Trophies (43 page)

Back at my condo, I'd thrown my old trophies
into the backpack along with the pistols and ammunition without a
glance. Now I sat cross-legged on the garret floor, pulled them out
one by one, and stared at each for a long time before setting it
aside and reaching for the next.

There were the first items I ever stole, the
penlight, Swiss Army knife, and spyglass that were once the proud
property of Darrow and Cartier. I can't say I felt much sorrow over
those two; they were bullies of the worst sort and deserved being
sent down and shamed before the entire school; but their behavior
had nothing to do with mine. I set the items aside.

There were others: Bannister's sketch pad and
Dorinne's lipstick case from my Harvard days; Tamara's journal,
Daphne's half-completed essay on Tennyson's "Ulysses," and Price's
coon-skin cap, all from Cambridge; and Jeremy's hip flask from my
days in Boston before Aunt Edith convinced me to join the Army.
Around that time my jaded conscience finally caught up with my
behavior and the trophy collecting thankfully came to an end.

Each of these items symbolized something for
me, a bloodless strike against the proper owner, somewhere between
a tennis score and aiming for the center of mass with the Mauser
rifle. I willingly acknowledged the stuff wasn't mine. But I never
considered returning them. They were too close to my heart, no
matter how much their presence currently shamed me. I looked at
each one, set it aside, reached into the backpack for the next, and
wondered at my own lack of ability to simply throw this rubbish
away.

Near the bottom was the dark blue,
gold-embossed case containing the Bronze Star. In a sense it was
the most shameful of the entire collection: instead of symbolizing
my underdeveloped juvenile morality, it spoke of my failure as an
adult to complete the assignment given to me. It had been a fair
fight. The spotter won and I lost, and that shame burned more
deeply than all the others in my life combined. I couldn't wear the
decoration and I couldn't throw it away. I didn't open the
presentation case, but set it aside with all the rest.

Lastly I pulled out Langstrom's family photo.
When I first arrived in Boston, I purchased — yes, purchased — a
sturdy mahogany frame to protect it, my championship trophy. For
years I displayed it proudly on the writing desk in my bedroom,
before guilt overwhelmed the pride and I hid it, first in the desk
drawer, then in the bottom of my sock drawer, and finally in a
false bottom beneath the ammunition in my gun case.

But hiding it didn't hide the fact that I
stole it in the first place, the same way Aunt Edith stole and
seduced me from my father. Finally it occurred to me to wonder if
she had considered me her trophy. And finally I wondered what else
she might have stolen.

I truly was a lot like Aunt Edith. Only now I
didn't want to be.

"Robbie my Robber?"

I glanced up. Sherlock stood just inside the
garret door, beside the stack of Uncle Hubert's tomes propping it
open.

Without thinking I blurted out my uppermost
thought. "I'm a thief."

"If you are," he said without pausing,
"you're the most honest thief I know."

I blinked and had no idea how to respond.

He strolled into the garret, brushing one big
scarred hand across the armoire's carving in passing. "You know,
there's nothing really wrong with this room. Spruce it up a bit, a
coat of paint, maybe some carpet," he glanced up at the bare bulb
dangling over the desk, "a light fixture with a ceiling fan, maybe
even a skylight to open it up some," he glanced at the trunk that
had concealed the death clothing, "a recliner in that corner, a
radio with the Astros game on—"

Even then I couldn't let him get away with
that. "The Red Sox."

"—a ball game in any case. This would be a
great room for getting away from it all." His roving glance touched
on the pile of trophies beside me, swept across my face, moved on
to the desk. He paused beside it and played with the rolltop, then
let it down with a gentle touch. "This sort of room doesn't have to
be dark, you know."

I stared at the bare wooden floor beneath my
crossed legs, almost afraid to breathe, and let his words soak
in.

His step, light even in combat boots, paused
at the door. "Theresa just called. Glendower's gone out."

I found air. "Right. Let's finish this."

