Roses Are Red (Alex Cross 6)

He started to walk. I watched him retrace his steps up Rhode Island Avenue. Then he waved down a cab.

I didn’t follow Szabo. I wanted to — but I had an even stronger urge. A hunch I needed to play. I hurried across the street and entered the brownstone where he’d spent most of the afternoon.

I had to find out what Szabo had been doing in there. I finally had to admit — he was driving me crazy. He was giving me nervous tics.

Chapter 113

I USED A SMALL, very useful lock pick and got into Szabo’s apartment in less time than it takes to say “illegal entry.” No one was ever going to know I’d been in there.

I was planning to take a quick look around the apartment, then get right out again. I doubted he’d left evidence linking him to the MetroHartford kidnapping, or any of the bank jobs. I needed to see his place, though. I had to know more about Szabo than the doctors and nurses at Hazelwood had written in their reports. I needed to understand the Mastermind.

He had a collection of sharpened hunting knives, and he also collected old guns: Civil War rifles, German Lugers, American Colts. There were souvenirs from Vietnam: a ceremonial sword and a battalion flag of the K10 NVA Battalion, North Vietnamese. Mostly, he had books and magazines in the apartment. The Evil That Men Do. Crime and Punishment. The Shooting Gazette. Scientific American.

So far, no big surprises. Other than that he had the apartment in the first place.

“Szabo, are you him?” I finally asked out loud. “Are you the Mastermind? What the hell is your game, man?”

I quickly searched the living room, a small bedroom, then a claustrophobic den that obviously served as an office.

Szabo, is this where you plotted everything out?

An unfinished handwritten letter was lying on the desk in his den. It seemed he’d been working on it recently. I began to read.

Mr. Arthur Lee

A. Lee Laundry

This is a warning, and if I were you, I’d take it very seriously.

Three weeks ago, I dropped off some dry cleaning to you. Before I send out my cleaning, I always enclose a list of all articles in the dry cleaning bag, and a brief description of each article.

I keep a copy for myself!

The list is orderly and efficient.

The letter went on to say that some clothes of Szabo’s were missing. He’d spoken to someone at the laundry and been promised the clothing would be sent right over. It wasn’t.

I march right down to your cleaners. I meet with YOU. I am enraged that YOU too can stand there and tell me you don’t have my clothes. Then for the final insult. You tell me my doorman probably stole them.

I don’t have a fucking doorman! I live in the same building you do!

Consider yourself warned.

Frederic Szabo

What the hell was this? I wondered as I finished reading the odd, crazy, and seemingly inconsequential letter.

I shook my head back and forth. Was the A. Lee Laundry his next target? Was he planning something against Lee? The Mastermind?

I opened the drawers in a small credenza and found more letters, written to other companies: Citibank, Chase, First Union Bank, Exxon, Kodak, Bell Atlantic, scores of others.

I sat down and skimmed through the letters. All of it was hate mail. Crazy stuff. This was Frederic Szabo as he’d been described in his hospital workups. Paranoid, angry at the world, a curmudgeonly fifty-one-year-old who had been fired from every job he’d had.

I was getting more confused rather than clearer about Szabo. I ran my fingers along the top of a tall filing cabinet. There were papers up there. I pulled them down and took a look.

There were blueprints of the banks that had been robbed!

And a layout of the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel!