Hope to Die (18 page)

"That's where it came from, and he must have been the one who took it."

"Why couldn't he buy it on the street? Not the hardest thing in the world to do, if you know your way around."

"The pillowcases," I said.

"Forgot about them. Same deal in both break-ins, at the shrink's and at the Hollanders'. Stripped the pillows, used the cases to carry off the goods."

"It's a fairly natural thing to do," I said, "and it saves hunting in the closet for tote bags, but when it pops up in both burglaries- "

"Likely the same person done both."

"Seems that way."

"If it was Ivanko, well, ain't burglary what he went away for? Maybe that's something he always did, strip the pillows an' turn the cases into sacks for Santa."

"Full of toys for girls and boys. I can't see Ivanko picking that apartment to break into. It's a doorman building facing the park. Ivanko was street-smart, but street's all he was. How would he get past the doorman?"

"Or even know about the shrink's place to begin with?"

"The burglar knew about the gun. That's the only thing he took from the office, and he took it out of a locked drawer. And he did it without making a mess, because the shrink didn't even miss the gun until a couple of days after the burglary."

"Burglar knew the shrink."

"I think so."

"Knew the office, knew how to get past the doorman. Knew about the gun."

"That's probably what brought him. He wanted a gun, so he broke in and took one."

"From the drawer where he already knew the shrink kept it. He knows the office, then he most likely knows the shrink."

"Stands to reason," I said.

"You tried with the shrink, didn't you? Called him or something?"

"I think a more imaginative approach might yield better results."

"Well," he said, "you imaginative, when you puts your mind to it. That what you gonna do today?"

"I think so."

"I disremember the doctor's name. Keep thinking Adler, but that ain't right."

"Nadler."

"Nadler. There was an Adler 'round the time Freud started the whole thing. What's the matter?"

"Nothing, why?"

"The look on your face. You didn't think I knew that, did you?"

"It's surprising, what you know and what you don't."

He nodded, as if he could accept the truth in that. He said, "Psychoanalysis. Anything to it, you figure?"

"You're asking the wrong person. I think they've gotten away from that approach nowadays, though. Easier to write out a prescription than listen to neurotics all day long."

"Listen to Prozac instead. You don't need me to see Dr. Nadler with you, do you?"

"I think that might be counterproductive."

"All you had to say was no. What I'll do, I'll go to Brooklyn, take a look at that house."

"Really?"

"Talk to people, see what's shakin'."

"Maybe you'll find something I missed," I said. "You want the D train to Avenue M, incidentally. I got off a stop too soon."

"Wrong house. I was thinkin' I'd see how the boyfriend's doin' in Williamsburg. She tell you the address?"

"I didn't ask."

"Not like you. She at least mention the street?"

I searched my memory. "No," I said, "I'm pretty sure she didn't. She'd have to know the street, and probably the house number as well. She was thinking about moving there."

"Boyfriend's name's Peter Meredith?"

"Yes, and he's the original Mr. Five-by-Five and wouldn't kill a cockroach. Where are you going?"

"Don't go nowhere," he said. "Be right back."

He was gone long enough for me to drink another cup of coffee and call for the check, and I was waiting for change when he came back. "I had half of a half a bagel left," he said. "You eat it?"

"The waiter took it."

"Damn," he said. "How I look?"

He'd been wearing knee-length camo shorts and an oversize sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, and he'd changed into the pants from a black pinstripe suit and a white shirt with short sleeves and a button-down collar. No tie. His black shoes were polished. There were four pens in his shirt pocket, and he was carrying a clipboard.

"You look like a city employee," I said.

"Buildings Department."

"They're usually older," I said. "And thicker through the middle."

"And lighter-complected."

"For the most part. The ones I ran into over the years all looked as though their feet hurt them some."

"I 'spect mine will," he said, "by the time these shoes take me to 168 Meserole Street."

"What did you do, call Brooklyn Information?"

