The Millionaires - Brad Meltzer [92]
“Dammit!” Gallo shouted.
“You’re a nice person,” Sophie insisted. “You’re a nice person, and good things are going to happen for you.”
“Yeah,” Maggie said, glancing up toward the smoke detector. “I should be so lucky.”
* * * *
Shutting the door behind Sophie, Maggie took a silent breath and made her way back to the window in the kitchen. Along the wall, the old radiator hiccuped with a sharp clang, but Maggie barely noticed it. She was too focused on everything else—her sons… and Gallo… and even her routine. Especially her routine.
Jamming her palms under the top of the window frame, she gave it two hard pushes and finally forced it open. A blast of cold air shoved its way inside, but again, Maggie didn’t care. With Sophie’s shirts gone, there was an open spot on the clothesline. An open spot she couldn’t wait to fill.
Grabbing the damp white sheet that was draped over the nearby ironing board, she leaned outside the window, took a clothespin from the pouch in her apron, and clipped the corner into place. Inch by inch, she scrolled the sheet out over the alley, slowly pinning more of it to the line. At the edge, she pulled the sheet taut. A gust of wind did its best to send it flying, but Maggie held it down with a tight fist. Just another normal night. All that was left was the hard part.
As the wind passed, she stuffed both hands back into the apron’s pouch. Her left hand felt around for a clothespin; her right searched for something more. Within seconds, her fingers skimmed along the edge of the note she had written earlier in the night. Careful to keep her back to the kitchen, she palmed the folded-up sheet of paper in her already shaking hand. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the faint glow in Gallo and DeSanctis’s car. It didn’t slow her down.
Fighting off tears, she clamped her jaw shut and planted her feet. Then, in one fluid motion, she leaned out the window, tucked her right hand under the sheet, and clipped the note in place. Directly across the way, the window in the building next door was dark—but Maggie could still make out the inky silhouette of Saundra Finkelstein. Hiding in the corner of her window, The Fink carefully nodded. And for the third time since yesterday—under the glare of four digital videocameras, six voice-activated microphones, two encrypted transmitters, and over fifty thousand dollars’ worth of the government’s best military-strength surveillance equipment, Maggie Caruso tugged at the two-dollar clothesline and, under a cheap, overused, wet sheet, passed a handwritten note to her next-door neighbor.
39
You can learn a lot about a man by going through his bathroom. A toothbrush with frazzled bristles… baking soda toothpaste… no Q-Tips anywhere. You can even learn more than you want to know. Down on my knees under the sink, I snake my arm past the rusted pipes and rummage through random, long-expired toiletries.
“What about the medicine chest?” Charlie asks, squeezing past me and hopping up on the edge of the bathtub.
“I already went through it.”
There’s a magnetic click as the medicine cabinet door opens. I lift up my head. Charlie’s picking it apart.
“I told you—I already went through it.”
“I know—just double-checking,” he says, quickly scanning the stash of brown prescription vials. “Lopressor for blood pressure, Glyburide for diabetes, Lipitor for high cholesterol, Allopurinol for gout…”
“Charlie, what’re you doing?”
“What’s it look like, Hawkeye? I want to know what medication he was on.”
“What for?”
“Just to see—I want to find out who this guy was—get into his brain—see what he’s made of…”
The rambling goes on a beat too long. I give him another look. He quickly starts putting the brown vials back in place.
“Want to tell me what you’re really doing?” I ask.
“See, now you’re smoking too many Twinkies,” he says, forcing a laugh. “I’m telling you, I’m just looking for his—”
“You forgot your medication, didn’t you?”
“What’re you—?”
“The mexiletine