I told him that I had to check out some things by myself.
'Like hell.' Alan threw back his sheet and blanket and swung himself out of bed. He was still wearing his boxer shorts. As soon as he stood up, his face went gray, and he sat down heavily on the bed. 'Something's wrong with me,' he said and held his thin arms out before him to inspect them. 'I can't stand up. I'm sore.'
'No wonder,' I said. 'We did a little mountain climbing yesterday.'
'I don't remember that.'
I reminded him that we had gone to Flory Park.
'My daughter used to go to Flory Park.' He sounded lost and alone.
'Alan, if you'd like to get dressed and spend some time with John and his parents, I'd be happy to drive you there.'
He started to push himself off the bed again, but his knees wobbled, and he sank back down again, grimacing.
'I'll run a hot bath,' Eliza Morgan said. 'You'll feel better when you're shaved and dressed.'
'That's the ticket,' Alan said. 'Hot water. Get the soreness out.'
Eliza left the room, and Alan gave me a piercing look. He held up his forefinger, signaling for silence. Down the hall, water rushed into the tub. He nodded. Now it was safe to speak. 'I remembered this man in town, just the ticket—brilliant man. Lamont von Heilitz. Von Heilitz could solve this thing lickety-split.'
Alan was somewhere back in the forties or fifties. 'I talked to him last night,' I said. 'Don't tell anybody, but he's helping us.'
He grinned at me. 'Mum's the word.'
Eliza returned and led him away to the bathroom, and I went downstairs and let myself out of the house.
I crossed the street and rang the bell of the house that faced Alan's. Within seconds, a young woman in a navy blue linen suit and a strand of pearls opened the door. She was holding a briefcase in one hand. 'I don't know who you are, and I'm already late,' she said. Then she gave me a quick inspection. 'Well, you don't look like a Jehovah's Witness. Back up, I'm coming out. We can talk on the way to the car.'
I stepped down, and she came out and locked her door. Then she looked at her watch. 'If you start talking about the Kingdom of God, I'm going to stamp on your foot.'
'I'm a friend of Alan Brookner's,' I said. 'I want to ask you about something a little bit strange that happened over there.'
'At the professor's house?' She looked at me quizzically. 'Everything that happens over there is strange. But if you're the person who got him to cut his lawn, the whole neighborhood is lining up to kiss your feet.'
'Well, I called the gardener for him,' I said.
Instead of kissing my feet, she strode briskly down the flagged pathway to the street, where a shiny red Honda Civic sat at the curb.
'Better start talking,' she said. 'You're almost out of time.'
'I wondered if you happened to see someone putting a car into the professor's garage, one night within the past week or so. He thought he heard noises in his garage, and he doesn't drive anymore himself.'
'About two weeks ago? Sure, I saw it—I was coming home late from a big client dinner. Someone was putting a car in his garage, and the light was on. I noticed because it was past one, and there are never any lights on in there after nine o'clock.'
I followed her around the front of the car. She unlocked the driver's door. .
'Did you see the car or the person who was driving it? Was it a black Mercedes sports car?'
'All I saw was the garage door coming down. I thought that the younger guy who visits him was putting his car away, and I was surprised, because I never saw him drive.' She opened the door and gave me another second and a half.
'What night was that, do you remember?'
She rolled her eyes up and jittered on one high heel. 'Okay, okay. It was on the tenth of June. Monday night, two weeks ago. Okay?'
'Thanks,' I said. She was already inside the car, turning the key. I stepped away, and the Civic shot down the street like a rocket.
Monday, the tenth of June, was the night April Ransom had been beaten into a coma and knifed in room 218 of the St. Alwyn Hotel.
I got into the Pontiac and drove down to Pigtown.
South Seventh Street began at Livermore Avenue and extended some twenty blocks west, a steady, unbroken succession of modest two-story frame houses with flat or peaked porches. Some of the facades had been covered with brickface, and in a few of the tiny front yards stood garish plaster animals —Bambi deer and big-eyed collies. One house in twenty had a shrine to Mary, the Virgin protected from snow and rain by a curling scallop of cement. On a hot Tuesday morning in June, a few old men and women sat outside on their porches, keeping an eye on things.
Number 17 was on the first block off Livermore, in the same position as our house, the fifth building up from the corner on the west side of the street. The dark green paint left long scabs where it had peeled off, and a network of cracks split the remaining paint. All the shades had been drawn. I left the car unlocked and went up the steps while the old couple sitting outside on the neighboring porch watched me over their newspapers.
I pushed the bell. Rusting mesh hung in the frame of the screen door. No sound came from inside the house. I tried the bell again and then knocked on the screen door. Then I opened the screen door and hit my fist against the wooden door. Nothing. 'Hello, is anybody home?' I hit the door a few more times.
'Nobody's at home in there,' a voice called.
The old man on the neighboring porch had folded his newspaper across his lap, and both he and his wife were eyeing me expressionlessly. 'Do you know when they'll be back?'
'You got the wrong house,' he said. His wife nodded.
'This is the right address,' I said. 'Do you know the people who live here?'
'Well, if you say it's the right house, keep on pounding.'
I walked to the end of the porch. The old man and his wife were no more than fifteen feet away from me. He was wearing a faded old plaid shirt buttoned up tight against the cords in his neck. 'What are you saying, no one lives here?'
'You could say that.' His wife nodded again.
'Is it empty?'
'Nope. Don't think it's empty.'
'Nobody's home, mister,' his wife said. 'Nobody's ever home.'
I looked from husband to wife and back again. It was a riddle: the house wasn't empty, but nobody was ever home. 'Could I come over and talk to you?'
He looked at his wife. 'Depends on who you are and what you want to talk about.'
I told them my name and saw a trace of recognition in the man's face. 'I grew up right around the corner, on South Sixth. Al Underhill was my father.'
'You're Al Underhill's boy?' He checked with his wife. 'Come on up here.'
When I got up onto their porch, the old man stood and held out his hand. 'Frank Belknap. This is the wife, Hannah. I knew your father a little bit. I was at Glax thirty-one years, welding. Sorry we can't give you a chair.'
I said that was fine and leaned against the railing.
