“Mr. Powder,” Uncle Adg said thoughtfully as his visitor entered. “Welcome. I haven’t had the pleasure for some time now.”
“I shop here regularly,” Powder said.
“Ahh, that I know, that I know. Very grateful for your continued patronage, of course.”
“I thought I’d take the opportunity to put in a request for some whole-meal pie dough.”
Uncle Adg frowned. “We stock that, I think.”
“But yours is made with animal fat.”
“Ah,” Uncle Adg said. “I’ll look into it.”
“Thank you.”
The men knew that pie dough was not what Powder was there about.
“You’re well, I hope,” Powder said.
“Yes,” Uncle Adg said, “and so, praise God, are my nearest and dearest.”
“I’m pleased to hear that,” Powder said.
“And your family, Mr. Powder?”
Powder shrugged. “My son is taking liberties with the conditions of his parole.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Uncle Adg said.
“My worry is that it indicates a frame of mind which will lead him back into antisocial activities.”
Uncle Adg nodded slowly in agreement. “It does not bode well,” he said.
“I would like,” Powder said, “to ask a favor of you.”
“And what would it be that I could do for you, Mr. Powder?” The fat man rubbed the sides of his mouth with the forefingers of both hands.
“I’ve been having a little trouble at my house,” Powder said.
“Oh, yes?”
“I will be surprised if you haven’t heard about my window.”
Uncle Adg smiled broadly. “Now that you mention it . . .”
“A stone,” Powder said, “and thrown during the day, which is not routine for vandalism.”
“No,” Uncle Adg agreed.
“And the previous day someone sprayed graffiti on the wall of my garage.”
Uncle Adg frowned. “On the alley door?”
“No. On the side, where I go into my workshop. It’s not plainly visible from either the alley or the street. Did you know about that?”
Uncle Adg thought for a moment before confessing,“No, I hadn’t heard about the graffiti.”
The two men were silent for a moment.
“Have you been home yet this evening, Mr. Powder?”
“No.”
The two men repeated their silence.
“I see,” Powder said.
“What exactly was it that you wanted me to do for you?” Uncle Adg asked.
“I thought that the next time you were out for a walk, if you happened to see someone behaving suspiciously in the immediate vicinity of my home, perhaps, if you had the time, you might follow him to see where he lived.”
Powder knew Agile Johnson never stirred from the store. But he had “contacts,” eyes and ears, all over the district.
“Such a thing might happen during my daily constitutional,” Johnson said. “But, if I may ask a delicate question . . .”
“I am not seeking a prosecution,” Powder said.
“I can see we are rapping on the same wavelength,” Agile Johnson said slowly, clearly.
“Do you know who’s responsible, Mr. Johnson?” Powder asked.
“No,” the fat man said. “But I will keep my eyes open and see if I can be of service to you.”
“I would be grateful.”
Uncle Adg then nodded slowly. “You must come for a longer visit next time, Mr. Powder. A little beer. A bite to eat.”
“All right,” Powder said, conscious of the fact that the invitation to come back, equally with the implied suggestion of an immediate departure, was unusual. “That would be nice.”
“Are you going home from here?”
“I hadn’t planned to,” Powder said. “But I think I will.”
Powder drove the short distance from Johnson’s to his house on Vermont Street. From the street he saw immediately a white swastika painted on his front door.
He got out of his car and walked up the path. The image was clear and evenly painted and it filled a panel in the lower half of the door.
Powder walked to his garage and found a can of brown paint. He carried it back to the front. Although the paint did not exactly match the color of the door, he painted the image out, leaving it visible only to someone standing near.
After replacing the paint and cleaning his brush. Powder returned to his car and drove to Bernard Avenue.
“These aren’t my dad!” Robert Sweet said indignantly
“None of them? Look carefully.”
“I ought to know what my own dad looks like,” the boy said. He dropped the pictures of the three corpses and the police artist’s drawing.
“That’s true,” Powder said. He rubbed his face. “Have you eaten yet?”
“Not exactly.”
“You just go and nibble from time to time, is that right?”
Robert Sweet shrugged.
“I’ll cook if you wash the dishes,” Powder said. “Fair?”
After a moment the boy said, “Fair.”
“Do you follow the Indians?” Robert Sweet asked over a plate of lasagna.
“Not so much recently,” Powder said. After a moment, “You ever hear of Ted Beard?”
Robert Sweet grinned. “Center fielder.”
“Never quite made it with the White Sox, but we were always happy to have him back.”
“We’re the Expos’ farm club now.”
“I know,” Powder said.
“Roger Maris played for us for one season in your day,” Sweet said.
“And Rocky Colavito and Herb Score.You heard of Herb Score?”
“Nineteen fifty-six, when the Indians won the American Association pennant and beat the All Stars from the other teams in the league.”
“I hadn’t been married long, those days,” Powder said. “Happy days.”
“Are you married now?”
“No.”
“Why do people stop being married?”
“I suppose it comes as a disappointment that not all years are nineteen fifty-sixes.”