Glendower had taken an efficiency apartment
in the North End, reasonably near the Carr Gallery and less than
ten minutes from my condo, but a long drive from the house for
someone not familiar with the city. But the apartment had other
considerations to recommend it. It was in a colorful neighborhood
where a stranger could come and go at all hours without being
noticed and without attracting questions. It was above a pawn shop,
rather like Goldberg's old shop where Uncle Hubert purchased my
lockpicking kit, and on a busy corner, backed onto an alley with a
rear entrance and stairway. For unnoticed comings and goings it was
built to order.

And that worked as much to our advantage as
to his.

Sherlock and Lindsay took up their positions
on the corners while Caren and I slipped up the fire escape in the
morning sunlight. Less than eight hours ago, we'd done the same
outside police headquarters. We wore the same clothing and I
carried the same tools, my web belt and its many heavy attachments
camouflaged in a canvas bag.

"We could just go in through the door,
couldn't we?" she asked as we climbed the fire escape side by side.
"I mean, no one would see us down that dark corridor."

"You're right, we could." We were far enough
above the street not to be noticed, so I pulled the web belt from
the canvas bag and strapped it on. "But I don't like going in
blind, not since I arrogantly picked the lock on Sherlock's office
one last time before the war."

"Was he in there?"

We rounded the corner of the fire escape and
climbed the final flight.

"Not him, no," I said. "Just a German
Shepherd with an attitude. That was Sherlock's oh-so-subtle way of
telling me to mind my own business in those halcyon days of our
youth."

"Why were you breaking into his office, in
any case?"

"Because I could."

The window of Glendower's flat was covered
with a mini-blind, but the leaves were bent and cracked. Even
through the dirt smearing the glass, it was obvious the furnished
apartment contained the bare minimum to qualify for the term. A
single bed, without headboard, leaned against the far right corner,
with an upright dresser at its foot and a rickety table serving as
a nightstand, so near the door I wondered it could open. On the
left was an envelope-sized countertop with a sink, microwave, and
electric burner crowded atop it, a small fridge beneath and cabinet
above. A round table wobbled on that side of the room with two hard
straight chairs tucked in around it. The floor was covered by an
old shag rug of indistinguishable brownish color.

"This is awful."

"Was this the City man who brokered a
thousand stocks?" I removed my dagger and started on the caulking
of one window pane.

"Do you think he asked Edith for money?
Charles, could he have blackmailed her?"

"I don't know." Nor did I want to consider it
and concentrated on the break-in instead. But the caulking was
minimal and I removed the pane without effort. I yanked up the
blind then felt around the casing, but could detect no trace of an
alarm through my gloves.

Nevertheless I was determined not to become
careless. This was the sort of ruthless situation where defenses
would be well hidden but vicious when sprung, like a syringe full
of anthrax buried somewhere to be tipped during a search.

"Caren, did you bring gloves?"

She peered through the window, watching as I
unhooked and lifted it open. "Gracious. No, I didn't."

"There's a handkerchief in my left hip
pocket. Wrap that around your hands before you touch anything. I
want to leave as few clues as possible. And be extremely careful.
Look before you touch."

She pulled out the handkerchief, and I did my
best to ignore my physical response. Right now, as much as I craved
her touch, the distraction could prove disastrous.

We climbed in through the window. I closed it
behind us. At least the apartment was clean and aired out.

"What are we looking for?"

"The same thing he was looking for when he
searched my condo: anything and everything. We'll show him higher
consideration than he showed me and leave everything just the way
we found it. Start in the kitchen, all right? Open everything
slowly and keep well back, just in case."

There was nothing on or under the nightstand,
under or inside the pillow, beneath the mattress, or taped under
the frame, and there were enough rips in the cloth covering the box
springs that I felt reasonably certain there was nothing hidden
there, either. I poked and prodded through the threadbare clothing
in the drawers, peered behind the dresser, and looked behind the
mirror and the lone framed print, a cheap landscape.

