Linwood Barclay - A Tap on the Window

“No!” Roman said. “Nothing like that happened. This is bullshit, bringing up this stuff. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Okay,” I said understandingly. “Just tell me what did happen. Tell me about Dennis.”

“I hardly ever even met the guy. I know he had a stupid job cutting grass for the summer.”

“With Hooper’s?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Driving around in one of those orange trucks.”

“So what happened?”

“She started seeing him, while she was still seeing me, right? But I could tell something was wrong, because she was getting all cool, you know? And then she gives me the whole it’s-not-you-it’s-me thing, and next thing I know she’s seeing Mullavey. I wanted to fucking bash his brains in, you know, but Sean, he talked me out of doing anything stupid like that, and I never would have anyway. You think these kinds of things, but you never actually do them.”

“But then Claire and Dennis broke up all of a sudden.”

“Yeah,” Roman said. “Like, from what Sean told me, one day he just quits his job and goes back home. Like, maybe one day he realized cutting grass was boring. He breaks it off with Claire. At the time, I thought it kind of looked good on her. Like now she’d know how it feels.”

“You try to get back with her? With anything more tempting than your dick shot?”

Roman hesitated. “I, you know, I called her a few times. I admit that.”

“You do anything more?”

“Like, what do you mean?”

“Did you start following her around? Stalking her?”

Another shrug. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

“But you followed her?”

“I just wanted to talk to her, that’s all. Because I think we had a good thing going on. She wouldn’t answer my calls, so what was I supposed to do?”

“That your Mustang out front?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Your parents bought that for you?”

“Yeah, so?”

“What’s your dad drive?”

“What the hell? Why are you asking?”

“Just tell me.”

“He’s got a BMW. Him and my mom both got ’em.”

BMW didn’t make a pickup truck. But I was betting Ravelson Furniture had one or two for deliveries. Roman could have borrowed one.

“Do you know why Dennis broke things off with Claire?”

“Man, I don’t even think Claire knew the reason, from what I hear. My guess is, he was just a total douche.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that would explain it. Roman, you know Claire, you went out with her. Where would she go? If she was scared, or just wanted to get away from everybody, where would she hide out? Aside from her mom’s place in Toronto.”

He thought, then said, “I got nuthin’.”

I got out of the computer chair. “Good luck with your meeting with Steven.”

If Roman Ravelson weren’t so unlikable, I might have felt bad mocking his ambitions. If I’d had a daughter and he’d sent her a photo of his erection, I’d have made him eat his phone. And I didn’t think much of him sending Sean and Hanna all over Niagara and Erie counties selling booze out of the back of a truck. It exposed them to countless risks, legal and physical. If Roman wanted to make a buck selling booze to minors, fine. But he didn’t need to be getting others on board.

I got into my Honda, thinking about Roman’s zombie movie, about his character named Tim, out to save the world from an alien plot to—

Tim. Timmy.

The name hit me like cold, wet spray coming over the bow of the Maid of the Mist . The young man with the limp who came into Iggy’s every night for a late dinner. The man who left the restaurant only seconds before Claire did.

Where was it Sal had said Timmy lived? It was the four-story apartment building just a stone’s throw down the road.

Maybe Timmy had noticed something.

It was a long shot, to be sure. But not only had they left at almost exactly the same time — Timmy had struck off in the same direction the driver of the Volvo had taken.

I pulled away from the Ravelson house and headed back to Iggy’s.

There was no mistaking the building. There was only one like it within spitting distance of Iggy’s. Most everything along this stretch of Danbury was commercial. Fast-food joints, gas stations, strip malls, a Target on the other side of the street. The low-rise apartment complex stood alone as a place where anyone near here might actually live.

I tried to remember what Sal had told me. Timmy came in at the end of his working day, after his shift, wherever that shift happened to be. My guess was Timmy didn’t have a car. If he did, he’d probably drive to Iggy’s on his way home, not walk over. Which meant he worked very close to where he lived, or took a bus from work every night. Either way, it meant he probably finished work around nine, and most shifts were seven or eight hours.

It was twelve thirty p.m. My guess was if Timmy hadn’t already left for work, he’d be coming out the lobby doors of that apartment building anytime now. I parked the car where I could watch. If he didn’t show in the next fifteen or twenty minutes, I’d go into the lobby and see if I could find him, but I knew the directory wasn’t going to be much help. Even if last names were attached to the buzzers on the intercom system, I didn’t know Timmy’s. If there was no super in the building, I was going to have to go knocking on doors. The building had at least forty units, and while I was wandering the halls, my man Timmy could be slipping out the front door.

I only had to wait ten minutes.

He hobbled down the building’s front steps and headed straight for the sidewalk. When he reached it, he didn’t turn left or right, but watched for a break in traffic. He didn’t walk very quickly, so that break was going to have to be a long one. Across the street were a Target and several other stores clustered around it like pups nursing off their mother.

I got out of my car and ran over to him before he started his trek across.

“Timmy?”

The man turned and eyed me curiously. “Huh?” he said.

“You’re Timmy?”

He looked afraid to say yes, but after a second’s hesitation, he said, “Yeah, that’s me.”

“My name’s Weaver. I wonder if I could ask you a couple of questions?”

“What about? Who are you?”

I handed him a card. “I’m a private investigator. I need to ask you about something that happened a couple of nights ago. What’s your last name?”

Hesitantly, he said, “Gursky. Timmy Gursky. Has this got something to do with work? Because I’m heading over there right now and I don’t want to be late.”

He pointed. Not to Target, but to one of the other businesses. An electronics store, it looked like.

“The stereo place?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“This isn’t about work. And you’re not in trouble. But you might have been a witness to something I’m looking into. Two nights ago, when you were leaving Iggy’s, there was a car pulling out of the lot, and I’m hoping you might have noticed it.”

“Noticed a car? You kidding?”

“I admit, I’m grasping at straws here.”

“How do you even know I was there? And which night you talking about?”

I told him, briefly, about reviewing the surveillance video at Iggy’s, that I’d been trying to find a girl who got into a silver or gray Volvo station wagon, and that Sal said he ate there most nights, around that time.

“Sal, yeah, he’s an okay guy,” Timmy said. “Yeah, two nights ago. You know what? I actually do remember that car.”

“Seriously?”

“Son of a bitch nearly ran over my foot. Like I need any more trouble. My knee here got all fucked-up in Iraq.”