Epitaph

FOURTEEN

Miami blues.

His next and very last break came later in the day, and when he most needed it. For the list was finally exhausted, done, completed, finito; so was he. The remaining addresses had been as barren as the first, and like a mailman on an unfamiliar route he was learning the terror of ignorance. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor hail- maybe, but ignorance, that was the kicker.

Someone was moving houses on him, turning hooch houses into vacant lots, sweet-sounding streets into slums. No one was where they were supposed to be, everyone was somewhere else. It was entirely possible someone was laughing at him. He could just about hear it every time he got in and out of the car, a process, by the way, that seemed to take longer and longer as the day went on, so that by the end of the day he wasn't so much getting out of the car as falling out of it.

He felt like giving up and going back to sleep. The fact was, Florida just wasn't working out the way he'd hoped. For if he'd come to find what Jean had, he'd found nothing, and if that was what Jean had found too-then he clearly lacked the knowledge to know what that meant.

It's what I bequeath to you, Jean had told Mr. Weeks. My last testament. But the testament was in code; the list was like the Book of the Dead, and not a Rosetta stone in sight.

I'm not in runaways anymore, Jean had said. No, just in missing persons. For that's what the biggest case of his life was turning out to be. A missing persons case. For there wasn't anyone on the list who wasn't missing- and come to think of it, everything else was too. For instance: a client. No one had come forward to claim Jean as their own. Whoever Jean was working for either didn't know he was dead, or didn't much care. Okay, maybe they didn't know-it hadn't been long. Maybe soon enough they'd come forward to offer their condolences- or at the very least, to ask for their money back. And yet, William didn't think so. There was, as Santini used to say, only because his favorite tough-guy actors in the movies used to say it, something fishy here. It had nothing to do with proximity to the water.

It had to do with a file that Jean had passed on like you pass on an heirloom in a bankrupt estate-one step before the tax collectors arrive. And it had to do with a crisscrossed map that was like one blind alley, and someone who came walking out of it with his eyes open. Rejuvenated, Weeks said.

Okay.

You find what you look for, Jean used to say. So be sure you look for the right thing. Which isn't what he said, but is what he meant.

Okay. I'm looking.

But whether it was his failing eyesight, or just his general failing, he saw only questions. And like a test he hadn't studied for-Missing Persons 101, say-the questions mocked him, absolutely stuck their tongues out at him. And not a crib sheet around.

And yet it couldn't have been more than a few minutes later when he remembered the number with no response; he'd tried four numbers in New York where the same name had a different address. Two had been home- three, including Alma Ross-but one hadn't.

He dug into his wallet looking for the right slip of paper, hoping he hadn't thrown it out or left it home or simply lost it.

There-stuck between two wrinkled fives. Mr. Alfred Koppleman: 791-8350. There.

He picked up the phone and dialed.

Good things come to those who wait: page G of Jean's little black book.

He'd finished dialing Mr. Koppleman's number, but it was a woman who picked up the phone. So when he asked her if an Alfred Koppleman, lately of 1620 Fuller Drive, resided there, he fully expected her to say no.

But she didn't.

Instead she said, "Not anymore. He used to," she added, "but not anymore."

And did she know perhaps where Mr. Koppleman did reside now?

"Sure," she said. "He's in a home."

A home? "That's right. An old age home." And did she know where this old age home was? "Yes," she said. She did. Then she put down the phone for half a minute or so, came back on the line, and told him. "Thank you," William said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you." Thanking her, thanking Alfred, thanking a suddenly benevolent universe. "Sure," she said. "But who is this-? " But William had already hung up to dial his old friends at Miami Directory Assistance.