Roses Are Red

asked.
    “I have no idea,” I said. I showed him my detective’s badge.
    The driver shook his head, then he moaned into his hands. “Oh, brother. Just my bad luck. Like the movies —
follow that cab.
”

Chapter 112
    SZABO GOT OUT OF HIS CAB on Rhode Island Avenue in Northwest. So did I. He walked for a while — window-shopped. At least that’s what it looked like. He seemed more relaxed now. His nervous tics had lessened once he was off the hospital grounds. Probably because he had been faking them.
    He finally turned into a squat, dilapidated brownstone building, still on Rhode Island Avenue. The basement floor was a Chinese laundry — A. LEE .
    What was he doing in there? Was he skipping out a back door? But then I saw a light flash in a second-floor window. Szabo crossed past it a few times. It was him.
Tall and bearded.
    My brain was starting to overload with possibilities.
No one at Hazelwood knew about Szabo’s apartment in D.C.
There wasn’t any mention of it in the nursing notes.
    Szabo was supposed to be a drifter. Hopeless, harmless,
homeless.
That was the illusion he’d created. I’d finally learned a secret of his. What did it mean?
    I waited down on Rhode Island Avenue. I didn’t feel in any particular danger. Not yet, anyway.
    I waited out on the street for quite a while. He was inside the building for nearly two hours. I didn’t see him appear at the windows again. What was he doing in there? Time flies when you’re hanging by your fingernails.
    Then the light in the apartment blinked out.
    I watched the building with mounting apprehension. Szabo didn’t come outside. I was concerned. Where was he?
    A good five minutes after the light went out upstairs, Szabo appeared on the front doorstep again. His nervous tics seemed to have returned. Maybe they were for real.
    He rubbed his eyes repeatedly, and then his lower chin. He twitched and continually pulled his shirt away from his chest. He finger-combed his thick black hair three or four times.
    Was this the Mastermind that I was watching? It almost didn’t seem possible. But if he wasn’t, where did that leave us?
    Szabo kept nervously looking around the street, but I was hidden in the dark shadows of another building. I was sure he couldn’t see me. What was he afraid of?
    He started to walk. I watched him retrace his steps up Rhode Island Avenue. Then he waved down a cab.
    I didn’t follow Szabo. I wanted to — but I had an even stronger urge. A hunch I needed to play. I hurried across the street and entered the brownstone where he’d spent most of the afternoon.
    I
had
to find out what Szabo had been doing in there. I finally had to admit — he was driving
me
crazy. He was giving me nervous tics.

Chapter 113
    I USED A SMALL, very useful lock pick and got into Szabo’s apartment in less time than it takes to say “illegal entry.” No one was ever going to know I’d been in there.
    I was planning to take a quick look around the apartment, then get right out again. I doubted he’d left evidence linking him to the MetroHartford kidnapping, or any of the bank jobs. I needed to see his place, though. I had to know more about Szabo than the doctors and nurses at Hazelwood had written in their reports. I needed to understand the Mastermind.
    He had a collection of sharpened hunting knives, and he also collected old guns: Civil War rifles, German Lugers, American Colts. There were souvenirs from Vietnam: a ceremonial sword and a battalion flag of the K10 NVA Battalion, North Vietnamese. Mostly, he had books and magazines in the apartment.
The Evil That Men Do. Crime and Punishment. The Shooting Gazette. Scientific American.
    So far, no big surprises. Other than that he
had
the apartment in the first place.
    “Szabo, are you
him?
” I finally asked out loud. “Are you the Mastermind? What the hell is your game, man?”
    I quickly searched the living room, a small bedroom, then a claustrophobic den that obviously served as an office.
    Szabo, is this where you plotted everything out?
    An unfinished handwritten letter was lying on the desk in his den. It seemed he’d been working on it recently. I began to read.
    Mr. Arthur Lee
A. Lee Laundry
    This is a warning, and if I were you, I’d take it very seriously.
    Three weeks ago, I dropped off some dry cleaning to you. Before I send out my cleaning, I always enclose a list of all articles in the dry cleaning bag, and a brief description of each article.
    I keep a copy for