She dressed in her one Washington lady outfit again, with a different shirt and a scarf to oblige the tradition that it was tacky to show twice at the same place wearing the same clothes, called, was told to come over, and headed to the house on L Street.
A whey-faced redheaded young woman in a pale green uniform and apron greeted her at the door with a suspicious stare.
'I'm here to see Mrs. Dobbs.'
'An' who shall I say?' said the woman in a thick brogue.
Marlene gave her name and was ushered to the study at the back. Mrs. Dobbs was seated at her husband's desk talking agitatedly on the telephone. She motioned Marlene to a chair and went on talking for a few minutes. When she put down the phone she said, 'Miss Ciampi, I'm terribly sorry, but something's come up. A dear friend of mine has been taken to the hospital and I'm afraid I have to go out right away. I tried to reach you at home, but you'd already left. Would it be possible for you to come back another time?'
'Oh, gosh, Mrs. Dobbs, I really wanted to finish up this week,' said Marlene. 'I mean, I'd hate to overlook anything, even some little thing; it might just be the one piece that brings it all together. Would it be possible for me to just look through things around here-the office…?'
Marlene could see by the curl of the woman's mouth that it was not going to be possible. Time for a lie.
'By the way, I got in touch with Viktor Reltzin,' she said quickly, 'and he said he thought Weinberg was lying about your husband because he had a grudge against him, something, um, from back in the past.'
'What? That's ridiculous! Richard never knew that man. If he did, don't you think it would've come out at the time?'
'No, I didn't say Richard knew him. Reltzin just said that Weinberg had a grudge against him, from something that happened in the past, which could mean anything. Maybe Weinberg was a waiter, or a relative of someone who thought Mr. Dobbs had wronged him. Anything. But, see, it's a new lead, actually our only new lead, so I just thought it might be worth looking through old material with that in mind. It could be anything, a photo, or a souvenir, something to connect the two men and give us more leads. Otherwise…' She let the word hang.
'Otherwise, what?'
Marlene shrugged. 'There's no point in going on. Hank doesn't have a viable book, in my opinion. All we have is the old assertions, which amount to 'Richard Dobbs was a nice guy and Weinberg lied.' Not prime time. Hank'll be pretty disappointed.'
She watched Mrs. Dobbs's face working, as if from far away, as the older woman balanced the violation of her privacy against the chance of hurting her son yet again. Why am I doing this? Marlene wondered. It wasn't a case. It wasn't even a real job. A habit, maybe. An itch that made her want to get to the bottom of secrets, even if she had to he to and browbeat a dignified old lady at a vulnerable moment, when she was concerned about a sick friend. She thought briefly about what Harry had said, about being scary. It might be true, although right now she didn't feel frightening as much as simply nasty. Which didn't mean that she was about to stop.
'Oh, I suppose it's all right,' Mrs. Dobbs said with a sigh. 'Although I can't imagine what there might still be in this house that's of relevance. Hank cleaned out the desk and the files in this office long ago. All that's here now is mine. There's the attic, I suppose. You can poke around up there-there are some photo albums and some of Richard's old books and other, I suppose you could call it junk, but I've never been able to get up the energy to throw it all away. It's in cartons, and on some old bookshelves up there. I'm afraid you'll get awfully dirty.'
'Don't worry about that. And thank you,' said Marlene, without a blush.
Mrs. Dobbs rose, as did Marlene. 'I really must be going. Kathleen will show you out.'
She paused. 'Oh, one thing. There's a high-backed wooden trunk up there that contains some of my personal things. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't disturb it.'
'Of course,' Marlene said.
The attic was low ceilinged and lit by a dusty round window and a bare forty-watt bulb. Marlene found the high-backed trunk right away, a construction in blond wood and dark iron bands of the type that wealthy people used in the twenties to take their clothes to and from the resorts. Searching around in the dark corners she found a short piece of angle iron, which she used to spring the lock.
