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Two men got out of the car. I didn’t recognize them and there was nothing obviously coppish about their appearance. They were wearing suits and ties, but lots of people do that, not just plainclothes detectives.
I stayed on my side of West End Avenue. And sure enough they showed something to Fritz, and I stayed where I was, backing away from the curb, as a matter of fact, and placing myself alongside the stoop of a brownstone where I wouldn’t be noticeable. Anyone who noticed me would take me for a mugger and give me a wide berth.
I just stood there for a minute. Then it occurred to me that I’d like to have a look at my window, so I crossed back to the corner I’d occupied originally and counted up to the sixteenth floor and over to the G apartment, and the light was on.
I stayed there for fifteen long minutes and the light went right on blazing away. I scratched my head, a dumb thing to do when you’re wearing a loose-fitting wig. I rearranged the wig and the cap and wondered what the bastards were doing in my apartment and just how long it would take them to do it.
Too long, I decided. And they’d be noisy, there being no reason for them to toss my place in silence, so that if I went in after them my neighbors might very well be sensitive to sounds, and…
The hell with it.
I walked for a while. I kept to residential streets and stayed away from streetlights, walking around and trying to figure out what to do next. Eventually I found myself just half a block from Pandora’s. I found a spot where I could watch the doorway without being terribly noticeable myself and I stood there until I got a cramp in my calf and became very much aware of a dryness in my throat. I don’t know just how long I stood there but it was long enough for eight or ten people to enter the saloon and about as many to leave. None of them was my little pear-shaped friend.
Maybe I’d seen him around the neighborhood. Maybe that was why he looked familiar to me. Maybe I used to pass him regularly on the streets and his face and figure had registered on some sub-liminal level. Maybe he’d mentioned Pandora’s because it was his regular hangout and the first place that came to mind, even though he’d had no intention whatsoever of keeping our appointment.
Maybe he was inside there right now.
I don’t honestly think I believed this for a minute. But I was thirsty enough to grab at a straw if it meant I could grab at a beer. The faint possibility of his presence in the place enabled me to rationalize going inside myself.
And of course he wasn’t there, but the beer was good.
I didn’t stay there long, and when I left I had a bad couple of minutes. I was convinced someone was following me. I was heading south on Broadway and there was a man twenty or thirty yards back of me who I was sure had come out of the bar after me. I turned right at Sixtieth Street and so did he, and this didn’t do wonders for my morale.
I crossed the street and went on walking west. He stayed on his side of the street. He was a smallish chap and he wore a poplin windbreaker over dark slacks and a light shirt. I couldn’t see much of his face in that light and I didn’t want to stop and stare at him anyway.
Just before I reached Columbus Avenue he crossed over to my side of the street. I turned downtown on Columbus, which becomes Ninth Avenue at about that point, and to the surprise of practically no one he turned the corner and followed me. I tried to figure out what to do. I could try to shake him, I could pop into a doorway and deck him when he came by, or I could just keep walking and see what he did.
I kept walking, and a block farther on he ducked into a saloon and that was the end of him. He was just another poor bastard looking for a drink.
I walked to Columbus Circle and took a subway home. Well, to my home away from home, anyway. This time I had less difficulty finding Bethune Street. It was right where I left it. I opened the downstairs door about as quickly as I could have managed if I had a key to it, scampered up the four miserable flights of stairs, and was in Rod’s apartment in no time at all. I had no trouble with the three locks because I hadn’t had a key to lock them with when I left. Only the spring lock was engaged, and I loided it with a strip of flexible steel, an operation that honestly takes less time than opening it with a key.
Then I fastened all the locks and went to bed. I hadn’t accomplished a thing and I’d taken any number of brainless chances, but all the same I lay there in Rod’s bed and felt pleased with myself. I’d gone out on the street instead of hiding, I’d gone through the motions of taking some responsibility for myself.
It felt good.
Chapter Eight
She didn’t have to knock any plants over the next morning. I was awake and out of bed a few minutes after nine. I took a shower and looked around for something to shave with. Rod had left his second-string razor behind. I found it in the medicine chest hiding behind an empty Band-Aid box. It was an obsolete Gillette that hadn’t been used in at least a year and hadn’t been cleaned in at least a year and a day. The old blade was still in it and so was the crud and whiskers from Rod’s last shave with it. I held it under the faucet stream, but that was like trying to sweep out the Augean stables with a child’s toy broom.
I decided to call Ruth and ask her to bring things like toothpaste and a toothbrush and shaving gear. I looked up Hightower in the Manhattan white pages and found it was a commoner name than I would have guessed, but none of the Hightowers were named Ruth or lived on Bank Street. I called Information and an operator with a Latin accent assured me that there were no listings in that name or on that street. After I’d put the phone down I told myself there was no reason to question the competence of a telephone operator just because English looked to be her second language, but all the same I dialed 411 again and put another operator through the same routine. Her accent was pure dulcet Flatbush and she didn’t do any better at finding Ruth’s number.
I decided she was probably unlisted. What the hell, she wasn’t an actress. Why should she have a listed phone?
I turned on the television set for company, put up a pot of coffee, and went back and looked at the phone some more. I decided to dial my own number to see if there were any cops in the place at the moment. I picked up the phone, then put it down when I realized I wasn’t sure of my number. It was one I never called, since when I was out there was never anybody home. This sort of surprised me; I mean, even if you never call your own number you have to know it to give it out to people. But I guess that doesn’t happen often in my case. Anyway, I looked it up and there it was, and I’m happy to say I recognized it once I saw it. I dialed and nobody answered, which stood to reason, and I put the phone back in its cradle.
I was on my second cup of coffee when I heard footsteps ascending the staircase and approaching the door. She knocked but I let her use her keys. She came in, all bright-eyed and buoyant, carrying a small grocery bag and explaining that she’d brought bacon and eggs. “And you’ve already got coffee made,” she said. “Great. Here’s this morning’s Times. There’s not really anything in it.”
“I didn’t think there would be.”
“I suppose I could have bought the Daily News too but I never do. I figure if anything really important happens the Times will tell me about it. Is this the only frying pan he owns?”
“Unless he took the others on tour with him.”
“He’s not very domestic at all. Well, we’ll have to deal with the material at hand. I’m relatively new at harboring fugitives but I’ll do my best to harbor you in the style to which you are accustomed. Is it called harboring a fugitive if you do it in somebody else’s apartment?”