“A limo came in here a few minutes ago,” Frank said. “I was wondering who it belonged to.”
“We have a great many limousines in this garage,” Schaeffer told him. He took Frank gently by the arm and began to move him away from the security station.
“It was a black Mercedes,” Frank added. “I got the license plate.”
“Why were you following it?”
“I was following somebody who got into it.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Schaeffer said, once the two of them were alone by the elevators. The politeness had disappeared, and Frank realized that his identification card had fixed him in Schaeffer’s mind as nothing but a two-bit shiny-suited gumshoe who was probably poking his nose into things the big guys at the top of the building weren’t interested in having brought out.
“I’m afraid you’re not allowed down here,” Schaeffer said. “Reynolds shouldn’t have brought you down.”
“The woman had long blond hair,” Frank said.”She must have passed the guard station.”
Schaeffer reached around Frank’s body and pressed the up arrow of the elevator. “The people in this building are very security-conscious,” he said.
“Do I look like a threat to their security?” Frank asked coldly.
The elevator doors opened behind him, but Frank did not get in.
Schaeffer’s jaw tightened. “You are technically trespassing,” he said.
Frank thought of his license, how, with his record, it could easily be revoked. He stepped back and held open the elevator door. “I’m not interested in bothering anybody,” he said. “I was just following a woman.”
“But you lost her, didn’t you?”
Frank said nothing.
“So, technically, that’s the problem, isn’t it? That you lost her.”
Frank could feel the rubber safety door growing warm in his hand. “Did you see her, or not?” he asked sharply.
Schaeffer pressed his hand lightly against Frank’s chest, urging him into the elevator. He didn’t answer.
“Did she go to a private apartment here?” Frank demanded.
Schaeffer was staring at him silently as the two doors moved smoothly toward each other.
Just as they came together, Frank could see him smile.
He couldn’t cover all the entrances to Trump Tower, so he decided to pick the one he’d seen her disappear into, the one that led out of the garage. He waited, pleasurelessly finishing off the bagel he’d stuffed into his jacket earlier in the morning, while his eyes stared at the black square of shadow that penetrated the building’s enormous foundation. Schaeffer had been right. There were a great many limousines, and for the next hour, Frank watched them as they came out of the garage—Cadillacs and Lincolns, a single white Rolls Royce, even another black Mercedes, but one with a different license number than the limousine which had picked Mrs. Phillips up on Madison Avenue.
Frank glanced at his watch restlessly, then, fifteen minutes later, glanced at it again. He could feel the evil bubble growing in him, the one that made everything a little emptier than it already was. It had started with Sarah’s death, deepened with his divorce, then deepened more as his love for Karen had gone dry and passionless. It drifted toward him from out of nowhere now, as if it no longer needed to be called up by any particular thing, but simply occupied its place as a steadily darkening presence, filling him with hissing accusations about the way he’d lived his life. There were times when he suspected that everyone must have such a specter, but then he’d see a couple laughing in a restaurant or a father playing with his daughter in the park, or even some solitary old woman contentedly reading a newspaper on her bare cement stoop, and they would strike him as people who’d somehow escaped the grasp of a merciless pursuer, had closed the door and thrown the bolt just in time to leave the shadow breathless in the hall.
Another car emerged from the underground garage, but as it broke into the light, Frank saw that it was dark blue, rather than black, another Cadillac rather than a Mercedes. He leaned back against the wall of the building and continued his long vigil. He knew that there was no way he could be sure that Mrs. Phillips was still inside the Tower. She could easily have left it by another entrance, taken a cab and gone to her next destination. Or she could simply have been driven out of it in a different car, one of those Cadillacs which had passed practically under his nose as it made its way back onto the street.
He lit a cigarette, fanning the smoke from his eyes to keep the garage in view. No cars were coming out and a steady stream of pedestrians walked back and forth across the dark entrance. They were mostly business people and office workers who labored in the immense buildings which rose over the avenue and along the surrounding streets, stretching river to river across the granite backbone of Manhattan.
Another hour passed, then another.
Schaeffer had gotten it right. He had lost her. There was no point in waiting any longer. The only thing to do now was return to the Phillips apartment so that he could at least find out when she got home.
He walked back up to the corner of Fifth Avenue, then northward to Sixty-fourth Street and took up his usual position by the wall.
Time continued forward with a maddening slowness, flowing over him like a thick, turbid river, choked and currentless.
He drank a cup of coffee, then another and another, crushing each paper cup in turn, then tossing it listlessly into the wire receptacle a few feet from where he stood.
One by one, he went through his cigarettes.
The bright midmoming air darkened into blue.
He looked at his watch. It was nearly five o’clock. He took out the last of his cigarettes and lit it, then glanced to his left, his eyes half-fogged with boredom, until in a sudden, stunning instant he realized that she was shooting toward him, that she was practically upon him, so close that the sound of her high-heeled shoes as they clicked against the cement sidewalk were as loud as pistol shots.
