“What are you trying to tell me, you sick son of a bitch?”
“The police got it wrong. The police, the papers, everyone. I didn’t kill your wife. But I think you know that, don’t you? You and Han van Meegeren have something in common.” Another pause. Tolan could almost feel the rage transmitted through the line. “And when I get you alone,” the caller finally said, “you’ll find out what true artistry is.”
Then the line clicked.
14
If Solomon had a flaw — and he’d be the first to admit he had more than a few — it was his inability to let something go.
All through breakfast he sat across from a grizzled old Vietnam vet named Red, only half listening to the old fool, his mind rolling back over the morning’s events.
“So there I am,” Red was saying, “sitting in the middle of a bathhouse in Patpong, this sexy thing standing buck naked in front of me, soaping herself up for one of them special Thai massages?”
“Uh-huh,” Solomon murmured.
“And get this: I’m just getting my clothes off, Mr. Johnson standing at full attention, and this cute little Betty frowns, shakes her head, says, ‘No go. Too big.’ You believe that? Like riding my dick is the most heinous crime anybody ever asked her to contemplate.”
This, of course, was only an approximation of what Red had really said, a story Solomon had heard at least a dozen times since he met the man, Red usually half in the bag when he told it. Solomon wasn’t sure if Red was expecting some kind of response, but he just nodded and threw him another “uh-huh” as if he was actually listening.
What he was really doing was thinking about Myra. Beginning to have doubts about what he’d seen, thinking he may have let sixty-eight years’ worth of backwater superstition cloud his judgment. After all, the lighting in that ambulance wasn’t all that great, right? Maybe he’d been mistaken and it was Myra after all. His Myra. All that dirt and blood on her face. Maybe he’d been done in by a trick of the eyes.
He sure hoped so.
“Tell me something,” he said, interrupting his table mate’s running monologue.
Red didn’t seem to mind. He’d been talking with his mouth full and took a quick swallow. “Yeah?”
“Somebody goes Section Eight on the street, gets picked up by the cops, where do they take ’em?”
Red frowned, took another bite. “How long you lived here, you don’t know that?”
“I wouldn’t be askin’ if I did.”
Solomon had seen the cops grab quite a few crazies off the street, had heard the usual bullshit about where they might be headed, but didn’t really pay much attention. Wasn’t his business.
Red looked at him a moment as if trying to decide if he was for real. Then he said, “You got two choices; the psych ward at County or, if they’re full up, they ship you up top the hill.”
“Up top what hill?”
“Pepper Mountain, my man. Headcase Hotel. Up on the mesa? Half the squatters down at the riverbed have checked in at one time or another. It’s like a goddamn five-star compared to County.”
Headcase Hotel.
Solomon remembered hearing the name, something about folks trying to get themselves locked up there on purpose, just so they could get a hot bath and a decent meal. But he’d never been curious enough to fill in the blanks. Had never known it was located up on Pepper Mountain Mesa, just above Baycliff, a little oceanside community about five miles northwest of the city. All he knew about the area was that a bunch of rich folks had beach houses there.
He wondered if you could see those houses from atop the mesa, and found himself smiling at the thought of all those loonies looking down on Bayside Drive. It undoubtedly made a few of the blue bloods squirm.
He wondered, too, about Myra. Wondered which one of the nut houses they took her to. He was convinced now that he’d overreacted this morning when he shoulda kept his cool. He’d been nervous was all, that big cop and people in their pj’s staring at him as he climbed into the back of that ambulance. Maybe he shoulda just followed Clarence’s lead and stayed the hell away from it.
Too late now.
Drums or no drums, he knew he had to take action. Either to help a friend, or — if his old eyes hadn’t been seeing things after all — to warn the poor sonofabitch who got in her way.
Only problem was, where had they taken her? County or HH? It was a coin toss. And there were no guarantees he’d be able to track her down even if he knew.
But in his time on this planet, one thing Solomon had learned — and learned the hard way — was that you can’t win the game if you don’t bother to roll the bones. And he was just superstitious enough to think that, one way or another, The Rhythm would set him on the right path.
So all through the rest of breakfast he formulated a plan. Not much of one, but he didn’t have all that much to work with.
Looking at the glass of watery orange juice in front of him, he gulped it down, then got up to ask for another. They were pretty generous with the liquid around here and he figured he’d better start loading up the ammunition.
Forty minutes later, Solomon St. Fort took a long arcing piss onto the hood of an Ocean City Police cruiser, shouting, “Make it stop, Mama! Please make it stop!” and hoped that after they finished beating on him, they’d take him exactly where he needed to go.
15
Blackburn knew he was about to lose his case. Had known it the moment he saw that winking smiley-face emoticon burned into Janovic’s lower lip. The return of Vincent Van Gogh was not the kind of thing the department left to a single Special Victims investigator. Or a squad room full of them, for that matter.
The return of Vincent Van Gogh required the reassembly of the task force, and once that happened — which was bound to be any moment now — Blackburn would be lucky if he was asked to go for coffee.
He had half-heartedly tried to convince Mats to keep the revelation under wraps for a while. But Mats wasn’t about to commit career suicide for Blackburn. Why should he? Mats was a company man, and Blackburn was fairly certain he’d already made the call, igniting a chain reaction that had quickly reached the residents of the fourth floor. It was only a matter of time before Blackburn got the official word.
Down here on Earth, the Special Victims squad room was nearly as quiet as the morgue.
Half the squad was either out on calls or late coming in, and Jenny, the support clerk, had been on maternity leave for at least a month. Blackburn figured they’d get around to replacing her about the time they found him a new partner.
A bulging black plastic bag was waiting for him on his desk top. He eyed it dubiously, then turned to Fred De Mello, who sat slumped at a nearby desk, staring at a computer screen, looking in dire need of either a cup of coffee or colonic hydrotherapy. Blackburn wasn’t sure which.
De Mello was a twenty-year veteran who had long ago decided he’d chosen the wrong career path. His skills in the field, even on a good day, were just a hair above lack-luster. But he could work the computer databases and phone like nobody Blackburn had ever seen. He was the go-to guy when it came to working up a victim profile. Which was why Blackburn had dragged him out of bed and tossed him the baton on Janovic.
Blackburn gestured to the bag. “Any idea where this came from?”
De Mello glanced forlornly toward a corner of the squad room, where a fresh pot of coffee was brewing. “Paramedic brought it in. Said he found it on the floor of his rig.”
“And I should care why?”
“He thought some old derelict might’ve dropped it while you were all wrestling around with your Jane Doe.” De Mello paused, assessing Blackburn with what passed for a wry smile. “Didn’t know you were into group gropes.”