Mrs Baylor, carrying a brown grocery bag. Nick looked up blankly.
“I thought she’d be someone you’d want. Why send her back, if you don’t mind my asking? Was something wrong?”
“You mean she’s gone?” First Brown, now Irina.
Well, don’t you know?“
Nick shook his head, confused.
“Oh. Of course, she did say it was temporary, but she seemed to like it here.”
“When did she leave?”
“Yesterday. Said she found something better. I don’t know what she means by better. There’s nothing wrong with the apartment. It’s self-contained. I thought you people sent her home.”
“No, nothing like that. Did she leave an address? They’re supposed to.”
“No. Of course, they come and go, the girls. But one month? No more for me, I can tell you, no more foreigners. Not that she wasn’t nice.”
“She was only here a month?” Could the list have been that recent? But his father must have had it earlier, when he had first planned to leave.
“One month. Hardly worth the time it takes to clean the place. Flighty.” Mrs Baylor’s arm shot up in the air, waving. “There’s Barbara.”
Nick looked toward the house, where a girl on the stoop was waving back. His eyes stopped, and he felt a tingling along his scalp. Not the Russian, the other girl. She started down the street.
“Thanks, Mrs Baylor. Sorry for your trouble. She’ll probably check in with us this week, when she’s settled. If she does send an address, let us know, okay? Just in case.” He turned on the ignition. “By the way, how did she find you? She give you references?”
“Well, I never thought to ask. Barbara told her about it. They met at work, I guess. Not that I blame Barbara. She was good as gold about those records.”
By the time Nick was able to pull away, the girl had turned the corner into the next block, shoulder bag swinging. A miniskirt, short heels, blond like Molly. Reliable Barbara, who’d met Irina at work. But she was heading downtown, away from the embassy.
Nick followed slowly, but even at this pace the car was bound to overtake her. She passed a bus stop, clearly intending to walk. He went through the light into the next block, keeping her in his rearview mirror. A car pulling away from the curb. He slammed on the brakes and backed into the spot, adjusting the parking angle until she went by. When he started down the sidewalk he kept his eyes on her hair, a tracking beam, so that everything around her blurred out of focus.
She was walking quickly, not stopping to look at windows, heading toward Farragut Square. She took a diagonal path across the park, unaware of Nick in the crowd. Downtown. The Bureau wasn’t far away. Then she went into a coffee shop, forcing Nick to stop at the corner, exposed. He fed some coins into a newspaper vending machine and took out a Post. A peace rally. District police requesting additional crowd-control units. People streamed by, carrying briefcases. What if she was just a boarder after all? But the address had been there, on the list.
When she came out, sipping from a Styrofoam cup, Nick turned away and almost lost her. Then, in front of a DON’T WALK sign, the blond hair came into view again. She crossed the street and disappeared through a door: EMPLOYEES ONLY. Nick looked around, then at the block-long row of plate-glass windows, trying to orient himself. It was only when he stepped back to the curb, taking the whole building in, that he finally recognized it, as familiar to him as an old dream. Garfinkel’s. Still. His father had said the reports never changed, the same pattern. You could tell just by the prose. One of them will lead me to him.
Nick went through the door. Don’t show yourself. But how else could he be sure? He walked past aisles of cosmetics and women’s handbags. She could be anybody. But when he reached the men’s department, there she was, just arrived behind the counter, talking to another clerk as she arranged the tie display, the shelves behind her lined with row after row of white shirts.
“We have to figure out a way to get in there,” Nick said later, excited. “I can’t spend all day trying on suits.”
They were in the lobby bar at the Madison, the soft spring light still flooding into the windows from 16th Street, not yet evening. Molly, unexpectedly subdued, picked out a cashew from the bowl of nuts.
“You want me to be her,” she said, not looking up.
“No, he probably knows her by sight. But if you were there. They’re always looking for extra help. You could talk your way in. Anyway, it’s worth a try.”
“No, I meant her. Rosemary. You want me to be her.”
Nick said nothing, surprised at her mood.
“Do I have to?”
“Molly, we’re so close.”
She nodded and looked out the window. In the corner, a man in black tie was playing the piano. Cocktail hour. These Foolish Things‘, one of the songs his mother must have danced to.
“It’s funny,” she said. “All my life, my mother kept telling me I was like her. Political. That’s what she said when I wanted to go to Kennedy’s funeral. A whole bus went down from school. You don’t want to get mixed up in anything, not like her. God. Every time I brought someone home. You’ll turn out boy-crazy, just like-” She broke off. “But I never thought I was. I didn’t even know her. That was just my mother. Half the time I didn’t know what she was talking about. Now it turns out maybe she was right. I am like her. I know just how she felt.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she did it for him, didn’t she? Mr Right. Anything, right up to the end. New dress. Order up a bottle-I’ll bet it was the kind he liked. Everything was going to be all right.”
“Everything is going to be all right.”
A weak smile, ignoring him. “And now I’m going to be her, do everything she did. Even sell the shirts.”
“Molly, if it bothers you, don’t do it. We’ll figure out something else.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll do it.” She paused. “I am like her. I’ll do it for you.”
“No. Do it for her.”
She sighed. “She’s dead, Nick.” She turned from the window. “I’ll do it for you. So you’ll be finished with it.”
“We’re so close,” he said again. “What do you want to do, walk away from it? I need to do this for him.”
Another wry smile, looking down at the nuts.
“What?” Nick said, annoyed.
“Not for him,” she said. “Don’t you know that?” She raised her hand, stopping his response. “It’s okay. I want you to bury him. But how do you end it, Nick? What are you going to do if this works, if you do get Silver? Have you thought about it?”
Nick looked down, embarrassed because he hadn’t. It had seemed enough to know, to see a face. “This one we turn in,” he said finally.
“But not the others.”
“He’s a murderer.”
“Maybe they are too.”
“And maybe they just sell shirts. Would you have turned Rosemary in?”
She shrugged, shying away. “I guess not. I don’t know.”
“Molly, what’s wrong?” he said, touching her arm. “What are you so worried about?”
“You’re just so determined.”
“We’re going to get him.”
“Then what? Push him over a balcony? Nick, let’s just give the whole thing to the FBI now. Let them do it.”
Nick took a drink, calming himself, so that when he spoke his voice was steady and reasonable. “Molly, for all we know it is the FBI.”
“You just want to do it yourself.”
“Yes,” he said, still calm. “I want to do it myself. I want to see his face.” A beat. “Then it’ll be over.”
