The Night Remembers

27

“You a friend of his?”

“I work for him.”

“You do?”

“Part time. I’m a former policeman.”

“You are?”

“Yep.”

“Cedar Rapids?”

“Yep.”

For the first time the apartment manager showed some vague belief in my story. A stubby man in a flannel shirt and baggy jeans and new leatherette slippers, he rubbed at a stubbled chin and said, “So he sent you back here to get something?”

“Right.” I chuckled. “Except he forgot to give me the key.”

“He don’t usually forget stuff.”

“No?”

“As a matter of fact, Conroy’s got one hell of a memory.”

Behind him, in a recliner, his wife sprawled in a robe. It was late enough for her to have a face shiny with cream and a head grotesque with curlers. She avoided looking at me, just kept staring straight ahead at the TV where somebody on one of the nighttime soap operas was just learning that he had an illegitimate son somewhere in the jungles of Ecuador.

“Boy, this is a toughie.”

“I know it is, Mr. Haversham.”

“It’s just his temper.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I let you in there and you aren’t who you say you are and—” He gripped the back of his neck and shook his head. “Boy.”

“ ‘Boy,’ is right. I wish I could help you.”

He looked back at the recliner. “Hon, you been listenin’ to this?”

She just waved him away. She was watching TV.

“The missus don’t get involved unless she has to.”

“I understand.”

He stared me up and down again. “Well, you sure look honest enough.”

“I appreciate that.”

“And you swear to me that you’re working with Frank? I mean, I know he hires ‘backup’ from time to time.”

“And this is one of those times.”

“Boy.”

“I’m really in kind of a hurry and all, Mr. Haversham.”

“So he’s waiting for you back there at the stakeout?”

“Right.”

“Boy.” He clapped his hand to the back of his neck again. “Well,” he said. He said it expansively, the way people do when they’ve given into something against their better judgment.

It was the sort of apartment old men go to die in. Everything had the feel of long use, of being passed down from transient to transient, one set of despairs to another.

There was a wicker rocking chair, the seat of which had long ago come unraveled, and there were faded photographs describing other eras entirely, Conroy in what appeared to be Vietnam, Conroy pointing to a door that had his name on it with “Detective Agency” just beneath, Conroy with a sad-eyed child who had to be his own glimpsed on a terrible Saturday-with-Daddy before the stepfather or new boyfriend came to claim him, Conroy as part of a five-man bowling team high on Schlitz and new silk shirts.

The room smelled of Lysol, cigarette smoke, beer, garbage that needed carrying out, and cold wind coming in through a window that had been smashed.

I went over, past a couch that was still folded out into a bed, and checked the window. It had been cracked so a hand could reach in and open the lock. My feet jangled on shards of glass. The window had been recently cracked, perhaps tonight.

What made me curious was that nothing bad been tossed. The bureau drawers were tidy, the bookcases with paperbacks running to Jackie Collins and Sidney Sheldon untouched, and the one large walk-in closet a model of neatness.

Nobody would have broken in unless they’d been looking for something. The orderliness implied that they’d found it, and without much trouble.

I went into the bathroom, needing to. After I finished, I washed my hands and dried them on a faded yellow towel on the rack. The nub was gone, and so was most of the “Holiday Inn” logo. As I put the towel back, I saw that the door of the long, narrow built-in storage closet was open an inch or so.

The scent of baby powder came to me as I pulled the door slowly open. I sneezed.

The first four shelves contained about what you’d expect. Bic razors new and old, a tube of Vitalis, Old Spice deodorant stick, combs, a Norelco electric shaver that apparently didn’t work, an empty red box that had contained Trojans, and several wads of toilet paper that had been used to apply cordovan shoe polish.

I found the dark brown photo album on the bottom shelf.

As soon as I lifted it, I knew immediately what had made the indentation in the bottom of the Vandersee Import-Export crate back at Bainbridge’s house.

The photo album was the identical shape and size.

I flipped through the album quickly. All the cellophane windows were empty. You could see, again from impressions left on the sheet, that the book had once held photographic slides.

I knelt down, my old knees cracking as I did so, and began groping around on the bottom shelf, hoping that a slide had fallen out from the book.

Within moments, way in the back, the smell of baby powder even stronger here, my fingers touched the cold plastic edge of a slide.

I was just retrieving it when I heard the apartment door open and Mr. Haversham say, “He told me a bare-faced lie, officers. A bare-faced lie.”

A cautious male voice said, “We’d like you to come out here, Mr. Walsh, and spend a little time explaining some things. Do you understand?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, pushing myself up from my haunches. “I understand.”