'I'm sure that Hazel would prefer to have you return to the ranch with a renewed assurance of no future repercussions.'
So there it was. Gloves off and foils unbuttoned. 'I had the assurance, you mangy son of a bitch,' I told him. 'What the hell are you, an Indian giver?'
He ignored the nomenclature. 'You have a stake in this, too,' he reminded me. 'Or Hazel has. Forget your lone-wolf complex for once and get in on a piece of action where people are available to do things you couldn't do yourself.'
'Your people?'
'That's right.'
'When would we be going?' I wasn't all that opposed to going to New York; I was opposed to going on Erikson's terms. If I could get away from him now, I could make a move on my own.
But he drove a nail in that coffin. 'Right now. As soon as we can drive to Tucson Municipal Airport.'
I could dump him in New York City any time I took the notion, of course. And if Hazel and I didn't stay at the ranch afterward he couldn't find us. We could set ourselves up anywhere. 'Okay,' I said. 'Since you asked me so nicely.'
He ignored that, too. Karl Erikson is a single-minded type with a great facility for ignoring anything not on the main track of his particular interest of the moment. I'd learned that about him in Cuba.
I called Hazel from the airport.
Erikson stood fairly close to the booth. I didn't think he could hear me, but I wondered if he could read hps. A couple of times before he'd demonstrated talents I hadn't expected him to have.
'I've been invited to continue on to New York City with our mutual friend,' I told Hazel when she came on the line.
'I was afraid of that.' Her tone was resigned. 'What does it mean?'
'Not much, probably. Right now he's hung up on the fact that I'm the only one who saw the guy who got away. We've got one lead, a bar on the New York east side, but it will be like looking for a virgin in a sorority house. I'm sure I'll be back in a couple of days.'
'You be careful, y'hear?'
'You do the same, big stuff.'
I left the booth and rejoined Erikson.
Eighty minutes later we were winging eastward in another of Senor Boeing's man-made birds.
We took a cab downtown from Kennedy International Airport. Erikson kept looking at his watch. 'I'll drop you at Lexington and Forty-sixth,' he said finally. 'The bar is in the next block. It's called the Alhambra. I want you to take a quick look at it, then come to my office at Five-O-Five Fifth Avenue.'
'What if the taxpayers find out they're supporting the government in the lap of luxury on Fifth Avenue?' I needled him.
He paid no attention. 'Don't spend more than a few minutes in the bar, because there's a meeting at my office I want you to listen in on. When you come to the Fifth Avenue building, take the elevator to the sixteenth floor and turn right when you get off it. Halfway down the corridor you'll find a door marked Intercontinental Plastics Company. Got it?'
'Got it. What should I be looking for in the bar besides the hijacker?'
'Impressions. Is it a neighborhood bar or a flossier place? Some bars in that area cater to Madison Avenue types. Get the name of the owner from the license on the wall, and I'll check out the management. It probably won't tell us anything, but you never can tell. Don't hang around, though. I want you to see the people who are coming to my office.'
'You think I might know them?'
'I doubt it, but we shouldn't overlook the possibility. These men are Israelis.'
'Intelligence again? How come they're running around loose in this country?'
'It's an unofficial situation.' Erikson's tone was dry. 'Complicated by the fact that at the moment I have no official status myself. I'm set up as a listening post to filter acquired information. These Israelis are good men, and they have none of the inhibitions inculcated in our own foreign agents. It makes some of the guys on Pennsylvania Avenue a little nervous.'
It had turned dark during the ride in from Kennedy, and a fight rain was falling. The cab was hurtling along through the bravura neon atmosphere of east-side Manhattan. I recognized Fifty-seventh as we hummed through the intersection with the green light, and I leaned forward to be ready to tap on the glass and attract the cabbie's attention.
'It's eight-thirty now,' Erikson continued. 'Be at my office no later than nine.'
'Okay.' I rapped on the glass. 'Forty-sixth,' I told the driver when he turned his head. The cab slowed and angled from the center of the street in toward the curb. I stepped out into rain that had degenerated into a heavy mist.
The sidewalks were deserted. Even if the area catered to Madison Avenue types, at this hour the boys in the gray flannel suits were out of the club cars on the New Haven and sitting with their feet cocked up in front of their Darien and Westport mortgaged homes, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood kids in the swimming pool.
The Alhambra wasn't hard to find. In the middle of the block a Gothic-lettered illuminated sign in a plate- glass window flashed on and off. The bottom half of the window was painted black. I walked up the block and opened a door with a massive brass handle. The door felt so heavy I took a second look at it. In the semidarkness I couldn't be sure, but it felt like solid oak.
The interior was dimly lighted. I had the impression of an attempt at an old-world style: heavy, ornate furniture, elaborate gilded mirrors, crystal chandeliers, rich-looking leather and wood. A garish canopy ballooned out over the bar, and the pictures on the walls showed the Alcazar and other Spanish architectural wonders which looked familiar but which I couldn't name. Everything in the place seemed pseudo-Spanish or pseudo-Moorish.
The customers were a mixed lot in looks and dress. The place seemed to be almost a League of Nations. There were black faces in African robes and black faces in Western business suits. In one corner three Japanese women in colorful kimonos chattered to a Japanese man in correct formal dress. In another a bearded Sikh in a white turban spoke animatedly to a shaggy-haired man wearing a Basque-like beret who was sitting next to a goateed, olive-skinned man in a skullcap. Sprinkled throughout the room were a variety of airline uniforms, both pilots and stewardesses.
I slid onto a vacant leather-cushioned stool at the bar beside a slim female in a sari. 'Jim Beam on the rocks,' I told the Spanish-looking bartender when he materialized in front of me. He turned to the bottles on the back bar. In its mirror I could see that my next-stool companion was a Nordic blonde with enormous gold earrings and a jewel carefully pasted in the center of her forehead. Her sari hung loosely upon her slenderness, and her eyes were wide-staring as they met mine in the mirror. 'You're wearing a hairpiece, aren't you?' she said to me in a little-girl voice. Her intonation was slow and dreamy-sounding.
'That's right,' I said, seeing no point in denying the obvious to a close observer. This girl hardly looked the part of a close observer, though.
She turned on her stool to look at me. 'And you've been badly burned,' she continued. 'They did a good job on you, but my best friend was burned when she was fifteen, and I can always tell.'
The bartender returned with my drink. 'I'm looking for Hawk,' I said to him as he took the bill I placed on the bar.
'He comes and goes,' the man said, and went to the cash register with my money.
So at least there was a Hawk, genus unknown.
'Do you have any speed?' the girl on the next stool asked me.
I took another look at her. New York permits eighteen-year-old drinkers, but this girl didn't look eighteen. Glancing down, I could see her feet under the soiled hem of her orange sari. They were bare and dirty. Her small features had an almost angelic expression, but I could see dirt smudges on her face, too. 'No,' I said.
'Too bad. I'd like to get high.'
There was no particular inflection in the childish voice. A half-empty beer glass reposed on the bar, but she