"Takes too long. They got to answer the phone, and then all they'll tell you is the number. You still got to look it up in a reverse directory or else call it and trick the address out of whoever answers. Who's got time for all that shit?"

"Your time is valuable," I said.

"I got on the Net," he said. "Typed in 'Peter Meredith, Brooklyn,' and got the address, the phone, the zip code. Took two seconds an' I didn't have to talk to nobody."

"Except the address is wrong."

"Say what?"

"Meserole's in Greenpoint, not Williamsburg. The two neighborhoods run into each other, but Meserole's in a part of Greenpoint that got gentrified a while ago. That's not a place to find a low-priced fixer-upper."

"That's Meserole Avenue. They on Meserole Street."

"There's two Meseroles?"

"You'd think one'd be enough," he said. "Look hard, you can probably find some cities don't have any." From the back of the clipboard he produced a sheet of paper showing a map of a few square miles of North Brooklyn. "Printed it out just now," he said, anticipating my question. "See? Here's Meserole Avenue, up in Greenpoint, an' this here's Meserole Street, runnin' over towards Bushwick Terminal."

I looked at the map. Both Meseroles, street and avenue, crossed Manhattan Avenue, the two intersections a mile and a half apart. It was the sort of thing that drove UPS drivers crazy.

Ray Galindez, a police artist I know, had bought a house in Williamsburg a couple of years ago, and I'd taken the L train out to visit him. The same train would get you close to Meserole Street, but you'd have to stay on an extra three stops. I didn't know the neighborhood- I hadn't even known the street existed- but I could guess why Kristin Hollander thought she'd rather stay in Manhattan.

"I didn't know you could do this," I said. "Print out a street map of Brooklyn."

"Man, you could just as easy print out a street map of Samarkand. You gotta get on-line. You missin' out."

We'd had this conversation before. "I'm too old for it," I told him, not for the first time, and he told me about a man he'd exchanged e-mails with, eighty-eight years old, living in Point Barrow, Alaska, and surfing the Net for hours every day.

"Why would anyone that age live in Point Barrow, Alaska?" I wondered. "And how do you know he's telling the truth? It's probably some nineteen-year-old lesbian posing as an old man."

He rolled his eyes.

"I'm sure I'd have a wonderful time surfing the Net," I said, "and I'd be a better person for it, too. But I don't need to because I've got you to do it for me."

"And to chase out to Brooklyn for you." He looked down at himself, shook his head. "Good thing it out in the middle of nowhere. Don't want nobody I know seein' me lookin' like this."

"Not to worry," I said. "They'd never recognize you."

I should know better, but I tend to form mental images of people I haven't met. I'll hear a voice over the phone and think I know what the person's going to look like.

With Seymour Nadler I'd had his voice- low in pitch, professionally calm- to go by, along with his name and address and profession. I found myself preparing to meet a big bear of a man, balding on top, with a mane of dark hair flowing down over the collar of his open-necked corduroy shirt. His beard, as black as his hair, would need trimming.

Nadler turned out to be about my height, trimly built, clean-shaven, and wearing a gray glen plaid suit and a striped tie. His hair was brown and neatly barbered, and he still had all of it. His eyes, behind horn-rimmed glasses with bifocal lenses, were a washed-out blue. He had a small, thin-lipped mouth, and the hand he offered me felt small in mine.

His office was on the tenth floor, agreeably furnished with older pieces. There was a couch, of course, but there were also several comfortable chairs. The carpet was Oriental, the paintings American primitives. Next to his desk, a computer perched on a black metal stand, the room's only contemporary note. The windows looked out on Central Park.

"I can give you twenty minutes," he said. "My next appointment's at two, and I need ten minutes to prepare."

I told him that would be ample.

"Perhaps you could tell me exactly why you're here," he said. "My claim for losses incurred in the burglary has long since been settled. It took you people long enough, and I can't say I was happy with the amount, but it didn't seem worth going to court over." He smiled. "Although I considered it."