While Robert Sweet washed the dishes. Powder put Sidney Sweet’s papers back in the desk and drawers he had taken them from.
Then, although he felt foolish doing it, he went around the father’s bedroom examining walls and floors for hidden compartments.
He found nothing and he remained very uneasy about the lack of personal residues of the missing man.
“Hey,” Robert Sweet said, “I did what you told me.”
“What was that?”
“I bought something today.” The boy hesitated. “With the money you gave me. You remember, don’t you?”
“I remember.”
“My dad will give it back to you when he gets home. I promise he will.”
“Show me what you bought.”
The boy smiled shyly, then brought an Indianapolis Indians autographed baseball bat from behind his back. He held it up, rotating it so Powder could see the printed signatures. Sweet smiled. “Some of the guys on the school team have them.”
“Good,” Powder said.
“Hey, Dad will pay you back. I know he will.”
Powder left Robert Sweet shortly after eight o’clock. He stopped at the first bar he came to and carried a shot to a table next to a phone booth. He sat for a while. He thought of Ace Mencelli. He thought of Fleetwood, whom he hadn’t seen again in the afternoon. He downed the drink. He went to the phone and dialed the number Mrs. Martha Miles—the first woman he ever took to bed—had given him earlier in the day.
“Roy!” she said. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”
“We might be dead tomorrow,” Powder said. “So why waste time?”
Martha Miles asked him to give her until nine-thirty. He used the time to drive home again, shower and change his clothes, including clean underwear.
When she answered her door s
he looked fresh and clean. She whispered a greeting and pointed to a second door leading off the railed porch. “That’s his,” she said. “The apartment is upstairs.”
As if on cue they heard heavy steps. The second door opened and Powder moved back to allow a dark-haired man in his early twenties to step out. The young man had a rectangular face with a prominent chin, and he wore a droopy moustache that, perhaps, made him look a year or two older than he really was.
The man paused in front of Powder and Mrs. Miles, allowing the corners of his mouth to rise into a form of smile that was not supported by his eyes.
“Evening, Mrs. Miles,” the young man said. He looked at one, then the other, and turned to pull his own door shut. He tested that it was securely closed and proceeded from the porch to the sidewalk, where he turned and walked away.
“He hardly ever goes out,” Martha Miles said as the man passed from sight. “I’ve only seen him half a dozen times in the last month. Maybe I’m just being stupid, but I’m scared to death of him.”
“Painter you say his name is?”
“Henry Painter.”
“Did he give you references when he took the place?”
She stepped back, feeling criticized. “He paid two months in advance.”
“Has he actually done or said anything out of line?”
“No, no. But he’s so, so . . . kind of arrogant.” She shrugged and lifted her eyes to his. “A poor widow woman on her own. Not as young as she used to be. People like me get scared of things, I guess.”
“Perhaps.”
She invited him in.
As she closed the door she said, “The guy just gives me the creeps, Roy, he really does.” She turned to face him. “Well,” she said, “here we are.”
Powder took her hands, which she gave quickly. He pulled her to him. He kissed her, roughly.
Later they went to Leonardo’s, a nightclub on the Northeast, near the intersection of Post Road and Pendleton Pike. In the first part of the three hours they were there they talked much, if generally, about their life histories. Powder spoke emotionally about his broken marriage and about the much-loved house he left behind and about the son he also seemed to have lost with his divorce. Martha Miles, too, had had a son and once was married, though her husband was dead. He had died twenty-three years before.
“And you didn’t get married again?”
Martha Miles looked at him wistfully. “Losing Joe was a terrible shock,” she said. “Then later I put all my energy into bringing up little Terry. Marrying again just didn’t happen. I had nothing against it, but I didn’t go looking for it either. You know?”
“I know.”
They were silent then, until Powder asked, “What have you done for money?”
A slight pain passed into her expression and she hesitated.
“Ah, hell,” Powder said. “Water under the bridge.”
Rapidly he became loud and jolly. He called for much service and laughed a lot and plied Martha Miles with drink. He stopped asking her personal questions.
Chapter Twelve
In his mail slot Friday morning Powder found a note saying that the fingerprints lifted off the glass, library book and razor from Sidney Sweet’s house did not match any prints in the IPD files. Did Powder want, the note asked, a match request to be sent to the FBI?
Powder read the note and then stormed through the corridors to the Fingerprint Identification section.
Because it was half an hour before opening time, no one was there.
Nevertheless he rattled the doorknob vigorously and banged on the glass.
After a minute he stopped. On the back of the memo he wrote, “Why was I not called about this yesterday? Don’t you guys realize that putting things in mail slots can cost lives?”
He slid the memo under the door and walked, humming, to the Missing Persons office.
“You look pleased with yourself,” Fleetwood said as he entered.
“It’s a brave face. I’m confused and hemmed in by things I don’t understand.”
Fleetwood became concerned. “Is there anything I can do, Leroy?”
Powder considered and was about to speak when the office door opened. Sue Swatts entered and, beaming, said,“Morning, everyone. A beautiful day, isn’t it?”
