Trust Your Eyes (22 page)

Talliman said if John Kerry’s service in Vietnam could be used against him, anything was possible. Go after the woman’s strength, and find a way to undermine it. Talliman put Lewis Blocker on it. He found evidence that could be used to prop up the suggestion that the woman’s commitment to helping others had been at the expense of her children and husband. Her teenage son had been picked up for coke possession, although the case never went to court. Her husband spent a lot of time in neighborhood bars and never saw a waitress’s butt he didn’t want to pinch. Talliman made sure the press found out, even though he never passed on the information directly. If these stories weren’t proof the woman was turning a blind eye to the home front, what was? With only a couple of weeks left in the campaign, Talliman flooded the district with flyers depicting his candidate as a strong family man, implying that his opponent cared more about strangers than her own family.

No one cared if a man put his career ahead of his family. But a woman?

It was slimy and underhanded and a misrepresentation of the truth. Worked, too. “Positively Rovian,” his admirers, and detractors, called it after the woman lost by more than three thousand votes.

It was around then that Howard put Lewis Blocker on permanent payroll.

It couldn’t have come at a better time for Lewis, who needed the money. He’d left the police before qualifying for a pension. He and several other officers had been called to a hostage-taking. A man was holed up in an apartment, threatening to kill his family. Shots were fired from inside the unit. Then the door flew open and someone charged out. Lewis, positioned down the hall, fired.

Too bad it was the shooter’s sixteen-year-old son trying to make a run for it.

No charges were filed, but Lewis Blocker’s career as a cop was finished that day.

Sometimes, Howard Talliman mused, things happened for a reason. If a young man had to die so Lewis Blocker could help advance the political careers of great men, well, who was Howard to argue with God’s plan?

But surely, Howard thought, God couldn’t have wanted things to go the way they had back in August.

The action he’d approved back then, the wheels he had allowed Lewis Blocker to set in motion, with the intention of protecting Morris Sawchuck, had the potential to destroy them all.

Sawchuck was more than a close friend to Howard. He was Talliman’s ticket to the Big Show. Once Sawchuck was governor of New York, it was only a matter of time, Howard knew, before he moved up the ladder from there. Sawchuck had the personality, the showmanship—even the most perfect set of
teeth
—to make it to the White House.

Howard had believed that Bridget’s lesbian affair with Allison Fitch, and—even more critically—what that woman might
know about Morris’s political problems, could derail all that. He’d trusted Lewis’s instincts about what needed to be done. He’d also trusted Lewis’s instincts about who was best suited to get it done.

Not that Howard hadn’t expected there to be some fallout once the job had been executed, as it were. When a young woman is murdered, or goes missing, it’s likely to draw some attention.

There was one story in the
Times
. Police were trying to track down Allison Fitch’s whereabouts when she failed to show up for work. The article reported that she was originally from Dayton, and there was a line from her mother, who said she had not heard from her.

The
New York Post
ran something as well, deep inside, just before Sports. And it made NY1 one day. Her smiling face on screen for no more than five seconds.

After that, not so much. A missing person in Manhattan was not news for long. Some girl from Ohio doesn’t come to work one day? Big deal. So maybe she couldn’t hack it in the big city and went home. Unless someone stumbled upon a body, a missing person was barely going to make it through a single news cycle.

No one had stumbled upon a body.

Ordinarily, a body being stumbled upon would have put Howard Talliman at ease. Because even if the rest of the world did not know what had happened to Allison Fitch,
he
would know what had happened to Allison Fitch.

But he did not.

Lewis didn’t know, either.

No one had known for quite some time.

Shortly after Nicole had been sent to do the job, Lewis placed a call to Howard.

“I heard from her. There’s a problem.”

“What sort of problem?”

Lewis had explained that normally, Allison Fitch, who
worked nights, would be home throughout the day, asleep, while her roommate, this Courtney Walmers woman who worked regular hours, would not.

At which point Howard Talliman had started to get a very bad feeling.

