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“I think so. There’s no police surveillance, if that’s worrying you. I checked earlier this afternoon.” And so I had, driving past slowly in the Pontiac. “Eleven o’clock,” I said. “I’ll see you then.”
I hung up and walked back to the corner of William and Pine. I could see the entrance of Number 12 from there, though not terribly well. I’d left Carolyn directly across the street in the doorway of a shop that offered old prints and custom framing. I couldn’t tell if she was still there or not.
I stayed put for maybe five minutes. Then someone emerged from the building, walking off immediately toward Nassau Street. He’d no sooner disappeared from view than Carolyn stepped out from the printshop’s doorway and gave me a wave.
I sprinted back to the telephone, dialed WOrth 4-1114. I let it ring a full dozen times, hung up, retrieved my dime, and raced back to where Carolyn was waiting. “No answer,” I told her. “He’s left the office.”
“Then we’ve got his picture.”
“There was just the one man?”
“Uh-huh. Somebody else left earlier, but you hadn’t even gotten to the phone by then, so I didn’t bother taking his picture. Then one man came out, and I waved to you after I snapped him, and there hasn’t been anybody since then. Here’s somebody now. It’s a woman. Should I take her picture?”
“Don’t bother.”
“She’s signing out. Demarest didn’t bother. He just waved to the guard and walked on by.”
“Doesn’t mean anything. I’ve done that myself, hitting doormen with the old nonchalance. If you act like they know you, they figure they must.”
“Here’s his picture. What we really need is one of those zoom lenses or whatever you call them. At least this is a narrow street or you wouldn’t be able to see much.”
I studied the picture. It didn’t have the clarity of a Bachrach portrait but the lighting was good and Demarest’s face showed up clearly. He was a big man, middle-aged, with the close-cropped gray hair of a retired Marine colonel.
The face was vaguely familiar but I couldn’t think why. He was no one I’d ever seen before.
On the way uptown Carolyn used the rear-view mirror to check the angle of her beret. It took a few minutes before she was satisfied with it.
“That was really fu
“Taking Demarest’s picture?”
“What’s fu
“Oh.”
“When Randy turned up. The ultimate bedroom farce. I swear, if jumping weren’t allowed she’d never get to a conclusion.”
“Well, from her point of view-”
“Oh, the whole thing’s ridiculous from anybody’s point of view. But there’s one thing you’ve got to admit.”
“What’s that?”
“She’s really cute when she’s mad.”
By a quarter to five we were in a cocktail lounge called Sangfroid. It was as elegant as the surrounding neighborhood, its floor deeply carpeted, its décor ru
“I know you don’t drink when you work,” she said. “But this isn’t drinking.”
“What is it?”
“Therapy. And not a moment too soon, because I think I’m hallucinating. Do you see what I see?”
“I see a very tall gentleman with a beard and a turban walking south on Madison Avenue.”
“Does that mean we’re both hallucinating?”
I shook my head. “The chap’s a Sikh,” I said. “Unless he’s a notorious homicidal burglar wearing a fiendishly clever disguise.”
“What’s he doing?”
He had entered the telephone booth. It was on our corner, a matter of yards from where we sat, and we could see him quite clearly through the window. I couldn’t swear he was the same Sikh who’d held a gun on me, but the possibility certainly did suggest itself.
“Is he the man who called you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then why’s he in the booth? He’s ten minutes early, anyway.”
“Maybe his watch is fast.”
“Is he just going to sit there? Wait a minute. Who’s he calling?”
“I don’t know. If it’s Dial-A-Prayer, you might get the number from him.”
“It’s not Dial-A-Prayer. He’s saying something.”
“Maybe it’s Dial-A-Mantra and he’s chanting along with the recording.”
“He’s hanging up.”
“So he is,” I said.
“And going away.”
But not far. He crossed the street and took a position in the doorway of a boutique. He was about as inconspicuous as the World Trade Center.
“He’s standing guard,” I said. “I think he just checked to make sure the coast was clear. Then he called the man I spoke with earlier and told him as much. Those may have been his very words-The coast is clear-but somehow I doubt it. Here comes our man now, I think.”
“Where did he come from?”
“The Carlyle, probably. It’s just a block away, and where else would you stay if you were the sort to employ turbaned Sikhs? The Waldorf, perhaps, if you had a sense of history. The Sherry-Netherlands, possibly, if you were a film producer and the Sikh was Yul Bry
“It’s definitely him. He’s in the booth.”
“So he is.”
“Now what?”
I stood up, found a dime in my pocket, checked my watch. “It’s about that time,” I said.
“You’ll excuse me, won’t you? I have a call to make.”
It was a longish call. A couple of times the operator cut in to ask for nickels, and it wasn’t the sort of conversation where one welcomed the intrusion. I thought of setting the receiver down, walking a few dozen yards, tapping on the phone-booth door and hanging onto my nickels. I decided that would be pound foolish.
I hung up, finally, and the operator rang back almost immediately to ask for a final dime. I dropped it in, then stood there fingering my ring of picks and probes and having fantasies of opening the coin box and retrieving what I’d spent. I’d never tried to pick a telephone, the game clearly not being worth the candle, but how hard could it be? I studied the key slot for perhaps a full minute before coming sharply to my senses.
Carolyn would love that one, I thought, and hurried back to the table to fill her in. She wasn’t there. I sat for a moment. The ice had melted in my Perrier and the natural carbonation, while remarkably persistent, was clearly flagging. I gazed out the window. The phone booth on the corner was empty, and I couldn’t spot the Sikh in the doorway across the street.
Had she responded to a call of nature? If so, she’d toted the camera along with her. I gave her an extra minute to return from the ladies’ room, then laid a five-dollar bill atop the little table, weighted it down with my glass, and got out of there.
I took another look for the Sikh and still couldn’t find him. I crossed the street and walked north on Madison in the direction of the Carlyle. Bobby Short was back from his summer break, I seemed to recall reading, and Tommie Flanagan, Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist for years, was doing a solo act in the Bemelmans Lounge. It struck me that I couldn’t think of a nicer way to spend a New York evening, and that I hadn’t been getting out much of late, and once this mess was cleared up I’d have to pay another visit to this glittering neighborhood.
Unless, of course, this mess didn’t get cleared up. In which case I wouldn’t be getting out much for years on end.
I was entertaining this grim thought when a voice came at me from a doorway on my left. “Pssssst,” I heard. “Hey, Mac, wa
And there she was, a cocky grin on her face. “You found me,” she said.
“I’m keen and resourceful.”
“And harder to shake than a summer cold.”