The Genius (16 page)

Since retiring, he had kept himself amused by paging through old cases that continued to bother him. His former colleagues were all too happy to have an experienced thinker shouldering a small portion of their burden. Most of the time, he said, what solved a cold case was the passage of time, as witnesses who had been afraid to talk now came forward. That had its own set of drawbacks: namely, that people forgot what they’d seen or died before bothering to tell. With the Queens murders, though, there hadn’t
been
anyone, willing or unwilling, to talk to. No rumors, no drunken bragging in a bar. It seemed hopeless. But McGrath had long ago promised himself to go down swinging.

“What else am I gonna do?” he asked me. “Watch
Dr. Phil
?”

HAVING GOTTEN USED TO running the gallery while I was working with the drawings, Nat was all too pleased to take the reins back, and so for a few weeks my life went like this: a car would come for me around three o’clock; I would get in and endure the fight to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel; through the rear window I would watch the Manhattan skyline turn to backdrop, watch the gray highway, listen for gulls circling above Riis Park. We would pull up outside the entrance to Breezy Point just as the bar was setting out the marker board with the evening’s drink specials. By four thirty I would be sitting at McGrath’s dining-room table, talking about the case. A good portion of that time was spent waiting for him to go to the bathroom.

Most nights I stayed until Samantha showed up. Actually, my cue to leave was the sound of her coming up the front steps. There was always a moment when she had to put down the bags of food and her work stuff and look for her keys, which apparently were never where she had last put them. By the time she succeeded in finding them I had opened the front door for her, and while she gathered her bags back up we would have a short and invariably banal conversation. She seemed both puzzled by and grateful for my presence, asking in a detached way if we’d turned anything up. No, I would tell her. She would shrug and tell me not to give up. Really what she meant was: don’t leave him alone. If I tried to help her with the bags she waved me away, straggling into the darkened house as McGrath called out to me, “Same time Wednesday!”

I justified taking off from work by telling myself that I had to protect my artist. I wanted to keep McGrath on a short tether, so that if he turned up anything on Victor Cracke, I’d be the first to know, and could apply the correct spin. As for McGrath, I assumed that his motivations were similar. By making me a party to the investigation, he could prevent me from interfering, or at least be better positioned if I had done so. Not to mention that—incapacitated, virtually alone—he needed a pair of legs, and I had been the first person to come along.

I had another motive, though, in going to Breezy Point. Being there gave me those few moments with his daughter.

Now that’s a detective-novel trope for you: instantaneous romance. But this one requires a little explanation, as I am not generally subject to infatuations. Besides, I had Marilyn. As I mentioned before, she and I expected of each other a certain amount of extracurricular activity. Or at least I did: the size of her sexual appetite put most men’s to shame, and we spent too many nights in our own apartments for me to believe that she had never taken home one of the opening-night waitstaff. As for me, I didn’t fool around too much. Having gotten a lot out of my system between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, by the time I hit thirty I realized how lucky I’d been never to catch anything more virulent than a few choice words and a faceful of undergraduate-caliber champagne. There had been only two or three other women in the last five years. You could blame my age, but the fact remained that I still had a full head of hair, I still fit into the same size pants, I still ran four times a week. I hadn’t lost my edge; I’d merely learned that the old saw about quantity and quality applied even to sex. Sex without any sort of challenge bored me. To a large extent that explained why I stuck with Marilyn as long as I did: she never failed to keep me on my toes, and she could be ten women in a given day.

Surely, I had less in common with Samantha than with the women I ran into on a daily basis at the gallery, most of whom were trying to be Marilyn. And nothing about our brief encounters on the front steps of Mc-Grath’s house suggested anything beyond two people passing a few cordial words, two people seated together on a plane. No prophetic words, no lingering glances, not that I can recall. I wish I’d paid closer attention.

MCGRATH AND I BEGAN BY CALLING AROUND. Most of the people mentioned in the files were either untraceable or dead—victims’ parents, the grocer who sold Alex Jendrzejewski his oatmeal, the woman on the porch in Forest Hills who had seen the strange vehicle—raising the distinct probability that the killer himself was dead, too.