But on this particular day, Lewis had explained, there was an unforeseen development.

“The woman in the apartment was not Allison Fitch. The wrong target was taken out.”

Howard, sitting in his office, had struggled to remain calm. But Jesus, the roommate? Dead? Someone who’d never posed a threat in the first place? Someone he didn’t even know? Sure, Howard had caused collateral damage in the past. His political shenanigans had destroyed more than his opponents’ reputations. He’d seen defeated candidates lose their homes to pay off campaign debts. They left their wives, or their wives left them. One became an alcoholic, drove his car into a bridge abutment, and never walked again.

But nothing like this. No one had ever died.

And as unexpected, and bad, as this news was, Howard had still wondered whether this woman Lewis had hired, once she’d realized her mistake, had still managed to get the original job done. What about the intended target?

“What about Fitch?” he had asked Lewis.

“Gone,” Lewis had said. “She walked in on it. Saw what happened. Took off like a bat out of hell.”

In the intervening months, Allison Fitch remained missing. Probably scared shitless, terrified to show herself.

As long as she was out there, somewhere, she was a ticking bomb, just waiting to go off.

Back when Howard had taken that original call from Lewis, he’d exploded with muted rage and sheer terror.

“Jesus Christ, this is one colossal fuckup.”

And Lewis had said, “It gets worse.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

I
thought Thomas’s confidence in me might have been misplaced. He’d seemed so certain I’d return from Manhattan with The Mystery of the Head in the Window all solved. I really wasn’t all that keen about heading down to Orchard Street.

I mean, once I was able to see, with my own eyes, the window in question, what was I supposed to do? My hope was that the head would still be there, that it was, in fact, one of those Styrofoam heads used for wig displays, and that seeing it in person would confirm all this.

As I walked south on Orchard, having jumped out of the cab on East Houston, out front of Ray’s Pizza, a couple of doors west of Katz’s Delicatessen, I worried the head would not be there, at which point I’d have no idea what to do.

Turn around and go home, most likely.

This part of the city wasn’t quite the Village, or SoHo, but it had a charm of its own. These old tenement buildings were rich in architectural detail and history. I started off in the
two-hundred block, walking past a gift shop and a diner and some buildings that were being extensively renovated. At Stanton I caught a whiff of pizza from Rosario’s.

I continued to stroll south on the west side, past a luggage store that had a display of suitcases that covered half the sidewalk, then by several clothing stores and a guitar shop. None of these storefronts looked like the streetscape in the picture that was folded and tucked into my jacket pocket. I took it out for another quick look and realized that the building Thomas had zeroed in on was in the sixties. It turned out I’d bailed out of my cab too far north. I’d have to cross Delancey before I was down in the right neighborhood.

So I kept on walking.

A couple of minutes later, I thought I was in the general area. Below the third-floor window I was looking for was supposed to be a store that specialized in scarves, and beside it, a smoke shop selling newspapers. The entrance to the apartments was a lobby door between the two businesses. I was to find it on the west side of the street.

I figured it would be easier to scope out the building from the east side. That would give me a better view.

And then, suddenly, there it was.

The window.

I looked again at the image Thomas had printed out for me, just to be sure. Studied the arrangements of neighboring windows, where the fire escape came down, the storefront below.

I’d found it.

There was no white head in the window above the air conditioner.

Nuts.

Aside from the air conditioner, there was nothing to look at. Not so much as a flowerpot. The window was shut, and the glass,
with no curtain behind it, looked black, reflecting the building across the street.

I got out my phone, set it to camera, and took a shot of the building, centering it on the window.

So, I’d come all the way to New York, found my way here, to the scene of the—what, exactly?—and taken a snapshot that I could show to Thomas to prove I had honored his request.

What an amazing accomplishment.

Would this picture be enough to satisfy him? Doubtful. I had to admit, if I were him, I’d find my effort somewhat halfhearted.

