Howard wonders every day whether he will have a heart attack.
And then, nine months later, a man comes knocking on the apartment door with a printout of a murder that the entire world can see if they only know where to look.
FORTY-ONE
JULIE said, “Okay, so let’s go through this again.”
I had my clothes on now, sitting on Thomas’s bed, and he was back in his chair in front of his three monitors. Julie and I sat like pupils in front of a teacher who was reviewing what was going to be on the final.
Julie said, “Thomas here sees this picture on the Net, manages to get you to go to this address in Manhattan to check it out, which you do, but not really, since your heart’s not really in it, but you do talk to some lady who lives next door.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And Thomas, who’s totally unimpressed with your investigatory skills, calls the landlord and finds out two women used to live in this place, but they’ve both moved out, and the place has been sitting empty since then, but the rent’s being paid by some guy named Blocker. How’m I doing so far?”
Thomas nodded. “Excellent.” He looked at me. “She’s doing very well.”
“Go on,” I said.
“And within a couple of days of your little mission, the image on Whirl360 is altered,” Julie said. “That kind of blows my mind.”
“Yeah, mine, too,” I said. “But it doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t say anything to the woman down the hall about seeing the image online. Thomas, did you say anything to the landlord about what you saw in the window, on your computer?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“So then, what’s the connection?” I asked.
Julie was thinking. “You didn’t tell why you were at that address? Did you tell that guy you had lunch with? Your agent?”
“No. I didn’t mention a word of it to him.”
“Nobody followed you?”
I gave Julie an eye roll. “Really.”
She grimaced. “Okay, maybe that’s a bit out there. But think back to when you got to the place on Orchard Street.”
I sighed. “After I finished the meeting I grabbed a cab and got out at Orchard, a few blocks north of where I needed to be. I headed down, slowly, with the printout in my hand, comparing the window patterns and the brick and everything until I was sure I had the right building. It had the same air-conditioning unit in the window and everything.”
“How’d you get in?”
“Some guy was coming out and I slipped in. I went upstairs, knocked on the door, no one answered. Nothing else to tell.”
Julie was thinking. “What were you going to say, if someone had opened the door?”
“I was going through several ideas in my head and finally decided to play it straight. That we’d seen this image on Whirl360 and were curious to find out what it was.”
Thomas shook his head disappointingly.
“So you had the printout in your hand the whole time,” Julie said.
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
“So the person heading out of the building saw it, the neighbor lady saw it, and anyone else you walked past saw it.”
“No…I don’t think…Shit. I took it out at one point, and I know I put it back in my pocket eventually, but I’m not sure when.”
“So that lady might have seen it,” Julie said. “Or someone else you didn’t even notice.”
“Maybe there was a camera in the lobby,” Thomas said. “Didn’t you think of that?”
I looked angrily at him. “No, I did not think of that. Why the hell would I think of that?” But I supposed it was possible. Calming down, I said, “Okay, let’s say somebody, somehow, saw that sheet of paper I was carrying. How do we make the leap from that to the image disappearing online now?”
Julie said, “For the sake of argument, why don’t we say that what Thomas saw in the window was…something. Something that someone—”
“Like who?” I asked.
“Work with me here. Okay? Let’s say whatever’s shown in the window is something someone wouldn’t be pleased to find out was online. And once they found out it was, they had to have it removed. Think about it. Think of all the candid shots these Whirl360 cars have taken. Husbands cheating on wives, wives cheating on husbands.”
“But they blur the faces,” I said.
“Okay, but let’s say, for example, just for fun, you’re some guy in Hartford and you want to see if your house is on Whirl360, and you find it, there’s a car in the driveway you recognize as your golfing buddy’s Lincoln, except he’s never been to your house. But your wife’s home during the day, when the picture was taken. Or let’s say you’re that guy with the Lincoln, and you find out that picture’s up there before your friend does. What do you do?”
“I get what you’re saying.”