That reduced the case to paper and physical evidence, the latter in storage at the Queens property clerk. To gain access, McGrath called a friend, a detective named Richard Soto, who said that if McGrath wanted to go fishing, God bless.

All the victims had been found outdoors, making analysis of the forensics that much more difficult. The boys had been killed elsewhere and taken to the dumping grounds or else left outside to be ravaged by weather. Either way, little remained that could be considered evidence, still less that could reliably be connected to the killer. There’s a lot of junk lying around New York City, and apparently it was no different in the 1960s. (“It was worse,” said McGrath. “We have Giuliani to thank for that.”)

Among the items in storage were a cigarette butt, the broken milk bottle, the cast of the footprint. There was a very slender partial fingerprint, taken from a discarded coffee cup, which itself seemed to have gone missing in the intervening years. Everything went back to the lab for reanalysis and reprinting. Of greatest significance was a pair of boy’s jeans crusted with blood and semen. That, too, went to the lab; and when it did, I had an idea that the case would soon be solved. But McGrath told me to be patient. The soonest we could expect an answer was December. “They’re still IDing 9/11 remains. Not to mention that whatever they give us is useless without something to compare it to, something we know was his. We need to get someone over to that apartment.”

“There’s nothing there,” I said. “I had the place cleaned out.”

McGrath smiled wanly. “Why did you do that.”

“Because it was a pigsty. Every time I went in I had a coughing fit.”

“Where’s all the art?”

“Storage.”

He began to question me: was there anything that might have traces of DNA on it? A toothbrush? A hairbrush?

“A pair of shoes,” I said. “A sweater. I don’t know, maybe I left something behind.”

“Did you?”

“I doubt it. We catalogued everything.”

“Shit. Well, all right. Can’t hurt to look. Are you free Monday, around lunch?”

In theory, I had an appointment to show the drawings. The client was an Indian metals tycoon, stopping in New York on his way to the fair in Miami. We’d met at the last Biennale, and since then I had been stoking the embers of a correspondence. This was my first opportunity to make good. If I tried to reschedule I would likely lose him; he was notoriously fickle and impatient.

I very easily could have asked for another day; McGrath didn’t seem to be demanding Monday.

“I’m free,” I said and felt the rush of flagrant disregard.

This was, I believe, the first sign that my life had begun to change.

“Good,” said McGrath. “Someone’ll be there. Not me, but I’m sure you already figured that out.”

“Do you ever get out?”

“On a good day, I’m strong enough to piss off the front porch.” He cackled. “It’s not too bad. I have cable. I get all my books off the computer. I got Sammy. So, not too bad.” He passed me the joint. “Well, you know, that’s horseshit. It’s like prison.”

I inhaled, said nothing.

He said, “Every morning the wind comes through here smelling like salt. If memory serves, the beach is nice.”

“It is.”

He nodded and motioned for the joint. “All right. We got work to do.”

ON THE APPOINTED MONDAY, I stood outside the entrance to Muller Courts, right where Tony had stood for me nine months prior. I hadn’t been to the building since July, and as I waited for McGrath’s team to show up, I felt guilty, as though I was about to throw a party inside a crypt. I had done my best to separate the art on the gallery walls from an actual person who lived in an actual room. I made him a ghost. Now, though, I came in search of the opposite—a literal piece of his body. The better metaphor might be graverobbing.

Who exactly was McGrath’s team, anyway? He hadn’t said anything more specific, and I kept looking for a big white police van loaded with men in Kevlar.

Instead, I got a small blue Toyota.

“Don’t look so surprised,” said Samantha. “Who else do you think is going to give up their lunch break? I’m a huge sucker or I wouldn’t be here.” She seemed to be in a good mood, or at least in a better mood than she was when I saw her in Breezy Point. If going home depressed her, I wasn’t in any position to criticize.

She whistled as she tore open a package of peanut butter and crackers and offered me one. “Nutritious and delicious.”

“I’ll pass.”

“I survive on these,” she said.

“Then I certainly don’t want to take one.”

