Or he stays pat, right under your nose, and you still can’t find him.
I knew I couldn’t expect any help from the cops. Cops stick together, and I’d be an outcast after news of my snit with Whiteside made its way through the department.
But two days after Denise’s death I had walked along Ralston’s block, knocked on every door, and talked to everyone I saw. In my own police career I had sometimes found that two-day wait productive. It gives talk time to ripple through the neighborhood; it can smoke out a reluctant witness and bring new facts to light. I know the theory of the trail gone cold and most of the time it’s true. But more than once I had found something forty-eight hours later, just by walking the same walk and talking to the same people. In the third house across and down from Ralston’s, I found a kid, about twelve years old, who had seen a man come out of the house just before dark. He didn’t remember much but he was sure of two things: the man was in a hurry and the man was white.
On Saturday night, after brooding about it for another two days, I called Whiteside and left the kid’s name and address on an answering machine.
Thus had the weekend passed. On Monday I had this flight to Baltimore, bought and paid for, so this was what I did.
I walked for a while, found a little park and settled on a bench, where I recovered an hour of sleep. At ten o’clock I walked back to Treadwell’s, timing my arrival well after they’d be open and thus, I hoped, I’d be inconspicuous. But the closed sign was still out and the place was still dark. I cursed Treadwell’s work ethic and waited some more.
Eventually, from the window of another cafe near the corner, I saw a young woman turn briskly into the block. She was the living, breathing manifestation of that telephone voice, a bleached blonde in her late twenties with skintight leather pants and a scandalously thin T-shirt glorifying the local ball club in scarlet letters. Her unhal-tered breasts held the Orioles scoreless at both ends, bouncing freely as she walked by.
I had more coffee and gave her time to open the store and get her act, whatever that might be, together; then I moseyed up the street and went into the store.
“Hey, hon,” she said. “You need some help?”
I faced her breasts and fought back the urge to say,
I went upstairs and up yet another flight, moving from one dark row to another, ostensibly browsing but in fact getting the lay of the land. Sporadic lightbulbs hung in each row but most of the light came from the enormous windows that faced one another on each floor from opposite sides of the building. The floors creaked as I walked on them. The place had a musty, dusty smell to it from top to bottom.
Slowly I worked my way back downstairs and came out into the room where Blondie was holding the fort. I stayed behind the stacks, watching her through the bookshelves as she went about her work. This was mostly sand-sifting, marking the sale books and putting them out, putting others aside for the Man to see if and when he decided to come in. There was no business as yet: no customers, no telephone calls, no people lined up to sell their treasures. But it was Tuesday morning and that could be dead in any bookstore in any city. I walked along behind the shelves, mainly to keep my feet moving and my blood pumping. I tried to stay away from the creaking boards: if the lady had forgotten me, I wanted to keep it that way.
A few customers finally came in. Two books bought, one sold. Always more coming in than going out, and again, that was the way of the trade, the nature of things.
Dean arrived sometime before noon.
He was a big man, hulking and bearlike behind his thick red beard, impossible to read at first glance: the kind of guy who could be palsy, intimidating, or anything in between. Something had been missing from the descriptions I had collected of Dean Treadwell, and I had also missed it in his voice on the phone. On second glance I made a guess at it: Dean was an actor, a chameleon who never showed anyone his real nature.
He said nothing by way of greeting to the blonde and she went on pushing books around behind the counter as if he wasn’t there. He browsed his own shelves, looking critically at the dusty rows of books that stretched away toward the back of the room. Abruptly he said, “You ever think of straightenin‘ this fuckin’ place up, Paula? Maybe we’d sell a book once in a while if you did.”
“So where’m I s’posed to start?”
“Throw all this shit out in the street would be a good place.”
He came behind the counter and looked at the one receipt, then at the books she had bought. “
“I thought it might appeal to ya,” she said, smiling brightly.
He thumbed through the book, pausing over what seemed to be a triple-paneled foldout illustration. “How damn