The chest was nearly empty and smelled of dust and the ghost of some light sachet. It contained a yellowed, moth-eaten V-necked sweater with a blue Y on it, several packets of letters tied with faded red ribbons, a black portfolio, a shoe box full of postcards and photographs, and, in the very bottom, a set of leather-bound, identical diaries for the years 1930 through 1948.
Marlene sat down in the dirt and began to explore the secret life of Selma Hewlett Dobbs.
The day after he killed Mosca, Caballo drove through the quiet streets of Hialeah, squinting in the bright sun, looking for house numbers. Like much of Latin America, Hialeah was not overly concerned with precision of address. Your friends and family knew where you lived and it was no one else's business.
He spotted a likely house, a small, lime green concrete-block-stucco with a gray tile roof, barely visible behind a wall of purplish crotons. He drove past it, stopped, and walked back to check. The number was printed on a sheet of shiny tin half-buried in the croton bushes. It was the right number. The people for whom Caballo worked had kept good track of Angelo Guel
Caballo went back to his car and drove to a gas station on Flamingo, where he bought a tin two-gallon fuel can and had it filled with gas. He put it in his trunk, next to his golf bag. Then he visited an auto parts store nearby and made a few more purchases. Next he had lunch in a Cuban restaurant, and after lunch found a movie theater and watched two features in Spanish, twice. During the second show he had a refreshing nap.
When he emerged it was past eight and dark. He drove to Guel's house and went past the low, chain-link gate and through the dark wall of the crotons. Then he walked around the house to the back.
At the rear door, he pulled from his pocket the paper bag from the auto parts store and removed a four-inch flashlight, a roll of gaffer's tape, and a heavy pliers. He taped one of the narrow jalousie panes of the rear door, snapped the pane in two silently with the pliers, pulled out the pane, unlocked the door, stripped off the tape, and replaced the pane in its slot. Then he went in.
Guel was not at home. The thin man checked the refrigerator, which contained half a paper case of Bud and some condiments. He took a can, cracked it, and settled down to wait in the dark.
'This is bullshit,' said Karp. 'I'm not going to wait around this goddamn motel for Tony to decide if he's going to tell us did he find Guel or not. And just you and Al cruising around town trying to find him is hopeless.'
It was the afternoon of the second day after Mosca's murder, and Karp and Fulton were indeed hanging around their government-rate motel, the Arrowhead, off Brickell in Miami proper. They were at the side of the tiny pool, sitting in uncomfortable aluminum armchairs. When it had become clear that they were stuck in Miami for some time, Karp had broken down and purchased a pair of wash-and-wear tan slacks and a couple of short-sleeved shirts. The sporty look was constrained by the thick cordovans he continued to wear on his feet. Fulton was a good deal more Miami in flip-flops, plaid Bermudas, and a Hawaiian shirt printed with a banana motif.
'What do you suggest, boss? It's police work. It requires patience, which you ain't got. I tell you what, why don't you go back to D.C. and I'll stay down here and work the streets with Al. You can wear your suit again.'
Karp seemed not to hear this. He was staring at the water, lost in thought. Suddenly he sprang up and walked quickly back to their room. He returned fifteen minutes later.
'Let's go!'
'Where're we going, Butch? We told Al we'd meet him here at four.'
'FBI. They have a tap on Tony's phone.'
Fulton gaped in surprise. 'How the fuck did you find that… oh, yeah, your buddy in New York. You called what's-his-name, Pillman. The Feeb.'
'He's a Feeb, but he's not my buddy. He's an unindicted felon and I have his ass in my hands and I get to squeeze it in the public interest about once a year. He set things up so we can get a feed from the phone tap. We have to see a guy named Lorrimer.'
Lorrimer was a tall, clean-cut gentleman with graying brown hair who treated Karp and Fulton like a pair of piss-bums who had wandered in off Flagler Street.
'You're not going to screw up this investigation,' he stated in steely tones when they arrived at his downtown office and explained what they wanted.
'Of course not,' said Karp. 'All we're after is any information that's conveyed to Buonafacci about a man named Angelo Guel.'
