The Shadow Man (35 page)

Walter Robinson shook his head just slightly. ‘A closed-door suicide?’

‘He misspelled his wife’s name.’

‘But surely he was tense, depressed, anxious___’ Espy

Martinez interrupted.

Winter looked at her, searching her face with his eyes, examining the curve in her brows, the shape of her eyes, looking for signs of something other than youth and inexperience. ‘Yes, he was those things.’

‘And you don’t think that could have caused him to make a mistake?’

‘Not in a million years. Not that mistake.’

Martinez shot a quick glance over at Robinson. But he had leaned back in his chair, lowering his chin to his chest in thought, but still staring right at Simon Winter.

‘Walter?’ she asked. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think people make mistakes all the time,’ he said slowly. ‘But I don’t think the mistake on that note was made by Herman Stein, unless he meant to.’

Frieda Kroner immediately slapped her hand hard on the wooden surface of the table in the interview room. It made a sound like a pistol shot. ‘Ach! I told you so! So, you believe, do you Mr Young Detective?

So now you are beginning to see?’

‘I’m still here,’ Robinson replied quietly. ‘I’m still listening.’ But inwardly, Walter Robinson was churning, filled with an abrupt, torrential surge of anxiety. For a moment he tried to concentrate on the two old people, masking the surge of suspicion within him, but this was difficult as his imagination began to fill with an unsettling, eerie dread. He worked hard to stifle this concern, thrusting it aside for the moment, knowing that he would revisit it before long.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Winter said quietly. ‘It has just occurred to me as well.’

Robinson turned to the ancient detective and measured the look on his face. There was no doubt in his mind that Winter was correct. He had been struck by the same horrific thought at the same moment. Robinson nodded to the elder man, like forging a link or grasping each other’s hand and shaking, as if an agreement had just been struck between the two of them.

‘What are you saying?’ Espy Martinez asked.

‘I’ll explain later,’ Robinson replied. ‘Please,’ he gestured toward the rabbi and Frieda Kroner. ‘Please continue.’

But the rabbi held up his hand. ‘There is something? Something different?’ He quickly looked over at Winter. ‘Something has just taken place, and I want to know what it is.’

For a moment everyone in the room was silent.

From somewhere else in the police headquarters came the noise of shouting, momentarily overcoming the soundproofing, but it receded quickly. The rabbi folded his arms across his chest, awaiting an answer to his question. Frieda Kroner saw him do this and once again she slapped the wooden tabletop.

‘Mr Winter, Detective Robinson, what is it?’ she demanded. ‘I may be old, but I am not like a child to be told little lies and have things hidden from me because of who I am. So please, if this is something to do with poor Sophie or Mr Stein and now my dear Irving, please, you are to tell me now!’

‘Frieda is absolutely right,’ Rabbi Rubinstein said sharply. ‘You have seen something. Perhaps a little light on the Shadow? I hope___’

Simon Winter shook his head. ‘No. Nothing this fortunate.’ He looked over at Walter Robinson and then at Espy Martinez, who had a look of confusion on her face.

‘Walter, what the hell’s going on?’ she asked. ‘Did I miss something?’

Robinson shrugged and smiled, but not at anything even the slightest bit amusing. ‘It was simply a detective’s thing. A click, you know. An observation. A worry. Mr Winter and I…’

‘… saw the same thing at the same time,’ Winter said, completing his sentence.

‘And what was it that you saw?’ Rabbi Rubinstein questioned.

The old detective and the young detective shared a quick glance. Then Winter turned to the rabbi and Mrs Kroner. ‘I apologize. I should have seen this from the start. I am not as sharp as I once was. I’m sorry.’

The rabbi made a quick, impatient gesture. ‘Mr Winter, what is it?’

‘Herman Stein dies in a locked room. Sophie dies, and the police immediately go searching for the junkie that killed her. Irving Silver disappears into the ocean, or so it appears. And we think you two will be next. But it occurs to Detective Robinson all of a sudden - and this, Mrs Kroner, is what makes him shift about in his seat and

maybe feel a little sweat on the back of his neck and a little twinge in the bottom of his stomach - it occurs to him that maybe, just maybe, Herman Stein wasn’t the first. Am I right, Detective?’

Walter Robinson slowly nodded in agreement. ‘You’re doing fine,’ he said softly.

