Diamond Solitaire

'Everything's important. Do you still have the note?'

'Not here.'

'Can you tell me the contents, accurately?'

Flexner closed his eyes as he spoke, as if trying to visualize the note. 'He wrote that he was an English detective inquiring into a murder and an abduction, the abduction of a child. He wanted to meet me for information about the kid's mother who carried out research sponsored by my firm in Yokohama, Japan, in the 1980s. Her name was Dr. Yuko Masuda. He signed himself Peter Diamond, Detective Superintendent.'

'And he gave a number for you to call?'

'The Brightside Hotel. I took it seriously. I looked up the records on this woman. Then I called Mr. Diamond and fixed a meeting at Battery Park, in the ticket office for the ferry.'

'Strange place for a meeting.'

Flexner gave a shrug. 'My circumstances are pretty unusual right now, for reasons unconnected with this. It was simplest to meet him someplace outside the office.'

'Battery Park? Why not his hotel?'

'Battery Park is a short taxi ride from my office. It's also a place a stranger to New York could find easily.'

'So did you go there?'

'Sure, but I was delayed. He wasn't there.' Flexner leaned forward in his chair as if a sudden thought had come to him. 'What happened to this guy? Is he okay?'

'You tell me what happened to you,' said Eastland.

'I turned up at Battery Park-'

'No,' said Eastland, who was letting nothing by. 'You tell me what delayed you.'

'A smoke alarm.'

'What?'

'A smoke alarm went off in a storeroom on the twentieth floor.'

'What time?'

'Around six forty-five, just when I was ready to leave. Someone had dumped a cigarette in a trash bin. It ignited some tissues.'

'In a storeroom?'

'That's where it was found. The result is I didn't get down to Battery Park until twenty-five after seven, and the guy wasn't around. I looked around, I asked-'

'Okay,' said Easdand. 'So let's make this very clear. Did you at any point instruct anyone else to meet Detective Diamond?'

'No. I just told you. I went myself.'

'Who else knew you made this appointment? Your secretary?'

Flexner shook his head. 'I handled it myself.'

'Is your phone system secure?'

'So far as I know.'

'You said that you consulted the records on this woman. Did somebody fetch them for you?'

'No, we have them on computer. We keep records of all our sponsorships and research programs. I accessed them on the modem I have in my office.'

'Anyone see you?'

'I was alone in there. Look, would you mind telling me what happened?'

'Detective Diamond was met by a woman who said she was sent by you. You know about this?'

Flexner swayed back in his chair, frowning. 'Sent by me? No, I don't. I didn't speak to anyone.'

'Take your time, Mr. Flexner. Think back. You're quite certain you mentioned this meeting to nobody?'

'Positive.'

'Maybe someone overheard you speaking on the phone. Is that possible?'

'I was alone in my office. The door was closed.'

'Yet this woman-who called herself Joan, by the way-found Detective Diamond in the ticket office, told him you were unable to get there and drove him in a black limousine to the waterfront area in the West Forties, where some goons were waiting to work him over good and sink him in the Hudson.'

'I can't believe this.' To his credit, Flexner was looking as if he meant what he said. He'd gone extremely pale.

'You'd better,' Eastland told him. 'And you'd better start thinking who this woman is, and why it was necessary to do that to a guy you arranged to met. You don't have to answer right off.'

'He's dead?' Flexner asked.

'Go over it in your mind, Mr. Flexner. There may be something you forgot. I'll be back.'

Flexner was left staring. There was only the sound of the interview room door being closed.

Eastland came into the room where Stein and Diamond had been following the interview. 'Well?'

'I'd like to question him,' Diamond said. 'I still want the information he was going to give me.'

'You think he's speaking the truth?'

'He made a pretty good impression.'

'Yeah?' said Eastland with heavy irony. 'Maybe none of this happened. That's a phantom black eye you have.'

'I still want to question him.'

'Not yet'

'This is urgent'

'We can break this guy, no problem,' Eastland bragged.

'He claims he told nobody he was meeting you. That's got to be horseshiL'

Diamond contained himself, but with difficulty. There was a real danger that Naomi's plight would be overlooked in the eagerness to break David Flexner. Breaking him, as Eastland candidly put it, was not the way to get the crucial information. 'Listen, I think we should test the truth of what he's saying this way. He arranged to meet me. That's not in dispute. So he must have had something to pass on about Naomi's mother.'

'It was a blind, just to set you up.'

'Let's find out Let's ask him what he can tell us. If he is telling the truth, it may lead us to Naomi.'

The lieutenant obviously wasn't impressed. He spread his hands as if his point had just been proved. 'Peter, my friend, you were asking about research the woman was doing seven, eight years back. That's not going to tell us who's holding the kid tonight.'

'It scared someone into wanting me killed. It can't be all that remote,' said Diamond. 'Let him talk while he still has an interest in cooperating. If you go in there and scare the shit out of him, we may get nothing.'

'Keep him sweet, you mean?'

'Play along with him. It won't take long, for God's sake.'

Eastland weighed the suggestion. 'You could be right.'

'I'll do it,' Diamond offered.

'You? No way. He thinks you're stashed away in the morgue, and we don't want to disillusion him. Okay, Diamond, we'll play it your way for a while. Just tell me what you would have asked him.'

Diamond outlined the strategy. Without going all the way to convincing Eastland, it seemed to mollify him somewhat.

In a few minutes, the questioning started up again. Eastland went straight to the point. 'Tell me about Yuko Ma-suda.'

'There isn't much. I haven't met her,' David Flexner replied. 'She's just one of thousands who have carried out postgraduate research funded by Manflex or one of its associate companies.'

'She's unimportant?'

'I didn't say that. According to our records, we've been sponsoring her research for ten years or more. She's written some papers on the treatment of drug and alcoholic comas using sympathomimetic drugs.'

'Using what?'

'They imitate the effects of the sympathetic nerves. Adrenalin and ephedrine are examples.'

'I've heard of Adrenalin.'