‘People never look out of the window in the houses out there,’ he had explained. ‘Besides, there are always lots of men sitting alone in their cars — go for a walk round and see for yourself.’
A little later on Reinhart actually did go for a walk around the block, and discovered that it really was true. Oversized cars stood parked on either side of the street, and in every fifth or sixth sat a man chewing gum or smoking. Or digging into a packet of crisps. Most of them were wearing dark glasses, despite the fact that the sun seemed to be further away than the Middle Ages. What’s going on? Reinhart wondered.
It was cold as well, certainly several degrees below freezing, and the same inhospitable wind as yesterday was blowing up from the river.
I don’t understand this society, Reinhart thought. What the hell do people do? What lies are they living that we haven’t discovered yet?
He told Pavarotti to go off for an hour and have a coffee: Pavarotti seemed to doubt if he ought to take an order like that from this dodgy chief inspector, but in the end he did as he was bidden.
Reinhart clambered over the low stone wall surrounding Sunset Park and went to sit down on a bench. There was just as good a view of number 602 from there as from inside the car, and he didn’t think there was any risk of fru Ponczak recognizing him. In his woolly hat, long scarf and old military parka he looked just like any other tramp, or so he told himself: one of those drifters who couldn’t even afford a car to sit in while they were waiting for death to catch up with them.
It was ten minutes to eleven when fru Ponczak came out. Pavarotti still hadn’t returned, even though it was over an hour since he had left. Reinhart wondered what to do, and decided to follow the woman.
She walked down as far as Fifth Avenue and turned left. Waddling gently and with a slight limp, it seemed. For a moment he thought she was going to the subway station on 45th Street… But he didn’t need to decide what to do in that case, as she went into a mini-market on the corner instead. Reinhart walked past and stationed himself on the other side of the street. Started filling his pipe with fingers as supple as icicles.
After five minutes she came out with a plastic carrier bag in each hand. Started walking back along Fifth Avenue the same way as she’d come. Turned back into 44th Street and was home in number 602 a minute later.
Reinhart sat in his car again. Ah well, he thought. That was presumably today’s dramatic high point. Mrs Ponczak goes shopping. It sounded like an English kitchen-sink film.
However, it turned out to be a correct diagnosis. Neither fru Ponczak nor her layabout son bothered to go out any more on this icy cold, windy, December Sunday — and why should they have done? There was always the telly, for instance. No sign of any possible herr Ponczak, and Reinhart guessed that if he existed at all, he was lying down in a back room overlooking the courtyard, reading the paper or sleeping off his hangover. That’s what he would have done if he’d been herr Ponczak.
For his own part, he hesitated between wandering around Sunset Park, lying back in his car, and sitting next to the cheerless Pavarotti. He also took up the question of what they should do if the object of their reconnaissance should leave her house once again. Pavarotti maintained that the object of their reconnaissance was in fact the house and not its occupier — that’s what Bloomguard had ordered him to do. Quite specific orders. In order to avoid any falling out between them, Reinhart phoned Bloomguard in his home in Queens and asked him to issue new instructions. In the event that the object of their reconnaissance Ponczak (Mrs) should again leave the object of their reconnaissance Ponczak (House), it was Pavarotti’s duty to shadow the former. No matter what the circumstances Reinhart should stay put near the street corner in question, since he was not considered to be one hundred per cent suitable for shadowing duties in a city with seven million inhabitants in which he knew the names of six people, two parks and five buildings.
At about two Pavarotti went to fetch a shoebox of junk food for each of them, by four o’clock Reinhart had finished reading the first of the books he had bought at Barnes amp; Noble — Sun Dogs by Robert Olen Butler — and at precisely 18.00 they were relieved by the night shift.
Nothing else happened, either in number 602 or anywhere in the vicinity.
If I don’t have a crash or get mugged on the way back to the hotel, Reinhart thought, I suppose one can say it’s been a quiet Sunday.
Neither of these things happened. After bathing up his body temperature to something approaching normal, he phoned Bloomguard and invited him to a meal, but was declined. He went for a long walk through the darkness of Central Park instead (still without being attacked or run over), had an evening meal at an Italian restaurant in 49th Street, and returned to his hotel and the next book at about eleven.
I don’t think I’ve ever followed a more slender lead than this one, he thought. Three more days to go. Just as pointless as giving roses to a goat. If it weren’t for The Chief Inspector and his damned intuition, well…
He set his alarm clock for 02.15, and when it rang he had slept for one-and-a-half hours. It was some time before he remembered what he was called, where he was and why. And why he had been woken up.
Then he phoned across the Atlantic and heard his daughter’s early-bird voice in his ear.
38
Monday was rather more eventful than Sunday had been.
But only a little. Reinhart had only just arrived at Sunset Park when both mother and son Ponczak came out into the street. Pavarotti had the day off and was replaced by the significantly more optimistic Sergeant Baxter, who looked like a successful cross between a bulldog and a young Robert Redford: after a brief discussion he slid out of the car and began following Mrs Ponczak down towards Fifth Avenue. Her son set off in the opposite direction, eastwards towards Seventh Avenue, but Reinhart judged him to be of only minor interest (presumably kids go to school in this country as well, he thought) and remained in Baxter’s car.
It was an hour and ten minutes before anything happened. Baxter rang from a department store down on Pacific (still in Brooklyn) and said he was drinking coffee (with caffeine) in a cafeteria directly opposite the bodyshop where Mrs Ponczak apparently worked. Today, at least.
As number 602 seemed to be deserted (Mr Ponczak’s existence seemed to become more improbable with every hour that passed), Reinhart decided that Baxter might just as well stay where he was, drinking coffee and keeping his eye on the mobile object, while he looked after the somewhat less mobile house in Sunset Park.
Good Lord, he thought as he closed down the call from Baxter. Was this the kind of thing I used to do twenty-five years ago?
By half past twelve he had read seventy pages of James Ellroy’s My Dark Places, and started asking himself once again what sort of a country this was that he’d come to. At one o’clock he left the car and went to buy some provisions at the mini-market on the corner of Sixth and 45th. He bought bananas, a bottle of mineral water, a bar of chocolate and a few bagels. Apparently there was a minimarket on every other street corner, you could take your pick. As he walked back to the car he noticed that it had become a bit warmer, and a quarter of an hour later it started raining. He continued ploughing on through Ellroy’s morbid world, and spoke to both Baxter and Bloomguard on the telephone a few times. At half past three Ponczak junior returned home in the company of a red-headed schoolmate, and half an hour later Reinhart was relieved.
Monday, he thought on the way in to Manhattan. Two days left. What the hell am I doing here?
Despite the fact that a smoggy dusk was already in the air, he took the ferry over to Staten Island. Managed to catch the right bus to take him to Snugg’s Harbor, where he wandered around for an hour among rotting leaves — it was the same place he’d wandered around with a young woman fifteen years ago: that was why he was repeating the experience now, but it didn’t feel the same at all. Then it had been plus thirty degrees, and the leaves had still been hanging on the trees.
Her name had been Rachel, and he hoped it still was: he recalled having loved her passionately for four days. With his head, his heart and his sexual organs. By the fifth day his head (perhaps also his heart, come to that) had vetoed the relationship, and after the sixth they had gone their separate ways.
He spent the evening with Bloomguard in an Asian restaurant in Canal Street. Bloomguard would have liked to take him up to 1 Police Plaza as well, to show him the latest technical advances in the fight against crime (electronic bugging devices, laser-sweepers etc.) but Reinhart declined the invitation as politely as he could.
He was back at his hotel by midnight. Winnifred had sent him a fax with the outlines of both Joanna’s hands