Reflexively, he pulled his eyes away from her, fixed them on a single seam of mortar in the brick wall which faced him, and let her pass, his breath held tightly in his lungs. A flash of blond hair swept across his field of vision as she whisked by, and he could feel a slight breeze from the air her body displaced as she swept past him. A very subtle sweetness surrounded him in her wake, and as he drew his breath again, his eyes watching as she disappeared behind her door, he realized, with an aching sense of something deeply out of place, that she’d seeded the evening air with her perfume.
“There’s something wrong, Farouk,” Frank said immediately as Farouk came through the door. Farouk sat down at his usual place in the chair opposite Frank’s desk and lifted his hands, palms up. “Something wrong? Well, that is the way of it, yes?”
“No, I mean about this case.”
Farouk glanced toward the window. A hint of light still remained. “You mean, the day case?”
Frank nodded. “I followed her again this morning,” he said. “She walked to Madison Avenue, but not to shop. It was too early for the stores to be open.”
“What did she do then?”
“She stopped in front of a window and sort of looked herself over, that’s all.”
“At her face?” Farouk asked.
“Yes. Then she stepped over to the curb and got into a limousine.”
Farouk stroked his chin. “A moment, please. She walked from her home on Sixty-fourth Street to Madison Avenue. That is but a single block.”
“Yes.”
“And that is when she stopped to look at her face in the window?”
“That’s right,” Frank said.
Farouk said nothing, but Frank could tell that things were moving through his mind.
“Then she let down her hair and …” he began again.
Farouk raised his hand to stop him. “You did not say this, about the hair. She let down her hair?”
“Yeah.”
“And then she did what?”
“S
he started walking over to the curb, and a limousine pulled up.”
“Which she did not lift her hand to signal.”
“No.”
“Which she signaled with her hair.”
“What?”
“When she let down her hair, that was the signal.”
Frank reviewed the scene in his mind. “Yes, that’s possible,” he said.
“And so the limousine pulled up to the curb and she got in, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“And went where?”
“To Trump Tower,” Frank told him. “Into the garage of the building.”
Farouk’s face stiffened. “Trump Tower?”
“Yeah, why?”
“It is what I learned from Mr. Devine last night,” Farouk said, “that he has an apartment in Trump Tower.”
“But I thought he lived at the Dakota?”
“Lives there, perhaps,” Farouk said. “But he also owns an apartment in Trump Tower.”
“He just happened to mention that?” Frank asked.
“He let it drop at the right moment,” Farouk said. “To demonstrate that he is a man of means.”
“Did he say anything else about it?”
Farouk shook his head. He thought a moment longer, his eyes drifting up toward the ceiling for a few seconds before they fell back sharply toward Frank. “And how long did she stay at the Tower?”
“I don’t know.”
Farouk looked at him unbelievingly. “You don’t know? Why is this?”
“Because I lost her.”
Farouk continued to stare.
“She must have taken something other than the usual elevators to get to the upper floors,” Frank explained quickly. “They have private elevators for the residents.”
“And you think she took one of these?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“To visit Devine?”
“I don’t know,” Frank said. He took out his notebook. “I was able to get the license number of the limousine she got into on Madison Avenue, and I …”
“A moment, please,” Farouk interrupted. “We have only a little time left for the day. Will this be short?”
“I’ll make it short,” Frank said. He ripped the page out of the notebook. “Here’s the license number. I’d like to know who the car belongs to.”
Farouk took the paper, glanced at the number, then handed it back to Frank. “You need this more than I.”
Frank returned the page to his notebook, then the notebook to his jacket.
“What happened after you lost her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You did not see her again?”
“Not until she got back home,” Frank admitted. “She practically bumped into me on the street.”
Farouk’s face grew solemn. “Perhaps you have burned your cover, yes?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How did she look when she returned?”
“The same.”
“I mean, her hair,” Farouk added pointedly.
In an instant, Frank saw her again, her white face coming toward him like a puff of ghostly smoke. “It was up,” he said. “She’d put it back up again.”
Farouk drew in a deep breath. “You are right,” he said. “There is something wrong.”
Frank nodded. “What about you, what else did you find out?”
“On the day case, you mean?”
“Yes,” Frank said. “You had an appointment with Devine.”
Farouk smiled. “It is my hope that the following may be of some assistance,” he began. “Mr. Devine received me with great kindness.” He pulled out a small business card and handed it to Frank. “This is what is called ‘the hook.’”
Frank glanced at the card. It listed Farouk as an official representing something called the United Middle Eastern Consortium.
“A hook must hold the bait,” Farouk said. “In this case, the bait is in the words.”
“Middle Eastern,” Frank said. “Consortium.”
Farouk smiled. “Does it not seem appropriately modest?”
“Yes, it does.”
“But also appropriately wealthy, yes?” Farouk added. “Appropriately, as they say, discreet.”
