“PT. He signed out. Szabo has full grounds and town. He can go wherever he likes.”
He had been vegetating on the ward for so long that he’d caught me off guard. “Tell the head nurse that I had to leave,” I said.
“Tell her yourself.” The aide frowned and tried to blow me off.
I pushed past him. “Tell her. It’s important.”
I let myself off the unit and took the rickety and temperamental elevator down to the lobby floor. PT was physical therapy, and Frederic Szabo hated the gym. I remembered reading it in his nursing notes. Where was he really going?
I hurried outside and saw Szabo skulking across the courtyard between hospital buildings. Tall and bearded — like the physical description we’d gotten from Brian Macdougall.
When Szabo walked right past the gym, I wasn’t surprised.
He was on the move!
He kept on going and I followed. He seemed kind of nervous and skitt
ish. He finally turned his head in my direction, and I ducked off the path. I didn’t think he’d seen me. Had he?
Szabo continued on and walked through the hospital gates. The street outside was filled with traffic. He walked due south. Not a care in the world. Was this the Mastermind?
He hopped into a cab a couple of blocks from the hospital. There were three of them parked in front of a Holiday Inn.
I hurried to one of the other cabs, got in, told the driver to follow.
The driver was Indian. “Where are we going, mister?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. I showed him my detective’s badge.
The driver shook his head, then he moaned into his hands. “Oh, brother. Just my bad luck. Like the movies — follow that cab.”
Chapter 112
SZABO GOT OUT OF HIS CAB on Rhode Island Avenue in Northwest. So did I. He walked for a while — window-shopped. At least that’s what it looked like. He seemed more relaxed now. His nervous tics had lessened once he was off the hospital grounds. Probably because he had been faking them.
He finally turned into a squat, dilapidated brownstone building, still on Rhode Island Avenue. The basement floor was a Chinese laundry — A. LEE.
What was he doing in there? Was he skipping out a back door? But then I saw a light flash in a second-floor window. Szabo crossed past it a few times. It was him. Tall and bearded.
My brain was starting to overload with possibilities. No one at Hazelwood knew about Szabo’s apartment in D.C. There wasn’t any mention of it in the nursing notes.
Szabo was supposed to be a drifter. Hopeless, harmless, homeless. That was the illusion he’d created. I’d finally learned a secret of his. What did it mean?
I waited down on Rhode Island Avenue. I didn’t feel in any particular danger. Not yet, anyway.
I waited out on the street for quite a while. He was inside the building for nearly two hours. I didn’t see him appear at the windows again. What was he doing in there? Time flies when you’re hanging by your fingernails.
Then the light in the apartment blinked out.
I watched the building with mounting apprehension. Szabo didn’t come outside. I was concerned. Where was he?
A good five minutes after the light went out upstairs, Szabo appeared on the front doorstep again. His nervous tics seemed to have returned. Maybe they were for real.
He rubbed his eyes repeatedly, and then his lower chin. He twitched and continually pulled his shirt away from his chest. He finger-combed his thick black hair three or four times.
Was this the Mastermind that I was watching? It almost didn’t seem possible. But if he wasn’t, where did that leave us?
Szabo kept nervously looking around the street, but I was hidden in the dark shadows of another building. I was sure he couldn’t see me. What was he afraid of?