In Hampden, a watchmaker builds time from scratch
There was the photograph Marco had remembered: Walt at the bench in the back room, a magnifier strapped to his forehead, twenty-seven years old, mustache and all, tweezers in one hand and a tiny brass wheel held up to the light. And under it, a second photograph: the watch, face-up, on gray velvet, with the waves of its dial plain as a fingerprint.
Walter Szabo, 27, of Szabo & Son on 36th Street, spent nearly two years building this wristwatch by hand in the evenings after work. "My father taught me to fix them," Szabo said. "I wanted to find out if I could make one. Now I know." The watch, he said, is not for sale.
Bernice read it over his shoulder and made a noise like a teakettle.
"Not for sale," she said. "Walt Szabo, you liar."
"I was twenty-seven," Walt said. "Everything was not for sale when I was twenty-seven." But he was looking at the photograph of the watch, and his hand on the counter had gone very still.
"1980," Lin said softly. "And the guy says his dad bought it in Geneva in 1968."
Desmond tapped the caption. "Certified copy," Desmond said. "Library seal on the back."
Walt picked up the photocopy and held it at arm's length, and then close, and then at arm's length again. Then he set it down and took off his apron and folded it, and put on his good jacket from the hook behind the curtain, the gray tweed Eva had bought him for his sixtieth birthday that he had worn exactly four times.
"Lin," he said. "Bring my small kit. The black roll. And the hand-lifters, the Bergeon ones, not the cheap ones. And the dial protector."
"Where are we going?"
"The police station," Walt said. "I have an appointment at two o'clock with a watch."
* * *
Dennis Carrow arrived at the Northern District at six minutes to two, which Ray noted, because people who are lying are usually early.
He was a pleasant-looking man of about fifty in a navy quarter-zip, clean-shaven, with rimless glasses and the soft, reasonable face of a man in a retirement-planning commercial. He carried a leather portfolio. He shook Ray's hand at the front desk with a firm, dry grip and said, "Officer Dombrowski. I can't tell you how grateful I am. My father wore that watch every day of my childhood."