me he did want a clock.”
We both looked at Law to settle it. His eyes flitted from his wife to me and then back again.
“Let’s try having a clock for a while,” he said. “I’d like to know the time of day so I know when my shows are coming on.”
“Fine,” she said in a clipped tone. “Whatever you want.”
She left the room, closing the door behind her. I leaned over and plugged the clock’s line into the outlet. Then I checked my watch and reached up to set the time and turn on the camera. When I was finished I put the hammer back into the toolbox and snapped the latch.
“Harry?”
“What?” I asked, though I knew what the question would be.
“Did you bring me some?”
“A little.”
I reopened the toolbox and took out the flask I had filled in the parking lot at the Vendome.
“Danny said you’re hung over. You sure?”
“’Course I’m sure. Give me a taste, Harry. I need it.”
I went through the same routine as the day before and then waited to see if he could tell I had watered down the whiskey.
“Ah, that’s the good stuff, Harry. Give me another, would you?”
I did and then I closed the flask, feeling somehow guilty about giving this broken man the one joy he seemed to have left in life.
“Listen, Law, I’m here to give you a heads-up. I think I sort of kicked over a can of worms with this thing.”
“What happened?”
“I tried to run down that agent you said had called Jack Dorsey about the currency numbers. You know, about the problem?”
“Yeah, I know. Did you find her?”
“No, Law, I didn’t. The agent was Martha Gessler. That ring a bell with you?”
His eyes moved across the ceiling as if that was where he kept his memory banks.
“No, should it?”
“I don’t know. She’s missing. She’s been missing for three years, since right about the time she called Jack.”
“Holy shit, Harry.”
“Yeah. So I kind of walked into that when I called up to try to track that call.”
“They’re going to come talk to me?”
“I don’t know. But that’s the heads-up. I think they might. Somehow, they’ve got this whole thing tied into a terrorism angle. It’s one of these post-September eleven crews running with it now. And I hear they like to kick ass and read the rule book later.”
“I don’t want them coming here, Harry. What did you start?”
“I’m sorry about that, Law. If they come, just let them ask their questions and you answer them the best you can. Get their names and tell Danny to call me after they leave.”
“I’ll try. I just want to be left alone.”
“I know, Law.”
I moved closer to his chair and held the flask up into his field of vision.
“You want more?”
“Does the pope shit in the woods?”
I poured a good slug into his mouth, then a chaser. I waited for it to go down and then work its way back up into his eyes. They seemed to glaze over.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
“There are a few more questions I have for you. They sort of came to me after I talked to the bureau.”
“Like what?”
“Like about the phone call Jack got. The FBI says there was no record of Gessler calling about the currency list.”
“That’s simple. Maybe it wasn’t her. Like I said, I didn’t get a name from Jack. Or if I did it’s gone. I don’t remember it.”
“I’m pretty sure it was her. Everything else you described about it fits. She had a program like you described on her laptop. It went missing with her.”
“There you go. There probably was a record of her calling. It just disappeared with her.”
“I guess so. What about the time of the call? Can you remember anything more about that, about when it came in?”
“Ah, jeez, I don’t know, Harry. It was just one of those things. It was just a call. I’m sure Jack put it on the log.”
He was talking about the chronological log. Everything was always entered on the log. Or was supposed to be.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But I don’t have access to that. I’m on the outside, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“You told me you thought it was ten or so months into the case, remember? You said you were working other cases by then and Jack took over lead on Angella Benton. Her murder was May sixteenth of ’ninety-nine. Martha Gessler disappeared the following March nineteenth. That’s almost exactly ten months later.”
“So I remembered it right. What else you want from me?”
“It’s just