The somnambulists were all around them, on every block. They went insensibly through the streets, playing the lead roles in their own delirious dramas. A man in a business suit stood at the edge of the park throwing seeds over his head while a flock of pigeons descended upon him to feed. His face was covered with scratches, his suit soiled and torn. A nearby tree was full of young boys, all of them throwing paper airplanes made of newspaper pages. While Unwin watched, one of the boys leaned too far off his branch and fell.
Screed hit the horn and swerved to avoid an old woman crouched in the middle of the street, her hands covered in dirt. She had relocated a pile of soil onto the pavement and was planting flowers in it.
“People these days!” Screed said.
The detective seemed to think that nothing was out of the ordinary—that this was simply the chaos of the everyday. An enemy to messiness in all its forms, he had called himself. Maybe Hoffmann’s version of the world was how Screed already imagined it to be. When they stopped at a traffic signal, he took the cigarette from his mouth and leaned forward to pick his teeth in the rearview mirror.
Unwin rubbed his jaw where Screed had struck it. He considered the many accounts he had read of the wild assertions made by suspects after they were apprehended. Protestations of his own would only sound like the pleas of a desperate man, but he had to try to convince Screed of his innocence. “I sent you a memo,” he told him. “Part of it was about Sivart’s cases.”
“Uh-huh,” Screed said.
“I found out he was wrong about a lot of things. That most of his cases have never been solved correctly. You could be the one to fix the record, Detective Screed. We can still help one another.”
“Oh, we are going to help one another,” he said, accelerating through the intersection.
Screed reached into his jacket pocket and removed the pad of paper he had taken from Lamech’s office, holding it so Unwin could see the top sheet. It had been rubbed with the flat of a pencil to reveal the impression left by words written on the previous page. Unwin recognized his own handwriting. The Gilbert, Room 202.
They parked across the street from the hotel. Screed directed him through the lobby to the restaurant, a dim, high-ceilinged room, crystal chandeliers coated in dust. The wallpaper, patterned with curlicues of gold specks, was stained yellow from years of tobacco smoke. On each table was a vase of withering lilies. They sat themselves in the back of the room.
“Your accomplice,” Screed said, “has been under surveillance since shortly after she returned to the city two weeks ago. We lost track of her for a day here and there, but we know it’s become her habit to take her meals at the Gilbert, where, as you know, she is currently lodged.”
The restaurant was all but empty. A few old, well-dressed men sat at a table near the center of the room, speaking quietly. When Unwin could hear what they were mumbling, he heard only numbers. They were arguing about an account of some kind, or the dream of an account. Seated to Unwin’s left, alone with his napkin tucked into his shirt collar, was the man with the pointy blond beard. He scrutinized an omelette while cutting small bites from it and chewing with measured care. When he saw Unwin look in his direction, he flashed him a glance of smug triumph.
“We will wait here for Miss Greenwood’s arrival,” Screed went on, “and you will greet her without rising from your seat. When she sees you, you will urge her to join us. When you speak of me, you will speak of me—in whatever sly, insinuating terms with which the two of you are accustomed to communicating—as one who has been brought into your plot to infiltrate the Agency.”
Unwin had no choice but to play along. “She’ll suspect something,” he said. “Even if she does sit with us, she won’t tell us anything.”
“That’s in your hands,” Screed said. “I’m giving you a chance to help, Unwin. You should be grateful. Now drink some more, your glass is too full.”
Screed had insisted on whiskey sours for both of them. There was no waiter in the place, but a red-jacketed bellhop—or a boy dreaming he was a bellhop—had filled in, taking the order and returning with the drinks. Unwin sipped from his glass and winced.
“Yes,” Screed said, answering a question he must have silently posed to himself, “my biggest case yet.” He took the maraschino cherry from his drink and plucked it from its stem with his teeth.
Just then the bellhop came back into the restaurant. The boy was oddly alert, and his actions more precise than those of the other sleepwalkers Unwin had seen. He went to the man with the blond beard and gestured with his thumb and pinkie open over his ear: a telephone call. The man with the blond beard looked annoyed but set down his fork, a bit of omelette still stuck to it, and rose from his chair. His napkin was dangling from his collar when he followed the bellhop into the lobby.
Unwin wondered whether it was the overseer on the phone, impatient for an update from his agent.
A minute later the bellhop came back. This time he had on his arm an old man in a tattered frock coat. He directed him to a table nearby, and the old man was about to sit when he saw Screed. He looked at Unwin, then at Screed again, then nodded and closed his eyes in solemn resignation.
It was Colonel Sherbrooke Baker. Like them, he was perfectly awake. “So you have me at last,” he said. “Battered, world-weary, a lowly fugitive, and a threat to no one. But you have me, and now you demand my surrender.”
Screed glowered at Unwin, as though he were somehow responsible and had better not try anything.
