'Why him, for Christ's sake?'
'He's a friend of mine.'
'Funny friend for you to have.'
'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'When you think about it, all I am is a guy who used to be a cop a long time ago. And what I am now is a sort of shady character with no visible means of support, so—'
'Cut it out.'
I didn't say anything.
'I'm sorry, all right? I played it the way it looked as though it had to be played. You were on the job long enough to know how it works.'
'Oh, I know how it works, all right.'
'Well,' he said. 'If you think of anything, you'll let me know, right?'
'If I think of anything.'
'Meantime, why don't you go home and get some sleep? You can't do her any good here. Go get some rest.'
'Sure,' I said.
We walked out of there together. They were paging some doctor on the intercom. I tried to remember the name of the one I'd talked to.
He'd been wearing one of those plastic badges with his name on it, but it hadn't registered.
Outside the sun was shining, the air, a little warmer than it had been lately. Durkin said he had a car parked around the corner and offered me a ride downtown. I said I'd take a cab, and he didn't press.
I didn't have to loid the door at 288 East Twenty-fifth. A woman was on her way out as I came in from the street. From the smile she gave me, I think she must have thought she recognized me. She held the door for me and I thanked her and went on in.
I walked the length of the hallway. The door to the rear courtyard was as I'd left it, with my toothpick wedged in place to keep it from locking. I pushed it shut behind me and stood at the back of the yard and looked up at his window.
I'd made two stops on the way downtown. As a result, I had a pair of standard-issue NYPD handcuffs in one of my topcoat pockets and a miniature tape recorder in the other. I found room in one of my pants pockets for the cuffs and put the recorder in a jacket pocket, where it shared space with Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, which I seemed as incapable of getting rid of as I was of reading. My other jacket pocket held the .38 Smith. I took off my topcoat, folded it, and set it down on top of one of the garbage cans. It was too bulky for what I had in mind.
No rats scuttled as I moved among the garbage cans. They were probably hidden away somewhere, sleeping off the effects of the long night. Maybe Motley was doing the same.
Making as little noise as possible, I positioned one garbage can beneath the fire escape and clambered on top of it. I straightened up and reached overhead to grasp the descending ladder. I pulled on it and nothing happened. I gave a yank and it creaked a little in protest, and there was a screech of metal scraping against metal as it lowered itself for my ascent.
I waited, but no heads emerged from the windows overlooking the courtyard. The noise was minimal, and most of the tenants were probably at work at that hour, while the night workers would be asleep.
Over on Second Avenue somebody leaned on a car horn, and another driver answered with a series of staccato beeps. I hauled myself upward, pulling myself hand over hand until I could get a foot onto the lowest rung. The Smith in my pocket clanged against the metal railing. I climbed onto the first horizontal walkway, leaned my weight against the brick wall of the building, and tried to catch my breath.
After a minute or two I was ready to go the rest of the way. I climbed up to the fourth floor and kept a low profile when I reached it, hunkering down on the metal parapet and peering over the windowsill.
The apartment was dark within. There were window gates to render the place burglar-proof, but they were unfastened, and the window itself was open a few inches at the bottom. I got up close to the window and looked in, first through the space at the bottom, then through the glass. I was looking into a small bedroom. There was an old-fashioned metal bedstead, a chest of drawers, a pair of milk crates set on end to serve as bedside tables. One of them held a phone, the other a digital clock-radio.
I sat perfectly still for what the clock-radio assured me was a full minute. The seconds ticked silently but visibly away, and not a sound issued from the apartment within. And the bed was empty, and unmade.
But it was the right apartment, and Brian's information was good.
And he'd been back since his visit to Elaine's apartment.
A jacket with a New York Auxiliary Police shoulder patch hung from the knob of the closet door.
So he had been there. And he would be back. And I would be waiting for him.
Slowly, carefully, I gripped the window at the bottom and lifted. It went up readily and made hardly any sound at all. I turned to look around, on the chance that someone was watching all of this from a neighboring building. I could envision myself waiting in there for him, only to have to open the door to some cops dispatched by some public-spirited citizen.
But there was nobody paying any attention. I opened the window the rest of the way and stepped in over the sill.
Inside, the bedroom smelled like some animal's lair. It was a woman's apartment, you could see that from the clothes in the closet and the clutter on the dresser top, but the scent was masculine and predatory.
I couldn't tell how recently he'd been here but I could feel his presence in the room, and without even thinking about it I dipped into my jacket pocket and brought out the Smith. The butt was snug in my palm and my index
