“They’re the ones who’ll know where he is. But I don’t know yet who they are.”
She looked at him abruptly with something very pained behind her eyes. “How did you hear about me?”
“From a woman named Grace Weiss.”
The name obviously meant nothing to her. She said, “Who on earth is she?”
“The wife of a guy George knew.”
“How did she know anything about me?”
“I don’t know.”
The complainer crept a little more into the open. “I don’t like the idea of people talking about me. People I don’t even know.”
“She told me you used to know George. That’s all she said. And if you used to know him, you know some of his friends.”
“I suppose.”
“Who would they be?” Parker asked her.
She would have liked to dwell on the injustice of strangers talking about her, but she came around reluctantly to consider Parker’s question. She said, “It’s been a while. George and I never really were that close anyway. He just used me, the way he uses everybody. He doesn’t let anybody get close to him, not really close.”
She wouldn’t stay on the track. Parker nudged her back on, saying, “But you had to know some of the other people he knew.”
“Well, there was Howie; that’s one.”
“Howie. You know his last name?”
“Something Italian. Let me think. It was like coffee, you know, the instant coffee? What is it, espresso. Progressi, that was his name! Howie Progressi.”
“Where’s he live?”
“Oh, somewhere in Brooklyn. He has a garage down there. He and George are both car nuts. Howie enters those demolition derby things out on the Island. You know the kind of thing?”
“No. Demolition derby?”
“A lot of crazy guys get into beat-up cars,” she said, “and they all go out in the middle and bump into each other. It’s supposed to be a gas, but frankly I never saw that much in it. I went with George a couple of times, and it was just creepy. Everybody in the stands screaming and yelling and cheering, and these crazy guys out there in the middle of the track bumping into each other. And the last car still moving is the winner. Is that creepy? And they talk about they wonder if this country’s violent. Wow.”
“And Howie Progressi drives in these things?”
“All the time. He never wins or anything, but he doesn’t even want to win, if you ask me. He’s just there to bump into other cars. He and George were buddies for a while. I don’t know if they are still.”
“And you don’t know his address?”
“Just somewhere in Brooklyn.” She shrugged. “I suppose he’s in the phone book.”
“All right. Who else?”
“There was somebody named Barry he used to see sometimes. I never met him, and then he moved to Washington or someplace.”
Washington? Near Alexandria. Uhl had been close enough to get to Pearson within a couple of hours, depending on what time Pearson had his change of heart and contacted Uhl. Parker said, “Who is this Barry?”
“I don’t know. That’s all I ever heard was Barry. No last name or anything. I remember him and Howie talking about this Barry together one time and giggling like crazy. Because they had a secret, you know. They knew Barry and I didn’t. That was supposed to be funny.”
“Howie knows Barry, though, is that right?”
“Sure. They had a lot of fun over that one.”
“Anybody else?”
“There was a cop,” she said. “I never met him either, but George saw him sometimes. They had something going on. I don’t know what.”
“What was his name?”
“Dumpke, or Drumpke. Dugald?” She frowned, rubbing the lines in her forehead with one finger. “Dumek!” she cried. “That’s it, Dumek!” She spelled it.
“What’s his first name?”
“I don’t know. George always just called him Officer Dumek. He’d say, ‘I’ve got to go see Officer Dumek.’ Wait, I did see him one time. We went to the movies, up to the New Yorker, you know? On Broadway? And we were walking back and there was a police car stopped by a fire hydrant and there was nobody behind the wheel, but there was a policeman on the right side, sitting there with his arm out the window, and when we went by he waved and said, ‘Hi, George.’ And George said hi back, but I forget what name he said. But then he told me that was Officer Dumek. But I couldn’t describe him or anything. He was just a policeman in a police car at night. You know?”
Parker nodded. “Okay. Anybody else?”