Frank handed him back the card. “So he was happy to see you.”
Farouk nodded. “He is one of those for whom the making of money holds the delights of the flesh,” he said.
“Where’d you meet him?”
“At his office on Forty-seventh Street,” Farouk said. “It was quite lavish. But not so lavish as to make Mr. Devine appear as one who spends money unwisely.”
“What did you say to him?”
“In his office, very little,” Farouk said. “He did not wish to remain there.” He smiled. “He is a large man, like myself, and the hour was late.”
“He was hungry.”
“Dinner was quite extravagant,” Farouk said. “A four-star restaurant which caters only to those who wish to be seen eating well. Mr. Devine was well known to the staff.” He smiled. “Yellow pike in a light pepper sauce, very tasty. And Devine has excellent taste in wine as well.” He rubbed his hands together softly. “The atmosphere was very cordial, but the conversation, as they say, was quite down-to-earth.”
“What did he say?”
“That he was always pleased to discover new business associates,” Farouk said. “I told him that I represented a number of people who were interested in investing in theatrical productions.”
“How’d he react?”
“As if a cold wind had come through the window,” Farouk said. “He said—and these are his words precisely— he said. ‘You should tell your associates that they would do better to burn their money and enjoy the heat.’” He smiled. “I, of course, immediately expressed my appreciation for such honesty. My associates are not interested in burning money, I told him, but in acquiring more and more of it. I asked if perhaps Mr. Devine might be of some assistance in this pursuit.” He took out his ivory cigarette holder and tapped a cigarette into it. “At this remark, as you might imagine, the cold wind grew warmer, and Mr. Devine appeared to glow.” He lit the cigarette. “He spoke a great deal, and I learned that in addition to those activities which I mentioned at our last meeting, he is also what is called a ‘packager.’”
“Packager? What does that mean?”
“He packages things, puts deals together. It might be anything,” Farouk said. “With Dr. Powers, for instance, he was packaging a theatrical production.”
“But that’s not his main business?”
Farouk laughed. “With this man, it hardly rates as a sideline.”
“What else, then?”
“Jewels, furs, oil,” Farouk said. “His dealings are international, and quite varied. His connections run very deep among my own people, in fact.”
“What does he sell to them?”
“He does not sell,” Farouk said. “He does not buy. Remember, my friend, Mr. Devine is a packager. He brings together the people who have something with the people who want it, you see? When money is spoken of, Mr. Devine rises from a bottle, like a genie.”
“Has he ever had any dealings with Harold Phillips?”
Farouk shook his head. “Not that I have been able to discover,” he said. “But, as far as I have been able to determine, in all matters, his dealings have been quite legal.”
“So it’s a dead end,” Frank said dully.
“Not exactly dead,” Farouk said. “I was not satisfied with what I had discovered, and so I returned to the question of theatrical productions. I told him that I and others were still interested in financing such enterprises. Mr. Devine did not seem interested. So I told him that this was surprising to me, since I’d heard his name mentioned as regards a company known as Business Associates.”
Frank leaned forward slightly. “How’d he react to that?”
“Rather strangely, I think,” Farouk told him. “He simply smiled.”
?
??He didn’t say anything?”
“After the smile, came the words,” Farouk went on. “He said, ‘Ah, I see. Well, if all goes well, that can certainly be arranged.’”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t pursue it?”
“It was my opinion that I could not pursue it at that time without betraying myself.”
Frank eased himself back into his seat. “No, I don’t think you could,” he said disappointedly.
Farouk smiled. “But much time remained for other inquiries,” he said. “And I was pleased to make them.”
“What did you find out?”
“That Mr. Devine is a man of various philanthropical interests.”
“Charities?”
“And in this, I discovered a new connection,” Farouk said. “One between Devine and Mrs. Phillips.”
“What is it?”
“I believe that you told me Mrs. Phillips was involved in a group which wishes to save the rain forest of South America, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“This played in my mind,” Farouk said. “And because of that, I visited the offices of this group.” He smiled. “They were happy to give me a certain amount of material on their cause.” He drew a single sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to Frank. “Including a letter detailing their concerns, complete with a letterhead that was kind enough to list the members of their board.”
Frank opened the letter, read it quickly, then glanced up. “Devine is on the board.”
Farouk nodded. “A recent member. He joined earlier this very year.”
Frank glanced back down at the letter, his eyes moving down the short list of names which moved in a column down the left side of the paper. “So Devine and Mrs. Phillips sit on the same board.”
“Precisely,” Farouk said. “Which makes it all the more unusual that she would use a false name in visiting him.” “Unless our first guess was right.”
“An unfaithful wife.”
Frank nodded.
“With a single odd twist, however,” Farouk added quickly. “Dr. Kevin A. Powers.”
“What does he have to do with anything?”
“He turns the circle into a triangle, do you not think?”
“I don’t know.”