The colonel went on, “Once in the poor dregs of his life, the old wretch determines to take his meal in the company of his fellow men, and that is when you nab him. So be it. Better this than to die alone in my cell, wondering how long before I am found by room service, stiff in my chair, eyes gone to jelly.”
Screed’s mustache was twitching as Colonel Baker sat with them at their table.
“My name is Sherbrooke Thucydides Baker,” he said. “I am eighty-nine years old. I am going to tell you the story of my first three deaths and how I was undone at last by the wiles of a madman and his treacherous agents.”
Screed recognized the name—he knew Sivart’s case files as well as anyone, if only out of envy. Slowly grasping the situation, he said, “You’ve made the smart choice, Baker. Why don’t you start from the beginning?” He took the notepad from Lamech’s office out of his pocket and gave it to Unwin. “You’re a clerk,” he said. “Write this down.”
Unwin took a pencil from his briefcase and waited.
“She came late one night to my home,” Baker began, “uninvited, unexpected. That Greenwood woman, from the carnival. I was busy at my polishing and would have shot her where she stood, if not for the plan she proposed. For a modest price, Enoch Hoffmann would oversee the faking of my death. It would be, she told me, the simplest of feats for the master illusionist. I saw immediately the advantages of such an arrangement.”
Screed leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Okay,” he said, “so Hoffmann helped you with the phony funeral. I read the rest of it in the papers. All to fool your son.”
The colonel took hold of the napkin and crushed it in his hand. His voice cracked as he said, “Leopold. My boy!”
“Easy now,” Screed said, looking to make sure Unwin was getting it all down. “What about your second death?”
The colonel dropped the napkin onto his plate. “Hoffmann betrayed me. He was the one who contacted my brother, told him where I was, what I’d planned. Reginald came to stop me, to claim my treasures.”
“You killed him,” Screed said. “You stabbed him with that dagger, eight times.”
“What a bore he was. How dreadful to see living boredom spilled from lips identical to yours. Forget the war, forget our childhood on the hilltop. Forget the hedgehog hunts; I despised them! Where was that, where?”
“You fled,” Screed said, trying to keep him on track.
“I was dead again, and a murderer besides. I went to City Park, to that old fort. It pl
eased me to go there sometimes, in the autumn. I took my son, once, to show him the view from the battlements.” The colonel chuckled to himself and drummed his hands against the edge of the table, as though to beat out the march of an approaching regiment.
Screed was at a loss. He sipped from his drink again, shaking his head.
“Sivart found you,” Unwin tried. “You fled to the bridge.”
“No, not to the bridge! To Hoffmann, to that carnival sideshow. He was in his tent at the fairgrounds, looking smug. There was a party going on. He invited me in, introduced me to the other guests. I remember there was a man who stood no taller than my knees, and some lascivious acrobats, and a woman with a hairless cat on a leash. I hated them all and showed them my teeth. He took me outside, sat me next to a fire, gave me a glass of brandy. I told him not to put on airs—anyone could see how lowly and mean were his circumstances. They say a magician never reveals his secrets, but out of spite he told me how he had encompassed my ruin.”
“They found your coat in the river,” Screed said.
“My son!” the colonel cried again, taking up the napkin and twisting it. “Greenwood found him. She was still working to finish Hoffmann’s trick.”
The man with the blond beard had come back into the restaurant, his napkin still tucked in his collar. He took in the scene instantly and came toward them with his beard thrust forward.
“Poor, poor Leopold,” the colonel said. “He thought his father was dead. Everyone suspected him. Greenwood found him and told him he was done for, gave him my old coat to wear. There was no escape for him. A little lion, my son, he always was. He put the coat on. I should have been the one to go to the bridge. Not he!”
“Stop this!” cried the man with the blond beard. He grabbed Screed by the shoulder. “You must end your investigation, close the case. Orders from up top.”
The three older gentlemen at the other table were looking around, troubled by all the noise but blind to its source. They spoke nervously in streams of inexplicable digits, their voices rising.
The colonel said, “Hoffmann would pose as my son, you see. It was the simplest of tricks for the master illusionist. I was dead, my brother was dead, and he would inherit everything. My collection, my home—he was going to throw nice parties there, he said. Not so lowly and mean anymore. He said he would drink brandy at my fireside.”
The man with the blond beard circled the table and tried to snatch Unwin’s pencil. Unwin kept hold of it until it snapped in two.
“He let me keep one thing,” the colonel said. “Any one thing of my choosing.” He withdrew the antique service revolver from his pocket. It shone from constant polishing and was worn to perfect smoothness, like an object come back from the sea. It was the brightest thing in the room.
“Cease, desist!” shouted the man with the blond beard, lunging at him.
The colonel responded to these words as though to a battle cry. He growled and locked arms with his adversary, spittle flying from his lips. Neither of the men was very strong; they circled one another in a jerky dance, the colonel straining backward to keep the beard from brushing his face. He fell, and the man with the blond beard fell with him. Then came the shot.
