'Are you finished here?'
'Not quite. I want to talk to the doorman who was on duty last night.'
'That's a lot of trouble for me.'
April gave her a little smile. 'You can give me his number at home.'
'I don't have to do that. He's on the day shift today.'
'Fine. Let's go talk to him, and no one else in here until further notice, okay?' April left it to Woody to close up. She was upset by the wallet with Maslow's ID on the bed. This was a sticky situation. As far as she knew no sixty- one had been filed. The missing doc was not her case, not her jurisdiction, but he had become her problem. She had a bad feeling about it and knew she'd have major explaining to do if further investigation of his work, his life, his patients, and the contents of his computer became necessary.
Eight
It turned out that Ben, the four-to-eleven-p.m. doorman last night, was filling in on the back elevator today. April and Woody talked to him as they rode up to the fourteenth floor with a Federal Express driver delivering a package.
'Dr. Atkins came in at seven,' Ben told them importantly as the manually operated elevator jerked its way up. 'These guys are cops,' he told the FedEx driver.
'No kidding,' the man replied without interest.
The elevator stopped. Ben heaved the doors open, the driver got out, went through the door out into the main hallway, and disappeared. The elevator bell rang, but Ben didn't close the doors.
'At seven,' Woody prompted.
'Yeah, I remember everything. I have a memory for details. Ask me anything. It rained pretty bad in the afternoon. I had to take the mats out to cover the carpets. Thems are new carpets, and it's a big lobby out there, I have to put down two sets. Takes twenty minutes to get them all placed just right. So I place the mats. Then at five, all them damn dogs have to go out. Let me tell you, those dogs make a mess when it rains.'
April took out her notebook and began writing in it. She had a lot of things on her mind now and let Woody do the talking.
'How about telling us about Dr. Atkins,' he said.
'I was telling you.' Ben gave Woody a dirty look, then leaned his shaggy white head April's way. April's nose twitched. The man smelled of sweat and stale beer. She hated beery breath on people who supplied information.
The elevator bell rang. Ben ignored it.
'The rain stopped at five-fifteen. By six-thirty I was thinking about taking the mats up. But I was starving. I thought I better wait to see if we were going to get some more. I went out on break for a sandwich. I go to that deli around the corner on Columbus. There's two, but I don't like the Korean one.'
'Stick to the facts. We don't need a novel,' Woody grumbled.
The bell rang a third time. The FedEx driver returned minus his package. Ben closed the doors and got the elevator moving again. He was in a bad mood now. 'Cops. Who knows what they're after.'
April didn't comment. The FedEx driver didn't comment. Ben stopped on ten. Two uniformed maids speaking Spanish got on with four bulging bags of laundry.
'Nobody gives a shit,' Ben complained.
The maids kept up a heated argument as the elevator continued down to the basement. When the doors opened, they hoisted the bags off the elevator still going at it. April felt a pang of sisterhood. The topic was lying, cheating
The bell rang a few more times. Several floor numbers popped up. Ben closed the doors.
'All we got here so far is a time frame. Let's finish up,' Woody said.
Ben gave him another dirty look and spoke to April. 'You take this down. I don't want no trouble later. Here's the fucking time frame. I just came back from my break. I had a cup of coffee. I ate the sandwich. It was bologna on rye, four pickles.'
All the people waiting for the elevator upstairs leaned on their bells at once, but April didn't care. After the elevator man started treating her like a secretary, April lost her patience.
'Just take us up to the lobby and leave the door closed until we're finished,' she told him.
Ben took the elevator up without a word, then went on as if there had been no interruption. 'I ain't had time to drink the coffee when Dr. Atkins comes down the street. If you don't let me get these calls, I'm going to lose my job,' he whined.
'What time?' Woody asked.
'Seven, I already told you it was just seven. I opened the front door for him. He went upstairs. I drank my coffee. A few minutes later he came out in shorts and took off.'
The bells sounded like a swarm of angry bees.
'Then what?'
Ben shrugged. 'That's it.'
'What time did Dr. Atkins come back?'
Ben scratched his cheek. 'He didn't come back.'
'Are you sure?' Woody asked.
'Of course I'm sure. No one gets in here unless I let them in.'
The swarm got angrier.
'Can I do something about this?' Ben was getting desperate.
April shook her head. 'What about when you go to the bathroom?' she asked.
'The door's locked. They have to wait. Just like now.' He licked his lips.
'So Dr. Atkins went out in his shorts. Did you see where he went?' Now Woody.
'Of course I did. I watched him. He went across the street to the park. A girl was waiting for him. They spoke. They went into the park together. He didn't come back.'
'What did the girl look like?'
'Real pretty. Black hair. Pink sweater. Tight pants. Looked like she might be a hooker.' Ben smiled for the first time. 'But you know girls these days. She might have been a debutante.' He smirked some more.
April glanced at Woody.
'Did you ever see her before?' he asked.
'Maybe.' The phone in the elevator rang. Ben picked up and said, 'No problem, I'll be right there.'
April shook her head.
'Not that I know of.'
'How about a name?'
'Nope.'
'Okay, that's it. You can let us out now.'
The elevator doors slid open. April and Woody crossed the lobby and went outside. At a little after ten, a full sun beat down. The chilly morning had become a brilliant day, summer all over again.
'The park?' Woody said.
April hesitated. Last night they'd been on a radio run when they'd gone into the park. Now was different. The park was not like any other precinct. It was almost another country. When she'd been in the Two-O, every time a detective or officer from another house stepped foot in the park, they'd had to notify the captain of the Park Precinct that they were working there. It was an ownership thing, a protocol thing.
But, for the second time that day, she strayed off the straight and narrow. She nodded at Woody. He grinned, knowing they were in the wrong as they left their unit in front of Atkins's building and crossed Central Park West, heading to the place where the doorman said he'd last seen Maslow Atkins with a black-haired woman in a pink