Perhaps it was my recent soul-searching, or
perhaps it was the deadly seriousness of the situation, with Caren
peering into cupboards behind me and in danger of triggering some
booby trap. But I wasn't nearly as relaxed about this search as I
had been going through Wingate's office. It was not a matter of
conscience. Glendower was, I now knew, a murderer, and he deserved
no pity for what he did to Aunt Edith, Trés, and the security
guard. This time, rather than playing for kicks, I answered a
professional's challenge. This wasn't only personal; this was
war.

"Charles."

I turned. Caren, using the screwdriver in my
lockpicking kit, had removed the backing from the cabinet.

"Smart woman. What have you found?"

Wordlessly, she pulled out a framed photo, an
old black-and-white in a silver frame. It was Aunt Edith, certainly
not yet of age, and she posed outdoors in a summer garden, wearing
nothing but a string of pearls, her own glorious dark unbound hair,
and an openwork shawl draped low beneath a solid wall of roses. She
leaned back on one hand, shoulders pulled back and tilted to
maximize her cleavage, the other hand holding the shawl closed and
strategically placed. Even for her nephew it was an incendiary
pose.

"Wow."

"This is Edith, isn't it." Caren's voice
didn't make it a question.

I took the photo from her. It shocked me to
my core and I couldn't seem to draw a breath. "Pardon me if this is
an old-fashioned question, but at that age would you have posed
semi-nude for just any photographer?"

"At that age I wouldn't have posed semi-nude
for anyone at all. Do you think Glendower was the
photographer?"

I tucked the picture into my canvas bag.
Despite the expensive frame it felt tawdry and I wanted it out of
sight. "Seems that way, doesn't it? Put that back together, will
you? Let's finish and get out of here." No matter what time of the
morning it was, I wanted a drink and a shower, in that order.

While Caren busied herself with the
screwdriver and handkerchief, I pulled the drawers from the
battered dresser and examined their backs and bottoms. On the last
one, nearest the floor, I struck pay dirt: a sheet of paper and a
passport in an envelope glued to the underside of the drawer.

"What have you found?" Caren closed the
microwave door and joined me. She craned her neck and peered at the
passport as I flipped through it. "What language is that?"

"Something central European. Bulgarian, I
think."

The I-94 exit date was the first of August;
unless Glendower applied for an extension of his stay in the United
States, he was legally due to leave in two days. Whatever he was
after, he'd have to make his move soon, which explained his
willingness to break into a house crammed with NATO special forces
soldiers.

But the paper, to me, was more damning than
the passport. I turned it so she could get a better look. It was a
hand-drawn scale map of the Carr Gallery, showing in detail the
exhibits and offices within, the best observation points on the
street, all windows and exits, and the locations of the motion
detectors, alarm contacts, and keypads. It was so detailed it could
only have been drawn by someone who'd been inside the gallery on
more than one occasion. Some of the exhibits were marked in red ink
atop the pencil; most of these were on Trés sprawling half of the
gallery but two were among Danny Vasquez's work. None marked
Sidnë's.

"Charles, oh, Charles. No, wait." Caren
balled the handkerchief and held it to her lips for a moment. "This
doesn't automatically mean he killed her. It could mean something
else."

Trust Caren to look for the good in anyone,
even Glendower. "This is a stakeout map. It means he intends to rob
the gallery. As for his guilt or innocence, look at the rug."

She glanced down at the old shag beneath our
knees. It only took her wonderful mind a moment. "This is what the
police found in Edith's car, isn't it?"

"The technician referred to it as old DuPont
acrylic."

"Are you going to the police with this?"

"And admit how I gathered the information?
Would it even be admissible in court?" I folded the map and stuffed
it in my pocket, then returned the passport to its hiding place and
slid the drawer back into its housing. "Let's get out of here."

We left the way we came and I caulked the
window behind us in silence. Before we clambered from the fire
escape, I unslung the web belt and returned it to the canvas bag.
Sherlock and Lindsay joined us at the Camaro.

"Swing by the gallery, boss, will you?"

He didn't ask questions but turned at the
light.

Lindsay asked questions. "What's wrong? You
look awful."