“Hope the cops don’t do any forensics up here,” he muttered to himself, as he was putting the boot back in the closet. He opened a couple of drawers in Madison’s dresser, took out a pair of black panty hose. He pulled them over his head, asked the mirror, “How do I look?” He considered himself for a moment, then said, “Like some moron with a pair of underpants on his head.”
He took them off, refolded them, put them away. He couldn’t wear them past a doorman anyway.
He went back to Madison’s dresser, sat down, looked at himself in the mirror. He looked all right, he thought. Like a bureaucrat or a college professor just back from vacation, who hadn’t had a chance to get his hair cut, who stayed in shape with handball.
There was nothing he could do, without a makeup expert, to make himself look like a thug. He didn’t have the scars under the eyes, he didn’t have the oft-broken nose, he didn’t have the shiny forehead. He did have the scalp cut. If he combed his hair just so . . .
He could definitely go for the insane look, he decided. He half smiled, thinking that he should have kept the
He went through Madison’s drawers, then through Lincoln Bowe’s, found a comb and a tube of hair gel. Went to the bathroom, gelled his hair, swept it straight back. Gelled it some more. The gel made his face look thinner, his head smaller, like a Doberman’s. And it made him look a little trashy. Expensive trashy, a street guy who’d lucked into a thousand-dollar suit. Better.
Stared at himself in the mirror again, took a quarter out of his pocket, put it between his upper right gum and his cheek. Talked to himself in the mirror, while holding the quarter in place with cheek and lip pressure: “Hi. I’m a killer for the CIA, and I’m crazy. I’m here to put a bullet in your head . . .”
No. He was being cute. He didn’t want cute, he wanted cold. He rehearsed for another moment: “Get your fuckin’ ass on the couch, fat man . . .” More gravel in the voice: “Get your fuckin’ ass on the couch . . .”
Rosenquist lived on the twelfth floor of a co-op apartment in the Park Avenue six-hundreds, a bulky granite building with a liveried doorman. One of the residents, leading a dog only slightly larger than a hoagie, went through ahead of Jake. The doorman nodded and she took the elevator. When the lobby was clear, Jake walked in. The doorman straightened and Jake asked, “Dr. Rosenquist?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Andy Carlyle.” No point in going on record with the doorman. “A friend of his died and I helped clean out the apartment. I found some, mmm, personal items that I believe belong to Dr. Rosenquist.”
The doorman called up. After a brief chat, he handed the phone to Jake. Jake took it and said, “Hello?”
“This is James Rosenquist. What do you have?”
“Your friend’s wife asked me to clean out, mmm, his apartment.” Ostentatiously not using the name. “I found some, ahh, jewelry. There were some personal papers, plus a note that said that you should get the jewelry. One of the pieces is leather with diamonds, two are separate gold chains.”
“Give the phone back to Ralph. I’ll tell him to send you up.”
In the elevator, Jake said aloud, “Tough and mysterious. Tough and mysterious. CIA killer. Movie killer, movie killer, movie killer . . .”
Looking at himself in the elevator mirror, he did a quick recomb of his hair, baring the shaved strip and the stitches. The Frankenstein vibe. When he was done, one lobe of the greased hair had fallen over his forehead, and he liked it, a vague Hitleresque note to go with the Frankenstein. He put the quarter between his gum and his left cheek and said, “Here’s lookin’ at ya.”
No. He was being cute again. No cute. He needed crazy.
Rosenquist was a blocky, round-faced man dressed in sweatpants, a half-marathon T-shirt that said, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, and slippers. A soft man, fifty pounds overweight. He had a glass in his hand. Dance music played from deeper in the apartment. Jake bobbed his head and held up his cane and the briefcase, tried to look like a polite CIA killer, and asked, “Dr. Rosenquist?”
“Better come in. You recovered these things from Linc’s apartment?”
Rosenquist had closed the door and Jake took two quick steps down the hallway and looked into the living room. Empty; music playing from a stereo in the corner. Jake turned back and said, his voice as hard and clipped as he could manage, “Yes, but we disposed of them. I used them as an excuse to get in here. I want to know what you did with Bowe’s medical records.”
Rosenquist stopped short, his lips turning down in a grimace, and he growled, “Get out.”
“No. We no longer have room to fuck around.” Jake stepped closer to him, and then another step, and Rosenquist stepped backward. “You’re right in the middle of this, Rosenquist, and people are getting hurt. I need the records.”
Rosenquist moved sideways, his hand darting toward an intercom panel. “I’ll get . . .”
The gun was in Jake’s hand, pointing at Rosenquist’s temple. “You don’t seem to understand how serious this is, fat man,” he said. “I’ve been told to get the records. I will get them, one way or another.”
Rosenquist’s hands were up, his eyes wide: “Don’t point the gun at me. The gun could go off, don’t point the gun.”
“The records . . .” The quarter slipped and Jake caught it with his upper lip: a snarl, a sneer.
“There are no records, there are no records,” Rosenquist babbled. “Whatever records there are, are in my office, but they’re meaningless. He never had anything wrong with him.” But he was lying; his eyes gave him away, moving sideways, then flicking back, judging whether Jake was buying the story.
He wasn’t. Jake waggled the gun at him. “In the living room. Put your ass on the couch, fat man.”
