Patzo lived in a small, frame house with shingle siding, a concrete-block stoop, and a neatly trimmed lawn. A dozen freshly planted petunias struggled for life in a window box. Jake knocked, knocked again. Patzo came to the door. Jake recognized him, but only because he’d known who he was.
The Patzo he’d met ten years earlier was a thick-necked, buzz-cut hood in his middle fifties. This Patzo had shriveled, although the hood was still there in his black eyes. His face was gray, the color of heart trouble, and his nose was large and soft. He was wearing a shabby flannel shirt and jeans with a too-big waist, and white athletic socks.
He pushed open the screen door and said, “Yeah?”
“Don Patzo,” Jake said. “You once taught a burglary class to a bunch of special forces guys.”
“Yeah? So what?”
“So I was one of those guys. I need a little help.”
“Ah, fuck you, pal.” Patzo started to pull the door closed. “And I didn’t teach no gimps.”
“I wasn’t a gimp back then,” Jake said. “I got to be a gimp later. What I want you to do is easy, not dangerous, will be all done by tonight, and will get you a thousand bucks in tax-free cash and a couple of decent meals. The best part is, it’s legal.”
Patzo didn’t shut the inner door. “How legal is that?”
Jake fished the apartment key from his pocket: “The owner gave me the key and called the doorman to clear the way. You’re more of a consultant than a burglar.”
Patzo pushed the door open: “I’ll give you five minutes to talk to me.”
They talked, and Patzo agreed. Jake loaded the old man into his car, headed back to Washington. Stopped at Riggs, opened his safe-deposit box, took out ten thousand of the twenty-five thousand he kept there, just in case; stopped at a drugstore, bought a package of vinyl gloves; and drove them both to National. Patzo kept his mouth shut, but he watched everything. The only emotion he showed was a tightening of his fists when the plane took off, and again when it landed.
They were in New York at one o’clock, a cab across the Triborough to the Upper East Side. The doorman had a note from Madison, and sent them up to Bowe’s apartment.
They stepped inside, facing an oval, gilt-framed mirror above an antique table with a cut-crystal bud vase.
Patzo said, “Jesus Christ, that fuckin’ table is worth thirty grand.”
“You know antiques?”
“Enough. Used to do a lot of woodwork. You know—when I was working for the state.” He touched the table gently. “How the fuck would I get it out of here?”
“Don’t even think about it,” Jake said.
The apartment had two bedrooms, but was bigger than that implied. The kitchen was long and narrow, but complete. The living room was expansive, oak floors and three Oriental carpets, contemporary abstracts on the wall, including, over the fireplace, an excellent Rothko. A den opened off the living room; and down a hall were two bedrooms, a master bedroom suite and a smaller guest room. The master bedroom had a bathroom that contained a tub big enough for three or four people. All of it was wallpapered in delicate pastels.
Jake gave Patzo a pair of the vinyl gloves and a short instruction: “Look, but don’t leave any prints. If you find anything that looks like it’s been hidden, or interesting—legal papers, medical documents—come get me. The owner had all the stuff inventoried for the IRS, so if anything goes missing, it’s gonna be embarrassing for us both.”
“Place like this has a safe,” Patzo said.
“It does,” Jake said. “It’s empty—the owner emptied it yesterday. See if you can find it.”
“Like a test.”
“Yeah.”
As the older man prowled the apartment, Jake sat on the floor and started through the filing cabinets. There were two, in the den, under a built-in computer table. He checked each individual file folder and found paid bills, financial records, co-op apartment records, tax forms, receipts and registrations for automobiles, and account papers for mutual funds at Fidelity and Vanguard. He totaled it up in his head, and found that Bowe’s accounts at two banks, at U.S. Trust, at Merrill Lynch, and the mutual fund companies totaled some eighty-five million dollars.
He checked every file folder, looking for hidden papers. Found none.
Patzo came by: “There’s a gun hanging off the headboard of the bed in the big bedroom.”
Jake went to look. The revolver looked like a self-defense piece, an old blue hammerless .38. The gun was in a black rubber holster that had been screwed to the headboard. Jake said, “Keep looking.”
As Madison said, there were no medical records at all. He checked the bank accounts, and there had been several large checks cashed in the months prior to Bowe’s disappearance, but the records didn’t indicate whom the checks were paid to.
He pulled up the computer, signed on with the Bonester password, and started reading e-mail. The e-mail, both incoming and outgoing, was remarkably bland. Too remarkably. He went into the address book, found addresses for fifty or sixty people, including Howard Barber. Yet when he looked for mail involving Barber, either outgoing or incoming, there was none.
The e-mail had been purged.
Patzo came back. “The safe is under the cutting board in the kitchen. It’s open. You want to look?”
