"Not tonight. Monday. Through the front door. I'm going to take this to Property Crimes and lay it on a detective's desk, and if she's who I think she is, she's going to be mad at me, and then she's going to be interested." He put his phone away. "Detective Ruiz. Ana Ruiz. She's been in Property Crimes eight years. She doesn't like shortcuts and she doesn't like being pushed by the Major's office, and she really doesn't like people who make her look stupid. If this guy's been making the Department look stupid for three years, she'll want him."
"What about the watch?" Walt asked. "What happens Monday?"
Ray's face did something complicated.
"That's the other reason I came," he said. "The complainant called the desk again this afternoon, after I logged it. He's coming in Monday at two o'clock to claim it. He's got his appraisal and his photograph and a receipt from his father, and he's been told that once the detective signs off, it's his. That's the usual process. Recovered property goes back to the owner of record."
"And he's the owner of record," Nadia said.
"Right now he's the only one on paper. As far as the system's concerned, Mr. Szabo's a guy with a card in a window, and you're a person who bought something from a guy with a card in a window."
"So on Monday at two o'clock," Lin said, "a man who made all of this up walks into the police station and walks out with Walt's watch."
"Unless somebody gives Ruiz a reason to stop him." Ray looked at Walt. "You said there's something under the dial."
"My name. The date. One other thing."
"What other thing?"
Walt didn't answer that. He reached under the counter for the green clothbound notebook, opened it to a page near the end, and turned it to face Ray. On it, in pencil, was a drawing of the main plate of a watch movement seen from the dial side, every jewel and screw and pillar marked. In the space between the center wheel and the edge, where nothing went, he had drawn a small rectangle, and inside it, in tiny careful letters, he had written exactly what he meant to engrave. It was in Hungarian.
"I can't read that," Ray said.
"No," Walt said. "Neither will he."
* * *
On the way back to her car Nadia stopped on the sidewalk and turned around and looked at the window.