'What's wrong with that?' Ken asked.
He slapped the curve of his belly and she grinned. 'I didn't mean it that way.'
The line of cars was still cruising steadily in the same formation. The New York skyline was in view now. 'We're on Long Island here, am I right?' Diamond asked.
'This is the Long Island Expressway we just moved onto,' she confirmed. 'We're heading for the toll tunnel under the East River.'
'Is this the route you would have taken anyway?'
She shook her head. 'I live in the Bronx. It doesn't matter.' After a pause she added, 'You appeal to my curiosity. You're not really a policeman at all. I may look dumb, but I can tell the difference between a police ID and a passport. On the other hand, you don't have the look of a hitchhiker. Or a rapist. Is it, like, a fight with your wife over custody of the child?'
He told her that Naomi wasn't his own child. He was almost persuaded, after all, to explain how the little Japanese girl had taken over his life. Then they entered the tunnel and he concentrated instead on the uncertainty of what would happen at the other end. 'Where exactly does this come out?' he asked, as if he had a map of Manhattan imprinted on his brain.
'East 34th,' Ken told him. 'It won't be so simple tailing them from now on.'
'Could you try and get closer, then?'
After they were out of the tunnel, she succeeded in passing one of the cars ahead and another turned off at the first traffic lights, leaving them with just a blue Volvo between their car and the Buick. But the tension grew as they crossed the city, negotiating lights, willing the Volvo not to hesitate. They passed the Empire State and Macy's before turning right, onto 8th Avenue, heading north.
The Buick picked up some speed.
'Can you pass the car in front?' Diamond asked.
When she moved into the next lane the driver of the Volvo took it as a challenge and blocked their way through. At the next lights he braked hard, forcing them to stop, while the Buick cruised on.
Diamond swore and turned to see if there was room to move out, but it was impossible.
'They won't get far,' Ken said in reassurance. 'The lights will hold them up.'
He wasn't so confident. He'd already watched them go through on the red at the next intersection. 'We've got to pass this clever dick.'
She did, on the next block, in front of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, to a crescendo of car horns. They had lost position badly. A glimpse of white some way ahead might just have been the Buick. They had to assume it was. Diamond strained forward with his face to the windshield. 'Keep going straight ahead. If they turn I'll tell you.'
She overtook cars at each opportunity and sometimes when the opportunity scarcely existed. He couldn't fault her commitment to the chase. Occasionally he caught sight of the white car through the traffic about a block ahead and he just hoped to God it was still the Buick they were following. Central Park came up on their right.
'We keep going far enough, we'll get to the Bronx and I'll be home,' Ken told him.
But they didn't get that far. They had almost reached the northern limit of the Park when the white car ahead moved into the left lane and turned.
'Can you move over?'
'Sure.'
'That must be 109th.'
She handled the Chevrolet with confidence, accelerating into a space and taking the turn at a speed that made the wheels screech. But there was no white car ahead of them on West 109th Street.
'He could have doubled back down Manhattan Avenue,' Ken suggested.
'Try it, then.'
She turned left again. Mistakenly, for two blocks ahead there were only yellow taxis.
'Sorry. I'm really sorry,' she said, and her voice was desolate. 'Want me to turn?'
'Where do you think they were heading before we lost Ihem?'
'Hard to say. We're not far from Columbia.'
'You mean the University?'
'Yes.'
'Can you work your way back in that direction? If we're lucky the car may be parked on the street somewhere.'
They turned right, onto Amsterdam Avenue. No sign of a white car. A vast church loomed up on their right. 'It's really popular with the students,' Ken remarked.
'The Cathedral of St. John the Divine?' Diamond read from the board in a disbelieving voice.
'I mean the Hungarian Pastry Shop on this side.'
'Ah.' Neither of them felt like smiling. The confusion was indicative of their helplessness. Nothing is so hard to accept as the knowledge that you have failed. They were floundering, trying to buoy each other up with words, but the words gave no real support.
'The Columbia campus comes up on this side in a block or two,' she informed him.
'We ought to be checking these. Can you turn up the next one?'
It was 113th Street, and they drove as far as Broadway, then made two lefts onto 112th. Three white cars were parked there, not one a Buick. Almost ten minutes had passed since they had lost sight of the car, and ten grew to twenty while they continued to tour the streets without result
'I can transfer to a taxi,' Diamond offered.
'I won't allow it,' Ken said. 'I'm as eager to find the damned car as you are.'
'It could have left the area by now.'
'We owe it to that little girl to keep looking.'
He didn't need telling.
It took them just under an hour to find the Buick. It was parked near the Broadway end of 114th Street. They would have found it sooner if they hadn't chosen to start at 113th and work back as far as 108th, but the enormous relief at picking up the trail wiped out any regrets.
'What now?' Ken asked.
'I'm more grateful than I can say.'
She frowned, not understanding his English avoidance of the direct statement.
'I can manage,' he said.
'Hey, you don't think I'm quitting now? I want to see the kid for myself.' Her eyes dispelled any doubt that she meant what she said.
'In that case, I'll tell you what we do next. We go door-stepping.'
This section of the street was lined with apartment blocks and small hotels. They tried the hotels first. 'I'm hoping to find a couple with a small girl who may have registered here an hour ago,' was the disarming way he phrased his inquiry. 'The lady is Japanese and so is the child.' He was trying to project himself as the caring English gent, as if friends of his had left behind some lost property that he was anxious to reclaim for them.
After trying three hotels and getting suspicious looks and shakes of the head, but no verbal response, he changed his approach at the Firbank, a shabby brownstone with a sign in the window saying Vacancies. The window needed cleaning.
The door stood open and a man in a black singlet and jeans was behind a hinged table that passed for a reception desk.
'Is Mrs. Tanaka staying here?'
'Who the fuck are you?'
It was, by certain lights, an improvement on silence. Diamond said that he'd been sent by Immigration. 'And who the fuck are you?' he added.
'George De Wint.'
'Manager?'
'I have no illegals in my hotel,' De Wint said defensively. For a beefy, tattooed man with a Cagney profile, he suddenly sounded pathetic.
'But you have Mrs. Tanaka, in this afternoon from England?' 'From England?'
'Japanese, with a male partner, and a small girl.'
