heated two cups of the morning's coffee in the microwave. From the wall, the black cat swung its pendulum tail and rolled its eyes at me.
I showed her Ray Galindez's sketch. She held it at arm's length and asked who it was supposed to be.
'Do you recognize him?'
'He looks familiar. Who is he?'
'He worked as a patrol officer for a private security firm. Back in February he discovered the body of Alan Watson while making his rounds a few blocks the other side of Continental Avenue. Watson had been stabbed, and it wasn't hard for this man to be the first person on the scene.'
'You're implying that he killed him.'
'Yes.'
'Was Alan Watson one of the men my husband had dinner with once a year?' I said that he was. 'And this man? Did he kill my husband?'
'I believe so.'
'My God,' she said, and stared at the sketch, and shuddered. 'I knew Fred Karp would never kill himself,' she said. 'My God.'
I said, 'You say this man looks familiar.'
'I know him.'
'Oh?'
'I know I've seen him. Where did he patrol? We don't have private guards around here, although the neighborhood association has been talking about hiring them. You said the other side of Continental Avenue? I wouldn't have seen him there. It's a nice section, upscale compared to this, but I don't have any reason to go there. Anyway, I know his face, and I wouldn't know it from glimpsing it through the window of a patrol car. Why do I know his face? Help me.'
'Have you seen him in the neighborhood recently?'
'No.'
'Has he come to the house?' She shook her head. 'Have you seen him at the school? He could have posed as a parent.'
'Why would he do that? Am I in danger?'
'It's possible.'
'For God's sake,' she said. She studied the picture. 'He looks so damn ordinary,' she said. 'To look at him, you'd think he was too much of a nebbish to be a policeman.'
'What could you picture him doing?'
'I don't know. Something menial, something completely pedestrian.'
'Close your eyes. He's doing something. What do you see him doing?'
'What's this, some new guided-imaging technique? It's not going to work. I intellectualize too much, that's my problem.'
'Try it anyway. What's he doing?'
'I can't see him.'
'If you could see him, what would he be doing?'
'I don't-'
'Don't figure it out. Just answer it. What's he doing?'
'Pushing a broom. My God, I don't believe it.'
'What?'
'That's it. He was a janitor in the Kashin Building where Fred had his office. He wore a uniform, matching pants and a shirt in greenish gray. How would I remember that?'
'I don't know.'
'Sometimes I would meet Fred at his office and we would have dinner and go to a play. And one time I saw this man. I think-'
'Yes?'
'I seem to remember that he was in Fred's office when I got there, and they were talking. He was sweeping the floor and he was emptying a wastebasket.'
'What was his name?'
'How would I know?'
'Your husband might have introduced you.'
'I'm afraid… John. His name was John!'
'That's very good.'
'Nobody introduced him. It was on his shirt.' She traced a short horizontal line above her left breast. 'Over the pocket, embroidered in white. No! Not white, yellow.' She shook her head. 'It's just amazing the things you remember.'
'And his name was John.'
'Yes. I didn't like him.'
'Why not?'
'There was something about him. I thought he was sly. In fact I almost said something to Fred, but I let it go.'
'What would you have said?'
'I would have warned him.'
'You thought the man was dangerous?'
She shook her head. 'Not physically dangerous. I thought he would steal something. There was a furtive quality about him. Do you know what I mean?'
'Yes.'
'But it wasn't so pronounced that it stayed in my mind. I don't believe I ever gave him another thought from that day to this. And I'm positive I never saw him again.'
'If you ever do-'
'Yes,' she said. 'I'll call you immediately, rest assured.' She frowned at the sketch. 'Definitely yellow. His name, I mean. John, in yellow script, over the left breast pocket.'
The superintendent at the Kashin Building didn't recognize the sketch, and it turned out he hadn't been working there at the time of Fred Karp's death. I went to the management company's office on West Thirty- seventh Street. Nobody there recognized the sketch, either, but a young woman checked personnel records and came up with an employee named John Siebert. He had started work five months before Karp's death and quit three weeks after. Under 'Reason for Leaving,' she told me, it said 'Moving to Florida.'
'I guess he decided to retire,' she said.
Hal Gabriel had been reclusive toward the end of his life, rarely leaving his apartment, ordering in from the Chinese restaurant and the liquor store. There were half a dozen Chinese restaurants within a few blocks of his building at Ninety-second and West End. I didn't know which ones had been in business twelve years ago when Gabriel was found hanged, but I hadn't yet known of a Chinese restaurant that employed Caucasian delivery boys.
I checked the two liquor stores a block east on Broadway. Both had had recent changes of ownership. One had changed hands when the owner retired and moved to Miami. The owner of the other had been killed five years before in a robbery. No one in either store recognized James Shorter from the sketch.
I had TJ along and we worked opposite sides of the street, showing the sketch in coffee shops and pizza parlors. The counterman at Poseidon looked at it and said, 'Haven't seen him in years and years. Two scrambled dry, toasted English no butter.' He grinned at the expression on my face. 'Good memory, huh?'
Almost too good. I complimented him on it and went outside, and TJ reported the dry cleaner across the street had also made Shorter from the sketch, and recalled that his name was Smith.
'Right, Smith,' I said. 'And he didn't want any butter on his English muffin.'
'Huh?'
'Smith? And he happened to remember the guy from twelve years ago?'
'Was a woman,' TJ said. 'An' she remembers him because he never came back for his suit jacket. Lady kept it for him for years, finally gave it to the Goodwill sometime last year. Soon as I showed her the picture, she got
