Page 38 (1/2)

"Because I o around paying fifty dollars to gain access to roo"

He wasn’t happy, but he went out into the hall and I closed the door, and used the hook-and-eye gadget to keep hiht have tucked ahere it wouldn’t be easy to find

A piece of carpeting covered most of the floor It was a bound reh to roll it up after I’d moved a couple of pieces of furniture And it was al after I’d established that the carpet hadn’t been hiding anything

The next place I looked was the dresser, a dark wood chest of drawers, its top scarred by neglected cigarettes I took out each drawer in turn, stacking its contents on the floor, turning over the e back One drawer, the arped with age, didn’t want to come out, but I coaxed it, and had no more luck with it than with the one before it, but the next drawer, just one up from the bottom, was the charm There was a 9×12 manila envelope Scotch-taped to its underside An envelope just like it had held Jack’s Eighth Step

I picked at the tape, freed the envelope One wing of theit If the contents turned out to be the new tenant’s can’t- winners, I’d be hard put to leave it as I found it But I wasn’t really worried on that score

The envelope held three sheets of unlined notebook paper, covered in what I was able to recognize as Jack’s careful handwriting There was a newspaper clipping as well, and I took a look at it before I read what Jack had written

It was froe I read it all the way through, although I could have stopped after the first paragraph

I re I read the first paragraph of what Jack had written, then decided the rest could wait I put the dresser drawer back, then returned everything to the envelope, fastened it hat remained of the clasp, and tucked the envelope inside arment, but with the shirt buttoned over it there wasn’t much chance anyone would take notice And I could leave Jack’s old room as empty-handed as I’d entered it

I let myself out Pardo was a few steps down the hall

"Nothing," I told him

"What did I tell you? These people had anything, they’d live somewhere else"

XXXVII

I WALKED DOWNTOWN, looking for someplace to have a cup of coffee while I read what Jack had written I wound up at Theresa’s I skirted the counter, where Frankie Dukacs was giving his full attention to a bowl of soup, and took a booth where all he’d see of me was the back of my head

I didn’t want a meal, but I remembered the last time I’d been here and ordered a piece of pie with my coffee They didn’t have strawberry-rhubarb, but they had pecan, and I decided that would do just fine

The newspaper clipping told of a man and woman who’d been shot dead in what the Post called a "Bohemian love nest" on Jane Street It was Bohee, but in a back house, a onetie house located to the rear of the Federal-period town house that fronted on the street And it was a love nest because the two victims were nude, and in bed, and theplayer in the financial world His na for Gordon, and his naot in the papers a lot in connection with corporate takeovers and leveraged buyouts Her name was Marcy Cantwell, and she’d come to New York to be an actress What she’d become instead was a waitress, but she’d taken some classes and had a turn in soht she waited on Raines’s table, and caught his eye, and he was back the next evening all by hi tieline House, a residence for young wouests weren’t allowed upstairs, but they were able to sit together in the parlor

A week later she was living in the Jane Street back house, and she wasn’t waiting tables anymore

A few months later she was dead, and so was he

I didn’t get all of this fro, or fro a couple of tiot myself down to thethe Ti time It couldn’t really uy, and his as socially prominent and his kids went to private schools, and best of all the case never got solved That ht be just what it looked like, a ho else--a contract killing arranged by a business rival of Raines’s, or so spawned by jealousy, either the wife’s or that of a prior boyfriend of Marcy’s She’d had a couple, including a bartender with a history of violence toomen, and the cops knocked on a lot of doors and asked a lot of questions, but they never caught a break

Or maybe I should say we and not they, because I was still with the NYPD when it happened, and in fact still attached to the Sixth Precinct Our house caught the case, but I was never assigned to it, and we didn’t have it long before all the publicity led the Major Case Squad to take it away froo, this was Before the bullet that killed Estrellita Rivera swept e and into a rooed for soot sober A full dozen years ago, and o very cold There were cold cases where you kneho did it, even though you couldn’t do anything about it And there were cases where you didn’t know a thing, and this was one of those