He nodded at the attendant, who went to a separate drawer. He pulled out a cardboard box. "Here."
I looked inside. Clothes.
"Plus this," said the detective, and handed me a clear Ziploc bag. "Wallet and watch, book of soggy matches."
I looked at the clear bag. The matchbook was from the steakhouse, the watch ruined by seawater. Then the clothes. "These things kind of smell," I said.
"Yes, they do. That's why we like to get rid of them."
I remembered the last piece of sushi on the plate in front of Jay Rainey. "By the way, what did he actually die of?"
The detective handed me his clipboard, flipped over two pages, and stuck a finger at a long paragraph:
Decedent's lungs and stomach were filled with seawater but autopsy and further sectioning revealed severe and progressed disease of the lungs and airways. Diffuse, symmetrical alveolar disease noted. Indications of pulmonary collapse and consolidation. Probable bronchiectasis, although these tissue slides were not prepared. Obliterative or constrictive bronchiolitis noted, with characteristic plugs of organizing fibrous tissue accompanying similar changes in the alveoli. No indication of bronchial carcinoma. Reduced lung distensibility noted by digital examination. Airway was scarred, indicating multiple instances of mechanical ventilation. Indications of chronic arterial hypoxemia. Secondary breathing muscles in chest showed unusual compensatory development. Pedal discoloration was also noted, as is typical. Cause of death: asphyxiation secondary to chronic, degenerative airway disorder with diffuse pulmonary alveolitis or fibrosis of unknown etiology.
I handed back the clipboard.
"That means he couldn't breathe," said the detective.
I nodded.
"You'll call the funeral home?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Free to go then."
Free to go, perhaps, but not free. Not at all. I carried the box to the pocket park a block away and found a bench. I put the bag with the wallet and watch and matchbook in my coat, then examined the clothes in the sunlight. They looked familiar, and included the same tie Jay had been wearing the night I'd last seen him in the Havana Room. They had been thrown in a dryer and were stiff yet unwashed. Three homeless men watched me from across the park. First the shoes, size 12, larger than mine. These I set on the bench. Then the socks. I shot my hand into each one. Empty. I rolled them up as my mother had taught me when I was a boy and put them into one of the shoes. Next came the pants. They'd been scissored off of him and were useless. I slipped my fingers into every pocket. Nothing. These I set on the other side of me. Then the underwear. These had also been cut off. I noted the waist size, 38. Un-stained, almost new. Then the shirt, also cut off. I checked the size. A 48 long, Brooks Brothers. Nothing in the breast pocket. I stood up and dropped the slit underwear, pants, and shirt into the municipal garbage can and returned to my bench.
The tie I kept. It was silk and quite nice and could be cleaned. I tucked it into my coat. Next came the jacket. It was discolored by salt and other liquids but intact. I slipped two fingers into the front breast pocket. The HAVANA ROOM napkin that Allison had handed him was still there, still folded into a tight square. I slipped it into my pocket. Next I checked the inside breast pocket and the side pockets. Nothing. I folded the jacket and set it by the shoes. Last was the heavy overcoat, a beauty. The label read Brentridge of London. I checked the side pockets. Nothing. I checked the inside breast pocket. Nothing.
"Hey," I called to the homeless guys. Then I pointed at the pile of clothes. "You want these?"
One of the men stood up, shambled over, poked disinterestedly at the pile, then picked up the whole bundle and shuffled away.
Now I drew the HAVANA ROOM napkin from my pocket, daring myself to unfold it. The marks on it, made in red lipstick, had nearly been bleached by the cold Atlantic. Nonetheless, unlike before, I could examine what had been drawn there. It was a small map, with the three X's and the box marked KROWLA.
Yes, a simple map. Of a small section of Jay Rainey's family farm, now owned by Marceno and his Chilean wine company. The scale was a little off, but the three X's probably corresponded to the three ancient trees next to the driveway with the rectangle indicating that something might be found directly off from the third tree: KROWLA, in Allison's block letters.
I called Marceno that afternoon.
"This is William Wy-eth?"
"It's me. I have something for you," I said. "What you wanted."
"You are perhaps hoping to resolve the lawsuit, Mr. Wy-eth?"
"Why didn't you come to the restaurant that day?" I asked. "After I called you?"
"Simple."
"Simple?"
"I called Martha Hallock to see if you were telling the truth, that Poppy was her nephew."
"And?"
"She said he'd told her he was driving to Florida."
"But what about the nephew part?"
"She said in these old farm communities everybody's related to everybody else somehow. She also said he was an unreliable character, drank too much."
"Ah." This sounded like a fat lie. But I didn't have enough leverage on him to force out the truth, whatever it was.
"What is it you want?" Marceno said, his voice measured but not without threat in it.
"I have the information you wanted."
"I see. Why don't you send it to me?"
"No, I want to give it to you in person. I want you to have it. You caused enough grief and suffering that I really think you should have it."
"I will meet you tomorrow."
"You will meet me on Saturday morning and you and I will drive out to the old farm and then and only then will I give you the information," I told him. "Got that?"
He did. His chauffeured car glided up in front of my building at eight the next Saturday morning. The sun was out, spring not far away. The ride was smooth, if not particularly fast. The expressway is a nightmare, day and night. Weekends everybody is shopping. From time to time Marceno had a brief conversation on his phone in Spanish.
As we neared the old farm, Marceno said, "I am sorry for all of this trouble, Mr. Wy-eth."
I nodded.
"But you see, I had to press the issue, as you say."
"I understand that you panicked, yes."
"That depends on what we find." He consulted the palms of his hands. "Maybe my fears were well founded."
We reached the farm. The old barns had been demolished, and all that remained was a smoking pile of lumber.
"That will be where the winery goes," said Marceno, pointing across the field. "You are just in time. We decided to begin, we had to take a chance."
Across the fields, a dozen workers had just started to erect the parallel rows of grape trellises. The car traveled over a new gravel road. I noticed what looked to be a profusion of daffodils pushing through the earth at the edge of the field. When we reached the place where the barn had stood, we counted the three trees specified on the napkin. Rather, we counted two stumps and one old box elder tree that had been trimmed to a limbless trunk reaching into the sky like an immense bony finger, swollen at the joints. It was due to come down that day. Marceno told his driver to stop and we got out. The field was soft- spongy and wet, sucking at our shoes.
We walked to the tree. Marceno studied the napkin, then paced ten steps east toward the Atlantic Ocean and stuck a shovel in the earth. This, I realized, was a straight shot to the place where the bulldozer and Herschel atop it had gone over the sea cliff. Holding the napkin in his hand a different way, Marceno paced out from the tree again, arriving at more or less the same spot. "There." He dug with a shovel and a foot down revealed a thatch of browned grass. "This whole section was regraded," Marceno said. "A huge amount of topsoil was brought in." He pointed at the rotting grass. "That was the original elevation a few weeks ago." But he uttered this softly, as if not yet committed to the act that awaited him.