to assume, in an instant, a shooting stance: Doing all that, he would have had to admit that he was afraid of a dead man.
And there was the truth. Evaded, now acknowledged.
The claustrophobia in the elevator and the expectation that he would find Rolf Reynerd on the fifth floor had been nothing but attempts to deflect himself from consideration of his true fear, from the even less rational conviction that dead Dunny had risen from the morgue gurney and had wandered home with unknowable intent.
Ethan didn’t believe that dead men could walk.
He doubted that Dunny, dead or alive, would harm him.
His anxiety arose from the possibility that Duncan Whistler, if indeed he’d left the hospital garden room under his own power, might be Dunny in name only. Having nearly drowned, having spent three months in a coma, he might be suffering brain damage that made him dangerous.
Although Dunny had his good qualities, not least of all the sense to recognize in Hannah a woman of exceptional virtues, he had been capable of ruthless violence. His success in the criminal life had not resulted from polished people skills and a nice smile.
He could break heads when he needed to break them. And sometimes he’d broken them when skull cracking wasn’t necessary.
If Dunny were half the man that he’d once been, and the wrong half, Ethan preferred not to come face to face with him. Over the years, their relationship had taken peculiar turns; one final and still darker twist in the road could not be ruled out.
The huge living room featured high-end contemporary sofas and chairs, upholstered in wheat-colored silk. Tables, cabinets, and decorative objects were all Chinese antiques.
Either Dunny had discovered a genie-stuffed lamp and had wished himself exquisite taste, or he’d employed a pricey interior designer.
Here high above the olive trees, the big windows revealed the buildings across the street and a sky that looked like the soggy char and ashes of a vast, extinguished fire.
Outside: a car horn in the distance, the low somber grumble of traffic up on Wilshire Boulevard.
The June-bug jitter, scarab click, tumblebug tap of the beetle-voiced rain spoke at the window, click-click-click.
In the living room, stillness distilled. Only his breathing. His heart.
Ethan went into the study to seek the source of a soft light.
On the chinoiserie desk stood a bronze lamp with an alabaster shade. The buttery-yellow glow struck iridescent colors from the border of mother-of-pearl inlays.
Previously a framed photograph of Hannah had been displayed on the desk. It was missing.
Ethan recalled his surprise on discovering the photo during his first visit to the apartment, eleven weeks ago, after he had learned that he held authority over Dunny’s affairs.
Surprise had been matched by dismay. Although Hannah had been gone for five years, the presence of the picture seemed to be an act of emotional aggression, and somehow an insult to her memory that she should be an object of affection—and once an object of desire—to a man steeped in a life of crime and violence.
Ethan had left the photograph untouched, for even with a power of attorney covering all of Dunny’s affairs, he had felt that the picture in the handsome silver frame hadn’t been his property either to dispose of or to claim.
At the hospital on the night of Hannah’s death, again at the funeral, following twelve years of estrangement, Ethan and Dunny had spoken. Their mutual grief had not, however, brought them together otherwise. They had not exchanged a word for three years.
On the third anniversary of Hannah’s passing, Dunny had phoned to say that over those thirty-six months, he had brooded long and hard on her untimely death at thirty-two. Gradually but profoundly, the loss of her—just knowing that she was no longer out there somewhere in the world—had affected him, had changed him forever.
Dunny claimed that he was going to go straight, extract himself from all his criminal enterprises. Ethan had not believed him, but had wished him luck. They had never spoken again.
Later, he heard through third parties that Dunny had gotten out of the life, that old friends and associates never saw him anymore, that he had become something of a hermit, bookish and withdrawn.
With those rumors, Ethan had taken enough salt to work up a thirst for truth. He remained certain that eventually he would learn Duncan Whistler had fallen back into old habits—or had never truly forsaken them.
Later still, he heard that Dunny had returned to the Church, attended Mass each week, and carried himself with a humility that had never before characterized him.
Whether this was true or not, the fact remained that Dunny had held fast to the fortune that he amassed through fraud, theft, and dealing drugs. Living in luxury paid for with such dirty money, any genuinely reformed man might have been racked with guilt until at last he put his riches to a cleansing use.
More than the photograph of Hannah had been taken from the study. An atmosphere of bookish innocence was gone, as well.
A double score of hardcover volumes were stacked on the floor, in a corner. They had been removed from two shelves of the wall-to-wall bookcase.
One of the shelves, which had seemed to be fixed like all the others, had been removed. A section of the bookcase backing, which also had appeared fixed, had been slid aside, revealing a wall safe.
The twelve-inch diameter door of the safe stood open. Ethan felt inside. The spacious box proved empty.
He hadn’t known that the study contained a safe. Logic suggested that no one but Dunny—and the installer—would have been aware of its existence.
Brain-damaged man dresses himself. Finds his way home. Remembers the combination to his safe.
Or … dead man comes home. In a mood to party, he picks up some spending money.
Dunny dead made nearly as much sense as Dunny with severe brain damage.
FRIC IN A FRACAS: TWO TRAINS CLACKETY-clacking and whistling at key crossroads, Nazis in the villages, American troops fighting their way down from the hills, dead soldiers everywhere, and villainous SS officers in black uniforms herding Jews into the boxcars of a third train stopped at a station, more SS bastards shooting Catholics and burying their bodies in a mass grave here by a pine woods.
Few people knew that the Nazis had killed not only Jews but also millions of Christians. Most of the higher-echelon Nazis had adhered to a strange and informal pagan creed, worshiping land and race and myths of ancient Saxony, worshiping blood and power.
Few people knew, but Fric knew. He liked knowing things that other people didn’t. Odd bits of history. Secrets. The mysteries of alchemy. Scientific curiosities.
Like how to power an electric clock with a potato. You needed a copper peg, a zinc nail, and some wire. A potato-powered clock looked stupid, but it worked.
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