Dead Watch

over to a window, where he had a clear view down Park Avenue, and thought it all over. All of it, from the circumstances of Bowe’s disappearance, to Schmidt and the poorly hidden gun, to Barber, to the mystery call that led him to Patterson, to the missing medical files.
    To that morning’s kiss.

    Everything that had happened ended in a mystery. He had almost no resources to solve any of them . . . with one exception.
    He sat until it was dark, working it out. And when it was dark, the red taillights streaming up Park Avenue, electronic salmon on the way to spawn, he pushed himself out of the chair, turned on a single light, went into the master bedroom, and got the gun and holster from the back of the headboard.
    He pulled the gun out, checked it, ejected the five .38 shells from the cylinder.
    When they’d gone through the apartment, they’d found a toolbox in a kitchen drawer. Jake used a pair of pliers to pull the slug out of one of the .38s, dumped the powder down the sink, washed it away.
    He loaded the empty case back in the pistol, turned it until it was under the hammer, found a knee-high woman’s boot in the closet of the second bedroom—part of Madison’s New York clothing cache—shoved his hand in the boot, holding the gun and the boot between two pillows, and pulled the trigger. There was a muffled crack, and the smell of burning primer.
    “Hope the cops don’t do any forensics up here,” he muttered to himself, as he was putting the boot back in the closet. He opened a couple of drawers in Madison’s dresser, took out a pair of black panty hose. He pulled them over his head, asked the mirror, “How do I look?” He considered himself for a moment, then said, “Like some moron with a pair of underpants on his head.”
    He took them off, refolded them, put them away. He couldn’t wear them past a doorman anyway.
    He went back to Madison’s dresser, sat down, looked at himself in the mirror. He looked all right, he thought. Like a bureaucrat or a college professor just back from vacation, who hadn’t had a chance to get his hair cut, who stayed in shape with handball.
    There was nothing he could do, without a makeup expert, to make himself look like a thug. He didn’t have the scars under the eyes, he didn’t have the oft-broken nose, he didn’t have the shiny forehead. He did have the scalp cut. If he combed his hair just so . . .
    He could definitely go for the insane look, he decided. He half smiled, thinking that he should have kept the Hello Kitty hat.
    He went through Madison’s drawers, then through Lincoln Bowe’s, found a comb and a tube of hair gel. Went to the bathroom, gelled his hair, swept it straight back. Gelled it some more. The gel made his face look thinner, his head smaller, like a Doberman’s. And it made him look a little trashy. Expensive trashy, a street guy who’d lucked into a thousand-dollar suit. Better.
    Stared at himself in the mirror again, took a quarter out of his pocket, put it between his upper right gum and his cheek. Talked to himself in the mirror, while holding the quarter in place with cheek and lip pressure: “Hi. I’m a killer for the CIA, and I’m crazy. I’m here to put a bullet in your head . . .”
    No. He was being cute. He didn’t want cute, he wanted cold. He rehearsed for another moment: “Get your fuckin’ ass on the couch, fat man . . .” More gravel in the voice: “Get your fuckin’ ass on the couch . . .”

    Rosenquist lived on the twelfth floor of a co-op apartment in the Park Avenue six-hundreds, a bulky granite building with a liveried doorman. One of the residents, leading a dog only slightly larger than a hoagie, went through ahead of Jake. The doorman nodded and she took the elevator. When the lobby was clear, Jake walked in. The doorman straightened and Jake asked, “Dr. Rosenquist?”
    “Who’s calling?”
    “Andy Carlyle.” No point in going on record with the doorman. “A friend of his died and I helped clean out the apartment. I found some, mmm, personal items that I believe belong to Dr. Rosenquist.”
    The doorman called up. After a brief chat, he handed the phone to Jake. Jake took it and said, “Hello?”
    “This is James Rosenquist. What do you have?”
    “Your friend’s wife asked me to clean out, mmm, his apartment.” Ostentatiously not using the name. “I found some, ahh, jewelry. There were some personal papers, plus a note that said that you should get the jewelry.