“Yes.”
“And then, what, you heard nothing?”
“For over forty years,” she says.
“And then someone—maybe a man named Randy—comes to Nero Staunch with information on Ry Strauss’s whereabouts,” I say. “Nero is too old and sick to do anything about it anymore. He’s in a wheelchair. His power is all ceremonial. His nephew Leo is the boss now, and Leo’s against this kind of vigilantism. So Nero calls you. I can show you three calls coming from the Staunch family craft brewery to your home. Landlines, which, if you don’t mind me saying, is old-school.”
“That’s not proof of anything.”
“Not in the slightest,” I agree. “But I don’t need proof. This isn’t a court of law. It’s just you and I having a chat. And I still need answers.”
“Why?”
“I told you.”
“Oh right.” Vanessa nods, remembering. “The Hut of Horrors. Your uncle and your cousin.”
“Yes.”
“So go on,” she says. “Tell me the rest of your theory.”
I hesitate—I want her to say it—but then I dive in. “I don’t know if the information came to you directly from Nero Staunch or if Staunch sent this Randy to you. That doesn’t really matter. You ended up getting the contents of Ry Strauss’s safe deposit box. That told you what name he was using, where he lived, perhaps a phone number. Ry was understandably panicked about the robbery. You called him and pretended to be someone from the bank. What did you tell him exactly?”
She narrows her eyes, tries to look wily. “What makes you so sure it was me?”
I open the file I’ve brought with me and pull out the first still from the CCTV camera in the basement. “We thought the perpetrator was a small, bald man. But once I realized that the killer could be a woman, one who perhaps lost her hair because of chemotherapy, well, that’s you, isn’t it?”
She says nothing.
I pull out the second still and hand it to her. On it, a man with jet-black hair and a brunette are exiting via the front door.
“This is the CCTV from the lobby of the Beresford. It was taken six hours after the one I just showed you from the basement. The man”—I point—“is a building resident named Seymour Rappaport. He lives on the sixteenth floor. The woman with him, however, is not his wife. No one knows who she is. Seymour didn’t know either. He said the woman was in the elevator when he got in, so she had to have come from a higher floor. We checked pretty thoroughly. There is no sign of this woman entering the building. You were very clever. You wore an overcoat on the way in via the basement. You dumped it in the middle of Ry’s apartment. No one would notice it unless they specifically looked. When you put on that wig, the bald man vanished for good. Then you took the elevator down and exited with another resident. Genius really.”
Vanessa Hogan just keeps smiling.
“You did make one small mistake though.”
That makes the smile falter. “What’s that?”
I point to the left shoe in one photograph, then the other.
“Same footwear.”
Vanessa Hogan squints at one image, then the next. “Looks like a white sneaker. Common enough.”
“True. Nothing that would hold up in a court.”
“And come now, Mr. Lockwood. Aren’t I too old to pull this off?”
“You’d think so,” I say, “but no. You had a gun. You kept it against his back. I could, of course, ask the FBI to pull all the nearby street camera footage from the day. I’m sure we would find the bald man holding a gun on him. We might even get a clearer shot of your face.”
Vanessa is loving this. “You don’t think I would have disguised my face too? Nothing much, just a little stage makeup?”
“More genius,” I say.
“I wonder though.”
“Wonder what?”
“I never realized the painting over his bed was so valuable.”
“And if you had?”
Vanessa Hogan shrugs. “I wonder if I would have taken it.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t, no.”
So there we are. I now know the fate of all six of the Jane Street Six. It occurs to me, as I sit there with Vanessa Hogan, that I am the only person in the world who does.
As if she could read my thoughts, Vanessa Hogan says, “Now it’s your turn, Mr. Lockwood. Where is Arlo Sugarman?”
I ponder how to answer this question. There is still one more thing I want to know. “You interrogated Billy Rowan and Edie Parker.”
“We went over that.”
“They told you that they didn’t throw Molotov cocktails.”
“Yes. So?”
“And what about Arlo Sugarman?”
“What about him?”
“What did they say about his role in all this?”
The smile is back. “I’m impressed, Mr. Lockwood.”
I say nothing.
“You think that makes Arlo guiltless?”
“What did Billy and Edie tell you?”
“Do you promise that you’ll still tell me where Arlo Sugarman is?”
“I do, yes.”
Vanessa settles back. “You seem to know already, but okay, I’ll confirm it for you. Arlo wasn’t there—but he was still the one who planned it. The fact that he ended up being too gutless to show doesn’t make him any less guilty.”
“Fair enough,” I say. “One final question.”
“No,” Vanessa Hogan says, and I hear steel in her voice. “First, you tell me where Arlo Sugarman is.”
It is indeed time. So I just say it: “He’s dead.”
Her face drops.
I produce a photograph of the tombstone. I tell her what Calvin Sinclair had told me. It takes a while for Vanessa Hogan to accept all of this. I take my time. I explain all I know about Arlo Sugarman, how he spent time in Oklahoma and overseas, how he seemed to do good in his life and try to right whatever wrong he’d committed.
After some time, Vanessa Hogan says, “So it’s over. It’s really over.”
It was for her. It wasn’t for me.
“One more thing,” I say, as I rise to leave. “If Billy and Edie didn’t throw the explosives, did they say who did?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Ry Strauss, for one.”
“And for the other?”
“You’ve seen the grainy images,” she says. “There were still six people there. Ry Strauss got someone else to take Arlo Sugarman’s place. He threw the second one.”
“And his name?”
“Billy and Edie didn’t know him before that night,” she says. “But everyone called him Rich.” She sits up a little straighter. “Do you have any idea who that is?”
Rich, I say to myself.
Short, of course, for Aldrich.
“No,” I tell her. “No idea at all.”
CHAPTER 34
When I take the helicopter to my familial home of Lockwood, I customarily don’t appreciate the views. Human beings adapt, one aspect of which is that when something becomes common, we lose the sense of awe. We take the everyday for granted. I am not saying this is a negative. Too much is made of “live every moment to its fullest.” It is an unrealistic goal, one that leads to more stress than satisfaction. The secret to fulfillment is not about exciting adventures or living out loud—no one can maintain that kind of pace—but in welcoming and even relishing the quiet and familiar.