Painted Ladies

My apartment was undisturbed. No one was in it. I retrieved my overnight bag and locked my front door and headed to the front windows to see if anything was shaking down below. As I passed the open door to my bedroom I tossed my suitcase on the bed and was a step past the doorway when it landed and the bed exploded.

Scraps of mattress and bed frame surged through my door and scattered on my living-room floor. I stepped back a little and peeked around the doorjamb. The bed was gone. Beyond that, there was surprisingly little damage. The bomb had been intended to kill only me. It must have been under the mattress, which had muffled its force and sound. I went to my living-room window and looked down.

The Lexus had pulled out of its parking spot and was approaching Berkeley Street. I got the license-plate number. Then I called the cops and walked back into my bedroom and looked at the wreckage.

38

Belson and I sat at my kitchen counter and watched the technicians do whatever it was they did.

“These guys are pretty good,” Belson said.

“I know.”

“They keep at it, they might get you.”

“I think the best bet is to catch them before they do,” I said.

Belson nodded.

“Good idea,” he said. “The license-plate number you got from the Lexus is assigned to a Volkswagen Passat. Owner is Laurie Hanlon. We’ll check her out, but sounds a lot like a stolen plate to me.”

“If it had anything to do with the bomb blast in the first place,” I said.

“If it’s a stolen plate,” Belson said, “it would make me think that they did.”

“Yeah, sat out there for however long,” I said, “waiting to make sure the bomb went off.”

“One of your neighbors takes her kid out in his carriage couple times a day, says the car’s been there for several days. Sometimes, she says, another car would pull up and a guy would get out and swap places with the guy in the Lexus.”

“Working in shifts,” I said.

“Rivera, the bomb-squad guy, says the kind of charge they rigged, to just destroy the bed and its occupant, is pretty sophisticated.”

“Can they tell anything else about it?”

“Nothing much to look at,” Belson said. “Maybe when they get the scraps into the lab.”

“We knew they had a bomber on staff,” I said. “The thing that blew Prince up wasn’t a bunch of nails in a pipe.”

“True,” Belson said. “You know how they got in here?”

“No.”

“You’ve looked?” Belson said.

“What do I do for a living,” I said. “Sell watches out of the trunk of my car?”

“You’ve looked.”

“I see no sign of forced entry,” I said.

“We haven’t, either,” Belson said. “Anybody got a key to the place besides Susan?”

“Hawk,” I said.

“Where is he?”

“Central Asia,” I said.

“Central Asia? Doing what?”

“What he does,” I said. “It’s got something to do with Ives, the government guy. You know Ives?”

“The spook,” Belson said.

“Yes.”

Belson shook his head slowly.

“Anybody else?”

“Nope. Just Hawk and Susan.”

“She’s okay?”

“Left her at seven-thirty this morning,” I said. “She was fine.”

“Why don’t I ask Cambridge to send a car up there, just to check,” Belson said.

“Yes,” I said.

He stood and went to the other end of the living room, where he took out a cell phone and talked for maybe five minutes. Then he came back.

“Cambridge will send a car up. I explained a little of the deal. They’ll actually talk to her, make sure she’s okay.”

I nodded.

One of the uniformed cops, a young one, came into my apartment.

“Sergeant,” he said.

“You got something, Stevie?” Belson said.

The young cop looked at me.

“He’s on our side,” Belson said. “For the moment, at least.”

Stevie nodded.

“Got a stiff in the cellar,” he said. “Hispanic male, maybe forty, forty-five, shot once in the back of the head. Got a tattoo on his right biceps says Rosa.”

“Francisco,” I said. “The super.”

Belson nodded.

“He have a passkey?”

“Sure,” I said.

“That’s probably how they got in,” he said.

I nodded.

“Take some scientists down there, Stevie,” Belson said. “I’ll be right there.”

He looked at me

“You wanna take a look?”

“I would,” I said.

And we headed to the cellar.

39

Francisco had been a good guy, and clever with his hands. He could fix a lot of stuff. Now he was facedown on the floor of his basement workroom with a small, dark hole at the base of his skull, in a pool of his blood dried and blackened on the floor.

“Keys?” Belson said.

Stevie shook his head. “Haven’t seen any.”

“Normally carried them in front, hooked to a belt loop,” I said. “Large bunch. You could hear him coming. They may be under him.”

“Turn him,” Belson said.

And a couple of technicians turned him up on his side. The bullet had apparently exited his forehead and made a much larger hole, from which the blood had come. The keys were on his belt loop. The technicians let him back down as he had been. Belson squatted on his haunches and looked at the bullet hole.

“Big caliber,” he said.

“Big enough,” I said.

Belson stood up.

“Bell marked Super out front?” Belson said.

“Yes,” I said.