Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

leash and went straight for the bedroom closets to see if I could find any of the outfits I thought he might have been wearing in Washington Square Park, finding nothing, then checking his makeup kit, a huge double-layered box. There were several beards and wigs in the bottom part of the box, but not the ones I’d seen him in, not the ones on the contact sheets. I found lots of hats on the shelf in the hall closet, gloves, too, but no fingerless ones, no beat-up boots, no hunter’s orange jacket either. He probably never wore the same thing twice, dumped most of it on the way home. He surely wouldn’t want to be seen here, where he lived, dressed like that.
    I went to check the medicine cabinet next, thinking only a fool would keep a stash of illegally procured drugs at home, and while I could call Ted a lot of things by now, a long list of things, fool wouldn’t have made the list. Most of the drug dealers in Washington Square Park kept their stash nearby, but not on them. Some of them had runners to fetch the drugs when they made a sale. I wasn’t sure how Ted operated, but since he’d been doing it without getting arrested for several years as far as I could tell, I was sure he’d figured out a secure place for his merchandise as well as the safest possible way to make the sale. What I hadn’t counted on was his own need for drugs, a guy in his fifties, dancing professionally his whole adult life, he would have had a long history of injuries and pain, arthritis by now as well. He might have started out with Advil, some Celebrex now and then, or whatever the drug of choice for pain had been when it had started. There would have been something stronger when he was working, when he had to work despite his pain. He would have done what he had to, taken whatever was available, legal or not. And the need would have grown, more and more help needed to get the job done. Judging by the looks of his medicine cabinet, Theo Fowler was one of his own best customers.
    I picked up the first orange container. Oxycontin. Patient’s name, Lucy Grubman. And then another and another, Percodan for Matthew Tannen, Valium for Stacy Sussman, Oxycontin for Mark Redmond, each prescription from a different pharmacy, one all the way uptown. There were those little samples, too, the inspiration that started it all—pills to lift you up, pills to calm you down, better living through chemistry.
    I remembered the first time I’d met Ted, how sleepy he’d looked when he answered the door, how absolutely perky a few moments later.
    I opened the cabinet under the sink, Dashiell’s big head poking in there before I got the chance to look. Rubber gloves, the thin kind that doctors use when they take blood or give a shot. My guess is that Ted wore those when he went to do business with Bechman, smart enough not to want to leave anything of himself behind, even long before the “accident.”
    I could have stayed in the apartment. I could have taken Ted up on his kind invitation to come back, make myself at home, relax, read a book. But relaxing was the last thing I had on my mind. So I hooked Dashiell’s leash back onto his collar, took a quick look around to make sure everything was as I’d found it, and went out the way I’d come in, locking the door behind me. Instead of leaving the building, I walked back to where the stairs were, sitting on the bottom step, signaling Dash to lie down. Then I checked my watch, hoping it wouldn’t be a long wait. After all, it was starting to get dark outside, and Ted had no reason to wait for Ms. Peach this afternoon. He’d already seen her in the park, bumming a cigarette in his old man costume, a nice touch, just in case anyone was looking.
    He was at the glass door now, beardless and wearing an expensive white turtleneck sweater, black woolen trousers, a short black leather jacket, Armani or perhaps Valentino, probably the things he was carrying in the old sack he had with him when he’d stopped to talk to Ms. Peach. He had on loafers now, polished, new-looking, and a scarf tossed around his neck, his signature.
    He saw me as soon as he entered the lobby, surprised, then smiling, a little too big for my money, but maybe he was in the habit of projecting to the cheap seats.
    “No one home?” he asked, glancing up toward the second floor.
    “Actually, I was waiting for you.”
    “Ah. I was hoping you’d take me up on my offer not to be a stranger.”
    He turned and headed for his door,