decided, but that was the limit of his speculation. At some stage he left the room and went upstairs to check whether anything new had emerged. He found a solitary cop slumped in a chair outside the murder room. No one was inside. Homicide had left, and the inquiry was now being conducted from Headquarters, wherever that was.
He returned to his room, stripped and got into bed. Back in England, it would be morning already. He didn't feel like sleep, but he was dog-tired.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Crime Scene Unit were running the inquiry their own way, and the detective skills of Peter Diamond were not included in the plans. He was finding that being a bystander was more stressful than heading the murder squad.
Early in the morning, realizing he hadn't eaten anything since the flight from London, he went looking for a coffee shop and found Hungry Mac's on Broadway and 114th. Number Seven on the menu, with just about everything in the kitchen included, carried the promise of what he regarded as a basic breakfast, and he ordered a double portion. He was on one of the stools at the counter-an uncomfortable perch for a big man-in order to get a view of the TV set. The Firbank wasn't the sort of hotel that provided television in the rooms, so he hadn't yet seen if there was any news coverage of the murder and Naomi's abduction. To add to his frustration, some kind of idiot game show was on the screen at present and two of the customers were watching as if it were the high point of their week.
He should have realized he'd get the information he wanted from the man who took his order.
'You think you can put away two breakfasts?'
'I'm certain I can.'
'You visiting?'
'Er, yes.'
'From England?'
'Yes.'
'Where you staying?'
He hesitated. He hadn't personally experienced rapid-fire interrogation by a New York waiter, though he'd seen others getting the treatment. 'The Firbank.'
'Where they found the dead woman?'
'Yes.' He tried to make light of it. 'Hot and cold in all rooms. Towels and corpse provided by the management.'
'You get some crazies these days,' the man remarked to the shop in general, and it wasn't entirely clear whether he meant Diamond. 'This guy slept in the Firbank last night.' Evidently he did mean Diamond.
The place was pretty full, but no one else seemed interested where Diamond had slept.
When the plateful of bacon, sausages, hash browns and four eggs, easy and over, was served with toast and coffee, there was an extra tidbit in the form of some hard information from the waiter. 'I hear they found the car the killer used.'
Diamond had the knife and fork poised over the plate. 'Where?'
'Some cop spotted it in Chinatown.'
'No one in it, I suppose?'
'No chance.'
He bolted his double breakfast at a rate that would be a talking point in Hungry Mac's for weeks to come and legged it rapidly down to the 26th Precinct station house. There, his air of authority carried him through as far as Sergeant Stein of the Detective Bureau, a gangling, grizzled man in a faded pink shirt and black jeans, who-this morning-was the senior detective on the case.
'You're the British cop,' Stein said in a tone that suggested he'd been warned to look out for Diamond.
'I hear you found the car.'
'A patrolman did.'
'Chinatown. Is that somewhere near the Bowery?'
'You could say that.'
'Where exactly is it, then?'
'Chinatown?'
'The Buick.'
'They moved it,' said Sergeant Stein, and added, after a considerable pause, 'for forensic examination.'
'So what time was it found?'
'A statement will be issued later.'
'Come on,' said Diamond in a flush of annoyance. 'I'm not here out of morbid curiosity.'
'What
'For a missing child out there with a murderer. Isn't that a good enough reason for the New York Police Department?'
Stein was unrepentant. 'Mister, I should be asking you the questions.'
'Like what?'
'Like what is your special interest in this kid?'
Diamond tensed. 'What exactly are you driving at, Sergeant?'
'We take a good look at middle-aged guys who follow little girls.'
The sergeant came within an ace of being thumped, and he knew it, because Diamond advanced on him until they were almost nose to nose like boxers staring each other out. 'That is not only insulting, it's also provocation,' he said on a note from deep in his gut. 'If you want to hang on to your shield, don't ever give horseshit like that to a senior policeman.' The minor detail that he was no longer a senior policeman didn't arise. He'd reacted as if he was. In the heat of the moment, he'd have needed to think hard to remind himself that he was not. And Sergeant Stein wasn't to know.
Stein backed down, actually raising his right palm like an Indian making peace. 'Just overlook what I said, would you? It was a heavy night.'
'Tonight could be heavier,' Diamond told him. 'Well? What time did they find the car?'
'Around two A.M. on Mulberry Street.'
'Anyone see anything?'
'No witnesses yet.'
'Where was the car taken to be examined?'
'Forensic has a workshop on Amsterdam.'
'Is that a walking proposition?'
'You want to visit? You can ride with a patrol. Just wait here. Mr. Diamond.' Nodding a number of times to demonstrate his newfound cooperativeness, Stein departed thankfully from Diamond's presence.
The ride to Amsterdam Avenue in the company of a laconic, gum-chewing officer allowed Diamond to weigh Stein's remark. Child abuse had always been around, yet lately its notoriety had increased sharply. Whether the practice was on the increase was another question. As with rape and other sexual offenses, the statistics needed to be put in the context of the greater opportunities for reporting and detecting the crimes. Whatever the truth, the public perception was that any man not actually a parent or a teacher had better not be seen alone with a young kid. He understood the need for vigilance, but he still regretted the fact that a few sexual deviants and sensation- seeking newspapers could make trust between man and child seem so unlikely as to be impossible anymore.
Without a kid of his own, he couldn't truly view the question as a parent would, but were childless people who liked children fated to be treated as potential perverts?
The place where vehicles were taken for the forensic tests was hardly the squeaky-clean workshop-cum- laboratory Diamond had expected to walk into. It was a converted garage with a couple of ramps and inspection pits manned by young men in greasy overalls. The Buick was parked on the forecourt and was getting no attention at all.
