"It was the fashion."
"It was a crime. There was a picture of the watch." Marco turned from the window. "Walt, there was a picture of the watch in the newspaper. In 1980. With your name under it."
Everyone in the shop looked at Walt.
"Eva had a copy," he said slowly. "She had it framed. It was on the wall at home, in the hallway, for years. Then we painted, and it came down, and—" He spread his hands. "I don't know. I'll look."
"I'll find it," Marco said. "Pratt Library's got the Sun on microfilm back to the eighteen-hundreds. My buddy Desmond works the Maryland Room. I'll call him tonight. If it's in there, he'll find it."
"It's Saturday," Bernice said.
"Desmond doesn't believe in Saturday."
Lin had gone through the cigar box of photographs, quick and careful, laying them out on the glass in rows. Walt at the bench with the magnifier on his head and, yes, a mustache. Eva in a sleeveless dress, laughing, holding a toddler who was not theirs, some cousin's baby. A Christmas tree with odd glittering medallions hanging from it, each one engraved in fine waves. Walt's wrist on a steering wheel, a car dashboard, a wedding ring, the watch.
"Here," Lin said. She picked up one picture and turned it over. On the back, in Eva's square capitals: W's watch – finished!! – Nov. 1979. On the front, the watch lay face-up on a square of gray velvet on this very counter. The light was from a lamp that was still sitting at the end of the counter. Behind it, slightly out of focus, the regulator on the back wall read twenty past nine.
Walt took the photograph from her and looked at it for a long time.
"She took that," he said. "With a little Kodak. She was so proud of the flash cube."
Nobody said anything. The clocks went on.
Then Nadia said, in a voice that had stopped shaking and gone very level, "Mr. Szabo. I'm not taking a refund."
He looked up.
"I want you to know that. I know the officer said I'd have to take it up with you. I'm not. I bought that watch. It's mine. It's my father's birthday present. I'm going to get it back, and I'm going to put it on his wrist, and I'm going to tell him who made it." She picked up her receipt off the counter and folded it once and put it carefully in the inside pocket of her canvas jacket. "And I want the name of the man who says it's his."