city. He’d be a fool to show his face there.
Yet what if he sent that message down the line without thinking about what that building had become? He could be sitting outside that casino, watching for his brother to appear, cursing himself for not doing a better job in his planning, but sitting there just the same because the message had been sent and now he had to play out his hand.
“I should go over there and check it out,” I said. “Lacking any better idea.”
“I’ll keep thinking,” she said. “If I remember another kind of breadbox, I’ll give you a call.”
“All right, please do. I’m gonna get going.”
I was half out of my chair when she stopped me.
“It was really him? Darryl’s really looking for his brother?”
“Somebody’s looking for TK,” I said. “As of two nights ago.”
“That has to be Darryl,” she said. “After all this time, he’s looking for his brother.”
That much was true, I thought. As for what he’d do with him when he found him… I wondered if I’d end up being there when it happened.
It was a short drive to the Motor City Casino. Of course, that was the general idea behind the message. Pick a spot they both knew, a spot both could have walked to, back in the day. Pick a spot that would mean something to the two of them, but nobody else.
But if you were looking for the old bakery where they made the Wonder Bread, dominating the corner of Grand River and Temple Street, your only clue would be the WAGNER BAKING CO. sign high on the original brick walls. The rest of the corner was taken over by the gleaming metal facade of the casino, with the new hotel looming right behind it.
It lit up the night sky, of course, as all non-Indian casinos do. There was a parking structure next door that took up a good city block. It was already feeling like a lost cause, but I drove up through the structure, all the way to the top level. I parked near the edge overlooking the casino, and I went and stood there and looked down at the people all dressed up for the evening, going into the casino to lose their money.
I looked at my watch. It was pushing eleven o’clock.
“One hour,” I said to the night. “What are the odds it’ll be anywhere around here?”
I went down to the street and walked around the casino. I tried to look like I was on my way somewhere at all times. I figured the security guys probably wouldn’t look kindly on a man just standing outside, scoping out the building for an hour.
Midnight came and I had my answer. If Darryl was going somewhere every night at midnight, hoping to meet his brother, I was pretty sure it wasn’t here. My biggest worry was that the meeting had already happened. I just had to hope that a few days would pass before Tremont got the message and made his way up here, assuming he felt like coming at all.
I gave Mrs. King a call, apologizing for the late hour, but of course I knew she’d be up. I told her I had come up empty. That we would regroup tomorrow and try to think up a new plan.
“Put it in your head,” I said to her. “Right as you’re going to sleep. Ask yourself where the breadbox is. Maybe in the morning it’ll come to you.”
I wished her a good night. Then I went back to my motel.
When I went back to see her the next morning, she didn’t have an answer for me.
“I did like you suggested,” she said. “I told myself that I’d remember some reference to the breadbox by the time I woke up, but it didn’t happen.”