It was, for the record, a K3B-M4. So I got the make but not the model.
I got most of the rest of it right. The escalation of the argument with the Korean American, the tactfully turned backs of the workers. And then my re-creation went awry. He did not search the premises. He did not even glance at the travel drive that I could clearly see sitting exactly where I’d been told it would be. He came, he killed, and he left. Leaving the drive.
I watched as the cameras went into delay mode, recording in shorter and shorter bursts at longer and longer intervals, allowing hours to pass in minutes, slight stutters in the lighting caused as one of the monitors continued to flicker. And then the cameras revived, movement bringing them back to life, and a second young man under duress entered the room.
He surveyed the crime scene with some thoroughness, taking several photos, recording the positions of bodies, the placement of entry wounds and blood sprays. Then pausing for a final assessment, he noticed the drive, made a brief mental calculation of some kind, took the travel drive, and left. Giving the impression that the theft of the drive was not at all premeditated.
As for his obvious anxiety and stress, they were revealed not in any particular tick of behavior but rather in the contrast between the efficiency with which he went about his business, and the blind distraction apparent in his failure to erase himself from the security hard drive from which I had recorded the DVD I was watching.
I watched it again. I watched it several times over.
His frame was lanky but fit. The haircut wasn’t one. It was what had been very short hair neglected over several months. The clothes were practical and inexpensive. Off-brand khaki cargo pants, a plain black T-shirt. Only his shoes were of any particular interest. A pair of black Tsubo Korphs, legendarily durable, comfortable, and ugly. Excellent for anyone who spends a great deal of time on his feet. Nurses and hospital orderlies often favor the white ones. In terms of palette and basic silhouette, he could quite easily have been taken for one of the mercenaries I had killed in the room several hours after he had gone carefully through the procedures I was watching him execute.
But he was not one of them. He was, in fact, a cop. Young, not terribly experienced at detective work, but game and apt. He’d obviously done his homework and listened up in class. He went about his business with care, but with concern for the time it was taking, frequently looking at the anachronism on his wrist. I watched and came to another conclusion.
The camera image could be magnified enough for me to see that he was deleting something from the Korean American’s BlackBerry That, combined with his time sensitivity, the impulsive theft of the drive, and his stress level, seemed to make a simple case. Dirty cop. Covering up traces of whatever dirty business he had been engaged in there.
This diagnosis was contraindicated by a few details: the time he took to survey the crime scene, take pictures, and check the pulses of the dead. Dirty? Well, certainly he had something to hide. More than likely it was some form of dirtiness. Always best to assume the worst about a stranger until you know otherwise.
The killer, for instance, had killed out of juvenile rage. There might be money involved, nothing would be more natural, but when it boiled down to the moment of the deed, he simply lost his self-control and, because he had one handy, pulled his gun and opened fire. It was on his face. Not beforehand, not even while he was shooting. But afterward, with smoke still oozing from the barrel of his weapon, the absolute shock on his face. The look that said explicitly, Did I just do that? I hardly needed to see his lips move: Oh, shit. Or to observe the nervous giggle that escaped from them. He’d never planned to go in there and kill those people. He’d just walked into a room where he knew he was going to have an argument with someone and took a high-powered assault rifle with him. For no real reason. Just because he thought he might need it. For what, he would have found it impossible to say.
The other young man, the one with the well-maintained ancient watch, the practical shoes, and the precise methodology, he’d never have lost control in that manner. Had he wanted to kill those people, he’d have gone in with a plan and carried it out with great efficiency. And possibly still have walked out having forgotten to take care of the cameras.
I was, I will admit it, intrigued.
Not that my curiosity was a matter of concern. I would have had to track him down whether or not I was keen to know just how and why he’d come to be there.
He had Lady Chizu’s drive.
Inevitably, I must find him. And take it. And do all that she had asked of me.
Sitting in my Cadillac, spending another late evening in traffic, some hours after the dear French pilot had touched down on the Thousand Storks pad in Century City and reminded me that I had his number, as if I had forgotten, I found a section of the recording where the cop’s face was turned almost directly to one of the cameras. I froze it, grabbed the frame, saved it as “Young Faust,” connected via Bluetooth to the Canon Pixma in the glove box, and printed several copies. Then I left-clicked the touchpad button on my Toughbook and skipped back on the recording, watching Young Faust depart backward, and the killer enter similarly, and, would that it were so easy, watched the dead jump joyously to life, expelling bullets from their bodies in sheer relief that it had all been a bad dream. Or so I chose to reimagine the scene.
I froze the picture and considered the killer. I would need no assistance from business associates who owed me favors to identify this face and give it a name. I owned a TV, after all.
Parsifal K. Afronzo Jr. Cager to his friends. Freshly minted mass murderer.
The policeman, dirty to whatever degree, would likely be seeking him, or vice versa. So then must I.
10
PARK DIDN’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT MUSIC. HIS IPOD WAS FILLED with playlists that Rose made and loaded for him. Music she thought he should listen to. Or things she just thought he might enjoy. He listened to all of them, trying always to listen to them in the manner she suggested.
Listen to this on the ride to class, she’d said the first time she made him a list. She did this after buying him the iPod as a birthday present and seeing that it hadn’t left the box in the two weeks since he’d unwrapped it. She thought that once he saw how much fun the little gadget could be, he’d start filling it himself, seeking out new music to expand his world. But he didn’t.
What he enjoyed was listening to what she chose for him. He’d never have told her what she came to suspect anyway, that he consciously avoided loading new music onto the player so that she would feel compelled to keep doing it herself. Over the years it gradually filled with music that came to be a part of the day-to-day communication between a woman who didn’t know how to edit a thought or emotion that crossed her mind and a man who barely understood that there might be a need to communicate anything that wasn’t absolutely essential to the immediate situation.
Playlist titles:
The ride to the water
Walking on Telegraph
Mowing the lawn
Missing Rose
We’re having a baby
Cheese sandwich for lunch
Keep your head down
What I’ll do to you tonight
Don’t forget the toilet paper
It’s not that big a deal, I’m not really mad at you, just frustrated with my fucking work
The baby kicked me this morning
Don’t worry so much
She has your eyes
Come home safe
Awake without you
When she asked at the end of a day how he’d felt about a new list, what songs he liked best, he never knew the song titles or the names of the artists. The songs were the messages from her; it never occurred to him to care what they were called or who was playing them. He’d say he liked, That one in the middle, with the happy beat, but it was kind of sad, about the kid falling down on the playing field and everyone looking at him and he just lies there. Or he’d hum the melody as he remembered it. Or, when she insisted, sing a lyric that had stuck in his head.