Koko

LINKLATER and BEEVERS, Poole saw, had been lightly penciled on the other cards.

The line-up was a pretext to get the four of them together for questioning. They had been summoned not to identify a killer, but to be frightened into saying more than they wished.

Beevers and Conor spoke at the same time: “Where did you get these?”

“You must have gotten pretty close to him.”

Murphy nodded. “We learned where he had been staying through a tip. Unfortunately, we didn’t find him, so he must have learned somehow—we probably missed him by a couple of minutes. But we never get as close as that without getting him in the end.”

Murphy used his pencil to nudge the cards back into the envelope. “There was one other survivor from your unit.”

For a moment Poole could not remember who this was.

“You all remember Timothy Underhill.”

“Sure,” Conor said, and the other two nodded.

“What can you tell me about him?”

There was silence for a moment or two.

“I can’t figure you characters out,” Murphy said.

Poole remembered Judy talking about Bob Bunce: lies of denial always transparent. “We looked for Underhill in Singapore,” he said. Then he stopped talking, because Harry Beevers’ well-shod foot had come down heavily on his.

“It was what you’d call a lark,” Beevers said. “We were in this interesting part of the world, on a vacation, and we thought maybe we could locate him. All we found were traces. People that used to know him, things like that. We went hither and yon in three countries. Had a ball.”

“You went to a lot of trouble to find an old army buddy,” Murphy said.

“That’s right,” Beevers said. He looked carefully at Maggie, then candidly back at Murphy. “We had a hell of a trip.”

“No luck?”

“The man disappeared.” Beevers’ mouth opened. “Ah. You think this Koko is Tim Underhill?”

“It’s one of the possibilities we’re considering.” He smiled with as much false candor as Beevers. “He certainly isn’t Wilson Manly or Spanky Burrage. Or any of you.”

Other questions came crowding up, but Harry asked only the most immediate. “Then who’s the guy who went crazy in Times Square?”

Murphy pushed himself away from the table. “Let’s go find out.”

2

Murphy stayed close to Michael Poole as they walked toward the stairs. “Our friend still won’t give his name. He claims to have forgotten it. In fact, he claims to have been born in New York City at the age of eighteen.” He coughed. “In the back room of a bar called The Anvil.” He gave Poole an almost human glance. “He drew us a map of Pumo’s apartment. Then he clammed up and refused to say anything except that he had a mission to clean up the filth in the world.”

Murphy led them through the big office space on the ground floor, through a door at the back, and down a wide set of stairs. Over the noise of typewriters clacking in nearby offices, Poole heard Harry Beevers speaking softly and urgently to Maggie Lah.

“Here we are,” Murphy said, swinging open a broad set of doors that resembled a theater with its rows of banked seats, raised platform, and overhead lights.

Murphy took them to the second row of seats, where Maggie filed in behind Poole, followed by Beevers and Conor Linklater. Then he stepped to a podium in the central aisle one row behind them, and flipped on the stage lights. He picked up a microphone on a cord, scrutinized it for a switch, and turned it on. “We are here now,” he spoke into the microphone. “Let’s get the screen in place, and you can send the men out.” He frowned down at the podium and flipped another switch. A long screen marked with height registrations rolled out on a track across the stage.

“Ready,” Murphy said. “Each man on his mark. Once they are onstage, I will direct each man in turn to step forward, tell us a few words about himself, and then step backward.”

Five men emerged from the left side of the stage and began moving uncertainly toward what Poole supposed were numbers embedded in the stage. At first glance, the three short, dark-haired men in the lineup could have been Victor Spitalny. One wore a grey business suit, one a checked sports jacket, and the third jeans and a denim jacket. The man in the checked jacket looked most like Spitalny, but his eyes were more widely spaced and his chin was broader. He looked bored and impatient. The fourth was a heavyset blond man with a lively cynical Irish face. The fifth man, who was wearing a loose khaki shirt, fatigue pants, and cowboy boots, had shaved his head some time ago and then let it grow out to a uniform dark cap still short enough to show the scalp beneath. He alone smiled at the row of people looking up at him.

Murphy called out their numbers in a toneless voice.

“My name is Bill and I work as a bartender on the Upper East Side.”

“My name is George. I am the leader of the Boy Scout troop in Washington Heights.”

“My name is Franco and I am from Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn.”

“My name is Liam. I am in the security business.”

When number five was called, the last man stepped forward. “I have no name because I have no past.”

“Oh, my God,” Maggie said. “I don’t believe it.”

Murphy ordered the fifth man to step back, and then asked all five to leave the stage. When the stage was empty he leaned on the podium and scowled down at Maggie. “Well?”

“The last man, the one in the middle of his sex change, was wearing Tina’s boots. I’m sure of it. I know who he is.”

“Who is he?”

“I mean—I don’t know his real name, but he called himself Dracula and had a long Mohawk before he shaved it off. Tina picked him up at a club last year, or was picked up by him. He was pretending to be a girl. After they got back to the loft, he beat Tina unconscious and stole a lot of things from him. Including the boots he was wearing up there. They were Tina’s favorites. I think they cost a lot of money.”

“Dracula,” Murphy said.

“But he isn’t the man I saw in the loft.”

“No,” Murphy said. “I guess he wouldn’t be. Gentlemen, you may leave. I want to thank you for your cooperation, and I will be speaking to each of you again. Please call me if you can think of anything I ought to know. Miss Lah, will you come back upstairs with me, please?”

Maggie stood up slightly before the other three and went out into the central aisle where Murphy stood waiting for her. She caught Michael’s eye and raised her eyebrows. Michael nodded, then stood up with the other two.

3

After seeing the others into a cab and promising to join them at Harry’s apartment in half an hour, Michael walked back down Tenth Street to wait outside the police station. The weather was still too cold to be really comfortable, but Michael enjoyed standing on Tenth Street in the tingling air. The sunlight lay like gilt on the pretty brownstones across the street. He felt suspended between the end of something and the beginning of something absolutely new. Stacy Talbot had been his last real tie to Westerholm—everything else that held him there could be carried away in a suitcase.

He saw how he easy it would be to keep watching the television program that his life had become. The bright dailyness of his work, the stream of snuffling children and their worried mothers, Judy and her anxieties, the lax dull partnership of the long mornings, the nice white house, the walks to the duck pond, Bloody Marys at Sunday brunch, the numbing details that rushed you forward minute by minute.

The door of the police station opened with a click as decisive as the crack of a bone, and Michael turned around and straightened up as Maggie Lah came out. Her beautiful hair caught the sun in a smooth mesh of rich deep lustrous black.