Only DeLaroza read the fear in Hotchins’s eyes.
He pulled him aside after the furore had died away.
‘What is the matter with you?’ DeLaroza demanded.
‘She’s down there,’ Hotchins said. He was trembling.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘She’s in that crowd. She’s leering at me!’
‘Who?’
‘Domino. She’s here. In this place.’
‘You are going to pieces. She would never take such a chance.’
‘I’m telling you, Domino is out there. She’s trying to rattle me and she did it.’
‘Listen to me,’ DeLaroza said, ‘we have only to walk down that stairway and over to the entrance of the ride and get in that steel ball and then you will be finished here. I assure you, she will not be at the press conference.’
‘I’m not going down there.’
‘You are most certainly going down there. The cameras, the reporters, the public, they are all waiting for us. Everyone who sees you on television riding in an amusement park will identify with you. It is something everyone can relate to. You are not backing out now.’
He grabbed Hotchins’s arm and led him down Into the crowd, bodyguards and security men forming a wedge through the mob, leading them down through the noisy bazaar.
They had gone a few steps when Hotchins saw the sketch. He pulled free of DeLaroza and rushed to the artist.
‘Who is that?’ he demanded, pointing to the easel ‘When did you do this sketch?’
‘Just before the speeches,’ the young artist stammered.
‘Where did she go. Which way?’
The artist waved his arm towards the crowd.
‘Out there somewhere, sir. She said she’d come back later and pick it up.’
‘What was she wearing?’ DeLaroza demanded.
‘Wearing?’
‘What kind of clothes was she wearing?
‘Uh.. . I was concentrating on her face, y’know. Uh, gold gown. That was it, a gold gown. Big splash of red right here in the middle.’
Hotchins remembered the woman at the entrance, the eyes following him from behind the impenetrable mask.
‘It was her downstairs. I knew it. I knew there was something...’
DeLaroza was urging him along the stairs.
‘Smile. Wave at the crowd. We are surrounded by guards. You have nothing to worry about.’
‘I have her to worry about I’
Like Scardi, Sharky too bad devised a daring scheme, one designed to unnerve Hotchins, and it was succeeding. He and Domino had moved to the rear of the crowd. Now, as the spectators turned from the speaker’s platform to walk down Ladder Street, they were leading the way into Prince Avenue. At the end of the street, the glowering figure of Man Chu waited ominously to send Hotchins and DeLaroza on the first official spin through the pinball machine. Photographers were jockeying for position and TV cameramen were eagerly setting up their tripods.
It had worked like a charm. Domino had put the mask on the back of her head and faced Sharky. Every time Hotchins looked in her direction, Sharky had turned her around facing him and then, the instant his eyes were averted, bad turned her quickly back around, so that when Hotchins looked up again he saw only the expressionless mask.
They bad moved through the crowd, trying the trick a dozen times or so, and Sharky was sure Hotchins had seen her at least three or four times.
Now for the cherry on the sundae. Hotchins and DeLaroza moved towards the robot. When the two were safely inside the steel car, with the guard rail snapped shut and the door secured, Domino would step out of the crowd and call each of them by name. The last thing they would see before plunging down into the dazzling interior of the ride would be Domino.
Sharky hoped they would try something desperate.
As they started up Prince Avenue, Sharky lowered his head slightly and spoke into the microphone pinned on the back of his lapel.
‘How you doin’, Vulture?’
Papa’s answer crackled in his hearing aid.
‘Right behind them. Hotchins’s flipping. May not work, but he ain’t gonna sleep tonight.’
‘Stay close.’
‘Gotcha.’
