"I'm sorry, Bernie."
"Just keep a lid on it," I said. "She came out of a blackout, and she tried to make the guy stop, but she couldn't, and then she went back into a blackout, and when she came to hours later he was gone, and so was a piece of jewelry Doc Mapes had given her."
"The necklace," Mapes said, and colored deeply when eyes turned toward him. I don't think he meant to say anything.
"The necklace," Marisol confirmed. "The beautiful ruby necklace you gave me, that I loved so much. I woke up and it was gone."
"And what did you remember?"
"At first," she said, "I hardly remembered anything. I remembered him buying me a drink, and I remembered waking up and…and trying to fight him off, to make him stop what he was doing. It was horrible."
"And did your memory come back?"
I saw Wally lean forward, and I was afraid he was going to cite me for leading the witness. But he got himself in check.
"Parts of it," she said. "I was so upset about the book of photographs, and I remember that I talked to him about it. I don't know exactly what I said, but I told him things I should have kept to myself." She frowned. "I don't understand it. I didn't have that much to drink. I never get like that, not on two drinks."
"You were drugged," I said.
"I thought maybe that's what happened."
"The man who drugged you," I said, "and went home with you, and raped you, and stole your necklace. Do you know who he is?"
"I don't know his name. I never saw him before that night, and I never saw him since." She paused, and her timing was right on the money. "Until today, in this room."
"Could you point him out?"
She got shakily to her feet, hesitated, touched her forefinger to her lower lip, trembled, and then thrust her hand dramatically in the direction of William Johnson. "Him," she said. "He did it."
You'd think the dumb son of a bitch would have seen it coming. After all, it was his MO, and I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd tried to patent it. But he was at a distinct disadvantage, in that he knew for a fact he'd never seen the girl before. With her Northern hair and eyes and her complexion out of the warm South, she wasn't someone he could have seen and forgotten, and he'd certainly remember her if he'd taken her home. He might not know where she was going with all of this, but there was no way she could be coming in his direction.
And here she was, sticking her little finger straight at him.
"No way, man. No fuckin' way. I never saw this chick before in my life."
"Really," I said. "The bar's called Parsifal's. Do you know it?"
"I was there maybe once or twice."
"Ever take a woman home?"
"Maybe. But not this broad. I told you, I never saw her."
"Ever put something in a drink to improve your chances?"
"Hey, c'mon," he said, and flexed some muscles. "You think I need any help?"
"Then you're saying you didn't slip Rohypnol to Marisol Maris?"
"Is that the chick's name? No, I never slipped her nothing. Not what you just said, and not whatshe says I slipped her."
"In fact you never saw her before."
"Never." He changed expressions, trying for sincere. "What happened to her's horrible, but I had nothin' to do with it. You got the wrong guy."
There was a silence, and Sigrid waited a beat before picking up her cue. "Oh, William," she said, exasperated. "You're so full of shit it's coming out your pores."
He stared.
"I've seen you operate," she said. "You're quite the stud, showing off your muscles and chatting up the ladies. You buy them one drink and the next thing I know they're out the door with you. I figured you had a hell of a line, or maybe you were oozing some kind of sex appeal that I couldn't see. I noticed that some of them looked a little woozy on the way out, but I just assumed lust was interfering with their motor skills. It never occurred to me that you were feeding them Roofies."
"This is crazy," he said.
"I'll say it is." To me she said, "He hit on me a few nights ago. I brushed him off, or it would have been my turn to wake up sleeping in the wet spot with my Diamonique earrings nowhere to be found. You came in the night before last, William. Remember? You tried to pick up two girls at once, and I think maybe they switched drinks on you, because you got a fit of the blind staggers and barely made it out the door."
You could see him processing the information. So that's what happened-the bitches had switched drinks with him, and next thing he knew he was coming to in an alley, covered with his own vomit, with his cash and cards gone and an aching groin that only bothered him on days ending in aY.
And there were people in the room he might have seen before. The brunette, for instance, dressed for success, her hair up. He'd pulled her out of someplace, and it could have been Parsifal's. And even I looked vaguely familiar, like maybe we hung out in some of the same bars. But this chick going on about her necklace and the pictures her cousin stole, he knew damn well he never saw her before in his life.
But I was just guessing. I couldn't really read his mind. For all I knew, he was thinking about super-setting bent-over rows with reverse-grip chins, and what that might do for his lats.
"You went home with her necklace," I said, "not to mention the warm glow that comes from an evening spent doing the Lord's work. And when you woke up you thought about the story she'd told, about a book full of photos of men who'd bought new faces in an effort to keep the past from catching up with them. You figured that kind of information ought to be worth something to the right people, and so you picked up the phone and called your Uncle Mike."
His jaw dropped, but I didn't care if it hit the floor and went through to the basement. I was through with him for now, and turned to Michael Quattrone, who'd been following the proceedings with interest. "Your nephew called you," I said, "and you saw an opportunity. You put the word out, and somebody picked up something about two people named Rogovin in an apartment at Third Avenue and 34th Street."
I'm not sure what my next sentence would have been, but Quattrone stopped me there by raising one well-manicured hand six inches into the air. "You put on a very good show," he said judiciously. "It's instructive and entertaining at the same time."
"Thank you."
"But you've got one thing wrong. My nephew never mentioned anything about Mapes and his photographs."
"You're saying you were unaware of them?"
"I was aware of them," he said. "There's no end of things of which the observant man becomes aware. But I never heard a word on the subject from my nephew." He looked over at Johnson, with something a few degrees cooler than avuncular affection. "My nephew. The son of my younger sister and the man she picked out all by herself and married."
"He didn't call you?"
"I guess he didn't need anything," Quattrone said. "He only calls when he needs something. Money, a lawyer. Something along those lines."
"Uncle Mike-"
"Shut up, Billy." To me he said, "You may have heard of a man named John Mullane."
"The name's familiar."
"He's also known as Whitey Mullane. You watchAmerica's Most Wanted?"
Religiously, hoping I won't see myself on it. " Jersey City," I said. "Or was it Newark? He ran rackets there for years, and at the same time he was working with the FBI. And now he's running away from a murder indictment-"
"Four counts, plus other charges."
"-and they update his profile every few months, and John Walsh says how we need to catch this coward, and they never do."
"And they won't," Quattrone said, "as long as they go on looking for the face he doesn't have anymore, thanks to our friend here." A nod to Mapes. "The man's an idiot, but he does good work. Whitey Mullane was like a father to me, I've known him since I was an altar boy, and I have to tell you, if I hadn't seen the Before picture I wouldn't have known the After picture was him."