mind. Experience helps. I know when a hunch is worth chasing. What makes you good at what you do? What makes anyone good?”
Isobel sipped the last of her drink. She put down the glass with emphasis.
“What do you have to do with Hopman, MacNeal, and Ochs?”
“There are other people on the list.” Walter was looking into her pupils, expecting a reaction. She gave him none. He went on. “Some of the ones who are probably on the list hired me to find the killer.”
“Who are the others?” Stupid, stupid, stupid. It was a stupid thing to say and she knew it, but too late.
“First I have to identify the guy, assuming it’s a him.”
“What will you do after you know who it is?”
“I will find him.”
“After you find him, what will you do?”
“I won’t ‘do’ anything.” The tone of his answer rejected her plain implication-that he intended to rub someone out. He was past his impatience now. He seemed pleased to be talking simple business. “Most of the time I’m bringing somebody home. All I’m doing now is finding a guy.”
“And what do you think your friends will do when you find him?”
“They’re not my friends. Just my clients. And what they do is their business. They’re not killers themselves. From what I’ve seen they will buy him off.”
“So you think he survived the E. coli disaster and lost someone he loved? Wife, child? Something like that?” She paused long enough for him to let her go on. “Then how do you buy off a person like that?”
Walter stopped, took in a long, deep breath through his nose, then turned his gaze to the park across the street for only a moment. “What’s the largest amount of money you’ve ever thought of having?” he asked, turning to look at her.
“I already have it. My people are not poor. I struggle only because I prefer it. Actually, I don’t struggle.”
“How much? Give me a figure.”
“I am not a materialist. I think in modest terms.”
“How much?”
Isobel took a moment to ponder. Before she could speak he reached out and touched her hand, his fingers surprisingly warm.
“In dollars. Do you have a figure in mind?”
She did, and she nodded.
Walter sat back. “Now double it, triple it, quadruple it.”
“Oh, m-m-my,” said Isobel.
“Think about Hopman and MacNeal. Think about their money. How much was their life worth? Think of the people we’re talking about.”
Another flick of the finger, another waiter. They ordered, and Walter went on without losing a beat. She had the somewhat creepy feeling that Walter believed he knew all about her. In retrospect now, his impatience seemed measured, as though he were tolerating expected girlish antics. She suddenly felt-absurdly, really-taken for granted. She also felt a little like being understood. His apparently genuine inclination to talk straight had an effect. She found herself tending to accept his words at face value.
He said he wanted Isobel’s help in identifying his man; he was sure that she’d done more research on it, and gathered more good information, than anyone else in the wide, wide world. He also said, quite matter-of-factly, that while Isobel’s research would speed his work, she could not realistically expect to identify this guy without him.
And he left it precisely there.
She thought long and hard, and he did not attempt to hurry her.
They ate in silence for what must have been quite a while, as New York passed on the street outside, and waiters danced through the room, and diners, all nicely dressed, a surprising number of them older, hummed at each other over their food.
She suddenly saw that he’d ordered a bottle of white wine. As the waiter poured, Isobel understood that her mind was made up. She explained that she’d turned her West Side apartment into a photo gallery. She said she had pictures of hundreds of adult survivors-parents and spouses and brothers and sisters and grown-up children of those killed by Knowland meat. She also had spreadsheets designed to connect the dots, to correlate factors likely to narrow the field, to grind the data down to a workable list.
She had a rough timeline tracking who died when. She knew who lost a child, a wife, a husband, a brother, a sister. She included cousins when evidence showed they were close. Many of their pictures were taped on her walls. On her kitchen wall, her “wall of fame,” hung photographs of all who had lost two or more close relatives. She and her assistant spent days on the net assembling facts and likenesses, then dumping them into a system of folders she had designed for that purpose.
Walter expressed neither admiration nor surprise, which disappointed Isobel and left her somewhat irritated, which irritated her all the more.
“You have the data,” Walter said. “I have the skill and experience. We need to help each other.”
“I am not without skill and experience.” Now this old man was getting on her nerves. “Besides, I have the New York Times behind me.” She wished she hadn’t said it the moment she did. Behind her with a pitchfork, maybe. Walter certainly knew that.
But he played it like a gentleman, just as her father would. “My guess is that that anyone who knows you finds it impossible to believe that you were dishonest or sloppy. I’m sure that many colleagues believe you, but I do not believe you. I know for a fact that you are right. And you know that I’m the only one who does.”
They both knew the deal was done.
And so was dinner. He suggested dessert and coffee and cognac. She signaled that she needed a rest by saying she’d never been inside the Mayflower before. He said that he based himself here when he stayed in New York. She thought to say that the senior contingent probably made him feel very young indeed, but she sipped her coffee instead.
Walter said, “When I was a kid in Rhinebeck, it took a couple of hours to drive down here. In high school we’d do it sometimes, get drunk, and drive home. It was a change of pace. At the time there was a notorious call girl ring in this building. It was all very high class and got some play in the papers when they busted the ring. I told my friends to drive by. We went around the block half a dozen times. After that I used to imagine walking down the street right out there, and one of these girls comes out looking like a movie star, and she wiggles her finger and there I go. And I’m sitting around in this penthouse with dozens of girls, drinking scotch and all the rest of it. The thing was, I’d seen an actual place that was in the news. I felt a connection. The first time I had to stay in the city for business, I came right here. I’ve done it ever since. I’ve sat at this table more times than I can count. As you can see, I’m a very popular figure here.”
“And the girls…?”
“Long gone by the time I landed.”
She was greatly encouraged by her meeting and ongoing work with Walter. It helped her keep her chin up during the next couple of days, as the criticism continued. She spent the next day at home, working with him. She went to the office the following morning, more than a little bucked up. On top of the pile of her morning mail was an envelope bearing no postmark, no stamp, and no return address. The computer-generated label showed only her name. Whoever sent it had gotten it into the Times ’ internal system. It contained a single sheet, unsigned. The following words in 16 pt. bold were printed across the center:
I killed Floyd Ochs.
It was not Harlan Jennings.
Details to follow.
Very carefully, holding it by a single edge, she placed the envelope between two sheets of paper and stapled them top and bottom. Later, she learned there were no fingerprints on either the envelope or the note. Then she placed the evidence in her top drawer and sat back to focus on her breathing, trying to get her heart under control.
St. John
“Best towel I ever used was in Aruba,” said Walter, wiping his face with the relatively clean specimen Billy had produced from behind the bar. “Big orange ones. They handed them out when you got to the beach. Real thick,
