Страница 13 из 47
The front-door lock was a Weiss. I sorted through my key picks and tried one or two without luck. Picking a lock is time-consuming shit and I didn't feel I could stand out there indefinitely. Someone might pass and wonder why I was jiggling that length of thin metal in the keyhole and cursing mildly to myself. On an impulse I raised my hand and felt along the top of the doorjamb. Andy 'd left me his key. I let myself in.
I dearly love being in places I'm not supposed to be. I can empathize with cat burglars, housebreakers, and sec-ond-story men, experiencing, as I've heard some do, adrenaline raised to a nearly sexual pitch. My heart was thudding and I felt extraordinarily alert.
I did a quick walking survey, eyeballing the two bed-rooms, walk-in closets and both bathrooms, just to deter-mine that no one was tossing the apartment but me. In the master bedroom, I opened the sliding glass door and the screen. I went out on the balcony that co
I eased back into the apartment and began my search. Andy 's bedroom floor was densely matted with dirty clothes, through which a narrow path had been cleared. I picked my way past socks, dress shirts, and boxer shorts in a variety of vulgar prints. In lieu of a chest of drawers, he kept his clean clothes in four dark-blue plastic stacking crates. His newfound bachelorhood must be taking him back to his college days. None of the bins contained any-thing of interest. I spent fifteen minutes sliding my hand into all the coat pockets on his hanging rod, but all I came up with were some woofies, a handkerchief full of old boogers, and a ticket for a batch of cleaning he hadn't yet retrieved. The second bedroom was smaller. Andy 's bicy-cle was propped against one wall, the back tire flat. He had a rowing machine, eight cardboard moving boxes, unla-beled and still taped shut. I wondered how long he'd been separated.
I'd met Andy 's wife, Janice, at a couple of California Fidelity office parties and hadn't thought much of her until I saw what she'd left him with. The lady had really done a thorough shakedown. Andy had always complained about her extravagance, making sure we all knew she shopped at the best stores in town. It was a measure of his success, of course, that she could charge with impunity. What was clear now was that she played for keeps. Andy 'd been granted a card table, four aluminum lawn chairs with webbed seats, a mattress, and some flatware with what must have been his mother's monogram. It looked like Janice had been sticking it in the dishwasher for years because the finish was dull and the silver plate was worn off the handles.
The kitchen cabinets held paper plates and insulated cups, along with a sorry assortment of ca
The dining area was actually a simple extension of the small living room, the kitchen separated by a pass-through with bi-fold shutters painted white. There was very little in the way of furnishings. The card table seemed to double as dining-room table and home office. The telephone sat there, plugged into the answering machine, which showed no messages. The surface was littered with typing supplies, but there was no typewriter in sight. His bottle of white-out was getting as sluggish as old nail polish. The wastebasket was empty.
I went back into the kitchen and slid open the com-pactor, which was loosely packed, but full. Gingerly, I rooted through, spotting crumpled sheets of paper about three layers down. I removed the liner and inserted a fresh one. I doubted Andy would remember whether he'd emp-tied his trash or not. He'd probably spent most of his mar-ried life being waited on hand and foot, and my guess was he took household chores for granted, as if the elves and fairies crept in at night and cleaned pee off the rim of the toilet bowl whenever he missed. I glanced at my watch. I'd been in the place thirty-five minutes and I didn't want to press my luck.
I closed and locked the sliding glass door again, made a final pass to see if I'd overlooked anything, and then let myself out the front, taking his trash bag with me.
By noon, I was home again, sitting on Henry's back patio with Andy 's garbage spread around me like a beg-gar's picnic. Actually, the debris was fairly benign and didn't make me feel I needed a tetanus booster just to sort through. He was heavy into pickles, olives, anchovies, jalapeno peppers, and other foodstuffs in which no germs could live. There were no coffee grounds or orange peels. No evidence whatever that he ate anything fresh. Lots of beer cans. There were six plastic Lean Cuisine pouches, layers of junk mail, six du
At the bottom of the bag was the back end of a pad of checks, deposit slips still attached, with the name of Andy 's bank and his checking-account number neatly printed thereon. I saved that for future reference. I had set aside the crumpled papers that were shoved into the bag half-way down. I smoothed them out now-six versions of a letter to someone he referred to variously as "angel," "be-loved," "light of my life," "my darling," and "dearest one." He seemed to remember her anatomy in loving detail without much attention to her intellect. Her sexual enthu-siasms still had him all aflame and had thus, apparently, impaired his typing skills-lots of strikeovers in the lines where he reviewed their "time together," which I gath-ered was on or about Christmas Eve. In recalling the expe-rience, he seemed to struggle with a paucity of adjectives, but the verbs were clear enough.
"Well, Andy, you old devil," I murmured to myself.
He said he longed to have her suckle the something-something from his xxxxxxxx… all crossed out. My guess was that it was related to flower parts and that his botanical knowledge had failed him. Either that or the very idea had caused emotional dyslexia. Also, he couldn't quite decide what tone to take. He vacillated somewhere between groveling and reverential. He said several things about her breasts that made me wonder if she might bene-fit from surgical reduction. It was embarrassing reading, but I tried not to shrink from my responsibilities.
Having finished, I made a neat packet of all the pa-pers. I'd make a separate holding file for them until I could decide if any might be of use. I shoved the trash back in the bag and tossed it in Henry's garbage can. I let myself into my apartment and checked my answering machine. There was one message.
"Hi, Kinsey. This is Ash. Listen, I talked to my mother yesterday about this business with Lance and she'd like to meet with you, if that's okay. Give me a call when you get in and we'll set something up. Maybe this afternoon some-time if that works for you. Thanks. Talk to you soon. Bye."