I finished the Coke, the pretzels, and three-quarters of the novel before falling asleep shortly after midnight. When I woke at 8:40 in the morning, I found a note from my mother on the nightstand: Sweetie, going to bed almost four ayem. Will sleep till noon. Then you and me and a fancy hotel for a late lunch!
In the kitchen, I quietly made toast and built two open-face sandwiches of thickly spread peanut butter and sliced banana. I washed them down with a glass of regular milk and then with a glass of chocolate. I figured if I ate this aggressively every day for a month, I’d still gain only an ounce. I’d given up daydreaming over those Charles Atlas bodybuilding ads in magazines. I conceded the portly end of the piano business to Fats Domino; maybe I would call myself Skinny Kirk. Better yet, Skinny Bledsoe.
I let myself out of the apartment, intending to loiter on the fifth floor to listen for activity in Mr. Yoshioka’s apartment. I had heard nothing from him since I’d gone to Metropolitan Suits on Thursday morning, three days earlier. I was anxious to know if he had learned anything or had any ideas about what we should do next.
As I locked the deadbolts, I noticed a three-by-five envelope propped against the baseboard to the left of the door. There was no return address and no indication for whom the contents were intended. I opened it and withdrew a note card on which four words were neatly printed: INFORMATION HAS BEEN OBTAINED.
On the fifth floor, when Mr. Yoshioka opened the door, I smelled coffee brewing. “Happy new year, Jonah Kirk.”
“Happy new year, sir. I’m thinking of calling myself Skinny Bledsoe.”
As he closed the door, locked the deadbolts, and engaged the security chain, he said, “Is that how you wish to be addressed?”
“Not yet. I’ll probably have to be eighteen to get my name legally changed.”
“Then I will restrain myself until you have done the deed. We will convene in the kitchen.” He led me there. “Would you care for anything to drink?”
“I smell coffee. I thought you drank tea.”
“I do drink tea. And coffee. I drink as well water, orange juice, the occasional soft drink, and numerous other beverages.”
“But not martinis.”
“No. I merely buy martinis and leave them untouched to perplex the managers of nightclubs. Would you like the usual tea and honey?”
“I’m allowed coffee now and then.”
“How do you prefer it—cream, sugar, both?”
“Black like me.”
“I am impressed.”
We sat at the kitchen table with mugs of black coffee. The brew was strong but flavorful.
Mr. Yoshioka said, “Mr. Yabu Tamazaki, who calls himself Robert and even Bobby but never Bob, has worked for seventeen years at the Daily News. He is an acquaintance of mine and a reliable person. At my request, he spent some time in their morgue, looking into the Drackman murders.”
“Morgue? They keep dead people at the Daily News?”
“The morgue is the name they give to the file room in which they preserve back issues of the newspaper.”
“Cool.”
“Because Mr. and Mrs. Drackman were wealthy and prominent in the Chicago arts community, their murder became nationwide news. Even our rather self-involved city was fascinated by the story. They were murdered in a suburb of Chicago on the night of October seventh, 1958, a little more than eight years ago. The coroner estimated the time of death at between one and three o’clock in the morning. The crime was never solved.”
I shook my head. “Their son, Lucas Drackman, he killed them. Like I told you, I saw it in the dream.”
“When he was a sophomore in high school, this Lucas Drackman’s parents sent him to a private military academy located a few miles south of Mattoon, Illinois.”
“What kind of name is Mattoon?”
“I did not ask Bobby Tamazaki to research the origin of the name Mattoon.”
“Yeah. Okay. I guess it doesn’t matter.”
Mr. Yoshioka didn’t consult any notes, having committed the entire report to memory. “Young Lucas Drackman remained at the academy during summers and came home only on a few selected holidays. On the night that his parents were murdered, he was a senior at the academy, which is one hundred and ninety miles from the Drackman residence—a drive that police estimate would have taken three and a half hours, seven hours round-trip.”
“Maybe he didn’t obey the speed limits.”
“Lucas Drackman had no access to a vehicle.”
“Maybe he stole one.”
“At ten o’clock, when bed check was conducted, Lucas Drackman was in his room.”
“Maybe it was a dummy of him, like in one of those prison-break movies.”
Mr. Yoshioka gestured with his right hand, as if chasing away an annoying fly, though the fly was me with all my maybes. “He spoke to the dorm master at bed check, face-to-face. Thereafter, he would have had to pass through security to leave the dormitory, and he did not. What is more, Lucas Drackman reported to breakfast, in uniform, at seven-thirty in the morning.”