“What’s a federal agent?”
She was playing dumb. He hoped she didn’t spread it on too thick. He doubted she would. “They’re like police officers, Amity. They’re looking for a bad man they think could be hiding here.”
“We’re not just searching for Harkenbach,” Falkirk corrected. “We’re looking as well for any indication
that he has been here with or without your knowledge or is known to any person living on these premises.” He produced the smartphone and conjured Ed’s photograph for Amity. “Young lady, have you ever seen this man?”
She hugged herself and frowned. “He’s like some drooling sicko.”
“You know him?”
“Nope. But he looks like some guy who’d give you candy to go for a ride with him, and then you’d never come home again. I know all about those perverts. Daddy’s warned me about them like ten thousand times.”
Falkirk frowned at the photo as though he had never seen Edwin Harkenbach in that light, then put the phone away. “Mr. Coltrane, do you understand what a thorough search of the premises will entail?”
“Turn the place upside down, I suppose.”
“My men and I are wearing body cams. You need to accompany us room by room to assure yourself there is no theft or vandalism. If there’s any sensitive area you have an issue about, discuss it with us. We’ll see if we can compromise on the approach to it.”
Jeffy assumed that any area he mentioned would be searched with special attention.
Maybe the same thought occurred to Amity, and she meant to raise their suspicion in order ultimately to deflate it. “Hey, you aren’t gonna search Snowball’s cage, are you? You’ll scare him silly.”
9
While Amity held Snowball and reassured him, one of Falkirk’s two underlings took everything out of the five-by-three-foot cage: the gnawing blocks, the exercise wheel, the miniature ladder with the observation platform at the top, the little blue mouse house with white shutters and a roof of shingles painted like slices of cheese, the drifts of shredded newspapers in which the shy rodent liked to burrow and hide away. One agent soiled two fingers and realized what he had touched and said, “Hey, the little bastard shits in his own cage,” and Amity said, “Well, he’s a mouse.” Jeffy showed the intruder to the powder bath to wash his hands, whereafter the guy took the lid off the toilet tank to look for whatever, most likely for the key to everything.
As Jeffy expected, they searched the place top to bottom, turning everything upside down, or almost everything.
In the workroom, as two of his other men opened and closed drawers and cabinet doors, Falkirk looked around at the radios and at the collection of costume jewelry also made out of Bakelite, everything sitting on open shelves. His expression was not one of investigative interest, but rather that of an elitist of the ruling class who found himself in a humble thrift shop with inadequately deodorized plebian customers. “What’s all this stuff?”
“I polish the jewelry, fix broken clasps. I put new vacuum tubes in the radios. Sell it all to collectors.”
“Collectors? For kitsch like this? People actually buy it?”
Jeffy pointed to the discolored shell of the Bendix, under which the key to everything was hidden. “This potential jewel cost me sixty bucks at a swap meet. Cleaned and polished, it’ll look like that”—he pointed to a radio on which he had worked—“and then I’ll sell it for maybe six thousand at an antique show. And I’ve seen women fight over the best Bakelite necklaces.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“That was my mouse,” Amity said, her hands folded around Snowball.
Falkirk’s face stiffened with contempt, his expression out of proportion to the moment. “You think you’re pretty funny, do you?”
“No, sir. Not as funny as some.”
At his sides, the man’s hands formed into fists. His lips were pale, his stare icy. “I know your type.”
Jeffy was disquieted by Falkirk’s sudden, acidic antipathy toward the girl. To distract the agent, he plugged in one of the fully restored radios, a Fada.
The vacuum tubes warmed, and the AM-only dial brightened. The radio’s sleek rounded form and rich golden plastic with the grain and depth of quartzite spoke of an age when even everyday items were designed to please the eye; the object embodied a desire to charm that had been lost in this era of bleak utilitarianism.
Falkirk stared at the radio with puzzlement and disdain.
When Taylor Swift sang forth from the nearly century-old set, he said, “She’s hot, but she doesn’t sound hot coming through those speakers. They sure aren’t Bose.”
“I’m selling nostalgia. This is a little bit how music sounded back then,” Jeffy said.
“Nostalgia is a dead end. We either progress or slide backward. Slide far enough backward, everything collapses.”