He evidently thought I was working for his insurance company. I hadn't quite said that, but I'd certainly done what I could to create that impression.

"Well," I said, "it's in connection with the gun."

"The gun!"

"Twenty-two-caliber Italian pistol," I said. "Stolen from a desk in your office, if my information's correct."

"I never even reported the loss of the gun."

I paged through my notebook, trying to look puzzled. "You didn't report it to the police? The law requires- "

"To the police, yes, of course, but I'd already submitted my claim to you people before I missed the gun. It wasn't that expensive, and I'd never listed it on my inventory, so I didn't bother to amend my claim. If I'd known you people were going to nickel-and-dime me on the value of my wife's jewelry, you can be sure I would have put the gun on the list."

I held up a hand. "Not my department," I said. "Believe me, I know where you're coming from. Don't quote me on this, but our claims adjusters pull that crap all the time."

"Well," he said, and gave me a sudden smile. We were on the same side now, and I felt pleased with myself for having successfully used psychology on a psychiatrist. "Well, then. What about the gun?"

"It was used recently in a home invasion."

"Yes," he said, frowning. "Yes, I actually did hear about that. A genuinely horrible incident, and it happened not far from here, I believe."

"On West Seventy-fourth Street."

"Yes, not far at all. Two people killed."

"And two more in Brooklyn."

"The perpetrators, yes. Murder and suicide, wasn't it? Interesting. That seems to happen sometimes, you know, with people who run amok and kill people. They conclude the drama by killing themselves." He put the tips of his small fingers together, pursed his lips. "I'm not certain of the mechanism. The conventional wisdom is that they're suddenly struck by the enormity of their actions and commit suicide to punish themselves. But I wonder if it isn't simply that they've run out of people to shoot and still feel the need to go on. So they turn the gun on the only person available, their own self."

His waiting room held several framed diplomas and certificates, but that speech did more to convince me he was a board-certified psychiatrist than a whole wall full of sheepskins.

"Well, that's just speculation," he said, after I'd admired the theory. "But why are you here? Surely the gun's not likely to be returned to me."

"No, I believe it's going to have to stay in a police evidence locker for a long time."

"It can stay there forever," he said. "I certainly don't want it back."

"Did you replace it?"

He shook his head. "I bought it for protection. I never expected to use it, and indeed I never had occasion to remove it from the locked drawer where I kept it." He stroked his chin. "When it was gone, I wondered if I might not have wanted it to be gone. Perhaps my distaste for the weapon had somehow contributed to its having been taken away by the burglars."

"How would that work, sir?"

"There's a principle that nothing happens entirely by accident. Some element of unconscious design is involved. This doesn't mean that the victim is always at fault, that's nonsense, but sometimes there's a contributory element. In this instance, the burglars confined themselves to our living quarters. The gun was absolutely the only item removed from my office. That's why it took me as long as it did to know the damned thing was missing."

"So you think the way you felt about the gun..."

"It may not have literally induced the burglar to come in here and get the gun," he said. "I can see where you might find that a bit of a stretch, and so might I, truth to tell. But the whole business, well, I certainly didn't feel inclined to go out and buy another damned gun."

I said, "You kept it in your desk."

"That's right."

"That desk you're sitting at?"

"Yes, of course. Do you see another desk in the room?"

"And which drawer would that be?"

He looked at me. "Which drawer? What possible difference can it make which drawer I kept it in?"

"Probably none," I said.

"And once again, just why are you here? I regret profoundly that a weapon I once owned was the instrument of several people's deaths, but I can't see that it's any of my responsibility."

"Well, that's just it."

"I beg your pardon?"

"There's a question of legal responsibility," I said. "It's possible that the owner of a weapon could be held accountable for the results of the use of that weapon by another party. In other words, someone injured by a bullet from your gun could sue you for letting the gun fall into criminal hands."