The Manual of Detection: A Novel - By Jedediah Berry Page 0,34
hand moving quickly between the wheel and the gearshift. She rounded a corner so fast that Unwin nearly fell into her. Her shiny black lunch box tipped over between their seats, and its contents rattled.
How had his assistant found him? She knew he had gone to the Municipal Museum, but she could not have learned of his trip to the Forty Winks unless she spoke to Edwin Moore—or to other contacts of her own.
“I shadowed Detective Screed,” she said, as though guessing his thoughts. “I knew he was up to no good when I saw him slink out of the office.”
She took a winding route through the city, using tunnels and side streets Unwin had never seen. He felt the cold now, felt the dampness of his clothes against the seat. He took off his hat and squeezed the water out of it, took off his jacket and tie, squeezed those, too. The address on the card was still legible; he gave it to Emily, and she nodded.
“Did you find a phonograph?” he asked.
Emily’s cheeks turned red. “I fell asleep,” she said, keeping her eyes on the road.
Unwin opened the heating vents and settled back into the seat. They were headed uptown now, and through the gray drifts of rain to the north, beyond the farthest reaches of the city, he could see green hills, distant woods. Had he been there once, as a child? He seemed to remember those hills, those woods, and a game he played there with other children. It involved hiding from one another; hiding and then waiting. Hide and wait—is that what the game was called? No, it involved seeking, too. Watch and seek?
“Screed thinks you’re guilty of murder,” said Emily.
Unwin remembered his conversation with the detective on the twenty-ninth floor, how he had given Lamech’s memo to him. Screed must have gone upstairs soon after. He probably found the corpse before the messenger did.
“What do you think?” Unwin asked.
“I think you’re going to clear your name,” she said. Her cheeks were still red, and there was something very much like passion in her voice. “I think you’re going to solve the biggest mystery yet.”
Unwin closed his eyes as the air from the vents slowly warmed him. He listened to the sound of the windshield wipers sweeping over the glass. Watch and follow? Hide and watch? Follow and seek?
Maybe he was confused. Maybe he had never played a game like that at all.
IT WAS DARK WHEN UNWIN WOKE, and his clothes were dry. Through the passenger window, he saw a low stone wall. Behind it a copse of red-leafed maple trees dripped in the light of a streetlamp. He was alone. He reached down and found his briefcase by his feet, but his umbrella was gone.
He opened the door and clambered out onto the sidewalk, jacket and tie over his arm. The air from City Park was cool and smelled of soil, of moldering things. A row of tall buildings stood opposite, the light from their windows illuminating shafts of rain over the street. Emily was gone. Had she finally seen through his facade and abandoned him?
A man in a gray overcoat emerged from the park with two small dogs on leashes. He paused when he saw Unwin, and both the dogs growled. The man seemed to approve and let them go on growling. A minute passed before he pulled them away down the block.
Unwin put on his tie, slipped into his jacket and buttoned it. He considered hailing a taxicab—not to take him to the Gilbert Hotel but to take him home. No cars moved on the block, however, and now he saw Emily, coming toward him from across the street. Her black raincoat was cinched around her waist, and she walked with one hand in her pocket. She did not look like a detective’s assistant. She looked like a detective.
Without a word she handed him his umbrella, took the keys from her pocket, and opened the trunk. Together they lifted the bicycle out, and Unwin set it against the lamppost.
“Everything’s set,” Emily said. “There’s a little restaurant in the back, but Miss Greenwood isn’t in there. You’ll have to go straight to her room. I’ve already spoken to the desk clerk. No one will stop you from going up.”
Unwin looked across the street and noticed the sign over the door from which she had come. The cursive script was lit by an overhanging lamp: The Gilbert.