Espy Martinez inadvertently lifted her hand to her mouth, covering it in surprise, unaware that she had made this motion like a hundred Hollywood actresses.

Frieda Kroner’s face seemed to collapse.

Rabbi Rubinstein slid back in his chair, as if pushing himself back from the table, away from what Simon Winter was saying.

‘You see,’ Winter continued, ‘what the detective thought was this: Why is this man starting to murder now? And the obvious answer is: He isn’t.’

Winter looked around at the others, finally resting on the two other old people. ‘Do you think perhaps that you are the last remaining Berliners that know of the Shadow Man? Or could there be others, that you do not know about? Do you think maybe there were once twenty? A hundred and twenty? A thousand and twenty? How many survived the basement? The train transport? Then survived the camps? Then found their way through the maze to the world here? How many people may have caught a glimpse of him, in an alley, at Gestapo headquarters, on a tram or in a shelter when the bombs were falling? Do you not think that he has spent every waking moment since the st bullet was shot and the last fire of the war doused,

thinking of all those faces, frightened that this one or that one will be the person who rises up and exposes him? And what would that make him do?’

The others remained quiet, unwilling to put words to this question.

Simon Winter turned to Walter Robinson. ‘Does that pretty much sum up what you thought?’

He nodded. ‘Pretty much. Except it could be worse.’

‘Worse?’ Espy Martinez asked. ‘How?’

‘Accept for a moment that this Shadow Man exists and that he’s killed maybe three times successfully. How many others? Over how many years? In how many places? Did he retire to Miami Beach last year? Or twenty-five years ago? Where has he been and how many people have lost their lives? We know nothing, except who he was once, fifty years ago, in Berlin, in the middle of a war, and even then, we have no name, no identification, no fingerprints or identifying marks. We have only these people’s recollections. Recollections based on terror and a momentary glimpse of someone when they were little more than children themselves. How do you connect the present to the past?’

Espy Martinez took a deep breath. ‘I know how,’ she said quietly.

The others all swiveled and looked at her.

‘Mr Leroy fucking Jefferson,’ she said.

It took several moments for Frieda Kroner to respond: ‘This is an unusual name for a person to have….’ And Espy Martinez realized that she had automatically attached the obscenity to the suspect’s name without considering the more delicate ears of the older people, who did not use the word fuck with the same constancy as virtually everyone connected to the criminal justice system. She immediately apologized.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Kroner. Leroy Jefferson is the man Detective Robinson originally charged with Sophie Millstein’s murder. Apparently he was at her apartment - or just outside it - and witnessed this Shadow Man

enter and commit the crime.’

‘So,’ the rabbi said slowly, ‘this man can tell us what the Shadow Man looks like today. He can describe him?’

‘Yes. I believe so.’

‘Identikit,’ Winter said. ‘A police artist could work with him and come up with something current. That would be a start. Can he provide other information? A license plate maybe?’

‘I don’t know,’ Martinez replied. ‘Not yet. The price of Mr Jefferson’s cooperation is high.’

‘How high?’ Robinson interrupted.

‘He wants to walk.’

‘Shit!’ the detective muttered.

‘Walk?’ Frieda Kroner asked. ‘He is crippled?’

‘What he wants is to be released from pending charges. Freed.’

‘Ahh, I see. And this is a problem?’

Espy Martinez nodded. ‘He shot and wounded a policeman.’

‘He must be an awful man to do such a thing,’ she said.

‘Indeed,’ Martinez replied.

Simon Winter was thinking quickly. ‘If we had a good picture, you know, something reasonably close …’

Martinez turned to him. ‘Yes? With that picture what?’

‘Well, first off, it would go a long ways toward helping the rabbi and Mrs Kroner. It would help them to be prepared. They wouldn’t be sitting around waiting to recognize some man they only saw for seconds fifty years ago. They would know what the man stalking them looks like. That would be an immense advantage. Help level the playing field.’

‘This is true,’ Mrs Kroner said. ‘We would not be so vulnerable.’

“But more, it gives me an idea or two.’

‘I think I know what you’re thinking,’ Walter Robinson said slowly. ‘You’re thinking that there is one thing in the entire world that this man is frightened of, and makes him act quickly, and one thing only: losing his anonymity. Correct?’

