So there wouldn’t be any more calls from the office.
She had a bookcase full of books, mostly paperback novels, but one illustrated volume called Lost Brooklyn, filled with photographs of buildings, many of them quite magnificent, which had fallen to the wrecking ball. He liked looking at the pictures and pondering the transitory nature of all things, even buildings. But he couldn’t get transported by pictures as he could by text.
He had plenty of money. Before they’d identified him, before they put his picture in the paper, he’d realized that his days of anonymity were over. Accordingly he’d used the ATM, drawing the $800 daily maximum for three days in succession. His expenses were lower now, too, since he couldn’t go to a hotel, or eat in a restaurant. The $2,400 he’d drawn would last him for the time that remained to him.
Before he found the Baltic Street apartment, he’d had to be resourceful. He didn’t dare sleep on park benches, fearing he’d wake up to a patrolman tapping the soles of his shoes with his nightstick, then taking a good look at him when he sat up and opened his eyes. He didn’t need much sleep, though, and got what he required an hour or two at a time in air-conditioned movie theaters. He rode the G train to Greenpoint and bought shirts and socks and underwear at a bargain store on Manhattan Avenue, which seemed safer to him than Fourteenth Street, and ate in ethnic enclaves in Queens, where the residents were more caught up in tensions over Kashmir and civil war in Colombia than the doings of white people in gay bars in Manhattan.
Then he found Evelyn Crispin’s apartment, and his life became less of a struggle. She had a cupboard and refrigerator full of food, and a soft bed for him to sleep in, and a comfortable chair and a television set with cable reception. She had neighbors, too, but he never saw them. He left the apartment after two A.M. and returned before five, and never encountered anyone.
Every day that he stayed out of sight, the likelihood of their capturing him diminished. The hunt would go on indefinitely, but the public, with its eight million pairs of eyes, had a notoriously short attention span. Look how quickly they’d forgotten all about the man who’d sent anthrax through the mails. Other stories were already competing for their notice, and the Carpenter’s facial features, not that sharply delineated in their photo to begin with, would blur and soften and recede from the forefront of their collective memory.
Before long he would be invisible again.
Someone was ringing the doorbell, knocking on the door.
He’d been drifting, lost in reverie, not asleep but not entirely awake, either, and now he sprang from his chair and turned toward the door. Someone had a key in it and was turning the lock. They couldn’t get in, he’d thrown the bolt, but he had to do something.
He picked up a knife in the kitchen, then went to the door, called, “Yes? Who is it?”
“It’s Carlos,” a voice said. “Come to check on Miz Crispin. You want to open the door?”
“I can’t,” he said. “I was in the shower and I heard you banging on the door. You’ve upset the cat terribly.”
“I don’t want to upset nobody,” Carlos said. “Where’s the lady? Been days now and nobody’s seen her.”
“She’s out of town,” he said. “Didn’t you get the note she left?”
“What note?”
“She’s in Duluth,” he said. “Her aunt passed away, she had to go there. Are you sure you didn’t get the note?”
A woman’s voice said, “Duluth?”
“In Minnesota. I’m a friend of hers, I’m taking care of her cat until she comes back. She asked if I’d stop in and feed the cat and water the plants, and I said I’d move right in, because my air conditioner died and just try to get them to come in the middle of a heat wave.”
“I know she’s from Minnesota,” the woman said.
“I just wanted to make sure she was all right,” Carlos said.
“She’s fine,” he said. “I had a postcard from her the other day. Come around tomorrow and I’ll show it to you.”
“No, I don’t have to see no postcard. I just...”
“Listen,” he said, “the water’s still running in the shower. You’re good to be concerned. She’s fortunate to have such good neighbors.”
“I’m the super. This building and three others on the block. I’m sort of responsible, you know what I mean?”
“I do,” he said, “and I appreciate it.”
He stood there, gripping the knife, until he heard their footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs.
He was going to have to decide about fingerprints.
To leave them or to wipe them away? There were persuasive arguments on both sides. If they found his fingerprints, and thus knew he’d taken refuge here on Baltic Street, he’d be catapulted back into the headlines. Of late there’d been little about him, some of it speculation that he might have left the city, might be in Mexico or Brazil or seeking refuge in some Arab nation (with his terrorist brothers, one columnist suggested), or that he might even be dead. His fingerprints would end such speculation, and would lead authorities to widen their search from Manhattan to the outer boroughs. The invisibility he’d begun to regain would afford less protection.
On the other hand, he’d be far from Boerum Hill, far from all of Brooklyn, by the time they even saw the need to look for fingerprints. Safety aside, might it not be advantageous to let the city know that the Carpenter was alive and well, and still devoted to his work? Fear was a powerful emotion, and had already served him well.
He could picture Carlos on Live at Five, interviewed by a vacuous reporter on the steps of the Baltic Street house. He hadn’t seen Carlos, hadn’t even tried to look through the peephole at him, but he was sure he knew what he looked like — short, stocky, a full head of curly black hair, pockmarks on his cheeks. “I go and check on her, you know? And he tells me he’s her friend, she went home on account of her aunt died, he’s staying there to feed her cat. And it sounds okay to me, you know?”
Yes, let them find his prints. Let them dread the Carpenter. It wouldn’t make things that much more dangerous for him, and he didn’t have to stay away from them for that much longer.
It was already well into August.
In the morning, he thought, Carlos would start to wonder. Perhaps he should meet Evelyn Crispin’s friend face to face, instead of having to talk with him through a door.
Time to be going.
He undressed, and put all of his clothes in her washing machine, sitting patiently at the window until it was time to switch them to the dryer. When they were dry he laid out the clothes he would put on when he awoke, packed the rest into a navy-blue backpack he’d found in one of the closets.
One of the small drawers in the kitchen held hardware — pliers, regular and Phillips-head screwdrivers, a hammer, a tape measure, a jar full of assorted nails and screws. He took out the hammer, and went through the jar to select the largest nail. It was a formidable thing, three inches long, and thick. He put the hammer and nail on the kitchen counter and closed the drawer.
The freezer had done its work, and the ice cubes had hardened. He collected the cubes in a bucket, refilled the trays, dumped the bucket in the bathtub. He wet a washcloth and gave himself a sponge bath, then got into her bed. The air conditioner, running full blast, had the room like an icebox, and he used both blankets.
He awoke at a quarter after two, dressed in the clothes he’d laid out, moving quietly to avoid disturbing the neighbor a flight below. The cat, whom he’d locked out of the bedroom, was busy rubbing against his ankles, signaling its hunger. He glanced down at the cat, then over at the hammer he’d left handy on the kitchen counter.