I supposed it wouldn’t kill me to go up there, knock on a door, say hello to whoever lived there. Maybe, if I had a peek into the apartment, that Styrofoam head I was so desperate to see would be sitting on a kitchen table or something.

Another case cracked by Ray Kilbride, illustrator by day, crime fighter by night. Except, okay, it was still daytime.

I studied the window so I’d have a chance of figuring out which apartment it was once I was inside the building, then crossed the street. I entered the lobby, which was really nothing more than an alcove with mailboxes and a directory. I tried the inside door and found it locked. No surprise there.

Judging by the directory, there appeared to be five apartments on the third floor, the last names indicated with thin strips of shiny black tape from one of those Dymo press-and-punch label-making guns. I remember Dad had one of those when we were kids and I labeled everything in my room. “Bookshelf.” “Bed.” “Door.” “Window.”

The tape strips all looked weathered with age, some were starting to peel off, and the one for apartment 305 was half missing, reading “ch/Walmers.” Kazinski was in 304, Goldberg in 303, Reynolds in 302, and Michaels in 301. I took out my phone
and snapped a picture, in case I needed to remember any of them later. I also took a shot of a note posted next to the directory, with a number for rental inquiries.

What to do, what to do.

As I pondered this, a man in his twenties came charging out the door, heading for the street. Without even thinking about it, I reached out and grabbed the handle before the door could close.

I climbed two flights of stairs. When I was on the third floor, I took a second to get my bearings so I could figure out which apartment was most likely the one that faced the street above the scarves store.

I settled on 305.

There were a number of ways I could play this. I could knock on the door, and assuming someone answered, say, “So, listen, how are you, my name is Ray Kilbride, and my brother, Thomas, who’s a bit, well, you know, was surfing the Net and happened to notice someone being smothered in your window. Does that ring a bell? Because I don’t know about you, but that’s the sort of thing I’d remember.”

Perhaps there was a better approach.

I could take the printout from my jacket, show it to whoever came to the door, and just say, “We saw your place on Whirl360, and noticed this in your window, and if you don’t mind my asking, what the hell is it?”

Also, not so hot. But of the two, I preferred it.

Maybe there was some kind of cover story I could come up with. I’m an illustrator, I’d say. I had a Pearl Paint bag in my hand, after all. I could say I’d been commissioned to illustrate a
Times
article on lower Manhattan architecture, and was looking up your street online, came upon this image, and had to know, what is that, anyway?

Pathetic.

What I’d do was this. I’d knock on the door and show whoever answered the printout and just ask.

Maybe they’d tell me. If they had questions, I’d do my best to answer. I’d be honest. I’d tell them I had a brother who was obsessed with Whirl360, and every once in a while he saw something online he had to know more about.

God.

With the printout in my left hand, I knocked on the door with my right, still holding the Pearl Paint bag with it. The bag swung up against the door as I knocked.

When no one came after three seconds, I tried again.

And waited.

I debated whether to knock a third time. Maybe someone was sleeping. Did I really want to wake them up over this?

I was about to do it anyway when a door down the hall opened. 303, I thought it was. I turned and saw a heavyset woman, hair in curlers, looking at me through black, heavy-framed glasses. Half her body was in the hall, the other half still in her apartment, but her face leaned out so I could see all of it.

“No one lives there,” she said.

“I’m sorry?”

“No one lives there. The girls are gone.”

“Oh, okay, I didn’t know.”

“Been gone for months,” she said. “Landlord hasn’t rented it out.”

“Okay,” I said again, nodding. “Thanks.”

She stepped back into her apartment and closed the door.

So that was that.

I turned left as I walked out the front of the building, heading north up Orchard, thinking about what I would tell Thomas
when I got home. Not much, really. I gave it a shot, but the place was empty.

What the hell else could I do?

I was sitting on the train, looking out at the passing Hudson, when, out of nowhere, something that had been troubling me for some time at an unconscious level came bubbling up to the surface:
Why was the blade housing up, and the ignition in the OFF position, on Dad’s lawn tractor?