Simon Winter nodded and smiled. ‘We seem to think alike.’

‘And,’ Robinson continued, ‘if we can threaten that anonymity, then perhaps we can do something else.’

‘What would that be?’ Rabbi Rubinstein asked quickly.

Simon Winter answered coldly for the both of them. ‘Set a trap.’

The Lumberjack lived in a modest three-bed, two-bath house on a quiet cul-de-sac in North Miami, a suburban neighborhood where every other house had a powerboat on a trailer parked by the side, and where the residents lived from barbecue to barbecue, weekend to weekend. It was clean, kept up, a place where policemen and firemen and city workers spent their money in sturdy, stolid pursuit of upward mobility in single-story, cinder-block homes with small, in-ground pools in the rear. The rooftops were flat white or red tile. Lawns were mowed, hedges trimmed. The late-model four-wheel-drive trucks that towed all the powerboats to the water some three or four miles away were all polished brightly, glistening in the midday sun.

An occasional dog barked, as Walter Robinson rolled slowly down the street, looking for the Lumberjack’s address. He assumed that the dogs were barking at his skin; no blacks in this neighborhood, he thought. Just the mixing of white and Hispanic that has a certain inevitability in Dade County. The middle-class blacks in the same economic sphere as the Lumberjack tended to bunch together in their own neighborhoods, where there weren’t quite as many shade trees, or books for the elementary

school library, where there were a few more brown spots on the lawns, and bank loans were a little harder to come by. These neighborhoods were always a little closer to Liberty City or Overtown, a little closer to the edges of poverty. He had an odd thought as he pulled in front of the Lumberjack’s house. He remembered all the early explorers who set out for the New World overcoming their fear that the world was flat and that they would sail off the rim into oblivion. This was the sort of historical information that his mother, the dutiful teacher, would speak of over dinner, when she wasn’t patiently but insistently correcting his table manners. They were wrong, he thought. The world is round. But it is the people in it who manufacture the edges, making it frighteningly easy to sail off the brink, where there are still monsters waiting eagerly to swallow you up.

Heat like an angry complaint greeted him as he stepped from his car. The walkway to the Lumberjack’s house glowed, filmy air hovering just above the cement. He saw a wooden swing set around one side of the house, and in front there was a small collection of bicycles and tricycles abandoned by the garage door. Across the street a middle-aged woman, wearing cut-off Mickey Mouse jeans and a T-shirt was cutting the lawn. She stopped, shutting off the mower, as he stepped from the car. He could feel her eyes tracking him as he approached the house.

He rang the bell and waited, hearing a set of harried footsteps after a moment or two. The door swung open and a young woman stared out. She wore baggy long shorts and a bathing suit top and had her dark hair pinned back sharply. A baby clutching a bottle was draped on her hip.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m Detective Robinson. Can I see your husband?’

She hesitated, without smiling. ‘He’s still in some pain,’ she said.

‘I need to see him,’ Robinson repeated.

‘He needs to rest,’ she whispered.

Before he could reply, a voice bellowed from within the house: ‘Honey, who is it?’

The Lumberjack’s wife seemed to want to close the door, but instead, she swung it open, calling out at the same time, ‘It’s Detective Robinson, here to see you.’ She jerked her head toward the rear of the house, and Robinson stepped in. He saw immediately that, for a house with small children, it was extremely neat. There were trimmed plants in an etagere, no toys underfoot. In the entranceway there was a large crucifix hanging over a blessing. He passed the expected wall decorations: framed photographs of babies and parents, a selection of posters advertising forgettable art shows.

One thing surprised him as he entered the living room. On the wall above the matching sofa and love-seat set was a large, brightly colored painting, realism in the primitive Haitian school, obviously painted by someone with little education and great talent. It was a marketplace scene, great splashes of vibrant color interrupted by the resonant blacks of the faces of the country people populating the market. It was striking, fascinating in a way, because it pulled him momentarily into that small world, as if allowing him to sense a little bit of the story of each character on the canvas. He stared at it, astonished to see it in the Lumberjack’s home. He had seen many of these paintings, usually hanging in the trendier art galleries in the rich sections of South Miami and Coral Gables. They had an odd attraction for the wealthy; a combination of something native and something articulate; the better examples of art from the impoverished Caribbean country