wasted pain, the ease with which he'd secured the name seemed almost pathetic. Like climbing the highest tree in the yard only to pluck a fruit so rotten it just about falls into your hand. A phone call to Raoul. A phone call to Mr. Greely. A phone call to Rodriguez. That's all it took. What was the name of Mrs. Winters's doctor, he'd asked Raoul. The one who recommended Florida? Fern, he'd replied. The old people love him. And why did the old people love him? 'Cause he's one of them. Not a day under eighty, Raoul said. Imagine that. Mr. Greely had needed some time to jog his memory. Palm, he said after a few minutes. Could it be Fern? I think it's Palm. But it might be Fern? Dr. Fern? An elderly gentleman in his own right? That's it, Greely said. An old doctor, too old-that's why I don't go to him. Dr. Palm. You mean Dr. Fern. Maybe. And Rodriguez, whom William once more interrupted in the act of sunning himself, who took ten minutes of the phone company's time to make his way down from the roof where his ten-year-old cradled the phone before a too-loud TV; Rodriguez remembered it perfectly. Fern, he said. Like the plant. If the plant was a Venus flytrap maybe. That's who came that night, he said. Old-real old. That it, bro? You didn't call him? No. Who did? Weeks did. Weeks didn't. What's the difference? Maybe Jean did. Before he went down for the count. Wasn't Jean French? French Hungarian. There you go then. The doctor parlay-vood too. He must have rang him up before he kicked. I don't think so. Okay, you don't think so. That all, Jose? Fern. Like the plant. Remembering later how he'd stared so hard at the list that night, the list of the missing, trying to find a common denominator that didn't seem to be there.
But there had been. Fern.
Fern was the common denominator.
Fern, who lived on a dead-end street within walking distance of everybody. Arthur Shankin. Doris Winters. And Jean.
Jean, who on his way to bag another runaway had run into the biggest runaway of all. The murderer of two hundred and fifteen men, women, and children-most of which Jean had greedily taken part in, but three of which he hadn't, the three that carried his name.
What Jean must have felt that night.
To begin with, he was scared, Weeks said.
To begin with, yes. He must have been torturously scared, frightened out of his mind. But then, something else. A chance, a chance as clear as day. To balance the books, to erase an unholy mistake-to unburden himself of the only guilt he'd ever carried. To take the mark of Cain and burn it off with acid.
But not too fast. It had been over fifty years-no reason to rush now. And besides, though Jean may have had the morals of a snake, he lacked the capacity to shed his skin. He was-first, foremost, and forever-a detective. And the detective in him must have spotted some familiar clues, sniffed out a most evocative odor. Could it be that Dr. Petoit hadn't hung up his syringe just yet? Could it be that it was still wartime, and there were still Jews out there running for their lives?
Only now they were called the elderly-pushed into ghettos called retirement communities, forced into concentration camps called old age homes, ignored by most, forgotten by family, absolute fair game for everyone else. And just as Jean had been a Jew then, Jean had been old now. It must have made it seem all so familiar, so shaped by fate, or cosmic irony, or maybe even God. In the end, maybe Jean had even believed.
Jean, like all good detectives, had gone about building a case. Even started a file, just like the old days. Even taking some precautions too, setting up Weeks as his insurance policy in case a safe dropped on his head. And perhaps, just perhaps, even showing Weeks a picture from the past-that's Santini there, and over there, that's William, William the Boy Scout, William the cuckold, William the priest. Because, after all, priests tend to show up at funerals, don't they.
And then a safe had dropped on his head.
And now, here and now, was the priest.
Standing, after more dead ends than he cared to remember, in the only dead end that mattered, talking with a woman who seemed intent on devouring him with words.
And thinking this-as she prattled on and on-that he should go to the police. That of course he should. No doubt about it. There were twelve missing people here, and a mass murderer that made Ted Bundy look quaint, so he should go to the police. Immediately go there.
But then, maybe there was doubt about it. Just a little doubt. Sure, it was there somewhere-say hello, doubt, and take a bow. Like, for instance, maybe he'd made all of it up in his head. Maybe it sounded completely coherent to him, but maybe it would sound completely incoherent to someone else. For example, the desk sergeant at the 105th Precinct. Who'd be interrupted mid-donut by a geezer trying to convince him that the next best thing to Eichmann was hiding out just around the corner. Not exactly hiding out, either, but when he wasn't involved in nefarious doings-calmly going about the business of practicing the Hippocratic oath on a bunch of patients who swore by him. Maybe the sergeant would look up from his coconut-creme donut and see an average- variety fruitcake.
Besides, it wasn't like he exactly liked the police. He didn't. Not for anything in particular, but simply because in his old job, not liking the police had been an occupational hazard, like having to work on Christmas, or having your wife screw someone besides you. Of course, the police didn't like detectives much either-they were always getting in each other's way. Maybe they were simply too much alike-detectives and policemen-half the detectives having been policemen in a previous life. Detectives knowing half the police were shit and the police knowing they knew it. Here you had detectives taking money to investigate things, and the police constantly taking money not to. Both on a first-name basis with guys with funny monikers. The Tuna. The Lip. The Bull. Those guys. Police and dicks tending to use the same professional witnesses, to shake down the same professional snitches. That kind of familiarity couldn't help but breed contempt. Three Eyes hadn't been any different. There you had Jean ruining legitimate DA cases left and right, Santini hogging the off-duty money New York's finest counted on to send the kids to college, and William trailing his cheating hearts all over town and occasionally taking it on the chin for just being their associate. He'd suffered an overload of parking tickets, had twice been rousted downtown on suspicion of something or other which always turned out to be nothing or other, and had even gotten blackjacked outside a cop bar once by an off-duty patrolman just practicing his opposite-field swing.
So though William knew he should go to the police, knew, in fact, that he would go to the police, he wasn't going to the police just yet.
He was back on the job, wasn't he? He was back in the saddle. So he was going to run out the drill. And what did the drill say? It said surveillance.
Over and just to the left of the talking woman's head was a house surrounded by pink rhododendrons and weeping willows. A sign was stuck off center in the middle of a thick and handsome lawn.
Dr. Fern M.D., it said.
Healer of ills.
From a distance, he looked like any other eighty-year- old man. But any other eighty-year-old man wouldn't have caused William to avert his eyes as if they'd been seared by the sun. Any other eighty-year-old man wouldn't have caused his stomach to drop to his quivering knees and cause his body to start involuntarily turning toward home.
Dr. Fern had a shock of white hair-tousled, as if someone had just run their fingers through it. His body was wiry and thin. He wore black thick-soled shoes. That was all William could actually see. What he felt was terrified.
The old people love him,Raoul the janitor said.
Yes. He could see why they loved him. One of them. One of us. And he suddenly remembered what Mr. Leonati had once said when he'd returned from a trip to Ger- many-the Teutonic Tour or Holiday in Heidelberg or some such name.
Scared me, Mr. Leonati had confessed. So beautiful, so familiar. There was a nice old man looked just like me, roasting chestnuts in the bus station. I smiled at him-then I wondered if he'd roasted Mr. Brickman's uncles during the war. Okay.
Okay.
Dr. Fern looked jolly. From a distance, he looked like the kind of doctor an older person would lean on. An older person wouldn't mind taking off their clothes in front of Dr. Fern. An older person wouldn't mind confiding in him either. Dr. Fern would understand, Dr. Fern knows what it's like.
And if Dr. Fern said go to Florida, an older person would say when?
William, another older person, slid back further into the weeds. He was sweating a lot-more than usual, more