“My blood is about two percent peanut butter.… He didn’t tell you I’d be coming?”

“No.”

“That’s hilarious. What did you expect, a guy in a lab coat?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a SWAT team.”

“Do we need a SWAT team?”

“I hope not. I didn’t realize that collecting DNA was part of your job.”

“None of this is part of my job. It’s a way to keep him occupied.”

“You don’t think he’s on to anything?”

“Based on what, the oatmeal theory?”

I nodded. “That, and everything else.”

“As far as I can tell, there isn’t much else. It’s interesting, but I don’t think anyone’s going to prison because of what they ate for breakfast. Besides, you don’t know where the guy is, do you?”

“No.”

“There you go. I’d rather spend my time going after people I know are guilty, and that I can find.”

“You must know how to track people down. You must have to do it all the time.”

“Not really,” she said. “That’s up to the police. Besides, people who commit crimes are stupid. Most of the time, they’re right where we expect them to be: in their mother’s basement, getting drunk and touching themselves.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Daughterly love. Anyway, in response to your question, no. I’m not collecting anything. I have a friend coming to do that. Now I owe her three favors.”

Before I could ask what the first two were, she turned to wave at a small dark woman coming up the block. She had curly black hair and purple lips and wore a form-fitting leather jacket. She set down her bag and rose up on tiptoes to kiss Samantha on the cheek. “Hey doll.” Then she offered her hand to me, revealing a tattoo of a bleeding rose on the inside of her wrist. “Annie Lundley.”

“Ethan Muller.”

“Pleased to meetcha.” She pointed a finger at Samantha. “That’s three.”

Samantha nodded. “Let’s go.”

“I THOUGHT MY PLACE WAS SMALL.” From the threshold, Annie peered into the apartment. She had on latex gloves and a hairnet. “You didn’t leave much when you cleaned up, huh.”

“Not really,” I said. “I like things neat.”

“How many people were in here?”

“A lot.”

“We’re going to need to rule them out, so make a list.” She checked her watch and sighed. “You might want to come back in four or five hours.”

Samantha and I stepped outside to give Annie the full run of the roost. “You don’t have to stay,” I said.

“That’s funny,” she said. “I was just going to say the same thing to you.”

“Don’t you have to get back to work?”

“Eventually. Civil service isn’t as rigorous as you’d think.”

“I don’t think it’d be that rigorous at all.”

“Then you’d be right on the money. They’re still out to lunch. The guys in my office will do anything to avoid their jobs. You don’t know how much porn they send me on an hourly basis.”

“It’s a nice thing you’re doing,” I said. “For your father.”

She half smiled. “Thanks.” Her tone implied that I had no right to grade her behavior. “It’s hard to remember that when he calls up and tells me I have to be somewhere on Monday, noon sharp. He can be pretty overbearing. Tunnel vision. It’s not just this, it’s everything.”

“He probably doesn’t realize he’s putting you out.” I felt hypocritical defending McGrath; who better than I to sympathize with someone suffering under a father’s ridiculous demands? But things your own parents do to drive you crazy can seem piteous and understandable when it’s someone else’s parents doing them.

“Oh, he realizes it. Sure he does. He knows it’s a pain in the ass. That’s
why
he asks me. I’m the only one who’ll do it. If you don’t believe me, ask my mother. I’m sure she’ll be happy to share her war stories with you.”

I didn’t ask about Mrs. McGrath. I had a feeling she lived someplace far away.

Samantha leaned against the wall. “So you’re an art dealer. That must be fun.”

“It has its moments.”

“More glamorous than my job.”

“It really isn’t. Most of the time I’m sending e-mails and making phone calls.”

“You want to switch for the day? You can interview rape victims.”

“That sounds awful.”

“I hate to say it, but you get used to it pretty fast.” Her phone rang. “Excuse me.” She walked down the hall to take the call.

Boyfriend calling, I guessed. I tried to listen in but couldn’t, not unless I got up and followed her. She talked for a good fifteen minutes. Eventually, I opened the door to the apartment and poked my head in. I saw Annie crouched near the baseboards, slowly playing a flashlight back and forth.