list was like the Book of the Dead, and not a Rosetta stone in sight.
I'm not in runaways anymore, Jean had said. No, just in missing persons. For that's what the biggest case of his life was turning out to be. A missing persons case. For there wasn't anyone on the list who wasn't missing- and come to think of it, everything else was too. For instance: a client. No one had come forward to claim Jean as their own. Whoever Jean was working for either didn't know he was dead, or didn't much care. Okay, maybe they didn't know-it hadn't been long. Maybe soon enough they'd come forward to offer their condolences- or at the very least, to ask for their money back. And yet, William didn't think so. There was, as Santini used to say, only because his favorite tough-guy actors in the movies used to say it, something fishy here. It had nothing to do with proximity to the water.
It had to do with a file that Jean had passed on like you pass on an heirloom in a bankrupt estate-one step before the tax collectors arrive. And it had to do with a crisscrossed map that was like one blind alley, and someone who came walking out of it with his eyes open. Rejuvenated, Weeks said.
Okay.
You find what you look for, Jean used to say. So be sure you look for the right thing. Which isn't what he said, but is what he meant.
Okay. I'm looking.
But whether it was his failing eyesight, or just his general failing, he saw only questions. And like a test he hadn't studied for-Missing Persons 101, say-the questions mocked him, absolutely stuck their tongues out at him. And not a crib sheet around.
And yet it couldn't have been more than a few minutes later when he remembered the number with no response; he'd tried four numbers in New York where the same name had a different address. Two had been home- three, including Alma Ross-but one hadn't.
He dug into his wallet looking for the right slip of paper, hoping he hadn't thrown it out or left it home or simply lost it.
There-stuck between two wrinkled fives. Mr. Alfred Koppleman: 791-8350. There.
He picked up the phone and dialed.
Good things come to those who wait: page G of Jean's little black book.
He'd finished dialing Mr. Koppleman's number, but it was a woman who picked up the phone. So when he asked her if an Alfred Koppleman, lately of 1620 Fuller Drive, resided there, he fully expected her to say no.
But she didn't.
Instead she said, 'Not anymore. He used to,' she added, 'but not anymore.'
And did she know perhaps where Mr. Koppleman did reside now?
'Sure,' she said. 'He's in a home.'
A home? 'That's right. An old age home.' And did she know where this old age home was? 'Yes,' she said. She did. Then she put down the phone for half a minute or so, came back on the line, and told him. 'Thank you,' William said. 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' Thanking her, thanking Alfred, thanking a suddenly benevolent universe. 'Sure,' she said. 'But who is this-? ' But William had already hung up to dial his old friends at Miami Directory Assistance.
FIFTEEN
Golden Meadows. That's what it was called. And true to everything else in misnomerville these days-thinking, for example, of Magnolia Drive and Peachtree Lane, there wasn't a meadow in sight. Instead, there were liquor stores sealed with black metal bars as if waiting to be carted away to another location; there were grocery stores with taped-up windows; a completely gutted Dunkin' Donuts; and what appeared to be half a 7-Eleven-more like a 3-Five then. The most dignified-looking building in Golden Meadows land was a pawnshop whose front window was filled floor to ceiling with seven different kinds of crap.
And excepting for the yellowed strips of paint that were peeling off its walls in bunches, there was nothing golden about Golden Meadows either. It looked, then, just like an old age home should look-like a place to wither and die, in the kind of neighborhood where death of any kind wouldn't even slow traffic.
William arrived there at twelve sharp. The first thing he noticed was the look. Yes, absolutely; when he walked through the door-the very second he walked through the door-he was met by the look. What kind of look was it? This kind. The kind of look used car salesmen give to rubes. Think of it this way. He was a visitor, sure, but to them he was something else. Another customer, a future resident. Why, they probably had a nicely soiled cot all ready and waiting for him.
It was over ninety outside, and not all that much better inside, but he shivered as if doused in ice water.
He walked over to the front desk where folded wheelchairs sat like shopping carts all in a row. A woman was waiting there, the woman who'd stared at him with predatory sweetness, and for just a moment William was rendered speechless. Words were told to report front and center, but they insisted on playing hide-and-seek with him. Okay, he was scared.
Once everyone's greatest fear was to die alone, uncared for, with no one there to hold your hand. But things had changed. Sure they had. Now there was something worse than dying alone, much worse. Dying here. In a place like this. Golden Meadows.
There were a whole bunch of things they talked about back home in the Astoria boarding house. The generally shitty state of the city, the generally shitty state of the Mets, the truly crappy state of their prostates. Among other things. But there were some things they never talked about. Things like old age homes. Things like that. The word had taken on the taboo aura of cancer; if you spoke it, it might happen to you. Old age homes were like concentration camps-they knew they were there, sure, but no one admitted it. And now, standing there in the dimly lit lobby filled with wheelchairs, black orderlies, and two residents who'd drifted in with walkers and were mumbling, both of them, at the floor, William felt the panic, the sheer dread, of someone who's been shown his final resting place. 'Yes?' the woman said to him, in a voice cool as ice. 'What can we do for you?' 'I called,' William said, his voice suddenly back, and with it, his mission, piss-poor as it was. 'I called about Mr. Koppleman. Alfred Koppleman. I'm here to say hi.' 'Oh, yes. I'm sure our Mr. Koppleman will be very happy to have a visitor.' William was sure their Mr. Koppleman would too; who wouldn't? She picked up a phone. 'Trudy… we have a visitor here for Mr. Koppleman.' She put the phone down softly as if afraid of scaring someone, then said, 'There's a visiting room through the swinging doors. Why don't you make yourself comfortable and we'll send Mr. Koppleman out to you. Oh,' she said just as William turned away, 'have you bought anything for Mr. Koppleman?' 'Bought? No,' William said, 'I haven't. Why?' 'We like to see everything our visitors bring here.' 'Why's that?' 'There's a good reason for it, Mr…?' 'Jones.' 'There's a good reason for it, Mr. Jones. Some people bring boxes of cookies or candy, and they want it to go to the person they brought it for.'
'Doesn't it?'
'Perhaps you've never been to a retirement home before,' she said, a little too sweetly. 'Our residents fight over things like that. You bring a box of cookies in there and five minutes later it's eaten. And someone's hurt. They are,' she said, 'a little like children.'
And soon enough, her eyes seemed to be saying to him, you'll be like that too.
'Trust me,' she continued. 'We ask people who bring things to leave them here at the desk. We make sure it goes to the person it was brought for.'
'Fine. But I don't have anything for Mr. Koppleman,' William said, repeating himself, eager to end the conversation.
'No, Mr. Jones, you don't.'
He turned then, and walked through the white swinging doors and into the visiting room. It's a nice place to visit, he remembered Mr. Leonati saying about Florida, but you wouldn't want to live there. You wouldn't want to live in the Golden Meadows Retirement Home, but you wouldn't want to visit it either; you wouldn't even want to visit the visiting room, especially the visiting room. Once upon a time, someone had tried to spruce it up with warmer colors, yellow and peach and pink, but that had been once upon a time, and the colors had faded to mere ghosts of their former selves, a little like the residents of Golden Meadows. Four or five of whom were scattered around the visiting room like props, waiting only for the arrival of an audience. Two of them were watching the lone
