Five men had vanished without a trace. He and John could have gone the same way…
'Hey, buddy, you going to fart around all day?'
He realized he had been staring into nothing for several minutes, reliving the past. He glanced at his watch. 'Shit.' He was late already and still had two blocks to walk. 'I'm really sorry.'
'Yeah. Sure.'
The assistant prosecuting attorney scowled as Cash slipped into the pewlike courtroom bench next to John. The man was one of the young firebreathers, bound for political glory. The judge, defense attorney, and court staff barely glanced his way. The jury and other witnesses paid him no heed either.
'Anything happened?' he whispered.
'Still making speeches.' John handed him a manila envelope. It contained two-dozen Xeroxes of classified pages, Personals. The key item on each had been circled in red magic marker.
Most began with a cryptic, 'Thanks to St. John Nepomuk for favors received,' and a date, followed by two or three vaguely religious and completely uninformative lines.
Nepomuk? Wasn't that a Czech saint? Cash asked himself. There was a Czech Catholic church at Twelfth and Lafayette dedicated to him. Why would a German, especially one who showed no religious inclinations in her home, be invoking a Czech saint?
Wait. Parts of Czechoslovakia… the Sudetenland, Bohernia. That had been Hitler's excuse for invading Czechoslovakia-to liberate the German minority. People who spoke German, anyway. In fact, Czechoslovakia as a country only went back to the First World War, didn't it?
What was it before that? Part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But the part called Bohemia had been an independent kingdom once. Prague was the capital. Hadn't there been a Mad King Ludwig once? No, he had been king of Bavaria. Hadn't he? Or was that Leopold? No, that was in Belgium…
There were times when he wished he knew more. About everything.
'The dates are important,' John whispered.
Teri had gone to the bother of typing up a catalog list. Most of the dates, the earlier ones, were at regular six month intervals. But since March there had been four, at erratic intervals. Cash reread those ads. He couldn't see where they varied significantly from the others, but their publication seemed timed to his encounters with Miss Groloch.
'How'd she put them in?'
John grinned. 'Through her accountants. I did a little number on them this morning. Had to stretch the truth a little and hint that we were on a narcotics case. The boss finally admitted that he got his instructions by phone.'
'But she doesn't have one.'
'There's an outside pay phone at the service station at Russell and Thurman. Only two blocks. She called the man at home, late at night.'
Cash laid a hand on John's arm. Both prosecutor and judge were eying them in irritation. 'Later.'
He began browsing through Mrs. Caldwell's report, which told him almost nothing he really wanted to know. It was thick because the woman had reproduced the entirety of dozens of letters or diary entries which mentioned the Grolochs only in passing.
During the first few decades, when there had been few neighbors, there seemed to have been a great deal of traffic to and from the Groloch house, mainly the coming and going of tradesmen. Letters of the period remarked on the odd bent of the Grolochs' interests. They were believed to be inventors, working with telegraphy, telephonies, or electricity. But Miss Groloch also seemed immensely interested in things medical.
She received dozens of journals, many from Europe.
Was invention the source of their fortune? Cash wondered. Was he going to have to undertake a stalk through patent records?
There had also been the air of mystery still felt today. Perhaps it had been even stronger then. More than one letter mentioned an irrational dread of the foreigners, who were universally admitted to be perfect neighbors.
Only the Fenian, O'Driscol, seemed to have been comfortable in their presence.
Of the Irishman there was little mention. The man seemed to have maintained a low profile, which fit his hypothetical revolutionary and draft-dodger background. His disappearance had caused so little comment that Mrs. Caldwell hadn't been able to pin down the exact year, let alone a specific date. Sometime in the eighties, probably late.
His departure loomed important only in retrospect, in the minds of a handful of people who had still been around at the time of the O'Brien incident.
Cash penned a marginal note:
Then he noted,
The departure of Fian, also, had slipped by with little notice, though it was better documented. June 14, 1889, aboard an eastbound train from Union Station. Explanation, a death in the old country, an estate that had to be settled.
Cash made another note:
Suppose the Grolochs were illegals?… No, no leverage there. Every ten years or so Congress passed laws exculpating long-term illegals.
