Trust Your Eyes

THIRTY-SIX

Thomas wouldn’t tell me anything about his chat with the landlord after Julie left. He said he was too annoyed with me. He went back up to his room and closed the door. I could hear him in there, chatting with one of our former presidents.

So the following morning when he came down to the kitchen, rather than beg him for details, I asked nothing. Except for what kind of cereal he wanted.

Halfway through the bowl, as I was pouring myself a second cup of coffee, Thomas said, “Don’t you want to know about my conversation?”

“Who with?” I asked, figuring he meant Bill Clinton.

“With the landlord. Mr. Papadapolous.”

“If you want to tell me. You didn’t last night, so it’s up to you.”

“I think I woke him up,” Thomas said. “He seemed very angry. And I had some trouble understanding him. He had some kind of accent.”

“I’d bet Greek.”

“Why?” Thomas asked.

“Never mind. Carry on with your story.”

“I told him who I was, and that I am a consultant to the Central Intelligence Agency.”

I put down my coffee. “Jesus, Thomas, no.”

“I didn’t want to lie. And I think identifying myself that way made him more agreeable to answering my questions.”

I figured it was only a matter of time before the FBI returned. They might have overlooked Thomas bombarding the CIA with e-mails, but telling people he was working on behalf of a federal agency? This could only get worse.

“I asked him who had lived there before,” Thomas said.

“Go on.”

“Two women.”

“That’s what the woman down the hall said,” I reminded him.

“I asked if they were sisters, or a mother and daughter, or just friends, and he said they were roommates, but not very good friends, because sometimes one of them didn’t always pay her rent on time and the other one had to come up with the extra money.”

I nodded. “Good questioning.”

“He said their names were Courtney and…the other one I think he said was Olsen but it was hard to tell with his accent.”

“That’s a first name and a last name.”

“‘Olsen’ was a first name. I have the last names. I wrote them down. He said as far as he knew Olsen still hasn’t been found.”

I perked up. “Hasn’t been found? What do you mean, hasn’t been found?”

“That’s what he said. And I asked what he meant and he said the CIA must be pretty stupid if it didn’t already know all about that and I had to explain to him that the CIA has many branches and is a very large organization and-”

“So what did he tell you?”

“He said Olsen disappeared. And I asked him who was living in the apartment now, and he said nobody.”

“That’s what I said.”

“But,” Thomas said, holding up a finger, like he was Sherlock Holmes or something, “the apartment is being rented.”

“Who’s renting it?”

“Mr. Blocker,” Thomas said.

“Who’s that?”

“The man who’s renting the apartment.”

“I know, but who is he?”

“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “Why would someone rent an apartment but not use it?”

“Lots of reasons. Maybe he doesn’t live in New York but has to come in all the time on business.”

Thomas was dubious. “That seems very wasteful.”

“People who have money don’t worry about being wasteful,” I said. “It’s just easier for them to have a place instead of renting a hotel room every time they come into town.”

That was a hard concept for Thomas to get his head around. “I don’t know. But what I do think is, it’s probably the Olsen woman who’s in the window. She got killed, and that’s why no one has seen her.”

“I see. And why was she killed?”

He thought a moment. “So Mr. Blocker could have her apartment when he came into Manhattan.”

I laughed. “Is that what you think this is about? Someone needed an apartment so they killed to get one?”

“I’ve heard that rental accommodation is hard to come by in New York,” Thomas said, dead serious.

“I was in the building. I don’t think those apartments are worth killing for.” I placed my palms on the table. “Look, Thomas, let’s take a moment to review. All we know is, two women used to live there, and now they don’t, and your landlord friend says Mr. Blocker now pays the rent on it but doesn’t actually live there.”

“The landlord’s not my friend. I don’t even know him.”

“Okay. But that little bit of information doesn’t add up to a murder.”

“Except one of the women is missing.”

“According to the landlord, who is not exactly a detective for the New York Police Department. Maybe the woman’s been found, but no one’s bothered to tell this guy.”

“That’s a good idea,” Thomas said.

“What’s a good idea?”

“Calling the New York Police Department.”

“I didn’t say that was a good idea. I just said that the landlord might not be your best source for information.”

“Then we should go to the best source.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

“Well, then, I can send an e-mail and ask the CIA to get in touch with them.”

Now, that was definitely not a good idea.

“Okay,” I said. “Leave this with me. I’ll put in a call to the New York police. Ask them about this missing woman, see if she turned up.”

“And tell them to go online, check out Orchard Street on Whirl360, and tell them to look at the face in the window.”

“Sure,” I said.

Thomas went back to eating his cereal. In my head, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. We were done with this. More done than Thomas realized. The odds of my picking up the phone to talk to the NYPD were about as good as anyone at the NYPD paying any attention to me if I actually made the call.

I could imagine how a New York detective would react when I told him my brother-the one now on file with the FBI for sending updates on his street memorization project to a former president-believed he’d seen a murder on the Internet.

Oh yeah, that was a call I wanted to make.

I said to Thomas, “Let me ask you something.”

“Go ahead,” he said, a drop of milk running down his chin.

“When this big meltdown happens, when all the online maps go kaplooey, what do you think is actually going to cause it?”

He put down his spoon and dabbed his chin with a paper napkin.

“I think the most likely cause will be an alien attack,” he said matter-of-factly. “The attack will most likely come from beyond our own solar system, although I think it’s possible it could be launched from either Venus or Mars. Once the aliens disable our mapping systems, it’ll be easier for them to make their landings undetected.”

A sad, hopeless feeling enveloped me.

“Gotcha,” Thomas said, never even cracking a smile. “You should see your face.”

I told Thomas I was driving into town and would be back in an hour or so.

Clicking away, he said, “Uh-huh.”