Powder turned on her, suddenly furious. He said, “What makes you so goddamned sickeningly sweet and happy all the time, Swatts? I want you to stop it. Have moods. Be nasty. Get angry. Become a human being, for a change.”
Officer Swatts, usually up to Powder’s sudden rages, was caught off guard this time and went rigid. The color drained from her face.
Fleetwood saw this immediately and became angry. “You’re an emotional cripple. Powder,” Fleetwood shouted. “You get annoyed with your own life and then you take it out on whoever else happens to be handy. You don’t have the right to do that, not to Sue, not to me, not to anybody.”
“Susan,” Powder said immediately, “Carollee, I’m sorry.”
The apology surprised them as much as his outburst had.
Twenty minutes later, at two minutes past nine, Powder’s internal telephone rang. Expecting it to be Fingerprints, he answered harshly.
“My, my, who got out of the wrong side of the wrong bed this morning?” Tidmarsh asked.
“Oh. It’s you,” Powder said rather stupidly.
“Thought you might pop up when you get a chance. I promise not to make any loud noises if hangover is one of your problems.”
A minute later the telephone rang again.
“What now?” Powder asked.
“Look, Powder, it was you who asked me about a regular missing-persons slot on CCC’s cable channel,” Lieutenant Miller said. “If you don’t want to take it any further, that’s all right by me.”
Two minutes later the telephone rang a third time. Finally wiser, Powder took a breath before picking up the receiver. He answered politely.
A high nasal voice said, “This is Sappolino of the Fingerprint Identification Department. We have received your message, but I would like to point out on behalf of my colleagues and myself that there are recognized and established procedures for urgent fingerprint identification searches. The procedure, for future reference, is that you mark your identification request `urgent,’ in red ink and in a prominent position. Moreover, your current wishes as to our question about a further search with the FBI are still not clear. Can you tell me whether you want the impressions forwarded and if so whose budget it should go on? Also whether you wish it to be categorized as urgent.”
It was another fifteen minutes before the disposition of the day’s routine work was completed to Powder’s satisfaction. Swatts reported that the Night Cover team had recorded two unidentified bodies overnight and she left the office to acquire details, photographs and fingerprints. Haddix asked to speak to Powder for a few minutes about the care of the missing father of the bride-to-be, but the conversation only amounted to a report that the father had not yet been located. Fleetwood settled to some paper work, after having been out of the office so much the previous day.
Noble Perkins gave Powder a copy of the past year’s statements from Sidney Sweet’s bank account. In exchange Powder gave him two more names to draw files for: Henry Painter, Martha Miles.
When Perkins was tucked up in his corner. Powder sat down next to Fleetwood at her desk. “We’re going to have to stop meeting like this,” he said.
“Why?” Fleetwood asked.
“Hey, got a question for you. Answer it for me and you get me out of a hole.”
Fleetwood said nothing.
“Got this guy, moves to a house that somebody else buys pretending to be him, and then he—”
“Hey, hang on! Somebody else—”
“You heard, but that’s not what I want to ask you about,” Powder said. “Then this guy gets a job where he draws more money than he works for,”
“He—?”
“You’re an impatient broad, aren’t you?”
Powder said. “Then the guy gets married and has a kid, but ten or eleven years later the wife suddenly skips off. Then a year and a half later the guy skips off himself, leaving the kid, and without warning.”
“What do you mean that—”
“Hang on, hang on. I’m only getting my breath. Now the bit I want to ask you about is this: The guy doesn’t let people take pictures of him, and—this is the goddamn thing that bugs me most—he doesn’t have any personal items around the house. No letters, no dog tag, no report cards, no second-place medals for swimming races, no gilded baby boots, no nothing. No pictures of his grandmother or his first car. Not even vacation slides. Everybody has vacation slides, don’t they?”
“Maybe his wife took them with her.”
“Maybe,” Powder said.
“Have you talked to her?”
“She’s supposed to be in Mexico,” Powder said. But he was thoughtful.
“I don’t know, Powder.” Fleetwood shrugged.
“You’re a lot of good, aren’t you?”
“I was going to ask, before . . .”
“What?”
“What do you mean someone pretends to be him to buy his house?”
Powder spread his hands. “That’s what what I got seems to mean.”
“What do you mean the guy draws more money than he works for?”
“That’s what his records show.”
“Anything where somebody is getting money for nothing sounds fishy to me,” Fleetwood said. “The guy must be some kind of a crook or a spy or something!”
Powder looked at her with a kind of admiration. “That’s what I always said about you, Fleetwood. You really got your feet on the ground.”
Tidmarsh looked tired.
“You look tired,” Powder said.
Tidmarsh laughed. “To think a wreck like you has the nerve to say something like that to me . . .” He shook his head.
Powder sat silently.
“OK,” Tidmarsh said. “I thought you would like to know that I found a kind of flaw in Mencelli’s work this morning.”
“This morning?” Powder asked. He looked at his watch.
“Well, I have trouble sleeping sometimes,” Tidmarsh said. “And it’s quiet around here early on.”
“I spent a lifetime working at night,” Powder said. “I know about the A.M. peace.”
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