I set the clock for that hour and got in bed. I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the map of Brooklyn, but before I could even begin to focus in on Sunset Park I was gone.
Traffic noises roused me slightly at one point, and I told myself I could open my eyes and check the clock, but instead I drifted off into a complicated dream involving clocks and computers and telephones, the source of which was not terribly difficult to guess. We were in a hotel room and someone was banging on the door. In the dream I went to the door and opened it. Nobody was there, but the noise continued, and then I was out of the dream and awake and somebody was pounding on my door.
It was Jacob, saying that Miss Mardell was on the phone and said it was urgent. 'I know you wanted to sleep till five,' he said, 'and I told her that, and she said to wake you no matter what you said. She sounded like she meant it.'
I hung up the phone and he went back downstairs and put the call through. I was anxious waiting for it to ring. The last time she'd called up and said it was urgent, a man turned up determined to kill us both. I snatched the phone when it rang, and she said, 'Matt, I hated waking you, but it really couldn't wait.'
'What's the matter?'
'It turns out there was a needle in the haystack after all. I just got off the phone with a woman named Pam. She's on her way over here.'
'So?'
'She's the one we're looking for. She met those men, she got in the truck with them.'
'And lived to tell the tale?'
'Barely. One of the counselors I pitched the movie story to called her right away, and she spent the past week working up the courage to call. I heard enough over the phone to know not to let this one get away.
I told her I could guarantee her a thousand dollars if she'd come over and run through her story in person. Was that all right?'
'Of course.'
'But I don't have the cash. I gave you all my cash Saturday.'
I looked at my watch. I had time to stop at the bank if I hurried.
'I'll get cash,' I told her. 'I'll be right over.'
Chapter 13
'Come on in,' Elaine said. 'She's already here. Pam, this is Mr.
Scudder, Matthew Scudder. Matt, I'd like you to meet Pam.'
She had been sitting on the couch and she arose at our approach, a slender woman, about five-three, with short dark hair and intensely blue eyes. She was wearing a dark gray skirt and a pale blue angora sweater.
Lipstick, eye shadow. High-heeled shoes. I sensed she'd chosen her outfit for our meeting, and that she wasn't sure she'd made the right choices.
Elaine, looking cool and competent in slacks and a silk blouse, said, 'Sit down, Matt. Take the chair.'
She joined Pam on the couch and said, 'I just finished telling Pam that I got her here under false pretenses. She's not going to meet Debra Winger.'
'I asked who the star was gonna be,' Pam said, 'and she said Debra Winger, and I'm like, wow, Debra Winger is gonna do a movie of the week? I didn't think she would do TV.' She shrugged. 'But I guess there's not gonna be a movie, so what difference does it make who the star is?'
'But the thousand dollars is real,' Elaine said.
'Yeah, well, that's good,' Pam said, 'because I can use the money.
But I didn't come for the money.'
'I know that, dear.'
'Not just for the money.'
I had the money, a thousand for her and the twelve hundred I owed Elaine and some walking-around money for myself, three thousand dollars total from my safe-deposit box.
'She said you're a detective,' Pam said.
'That's right.'
'And you're going after those guys. I talked a lot with the cops, I must of talked with three, four different cops—'
'When was that?'
'Right after it happened.'
'And that was—?'
'Oh, I didn't realize you didn't know. It was in July, this past July.'
'And you reported it to the police?'
'Jesus,' she said. 'What choice did I have? I had to go to the hospital, didn't I? The doctors are like, wow, who did this to you, and what am I gonna say, I slipped? I cut myself? So they called the police, naturally. I mean, even