“I’d like you to make lunch today,” I said. “For both of us. And I’ll do dinner.”

He stopped and spun around in his chair. “Do I clean up, too?”

“Yes. Hey, Julie was saying, back in high school, you kind of had a thing for Margaret Tursky. That true?”

“I don’t see where that’s any of your business.”

I gave it a shot.

“Catch ya later,” I said. He nodded and returned to work. I didn’t think I’d be gone long enough for him to get into any mischief, but you could never know for sure.

I pulled into the driveway of a single-story ranch on Ridgeway Drive and rang the bell. It was Marie Prentice who answered.

“Why, Ray, what a surprise!” she said, holding open the screen door. She shouted back into the house: “Len! Ray’s here! Ray, did you bring your brother? Is he in the car?”

“I came alone, Marie,” I said, stepping into their house.

“Oh, that’s such a shame!” she said, slightly out of breath, but still managing to ooze enthusiasm with every syllable. “It would have been so nice to see him.”

Marie collected small ceramic figurines of forest creatures that adorned nearly every surface in the house. The slender table in the front hall was littered with deer and raccoons and squirrels and chipmunks, none of them to scale with one another, at least I hoped not, or else there were chipmunks out there somewhere capable of eating Bambi for lunch.

Peering into the living room I could see more of the menagerie. Len had carved out a small piece of territory on the coffee table for his remotes, but otherwise the animals had taken over. Marie also fancied herself a painter, and the walls were decorated with her own portraits of owls and moose and bunnies.

“Len!” she screamed again.

A door in the hallway just off the living room opened and Len emerged from the basement. I was willing to bet he spent a lot of time down there. I knew he had a workshop, that he made furniture.

“Ray dropped by!” Marie said. “Isn’t that nice?”

Len cracked a nervous smile. “Hey there,” he said. “You on your own?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Would you like some coffee?” Marie asked. “I was just about to start a fresh pot.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I just wanted to have a word with Len for a second.”

“Why don’t you come downstairs and I’ll show you what I’ve been working on,” he said, giving me a look that told me he knew why I was there, and that he didn’t want to talk about it in front of his wife.

“Sure,” I said.

“You positive you won’t have something?” Marie asked, following us to the basement door.

“We’re good, Marie,” Len said, holding out his arm for me to precede him down the steps. He closed the door behind him as he followed me.

“Nice workshop,” I said. It looked as though Len had, in this well-illuminated room, every tool a master craftsman might need: jigsaw, drill press, lathe, a large worktable, a Shop-Vac, and a wall adorned with hand tools of every description. On the far side of the room, a broad set of stairs led up to a pair of angled, swinging doors. So that was how he’d get the furniture out. There wasn’t a speck of sawdust on the floor, which made sense, since I didn’t see any project under way. No chair legs or dresser drawers or cabinet doors lying about, waiting to be made into something whole.

“I try to keep it nice,” Len said.

“So what are you working on?” I asked. “This place looks too pristine to actually build anything.”

“I don’t have any projects on the go,” Len said. “I figured you’d want to talk privately.”

“Thomas told me there was an incident yesterday,” I said. “I came over to find out more. I understand Thomas struck you.”

Len reached up and touched his cheek. “Yeah, well.”

“I’m sorry. Thomas shouldn’t have done that.”

“I guess he can’t help it,” Len said. “Being crazy and all.”

“He’s not crazy,” I said. “He has a mental illness. You know that.”

“Come on, Ray. That’s just a nice way to say he’s nuttier than a fruitcake.”

I felt something tingle at the back of my neck. “What happened, exactly? When you came out to the house.”

“I dropped by, just to see how you boys were doing, that’s the kind of thing your dad would have wanted me to do, and you weren’t there, just Thomas. He said you were in New York?”

“And what happened?”

“I tried to do something nice, that’s what happened.”

“I don’t understand why Thomas would get angry if that’s what you were trying to do.”

“I just wanted to get him-”

“Everything okay down there?” Marie called. She had opened the door.

“We’re fine, damn it!” Len barked.

The door closed.

Len cleared his throat and continued. “I offered to take him out for lunch.”

“You know Thomas doesn’t like to leave the house much.” I didn’t add that he especially wouldn’t have liked leaving it to go out with Len.

“Yeah, yeah, I know that, but I thought it would do him some good. He can’t stay cooped up in there all the time. It’s just not healthy. Used to drive your dad batty.”

“So when did Thomas hit you?”

Len shrugged tiredly. “I guess I was kind of pressing the point. Trying to talk him into coming out. I took hold of his arm, thought I could nudge him along, you know? He yanked his arm back and he caught me on the side of the face. If Thomas said it was anything more than that, if he said I hurt him or anything, that’s totally not true. That’s one of his flights of imagination, that’s what that is.”

“He never said anything like that,” I said.

He nodded with satisfaction. “That’s good. Because crazy people can say all kinds of shit that’s just not true, you know what I mean? He thinks a former president is his friend, for Christ’s sake.”

I kept my voice level, and firm. “Len, I suspect you meant well, and I know you were my father’s friend for a very long time, and I mean no disrespect, but I won’t have you calling Thomas crazy. He’s a good, gentle, decent person. I’m not going to try to argue that he’s not a bit unusual. I get that. But you’ve no right to call him names. And if he doesn’t want to take you up on your offer to go to lunch, you need to respect that the way you would if you were asking anyone else.” I took a breath.

As I turned for the stairs, Len said, “He’s not so gentle, you know.”

“What?”

“Your dad told me. Thomas could get real angry. Tried to push your dad down the stairs one time. Oh, he made all kinds of excuses for your brother’s behavior, but if you want my honest opinion, he ought to be locked up in a loony bin.”