“Mr. Partridge,” Murphy said, “do you see the YMCA tenant who called himself Timothy Underhill anywhere in this room?”
“You know I don’t.”
“Thank you for coming in, Mr. Partridge,” said Murphy. “I am sorry we took you away from your duties, but I’d like you to see our artist downstairs to work on a composite portrait. If you feel that the department owes you money, you can try submitting a bill to us.”
“You’re doin’ a great job,” Partridge said, and turned to leave the room.
Poole called out to him. “Mr. Partridge, what did the man do to his room?”
Partridge did a half-turn and frowned at Poole. “Let the cop tell you.” He went through the door without closing it behind him.
The young detective moved to the door and closed it. He grinned at Maggie as he went back to his place beside the desk. He had a broad handsome face, and his teeth shone very white beneath his thick moustache. It occurred to Poole that both Murphy and the younger officer looked like Keith Hernandez, the Met’s first baseman.
Murphy looked gloomily at Underhill, who sat in the folds of his big coat, holding his hat in his lap. “He was here to give us an identification, of course. Timothy Underhill checked into the YMCA on the Upper West Side on the evening of the day that Clement Irwin was killed at the airport. There is, by the way, no record of anyone named Timothy Underhill passing through Customs to get back into the country at any time during the month of January, so we know that he traveled under another name. We stopped examining the records before the three of you and Mr. Beevers came back, of course, because we knew our man was with us by then.” He shook his head. “Partridge called us as soon as he looked inside Underhill’s room. Once we got in there, we knew we had him. All we had to do was wait.” He took a manila folder out of the middle drawer of the desk. “But after we waited all night, we thought he must have come back just after we showed up and saw our patrol cars. Which means that we missed him by no more than a couple of minutes. Take a look at the pictures of the room.”
He took a handful of Polaroids from the envelope and passed them to the young detective. Grinning again, the man went straight to Maggie and handed the photographs to her.
Maggie smiled at him and passed the photographs to Michael without looking at them.
The walls of the room looked chaotic, with clippings and photographs taped up above a wandering wavelike pattern that rose and fell through gouts of red paint. Another photograph showed a black and white picture of Tina, torn from a newspaper. In the third photograph, the undulating wave pattern finally came into focus. Poole swallowed. It was a crudely drawn mural of the heads and bodies of a lot of children. Chests had been exploded open, heads lolled on lifeless necks. Several of the children were naked, and the photograph clearly showed entry wounds in their trunks and stomachs.
Painted on another wall were the slogans A DROWSY STIFLED UNIMPASSIONED GRIEF and A MAN OF SORROW AND ACQUAINTED WITH GRIEF.
Poole passed the photographs to Underhill.
“I’ll show you the other half of why I met you at the airport,” Murphy said. He took a copy of a typewritten letter from the envelope and gave it to the young detective. “This time give it to Dr. Poole, Dalton.”
Dalton smiled handsomely at Maggie and handed the sheet of paper to Michael.
“St. Louis police found it in his desk.”
So this was how he had persuaded the journalists to come to him—Harry Beevers had been right. Poole read the letter very slowly:
He became aware that Murphy was saying something about Roberto Ortiz’s apartment. The detective was holding up another typed sheet of paper. “It’s identical to the one addressed to Mr. Martinson, except that the writer instructs Mr. Ortiz to reach him at an address on something called”—he glanced at the sheet—“called Plantation Road, in Singapore. Which is where his body was found.”
“Only these two letters were found?”
Murphy nodded. “Some of the others must have done as he asked, and destroyed the letters. Anyhow, these letters and the room at the Y were the reason we were so interested in you, Mr. Underhill.”
“Do you have any idea who placed the anonymous call?”
“Do you?” Murphy asked.
“Michael and Connor and I feel it must have been Harry Beevers.”
“But if he got your friends to lie to me about your whereabouts, why would he send me out to arrest you?”
“You know why that asshole called the police,” Conor said to Poole. “He was going to meet Koko, and he wanted you out of the way.”
“So where is Mr. Beevers now? Trying to capture this man by himself?”
Nobody spoke.
“Get Beevers on the telephone,” Murphy said, and with a final look at Maggie, Dalton hurried out of the room.
“If you people are hiding anything more from me, I promise you, you’ll spend a lot of time wishing you hadn’t.”
They sat in silence until Dalton returned. “Beevers isn’t answering his phone. I left a message for him to call you as soon as he got back, and I sent a car over to his place in case he’s there.”
“I think our business is over for the moment,” Murphy said. “I really do hope that I am through with you people. All of you are lucky not to be in jail. Now I want you to get out of my way and let me do my job.”
“Are you going down to Chinatown?” Michael asked.
“That is none of your business. You’ll find your car out in front, Mr. Poole.”
“Are there any caves in Chinatown?” Underhill asked. “Anything that might look like a cave?”
“New York is full of caves,” Murphy said. “Get out of here. Go home and stay there. If you hear from this man Dengler, call me immediately.”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Conor said. “Dengler? Will somebody sort of fill me in on what I missed?”
Underhill pulled Conor toward him and whispered something in his ear.
“I want to suggest something to you before you go,” Murphy said. He stood up behind his desk, and his face mottled with the force of the anger he did not allow himself to show. “In the future, when you come across something important to this case, do not
He walked out of the office, and Dalton trailed behind him. Conor said, “Mikey, what is this? Dengler?”
A uniformed policeman appeared in the door and politely told them to go away.
3
“I have to call Judy,” Poole said when they got outside. “We have a lot of things to get straight.”
Maggie suggested that he make the call from Saigon. Poole looked at his watch—four o’clock.
“Harry loved that bar,” Conor told Ellen. “I think he spent most of his afternoons there.”
“You’re talking about him as though he was dead,” Ellen said.
“I think we’re all afraid of that,” said Tim Underhill. “Michael told him our plane was getting in at two, and I bet he somehow managed to arrange a meeting with Koko around then. So it’s been two hours—if Dengler called Harry in order to turn himself in and Harry tried anything tricky, which would be impossible for Harry
“Can you explain all this stuff about Dengler now?” Conor asked.
“That will require a drink,” Tim said. “For you, not for me.”
Poole opened his car, and Maggie stepped beside him. “There’s someone uptown I want you to meet. My godfather.” He looked at her curiously, but she merely smiled and said, “Can all of us really squeeze into your car?”
They all could.
