Diamond Solitaire

was getting messages from parts of his body that had suffered injuries he hadn't registered. Now his face was smarting. He put his hand to his left eye and felt a large swelling. There was a cut across the center of his nose.

He couldn't tell how long he'd been in the water. There had certainly been an interval while he was unconscious. Presumably the shock of immersion had revived him.

In the open, darkness is never total. He rolled over and peered across the expanse of open ground between the pier and the warehouse from which his attackers must have come. The limousine had gone, maybe-he told himself optimistically-with the men as passengers. The instinct of killers is to leave the scene.

What now?

Clearly, he needed to get to the police. It was vital that they were informed what had happened, for the Manflex connection was no longer tenuous. Those people were revealed as willing to kill, and he wanted them interrogated as soon as possible. He wanted to hear David Flexner's explanation.

He just hoped he was capable of staying on his feet long enough.

Staying? He realized that he had yet to get to his feet, and now he was about to try. The effort required was immense. He achieved the standing position by a process of crouching for a while, then stooping, propped with hands on knees, and finally trying unsuccessfully to straighten and groaning at the effort. Movement was going to be a painful, shuffling process that made him think how useful a zimmer-frame would have been. Even the light shore breeze threatened to bowl him over.

Obviously he needed to find a way back to the streets, but getting there would be like finishing a marathon. To be positive, he still had both shoes on. All he seemed to have lost was his hat.

In the next twenty minutes he made it across the waterfront, over a no-man's-land cluttered with rubbish, and down a slope to where one of the West Side streets terminated. The nearest block of tenement buildings didn't really have the look of a haven for a half-drowned, badly-beaten Brit, but he staggered to the first door he could find, and looked for a doorbell-a facility the household lacked. He rapped the woodwork with his knuckles. Nobody came. He could hear nothing from inside.

He tried two more houses before anyone appeared, and this was a small, black boy who stared. Anyone would have 'Hi,' said Diamond with an effort of the imagination.

The stare persisted.

'Are your parents about?'

A blink, and then a resumption of the stare.

'Your Mum and Dad? Sonny, I need help.'

The boy frowned and said, 'Where you from?'

He didn't want to go through that again, not in the state he was in, but the kid had broken his silence, so: 'From England.'

'England?' The kid raised a hand as if to strike him.

Just in time, Diamond saw what was intended and let his own right hand come in a sweeping movement to slap against the boy's in salute.

A short time after, wrapped in a blanket, he was seated in a wicker armchair in the living room of the basement apartment, surrounded by a large Afro-Caribbean family. They brought him coffee laced with rum and they put a Band-Aid on his nose.

Twenty minutes or so of this treatment revived him remarkably. He was ready to move on. They wanted to know where he was going and he named the police at the 26th Precinct.

When the amusement had subsided, the boy's father offered to drive him there.

Thus it was that towards ten P.M., Sergeant Stein of the 26th, passing the front counter, was confronted by the disturbing spectacle of a grinning man, notorious across New York for the terms he'd served for armed robbery, carrying a heap of wet clothes, accompanied by Superintendent Diamond dressed in a blanket, a Band-Aid on his nose, his left eye black and closed.

The explanation had to be given twice over, because Lieutenant Eastland, who was off duty, was called in to make decisions. He didn't go so far as to smile at Diamond's state, but he wasn't sympathetic. 'So what we have,' he summed up, 'is a link with Manflex through the child's mother. You set out to investigate, and you were beaten up and dumped in the river. By who?'

'Come on,' said Diamond angrily. 'There were no lights out there except the car headlights. The girl who called herself Joan I'd know. But the point is that David Flexner himself must have given these people their instructions. Something I said must have really upset him.'

'You surprise me,' said Eastland.

'What did you say?' asked Stein.

'Just that I wanted information about the research Dr. Masuda was doing some years ago in Yokohama on a grant from Manflex.'

'I wouldn't have said this was grounds for murder,' commented Eastland. 'Are we sure of this connection''

'What do you mean?'

'I mean can we be certain that these people who jumped you were sent by Flexner?'

'It's inescapable. The girl told me she was working for him. She knew about the meeting. She knew where to find me, and when.'

'Okay, we'll pull him in and see what this is about.'

'One more thing,' said Diamond.

'You want to see a doctor?'

'I want to get my clothes to a laundry.'

'Okay. How you feeling now?'

'Impatient… to see Flexner.'

'You should rest'

'Go to hell.'

In fact, he did get almost an hour on the cot he d slept on the previous night They had to wake him when Flexner was brought in, and then he felt worse than ever for the short sleep. Every part of him ached.

It was agreed that he should observe the first interview on closed-circuit TV. Lieutenant Eastland pointed out that Flexner had no reason to believe that Diamond had survived the attack. A first principle of interrogation was to give nothing away.

The young, long-haired man on the screen certainly looked uneasy, revealing in body language how agitated he was at being brought in for questioning. He flicked the tip of his tongue repeatedly around the edges of his mouth and worked his hands around his face like some actor overplaying Hamlet..

Eastland's voice started up, giving the routine information about the taping of interviews. 'You give your permission?'

Flexner nodded.

'Would you mind giving a verbal response?'

'I don't mind.'

'You agree to us taping the interview?'

'I agree.'

'Okay.'..

While Eastland went through the preliminaries of establishing Flexner's identity and address, Diamond watched the young man keenly. For a business tycoon, he was pretty unconventional in style, dressed in T-shirt, jeans and wind-cheater with the mane of blond hair extending to his shoulders. It was pretty well the description he'd given of himself over the phone.

'You know a guy called Diamond-a British cop?' Eastland asked. He wasn't in shot. The camera was continuously on Flexner.

'I know the name, that's all. He called me this afternoon.'

'He called you? Is that an accurate answer, Mr. Flexner?'

Flexner raked a hand nervously through his hair. 'What I mean is, he wrote me a note. I called him at his hotel.'

'Let's have the truth, huh?'

'I'm sorry. Was that important?'