Colonel Baker rose to his knees. He took hold of the edge of the table and pulled himself up. The man with the blond beard remained on the floor. His teeth were chattering. It sounded, Unwin thought, like coins falling through a pay phone.
“Just the one thing,” the colonel said. The old service revolver was still in his hand. He looked surprised to see it there. “I took only what I needed.”
Screed had his pistol out, but there was nothing he could do to stop the colonel from turning the gun on himself. Unwin looked away just before the shot that signaled the fourth and final death of Colonel Baker.
Screed dropped his pistol on the table and picked up the napkin. He put it to his face and breathed quickly, making little sounds into the fabric. A minute later he put the napkin down and drank his whiskey sour. When that was gone, he started drinking Unwin’s.
Unwin stood with his back against the restaurant’s dappled green wallpaper. He could not remember when he had risen from his chair. Screed was saying something to him, but Unwin could only see the detective’s lips moving. Gradually his hearing returned.
“You were telling the truth,” Screed said. “About Sivart’s cases.”
On the floor the man with the blond beard had stopped chattering.
“Yes.”
“I don’t want the cases,” Screed said. “I want Enoch Hoffmann.”
Unwin allowed himself a few more breaths, taking time to think that over. “And in exchange you’ll let me go.”
Screed’s mustache twitched, but he said, “Yes, I’ll let you go.”
A plan was forming in Unwin’s mind. It was full of holes, and he did not have time to check it against the recommendations of the Manual. Still, it was all he had. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll make the arrangements.”
“What do you need?” Screed asked.
“I need my alarm clock.”
Screed fished it out of his jacket and thrust it at him, its alarm bell jangling.
“Go to the Cat & Tonic at six tomorrow morning,” Unwin said. “Go to the room that was Colonel Baker’s study and wait.”
“Why?” Screed asked.
“Hoffmann will be there, and he won’t be ready for you. You have to wait for the right moment, though. You’ll know it when it comes.” It was the sort of bold statement Sivart would have made in order to buy himself more time. Sometimes the detective delivered, sometimes he changed the rules enough that his promise no longer mattered. Unwin would be lucky, he thought, if he managed to survive the night.
He put the alarm clock in his briefcase and left through the front door. In the alley he found his bicycle chained to the fire escape, right where he had left it the night before. He had been correct about one thing. The chain would need a good deal of oiling.
SEVENTEEN
On Solutions
A good detective tries to know
everything. But a great detective knows
just enough to see him through to the end.
Unwin walked his bicycle toward the street but found the Gilbert’s bellhop at the entrance of the alley, blocking his way. The boy stood under a broad black umbrella. He held it out to Unwin and said, “This was in lost and found. I thought you might need it.” The boy’s voice was perfectly clear, but his eyes were half closed and unfocused.
Unwin approached slowly, then ducked under the umbrella with him. “Tom,” he said, reading the name tag on his red jacket, “what makes you think I need this more than anyone else?”
Without looking at him, the bellhop said, “It’s a long ride from here to the Cat & Tonic.”
Unwin felt suddenly colder. In spite of himself, he stepped back into the rain, rolling his bicycle with him. He remembered his vision of that morning—the game at the cottage, Hoffmann’s blank stare: The magician could be anyone.
“Tom, how do you know about the Cat & Tonic?”
The bellhop frowned and shook his head, struggling with the words. “I don’t,” he said. “I’m just the bellhop. But Dad says I might get promoted to desk clerk if I keep my head screwed on straight.”
While the bellhop was talking, Unwin began to circle slowly around him. But Tom grabbed his wrist and held him there. The boy’s grip was strong. “I don’t know anything about the Cat & Tonic,” he said. “But I’m good at getting messages to people.”
“You have a message for me? From whom?”
Unwin could see the boy’s breath as he spoke. “She’s on the fourteenth floor right now, asleep with her head on your old desk. Mr. Duden is trying to wake her, and he might succeed soon. In the meantime she and I are in . . .” Tom trailed off, frowning again. “We’re in direct communication.”
Unwin looked around. He saw no one on the street, no one looking down from the windows above. He moved back under t
he umbrella and whispered, “Direct communication? With Penelope Greenwood, you mean.”
“No names,” Tom said. “Don’t know who—”
“Don’t know who might be listening in,” Unwin said. “That’s fine, Tom. But what’s the message?”
“She and her dad are in the mist. No, the midst. Of a contest of wills. She’s trying to stop him. She says she’s on your side.”
“But I saw their reunion,” Unwin said. “Her father said they would work together. He said it wasn’t the first time.”
Tom tilted his head, as though his ears were antennae and he was trying to improve reception. “She was eleven years old on November twelfth. He . . . conscripted her.”
The Manual of Detection Page 25