and facts, and a missing boy I was trying to find. Nothing more, except that someone else was also looking, for reasons unknown to me. I really knew nothing.
No one was going to believe that. And there was my problem.
I had asked questions. I seemed to be involved, and it is not what you are that counts, it is what you seem to be. It isn’t reality that matters, it is what people think is real and act on. Not what is true, but what people believe is true.
So I was alone in a cheap hotel room. I was drinking alone and sweating alone. I was on a lumpy bed in a dark room in a world where I did not belong. A world that was pulling me back because I was looking for a missing boy. A world I could die in if I did not find that boy soon.
Chapter 10
I woke up with a hangover and a knot in my stomach. I had not slept well. I had dreamed of running alone down a long dark street chasing my missing arm as it floated ahead of me just out of reach. I had a drink. I had two drinks until the knot in my gut eased and my hands stopped sweating. Then I got up and dressed and slipped out and down the back way. Because I had to do something more than hide in a cheap room.
The Trafalgar Travel Bureau was on the second floor of a big midtown building. I was camped outside the door when the staff began to arrive. The first to show was a middle-aged lady, grey and belligerent. She unlocked, and I followed her inside. She asked if she could help me. I told her I wanted the manager. I looked as dangerous as I could. (I look more dangerous than I am after a bad night.) She considered my missing arm and retreated. She vanished somewhere, but I sensed her watching me.
Four more females arrived in due time. They came in order of good looks, the best-looking last, which gave me some idea of what the boss was like. I mean, an office worker in New York will take every liberty he or she can get away with, and in this office it looked like the prettier the girl the more she could get away with. This did not surprise me. Each girl gave me the eyes up-and-down as she came in, and then looked at the grey one, who shrugged. My man arrived promptly at nine forty-five. I figured he ran a loose ship.
‘You the manager?’ I asked, trying to sound official.
‘Walsh,’ he said. I’m the manager. What…’
‘It’s private,’ I said.
He hesitated, then nodded. ‘Okay, come on in.’
His office was nothing to brag about, but it was private and it had four windows. He took his time about getting settled and asking me to sit down. I saw the pictures of his wife and kids, three, on his desk and a pretty good-sized cabin cruiser beside them. The picture of the boat was better framed than the picture of his wife. He waved me to a seat, and the telephone rang. While he answered I had a good look at him. He was tall, handsome, in a seedy way, and well dressed. His face was heavily tanned, which helped him a lot. It tended to hide the bald spot on his skull and gave him an athletic appearance. His face was thin, he wore a pencil moustache, grey now, and he had a habit of rubbing his bicep with his free hand. He seemed to be feeling his own muscle.
‘So,’ he said when he hung up, ‘what can I do for you, Mr…?’
‘Dan Fortune. You can tell me where I can find Miss Driscoll.’
‘Nancy-?’
His voice gave him away when he tried to stop. The ‘Nan’ part of Nancy came out fast and surprised. The end of the name was modulated and trailed off. His jaw muscles clamped hard to prevent any more involuntary sounds. I could see the knots of muscle along his jaw. I had also seen the surprise. The name had hit him unprepared. Exactly why it was a shock I didn’t know, but I could guess. Judging from the way he ran his office, Mr Walsh liked young ladies. But I was not interested in the manager’s love life unless it related to Jo-Jo Olsen.
‘Miss Nancy Driscoll, right,’ I said as if remembering some official report that had sent me here to the travel bureau. ‘I’d like to talk to her.’
‘I’m afraid she’s not here,’ Walsh said.
There was a tone in his voice that started a small alarm in my brain. Walsh was being cautious. And something else. The manager had a faint question in his voice. The caution could be caused by his interest in the girl, if he had an interest. But what was the question I heard?
‘When do you expect her?’ I said. I decided to be cautious too.
‘I, ah, couldn’t say, Mr Fortune,’ Walsh said. ‘May I ask what your interest is?’
‘I can’t say,’ I said as brusquely as I could, trying to sound like a policeman. ‘But I have to talk to her. Maybe you can tell me where she is.’
Walsh squeezed at the bicep muscle of his left arm with his right hand. ‘Well, I’m not sure…’
I had a thought. ‘How long since she’s been to work, Mr Walsh?’
‘What?’ the manager said. ‘Oh, well, about a week. Yes, this is Friday, and she hasn’t been in since last Friday. I mean, she was here all day last Friday, but not since.’
‘In other words, she didn’t show last Monday and hasn’t been in all week.’
‘Yes,’ Walsh said. ‘That’s it.’
‘Has she called in?’
‘Er, well, no,’ Walsh said.
There it was again. The caution and question in the voice of the manager. Did he think I was a snooper hired by his wife? That was more than possible. He was nervous about something. I began to think that the manager had more than a passing interest in Nancy Driscoll. He was acting very much like a man with a lot on his mind and a hot potato in his pocket. But just at that moment I had more on my mind than an office scandal.
The Driscoll girl had not been to work all week. She had not called in sick, if Walsh were telling the truth. And Jo-Jo had done his fadeout last Friday. I felt a lot like swearing. After all I had done so far it could turn out that Jo- Jo Olsen was just off with the Driscoll girl. There could be a hundred reasons why he would not tell about it. No, there had to be more. My two shadows were looking for Jo-Jo for some reason. Still, it was possible that Jo-Jo had planned to run far and stay long and had taken the Driscoll girl along.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘suppose you give me her address.’
‘Well, I…’ Walsh began.
‘I think you’d better,’ I said.
Walsh considered me. ‘She lives at 145 West Seventy-Fourth Street, apartment 2B.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
All the females watched me go. The grey-haired harpie gave me a smug look as if she was sure that her Mr Walsh had handled my type. I grinned all around, and they became busy. I glanced back. Walsh had forgotten to close his door behind me. I saw him through the open door. He was talking fast on the telephone. I had not heard it ring. Walsh was calling someone. I had a good hunch that it was about me.
All at once another possibility occurred to me. I did not like the thought. Maybe my two shadows and the mayhem so far on Pete had no connection to Stettin or Tani Jones but to Nancy Driscoll. It was possible. Maybe Jo- Jo had run off with the Driscoll girl and someone did not like that. My two hard types could be looking for Jo-Jo about Nancy Driscoll. It was as good a theory as any other I had come up with. With the little I knew, it was a fine theory.
It was also a dangerous theory. If it had any germ of truth in it, Walsh was probably calling down the wolves on me.
I got out of that office and out of the building. Once I reached the crowded midtown street I felt better. Somehow daylight and sun and crowds make a man feel safer. What can happen in broad daylight on a street full of innocent people? Plenty, that’s what can happen. I can name six unsolved killings that took place in broad daylight on a city street. Caution was indicated.
So I took the short subway ride up to Seventy-second Street, with a careful and watchful change at Columbus Circle, and went warily up out of the station into the heat.
I walked north on Central Park West in the shadow of the Dakota Apartments. The park was across the street to the right. It was still early and the park was green and bright in the sun. New York, in summer, is always at its best before eleven o’clock in the morning. The air is clearer then, the heat not yet an oven.
