24
I pulled out of Rachel’s driveway at 9:20 the next morning, wondering how I was going to get through the next sixty hours without seeing her. That was part of the deal: to give each other time and space, we weren’t going to meet again until dinner Sunday night. She wanted it that way, not me. She was the one who needed time to recover. I understood and went along without question.
Neither of us mentioned again my searching for Conrad’s killer. I was in a fog as I pulled out of her neighborhood onto Hillsboro Road, drove toward town a couple of blocks, then got on the entrance ramp for I- 440.
I wasn’t even sure where I was going. Back to my apartment first, I supposed, for a shower and a change of clothes. Then I had to figure out what was next. Albert Zitin, maybe. If I could track him down, check out his story against Jane Collingswood’s, then maybe I’d have some idea if my suspicions were on target.
Mrs. Hawkins was in her front yard weeding a flower bed when I coasted into the driveway. She was a sweet old lady, a tad on the dumpy side, with those rhinestone teardrop glasses that were popular thirty-five or forty years ago. She reminded me in a way of my grandmother, except that my grandmother had exceptional hearing until she died. Mrs. Hawkins, even with her hearing aids, was nearly as deaf as a box of rocks.
After parking the car, I walked to the front yard just to be polite. “Hello, Mrs. Hawkins,” I yelled about five feet away from her.
She looked up from her weeding. She was wearing a faded pair of stretch denims, a checked workshirt, and an old pair of work gloves.
“Good morning, Harry,” she said, her voice high and loud. “I didn’t hear you leave this morning.”
“You wouldn’t hear me leave if I’d shot my way out of the house,” I said in a normal voice.
“What was that?”
“I said I left
“Hot case, I suppose. It’s so exciting having a private detective as a tenant.”
“I’m flattered, Mrs. Hawkins. Listen, I’ve got to get back to my office. I just came by to grab a quick shower.”
“Fine, Harry. By the way, do you think you could see to the lawn this weekend?”
“Just freaking great,” I muttered under my breath, then raising my voice back to noise pollution levels: “Sure, Mrs. Hawkins. I’ll take care of it this weekend.”
“Thank you. You’re such a
I laughed to myself. If Mrs. Hawkins knew how I spent last evening, she’d probably evict me.
It took one last call posing as Dr. Evans of Neurosurgery for me to learn that Albert Zitin lived a block or two off West End. He rented one side of a duplex near St. Thomas Hospital. He was off rotation until ten o’clock tonight. I figured he’d be at home mustering his reserves.
The brick house sat on a corner of a four-way stop intersection. The neighborhood was quiet, middle-class, a mix of rental property and owner occupied. A pair of fir trees maybe twenty feet high and badly in need of a trim grew on either side of the concrete front porch, nearly blocking the front door from view. I parked the Ford in front and killed the ignition. The engine chugged for a few seconds, then backfired and let loose a puff of smoke before finally sighing itself into silence.
I shook my head, both embarrassed and disgusted. I walked up the long stretch of concrete to the front door. There was a picture window behind the overgrown shrubbery with no curtains. I peeked through a branch and saw Albert Zitin lying on the couch in a pair of jeans, no shirt, no shoes. A book was propped on his chest, but it was lying facedown where it had settled when he dropped off to sleep.
I folded a branch of the fir out of the way and rapped on the glass storm door. There was no sound for perhaps thirty seconds, so I made a fist, knuckles out, and pounded on the glass a little harder. The echo reverberated in the space between the storm door and the front door.
This time, I heard a shuffling and the thud of a book falling on the floor. A sleepy voice yelled, “Hold on a minute.” There was a fumbling with the lock, then a sleep-logged face surrounded by a mop of thinning, curly hair appeared at the door.
“Sorry to wake you up,” I said.
“Oh, hell. It’s you.”
I smiled at him, trying friendly first to see how it worked.
“Jane said you’d probably find me.”
“Then you’ve been expecting me. Mind if I come in?”
“Yes, I mind. I mind very much. But I’m afraid if I don’t let you, I’m never going to be rid of you.”
“Yeah,” I said, drawing it out a little, “that’s probably right.”
He fumbled with the latch on the door, then pushed it open.
Albert Zitin’s house was more my style; under-socialized bachelors who live alone for extended periods share certain similarities. Plainness of surroundings, for example. Albert had nothing on his walls, no rugs on the scuffed hardwood floors. His couch was an expensive one, but it clearly had been bought to sit by itself in a living room as the sole piece of furniture.
“At least let me make a cup of coffee first. You want one?”
“Sure, if you got it.”
He led the way to the kitchen, whose cabinets doubtless held an unmatched set of dishes missing odd and random pieces. His refrigerator, I guessed, would have a scattered collection of condiment jars and a carton of milk a week past the expiration date.
“I think this is still drinkable,” he speculated, opening the refrigerator door and sniffing cautiously at the lid of a milk carton. “At least for coffee.”
Can I call ’em or what?
Albeit boiled water and pulled two mismatched mugs from a cabinet above the stove. He spooned instant coffee into each, then poured in boiling water and handed me a cup. The instant coffee clumped up like chunks of brown mud floating in the water. I took the carton when he handed it to me and poured in a dollop of milk, which immediately clotted into rancid-looking lumps.
I stirred hard, hoping to make something drinkable out of it. Finally, the liquid inside resembled coffee, except for the truly sour lumps of milk that refused to dissolve no matter what. Think of it as yogurt, I told myself.
“Sugar?”
I took the lid off the sugar bowl; inside, clumps of brown mixed in with the white, the result of spooning sugar out with a wet coffee spoon. Yeah, Albert and I could have been roommates.
He sipped the coffee as if it were actually something fit for human consumption. I lifted the cup to my lips and took a quick swallow, surprised that it wasn’t any worse than I feared.
“So what do you want?” he asked, heading back into the living room. “Here, have a seat.”
I sat on the far end of the couch and set my coffee cup on an upturned fruit crate that served as an end table. “Just wanted to talk to you.”
“Jane says you think I killed Fletcher, and that she was in on it.”
“I don’t know if that’s what I think or not. It could be that way. On the other hand, there were a lot of people who wanted to see Conrad Fletcher dead.”
“You got that right, He was one slimy son of a bitch.”
“And I thought doctors never spoke ill of each other.”
“That’s one rule I’ll break in his case,” Zitin said, pulling his legs up on the couch under him. He sat cross- legged, the beginnings of a paunch settling over his belt. He was pale, pasty, not terribly attractive to women, I would think. But he was obviously intelligent and dedicated, as well as determined.
“Tell me how you came to meet him. How’d you wind up here?”
“Same as everybody else, I guess. I’m from up north, took my medical training at Albert Einstein. Came
